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+Project Gutenberg’s Christopher Columbus, Complete, by Filson Young
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Christopher Columbus, Complete
+
+Author: Filson Young
+
+Release Date: October 7, 2006 [EBook #4116]
+Last Updated: August 24, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS, COMPLETE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                         CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS
+
+                   AND THE NEW WORLD OF HIS DISCOVERY
+
+                      A NARRATIVE BY FILSON YOUNG
+
+
+
+                                  TO
+                  THE RIGHT HON. SIR HORACE PLUNKETT,
+                        K.C.V.O., D.C.L., F.R.S.
+
+MY DEAR HORACE,
+
+Often while I have been studying the records of colonisation in the New
+World I have thought of you and your difficult work in Ireland; and I
+have said to myself, “What a time he would have had if he had been
+Viceroy of the Indies in 1493!”  There, if ever, was the chance for a
+Department such as yours; and there, if anywhere, was the place for the
+Economic Man.  Alas! there war only one of him; William Ires or Eyre, by
+name, from the county Galway; and though he fertilised the soil he did it
+with his blood and bones.  A wonderful chance; and yet you see what came
+of it all.  It would perhaps be stretching truth too far to say that you
+are trying to undo some of Columbus’s work, and to stop up the hole he
+made in Ireland when he found a channel into which so much of what was
+best in the Old Country war destined to flow; for you and he have each
+your places in the great circle of Time and Compensation, and though you
+may seem to oppose one another across the centuries you are really
+answering the same call and working in the same vineyard.  For we all set
+out to discover new worlds; and they are wise who realise early that
+human nature has roots that spread beneath the ocean bed, that neither
+latitude nor longitude nor time itself can change it to anything richer
+or stranger than what it is, and that furrows ploughed in it are furrows
+ploughed in the sea sand.  Columbus tried to pour the wine of
+civilisation into very old bottles; you, more wisely, are trying to pour
+the old wine of our country into new bottles.  Yet there is no great
+unlikeness between the two tasks: it is all a matter of bottling; the
+vintage is the same, infinite, inexhaustible, and as punctual as the sun
+and the seasons.  It was Columbus’s weakness as an administrator that he
+thought the bottle was everything; it is your strength that you care for
+the vintage, and labour to preserve its flavour and soft fire.
+
+                                        Yours,
+                                             FILSON YOUNG.
+RUAN MINOR, September 1906.
+
+
+
+
+                                 PREFACE
+
+The writing of historical biography is properly a work of partnership, to
+which public credit is awarded too often in an inverse proportion to the
+labours expended.  One group of historians, labouring in the obscurest
+depths, dig and prepare the ground, searching and sifting the documentary
+soil with infinite labour and over an area immensely wide.  They are
+followed by those scholars and specialists in history who give their
+lives to the study of a single period, and who sow literature in the
+furrows of research prepared by those who have preceded them.  Last of
+all comes the essayist, or writer pure and simple, who reaps the harvest
+so laboriously prepared.  The material lies all before him; the documents
+have been arranged, the immense contemporary fields of record and
+knowledge examined and searched for stray seeds of significance that may
+have blown over into them; the perspective is cleared for him, the
+relation of his facts to time and space and the march of human
+civilisation duly established; he has nothing to do but reap the field of
+harvest where it suits him, grind it in the wheels of whatever machinery
+his art is equipped with, and come before the public with the finished
+product.  And invariably in this unequal partnership he reaps most richly
+who reaps latest.
+
+I am far from putting this narrative forward as the fine and ultimate
+product of all the immense labour and research of the historians of
+Columbus; but I am anxious to excuse myself for my apparent presumption
+in venturing into a field which might more properly be occupied by the
+expert historian.  It would appear that the double work of acquiring the
+facts of a piece of human history and of presenting them through the
+medium of literature can hardly ever be performed by one and the same
+man.  A lifetime must be devoted to the one, a year or two may suffice
+for the other; and an entirely different set of qualities must be
+employed in the two tasks.  I cannot make it too clear that I make no
+claim to have added one iota of information or one fragment of original
+research to the expert knowledge regarding the life of Christopher
+Columbus; and when I add that the chief collection of facts and documents
+relating to the subject, the ‘Raccolta Columbiana,’--[Raccolta di
+Documenti e Studi Publicati dalla R. Commissione Colombiana, &c.  Auspice
+il Ministero della Publica Istruzione.  Rome, 1892-4.]--is a work
+consisting of more than thirty folio volumes, the general reader will be
+the more indulgent to me.  But when a purely human interest led me some
+time ago to look into the literature of Columbus, I was amazed to find
+what seemed to me a striking disproportion between the extent of the
+modern historians’ work on that subject and the knowledge or interest in
+it displayed by what we call the general reading public.  I am surprised
+to find how many well-informed people there are whose knowledge of
+Columbus is comprised within two beliefs, one of them erroneous and the
+other doubtful: that he discovered America, and performed a trick with
+an egg.  Americans, I think, are a little better informed on the subject
+than the English; perhaps because the greater part of modern critical
+research on the subject of Columbus has been the work of Americans.
+It is to bridge the immense gap existing between the labours of the
+historians and the indifference of the modern reader, between the
+Raccolta Columbiana, in fact, and the story of the egg, that I have
+written my narrative.
+
+It is customary and proper to preface a work which is based entirely on
+the labours of other people with an acknowledgment of the sources whence
+it is drawn; and yet in the case of Columbus I do not know where to
+begin.  In one way I am indebted to every serious writer who has even
+remotely concerned himself with the subject, from Columbus himself and
+Las Casas down to the editors of the Raccolta.  The chain of historians
+has been so unbroken, the apostolic succession, so to speak, has passed
+with its heritage so intact from generation to generation, that the
+latest historian enshrines in his work the labours of all the rest.
+Yet there are necessarily some men whose work stands out as being more
+immediately seizable than that of others; in the period of whose care the
+lamp of inspiration has seemed to burn more brightly.  In a matter of
+this kind I cannot pretend to be a judge, but only to state my own
+experience and indebtedness; and in my work I have been chiefly helped by
+Las Casas, indirectly of course by Ferdinand Columbus, Herrera, Oviedo,
+Bernaldez, Navarrete, Asensio, Mr. Payne, Mr. Harrisse, Mr. Vignaud,
+Mr. Winsor, Mr. Thacher, Sir Clements Markham, Professor de Lollis,
+and S. Salvagnini.  It is thus not among the dusty archives of Seville,
+Genoa, or San Domingo that I have searched, but in the archive formed by
+the writings of modern workers.  To have myself gone back to original
+sources, even if I had been competent to do so, would have been in the
+case of Columbian research but a waste of time and a doing over again
+what has been done already with patience, diligence, and knowledge.  The
+historians have been committed to the austere task of finding out and
+examining every fact and document in connection with their subject; and
+many of these facts and documents are entirely without human interest
+except in so far as they help to establish a date, a name, or a sum of
+money.  It has been my agreeable and lighter task to test and assay the
+masses of bed-rock fact thus excavated by the historians for traces of
+the particular ore which I have been seeking.  In fact I have tried to
+discover, from a reverent examination of all these monographs, essays,
+histories, memoirs, and controversies concerning what Christopher
+Columbus did, what Christopher Columbus was; believing as I do that any
+labour by which he can be made to live again, and from the dust of more
+than four hundred years be brought visibly to the mind’s eye, will not be
+entirely without use and interest.  Whether I have succeeded in doing so
+or not I cannot be the judge; I can only say that the labour of
+resuscitating a man so long buried beneath mountains of untruth and
+controversy has some times been so formidable as to have seemed hopeless.
+And yet one is always tempted back by the knowledge that Christopher
+Columbus is not only a name, but that the human being whom we so describe
+did actually once live and walk in the world; did actually sail and look
+upon seas where we may also sail and look; did stir with his feet the
+indestructible dust of this old Earth, and centre in himself, as we all
+do, the whole interest and meaning of the Universe.  Truly the most
+commonplace fact, yet none the less amazing; and often when in the dust
+of documents he has seemed most dead and unreal to me I have found
+courage from the entertainment of some deep or absurd reflection; such as
+that he did once undoubtedly, like other mortals, blink and cough and
+blow his nose.  And if my readers could realise that fact throughout
+every page of this book, I should say that I had succeeded in my task.
+
+To be more particular in my acknowledgments.  In common with every modern
+writer on Columbus--and modern research on the history of Columbus is
+only thirty years old--I owe to the labours of Mr. Henry Harrisse, the
+chief of modern Columbian historians, the indebtedness of the gold-miner
+to the gold-mine.  In the matters of the Toscanelli correspondence and
+the early years of Columbus I have followed more closely Mr. Henry
+Vignaud, whose work may be regarded as a continuation and reexamination
+--in some cases destructive--of that of Mr. Harrisse.  Mr. Vignaud’s work
+is happily not yet completed; we all look forward eagerly to the
+completion of that part of his ‘Etudes Critiques’ dealing with the second
+half of the Admiral’s life; and Mr. Vignaud seems to me to stand higher
+than all modern workers in this field in the patient and fearless
+discovery of the truth regarding certain very controversial matters,
+and also in ability to give a sound and reasonable interpretation to
+those obscurer facts or deductions in Columbus’s life that seem doomed
+never to be settled by the aid of documents alone.  It may be unseemly in
+me not to acknowledge indebtedness to Washington Irving,  but I cannot
+conscientiously do so.  If I had been writing ten or fifteen years ago I
+might have taken his work seriously; but it is impossible that anything
+so one-sided, so inaccurate, so untrue to life, and so profoundly dull
+could continue to exist save in the absence of any critical knowledge or
+light on the subject.  All that can be said for him is that he kept the
+lamp of interest in Columbus alive for English readers during the period
+that preceded the advent of modern critical research.  Mr. Major’s
+edition’ of Columbus’s letters has been freely consulted by me, as it
+must be by any one interested in the subject.  Professor Justin Winsor’s
+work has provided an invaluable store of ripe scholarship in matters of
+cosmography and geographical detail; Sir Clements Markham’s book, by far
+the most trustworthy of modern English works on the subject, and a
+valuable record of the established facts in Columbus’s life, has proved a
+sound guide in nautical matters; while the monograph of Mr. Elton, which
+apparently did not promise much at first, since the author has followed
+some untrustworthy leaders as regards his facts, proved to be full of a
+fragrant charm produced by the writer’s knowledge of and interest in
+sub-tropical vegetation; and it is delightfully filled with the names of
+gums and spices.  To Mr. Vignaud I owe special thanks, not only for the
+benefits of his research and of his admirable works on Columbus, but also
+for personal help and encouragement.  Equally cordial thanks are due to
+Mr. John Boyd Thacher,  whose work, giving as it does so large a
+selection of the Columbus documents both in facsimile, transliteration,
+and translation, is of the greatest service to every English writer on
+the subject of Columbus.  It is the more to be regretted, since the
+documentary part of Mr. Thacher’s work is so excellent, that in his
+critical studies he should have seemed to ignore some of the more
+important results of modern research.  I am further particularly indebted
+to Mr. Thacher and to his publishers, Messrs.  Putnam’s Sons, for
+permission to reproduce certain illustrations in his work, and to avail
+myself also of his copies and translations of original Spanish and
+Italian documents.  I have to thank Commendatore Guido Biagi, the keeper
+of the Laurentian Library in Florence, for his very kind help and letters
+of introduction to Italian librarians; Mr. Raymond Beazley, of Merton
+College, Oxford, for his most helpful correspondence; and Lord Dunraven
+for so kindly bringing, in the interests of my readers, his practical
+knowledge of navigation and seamanship to bear on the first voyage of
+Columbus.  Finally my work has been helped and made possible by many
+intimate and personal kindnesses which, although they are not specified,
+are not the less deeply acknowledged.
+
+September 1906.
+
+
+
+                                 CONTENTS
+
+
+THE INNER LIGHT
+
+I         THE STREAM OF THE WORLD
+
+II        THE HOME IN GENOA
+
+III       YOUNG CHRISTOPHER
+
+IV        DOMENICO
+
+V         SEA THOUGHTS
+
+VI        IN PORTUGAL
+
+VII       ADVENTURES BODILY AND SPIRITUAL
+
+VIII      THE FIRE KINDLES
+
+IX        WANDERINGS WITH AN IDEA
+
+X         OUR LADY OF LA RABIDA
+
+XI        THE CONSENT OF SPAIN
+
+XII       THE PREPARATIONS AT PALOS
+
+XIII      EVENTS OF THE FIRST VOYAGE
+
+XIV       LANDFALL
+
+
+
+
+THE NEW WORLD
+
+I         THE ENCHANTED ISLANDS
+
+II        THE EARTHLY PARADISE
+
+III       THE VOYAGE HOME
+
+IV        THE HOUR OF TRIUMPH
+
+V         GREAT EXPECTATIONS
+
+VI        THE SECOND VOYAGE
+
+VII       THE EARTHLY PARADISE REVISITED
+
+
+
+DESPERATE REMEDIES
+
+I         THE VOYAGE TO CUBA
+
+II        THE CONQUEST OF ESPANOLA
+
+III       UPS AND DOWNS
+
+IV        IN SPAIN AGAIN
+
+V         THE THIRD VOYAGE
+
+VI        AN INTERLUDE
+
+VII       THE THIRD VOYAGE (continued)
+
+
+
+TOWARDS THE SUNSET
+
+I         DEGRADATION
+
+II        CRISIS IN THE ADMIRAL’S LIFE
+
+III       THE LAST VOYAGE
+
+IV        HEROIC ADVENTURES BY LAND AND SEA
+
+V         THE ECLIPSE OF THE MOON
+
+VI        RELIEF OF THE ADMIRAL
+
+VII       THE HERITAGE OF HATRED
+
+VIII      THE ADMIRAL COMES HOME
+
+IX        THE LAST DAYS
+
+X         THE MAN COLUMBUS
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                          THY WAY IS THE SEA,
+                   AND THY PATH IN THE GREAT WATERS,
+                    AND THY FOOTSTEPS ARE NOT KNOWN.
+
+
+
+
+THE INNER LIGHT
+
+BOOK I.
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE STREAM OF THE WORLD
+
+A man standing on the sea-shore is perhaps as ancient and as primitive a
+symbol of wonder as the mind can conceive.  Beneath his feet are the
+stones and grasses of an element that is his own, natural to him, in some
+degree belonging to him, at any rate accepted by him.  He has place and
+condition there.  Above him arches a world of immense void, fleecy
+sailing clouds, infinite clear blueness, shapes that change and dissolve;
+his day comes out of it, his source of light and warmth marches across
+it, night falls from it; showers and dews also, and the quiet influence
+of stars.  Strange that impalpable element must be, and for ever
+unattainable by him; yet with its gifts of sun and shower, its furniture
+of winged life that inhabits also on the friendly soil, it has links and
+partnerships with life as he knows it and is a complement of earthly
+conditions.  But at his feet there lies the fringe of another element,
+another condition, of a vaster and more simple unity than earth or air,
+which the primitive man of our picture knows to be not his at all.  It is
+fluent and unstable, yet to be touched and felt; it rises and falls,
+moves and frets about his very feet, as though it had a life and entity
+of its own, and was engaged upon some mysterious business.  Unlike the
+silent earth and the dreaming clouds it has a voice that fills his world
+and, now low, now loud, echoes throughout his waking and sleeping life.
+Earth with her sprouting fruits behind and beneath him; sky, and larks
+singing, above him; before him, an eternal alien, the sea: he stands
+there upon the shore, arrested, wondering.  He lives,--this man of our
+figure; he proceeds, as all must proceed, with the task and burden of
+life.  One by one its miracles are unfolded to him; miracles of fire and
+cold, and pain and pleasure; the seizure of love, the terrible magic of
+reproduction, the sad miracle of death.  He fights and lusts and endures;
+and, no more troubled by any wonder, sleeps at last.  But throughout the
+days of his life, in the very act of his rude existence, this great
+tumultuous presence of the sea troubles and overbears him.  Sometimes in
+its bellowing rage it terrifies him, sometimes in its tranquillity it
+allures him; but whatever he is doing, grubbing for roots, chipping
+experimentally with bones and stones, he has an eye upon it; and in his
+passage by the shore he pauses, looks, and wonders.  His eye is led from
+the crumbling snow at his feet, past the clear green of the shallows,
+beyond the furrows of the nearer waves, to the calm blue of the distance;
+and in his glance there shines again that wonder, as in his breast stirs
+the vague longing and unrest that is the life-force of the world.
+
+What is there beyond?  It is the eternal question asked by the finite of
+the infinite, by the mortal of the immortal; answer to it there is none
+save in the unending preoccupation of life and labour.  And if this old
+question was in truth first asked upon the sea-shore, it was asked most
+often and with the most painful wonder upon western shores, whence the
+journeying sun was seen to go down and quench himself in the sea.  The
+generations that followed our primitive man grew fast in knowledge, and
+perhaps for a time wondered the less as they knew the more; but we may be
+sure they never ceased to wonder at what might lie beyond the sea.  How
+much more must they have wondered if they looked west upon the waters,
+and saw the sun of each succeeding day sink upon a couch of glory where
+they could not follow?  All pain aspires to oblivion, all toil to rest,
+all troubled discontent with what is present to what is unfamiliar and
+far away; and no power of knowledge and scientific fact will ever prevent
+human unhappiness from reaching out towards some land of dreams of which
+the burning brightness of a sea sunset is an image.  Is it very hard to
+believe, then, that in that yearning towards the miracle of a sun
+quenched in sea distance, felt and felt again in human hearts through
+countless generations, the westward stream of human activity on this
+planet had its rise?  Is it unreasonable to picture, on an earth spinning
+eastward, a treadmill rush of feet to follow the sinking light?  The
+history of man’s life in this world does not, at any rate, contradict us.
+Wisdom, discovery, art, commerce, science, civilisation have all moved
+west across our world; have all in their cycles followed the sun; have
+all, in their day of power, risen in the East and set in the West.
+
+
+This stream of life has grown in force and volume with the passage of
+ages.  It has always set from shore to sea in countless currents of
+adventure and speculation; but it has set most strongly from East to
+West.  On its broad bosom the seeds of life and knowledge have been
+carried throughout the world.  It brought the people of Tyre and Carthage
+to the coasts and oceans of distant worlds; it carried the English from
+Jutland across cold and stormy waters to the islands of their conquest;
+it carried the Romans across half the world; it bore the civilisation of
+the far East to new life and virgin western soils; it carried the new
+West to the old East, and is in our day bringing back again the new East
+to the old West.  Religions, arts, tradings, philosophies, vices and laws
+have been borne, a strange flotsam, upon its unchanging flood.  It has
+had its springs and neaps, its trembling high-water marks, its hour of
+affluence, when the world has been flooded with golden humanity; its ebb
+and effluence also, when it has seemed to shrink and desert the kingdoms
+set upon its shores.  The fifteenth century in Western Europe found it at
+a pause in its movements: it had brought the trade and the learning of
+the East to the verge of the Old World, filling the harbours of the
+Mediterranean with ships and the monasteries of Italy and Spain with
+wisdom; and in the subsequent and punctual decadence that followed this
+flood, there gathered in the returning tide a greater energy and volume
+which was to carry the Old World bodily across the ocean.  And yet, for
+all their wisdom and power, the Spanish and Portuguese were still in the
+attitude of our primitive man, standing on the sea-shore and looking out
+in wonder across the sea.
+
+The flood of the life-stream began to set again, and little by little to
+rise and inundate Western Europe, floating off the galleys and caravels
+of King Alphonso of Portugal, and sending them to feel their way along
+the coasts of Africa; a little later drawing the mind of Prince Henry the
+Navigator to devote his life to the conquest and possession of the
+unknown.  In his great castle on the promontory of Sagres, with the voice
+of the Atlantic thundering in his ears, and its mists and sprays bounding
+his vision, he felt the full force of the stream, and stretched his arms
+to the mysterious West.  But the inner light was not yet so brightly
+kindled that he dared to follow his heart; his ships went south and south
+again, to brave on each voyage the dangers and terrors that lay along the
+unknown African coast, until at length his captains saw the Cape of Good
+Hope.  South and West and East were in those days confusing terms; for it
+was the East that men were thinking of when they set their faces to the
+setting sun, and it was a new road to the East that they sought when they
+felt their way southward along the edge of the world.  But the rising
+tide of discovery was working in that moment, engaging the brains of
+innumerable sages, stirring the wonder of innumerable mariners; reaching
+also, little by little, to quarters less immediately concerned with the
+business of discovery.  Ships carried the strange tidings of new coasts
+and new islands from port to port throughout the Mediterranean; Venetians
+on the lagoons, Ligurians on the busy trading wharves of Genoa, were
+discussing the great subject; and as the tide rose and spread, it floated
+one ship of life after another that was destined for the great business
+of adventure.  Some it inspired to dream and speculate, and to do no more
+than that; many a heart also to brave efforts and determinations that
+were doomed to come to nothing and to end only in failure.  And among
+others who felt the force and was swayed and lifted by the prevailing
+influence, there lived, some four and a half centuries ago, a little boy
+playing about the wharves of Genoa, well known to his companions as
+Christoforo, son of Domenico the wool-weaver, who lived in the Vico
+Dritto di Ponticello.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE HOME IN GENOA
+
+It is often hard to know how far back we should go in the ancestry of a
+man whose life and character we are trying to reconstruct.  The life that
+is in him is not his own, but is mysteriously transmitted through the
+life of his parents; to the common stock of his family, flesh of their
+flesh, bone of their bone, character of their character, he has but added
+his own personality.  However far back we go in his ancestry, there is
+something of him to be traced, could we but trace it; and although it
+soon becomes so widely scattered that no separate fraction of it seems to
+be recognisable, we know that, generations back, we may come upon some
+sympathetic fact, some reservoir of the essence that was him, in which we
+can find the source of many of his actions, and the clue, perhaps, to his
+character.
+
+In the case of Columbus we are spared this dilemma.  The past is reticent
+enough about the man himself; and about his ancestors it is almost
+silent.  We know that he had a father and grandfather, as all grandsons
+of Adam have had; but we can be certain of very little more than that.
+He came of a race of Italian yeomen inhabiting the Apennine valleys; and
+in the vale of Fontanabuona, that runs up into the hills behind Genoa,
+the two streams of family from which he sprang were united.  His father
+from one hamlet, his mother from another; the towering hills behind, the
+Mediterranean shining in front; love and marriage in the valley; and a
+little boy to come of it whose doings were to shake the world.
+
+His family tree begins for us with his grandfather, Giovanni Colombo of
+Terra-Rossa, one of the hamlets in the valley--concerning whom many human
+facts may be inferred, but only three are certainly known; that he lived,
+begot children, and died.  Lived, first at Terra Rossa, and afterwards
+upon the sea-shore at Quinto; begot children in number three--Antonio,
+Battestina, and Domenico, the father of our Christopher; and died,
+because one of the two facts in his history is that in the year 1444 he
+was not alive, being referred to in a legal document as quondam, or, as
+we should say, “the late.”  Of his wife, Christopher’s grandmother, since
+she never bought or sold or witnessed anything requiring the record of
+legal document, history speaks no word; although doubtless some pleasant
+and picturesque old lady, or lady other than pleasant and picturesque,
+had place in the experience or imagination of young Christopher.  Of the
+pair, old Quondam Giovanni alone survives the obliterating drift of
+generations, which the shores and brown slopes of Quinto al Mare, where
+he sat in the sun and looked about him, have also survived.  Doubtless
+old Quondam could have told us many things about Domenico, and his
+over-sanguine buyings and sellings; have perhaps told us something about
+Christopher’s environment, and cleared up our doubts concerning his first
+home; but he does not.  He will sit in the sun there at Quinto, and sip
+his wine, and say his Hail Marys, and watch the sails of the feluccas
+leaning over the blue floor of the Mediterranean as long as you please;
+but of information about son or family, not a word.  He is content to
+have survived, and triumphantly twinkles his two dates at us across the
+night of time.  1440, alive; 1444, not alive any longer: and so hail and
+farewell, Grandfather John.
+
+
+Of Antonio and Battestina, the uncle and aunt of Columbus, we know next
+to nothing.  Uncle Antonio inherited the estate of Terra-Rossa, Aunt
+Battestina was married in the valley; and so no more of either of them;
+except that Antonio, who also married, had sons, cousins of Columbus, who
+in after years, when he became famous, made themselves unpleasant, as
+poor relations will, by recalling themselves to his remembrance and
+suggesting that something might be done for them.  I have a belief,
+supported by no historical fact or document, that between the families of
+Domenico and Antonio there was a mild cousinly feud.  I believe they did
+not like each other.  Domenico, as we shall see presently, was sanguine
+and venturesome, a great buyer and seller, a maker of bargains in which
+he generally came off second best.  Antonio, who settled in Terra-Rossa,
+the paternal property, doubtless looked askance at these enterprises from
+his vantage-ground of a settled income; doubtless also, on the occasion
+of visits exchanged between the two families, he would comment upon the
+unfortunate enterprises of his brother; and as the children of both
+brothers grew up, they would inherit and exaggerate, as children will,
+this settled difference between their respective parents.  This, of
+course, may be entirely untrue, but I think it possible, and even likely;
+for Columbus in after life displayed a very tender regard for members of
+his family, but never to our knowledge makes any reference to these
+cousins of his, till they send emissaries to him in his hour of triumph.
+At any rate, among the influences that surrounded him at Genoa we may
+reckon this uncle and aunt and their children--dim ghosts to us, but to
+him real people, who walked and spoke, and blinked their eyes and moved
+their limbs, like the men and women of our own time.  Less of a ghost to
+us, though still a very shadowy and doubtful figure, is Domenico himself,
+Christopher’s father.  He at least is a man in whom we can feel a warm
+interest, as the one who actually begat and reared the man of our story.
+We shall see him later, and chiefly in difficulties; executing deeds and
+leases, and striking a great variety of legal attitudes, to the
+witnessing of which various members of his family were called in.  Little
+enough good did they to him at the time, poor Domenico; but he was a
+benefactor to posterity without knowing it, and in these grave notarial
+documents preserved almost the only evidence that we have as to the early
+days of his illustrious son.  A kind, sanguine man, this Domenico, who,
+if he failed to make a good deal of money in his various enterprises,
+at least had some enjoyment of them, as the man who buys and sells and
+strikes legal attitudes in every age desires and has.  He was a
+wool-carder by trade, but that was not enough for him; he must buy
+little bits of estates here and there; must even keep a tavern, where he
+and his wife could entertain the foreign sailors and hear the news of
+the world; where also, although perhaps they did not guess it, a sharp
+pair of ears were also listening, and a pair of round eyes gazing, and
+an inquisitive face set in astonishment at the strange tales that went
+about.
+
+There is one fragment of fact about this Domenico that greatly enlarges
+our knowledge of him.  He was a wool-weaver, as we know; he also kept a
+tavern, and no doubt justified the adventure on the plea that it would
+bring him customers for his woollen cloth; for your buyer and seller
+never lacks a reason either for his selling or buying.  Presently he is
+buying again; this time, still with striking of legal attitudes, calling
+together of relations, and accompaniments of crabbed Latin notarial
+documents, a piece of ground in the suburbs of Genoa, consisting of scrub
+and undergrowth, which cannot have been of any earthly use to him.  But
+also, according to the documents, there went some old wine-vats with the
+land.  Domenico, taking a walk after Mass on some feast-day, sees the
+land and the wine-vats; thinks dimly but hopefully how old wine-vats, if
+of no use to any other human creature, should at least be of use to a
+tavern-keeper; hurries back, overpowers the perfunctory objections of his
+complaisant wife, and on the morrow of the feast is off to the notary’s
+office.  We may be sure the wine-vats lay and rotted there, and furnished
+no monetary profit to the wool-weaving tavern-keeper; but doubtless they
+furnished him a rich profit of another kind when he walked about his
+newly-acquired property, and explained what he was going to do with the
+wine-vats.
+
+And besides the weaving of wool and pouring of wine and buying and
+selling of land, there were more human occupations, which Domenico was
+not the man to neglect.  He had married, about the year 1450, one
+Susanna, a daughter of Giacomo of Fontana-Rossa, a silk weaver who lived
+in the hamlet near to Terra-Rossa.  Domenico’s father was of the more
+consequence of the two, for he had, as well as his home in the valley, a
+house at Quinto, where he probably kept a felucca for purposes of trade
+with Alexandria and the Islands.  Perhaps the young people were married
+at Quinto, but if so they did not live there long, moving soon into
+Genoa, where Domenico could more conveniently work at his trade.  The
+wool-weavers at that time lived in a quarter outside the old city walls,
+between them and the outer borders of the city, which is now occupied by
+the park and public gardens.  Here they had their dwellings and
+workshops, their schools and institutions, receiving every protection and
+encouragement from the Signoria, who recognised the importance of the
+wool trade and its allied industries to Genoa.  Cloth-weavers,
+blanket-makers, silk-weavers, and velvet-makers all lived in this
+quarter, and held their houses under the neighbouring abbey of San
+Stefano.  There are two houses mentioned in documents which seem to have
+been in the possession of Domenico at different times.  One was in the
+suburbs outside the Olive Gate; the other was farther in, by St.
+Andrew’s Gate, and quite near to the sea.  The house outside the Olive
+Gate has disappeared; and it was probably here that our Christopher
+first saw the light, and pleased Domenico’s heart with his little cries
+and struggles. Neither the day nor even the year is certainly known, but
+there is most reason to believe that it was in the year 1451.  They must
+have moved soon afterwards to the house in the Vico Dritto di
+Ponticello, No. 37, in which most of Christopher’s childhood was
+certainly passed.  This is a house close to St. Andrew’s Gate, which
+gate still stands in a beautiful and ruinous condition.
+
+From the new part of Genoa, and from the Via XX Settembre, you turn into
+the little Piazza di Ponticello just opposite the church of San Stefano.
+In a moment you are in old Genoa, which is to-day in appearance virtually
+the same as the place in which Christopher and his little brothers and
+sisters made the first steps of their pilgrimage through this world.  If
+the Italian, sun has been shining fiercely upon you, in the great modern
+thoroughfare, you will turn into this quarter of narrow streets and high
+houses with grateful relief.  The past seems to meet you there; and from
+the Piazza, gay with its little provision-shops and fruit stalls, you
+walk up the slope of the Vico Dritto di Ponticello, leaving the sunlight
+behind you, and entering the narrow street like a traveller entering a
+mountain gorge.
+
+It is a very curious street this; I suppose there is no street in the
+world that has more character.  Genoa invented sky-scrapers long before
+Columbus had discovered America, or America had invented steel frames for
+high building; but although many of the houses in the Vico Dritto di
+Ponticello are seven and eight storeys high, the width of the street from
+house-wall to house-wall does not average more than nine feet.  The
+street is not straight, moreover; it winds a little in its ascent to the
+old city wall and St. Andrew’s Gate, so that you do not even see the sky
+much as you look forward and upwards.  The jutting cornices of the roofs,
+often beautifully decorated, come together in a medley of angles and
+corners that practically roof the street over; and only here and there do
+you see a triangle or a parallelogram of the vivid brilliant blue that is
+the sky.  Besides being seven or eight storeys high, the houses are the
+narrowest in the world; I should think that their average width on the
+street front is ten feet.  So as you walk up this street where young
+Christopher lived you must think of it in these three dimensions towering
+slices of houses, ten or twelve feet in width: a street often not more
+than eight and seldom more than fifteen feet in width; and the walls of
+the houses themselves, painted in every colour, green and pink and grey
+and white, and trellised with the inevitable green window-shutters of the
+South, standing like cliffs on each side of you seven or eight rooms
+high.  There being so little horizontal space for the people to live
+there, what little there is is most economically used; and all across the
+tops of the houses, high above your head, the cliffs are joined by wires
+and clothes-lines from which thousands of brightly-dyed garments are
+always hanging and fluttering; higher still, where the top storeys of the
+houses become merged in roof, there are little patches of garden and
+greenery, where geraniums and delicious tangling creepers uphold thus
+high above the ground the fertile tradition of earth.  You walk slowly up
+the paved street.  One of its characteristics, which it shares with the
+old streets of most Italian towns, is that it is only used by
+foot-passengers, being of course too narrow for wheels; and it is paved
+across with flagstones from door to door, so that the feet and the
+voices echo pleasantly in it, and make a music of their own.  Without
+exception the ground floor of every house is a shop--the gayest, busiest
+most industrious little shops in the world.  There are shops for
+provisions, where the delightful macaroni lies in its various bins, and
+all kinds of frugal and nourishing foods are offered for sale.  There
+are shops for clothes and dyed finery; there are shops for boots, where
+boots hang in festoons like onions outside the window--I have never seen
+so many boot-shops at once in my life as I saw in the streets
+surrounding the house of Columbus.  And every shop that is not a
+provision-shop or a clothes-shop or a boot-shop, is a wine-shop--or at
+least you would think so, until you remember, after you have walked
+through the street, what a lot of other kinds of shops you have seen on
+your way.  There are shops for newspapers and tobacco, for cheap
+jewellery, for brushes, for chairs and tables and articles of wood;
+there are shops with great stacks and piles of crockery; there are shops
+for cheese and butter and milk--indeed from this one little street in
+Genoa you could supply every necessary and every luxury of a humble
+life.
+
+As you still go up, the street takes a slight bend; and immediately
+before you, you see it spanned by the lofty crumbled arch of St.
+Andrew’s Gate, with its two mighty towers one on each side.  Just as you
+see it you are at Columbus’s house.  The number is thirty-seven; it is
+like any of the other houses, tall and narrow; and there is a slab built
+into the wall above the first storey, on which is written this
+inscription:--
+
+                      NVLLA DOMVS TITVLO DIGNIOR
+                                 HEIC
+                          PATERNIS IN AEDIBV
+                        CHRISTOPHORVS COLVMBVS
+                               PVERITIAM
+                      PRIMAMQVE IVVENTAM TRANSEGIT
+
+You stop and look at it; and presently you become conscious of a
+difference between it and all the other houses.  They are all alert,
+busy, noisy, crowded with life in every storey, oozing vitality from
+every window; but of all the narrow vertical strips that make up the
+houses of the street, this strip numbered thirty-seven is empty, silent,
+and dead.  The shutters veil its windows; within it is dark, empty of
+furniture, and inhabited only by a memory and a spirit.  It is a strange
+place in which to stand and to think of all that has happened since the
+man of our thoughts looked forth from these windows, a common little boy.
+The world is very much alive in the Vico Dritto di Ponticello; the little
+freshet of life that flows there flows loud and incessant; and yet into
+what oceans of death and silence has it not poured since it carried forth
+Christopher on its stream!  One thinks of the continent of that New World
+that he discovered, and all the teeming millions of human lives that have
+sprung up and died down, and sprung up again, and spread and increased
+there; all the ploughs that have driven into its soil, the harvests that
+have ripened, the waving acres and miles of grain that have answered the
+call of Spring and Autumn since first the bow of his boat grated on the
+shore of Guanahani.  And yet of the two scenes this narrow shuttered
+house in a bye-street of Genoa is at once the more wonderful and more
+credible; for it contains the elements of the other.  Walls and floors
+and a roof, a place to eat and sleep in, a place to work and found a
+family, and give tangible environment to a human soul--there is all human
+enterprise and discovery, effort, adventure, and life in that.
+
+
+If Christopher wanted to go down to the sea he would have to pass under
+the Gate of St. Andrew, with the old prison, now pulled down to make room
+for the modern buildings, on his right, and go down the Salita del
+Prione, which is a continuation of the Vico Dritto di Ponticello.  It
+slopes downwards from the Gate as the first street sloped upwards to it;
+and it contains the same assortment of shops and of houses, the same
+mixture of handicrafts and industries, as were seen in the Vico Dritto di
+Ponticello.  Presently he would come to the Piazza dell’ Erbe, where
+there is no grass, but only a pleasant circle of little houses and shops,
+with already a smack of the sea in them, chiefly suggested by the shops
+of instrument-makers, where to-day there are compasses and sextants and
+chronometers.  Out of the Piazza you come down the Via di San Donato and
+into the Piazza of that name, where for over nine centuries the church of
+San Donato has faced the sun and the weather.  From there Christopher’s
+young feet would follow the winding Via di San Bernato, a street also
+inhabited by craftsmen and workers in wood and metal; and at the last
+turn of it, a gash of blue between the two cliffwalls of houses, you see
+the Mediterranean.
+
+Here, then, between the narrow little house by the Gate and the clamour
+and business of the sea-front, our Christopher’s feet carried him daily
+during some part of his childish life.  What else he did, what he thought
+and felt, what little reflections he had, are but matters of conjecture.
+Genoa will tell you nothing more.  You may walk over the very spot where
+he was born; you may unconsciously tread in the track of his vanished
+feet; you may wander about the wharves of the city, and see the ships
+loading and unloading--different ships, but still trafficking in
+commodities not greatly different from those of his day; you may climb
+the heights behind Genoa, and look out upon the great curving Gulf from
+Porto Fino to where the Cape of the western Riviera dips into the sea;
+you may walk along the coast to Savona, where Domenico had one of his
+many habitations, where he kept the tavern, and whither Christopher’s
+young feet must also have walked; and you may come back and search again
+in the harbour, from the old Mole and the Bank of St. George to where the
+port and quays stretch away to the medley of sailing-ships and steamers;
+but you will not find any sign or trace of Christopher.  No echo of the
+little voice that shrilled in the narrow street sounds in the Vico
+Dritto; the houses stand gaunt and straight, with a brilliant strip of
+blue sky between their roofs and the cool street beneath; but they give
+you nothing of what you seek.  If you see a little figure running towards
+you in a blue smock, the head fair-haired, the face blue-eyed and a
+little freckled with the strong sunshine, it is not a real figure; it is
+a child of your dreams and a ghost of the past.  You may chase him while
+he runs about the wharves and stumbles over the ropes, but you will never
+catch him.  He runs before you, zigzagging over the cobbles, up the sunny
+street, into the narrow house; out again, running now towards the Duomo,
+hiding in the porch of San Stefano, where the weavers held their
+meetings; back again along the wharves; surely he is hiding behind that
+mooring-post!  But you look, and he is not there--nothing but the old
+harbour dust that the wind stirs into a little eddy while you look.  For
+he belongs not to you or me, this child; he is not yet enslaved to the
+great purpose, not yet caught up into the machinery of life.  His eye has
+not yet caught the fire of the sun setting on a western sea; he is still
+free and happy, and belongs only to those who love him.  Father and
+mother, brothers Bartolomeo and Giacomo, sister Biancinetta, aunts,
+uncles, and cousins possibly, and possibly for a little while an old
+grandmother at Quinto--these were the people to whom that child belonged.
+The little life of his first decade, unviolated by documents or history,
+lives happily in our dreams, as blank as sunshine.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+YOUNG CHRISTOPHER
+
+Christopher was fourteen years old when he first went to sea.  That
+is his own statement, and it is one of the few of his autobiographical
+utterances that we need not doubt.  From it, and from a knowledge of
+certain other dates, we are able to construct some vague picture of his
+doings before he left Italy and settled in Portugal.  Already in his
+young heart he was feeling the influence that was to direct and shape
+his destiny; already, towards his home in Genoa, long ripples from the
+commotion of maritime adventure in the West were beginning to spread.
+At the age of ten he was apprenticed to his father, who undertook,
+according to the indentures, to provide him with board and lodging, a
+blue gabardine and a pair of good shoes, and various other matters in
+return for his service.  But there is no reason to suppose that he ever
+occupied himself very much with wool-weaving.  He had a vocation quite
+other than that, and if he ever did make any cloth there must have been
+some strange thoughts and imaginings woven into it, as he plied the
+shuttle.  Most of his biographers, relying upon a doubtful statement in
+the life of him written by his son Ferdinand, would have us send him at
+the age of twelve to the distant University of Pavia, there, poor mite,
+to sit at the feet of learned professors studying Latin, mathematics, and
+cosmography; but fortunately it is not necessary to believe so improbable
+a statement.  What is much more likely about his education--for education
+he had, although not of the superior kind with which he has been
+credited--is that in the blank, sunny time of his childhood he was sent
+to one of the excellent schools established by the weavers in their own
+quarter, and that there or afterwards he came under some influence, both
+religious and learned, which stamped him the practical visionary that he
+remained throughout his life.  Thereafter, between his sea voyagings and
+expeditions about the Mediterranean coasts, he no doubt acquired
+knowledge in the only really practical way that it can be acquired; that
+is to say, he received it as and when he needed it.  What we know is that
+he had in later life some knowledge of the works of Aristotle, Julius
+Caesar, Seneca, Pliny, and Ptolemy; of Ahmet-Ben-Kothair the Arabic
+astronomer, Rochid the Arabian, and the Rabbi Samuel the Jew; of Isadore
+the Spaniard, and Bede and Scotus the Britons; of Strabo the German,
+Gerson the Frenchman, and Nicolaus de Lira the Italian.  These names
+cover a wide range, but they do not imply university education.  Some of
+them merely suggest acquaintance with the ‘Imago Mundi’; others imply
+that selective faculty, the power of choosing what can help a man’s
+purpose and of rejecting what is useless to it, that is one of the marks
+of genius, and an outward sign of the inner light.
+
+We must think of him, then, at school in Genoa, grinding out the tasks
+that are the common heritage of all small boys; working a little at the
+weaving, interestedly enough at first, no doubt, while the importance of
+having a loom appealed to him, but also no doubt rapidly cooling off in
+his enthusiasm as the pastime became a task, and the restriction of
+indoor life began to be felt.  For if ever there was a little boy who
+loved to idle about the wharves and docks, here was that little boy.
+It was here, while he wandered about the crowded quays and listened to
+the medley of talk among the foreign sailors, and looked beyond the masts
+of the ships into the blue distance of the sea, that the desire to wander
+and go abroad upon the face of the waters must first have stirred in his
+heart.  The wharves of Genoa in those days combined in themselves all the
+richness of romance and adventure, buccaneering, trading, and
+treasure-snatching, that has ever crowded the pages of romance.  There
+were galleys and caravels, barques and feluccas, pinnaces and caraccas.
+There were slaves in the galleys, and bowmen to keep the slaves in
+subjection. There were dark-bearded Spaniards, fair-haired Englishmen;
+there were Greeks, and Indians, and Portuguese.  The bales of goods on
+the harbour-side were eloquent of distant lands, and furnished object
+lessons in the only geography that young Christopher was likely to be
+learning.  There was cotton from Egypt, and tin and lead from
+Southampton.  There were butts of Malmsey from Candia; aloes and cassia
+and spices from Socotra; rhubarb from Persia; silk from India; wool from
+Damascus, raw wool also from Calais and Norwich.  No wonder if the
+little house in the Vico Dritto di Ponticello became too narrow for the
+boy; and no wonder that at the age of fourteen he was able to have his
+way, and go to sea.  One can imagine him gradually acquiring an
+influence over his father, Domenico, as his will grew stronger and
+firmer--he with one grand object in life, Domenico with none; he with a
+single clear purpose, and Domenico with innumerable cloudy ones.  And
+so, on some day in the distant past, there were farewells and anxious
+hearts in the weaver’s house, and Christopher, member of the crew of
+some trading caravel or felucca, a diminishing object to the wet eyes
+of his mother, sailed away, and faded into the blue distance.
+
+They had lost him, although perhaps they did not realise it; from the
+moment of his first voyage the sea claimed him as her own.  Widening
+horizons, slatting of cords and sails in the wind, storms and stars and
+strange landfalls and long idle calms, thunder of surges, tingle of
+spray, and eternal labouring and threshing and cleaving of infinite
+waters--these were to be his portion and true home hereafter.
+Attendances at Court, conferences with learned monks and bishops,
+sojourns on lonely islands, love under stars in the gay, sun-smitten
+Spanish towns, governings and parleyings in distant, undreamed-of lands
+--these were to be but incidents in his true life, which was to be
+fulfilled in the solitude of sea watches.
+
+When he left his home on this first voyage, he took with him one other
+thing besides the restless longing to escape beyond the line of sea and
+sky.  Let us mark well this possession of his, for it was his companion
+and guiding-star throughout a long and difficult life, his chart and
+compass, astrolabe and anchor, in one.  Religion has in our days fallen
+into decay among men of intellect and achievement.  The world has thrown
+it, like a worn garment or an old skin, from off its body, the thing
+itself being no longer real and alive, and in harmony with the life of
+an age that struggles towards a different kind of truth.  It is hard,
+therefore, for us to understand exactly how the religion of Columbus
+entered so deeply into his life and brooded so widely over his thoughts.
+
+Hardest of all is it for people whose only experience of religion is of
+Puritan inheritance to comprehend how, in the fifteenth century, the
+strong intellect was strengthened, and the stout heart fortified, by the
+thought of hosts of saints and angels hovering above a man’s incomings
+and outgoings to guide and protect him.  Yet in an age that really had
+the gift of faith, in which religion was real and vital, and part of the
+business of every man’s daily life; in which it stood honoured in the
+world, loaded with riches, crowned with learning, wielding government
+both temporal and spiritual, it was a very brave panoply for the soul of
+man.  The little boy in Genoa, with the fair hair and blue eyes and grave
+freckled face that made him remarkable among his dark companions, had no
+doubt early received and accepted the vast mysteries of the Christian
+faith; and as that other mystery began to grow in his mind, and that idea
+of worlds that might lie beyond the sea-line began to take shape in his
+thoughts, he found in the holy wisdom of the prophets, and the inspired
+writings of the fathers, a continual confirmation of his faith.  The full
+conviction of these things belongs to a later period of his life; but
+probably, during his first voyagings in the Mediterranean, there hung in
+his mind echoes of psalms and prophecies that had to do with things
+beyond the world of his vision and experience.  The sun, whose going
+forth is to the end of heaven, his circuit back to the end of it, and
+from whose heat there is nothing hid; the truth, holy and prevailing,
+that knows no speech nor language where its voice is not heard; the great
+and wide sea, with its creeping things innumerable, and beasts small and
+great--no wonder if these things impressed him, and if gradually, as his
+way fell clearer before him, and the inner light began to shine more
+steadily, he came to believe that he had a special mission to carry the
+torch of the faith across the Sea of Darkness, and be himself the bearer
+of a truth that was to go through all the earth, and of words that were
+to travel to the world’s end.
+
+In this faith, then, and with this equipment, and about the year 1465,
+Christopher Columbus began his sea travels.  His voyages would be
+doubtless at first much along the coasts, and across to Alexandria and
+the Islands.  There would be returnings to Genoa, and glad welcomings by
+the little household in the narrow street; in 1472 and 1473 he was with
+his father at Savona, helping with the wool-weaving and tavern-keeping;
+possibly also there were interviews with Benincasa, who was at that time
+living in Genoa, and making his famous sea-charts.  Perhaps it was in his
+studio that Christopher first saw a chart, and first fell in love with
+the magic that can transfer the shapes of oceans and continents to a
+piece of paper.  Then he would be off again in another ship, to the
+Golden Horn perhaps, or the Black Sea, for the Genoese had a great
+Crimean trade.  This is all conjecture, but very reasonable conjecture;
+what we know for a fact is that he saw the white gum drawn from the
+lentiscus shrubs in Chio at the time of their flowering; that fragrant
+memory is preserved long afterwards in his own writings, evoked by some
+incident in the newly-discovered islands of the West.  There are vague
+rumours and stories of his having been engaged in various expeditions
+--among them one fitted out in Genoa by John of Anjou to recover the
+kingdom of Naples for King Rene of Provence; but there is no reason to
+believe these rumours: good reason to disbelieve them, rather.
+
+The lives that the sea absorbs are passed in a great variety of adventure
+and experience, but so far as the world is concerned they are passed in a
+profound obscurity; and we need not wonder that of all the mariners who
+used those seas, and passed up and down, and held their course by the
+stars, and reefed their sails before the sudden squalls that came down
+from the mountains, and shook them out again in the calm sunshine that
+followed, there is no record of the one among their number who was
+afterwards to reef and steer and hold his course to such mighty purpose.
+For this period, then, we must leave him to the sea, and to the vast
+anonymity of sea life.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+DOMENICO
+
+Christopher is gone, vanished over that blue horizon; and the tale of
+life in Genoa goes on without him very much as before, except that
+Domenico has one apprentice less, and, a matter becoming of some
+importance in the narrow condition of his finances, one boy less to feed
+and clothe.  For good Domenico, alas! is no economist.  Those hardy
+adventures of his in the buying and selling line do not prosper him; the
+tavern does not pay; perhaps the tavern-keeper is too hospitable; at any
+rate, things are not going well.  And yet Domenico had a good start; as
+his brother Antonio has doubtless often told him, he had the best of old
+Giovanni’s inheritance; he had the property at Quinto, and other property
+at Ginestreto, and some ground rents at Pradella; a tavern at Savona, a
+shop there and at Genoa--really, Domenico has no excuse for his
+difficulties.  In 1445 he was selling land at Quinto, presumably with the
+consent of old Giovanni, if he was still alive; and if he was not living,
+then immediately after his death, in the first pride of possession.
+
+In 1450 he bought a pleasant house at Quarto, a village on the sea-shore
+about a mile to the west of Quinto and about five miles to the east of
+Genoa.  It was probably a pure speculation, as he immediately leased the
+house for two years, and never lived in it himself, although it was a
+pleasant place, with an orchard of olives and figs and various other
+trees--‘arboratum olivis ficubus et aliis diversis arboribus’.  His next
+recorded transaction is in 1466, when he went security for a friend,
+doubtless with disastrous results.  In 1473 he sold the house at the
+Olive Gate, that suburban dwelling where probably Christopher was born,
+and in 1474 he invested the proceeds of that sale in a piece of land
+which I have referred to before, situated in the suburbs of Savona, with
+which were sold those agreeable and useless wine-vats.  Domenico was
+living at Savona then, and the property which he so fatuously acquired
+consisted of two large pieces of land on the Via Valcalda, containing a
+few vines, a plantation of fruit-trees, and a large area of shrub and
+underwood.  The price, however, was never paid in full, and was the cause
+of a lawsuit which dragged on for forty years, and was finally settled by
+Don Diego Columbus, Christopher’s son, who sent a special authority from
+Hispaniola.
+
+Owing, no doubt, to the difficulties that this un fortunate purchase
+plunged him into, Domenico was obliged to mortgage his house at St.
+Andrew’s Gate in the year 1477; and in 1489 he finally gave it up to
+Jacob Baverelus, the cheese-monger, his son-in-law.  Susanna, who had
+been the witness of his melancholy transactions for so many years, and
+possibly the mainstay of that declining household, died in 1494; but not,
+we may hope, before she had heard of the fame of her son Christopher.
+Domenico, in receipt of a pension from the famous Admiral of the Ocean,
+and no doubt talking with a deal of pride and inaccuracy about the
+discovery of the New World, lived on until 1498; when he died also, and
+vanished out of this world.  He had fulfilled a noble destiny in being
+the father of Christopher Columbus.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+SEA THOUGHTS
+
+The long years that Christopher Columbus spent at sea in making voyages
+to and from his home in Genoa, years so blank to us, but to him who lived
+them so full of life and active growth, were most certainly fruitful in
+training and equipping him for that future career of which as yet,
+perhaps, he did not dream.  The long undulating waves of the
+Mediterranean, with land appearing and dissolving away in the morning and
+evening mists, the business of ship life, harsh and rough in detail, but
+not too absorbing to the mind of a common mariner to prevent any thoughts
+he might have finding room to grow and take shape; sea breezes, sea
+storms, sea calms; these were the setting of his knowledge and experience
+as he fared from port to port and from sea to sea.  He is a very elusive
+figure in that environment of misty blue, very hard to hold and identify,
+very shy of our scrutiny, and inaccessible even to our speculation.  If
+we would come up with him, and place ourselves in some kind of sympathy
+with the thoughts that were forming in his brain, it is necessary that we
+should, for the moment, forget much of what we know of the world, and
+assume the imperfect knowledge of the globe that man possessed in those
+years when Columbus was sailing the Mediterranean.
+
+That the earth was a round globe of land and water was a fact that, after
+many contradictions and uncertainties, intelligent men had by this time
+accepted.  A conscious knowledge of the world as a whole had been a part
+of human thought for many hundreds of years; and the sphericity of the
+earth had been a theory in the sixth century before Christ.  In the
+fourth century Aristotle had watched the stars and eclipses; in the third
+century Eratosthenes had measured a degree of latitude, and measured it
+wrong;--[Not so very wrong.  D.W.]--in the second century the
+philosopher Crates had constructed a rude sort of globe, on which were
+marked the known kingdoms of the earth, and some also unknown.  With the
+coming of the Christian era the theory of the roundness of the earth
+began to be denied; and as knowledge and learning became gathered into
+the hands of the Church they lost something of their clarity and
+singleness, and began to be used arbitrarily as evidence for or against
+other and less material theories.  St. Chrysostom opposed the theory of
+the earth’s roundness; St. Isidore taught it; and so also did St.
+Augustine, as we might expect from a man of his wisdom who lived so long
+in a monastery that looked out to sea from a high point, and who wrote
+the words ‘Ubi magnitudo, ibi veritas’.  In the sixth century of the
+Christian era Bishop Cosmas gave much thought to this matter of a round
+world, and found a new argument which to his mind (poor Cosmas!) disposed
+of it very clearly; for he argued that, if the world were round, the
+people dwelling at the antipodes could not see Christ at His coming, and
+that therefore the earth was not round.  But Bede, in the eighth century,
+established it finally as a part of human knowledge that the earth and
+all the heavenly bodies were spheres, and after that the fact was not
+again seriously disputed.
+
+What lay beyond the frontier of the known was a speculation inseparable
+from the spirit of exploration.  Children, and people who do not travel,
+are generally content, when their thoughts stray beyond the paths trodden
+by their feet, to believe that the greater world is but a continuation on
+every side of their own environment; indeed, without the help of sight or
+suggestion, it is almost impossible to believe anything else.  If you
+stand on an eminence in a great plain and think of the unseen country
+that lies beyond the horizon, trying to visualise it and imagine that you
+see it, the eye of imagination can only see the continuance or projection
+of what is seen by the bodily sight.  If you think, you can occupy the
+invisible space with a landscape made up from your own memory and
+knowledge: you may think of mountain chains and rivers, although there
+are none visible to your sight, or you may imagine vast seas and islands,
+oceans and continents.  This, however, is thought, not pure imagination;
+and even so, with every advantage of thought and knowledge, you will not
+be able to imagine beyond your horizon a space of sea so wide that the
+farther shore is invisible, and yet imagine the farther shore also.  You
+will see America across the Atlantic and Japan across the Pacific; but
+you cannot see, in one single effort of the imagination, an Atlantic of
+empty blue water stretching to an empty horizon, another beyond that
+equally vast and empty, another beyond that, and so on until you have
+spanned the thousand horizons that lie between England and America.  The
+mind, that is to say, works in steps and spans corresponding to the spans
+of physical sight; it cannot clear itself enough from the body, or rise
+high enough beyond experience, to comprehend spaces so much vaster than
+anything ever seen by the eye of man.  So also with the stretching of the
+horizon which bounded human knowledge of the earth.  It moved step by
+step; if one of Prince Henry’s captains, creeping down the west coast of
+Africa, discovered a cape a hundred miles south of the known world, the
+most he could probably do was to imagine that there might lie, still
+another hundred miles farther south, another cape; to sail for it in
+faith and hope, to find it, and to imagine another possibility yet
+another hundred miles away.  So far as experience went back, faith could
+look forward.  It is thus with the common run of mankind; yesterday’s
+march is the measure of to-morrow’s; as much as they have done once, they
+may do again; they fear it will be not much more; they hope it may be not
+much less.
+
+The history of the exploration of the world up to the day when Columbus
+set sail from Palos is just such a history of steps.  The Phoenicians
+coasting from harbour to harbour through the Mediterranean; the Romans
+marching from camp to camp, from country to country; the Jutes venturing
+in their frail craft into the stormy northern seas, making voyages a
+little longer and more daring every time, until they reached England; the
+captains of Prince Henry of Portugal feeling their way from voyage to
+voyage down the coast of Africa--there are no bold flights into the
+incredible here, but patient and business-like progress from one
+stepping-stone to another.  Dangers and hardships there were, and brave
+followings of the faint will-o’-the-wisp of faith in what lay beyond; but
+there were no great launchings into space.  They but followed a line that
+was the continuance or projection of the line they had hitherto followed;
+what they did was brave and glorious, but it was reasonable.  What
+Columbus did, on the contrary, was, as we shall see later, against all
+reason and knowledge.  It was a leap in the dark towards some star
+invisible to all but him; for he who sets forth across the desert sand or
+sea must have a brighter sun to guide him than that which sets and rises
+on the day of the small man.
+
+
+Our familiarity with maps and atlases makes it difficult for us to think
+of the world in other terms than those of map and diagram; knowledge and
+science have focussed things for us, and our imagination has in
+consequence shrunk.  It is almost impossible, when thinking of the earth
+as a whole, to think about it except as a picture drawn, or as a small
+globe with maps traced upon it.  I am sure that our imagination has a far
+narrower angle--to borrow a term from the science of lenses--than the
+imagination of men who lived in the fifteenth century.  They thought of
+the world in its actual terms--seas, islands, continents, gulfs, rivers,
+oceans.  Columbus had seen maps and charts--among them the famous
+‘portolani’ of Benincasa at Genoa; but I think it unlikely that he was so
+familiar with them as to have adopted their terms in his thoughts about
+the earth.  He had seen the Mediterranean and sailed upon it before he
+had seen a chart of it; he knew a good deal of the world itself before he
+had seen a map of it.  He had more knowledge of the actual earth and sea
+than he had of pictures or drawings of them; and therefore, if we are to
+keep in sympathetic touch with him, we must not think too closely of
+maps, but of land and sea themselves.
+
+The world that Columbus had heard about as being within the knowledge of
+men extended on the north to Iceland and Scandinavia, on the south to a
+cape one hundred miles south of the Equator, and to the east as far as
+China and Japan.  North and South were not important to the spirit of
+that time; it was East and West that men thought of when they thought of
+the expansion and the discovery of the world.  And although they admitted
+that the earth was a sphere, I think it likely that they imagined
+(although the imagination was contrary to their knowledge) that the line
+of West and East was far longer, and full of vaster possibilities, than
+that of North and South.  North was familiar ground to them--one voyage
+to England, another to Iceland, another to Scandinavia; there was nothing
+impossible about that.  Southward was another matter; but even here there
+was no ambition to discover the limit of the world.  It is an error
+continually made by the biographers of Columbus that the purpose of
+Prince Henry’s explorations down the coast of Africa was to find a sea
+road to the West Indies by way of the East.  It was nothing of the kind.
+There was no idea in the minds of the Portuguese of the land which
+Columbus discovered, and which we now know as the West Indies.  Mr.
+Vignaud contends that the confusion arose from the very loose way in
+which the term India was applied in the Middle Ages.  Several Indias were
+recognised.  There was an India beyond the Ganges; a Middle India between
+the Ganges and the Indus; and a Lesser India, in which were included
+Arabia, Abyssinia, and the countries about the Red Sea.  These divisions
+were, however, quite vague, and varied in different periods.  In the time
+of Columbus the word India meant the kingdom of Prester John, that
+fabulous monarch who had been the subject of persistent legends since the
+twelfth century; and it was this India to which the Portuguese sought a
+sea road.  They had no idea of a barrier cape far to the south, the
+doubling of which would open a road for them to the west; nor were they,
+as Mr. Vignaud believes, trying to open a route for the spice trade with
+the Orient.  They had no great spice trade, and did not seek more; what
+they did seek was an extension of their ordinary trade with Guinea and
+the African coast.  To the maritime world of the fifteenth century, then,
+the South as a geographical region and as a possible point of discovery
+had no attractions.
+
+To the west stretched what was known as the Sea of Darkness, about which
+even the cool knowledge of the geographers and astronomers could not
+think steadily.  Nothing was known about it, it did not lead anywhere,
+there were no people there, there was no trade in that direction.  The
+tides of history and of life avoided it; only now and then some terrified
+mariner, blown far out of his course, came back with tales of sea
+monsters and enchanted disappearing islands, and shores that receded, and
+coasts upon which no one could make a landfall.  The farthest land known
+to the west was the Azores; beyond that stretched a vague and impossible
+ocean of terror and darkness, of which the Arabian writer Xerif al
+Edrisi, whose countrymen were the sea-kings of the Middle Ages, wrote as
+follows:
+
+     “The ocean encircles the ultimate bounds of the inhabited earth, and
+     all beyond it is unknown.  No one has been able to verify anything
+     concerning it, on account of its difficult and perilous navigation,
+     its great obscurity, its profound depth, and frequent tempests;
+     through fear of its mighty fishes and its haughty winds; yet there
+     are many islands in it, some peopled, others uninhabited.  There is
+     no mariner who dares to enter into its deep waters; or if any have
+     done so, they have merely kept along its coasts, fearful of
+     departing from them.  The waves of this ocean, although they roll as
+     high as mountains, yet maintain themselves without breaking; for if
+     they broke it would be impossible for a ship to plough them.”
+
+It is another illustration of the way in which discovery and imagination
+had hitherto gone by steps and not by flights, that geographical
+knowledge reached the islands of the Atlantic (none of which were at a
+very great distance from the coast of Europe or from each other) at a
+comparatively early date, and stopped there until in Columbus there was
+found a man with faith strong enough to make the long flight beyond them
+to the unknown West.  And yet the philosophers, and later the
+cartographers, true to their instinct for this pedestrian kind of
+imagination, put mythical lands and islands to the westward of the known
+islands as though they were really trying to make a way, to sink stepping
+stones into the deep sea that would lead their thoughts across the
+unknown space.  In the Catalan map of the world, which was the standard
+example of cosmography in the early days of Columbus, most of these
+mythical islands are marked.  There was the island of Antilia, which was
+placed in 25 deg. 35’ W., and was said to have been discovered by Don
+Roderick, the last of the Gothic kings of Spain, who fled there after
+his defeat by the Moors.  There was the island of the Seven Cities,
+which is sometimes identified with this Antilia, and was the object of a
+persistent belief or superstition on the part of the inhabitants of the
+Canary Islands.  They saw, or thought they saw, about ninety leagues to
+the westward, an island with high peaks and deep valleys.  The vision was
+intermittent; it was only seen in very clear weather, on some of those
+pure, serene days of the tropics when in the clear atmosphere distant
+objects appear to be close at hand.  In cloudy, and often in clear
+weather also, it was not to be seen at all; but the inhabitants of the
+Canaries, who always saw it in the same place, were so convinced of its
+reality that they petitioned the King of Portugal to allow them to go and
+take possession of it; and several expeditions were in fact despatched,
+but none ever came up with that fairy land.  It was called the island of
+the Seven Cities from a legend of seven bishops who had fled from Spain
+at the time of the Moorish conquest, and, landing upon this island, had
+founded there seven splendid cities.  There was the island of St.
+Brandan, called after the Saint who set out from Ireland in the sixth
+century in search of an island which always receded before his ships;
+this island was placed several hundred miles to the west of the Canaries
+on maps and charts through out the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
+There was the island of Brazil, to the west of Cape St. Vincent; the
+islands of Royllo, San Giorgio, and Isola di Mam; but they were all
+islands of dreams, seen by the eyes of many mariners in that imaginative
+time, but never trodden by any foot of man.  To Columbus, however, and
+the mariners of his day, they were all real places, which a man might
+reach by special good fortune or heroism, but which, all things
+considered, it was not quite worth the while of any man to attempt to
+reach.  They have all disappeared from our charts, like the Atlantis of
+Plato, that was once charted to the westward of the Straits of Gibraltar,
+and of which the Canaries were believed to be the last peaks unsubmerged.
+
+Sea myths and legends are strange things, and do not as a rule persist in
+the minds of men unless they have had some ghostly foundation; so it is
+possible that these fabled islands of the West were lands that had
+actually been seen by living eyes, although their position could never be
+properly laid down nor their identity assured.  Of all the wandering
+seamen who talked in the wayside taverns of Atlantic seaports, some must
+have had strange tales to tell; tales which sometimes may have been true,
+but were never believed.  Vague rumours hung about those shores, like
+spray and mist about a headland, of lands seen and lost again in the
+unknown and uncharted ocean.  Doubtless the lamp of faith, the inner
+light, burned in some of these storm-tossed men; but all they had was a
+glimpse here and there, seen for a moment and lost again; not the clear
+sight of faith by which Columbus steered his westward course.
+
+
+The actual outposts of western occupation, then, were the Azores, which
+were discovered by Genoese sailors in the pay of Portugal early in the
+fourteenth century; the Canaries, which had been continuously discovered
+and rediscovered since the Phoenicians occupied them and Pliny chose them
+for his Hesperides; and Madeira, which is believed to have been
+discovered by an Englishman under the following very romantic and moving
+circumstances.
+
+In the reign of Edward the Third a young man named Robert Machin fell in
+love with a beautiful girl, his superior in rank, Anne Dorset or d’Urfey
+by name.  She loved him also, but her relations did not love him; and
+therefore they had Machin imprisoned upon some pretext or other, and
+forcibly married the young lady to a nobleman who had a castle on the
+shores of the Bristol Channel.
+
+The marriage being accomplished, and the girl carried away by her
+bridegroom to his seat in the West, it was thought safe to release
+Machin.  Whereupon he collected several friends, and they followed the
+newly-married couple to Bristol and laid their plans for an abduction.
+One of the friends got himself engaged as a groom in the service of the
+unhappy bride, and found her love unchanged, and if possible increased by
+the present misery she was in.  An escape was planned; and one day, when
+the girl and her groom were riding in the park, they set spurs to their
+horses, and galloped off to a place on the shores of the Bristol Channel
+where young Robert had a boat on the beach and a ship in the offing.
+They set sail immediately, intending to make for France, where the
+reunited lovers hoped to live happily; but it came on to blow when they
+were off the Lizard, and a southerly gale, which lasted for thirteen
+days, drove them far out of their course.
+
+The bride, from her joy and relief, fell into a state of the gloomiest
+despondency, believing that the hand of God was turned against her,
+and that their love would never be enjoyed.  The tempest fell on the
+fourteenth day, and at the break of morning the sea-worn company saw
+trees and land ahead of them.  In the sunrise they landed upon an island
+full of noble trees, about which flights of singing birds were hovering,
+and in which the sweetest fruits, the most lovely flowers, and the purest
+and most limpid waters abounded.  Machin and his bride and their friends
+made an encampment on a flowery meadow in a sheltered valley, where for
+three days they enjoyed the sweetness and rest of the shore and the
+companionship of all kinds of birds and beasts, which showed no signs of
+fear at their presence.  On the third day a storm arose, and raged for a
+night over the island; and in the morning the adventurers found that
+their ship was nowhere to be seen.  The despair of the little company was
+extreme, and was increased by the condition of poor Anne, upon whom
+terror and remorse again fell, and so preyed upon her mind that in three
+days she was dead.  Her lover, who had braved so much and won her so
+gallantly, was turned to stone by this misfortune.  Remorse and aching
+desolation oppressed him; from the moment of her death he scarcely ate
+nor spoke; and in five days he also was dead, surely of a broken heart.
+They buried him beside his mistress under a spreading tree, and put up a
+wooden cross there, with a prayer that any Christians who might come to
+the island would build a chapel to Jesus the Saviour.  The rest of the
+party then repaired their little boat and put to sea; were cast upon the
+coast of Morocco, captured by the Moors, and thrown into prison.  With
+them in prison was a Spanish pilot named Juan de Morales, who listened
+attentively to all they could tell him about the situation and condition
+of the island, and who after his release communicated what he knew to
+Prince Henry of Portugal.  The island of Madeira was thus rediscovered in
+1418, and in 1425 was colonised by Prince Henry, who appointed as
+Governor Bartolomeo de Perestrello, whose daughter was afterwards to
+become the wife of Columbus.
+
+So much for the outposts of the Old World.  Of the New World, about the
+possibility of which Columbus is beginning to dream as he sails the
+Mediterranean, there was no knowledge and hardly any thought.  Though new
+in the thoughts of Columbus, it was very old in itself; generations of
+men had lived and walked and spoken and toiled there, ever since men came
+upon the earth; sun and shower, the thrill of the seasons, birth and life
+and death, had been visiting it for centuries and centuries.  And it is
+quite possible that, long before even the civilisation that produced
+Columbus was in its dawn, men from the Old World had journeyed there.
+There are two very old fragments of knowledge which indicate at least the
+possibility of a Western World of which the ancients had knowledge.
+There is a fragment, preserved from the fourth century before Christ, of
+a conversation between Silenus and Midas, King of Phrygia, in which
+Silenus correctly describes the Old World--Europe, Asia, and Africa--as
+being surrounded by the sea, but also describes, far to the west of it, a
+huge island, which had its own civilisation and its own laws, where the
+animals and the men were of twice our stature, and lived for twice our
+years.  There is also the story told by Plato of the island of Atlantis,
+which was larger than Africa and Asia together, and which in an
+earthquake disappeared beneath the waves, producing such a slime upon the
+surface that no ship was able to navigate the sea in that place.  This is
+the story which the priests of Sais told to Solon, and which was embodied
+in the sacred inscriptions in their temples.  It is strange that any one
+should think of this theory of the slime who had not seen or heard of the
+Sargasso Sea--that great bank of floating seaweed that the ocean currents
+collect and retain in the middle of the basin of the North Atlantic.
+
+The Egyptians, the Tartars, the Canaanites, the Chinese, the Arabians,
+the Welsh, and the Scandinavians have all been credited with the
+colonisation of America; but the only race from the Old World which had
+almost certainly been there were the Scandinavians.  In the year 983 the
+coast of Greenland was visited by Eric the Red, the son of a Norwegian
+noble, who was banished for the crime of murder.  Some fifteen years
+later Eric’s son Lief made an expedition with thirty-five men and a ship
+in the direction of the new land.  They came to a coast where there were
+nothing but ice mountains having the appearance of slate; this country
+they named Helluland--that is, Land of Slate.  This country is our
+Newfoundland.  Standing out to sea again, they reached a level wooded
+country with white sandy cliffs, which they called Markland, or Land of
+Wood, which is our Nova Scotia.  Next they reached an island east of
+Markland, where they passed the winter, and as one of their number who
+had wandered some distance inland had found vines and grapes, Lief named
+the country Vinland or Vine Land, which is the country we call New
+England.  The Scandinavians continued to make voyages to the West and
+South; and finally Thorfinn Karlsefne, an Icelander, made a great
+expedition in the spring of 1007 with ships and material for
+colonisation.  He made much progress to the southwards, and the Icelandic
+accounts of the climate and soil and characteristics of the country leave
+no doubt that Greenland and Nova Scotia were discovered and colonised at
+this time.
+
+It must be remembered, however, that then and in the lifetime of Columbus
+Greenland was supposed to--be a promontory of the coast of Europe, and
+was not connected in men’s minds with a western continent.  Its early
+discovery has no bearing on the significance of Columbus’s achievement,
+the greatness of which depends not on his having been the first man from
+the Old World to set foot upon the shores of the New, but on the fact
+that by pure faith and belief in his own purpose he did set out for and
+arrive in a world where no man of his era or civilisation had ever before
+set foot, or from which no wanderer who may have been blown there ever
+returned.  It is enough to claim for him the merit of discovery in the
+true sense of the word.  The New World was covered from the Old by a veil
+of distance, of time and space, of absence, invisibility, virtual
+non-existence; and he discovered it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+IN PORTUGAL
+
+There is no reason to believe that before his twenty-fifth year Columbus
+was anything more than a merchant or mariner, sailing before the mast,
+and joining one ship after another as opportunities for good voyages
+offered themselves.  A change took place later, probably after his
+marriage, when he began to adapt himself rapidly to a new set of
+surroundings, and to show his intrinsic qualities; but all the attempts
+that have been made to glorify him socially--attempts, it must be
+remembered, in which he himself and his sons were in after years the
+leaders--are entirely mistaken.  That strange instinct for consistency
+which makes people desire to see the outward man correspond, in terms of
+momentary and arbitrary credit, with the inner and hidden man of the
+heart, has in truth led to more biographical injustice than is fully
+realised.  If Columbus had been the man some of his biographers would
+like to make him out--the nephew or descendant of a famous French
+Admiral, educated at the University of Pavia, belonging to a family of
+noble birth and high social esteem in Genoa, chosen by King Rene to be
+the commander of naval expeditions, learned in scientific lore, in the
+classics, in astronomy and in cosmography, the friend and correspondent
+of Toscanelli and other learned scientists--we should find it hard indeed
+to forgive him the shifts and deceits that he practised.  It is far more
+interesting to think of him as a common craftsman, of a lowly condition
+and poor circumstances, who had to earn his living during the formative
+period of his life by the simplest and hardest labour of the hand.  The
+qualities that made him what he was were of a very simple kind, and his
+character owed its strength, not to any complexity or subtlety of
+training and education, but rather to that very bareness and simplicity
+of circumstance that made him a man of single rather than manifold ideas.
+He was not capable of seeing both sides of a question; he saw only one
+side.  But he came of a great race; and it was the qualities of his race,
+combined with this simplicity and even perhaps vacancy of mind, that gave
+to his idea, when once the seed of it had lodged in his mind, so much
+vigour in growth and room for expansion.  Think of him, then, at the age
+of twenty-five as a typical plebeian Genoese, bearing all the
+characteristic traits of his century and people--the spirit of adventure,
+the love of gold and of power, a spirit of mysticism, and more than a
+touch of crafty and elaborate dissimulation, when that should be
+necessary.
+
+He had been at sea for ten or eleven years, making voyages to and from
+Genoa, with an occasional spell ashore and plunge into the paternal
+affairs, when in the year 1476 he found himself on board a Genoese vessel
+which formed one of a convoy going, to Lisbon.  This convoy was attacked
+off Cape St. Vincent by Colombo, or Colomb, the famous French corsair, of
+whom Christopher himself has quite falsely been called a relative.  Only
+two of the Genoese vessels escaped, and one of these two was the ship
+which carried Columbus.  It arrived at Lisbon, where Columbus went ashore
+and took up his abode.
+
+This, so far as can be ascertained, is the truth about the arrival of
+Columbus in Portugal.  The early years of an obscure man who leaps into
+fame late in life are nearly always difficult to gather knowledge about,
+because not only are the annals of the poor short and simple and in most
+cases altogether unrecorded, but there is always that instinct, to which
+I have already referred, to make out that the circumstances of a man who
+late in life becomes great and remarkable were always, at every point in
+his career, remarkable also.  We love to trace the hand of destiny
+guiding her chosen people, protecting them from dangers, and preserving
+them for their great moment.  It is a pleasant study, and one to which
+the facts often lend themselves, but it leads to a vicious method of
+biography which obscures the truth with legends and pretences that have
+afterwards laboriously to be cleared away.  It was so in the case of
+Columbus.  Before his departure on his first voyage of discovery there is
+absolutely no temporary record of him except a few dates in notarial
+registers.  The circumstances of his life and his previous conditions
+were supplied afterwards by himself and his contemporaries; and both he
+and they saw the past in the light of the present, and did their best to
+make it fit a present so wonderful and miraculous.  The whole trend of
+recent research on the subject of Columbus has been unfortunately in the
+direction of proving the complete insincerity of his own speech and
+writings about his early life, and the inaccuracy of Las Casas writings
+his contemporary biographer, and the first historian of the West Indies.
+Those of my readers, then, who are inclined to be impatient with the
+meagreness of the facts with which I am presenting them, and the
+disproportionate amount of theory to fact with regard to these early
+years of Columbus, must remember three things.  First, that the only
+record of the early years of Columbus was written long after those years
+had passed away, and in circumstances which did not harmonise with them;
+second, that there is evidence, both substantive and presumptive, that
+much of those records, even though it came from the hands of Columbus and
+his friends, is false and must be discarded; and third, that the only way
+in which anything like the truth can be arrived at is by circumstantial
+and presumptive evidence with regard to dates, names, places, and events
+upon which the obscure life of Columbus impinged.  Columbus is known to
+have written much about himself, but very little of it exists or remains
+in his own handwriting.  It remains in the form of quotation by others,
+all of whom had their reasons for not representing quite accurately what
+was, it must be feared, not even itself a candid and accurate record.
+The evidence for these very serious statements is the subject of
+numberless volumes and monographs, which cannot be quoted here; for it is
+my privilege to reap the results, and not to reproduce the material, of
+the immense research and investigation to which in the last fifty years
+the life of Columbus has been subjected.
+
+
+We shall come to facts enough presently; in the meantime we have but the
+vaguest knowledge of what Columbus did in Lisbon.  The one technical
+possession which he obviously had was knowledge of the sea; he had also a
+head on his shoulders, and plenty of judgment and common sense; he had
+likely picked up some knowledge of cartography in his years at Genoa,
+since (having abandoned wool-weaving) he probably wished to make progress
+in the profession of the sea; and it is, therefore, believed that he
+picked up a living in Lisbon by drawing charts and maps.  Such a living
+would only be intermittent; a fact that is indicated by his periodic
+excursions to sea again, presumably when funds were exhausted.  There
+were other Genoese in Lisbon, and his own brother Bartholomew was with
+him there for a time.  He may actually have been there when Columbus
+arrived, but it was more probable that Columbus, the pioneer of the
+family, seeing a better field for his brother’s talent in Lisbon than in
+Genoa, sent for him when he himself was established there.  This
+Bartholomew, of whom we shall see a good deal in the future, is merely an
+outline at this stage of the story; an outline that will later be filled
+up with human features and fitted with a human character; at present he
+is but a brother of Christopher, with a rather bookish taste, a better
+knowledge of cartography than Christopher possessed, and some little
+experience of the book-selling trade.  He too made charts in Lisbon, and
+sold books also, and no doubt between them the efforts of the brothers,
+supplemented by the occasional voyages of Christopher, obtained them a
+sufficient livelihood.  The social change, in the one case from the
+society of Genoese wool-weavers, and in the other from the company of
+merchant sailors, must have been very great; for there is evidence that
+they began to make friends and acquaintances among a rather different
+class than had been formerly accessible to them.  The change to a new
+country also and to a new language makes a deep impression at the age of
+twenty-five; and although Columbus in his sea-farings had been in many
+ports, and had probably picked up a knowledge both of Portuguese and of
+Spanish, his establishment in the Portuguese capital could not fail to
+enlarge his outlook upon life.
+
+There is absolutely no record of his circumstances in the first year of
+his life at Lisbon, so we may look once more into the glass of
+imagination and try to find a picture there.  It is very dim, very
+minute, very, very far away.  There is the little shop in a steep Lisbon
+street, somewhere near the harbour we may be sure, with the shadows of
+the houses lying sharp on the white sunlight of the street; the cool
+darkness of the shop, with its odour of vellum and parchment, its rolls
+of maps and charts; and somewhere near by the sounds and commotion of the
+wharves and the shipping.  Often, when there was a purchaser in the shop,
+there would be talk of the sea, of the best course from this place to
+that, of the entrance to this harbour and the other; talk of the western
+islands too, of the western ocean, of the new astrolabe which the German
+Muller of Konigsberg, or Regiomontanus, as they called him in Portugal,
+had modified and improved.  And if there was sometimes an evening walk,
+it would surely be towards the coast or on a hill above the harbour, with
+a view of the sun being quenched in the sea and travelling down into the
+unknown, uncharted West.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+ADVENTURES BODILY AND SPIRITUAL
+
+Columbus had not been long in Portugal before he was off again to sea,
+this time on a longer voyage than any he had yet undertaken.  Our
+knowledge of it depends on his own words as reported by Las Casas, and,
+like so much other knowledge similarly recorded, is not to be received
+with absolute certainty; but on the whole the balance of probability is
+in favour of its truth.  The words in which this voyage is recorded are
+given as a quotation from a letter of Columbus, and, stripped of certain
+obvious interpolations of the historian, are as follows:--
+
+     “In the month of February, and in the year 1477, I navigated as far
+     as the island of Tile [Thule], a hundred leagues; and to this
+     island, which is as large as England, the English, especially those
+     of Bristol, go with merchandise; and when I was there the sea was
+     not frozen over, although there were very high tides, so much so
+     that in some parts the sea rose twenty-five ‘brazas’, and went down
+     as much, twice during the day.”
+
+The reasons for doubting that this voyage took place are due simply to
+Columbus’s habit of being untruthful in regard to his own past doings,
+and his propensity for drawing the long bow; and the reason that has been
+accepted by most of his biographers who have denied the truth of this
+statement is that, in the year 1492, when Columbus was addressing the
+King and Queen of Spain on his qualifications as a navigator, and when he
+wished to set forth his experience in a formidable light, he said nothing
+about this voyage, but merely described his explorations as having
+extended from Guinea on the south to England on the north.  A shrewd
+estimate of Columbus’s character makes it indeed seem incredible that,
+if he had really been in Iceland, he should not have mentioned the fact
+on this occasion; and yet there is just one reason, also quite
+characteristic of Columbus, that would account for the suppression.
+It is just possible that when he was at Thule, by which he meant Iceland,
+he may have heard of the explorations in the direction of Greenland and
+Newfoundland; and that, although by other navigators these lands were
+regarded as a part of the continent of Europe, he may have had some
+glimmerings of an idea that they were part of land and islands in the
+West; and he was much too jealous of his own reputation as the great and
+only originator of the project for voyaging to the West, to give away any
+hints that he was not the only person to whom such ideas had occurred.
+There is deception and untruth somewhere; and one must make one’s choice
+between regarding the story in the first place as a lie, or accepting it
+as truth, and putting down Columbus’s silence about it on a later
+occasion to a rare instinct of judicious suppression.  There are other
+facts in his life, to which, we shall come later, that are in accordance
+with this theory.  There is no doubt, moreover, that Columbus had a very
+great experience of the sea, and was one of the greatest practical
+seamen, if not the greatest, that has ever lived; and it would be foolish
+to deny, except for the greatest reasons, that he made a voyage to the
+far North, which was neither unusual at the time nor a very great
+achievement for a seaman of his experience.
+
+Christopher returned from these voyages, of which we know nothing except
+the facts that he has given us, towards the end of 1477; and it was
+probably in the next year that an event very important in his life and
+career took place.  Hitherto there has been no whisper of love in that
+arduous career of wool-weaving, sailoring, and map-making; and it is not
+unlikely that his marriage represents the first inspiration of love in
+his life, for he was, in spite of his southern birth, a cool-blooded man,
+for whom affairs of the heart had never a very serious interest.  But at
+Lisbon, where he began to find himself with some footing and place in the
+world, and where the prospect of at least a livelihood began to open out
+before him, his thoughts took that turn towards domesticity and family
+life which marks a moment in the development of almost every man.  And
+now, since he has at last to emerge from the misty environment of
+sea-spray that has veiled him so long from our intimate sight, we may
+take a close look at him as he was in this year 1478.
+
+Unlike the southern Italians, he was fair in colouring; a man rather
+above the middle height, large limbed, of a shapely breadth and
+proportion, and of a grave and dignified demeanour.  His face was ruddy,
+and inclined to be freckled under the exposure to the sun, his hair at
+this age still fair and reddish, although in a few years later it turned
+grey, and became white while he was still a young man.  His nose was
+slightly aquiline, his face long and rather full; his eyes of a clear
+blue, with sharply defined eyebrows--seamen’s eyes, which get an
+unmistakable light in them from long staring into the sea distances.
+Altogether a handsome and distinguished-looking young man, noticeable
+anywhere, and especially among a crowd of swarthy Portuguese.  He was not
+a lively young man; on the contrary, his manner was rather heavy, and
+even at times inclined to be pompous; he had a very good opinion of
+himself, had the clear calculating head and tidy intellectual methods of
+the able mariner; was shrewd and cautious--in a word, took himself and
+the world very seriously.  A strictly conventional man, as the
+conventions of his time and race went; probably some of his gayer and
+lighter-hearted contemporaries thought him a dull enough dog, who would
+not join in a carouse or a gallant adventure, but would probably get the
+better of you if he could in any commercial deal.  He was a great
+stickler for the observances of religion; and never a Sunday or feast-day
+passed, when he was ashore, without finding him, like the dutiful son of
+the Church that he was, hearing Mass and attending at Benediction.  Not,
+indeed, a very attractive or inspiring figure of a man; not the man whose
+company one would likely have sought very much, or whose conversation one
+would have found very interesting.  A man rather whose character was cast
+in a large and plain mould, without those many facets which add so much
+to the brightness of human intercourse, and which attract and reflect the
+light from other minds; a man who must be tried in large circumstances,
+and placed in a big setting, if his qualities are to be seen to advantage
+.  .  .  .  I seem to see him walking up from the shop near the harbour
+at Lisbon towards the convent of Saints; walking gravely and firmly, with
+a dignified demeanour, with his best clothes on, and glad, for the
+moment, to be free of his sea acquaintances, and to be walking in the
+direction of that upper-class world after which he has a secret hankering
+in his heart.  There are a great many churches in Lisbon nearer his house
+where he might hear Mass on Sundays; but he prefers to walk up to the
+rich and fashionable convent of Saints, where everybody is well dressed,
+and where those kindling eyes of his may indulge a cool taste for
+feminine beauty.
+
+
+While the chapel bell is ringing other people are hurrying through the
+sunny Lisbon streets to Mass at the convent.  Among the fashionable
+throng are two ladies, one young, one middle-aged; they separate at the
+church door, and the younger one leaves her mother and takes her place in
+the convent choir.  This is Philippa Moniz, who lives alone with her
+mother in Lisbon, and amuses herself with her privileges as a cavaliera,
+or dame, in one of the knightly orders attached to the rich convent of
+Saints.  Perhaps she has noticed the tall figure of the young Genoese in
+the strangers’ part of the convent, perhaps not; but his roving blue eye
+has noticed her, and much is to come of it.  The young Genoese continues
+his regular and exemplary attendance at the divine Office, the young lady
+is zealous in observing her duties in the choir; some kind friend
+introduces them; the audacious young man makes his proposals, and,
+in spite of the melancholy protests of the young lady’s exceedingly
+respectable and highly-connected relatives, the young people are
+betrothed and actually married before the elders have time to recover
+breath from their first shock at the absurdity of the suggestion.
+
+There is a very curious fact in connection with his marriage that is
+worthy of our consideration.  In all his voluminous writings, letters,
+memoirs, and journals, Columbus never once mentions his wife.  His sole
+reference to her is in his will, made at Valladolid many years later,
+long after her death; and is contained in the two words “my wife.”
+He ordains that a chapel shall be erected and masses said for the repose
+of the souls of his father, his mother, and his wife.  He who wrote so
+much, did not write of her; he who boasted so much, never boasted of her;
+he who bemoaned so much, never bemoaned her.  There is a blank silence
+on his part about everything connected with his marriage and his wife.
+I like to think that it was because this marriage, which incidentally
+furnished him with one of the great impulses of his career, was in itself
+placid and uneventful, and belongs to that mass of happy days that do not
+make history.  Columbus was not a passionate man.  I think that love had
+a very small place in his life, and that the fever of passion was with
+him brief and soon finished with; but I am sure he was affectionate, and
+grateful for any affection and tenderness that were bestowed upon him.
+He was much away too, at first on his voyages to Guinea and afterwards on
+the business of his petitions to the Portuguese and Spanish Courts; and
+one need not be a cynic to believe that these absences did nothing to
+lessen the affection between him and his wife.  Finally, their married
+life was a short one; she died within ten years, and I am sure did not
+outlive his affections; so that there may be something solemn, some
+secret memories of the aching joy and sorrow that her coming into his
+life and passing out of it brought him, in this silence of Columbus
+concerning his wife.
+
+
+This marriage was, in the vulgar idiom of to-day, a great thing for
+Columbus.  It not only brought him a wife; it brought him a home,
+society, recognition, and a connection with maritime knowledge and
+adventure that was of the greatest importance to him.  Philippa Moniz
+Perestrello was the daughter of Bartolomeo Perestrello, who had been
+appointed hereditary governor of the island of Porto Santo on its
+colonisation by Prince Henry in 1425 and who had died there in 1457.
+Her grandfather was Gil Ayres Moniz, who was secretary to the famous
+Constable Pereira in the reign of John I, and is chiefly interesting to
+us because he founded the chapel of the “Piedad” in the Carmelite
+Monastery at Lisbon, in which the Moniz family had the right of interment
+for ever, and in which the body of Philippa, after her brief pilgrimage
+in this world was over, duly rested; and whence her son ordered its
+disinterment and re-burial in the church of Santa Clara in San Domingo.
+Philippa’s mother, Isabel Moniz, was the second or third wife of
+Perestrello; and after her husband’s death she had come to live in
+Lisbon.  She had another daughter, Violante by name, who had married one
+Mulier, or Muliartes, in Huelva; and a son named Bartolomeo, who was the
+heir to the governorship of Porto Santo; but as he was only a little boy
+at the time of his father’s death his mother ceded the governorship to
+Pedro Correa da Cunha, who had married Iseult, the daughter of old
+Bartolomeo by his first wife.  The governorship was thus kept in the
+family during the minority of Bartolomeo, who resumed it later when he
+came of age.
+
+This Isabel, mother of Philippa, was a very important acquaintance indeed
+for Columbus.  It must be noted that he left the shop and poor
+Bartholomew to take care of themselves or each other, and went to live in
+the house of his mother-in-law.  This was a great social step for the
+wool-weaver of Genoa; and it was probably the result of a kind of
+compromise with his wife’s horrified relatives at the time of her
+marriage.  It was doubtless thought impossible for her to go and live
+over the chart-maker’s shop; and as you can make charts in one house as
+well as another, it was decided that Columbus should live with his
+mother-in-law, and follow his trade under her roof.  Columbus, in fact,
+seems to have been fortunate in securing the favour of his female
+relatives-in-law, and it was probably owing to the championship of
+Philippa’s mother that a marriage so much to his advantage ever took
+place at all.  His wife had many distinguished relatives in the
+neighbourhood of Lisbon; her cousin was archbishop at this very time;
+but I can neither find that their marriage was celebrated with the
+archiepiscopal blessing or that he ever got much help or countenance from
+the male members of the Moniz family.  Archbishops even today do not much
+like their pretty cousins marrying a man of Columbus’s position, whether
+you call him a woolweaver, a sailor, a map-maker, or a bookseller.
+“Adventurer” is perhaps the truest description of him; and the word was
+as much distrusted in the best circles in Lisbon in the fifteenth century
+as it is to-day.
+
+Those of his new relatives, however, who did get to know him soon began
+to see that Philippa had not made such a bad bargain after all.  With the
+confidence and added belief in himself that the recognition and
+encouragement of those kind women brought him, Columbus’s mind and
+imagination expanded; and I think it was probably now that he began to
+wonder if all his knowledge and seamanship, his quite useful smattering
+of cartography and cosmography, his real love of adventure, and all his
+dreams and speculations concerning the unknown and uncharted seas, could
+not be turned to some practical account.  His wife’s step-sister Iseult
+and her husband had, moreover, only lately returned to Lisbon from their
+long residence in Porto Santo; young Bartolomeo Perestrello, her brother,
+was reigning there in their stead, and no doubt sending home interesting
+accounts of ships and navigators that put in at Madeira; and all the
+circumstances would tend to fan the spark of Columbus’s desire to have
+some adventure and glory of his own on the high seas.  He would wish
+to show all these grandees, with whom his marriage had brought
+him acquainted, that you did not need to be born a Perestrello
+--or Pallastrelli, as the name was in its original Italian form--to make
+a name in the world.  Donna Isabel, moreover, was never tired of talking
+about Porto Santo and her dead husband, and of all the voyages and sea
+adventures that had filled his life.  She was obviously a good teller of
+tales, and had all the old history and traditions of Madeira at her
+fingers’ ends; the story of Robert Machin and Anne Dorset; the story of
+the isle of Seven Cities; and the black cloud on the horizon that turned
+out in the end to be Madeira.  She told Christopher how her husband, when
+he had first gone to Porto Santo, had taken there a litter of rabbits,
+and how the rabbits had so increased that in two seasons they had eaten
+up everything on the island, and rendered it uninhabitable for some time.
+
+She brought out her husband’s sea-charts, memoranda, and log-books,
+the sight of which still farther inflamed Christopher’s curiosity and
+ambition.  The great thing in those days was to discover something, if it
+was only a cape down the African coast or a rock in the Atlantic.  The
+key to fame, which later took the form of mechanical invention, and later
+still of discovery in the region of science, took the form then of actual
+discovery of parts of the earth’s surface.  The thing was in the air;
+news was coming in every day of something new seen, something new
+charted.  If others had done so much, and the field was still half
+unexplored, could not he do something also?  It was not an unlikely
+thought to occur to the mind of a student of sea charts and horizons.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE FIRE KINDLES
+
+The next step in Columbus’s career was a move to Porto Santo, which
+probably took place very soon after his marriage--that is to say, in the
+year 1479.  It is likely that he had the chance of making a voyage there;
+perhaps even of commanding a ship, for his experience of the sea and
+skill as a navigator must by this time have raised him above the rank of
+an ordinary seaman; and in that case nothing would be more natural than
+that he should take his young wife with him to visit her brother
+Bartolomeo, and to see the family property.  It is one of the charms of
+the seaman’s profession that he travels free all over the world; and if
+he has no house or other fixed possessions that need to be looked after
+he has the freedom of the world, and can go where he likes free of cost.
+Porto Santo and Madeira, lying in the track of the busiest trade on the
+Atlantic coast, would provide Columbus with an excellent base from which
+to make other voyages; so it was probably with a heart full of eager
+anticipation for the future, and sense of quiet happiness in the present,
+that in the year 1479 Signor Cristoforo Colombo (for he did not yet call
+himself Senor Cristoval Colon) set out for Porto Santo--a lonely rock
+some miles north of Madeira.  Its southern shore is a long sweeping bay
+of white sand, with a huddle of sand-hills beyond, and cliffs and peaks
+of basalt streaked with lava fringing the other shores.  When Columbus
+and his bride arrived there the place was almost as bare as it is to-day.
+There were the governor’s house; the settlement of Portuguese who worked
+in the mills and sugar-fields; the mills themselves, with the cultivated
+sugar-fields behind them; and the vineyards, with the dwarf Malmsey vines
+pegged down to the ground, which Prince Henry had imported from Candia
+fifty years before.  The forest of dragon-trees that had once covered the
+island was nearly all gone.  The wood had all been used either for
+building, making boats, or for fuel; and on the fruit of the few trees
+that were left a herd of pigs was fattened.  There was frequent
+communication by boat with Madeira, which was the chief of all the
+Atlantic islands, and the headquarters of the sugar trade; and Porto
+Santo itself was a favourite place of call for passing ships.  So that it
+was by no means lonely for Christopher Columbus and his wife, even if
+they had not had the society of the governor and his settlement.
+
+
+We can allow him about three years in Porto Santo, although for a part of
+this time at least he must have been at sea.  I think it not unlikely
+that it was the happiest time of his life.  He was removed from the
+uncomfortable environment of people who looked down upon him because of
+his obscure birth; he was in an exquisite climate; and living by the
+sea-shore, as a sailor loves to do; he got on well with Bartolomeo, who
+was no doubt glad enough of the company of this grave sailor who had
+seen so much and had visited so many countries; above all he had his
+wife there, his beautiful, dear, proud Philippa, all to himself, and out
+of reach of those abominable Portuguese noblemen who paid so much
+attention to her and so little to him, and made him so jealous; and
+there was a whispered promise of some one who was coming to make him
+happier still.  It is a splendid setting, this, for the sea adventurer;
+a charming picture that one has of him there so long ago, walking on the
+white shores of the great sweeping bay, with the glorious purple
+Atlantic sparkling and thundering on the sands, as it sparkles and
+thunders to-day.  A place empty and vivid, swept by the mellow winds;
+silent, but for the continuous roar of the sea; still, but for the
+scuttling of the rabbits among the sand-hills and the occasional passage
+of a figure from the mills up to the sugar-fields; but brilliant with
+sunshine and colour and the bright environment of the sea.  It was upon
+such scenes that he looked during this happy pause in his life; they
+were the setting of Philippa’s dreams and anxieties as the time of
+motherhood drew near; and it was upon them that their little son first
+opened his eyes, and with the boom of the Atlantic breakers that he
+first mingled his small voice.
+
+It is but a moment of rest and happiness; for Christopher the scene is
+soon changed, and he must set forth upon a voyage again, while Philippa
+is left, with a new light in her eyes, to watch over the atom that wakes
+and weeps and twists and struggles and mews, and sleeps again, in her
+charge.  Sleep well, little son!  Yet a little while, and you too shall
+make voyages and conquests; new worlds lie waiting for you, who are so
+greatly astonished at this Old World; far journeys by land and sea, and
+the company of courtiers and kings; and much honour from the name and
+deeds of him who looked into your eyes with a laugh and, a sob, and was
+so very large and overshadowing!  But with her who quietly sings to you,
+whose hands soothe and caress you, in whose eyes shines that wonderful
+light of mother’s love--only a little while longer.
+
+
+While Diego, as this son was christened, was yet only a baby in his
+cradle, Columbus made an important voyage to the, coast of Guinea as all
+the western part of the African continent was then called.  His solid and
+practical qualities were by this time beginning to be recognised even by
+Philippa’s haughty family, and it was possibly through the interest of
+her uncle, Pedro Noronhas, a distinguished minister of the King of
+Portugal, that he got the command of a caravel in the expedition which
+set out for Guinea in December 1481.  A few miles from Cape Coast Castle,
+and on the borders of the Dutch colony, there are to-day the ruined
+remains of a fort; and it is this fort, the fortress of St. George, that
+the expedition was sent out to erect.  On the 11th of December the little
+fleet set sail for [from?  D.W.] Lisbon--ten caravels, and two barges or
+lighters laden with the necessary masonry and timber-work for the fort.
+Columbus was in command of one of the caravels, and the whole fleet was
+commanded by the Portuguese Admiral Azumbaga.  They would certainly see
+Porto Santo and Madeira on their way south, although they did not call
+there; and Philippa was no doubt looking out for them, and watching from
+the sand-hills the fleet of twelve ships going by in the offing.  They
+called at Cape Verde, where the Admiral was commissioned to present one
+of the negro kings with some horses and hawks, and incidentally to obtain
+his assent to a treaty.  On the 19th of January 1482, having made a very
+good voyage, they, landed just beyond the Cape of the Three Points, and
+immediately set about the business of the expedition.
+
+There was a state reception, with Admiral Azumbaga walking in front in
+scarlet and brocade, followed by his captains, Columbus among them,
+dressed in gorgeous tunics and cloaks with golden collars and, well
+hidden beneath their finery, good serviceable cuirasses.  The banner of
+Portugal was ceremoniously unfurled and dis played from the top of a tall
+tree.  An altar was erected and consecrated by the chaplain to the
+expedition, and a mass was sung for the repose of the soul of Prince
+Henry.  The Portugal contingent were then met by Caramansa, the king of
+the country, who came, surrounded by a great guard of blacks armed with
+assegais, their bodies scantily decorated with monkey fur and palm
+leaves.  The black monarch must have presented a handsome appearance,
+for his arms and legs were decked with gold bracelets and rings, he had
+a kind of dog-collar fitted with bells round his neck, and some pieces of
+gold were daintily twisted into his beard.  With these aids to diplomacy,
+and doubtless also with the help of a dram or two of spirits or of the
+wine of Oporto, the treaty was soon concluded, and a very shrewd stroke
+of business accomplished for the King of Portugal; for it gave him the
+sole right of exchanging gaudy rubbish from Portugal for the precious
+gold of Ethiopia.  When the contents of the two freight-ships had been
+unloaded they were beached and broken up by the orders of King John, who
+wished it to be thought that they had been destroyed in the whirlpools of
+that dangerous sea, and that the navigation of those rough waters was
+only safe for the caravels of the Navy.  The fort was built in twenty
+days, and the expedition returned, laden with gold and ivory; Admiral
+Azumbaga remained behind in command of the garrison.
+
+This voyage, which was a bold and adventurous one for the time, may be
+regarded as the first recognition of Columbus as a man of importance,
+for the expedition was manned and commanded by picked men; so it was for
+all reasons a very fortunate one for him, although the possession of the
+dangerous secret as to the whereabouts of this valuable territory might
+have proved to be not very convenient to him in the future.
+
+
+Columbus went back to Porto Santo with his ambitions thoroughly kindled.
+He had been given a definite command in the Portuguese Navy; he had been
+sailing with a fleet; he had been down to the mysterious coast of Africa;
+he had been trafficking with strange tribes; he had been engaged in a
+difficult piece of navigation such as he loved; and on the long dreamy
+days of the voyage home, the caravels furrowing the blue Atlantic before
+the steady trade-wind, he determined that he would find some way of
+putting his knowledge to use, and of earning distinction for himself.
+Living, as he had been lately, in Atlantic seaports overlooking the
+western ocean it is certain that the idea of discovering something in
+that direction occupied him more and more.  What it was that he was to
+discover was probably very vague in his mind, and was likely not
+designated by any name more exact than “lands.”  In after years he tried
+to show that it was a logical and scientific deduction which led him to
+go and seek the eastern shore of the Indian continent by sailing west;
+but we may be almost certain that at this time he thought of no such
+thing.  He had no exact scientific knowledge at this date.  His map
+making had taught him something, and naturally he had kept his ears open,
+and knew all the gossip and hearsay about the islands of the West; and
+there gradually grew in his mind the intuition or conviction--I refuse to
+call it an opinion--that, over that blue verge of the West, there was
+land to be found.  How this seed of conviction first lodged in his mind
+it would be impossible to say; in any one of the steps through which we
+have followed him, it might have taken its root; but there it was,
+beginning to occupy his mind very seriously indeed; and he began to look
+out, as all men do who wish to act upon faith or conviction which they
+cannot demonstrate to another person, for some proofs that his conviction
+was a sound one.
+
+And now, just at the moment when he needs it most, comes an incident
+that, to a man of his religious and superstitious habit, seems like the
+pointing finger of Providence.  The story of the shipwrecked pilot has
+been discredited by nearly all the modern biographers of Columbus,
+chiefly because it does not fit in with their theory of his scientific
+studies and the alleged bearing of these on his great discovery; but it
+is given by Las Casas, who says that it was commonly believed by
+Columbus’s entourage at Hispaniola.  Moreover, amid all the tangles of
+theory and argument in which the achievement of Columbus has been
+involved, this original story of shipwrecked mariners stands out with a
+strength and simplicity that cannot be entirely disregarded by the
+historian who permits himself some light of imagination by which to work.
+It is more true to life and to nature that Columbus should have received
+his last impulse, the little push that was to set his accumulated energy
+and determination in motion, from a thing of pure chance, than that he
+should have built his achievement up in a logical superstructure resting
+on a basis of profound and elaborate theory.
+
+In the year following Columbus’s return from Guinea, then, he, and
+probably his family, had gone over to Madeira from Porto Santo, and were
+staying there.  While they were there a small ship put in to Madeira,
+much battered by storms and bad weather, and manned by a crew of five
+sick mariners.  Columbus, who was probably never far from the shore at
+Funchal when a ship came into the harbour, happened to see them.  Struck
+by their appearance, and finding them in a quite destitute and grievously
+invalid condition, he entertained them in his house until some other
+provision could be made for them.  But they were quite worn out.  One by
+one they succumbed to weakness and illness, until one only, a pilot from
+Huelva, was left.  He also was sinking, and when it was obvious that his
+end was near at hand, he beckoned his good host to his bedside, and, in
+gratitude for all his kindness, imparted to him some singular knowledge
+which he had acquired, and with which, if he had lived, he had hoped to
+win distinction for himself.
+
+The pilot’s story, in so far as it has been preserved, and taking the
+mean of four contemporary accounts of it, was as follows.  This man,
+whose name is doubtful, but is given as Alonso Sanchez, was sailing on a
+voyage from one of the Spanish ports to England or Flanders.  He had a
+crew of seventeen men.  When they had got well out to sea a severe
+easterly gale sprung up, which drove the vessel before it to the
+westward.  Day after day and week after week, for twenty-eight days, this
+gale continued.  The islands were all left far behind, and the ship was
+carried into a region far beyond the limits of the ocean marked on the
+charts.  At last they sighted some islands, upon one of which they landed
+and took in wood and water.  The pilot took the bearings of the island,
+in so far as he was able, and made some observations, the only one of
+which that has remained being that the natives went naked; and, the wind
+having changed, set forth on his homeward voyage.  This voyage was long
+and painful.  The wind did not hold steady from the west; the pilot and
+his crew had a very hazy notion of where they were; their dead reckoning
+was confused; their provisions fell short; and one by one the crew
+sickened and died until they were reduced to five or six--the ones who,
+worn out by sickness and famine, and the labours of working the ship
+short-handed and in their enfeebled condition, at last made the island of
+Madeira, and cast anchor in the beautiful bay of Funchal, only to die
+there.  All these things we may imagine the dying man relating in
+snatches to his absorbed listener; who felt himself to be receiving a
+pearl of knowledge to be guarded and used, now that its finder must
+depart upon the last and longest voyage of human discovery.  Such
+observations as he had made--probably a few figures giving the bearings
+of stars, an account of dead reckoning, and a quite useless and
+inaccurate chart or map--the pilot gave to his host; then, having
+delivered his soul of its secret, he died.  This is the story; not an
+impossible or improbable one in its main outlines.  Whether the pilot
+really landed on one of the Antilles is extremely doubtful, although it
+is possible.  Superstitious and storm-tossed sailors in those days were
+only too ready to believe that they saw some of the fabled islands of the
+Atlantic; and it is quite possible that the pilot simply announced that
+he had seen land, and that the details as to his having actually set foot
+upon it were added later.  That does not seem to me important in so far
+as it concerns Columbus.  Whether it were true or not, the man obviously
+believed it; and to the mind of Columbus, possessed with an idea and a
+blind faith in something which could not be seen, the whole incident
+would appear in the light of a supernatural sign.  The bit of paper or
+parchment with the rude drawing on it, even although it were the drawing
+of a thing imagined and not of a thing seen, would still have for him a
+kind of authority that he would find it hard to ignore.  It seems
+unnecessary to disbelieve this story.  It is obviously absurd to regard
+it as the sole origin of Columbus’s great idea; it probably belongs to
+that order of accidents, small and unimportant in themselves, which are
+so often associated with the beginnings of mighty events.  Walking on the
+shore at Madeira or Porto Santo, his mind brooding on the great and
+growing idea, Columbus would remember one or two other instances which,
+in the light of his growing conviction and know ledge, began to take on a
+significant hue.  He remembered that his wife’s relative, Pedro Correa,
+who had come back from Porto Santo while Columbus was living in Lisbon,
+had told him about some strange flotsam that came in upon the shores of
+the island.  He had seen a piece of wood of a very dark colour curiously
+carved, but not with any tool of metal; and some great canes had also
+come ashore, so big that, every joint would hold a gallon of wine.  These
+canes, which were utterly unlike any thing known in Europe or the islands
+of the Atlantic, had been looked upon as such curiosities that they had
+been sent to the King at Lisbon, where they remained, and where Columbus
+himself afterwards saw them.  Two other stories, which he heard also at
+this time, went to strengthen his convictions.  One was the tale of
+Martin Vincenti, a pilot in the Portuguese Navy, who had found in the
+sea, four hundred and twenty leagues to the west of Cape St. Vincent,
+another piece of wood, curiously carved, that had evidently not been
+laboured with an iron instrument.  Columbus also remembered that the
+inhabitants of the Azores had more than once found upon their coasts the
+trunks of huge pine-trees, and strangely shaped canoes carved out of
+single logs; and, most significant of all, the people of Flares had taken
+from the water the bodies of two dead men, whose faces were of a strange
+broad shape, and whose features differed from those of any known race of
+mankind.  All these objects, it was supposed, were brought by westerly
+winds to the shores of Europe; it was not till long afterwards, when the
+currents of the Atlantic came to be studied, that the presence of such
+flotsam came to be attributed to the ocean currents, deflected by the
+Cape of Good Hope and gathered in the Gulf of Mexico, which are sprayed
+out across the Atlantic.
+
+The idea once fixed in his mind that there was land at a not impossible
+distance to the west, and perhaps a sea-road to the shores of Asia
+itself, the next thing to be done, was to go and discover it.  Rather a
+formidable task for a man without money, a foreigner in a strange
+land, among people who looked down upon him because of his obscure birth,
+and with no equipment except a knowledge of the sea, a great mastery of
+the art and craft of seamanship, a fearless spirit of adventure, and an
+inner light!  Some one else would have to be convinced before anything
+could be done; somebody who would provide ships and men and money and
+provisions.  Altogether rather a large order; for it was not an unusual
+thing in those days for master mariners, tired of the shore, to suggest
+to some grandee or other the desirability of fitting out a ship or two to
+go in search of the isle of St. Brandon, or to look up Antilia, or the
+island of the Seven Cities.  It was very hard to get an audience even for
+such a reasonable scheme as that; but to suggest taking a flotilla
+straight out to the west and into the Sea of Darkness, down that curving
+hill of the sea which it might be easy enough to slide down, but up which
+it was known that no ship could ever climb again, was a thing that hardly
+any serious or well-informed person would listen to.  A young man from
+Genoa, without a knowledge either of the classics or of the Fathers, and
+with no other argument except his own fixed belief and some vague talk
+about bits of wood and shipwrecked mariners, was not the person to
+inspire the capitalists of Portugal.  Yet the thing had to be done.
+Obviously it could not be done at Porto Santo, where there were no ships
+and no money.  Influence must be used; and Columbus knew that his
+proposals, if they were to have even a chance of being listened to, must
+be presented in some high-flown and elaborate form, giving reasons and
+offering inducements and quoting authorities.  He would have to get some
+one to help him in that; he would have to get up some scientific facts;
+his brother Bartholomew could help him, and some of those disagreeable
+relatives-in-law must also be pressed into the service of the Idea.
+Obviously the first thing was to go back to Lisbon; which accordingly
+Columbus did, about the year 1483.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+WANDERINGS WITH AN IDEA
+
+The man to whom Columbus proposed to address his request for means with
+which to make a voyage of discovery was no less a person than the new
+King of Portugal.  Columbus was never a man of petty or small ideas; if
+he were going to do a thing at all, he went about it in a large and
+comprehensive way; and all his life he had a way of going to the
+fountainhead, and of making flights and leaps where other men would only
+climb or walk, that had much to do with his ultimate success.  King John,
+moreover, had shown himself thoroughly sympathetic to the spirit of
+discovery; Columbus, as we have seen, had already been employed in a
+trusted capacity in one of the royal expeditions; and he rightly thought
+that, since he had to ask the help of some one in his enterprise, he
+might as well try to enlist the Crown itself in the service of his great
+Idea.  He was not prepared, however, to go directly to the King and ask
+for ships; his proposal would have to be put in a way that would appeal
+to the royal ambition, and would also satisfy the King that there was
+really a destination in view for the expedition.  In other words Columbus
+had to propose to go somewhere; it would not do to say that he was going
+west into the Atlantic Ocean to look about him.  He therefore devoted all
+his energies to putting his proposal on what is called a business
+footing, and expressing his vague, sublime Idea in common and practical
+terms.
+
+The people who probably helped him most in this were his brother
+Bartholomew and Martin Behaim, the great authority on scientific
+navigation, who had been living in Lisbon for some time and with whom
+Columbus was acquainted.  Behaim, who was at this time about forty eight
+years of age, was born at Nuremberg, and was a pupil of Regiomontanus,
+the great German astronomer.  A very interesting man, this, if we could
+decipher his features and character; no mere star-gazing visionary, but a
+man of the world, whose scientific lore was combined with a wide and
+liberal experience of life.  He was not only learned in cosmography and
+astronomy, but he had a genius for mechanics and made beautiful
+instruments; he was a merchant also, and combined a little business with
+his scientific travels.  He had been employed at Lisbon in adapting the
+astrolabe of Regiomontanus for the use of sailors at sea; and in these
+labours he was assisted by two people who were destined to have a weighty
+influence on the career of Columbus--Doctors Rodrigo and Joseph,
+physicians or advisers to the King, and men of great academic reputation.
+There was nothing known about cosmography or astronomy that Behaim did
+not know; and he had just come back from an expedition on which he had
+been despatched, with Rodrigo and Joseph, to take the altitude of the sun
+in Guinea.
+
+Columbus was not the man to neglect his opportunities, and there can be
+no doubt that as soon as his purpose had established itself in his mind
+he made use of every opportunity that presented itself for improving his
+meagre scientific knowledge, in order that his proposal might be set
+forth in a plausible form.  In other words, he got up the subject.  The
+whole of his geographical reading with regard to the Indies up to this
+time had been in the travels of Marco Polo; the others--whose works he
+quoted from so freely in later years were then known to him only by name,
+if at all.  Behaim, however, could tell him a good deal about the
+supposed circumference of the earth, the extent of the Asiatic continent,
+and so on.  Every new fact that Columbus heard he seized and pressed into
+the service of his Idea; where there was a choice of facts, or a
+difference of opinion between scientists, he chose the facts that were
+most convenient, and the opinions that fitted best with his own beliefs.
+The very word “Indies” was synonymous with unbounded wealth; there
+certainly would be riches to tempt the King with; and Columbus, being a
+religious man, hit also on the happy idea of setting forth the spiritual
+glory of carrying the light of faith across the Sea of Darkness, and
+making of the heathen a heritage for the Christian Church.  So that, what
+with one thing and another, he soon had his proposals formally arranged.
+
+Imagine him, then, actually at Court, and having an audience of the King,
+who could scarcely believe his ears.  Here was a man, of whom he knew
+nothing but that his conduct of a caravel had been well spoken of in the
+recent expedition to Guinea, actually proposing to sail out west into the
+Atlantic and to cross the unknown part of the world.  Certainly his
+proposals seemed plausible, but still--.  The earth was round, said
+Columbus, and therefore there was a way from East to West and from West
+to East.  The prophet Esdras, a scientific authority that even His
+Majesty would hardly venture to doubt, had laid it down that only
+one-seventh of the earth was covered by waters.  From this fact Columbus
+deduced that the maritime space extending westward between the shores of
+Europe and eastern coast of Asia could not be large; and by sailing
+westward he proposed to reach certain lands of which he claimed to have
+knowledge.  The sailors’ tales, the logs of driftwood, the dead bodies,
+were all brought into the proposals; in short, if His Majesty would grant
+some ships, and consent to making Columbus Admiral over all the islands
+that he might discover, with full viceregal state, authority, and profit,
+he would go and discover them.
+
+There are two different accounts of what the King said when this proposal
+was made to him.  According to some authorities, John was impressed by
+Columbus’s proposals, and inclined to provide him with the necessary
+ships, but he could not assent to all the titles and rewards which
+Columbus demanded as a price for his services.  Barros, the Portuguese
+historian, on the other hand, represents that the whole idea was too
+fantastic to be seriously entertained by the King for a moment, and that
+although he at once made up his mind to refuse the request he preferred
+to delegate his refusal to a commission.  Whatever may be the truth as to
+King John’s opinions, the commission was certainly appointed, and
+consisted of three persons, to wit: Master Rodrigo, Master Joseph the
+Jew, and the Right Reverend Cazadilla, Bishop of Ceuta.
+
+
+Before these three learned men must Columbus now appear, a little less
+happy in his mind, and wishing that he knew more Latin.  Master Rodrigo,
+Master Joseph the Jew, the Right Reverend Cazadilla: three pairs of cold
+eyes turned rather haughtily on the Genoese adventurer; three brains much
+steeped in learning, directed in judgment on the Idea of a man with no
+learning at all.  The Right Reverend Cazadilla, being the King’s
+confessor, and a bishop into the bargain, could speak on that matter of
+converting the heathen; and he was of opinion that it could not be done.
+Joseph the Jew, having made voyages, and worked with Behaim at the
+astrolabe, was surely an authority on navigation; and he was of opinion
+that it could not be done.  Rodrigo, being also a very learned man, had
+read many books which Columbus had not read; and he was of opinion that
+it could not be done.  Three learned opinions against one Idea; the Idea
+is bound to go.  They would no doubt question Columbus on the scientific
+aspect of the matter, and would soon discover his grievous lack of
+academic knowledge.  They would quote fluently passages from writers that
+he had not heard of; if he had not heard of them, they seemed to imply,
+no wonder he made such foolish proposals.  Poor Columbus stands there
+puzzled, dissatisfied, tongue-tied.  He cannot answer these wiseacres in
+their own learned lingo; what they say, or what they quote, may be true
+or it may not; but it has nothing to do with his Idea.  If he opens his
+mouth to justify himself, they refute him with arguments that he does not
+understand; there is a wall between them.  More than a wall; there is a
+world between them!  It is his ‘credo’ against their ‘ignoro’; it is, his
+‘expecto’ against their ‘non video’.  Yet in his ‘credo’ there lies a
+power of which they do not dream; and it rings out in a trumpet note
+across the centuries, saluting the life force that opposes its
+irresistible “I will” to the feeble “Thou canst not” of the worldly-wise.
+Thus, in about the year 1483, did three learned men sit in judgment upon
+our ignorant Christopher.  Three learned men: Doctors Rodrigo, Joseph the
+Jew, and the Right Reverend Cazadilla, Bishop of Ceuta; three risen,
+stuffed to the eyes and ears with learning; stuffed so full indeed that
+eyes and ears are closed with it.  And three men, it would appear, wholly
+destitute of mother-wit.
+
+
+After all his preparations this rebuff must have been a serious blow to
+Columbus.  It was not his only trouble, moreover.  During the last year
+he had been earning nothing; he was already in imagination the Admiral of
+the Ocean Seas; and in the anticipation of the much higher duties to
+which he hoped to be devoted it is not likely that he would continue at
+his humble task of making maps and charts.  The result was that he got
+into debt, and it was absolutely necessary that something should be done.
+But a darker trouble had also almost certainly come to him about this
+time.  Neither the day nor the year of Philippa’s death is known;
+but it is likely that it occurred soon after Columbus’s failure at the
+Portuguese Court, and immediately before his departure into Spain.  That
+anonymous life, fulfilling itself so obscurely in companionship and
+motherhood, as softly as it floated upon the page of history, as softly
+fades from it again.  Those kind eyes, that encouraging voice, that
+helping hand and friendly human soul are with him no longer; and after
+the interval of peace and restful growth that they afforded Christopher
+must strike his tent and go forth upon another stage of his pilgrimage
+with a heavier and sterner heart.
+
+Two things are left to him: his son Diego, now an articulate little
+creature with character and personality of his own, and with strange,
+heart-breaking reminiscences of his mother in voice and countenance and
+manner--that is one possession; the other is his Idea.  Two things alive
+and satisfactory, amid the ruin and loss of other possessions; two
+reasons for living and prevailing.  And these two possessions Columbus
+took with him when he set out for Spain in the year 1485.
+
+His first care was to take little Diego to the town of Huelva, where
+there lived a sister of Philippa’s who had married a Spaniard named
+Muliartes.  This done, he was able to devote himself solely to the
+furtherance of his Idea.  For this purpose he went to Seville, where he
+attached himself for a little while to a group of his countrymen who were
+settled there, among them Antonio and Alessandro Geraldini, and made such
+momentary living as was possible to him by his old trade.  But the Idea
+would not sleep.  He talked of nothing else; and as men do who talk of an
+idea that possesses them wholly, and springs from the inner light of
+faith, he interested and impressed many of his hearers.  Some of them
+suggested one thing, some another; but every one was agreed that it would
+be a good thing if he could enlist the services of the great Count
+(afterwards Duke) of Medini Celi, who had a palace at Rota, near Cadiz.
+
+This nobleman was one of the most famous of the grandees of Spain, and
+lived in mighty state upon his territory along the sea-shore, serving the
+Crown in its wars and expeditions with the power and dignity of an ally
+rather than of a subject.  His domestic establishment was on a princely
+scale, filled with chamberlains, gentlemen-at-arms, knights, retainers,
+and all the panoply of social dignity; and there was also place in his
+household for persons of merit and in need of protection.  To this great
+man came Columbus with his Idea.  It attracted the Count, who was a judge
+of men and perhaps of ideas also; and Columbus, finding some hope at last
+in his attitude, accepted the hospitality offered to him, and remained at
+Rota through the winter of 1485-86.  He had not been very hopeful when he
+arrived there, and had told the Count that he had thought of going to the
+King of France and asking for help from him; but the Count, who found
+something respectable and worthy of consideration in the Idea of a man
+who thought nothing of a journey in its service from one country to
+another and one sovereign to another, detained him, and played with the
+Idea himself.  Three or four caravels were nothing to the Count of Medina
+Eeli; but on the other hand the man was a grandee and a diplomat, with a
+nice sense of etiquette and of what was due to a reigning house.  Either
+there was nothing in this Idea, in which case his caravels would be
+employed to no purpose, or there was so much in it that it was an
+undertaking, not merely for the Count of Medina Celi, but for the Crown
+of Castile.  Lands across the ocean, and untold gold and riches of the
+Indies, suggested complications with foreign Powers, and transactions
+with the Pope himself, that would probably be a little too much even for
+the good Count; therefore with a curious mixture of far-sighted
+generosity and shrewd security he wrote to Queen Isabella, recommending
+Columbus to her, and asking her to consider his Idea; asking her also,
+in case anything should come of it, to remember him (the Count), and to
+let him have a finger in the pie.  Thus, with much literary circumstance
+and elaboration of politeness, the Count of Medina Celi to Queen
+Isabella.
+
+Follows an interval of suspense, the beginning of a long discipline of
+suspense to which Columbus was to be subjected; and presently comes a
+favourable reply from the Queen, commanding that Columbus should be sent
+to her.  Early in 1486 he set out for Cordova, where the Court was then
+established, bearing another letter from the Count in which his own
+private requests were repeated, and perhaps a little emphasised.
+Columbus was lodged in the house of Alonso de Quintanilla, Treasurer to
+the Crown of Castile, there to await an audience with Queen Isabella.
+
+
+While he is waiting, and getting accustomed to his new surroundings, let
+us consider these two monarchs in whose presence he is soon to appear,
+and upon whose decision hangs some part of the world’s destiny.  Isabella
+first; for in that strange duet of government it is her womanly soprano
+that rings most clearly down the corridors of Time.  We discern in her a
+very busy woman, living a difficult life with much tact and judgment, and
+exercising to some purpose that amiable taste for “doing good” that marks
+the virtuous lady of station in every age.  This, however, was a woman
+who took risks with her eyes open, and steered herself cleverly in
+perilous situations, and guided others with a firm hand also, and in
+other ways made good her claim to be a ruler.  The consent and the will
+of her people were her great strength; by them she dethroned her niece
+and ascended the throne of Castile.  She had the misfortune to be at
+variance with her husband in almost every matter of policy dear to his
+heart; she opposed the expulsion of the Jews and the establishment of the
+Inquisition; but when she failed to get her way, she was still able to
+preserve her affectionate relations with her husband without disagreement
+and with happiness.  If she had a fault it was the common one of being
+too much under the influence of her confessors; but it was a fault that
+was rarely allowed to disturb the balance of her judgment.  She liked
+clever people also; surrounded herself with men of letters and of
+science, fostered all learned institutions, and delighted in the details
+of civil administration.  A very dignified and graceful figure, that
+could equally adorn a Court drawing-room or a field of battle; for she
+actually went into the field, and wore armour as becomingly as silk and
+ermine.  Firm, constant, clever, alert, a little given to fussiness
+perhaps, but sympathetic and charming, with some claims to genius and
+some approach to grandeur of soul: so much we may say truly of her inner
+self.  Outwardly she was a woman well formed, of medium height, a very
+dignified and graceful carriage, eyes of a clear summer blue, and the red
+and gold of autumn in her hair--these last inherited from her English
+grandmother.
+
+Ferdinand of Aragon appears not quite so favourably in our pages, for he
+never thought well of Columbus or of his proposals; and when he finally
+consented to the expedition he did so with only half a heart, and against
+his judgment.  He was an extremely enterprising, extremely subtle,
+extremely courageous, and according to our modern notions, an extremely
+dishonest man; that is to say, his standards of honour were not those
+which we can accept nowadays.  He thought nothing of going back on a
+promise, provided he got a priestly dispensation to do so; he juggled
+with his cabinets, and stopped at nothing in order to get his way; he had
+a craving ambition, and was lacking in magnanimity; he loved dominion,
+and cared very little for glory.  A very capable man; so capable that in
+spite of his defects he was regarded by his subjects as wise and prudent;
+so capable that he used his weaknesses of character to strengthen and
+further the purposes of his reign.  A very cold man also, quick and sure
+in his judgments, of wide understanding and grasp of affairs; simple and
+austere in dress and diet, as austerity was counted in that period of
+splendour; extremely industrious, and close in his observations and
+judgments of men.  To the bodily eye he appeared as a man of middle size,
+sturdy and athletic, face burned a brick red with exposure to the sun and
+open air; hair and eyebrows of a bright chestnut; a well-formed and not
+unkindly mouth; a voice sharp and unmelodious, issuing in quick fluent
+speech.  This was the man that earned from the Pope, for himself and his
+successors, the title of “Most Catholic Majesty.”
+
+
+The Queen was very busy indeed with military preparations; but in the
+midst of her interviews with nobles and officers, contractors and state
+officials, she snatched a moment to receive the person Christopher
+Columbus.  With that extreme mental agility which is characteristic of
+busy sovereigns all the force of this clever woman’s mind was turned for
+a moment on Christopher, whose Idea had by this time invested him with a
+dignity which no amount of regal state could abash.  There was very
+little time.  The Queen heard what Columbus had to say, cutting him
+short, it is likely, with kindly tact, and suppressing his tendency to
+launch out into long-winded speeches.  What she saw she liked; and, being
+too busy to give to this proposal the attention that it obviously
+merited, she told Columbus that the matter would be fully gone into and
+that in the meantime he must regard himself as the guest of the Court.
+And so, in the countenance of a smile and a promise, Columbus bows
+himself out.  For the present he must wait a little and his hot heart
+must contain itself while other affairs, looming infinitely larger than
+his Idea on the royal horizon, receive the attention of the Court.
+
+It was not the happiest moment, indeed, in which to talk of ships and
+charts, and lonely sea-roads, and faraway undiscovered shores.  Things at
+home were very real and lively in those spring days at Cordova.  The war
+against the Moors had reached a critical stage; King Ferdinand was away
+laying siege to the city of Loxa, and though the Queen was at Cordova she
+was entirely occupied with the business of collecting and forwarding
+troops and supplies to his aid.  The streets were full of soldiers;
+nobles and grandees from all over the country were arriving daily with
+their retinues; glitter and splendour, and the pomp of warlike
+preparation, filled the city.  Early in June the Queen herself went to
+the front and joined her husband in the siege of Moclin; and when this
+was victoriously ended, and they had returned in triumph to Cordova, they
+had to set out again for Gallicia to suppress a rebellion there.  When
+that was over they did not come back to Cordova at all, but repaired at
+once to Salamanca to spend the winter there.
+
+At the house of Alonso de Quintanilla, however, Columbus was not
+altogether wasting his time.  He met there some of the great persons of
+the Court, among them the celebrated Pedro Gonzalez de Mendoza,
+Archbishop of Toledo and Grand Cardinal of Spain.  This was far too great
+a man to be at this time anything like a friend of Columbus; but Columbus
+had been presented to him; the Cardinal would know his name, and what his
+business was; and that is always a step towards consideration.  Cabrero,
+the royal Chamberlain, was also often a fellow-guest at the Treasurer’s
+table; and with him Columbus contracted something like a friendship.
+Every one who met him liked him; his dignity, his simplicity of thought
+and manner, his experience of the sea, and his calm certainty and
+conviction about the stupendous thing which he proposed to do, could
+not fail to attract the liking and admiration of those with whom he came
+in contact.  In the meantime a committee appointed by the Queen sat upon
+his proposals.  The committee met under the presidentship of Hernando de
+Talavera, the prior of the monastery of Santa Maria del Prado, near
+Valladolid, a pious ecclesiastic, who had the rare quality of honesty,
+and who was therefore a favourite with Queen Isabella; she afterwards
+created him Archbishop of Granada.  He was not, however, poor honest
+soul! quite the man to grasp and grapple with this wild scheme for a
+voyage across the ocean.  Once more Columbus, as in Portugal, set forth
+his views with eloquence and conviction; and once more, at the tribunal
+of learning, his unlearned proposals were examined and condemned.  Not
+only was Columbus’s Idea regarded as scientifically impossible, but it
+was also held to come perilously near to heresy, in its assumption of a
+state of affairs that was clearly at variance with the writings of the
+Fathers and the sacred Scriptures themselves.
+
+This new disappointment, bitter though it was, did not find Columbus in
+such friendless and unhappy circumstances as those in which he left
+Portugal.  He had important friends now, who were willing and anxious to
+help him, and among them was one to whom he turned, in his profound
+depression, for religious and friendly consolation.  This was Diego de
+DEA, prior of the Dominican convent of San Estevan at Salamanca, who was
+also professor of theology in the university there and tutor to the young
+Prince Juan.  Of all those who came in contact with Columbus at this time
+this man seems to have understood him best, and to have realised where
+his difficulty lay.  Like many others who are consumed with a burning
+idea Columbus was very probably at this time in danger of becoming
+possessed with it like a monomaniac; and his new friends saw that if he
+were to make any impression upon the conservative learning of the time to
+which a decision in such matters was always referred he must have some
+opportunity for friendly discussion with learned men who were not
+inimical to him, and who were not in the position of judges examining a
+man arraigned before them and pleading for benefits.
+
+When the Court went to Salamanca at the end of 1486, DEA arranged that
+Columbus should go there too, and he lodged him in a country farm called
+Valcuebo, which belonged to his convent and was equi-distant from it and
+the city.  Here the good Dominican fathers came and visited him, bringing
+with them professors from the university, who discussed patiently with
+Columbus his theories and ambitions, and, himself all conscious,
+communicated new knowledge to him, and quietly put him right on many a
+scientific point.  There were professors of cosmography and astronomy in
+the university, familiar with the works of Alfraganus and Regiomontanus.
+It is likely that it was at this time that Columbus became possessed of
+d’Ailly’s ‘Imago Mundi’, which little volume contained a popular resume
+of the scientific views of Strabo, Pliny, Ptolemy, and others, and was
+from this time forth Columbus’s constant companion.
+
+Here at Valcuebo and later, when winter came, in the great hall of the
+Dominican convent at Salamanca, known as the “De Profundis” hall, where
+the monks received guests and held discussions, the Idea of Columbus was
+ventilated and examined.  He heard what friendly sceptics had to say
+about it; he saw the kind of argument that he would have to oppose to the
+existing scientific and philosophical knowledge on cosmography.  There is
+no doubt that he learnt a good deal at this time; and more important even
+than this, he got his project known and talked about; and he made
+powerful friends, who were afterwards to be of great use to him.  The
+Marquesa de Moya, wife of his friend Cabrera, took a great liking to him;
+and as she was one of the oldest and closest friends of the Queen, it is
+likely that she spoke many a good word for Columbus in Isabella’s ear.
+
+By the time the Court moved to Cordova early in 1487, Columbus was once
+more hopeful of getting a favourable hearing.  He followed the Court to
+Cordova, where he received a gracious message from the Queen to the
+effect that she had not forgotten him, and that as soon as her military
+preoccupations permitted it, she would go once more, and more fully, into
+his proposals.  In the meantime he was attached to the Court, and
+received a quarterly payment of 3000 maravedis.  It seemed as though the
+unfavourable decision of Talavera’s committee had been forgotten.
+
+In the meantime he was to have a change of scene.  Isabella followed
+Ferdinand to the siege of Malaga, where the Court was established; and as
+there were intervals in which other than military business might be
+transacted, Columbus was ordered to follow them in case his affairs
+should come up for consideration.  They did not; but the man himself had
+an experience that may have helped to keep his thoughts from brooding too
+much on his unfulfilled ambition.  Years afterwards, when far away on
+lonely seas, amid the squalor of a little ship and the staggering buffets
+of a gale, there would surely sometimes leap into his memory a brightly
+coloured picture of this scene in the fertile valley of Malaga: the
+silken pavilions of the Court, the great encampment of nobility with its
+arms and banners extending in a semicircle to the seashore, all
+glistening and moving in the bright sunshine.  There was added excitement
+at this time at an attempt to assassinate Ferdinand and Isabella, a
+fanatic Moor having crept up to one of the pavilions and aimed a blow at
+two people whom he mistook for the King and Queen.  They turned out to be
+Don Alvaro de Portugal, who was dangerously wounded, and Columbus’s
+friend, the Marquesa de Moya, who was unhurt; but it was felt that the
+King and Queen had had a narrow escape.  The siege was raised on the 18th
+of August, and the sovereigns went to spend the winter at Zaragoza; and
+Columbus, once more condemned to wait, went back to Cordova.
+
+
+It was here that he contracted his second and, so far as we know, his
+last romantic attachment.  The long idle days of summer and autumn at
+Cordova, empty of all serious occupation, gave nature an opportunity for
+indulging her passion for life and continuity.  Among Christopher’s
+friends at Cordova was the family of Arana, friendly hospitable souls,
+by some accounts noble and by others not noble, and certainly in somewhat
+poor circumstances, who had welcomed him to their house, listened to his
+plans with enthusiasm, and formed a life-long friendship with him.  Three
+members of this family are known to us--two brothers, Diego and Pedro,
+both of whom commanded ships in Columbus’s expeditions, and a sister
+Beatriz.  Columbus was now a man of six-and-thirty, while she was little
+more than a girl; he was handsome and winning, distinguished by the
+daring and importance of his scheme, full of thrilling and romantic talk
+of distant lands; a very interesting companion, we may be sure.  No
+wonder she fell in love with Christopher; no wonder that he, feeling
+lonely and depressed by the many postponements of his suit at Court, and
+in need of sympathy and encouragement, fell in these blank summer days
+into an intimacy that flamed into a brief but happy passion.  Why
+Columbus never married Beatriz de Arana we cannot be sure, for it is
+almost certain that his first wife had died some time before.  Perhaps he
+feared to involve himself in any new or embarrassing ties; perhaps he
+loved unwillingly, and against his reason; perhaps--although the
+suggestion is not a happy one--he by this time did not think poor Beatriz
+good enough for the Admiral-elect of the Ocean Seas; perhaps (and more
+probably) Beatriz was already married and deserted, for she bore the
+surname of Enriquez; and in that case, there being no such thing as a
+divorce in the Catholic Church, she must either sin or be celibate.  But
+however that may be, there was an uncanonical alliance between them which
+evidently did not in the least scandalise her brothers and which resulted
+in the birth of Ferdinand Columbus in the following year.  Christopher,
+so communicative and discursive upon some of his affairs, is as reticent
+about Beatriz as he was about Philippa.  Beatriz shares with his
+legitimate wife the curious distinction of being spoken of by Columbus to
+posterity only in his will, which was executed at Valladolid the day
+before he died.  In the dry ink and vellum of that ancient legal document
+is his only record of these two passions.  The reference to Beatriz is as
+follows:
+
+     “And I direct him [Diego] to make provision for Beatriz Enriquez,
+     mother of D. Fernando, my son, that she may be able to live
+     honestly, being a person to whom I am under very great obligation.
+     And this shall be done for the satisfaction of my conscience,
+     because this matter weighs heavily upon my soul.  The reason for
+     which it is not fitting to write here.”
+
+About the condition of Beatriz, temporal and spiritual, there has been
+much controversy; but where the facts are all so buried and inaccessible
+it is unseemly to agitate a veil which we cannot lift, and behind which
+Columbus himself sheltered this incident of his life.  “Acquainted with
+poverty” is one fragment of fact concerning her that has come down to us;
+acquainted also with love and with happiness, it would seem, as many poor
+persons undoubtedly are.  Enough for us to know that in the city of
+Cordova there lived a woman, rich or poor, gentle or humble, married or
+not married, who brought for a time love and friendly companionship into
+the life of Columbus; that she gave what she had for giving, without
+stint or reserve, and that she became the mother of a son who inherited
+much of what was best in his father, and but for whom the world would be
+in even greater darkness than it is on the subject of Christopher
+himself.  And so no more of Beatriz Enriquez de Arana, whom “God has in
+his keeping”--and has had now these many centuries of Time.
+
+
+Thus passed the summer and autumn of 1487; precious months, precious
+years slipping by, and the great purpose as yet unfulfilled and seemingly
+no nearer to fulfilment.  It is likely that Columbus kept up his
+applications to the Court, and received polite and delaying replies.
+The next year came, and the Court migrated from Zaragoza to Murcia, from
+Murcia to Valladolid, from Valladolid to Medina del Campo.  Columbus
+attended it in one or other of these places, but without result.  In
+August Beatriz gave birth to a son, who was christened Ferdinand, and who
+lived to be a great comfort to his father, if not to her also.  But the
+miracle of paternity was not now so new and wonderful as it had been; the
+battle of life, with its crosses and difficulties, was thick about him;
+and perhaps he looked into this new-comer’s small face with conflicting
+thoughts, and memories of the long white beach and the crashing surf at
+Porto Santo, and regret for things lost--so strangely mingled and
+inconsistent are the threads of human thought.  At last he decided to
+turn his face elsewhere.  In September 1488 he went to Lisbon, for what
+purpose it is not certain; possibly in connection with the affairs of his
+dead wife; and probably also in the expectation of seeing his brother
+Bartholomew, to whom we may now turn our attention for a moment.
+
+
+After the failure of Columbus’s proposals to the King of Portugal in
+1486, and the break-up of his home there, Bartholomew had also left
+Lisbon.  Bartholomew Diaz, a famous Portuguese navigator, was leaving for
+the African coast in August, and Bartholomew Columbus is said to have
+joined his small expedition of three caravels.  As they neared the
+latitude of the Cape which he was trying to make, he ran into a gale
+which drove him a long way out of his course, west and south.
+
+The wind veered round from north-east to north-west, and he did not
+strike the land again until May 1487.  When he did so his crew insisted
+upon his returning, as they declined to go any further south.  He
+therefore turned to the west, and then made the startling discovery that
+in the course of the tempest he had been blown round the Cape, and that
+the land he had made was to the eastward of it; and he therefore rounded
+it on his way home.  He arrived back in Lisbon in December 1488, when
+Columbus met his brother again, and was present at the reception of Diaz
+by the King of Portugal.  They had a great deal to tell each other, these
+two brothers; in the two years and a half that had gone since they had
+parted a great deal had happened to them; and they both knew a good deal
+more about the great question in which they, were interested than they
+had known when last they talked.
+
+It is to this period that I attribute the inception, if not the
+execution, of the forgery of the Toscanelli correspondence, if, as I
+believe, it was a forgery.  Christopher’s unpleasant experiences before
+learned committees and commissions had convinced him that unless he were
+armed with some authoritative and documentary support for his theories
+they had little chance of acceptance by the learned.  The, Idea was
+right; he knew that; but before he could convince the academic mind, he
+felt that it must have the imprimatur of a mind whose learning could not
+be impugned.  Therefore it is not an unfair guess--and it can be nothing
+more than a guess--that Christopher and Bartholomew at this point laid
+their heads together, and decided that the next time Christopher had to
+appear before a commission he would, so to speak, have something “up his
+sleeve.”  It was a risky thing to do, and must in any case be used only
+as a very last resource; which would account for the fact that the
+Toscanelli correspondence was never used at all, and is not mentioned in
+any document known to men written until long after Columbus’s death.
+
+But these summers and winters of suspense are at last drawing to a close,
+and we must follow Christopher rapidly through them until the hour of his
+triumph.  He was back in Spain in the spring of 1489, his travelling
+expenses being defrayed out of the royal purse; and a little later he was
+once more amid scenes of war at the siege of Baza, and, if report is
+true, taking a hand himself, not without distinction.  It was there that
+he saw the two friars from the convent of the Holy Sepulchre at
+Jerusalem, who brought a message from the Grand Soldan of Egypt,
+threatening the destruction of the Sepulchre if the Spanish sovereigns
+did not desist from the war against Granada; and it was there that in his
+simple and pious mind he formed the resolve that if ever his efforts
+should be crowned with success, and he himself become rich and powerful,
+he would send a crusade for the rescue of the Holy Sepulchre.  And it was
+there that, on the 22nd of December, he saw Boabdil, the elder of the two
+rival Kings of Granada, surrender all his rights and claims to Spain.
+Surely now there will be a chance for him?  No; there is another
+interruption, this time occasioned by the royal preparations for the
+marriage of the Princess Isabella to the heir of Portugal.  Poor
+Columbus, sickened and disappointed by these continual delays, irritated
+by a sense of the waste of his precious time, follows the Court about
+from one place to another, raising a smile here and a scoff there, and
+pointed at by children in the street.  There, is nothing so ludicrous as
+an Idea to those who do not share it.
+
+Another summer, another winter, lost out of a life made up of a limited
+number of summers and winters; a few more winters and summers, thinks
+Christopher, and I shall be in a world where Ideas are not needed, and
+where there is nothing left to discover!  Something had to be done.  In
+the beginning of 1491 there was only one thing spoken of at Court--the
+preparations for the siege of Granada, which did not interest Columbus at
+all.  The camp of King Ferdinand was situated at Santa Fe, a few miles to
+the westward of Granada, and Columbus came here late in the year,
+determined to get a final answer one way or the other to his question.
+He made his application, and the busy monarchs once more adopted their
+usual polite tactics.  They appointed a junta, which was presided over by
+no less a person than the Cardinal of Spain, Gonzales de Mendoza: Once
+more the weary business was gone through, but Columbus must have had some
+hopes of success, since he did not produce his forged Toscanelli
+correspondence.  It was no scruple of conscience that held him back, we
+may be sure; the crafty Genoese knew nothing about such scruples in the
+attainment of a great object; he would not have hesitated to adopt any
+means to secure an end which he felt to be so desirable.  So it is
+probable that either he was not quite sure of his ground and his courage
+failed him, or that he had hopes, owing to his friendship with so many of
+the members of the junta, that a favourable decision would at last be
+arrived at.  In this he was mistaken.  The Spanish prelates again quoted
+the Fathers of the Church, and disposed of his proposals simply on the
+ground that they were heretical.  Much talk, and much wagging of learned
+heads; and still no mother-wit or gleam of light on this obscurity of
+learning.  The junta decided against the proposals, and reported its
+decision to the King and Queen.  The monarchs, true to their somewhat
+hedging methods when there was anything to be gained by hedging, informed
+Columbus that at present they were too much occupied with the war to
+grant his requests; but that, when the preoccupations and expenses of the
+campaign were a thing of the past, they might again turn their attention
+to his very interesting suggestion.
+
+It was at this point that the patience of Columbus broke down.  Too many
+promises had been made to him, and hope had been held out to him too
+often for him to believe any more in it.  Spain, he decided, was useless;
+he would try France; at least he would be no worse off there.  But he had
+first of all to settle his affairs as well as possible.  Diego, now a
+growing boy nearly eleven years old, had been staying with Beatriz at
+Cordova, and going to school there; Christopher would take him back to
+his aunt’s at Huelva before he went away.  He set out with a heavy heart,
+but with purpose and determination unimpaired.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+OUR LADY OF LA RABIDA
+
+It is a long road from Santa Fe to Huelva, a long journey to make on
+foot, and the company of a sad heart and a little talking boy, prone to
+sudden weariness and the asking of innumerable difficult questions, would
+not make it very much shorter.  Every step that Christopher took carried
+him farther away from the glittering scene where his hopes had once been
+so bright, and were now fallen to the dust; and every step brought him
+nearer that unknown destiny as to which he was in great darkness of mind,
+and certain only that there was some small next thing constantly to be
+done: the putting down of one foot after another, the request for food
+and lodging at the end of each short day’s march, the setting out again
+in the morning.  That walk from Santa Fe, so real and painful and
+wearisome and long a thing to Christopher and Diego, is utterly blank and
+obliterated for us.  What he thought and felt and suffered are things
+quite dead; what he did-namely, to go and do the immediate thing that it
+seemed possible and right for him to do--is a living fact to-day, for it
+brought him, as all brave and honest doing will, a little nearer to his
+destiny, a little nearer to the truthful realisation of what was in him.
+
+At about a day’s journey from Huelva, where the general slope of the land
+begins to fall towards the sea, two small rivers, the Odiel and the
+Tinto, which have hitherto been making music each for itself through the
+pleasant valleys and vineyards of Andalusia, join forces, and run with a
+deeper stream towards the sea at Palos.  The town of Palos lay on the
+banks of the river; a little to the south of it, and on the brow of a
+rocky promontory dark with pine trees, there stood the convent of Our
+Lady of La Rabida.  Stood, on this November evening in the year 1491;
+had stood in some form or other, and used for varying purposes, for many
+years and centuries before that, even to the time of the Romans; and
+still stands, a silent and neglected place, yet to be visited and seen by
+such as are curious.  To the door of this place comes Christopher as
+darkness falls, urged thereto by the plight of Diego, who is tired and
+hungry.  Christopher rings the bell, and asks the porter for a little
+bread and water for the child, and a lodging for them both.  There is
+some talk at the door; the Franciscan lay brother being given, at all
+times in the history of his order, to the pleasant indulgence of
+gossiping conversation, when that is lawful; and the presence of a
+stranger, who speaks with a foreign accent, being at all times a incident
+of interest and even of excitement in the quiet life of a monastery.  The
+moment is one big with import to the human race; it marks a period in the
+history of our man; the scene is worth calling up.  Dark night, with sea
+breezes moaning in the pine trees, outside; raying light from within
+falling on the lay brother leaning in the doorway and on the two figures
+standing without: on Christopher, grave, subdued, weary, yet now as
+always of pleasant and impressive address, and on the small boy who
+stands beside him round-eyed and expectant, his fatigue for the moment
+forgotten in curiosity and anticipation.
+
+While they are talking comes no less a person than the Prior of the
+monastery, Friar Juan Perez, bustling round, good-natured busybody that
+he is, to see what is all this talk at the door.  The Prior, as is the
+habit of monks, begins by asking questions.  What is the stranger’s name?
+Where does he come from?  Where is he going to?  What is his business?
+Is the little boy his son?  He has actually come from Santa Fe?  The
+Prior, loving talk after the manner of his kind, sees in this grave and
+smooth-spoken stranger rich possibilities of talk; possibilities that
+cannot possibly be exhausted to-night, it being now hard on the hour of
+Compline; the stranger must come in and rest for tonight at least, and
+possibly for several nights.  There is much bustle and preparation; the
+travellers are welcomed with monkish hospitality; Christopher, we may be
+sure, goes and hears the convent singing Compline, and offers up devout
+prayers for a quiet night and for safe conduct through this vale of
+tears; and goes thankfully to bed with the plainsong echoing in his ears,
+and some stoic sense that all days, however hard, have an evening, and
+all journeys an end.
+
+Next morning the talk begins in earnest, and Christopher, never a very
+reserved man, finds in the friendly curiosity of the monks abundant
+encouragement to talk; and before very long he is in full swing with his
+oft-told story.  The Prior is delighted with it; he has not heard
+anything so interesting for a long time.  Moreover, he has not always
+been in a convent; he was not so long ago confessor to Queen Isabella
+herself, and has much to communicate and ask concerning that lady.
+Columbus’s proposal does not strike him as being unreasonable at all;
+but he has a friend in Palos, a very learned man indeed, Doctor Garcia
+Hernandez, who often comes and has a talk with him; he knows all about
+astronomy and cosmography; the Prior will send for him.  And meanwhile
+there must be no word of Columbus’s departure for a few days at any rate.
+
+Presently Doctor Garcia Hernandez arrives, and the whole story is gone
+over again.  They go at it hammer and tongs, arguments and
+counter-arguments, reasons for and against, encouragements, and
+objections.  The result is that Doctor Garcia Hernandez, whose learning
+seems not yet quite to have blinded or deafened him, thinks well of the
+scheme; thinks so well of it that he protests it will be a thousand
+pities if the chance of carrying it out is lost to Spain.  The worthy
+Prior, who has been somewhat out of it while the talk about degrees and
+latitudes has been going on, here strikes in again; he will use his
+influence.  Perhaps the good man, living up here among the pine trees
+and the sea winds, and involved in the monotonous round of Prime, Lauds,
+Nones, Vespers, has a regretful thought or two of the time when he moved
+in the splendid intricacy of Court life; at any rate he is not sorry to
+have an opportunity of recalling himself to the attention of Her
+Majesty, for the spiritual safety of whose soul he was once responsible;
+perhaps, being (in spite of his Nones and Vespers) a human soul, he is
+glad of an opportunity of opposing the counsels of his successor,
+Talavera.  In a word, he will use his Influence.  Then follow much
+drafting of letters, and laying of heads together, and clatter of
+monkish tongues; the upshot of which is that a letter is written in
+which Perez urges his daughter in the Lord in the strongest possible
+terms not to let slip so glorious an opportunity, not only of fame and
+increment to her kingdom, but of service to the Church and the kingdom
+of Heaven itself.  He assures her that Columbus is indeed about to
+depart from the country, but that he (Perez) will detain him at La
+Rabida until he has an answer from the Queen.
+
+A messenger to carry the letter was found in the person of Sebastian
+Rodriguez, a pilot of the port, who immediately set off to Santa Fe.
+It is not likely that Columbus, after so many rebuffs, was very hopeful;
+but in the meantime, here he was amid the pious surroundings in which the
+religious part of him delighted, and in a haven of rest after all his
+turmoils and trials.  He could look out to sea over the flecked waters of
+that Atlantic whose secrets he longed to discover; or he could look down
+into the busy little port of Palos, and watch the ships sailing in and
+out across the bar of Saltes.  He could let his soul, much battered and
+torn of late by trials and disappointments, rest for a time on the rock
+of religion; he could snuff the incense in the chapel to his heart’s
+content, and mingle his rough top-gallant voice with the harsh croak of
+the monks in the daily cycle of prayer and praise.  He could walk with
+Diego through the sandy roads beneath the pine trees, or through the
+fields and vineyards below; and above all he could talk to the company
+that good Perez invited to meet him--among them merchants and sailors
+from Palos, of whom the chief was Martin Alonso Pinzon, a wealthy
+landowner and navigator, whose family lived then at Palos, owning the
+vineyards round about, and whose descendants live there to this day.
+Pinzon was a listener after Columbus’s own heart; he not only believed in
+his project, but offered to assist it with money, and even to accompany
+the expedition himself.  Altogether a happy and peaceful time, in which
+hopes revived, and the inner light that, although it had now and then
+flickered, had never gone out, burned up again in a bright and steady
+flame.
+
+At the end of a fortnight, and much sooner than had been expected, the
+worthy pilot returned with a letter from the Queen.  Eager hands seized
+it and opened it; delight beamed from the eyes of the good Prior.  The
+Queen was most cordial to him, thanked him for his intervention, was
+ready to listen to him and even to be convinced by him; and in the
+meantime commanded his immediate appearance at the Court, asking that
+Columbus would be so good as to wait at La Rabida until he should hear
+further from her.  Then followed such a fussing and fuming, such a
+running hither and thither, and giving and taking of instructions and
+clatter of tongues as even the convent of La Rabida had probably never
+known.  Nothing will serve the good old busybody, although it is now near
+midnight, but that he must depart at once.  He will not wait for
+daylight; he will not, the good honest soul! wait at all.  He must be off
+at once; he must have this, he must have that; he will take this, he
+will leave that behind; or no, he will take that, and leave this behind.
+He must have a mule, for his old feet will not bear him fast enough;
+ex-confessors of Her Majesty, moreover, do not travel on foot; and after
+more fussing and running hither and thither a mule is borrowed from one
+Juan Rodriguez Cabezudo of Moguer; and with a God-speed from the group
+standing round the lighted doorway, the old monk sets forth into the
+night.
+
+It is a strange thing to consider what unimportant flotsam sometimes
+floats visibly upon the stream of history, while the gravest events are
+sunk deep beneath its flood.  We would give a king’s ransom to know
+events that must have taken place in any one of twenty years in the life
+of Columbus, but there is no sign of them on the surface of the stream,
+nor will any fishing bring them to light.  Yet here, bobbing up like a
+cork, comes the name of Juan Rodriguez Cabezudo of Moguer, doubtless a
+good worthy soul, but, since he has been dead these four centuries and
+more, of no interest or importance to any human being; yet of whose life
+one trivial act, surviving the flood of time which has engulfed all else
+that he thought important, falls here to be recorded: that he did,
+towards midnight of a day late in December 1491 lend a mule to Friar Juan
+Perez.
+
+
+Of that heroic mule journey we have no record; but it brought results
+enough to compensate the good Prior for all his aching bones and
+rheumatic joints.  He was welcomed by the Queen, who had never quite lost
+her belief in Columbus, but who had hitherto deferred to the apathy of
+Ferdinand and the disapproval--of her learned advisers.  Now, however,
+the matter was reopened.  She, who sometimes listened to priests with
+results other than good, heard this worthy priest to good purpose.  The
+feminine friends of Columbus who remembered him at Court also spoke up
+for him, among them the Marquesa de Moya, with whom he had always been a
+favourite; and it was decided that his request should be granted and
+three vessels equipped for the expedition, “that he might go and make
+discoveries and prove true the words he had spoken.”--Moreover, the
+machinery that had been so hard to move before, turned swiftly now.
+Diego Prieto, one of the magistrates of Palos, was sent to Columbus at La
+Rabida, bearing 20,000 maravedis  with which he was to buy a mule and
+decent clothing for himself, and repair immediately to the Court at Santa
+Fe.  Old Perez was in high feather, and busy with his pen.  He wrote to
+Doctor Garcia Hernandez, and also to Columbus, in whose letter the
+following pleasant passage occurs:
+
+     “Our Lord has listened to the prayers of His servant.  The wise and
+     virtuous Isabella, touched by the grace of Heaven, gave a favourable
+     hearing to the words of this poor monk.  All has turned out well.
+     Far from despising your project, she has adopted it from this time,
+     and she has summoned you to Court to propose the means which seem
+     best to you for the execution of the designs of Providence.  My
+     heart swims in a sea of comfort, and my spirit leaps with joy in the
+     Lord.  Start at once, for the Queen waits for you, and I much more
+     than she.  Commend me to the prayers of my brethren, and of your
+     little Diego.  The grace of God be with you, and may Our Lady of La
+     Rabida accompany you.”
+
+The news of that day must have come upon Columbus like a burst of
+sunshine after rain.  I like to think how bright must have seemed to him
+the broad view of land and sea, how deeply the solemn words of the last
+office which he attended must have sunk into his soul, how great and glad
+a thing life must have been to him, and how lightly the miles must have
+passed beneath the feet of his mule as he jogged out on the long road to
+Santa Fe.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+THE CONSENT OF SPAIN
+
+Once more; in the last days of the year 1491, Columbus rode into the
+brilliant camp which he had quitted a few weeks before with so heavy a
+heart.  Things were changed now.  Instead of being a suitor, making a
+nuisance of himself, and forcing his affairs on the attention of
+unwilling officials, he was now an invited and honoured guest; much more
+than that, he was in the position of one who believed that he had a great
+service to render to the Crown, and who was at last to be permitted to
+render it.
+
+Even now, at the eleventh hour, there was one more brief interruption.
+On the 1st of January 1492 the last of the Moorish kings sent in his
+surrender to King Ferdinand, whom he invited to come and take possession
+of the city of Granada; and on the next day the Spanish army marched into
+that city, where, in front of the Alhambra, King Ferdinand received the
+keys of the castle and the homage of the Moorish king.  The wars of eight
+centuries were at an end, and the Christian banner of Spain floated at
+last over the whole land.  Victory and success were in the air, and the
+humble Genoese adventurer was to have his share in them.  Negotiations of
+a practical nature were now begun; old friends--Talavera, Luis de
+Santangel, and the Grand Cardinal himself--were all brought into
+consultation with the result that matters soon got to the documentary
+stage.  Here, however, there was a slight hitch.  It was not simply a
+matter of granting two, or three ships.  The Genoese was making a
+bargain, and asking an impossible price.  Even the great grandees and
+Court officials, accustomed to the glitter and dignity of titles, rubbed
+their eyes with astonishment, when they saw what Columbus was demanding.
+He who had been suing for privileges was now making conditions.  And what
+conditions!  He must be created Admiral of all the Ocean Seas and of the
+new lands, with equal privileges and prerogatives as those appertaining
+to the High Admiral of Castile, the supreme naval officer of Spain.
+Not content with sea dignities, he was also to be Viceroy and
+Governor-General in all islands or mainlands that he might acquire; he
+wanted a tenth part of the profits resulting from his discoveries, in
+perpetuity; and he must have the permanent right of contributing an
+eighth part of the cost of the equipment and have an additional eighth
+part of the profits; and all his heirs and descendants for ever were to
+have the same privileges.  These conditions were on such a scale as no
+sovereign could readily approve.  Columbus’s lack of pedigree, and the
+fact also that he was a foreigner, made them seem the more preposterous;
+for although he might receive kindness and even friendship from some of
+the grand Spaniards with whom he associated, that friendship and
+kindness were given condescendingly and with a smile.  He was delightful
+when he was merely proposing as a mariner to confer additional grandeur
+and glory on the Crown; but when it came to demanding titles and
+privileges which would make him rank with the highest grandees in, the
+land, the matter took on quite a different colour.  It was nonsense; it
+could not be allowed; and many were the friendly hints that Columbus
+doubtless received at this time to relinquish his wild demands and not
+to overreach himself.
+
+But to the surprise and dismay of his friends, who really wished him to
+have a chance of distinguishing himself, and were shocked at the
+impediments he was now putting in his own way, the man from Genoa stood
+firm.  What he proposed to do, he said, was worthy of the rewards that he
+asked; they were due to the importance and grandeur of his scheme, and so
+on.  Nor did he fail to point out that the bestowal of them was a matter
+altogether contingent on results; if there were no results, there would
+be no rewards; if there were results, they would be worthy of the
+rewards.  This action of Columbus’s deserves close study.  He had come to
+a turning-point in his life.  He had been asking, asking, asking, for six
+years; he had been put off and refused over and over again; people were
+beginning to laugh at him for a madman; and now, when a combination of
+lucky chances had brought him to the very door of success, he stood
+outside the threshold bargaining for a preposterous price before he would
+come in.  It seemed like the densest stupidity.  What is the explanation
+of it?
+
+The only explanation of it is to be found in the character of Columbus.
+We must try to see him as he is in this forty-second year of his life,
+bargaining with notaries, bishops, and treasurers; we must try to see
+where these forty years have brought him, and what they have made of him.
+Remember the little boy that played in the Vico Dritto di Ponticello,
+acquainted with poverty, but with a soul in him that could rise beyond it
+and acquire something of the dignity of that Genoa, arrogant, splendid
+and devout, which surrounded him during his early years.  Remember his
+long life of obscurity at sea, and the slow kindling of the light of
+faith in something beyond the familiar horizons; remember the social
+inequality of his marriage, his long struggle with poverty, his long
+familiarity with the position of one who asked and did not receive; the
+many rebuffs and indignities which his Ligurian pride must have received
+at the hands of all those Spanish dignitaries and grandees--remember all
+this, and then you will perhaps not wonder so much that Columbus, who was
+beginning to believe himself appointed by Heaven to this task of
+discovery, felt that he had much to pay himself back for.  One must
+recognise him frankly for what he was, and for no conventional hero of
+romance; a man who would reconcile his conscience with anything, and
+would stop at nothing in the furtherance of what he deemed a good object;
+and a man at the same time who had a conscience to reconcile, and would,
+whenever it was necessary, laboriously and elaborately perform the act of
+reconciliation.  When he made these huge demands in Granada he was
+gambling with his chances; but he was a calculating gambler, just about
+as cunning and crafty in the weighing of one chance against another as a
+gambler with a conscience can be; and he evidently realised that his own
+valuation of the services he proposed to render would not be without its
+influence on his sovereign’s estimate of them.  At any rate he was
+justified by the results, for on the 17th of April 1492, after a deal of
+talk and bargaining, but apparently without any yielding on Columbus’s
+part, articles of capitulation were drawn up in which the following
+provisions were made:--
+
+First, that Columbus and his heirs for ever should have the title and
+office of Admiral in all the islands and continents of the ocean that he
+or they might discover, with similar honours and prerogatives to those
+enjoyed by the High Admiral of Castile.
+
+Second, that he and his heirs should be Viceroys and Governors-General
+over all the said lands and continents, with the right of nominating
+three candidates for the governing of each island or province, one of
+whom should be appointed by the Crown.
+
+Third, that he end his heirs should be entitled to one-tenth of all
+precious stones, metals, spices, and other merchandises, however
+acquired, within his Admiralty, the cost of acquisition being first
+deducted.
+
+Fourth, that he or his lieutenants in their districts, and the High
+Admiral of Castile in his district, should be the sole judge in all
+disputes arising out of traffic between Spain and the new countries.
+
+Fifth, that he now, and he and his heirs at all times, should have the
+right to contribute the eighth part of the expense of fitting out
+expeditions, and receive the eighth part of the profits.
+
+In addition to these articles there was another document drawn up on the
+30th of April, which after an infinite preamble about the nature of the
+Holy Trinity, of the Apostle Saint James, and of the Saints of God
+generally in their relations to Princes, and with a splendid trailing of
+gorgeous Spanish names and titles across the page, confers upon our
+hitherto humble Christopher the right to call himself “Don,” and finally
+raises him, in his own estimation at any rate, to a social level with his
+proud Spanish friends.  It is probably from this time that he adopted the
+Spanish form of his name, Christoval Colon; but in this narrative I shall
+retain the more universal form in which it has become familiar to the
+English-speaking world.
+
+He was now upon a Pisgah height, from which in imagination he could look
+forth and see his Land of Promise.  We also may climb up with him, and
+stand beside him as he looks westward.  We shall not see so clearly as he
+sees, for we have not his inner light; and it is probable that even he
+does not see the road at all, but only the goal, a single point of light
+shining across a gulf of darkness.  But from Pisgah there is a view
+backward as well as forward, and, we may look back for a moment on this
+last period of Christopher’s life in Spain, inwardly to him so full of
+trouble and difficulty and disappointment, outwardly so brave and
+glittering, musical with high-sounding names and the clash of arms; gay
+with sun and shine and colour.  The brilliant Court moving from camp to
+camp with its gorgeous retinues and silken pavilions and uniforms and
+dresses and armours; the excitement of war, the intrigues of the
+antechamber--these are the bright fabric of the latter years; and against
+it, as against a background, stand out the beautiful names of the Spanish
+associates of Columbus at this time--Medina Celi, Alonso de Quintanilla,
+Cabrero, Arana, DEA, Hernando de Talavera, Gonzales de Mendoza, Alonso de
+Cardenas, Perez, Hernandez, Luis de Santangel, and Rodriguez de
+Maldonado--names that now, in his hour of triumph, are like banners
+streaming in the wind against a summer sky.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+THE PREPARATIONS AT PALOS
+
+The Palos that witnessed the fitting out of the ships of Columbus exists
+no longer.  The soul is gone from it; the trade that in those days made
+it great and busy has floated away from it into other channels; and it
+has dwindled and shrunk, until to-day it consists of nothing but a double
+street of poor white houses, such almost as you may see in any sea-coast
+village in Ireland.  The slow salt tides of the Atlantic come flooding in
+over the Manto bank, across the bar of Saltes, and, dividing at the
+tongue of land that separates the two rivers, creep up the mud banks of
+the Tinto and the Odiel until they lie deep beside the wharves of Huelva
+and Palos; but although Huelva still has a trade the tides bring nothing
+to Palos, and take nothing away with them again.  From La Rabida now you
+can no longer see, as Columbus saw, fleets of caravels lying-to and
+standing off and on outside the bar waiting for the flood tide; only a
+few poor boats fishing for tunny in the empty sunny waters, or the smoke
+of a steamer standing on her course for the Guadalquiver or Cadiz.
+
+But in those spring days of 1492 there was a great stir and bustle of
+preparation in Palos.  As soon as the legal documents had been signed
+Columbus returned there and, taking up his quarters at La Rabida, set
+about fitting out his expedition.  The reason Palos was chosen was an
+economical one.  The port, for some misdemeanour, had lately been
+condemned to provide two caravels for the service of the Crown for a
+period of twelve months; and in the impoverished state of the royal
+exchequer this free service came in very usefully in fitting out the
+expedition of discovery.  Columbus was quite satisfied, since he had such
+good friends at Palos; and he immediately set about choosing the ships.
+
+This, however, did not prove to be quite such a straightforward business
+as might have been expected.  The truth is that, whatever a few monks and
+physicians may have thought of it, the proposed expedition terrified the
+ordinary seafaring population of Palos.  It was thought to be the wildest
+and maddest scheme that any one had ever heard of.  All that was known
+about the Atlantic west of the Azores was that it was a sea of darkness,
+inhabited by monsters and furrowed by enormous waves, and that it fell
+down the slope of the world so steeply that no ship having once gone down
+could ever climb up it again.  And not only was there reluctance on the
+part of mariners to engage themselves for the expedition, but also a
+great shyness on the part of ship-owners to provide ships.  This
+reluctance proved so formidable an impediment that Columbus had to
+communicate with the King and Queen; with the result that on the 23rd of
+May the population was summoned to the church of Saint George, where the
+Notary Public read aloud to them the letter from the sovereigns
+commanding the port to furnish ships and men, and an additional order
+summoning the town to obey it immediately.  An inducement was provided in
+the offer of a free pardon to all criminals and persons under sentence
+who chose to enlist.
+
+Still the thing hung fire; and on June 20 a new and peremptory order was
+issued by the Crown authorising Columbus to impress the vessels and crew
+if necessary.  Time was slipping away; and in his difficulty Columbus
+turned to Martin Alonso Pinzon, upon whose influence and power in the
+town he could count.  There were three brothers then in this
+family--Martin Alonso, Vincenti Yanez, and Francisco Martin, all pilots
+themselves and owners of ships.  These three brothers saw some hope of
+profit out of the enterprise, and they exerted themselves on
+Christopher’s behalf so thoroughly that, not only did they afford him
+help in the obtaining of ships, men, and supplies, but they all three
+decided to go with him.
+
+There was one more financial question to be settled--a question that
+remains for us in considerable obscurity, but was in all probability
+partly settled by the aid of these brothers.  The total cost of the
+expedition, consisting of three ships, wages of the crew, stores and
+provisions, was 1,167,542 maravedis, about L950(in 1900).  After all
+these years of pleading at Court, all the disappointments and deferred
+hopes and sacrifices made by Columbus, the smallness of this sum cannot
+but strike us with amazement.  Many a nobleman that Columbus must have
+rubbed shoulders with in his years at Court could have furnished the
+whole sum out of his pocket and never missed it; yet Columbus had to wait
+years and years before he could get it from the Crown.  Still more
+amazing, this sum was not all provided by the Crown; 167,000 maravedis
+were found by Columbus, and the Crown only contributed one million
+maravedis.  One can only assume that Columbus’s pertinacity in
+petitioning the King and Queen to undertake the expedition, when he
+could with comparative ease have got the money from some of his noble
+acquaintance, was due to three things--his faith and belief in his Idea,
+his personal ambition, and his personal greed.  He believed in his Idea
+so thoroughly that he knew he was going to find something across the
+Atlantic.  Continents and islands cannot for long remain in the
+possession of private persons; they are the currency of crowns; and he
+did not want to be left in the lurch if the land he hoped to discover
+should be seized or captured by Spain or Portugal.  The result of his
+discoveries, he was convinced, was going to be far too large a thing to
+be retained and controlled by any machinery less powerful than that of a
+kingdom; therefore he was unwilling to accept either preliminary
+assistance or subsequent rewards from any but the same powerful hand.
+Admiralties, moreover, and Governor-Generalships and Viceroyships cannot
+be conferred by counts and dukes, however powerful; the very title Don
+could only be conferred by one power in Spain; and all the other titles
+and dignities that Columbus craved with all his Genoese soul were to be
+had from the hands of kings, and not from plutocrats.  It was
+characteristic of him all his life never to deal with subordinates, but
+always to go direct to the head man; and when the whole purpose and
+ambition of his life was to be put to the test it was only consistent in
+him, since he could not be independent, to go forth under the protection
+of the united Crown of Aragon and Castile.  Where or how he raised his
+share of the cost is not known; it is possible that his old friend the
+Duke of Medina Celi came to his help, or that the Pinzon family, who
+believed enough in the expedition to risk their lives in it, lent some of
+the necessary money.
+
+
+Ever since ships were in danger of going to sea short-handed methods of
+recruiting and manning them have been very much the same; and there must
+have been some hot work about the harbour of Palos in the summer of 1492.
+The place was in a panic.  It is highly probable that many of the
+volunteers were a ruffianly riff-raff from the prisons, to whom personal
+freedom meant nothing but a chance of plunder; and the recruiting office
+in Palos must have seen many a picturesque scoundrel coming and taking
+the oath and making his mark.  The presence of these adventurers, many of
+them entirely ignorant of the sea, would not be exactly an encouragement
+to the ordinary seaman.  It is here very likely that the influence of the
+Pinzon family was usefully applied.  I call it influence, since that is a
+polite term which covers the application of force in varying degrees;
+and it was an awkward thing for a Palos sailor to offend the Pinzons,
+who owned and controlled so much of the shipping in the port.  Little by
+little the preparations went on.  In the purchasing of provisions and
+stores the Pinzons were most helpful to Columbus and, it is not
+improbable, to themselves also.  They also procured the ships;
+altogether, in the whole history of the fitting out of expeditions,
+I know nothing since the voyage of the Ark which was so well kept within
+one family.  Moreover it is interesting to notice, since we know the
+names and places of residence of all the members of the expedition,
+that the Pinzons, who personally commanded two of the caravels, had them
+almost exclusively manned by sailors from Palos, while the Admiral’s ship
+was manned by a miscellaneous crew from other places.  To be sure they
+gave the Admiral the biggest ship, but (in his own words) it proved “a
+dull sailer and unfit for discovery”; while they commanded the two
+caravels, small and open, but much faster and handier.  Clearly these
+Pinzons will take no harm from a little watching.  They may be honest
+souls enough, but their conduct is just a little suspicious, and we
+cannot be too careful.
+
+
+Three vessels were at last secured.  The first, named the Santa Maria,
+was the largest, and was chosen to be the flagship of Columbus.  She was
+of about one hundred tons burden, and would be about ninety feet in
+length by twenty feet beam.  She was decked over, and had a high poop
+astern and a high forecastle in the bows.  She had three masts, two of
+them square-rigged, with a latine sail on the mizzen mast; and she
+carried a crew of fifty-two persons.  Where and how they all stowed
+themselves away is a matter upon which we can only make wondering
+guesses; for this ship was about the size of an ordinary small coasting
+schooner, such as is worked about the coasts of these islands with a crew
+of six or eight men.  The next largest ship was the Pinta, which was
+commanded by Martin Alonso Pinzon, who took his brother Francisco with
+him as sailing-master.  The Pinta was of fifty tons burden, decked only
+at the bow and stern, and the fastest of the three ships; she also had
+three masts.  The third ship was a caravel of forty tons and called the
+Nina; she belonged to Juan Nino of Palos.  She was commanded by Vincenti
+Pinzon, and had a complement of eighteen men.  Among the crew of the
+flagship, whose names and places of residence are to be found in the
+Appendix, were an Englishman and an Irishman.  The Englishman is entered
+as Tallarte de Lajes (Ingles), who has been ingeniously identified with a
+possible Allard or AEthelwald of Winchelsea, there having been several
+generations of Allards who were sailors of Winchelsea in the fifteenth
+century.  Sir Clements Markham thinks that this Allard may have been
+trading to Coruna and have married and settled down at Lajes.  There is
+also Guillermo Ires, an Irishman from Galway.
+
+Allard and William, shuffling into the recruiting office in Palos,
+doubtless think that this is a strange place for them to meet, and rather
+a wild business that they are embarked upon, among all these bloody
+Spaniards.  Some how I feel more confidence in Allard than in William,
+knowing, as I do so well, this William of Galway, whether on his native
+heath or in the strange and distant parts of the world to which his
+sanguine temperament leads him.  Alas, William, you are but the first of
+a mighty stream that will leave the Old Country for the New World; the
+world destined to be good for the fortunes of many from the Old Country,
+but for the Old Country itself not good.  Little does he know, drunken
+William, willing to be on hand where there is adventure brewing, and to
+be after going with the boys and getting his health on the salt water,
+what a path of hope for those who go, and of heaviness for those who stay
+behind, he is opening up .  .  .  .  Farewell, William; I hope you were
+not one of those whom they let out of gaol.
+
+June slid into July, and still the preparations were not complete.  Down
+on the mud banks of the Tinto, where at low water the vessels were left
+high and dry, and where the caulking and refitting were in hand, there
+was trouble with the workmen.  Gomaz Rascon and Christoval Quintero, the
+owners of the Pinta, who had resented her being pressed into the service,
+were at the bottom of a good deal of it.  Things could not be found; gear
+mysteriously gave way after it had been set up; the caulking was found to
+have been carelessly and imperfectly done; and when the caulkers were
+commanded to do it over again they decamped.  Even the few volunteers,
+the picked hands upon whom Columbus was relying, gave trouble.  In those
+days of waiting there was too much opportunity for talk in the shore-side
+wine-shops; some of the volunteers repented and tried to cry off their
+bargains; others were dissuaded by their relatives, and deserted and hid
+themselves.  No mild measures were of any use; a reign of terror had to
+be established; and nothing short of the influence of the Pinzons was
+severe enough to hold the company together.  To these vigorous measures,
+however, all opposition gradually yielded.  By the end of July the
+provisions and stores were on board, the whole complement of eighty-seven
+persons collected and enlisted, and only the finishing touches left for
+Columbus.  It is a sign of the distrust and fear evinced with regard to
+this expedition, that no priest accompanied it--something of a sorrow to
+pious Christopher, who would have liked his chaplain.  There were two
+surgeons, or barbers, and a physician; there were an overseer, a
+secretary, a master-at-arms; there was an interpreter to speak to the
+natives of the new lands in Hebrew, Greek, German, Chaldean or Arabic;
+and there was an assayer and silversmith to test the quality of the
+precious metals that they were sure to find.  Up at La Rabida, with the
+busy and affectionate assistance of the old Prior, Columbus made his
+final preparations.  Ferdinand was to stay at Cordova with Beatriz, and
+to go to school there; while Diego was already embarked upon his life’s
+voyage, having been appointed a page to the Queen’s son, Prince Juan, and
+handed over to the care of some of the Court ladies.  The course to be
+sailed was talked over and over again; the bearings and notes of the
+pilot at Porto Santo consulted and discussed; and a chart was made by
+Columbus himself, and copied with his own hands for use on the three
+ships.
+
+On the 2nd of August everything was ready; the ships moored out in the
+stream, the last stragglers of the crew on board, the last sack of flour
+and barrel of beef stowed away.  Columbus confessed himself to the Prior
+of La Rabida--a solemn moment for him in the little chapel up on the
+pine-clad hill.  His last evening ashore would certainly be spent at the
+monastery, and his last counsels taken with Perez and Doctor Hernandez.
+We can hardly realise the feelings of Christopher on the eve of his
+departure from the land where all his roots were, to a land of mere faith
+and conjecture.  Even today, when the ocean is furrowed by crowded
+highways, and the earth is girdled with speaking wires, and distances are
+so divided and reduced that the traveller need never be very long out of
+touch with his home, few people can set out on a long voyage without some
+emotional disturbance, however slight it may be; and to Columbus on this
+night the little town upon which he looked down from the monastery, which
+had been the scene of so many delays and difficulties and vexations, must
+have seemed suddenly dear and familiar to him as he realised that after
+to-morrow its busy and well-known scenes might be for ever a thing of the
+past to him.  Behind him, living or dead, lay all he humanly loved and
+cared for; before him lay a voyage full of certain difficulties and
+dangers; dangers from the ships, dangers from the crews, dangers from
+the weather, dangers from the unknown path itself; and beyond them, a
+twinkling star on the horizon of his hopes, lay the land of his belief.
+That he meant to arrive there and to get back again was beyond all doubt
+his firm intention; and in the simple grandeur of that determination the
+weaknesses of character that were grouped about it seem unimportant.  In
+this starlit hour among the pine woods his life came to its meridian;
+everything that was him was at its best and greatest there.  Beneath him,
+on the talking tide of the river, lay the ships and equipment that
+represented years of steady effort and persistence; before him lay the
+pathless ocean which he meant to cross by the inner light of his faith.
+What he had suffered, he had suffered by himself; what he had won, he had
+won by himself; what he was to finish, he would finish by himself.
+
+But the time for meditations grows short.  Lights are moving about in the
+town beneath; there is an unwonted midnight stir and bustle; the whole
+population is up and about, running hither and thither with lamps and
+torches through the starlit night.  The tide is flowing; it will be high
+water before dawn; and with the first of the ebb the little fleet is to
+set sail.  The stream of hurrying sailors and townspeople sets towards
+the church of Saint George, where mass is to be said and the Sacrament
+administered to the voyagers.  The calls and shouts die away; the bell
+stops ringing; and the low muttering voice of the priest is heard
+beginning the Office.  The light of the candles shines upon the gaudy
+roof, and over the altar upon the wooden image of Saint George
+vanquishing the dragon, upon which the eyes of Christopher rested during
+some part of the service, and where to-day your eyes may rest also if you
+make that pilgrimage.  The moment approaches; the bread and the wine are
+consecrated; there is a shuffling of knees and feet; and then a pause.
+The clear notes of the bell ring out upon the warm dusky silence--once,
+twice, thrice; the living God and the cold presence of dawn enter the
+church together.  Every head is bowed; and for once at least every heart
+of that company beats in unison with the rest.  And then the Office goes
+on, and the dark-skinned congregation streams up to the sanctuary and
+receives the Communion, while the blue light of dawn increases and the
+candles pale before the coming day.  And then out again to the boats with
+shoutings and farewells, for the tide has now turned; hoisting of sails
+and tripping of anchors and breaking out of gorgeous ensigns; and the
+ships are moving!  The Maria leads, with the sign of the Redemption
+painted on her mainsail and the standard of Castile flying at her mizzen;
+and there is cheering from ships and from shore, and a faint sound of
+bells from the town of Huelva.
+
+Thus, the sea being--calm, and a fresh breeze blowing off the land, did
+Christopher Columbus set sail from Palos at sunrise on Friday the 3rd of
+August 1492.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+EVENTS OF THE FIRST VOYAGE
+
+     “In nomine D.N. Jesu Christi--Friday, August 3, 1492, at eight
+     o’clock we started from the bar of Saltes.  We went with a strong
+     sea breeze sixty miles,--[Columbus reckoned in Italian miles, of
+     which four = one league.]--which are fifteen leagues, towards the
+     south, until sunset: afterwards to the south-west and to the south,
+     quarter south-west, which was the way to the Canaries.”
+
+     [The account of Columbus’s first voyage is taken from a Journal
+     written by himself, but which in its original form does not exist.
+     Las Casas had it in his possession, but as he regarded it (no doubt
+     with justice) as too voluminous and discursive to be interesting, he
+     made an abridged edition, in which the exact words of Columbus were
+     sometimes quoted, but which for the most part is condensed into a
+     narrative in the third person.  This abridged Journal, consisting of
+     seventy-six closely written folios, was first published by
+     Navarrette in 1825.  When Las Casas wrote his ‘Historie,’ however,
+     he appears here and there to have restored sections of the original
+     Journal into the abridged one; and many of these restorations are of
+     importance.  If the whole account of his voyage written by Columbus
+     himself were available in its exact form I would print it here; but
+     as it is not, I think it better to continue my narrative, simply
+     using the Journal of Las Casas as a document.]
+
+With these rousing words the Journal of Columbus’s voyage begins; and
+they sound a salt and mighty chord which contains the true diapason of
+the symphony of his voyages.  There could not have been a more fortunate
+beginning, with clear weather and a calm sea, and the wind in exactly
+the right quarter.  On Saturday and Sunday the same conditions held, so
+there was time and opportunity for the three very miscellaneous ships’
+companies to shake down into something like order, and for all the
+elaborate discipline of sea life to be arranged and established; and we
+may employ the interval by noting what aids to navigation Columbus had
+at his disposal.
+
+
+The chief instrument was the astrolabe, which was an improvement on the
+primitive quadrant then in use for taking the altitude of the sun.  The
+astrolabe, it will be remembered, had been greatly improved, by Martin
+Behaim and the Portuguese Commission in 1840--[1440  D.W.]; and it was
+this instrument, a simplification of the astrolabe used in astronomy
+ashore, that Columbus chiefly used in getting his solar altitudes.  As
+will be seen from the illustration, its broad principle was that of a
+metal circle with a graduated circumference and two arms pivoted in the
+centre.  It was made as heavy as possible; and in using it the observer
+sat on deck with his back against the mainmast and with his left hand
+held up the instrument by the ring at the top.  The long arm was moved
+round until the two sights fixed upon it were on with the sun.  The point
+where the other arm then cut the circle gave the altitude.  In
+conjunction with this instrument were used the tables of solar
+declination compiled by Regiomontanus, and covering the sun’s declination
+between the years 1475 and 1566.
+
+The compass in Columbus’s day existed, so far as all essentials are
+concerned, as it exists to-day.  Although it lacked the refinements
+introduced by Lord Kelvin it was swung in double-cradles, and had the
+thirty-two points painted upon a card.  The discovery of the compass, and
+even of the lodestone, are things wrapt in obscurity; but the lodestone
+had been known since at least the eleventh century, and the compass
+certainly since the thirteenth.  With the compass were used the sea
+charts, which were simply maps on a rather larger and more exact scale
+than the land maps of the period.  There were no soundings or currents
+marked on the old charts, which were drawn on a plane projection; and
+they can have been of little--practical use to navigators except in the
+case of coasts which were elaborately charted on a large scale.  The
+chart of Columbus, in so far as it was concerned with the ocean westward
+of the Azores, can of course have contained nothing except the
+conjectured islands or lands which he hoped to find; possibly the land
+seen by the shipwrecked pilot may have been marked on it, and his failure
+to find that land may have been the reason why, as we shall see, he
+changed his course to the southward on the 7th of October.  It must be
+remembered that Columbus’s conception of the world was that of the
+Portuguese Mappemonde of 1490, a sketch of which is here reproduced.
+This conception of the world excluded the Pacific Ocean and the continent
+of North and South America, and made it reasonable to suppose that any
+one who sailed westward long enough from Spain would ultimately reach
+Cathay and the Indies.  Behaim’s globe, which was completed in the year
+1492, represented the farthest point that geographical knowledge had
+reached previous to the discoveries of Columbus, and on it is shown the
+island of Cipango or Japan.
+
+By far the most important element in the navigation of Columbus, in so
+far as estimating his position was concerned, was what is known as
+“dead-reckoning” that is to say, the computation of the distance
+travelled by the ship through the water.  At present this distance is
+measured by a patent log, which in its commonest form is a
+propeller-shaped instrument trailed through the water at the end of a
+long wire or cord the inboard end of which is attached to a registering
+clock.  On being dragged through the water the propeller spins round and
+the twisting action is communicated by the cord to the clock-work
+machinery which counts the miles.  In the case of powerful steamers and
+in ordinary weather dead-reckoning is very accurately calculated by the
+number of revolutions of the propellers recorded in the engine-room; and
+a device not unlike this was known to the Romans in the time of the
+Republic.  They attached small wheels about four feet in diameter to the
+sides of their ships; the passage of the water turned the wheels, and a
+very simple gearing was arranged which threw a pebble into a tallypot at
+each revolution.  This device, however, seems to have been abandoned or
+forgotten in Columbus’s day, when there was no more exact method of
+estimating dead-reckoning than the primitive one of spitting over the
+side in calm weather, or at other times throwing some object into the
+water and estimating the rate of progress by its speed in passing the
+ship’s side.  The hour-glass, which was used to get the multiple for
+long distances, was of course the only portable time measurer available
+for Columbus.  These, with a rough knowledge of astronomy, and the
+taking of the altitude of the polar star, were the only known means for
+ascertaining the position of his ship at sea.
+
+
+The first mishap occurred on Monday, August 6th, when the Pinta carried
+away her rudder.  The Pinta, it will be remembered, was commanded by
+Martin Alonso Pinzon, and was owned by Gomaz Rascon and Christoval
+Quintero, who had been at the bottom of some of the troubles ashore; and
+it was thought highly probable that these two rascals had something to do
+with the mishap, which they had engineered in the hope that their vessel
+would be left behind at the Canaries.  Martin Alonso, however, proved a
+man of resource, and rigged up a sort of steering gear with ropes.  There
+was a choppy sea, and Columbus could not bring his own vessel near enough
+to render any assistance, though he doubtless bawled his directions to
+Pinzon, and looked with a troubled eye on the commotion going on on board
+the Pinta.  On the next day the jury-rigged rudder carried away again,
+and was again repaired, but it was decided to try and make the island of
+Lanzarote in the Canaries, and to get another caravel to replace the
+Pinta.  All through the next day the Santa Maria and the Nina had to
+shorten sail in order not to leave the damaged Pinta behind; the three
+captains had a discussion and difference of opinion as to where they
+were; but Columbus, who was a genius at dead-reckoning, proved to be
+right in his surmise, and they came in sight of the Canaries on Thursday
+morning, August 9th.
+
+Columbus left Pinzon on the Grand Canary with orders to try to obtain a
+caravel there, while he sailed on to Gomera, which he reached on Sunday
+night, with a similar purpose.  As he was unsuccessful he sent a message
+by a boat that was going back to tell Pinzon to beach the Pinta and
+repair her rudder; and having spent more days in fruitless search for a
+vessel, he started back to join Pinzon on August 23rd.  During the night
+he passed the Peak of Teneriffe, which was then in eruption.  The repairs
+to the Pinta, doubtless in no way expedited by Messrs. Rascon and
+Quintera, took longer than had been expected; it was found necessary to
+make an entirely new rudder for her; and advantage was taken of the delay
+to make some alterations in the rig of the Nina, which was changed from a
+latine rig to a square rig, so that she might be better able to keep up
+with the others.  September had come before these two jobs were
+completed; and on the 2nd of September the three ships sailed for Gomera,
+the most westerly of the islands, where they anchored in the north-east
+bay.  The Admiral was in a great hurry to get away from the islands and
+from the track of merchant ships, for he had none too much confidence in
+the integrity of his crews, which were already murmuring and finding
+every mishap a warning sign from God.  He therefore only stayed long
+enough at Gomera to take in wood and water and provisions, and set sail
+from that island on the 6th of September.
+
+The wind fell lighter and lighter, and on Friday the little fleet lay
+becalmed within sight of Ferro.  But on Saturday evening north-east airs
+sprang up again, and they were able to make nine leagues of westing.  On
+Sunday they had lost sight of land; and at thus finding their ships three
+lonely specks in the waste of ocean the crew lost heart and began to
+lament.  There was something like a panic, many of the sailors bursting
+into tears and imploring Columbus to take them home again.  To us it may
+seem a rather childish exhibition; but it must be remembered that these
+sailors were unwillingly embarked upon a voyage which they believed would
+only lead to death and disaster.  The bravest of us to-day, if he found
+himself press-ganged on board a balloon and embarked upon a journey, the
+object of which was to land upon Mars or the moon, might find it
+difficult to preserve his composure on losing sight of the earth; and the
+parallel is not too extreme to indicate the light in which their present
+enterprise must have appeared to many of the Admiral’s crew.
+
+Columbus gave orders to the captains of the other two ships that, in case
+of separation, they were to sail westward for 700 leagues-that being the
+distance at which he evidently expected to find land--and there to lie-to
+from midnight until morning.  On this day also, seeing the temper of the
+sailors, he began one of the crafty stratagems upon which he prided
+himself, and which were often undoubtedly of great use to him; he kept
+two reckonings, one a true one, which he entered in his log, and one a
+false one, by means of which the distance run was made out to be less
+than what it actually was, so that in case he could not make land as soon
+as he hoped the crew would not be unduly discouraged.  In other words, he
+wished to have a margin at the other end, for he did not want a mutiny
+when he was perhaps within a few leagues of his destination.  On this day
+he notes that the raw and inexperienced seamen were giving trouble in
+other ways, and steering very badly, continually letting the ship’s
+head fall off to the north; and many must have been the angry remonstrances
+from the captain to the man at the wheel.  Altogether rather a trying day
+for Christopher, who surely has about as much on his hands as ever mortal
+had; but he knows how to handle ships and how to handle sailors, and so
+long as this ten-knot breeze lasts, he can walk the high poop of the
+Santa Maria with serenity, and snap his fingers at the dirty rabble
+below.
+
+
+On Monday they made sixty leagues, the Admiral duly announcing
+forty-eight; on Tuesday twenty leagues, published as sixteen; and on
+this day they saw a large piece of a mast which had evidently belonged
+to a ship of at least 120 tons burden.  This was not an altogether
+cheerful sight for the eighteen souls on board the little Nina, who
+wondered ruefully what was going to happen to them of forty tons when
+ships three times their size had evidently been unable to live in this
+abominable sea!
+
+On Thursday, September 13th, when Columbus took his observations, he made
+a great scientific discovery, although he did not know it at the time.
+He noticed that the needle of the compass was declining to the west of
+north instead of having a slight declination to the east of north, as all
+mariners knew it to have.  In other words, he had passed the line of true
+north and of no variation, and must therefore have been in latitude
+28 deg. N.  and longitude 29 deg. 37’ W.  of Greenwich.  With his usual
+secrecy he said nothing about it; perhaps he was waiting to see if the
+pilots on the other ships had noticed it, but apparently they were not so
+exact in their observations as he was.  On the next day, Friday, the wind
+falling a little lighter, they, made only twenty leagues.  “Here the
+persons on the caravel Nina said they had seen a jay and a ringtail, and
+these birds never come more than twenty-five leagues from land at most.”
+--Unhappy “persons on the Nina”!  Nineteen souls, including the captain,
+afloat in a very small boat, and arguing God knows what from the fact
+that a jay and a ringtail never went more than twenty-five leagues from
+land!--The next day also was not without its incident; for on Saturday
+evening they saw a meteor, or “marvellous branch of fire” falling from
+the serene violet of the sky into the sea.
+
+They were now well within the influence of the trade-wind, which in these
+months blows steadily from the east, and maintains an exquisite and balmy
+climate.  Even the Admiral, never very communicative about his
+sensations, deigns to mention them here, and is reported to have said
+that “it was a great pleasure to enjoy the morning; that nothing was
+lacking except to hear the nightingales, and that the weather was like
+April in Andalusia.”  On this day they saw some green grasses, which the
+Admiral considered must have floated off from some island; “not the
+continent,” says the Admiral, whose theories are not to be disturbed by a
+piece of grass, “because I make the continental land farther onward.”
+The crew, ready to take the most depressing and pessimistic view of
+everything, considered that the lumps of grass belonged to rocks or
+submerged lands, and murmured disparaging things about the Admiral.
+As a matter of fact these grasses were masses of seaweed detached from
+the Sargasso Sea, which they were soon to enter.
+
+On Monday, September 17th, four days after Columbus had noted it, the
+other pilots noted the declination of the needle, which they had found on
+taking the position of the North star.  They did not like it; and
+Columbus, whose knowledge of astronomy came to his aid, ordered them to
+take the position of the North star at dawn again, which they did, and
+found that the needles were true.  He evidently thought it useless to
+communicate to them his scientific speculations, so he explained to them
+that it was the North star which was moving in its circle, and not the
+compass.  One is compelled to admit that in these little matters of
+deceit the Admiral always shone.  To-day, among the seaweed on the ship’s
+side, he picked up a little crayfish, which he kept for several days,
+presumably in a bottle in his cabin; and perhaps afterwards ate.
+
+So for several days this calm and serene progress westward was
+maintained.  The trade-wind blew steady and true, balmy and warm also;
+the sky was cloudless, except at morning and evening dusk; and there were
+for scenery those dazzling expanses of sea and sky, and those gorgeous
+hues of dawn and sunset, which are only to be found in the happy
+latitudes.  The things that happened to them, the bits of seaweed and
+fishes that they saw in the water, the birds that flew around them, were
+observed with a wondering attention and wistful yearning after their
+meaning such as is known only to children and to sailors adventuring on
+uncharted seas.  The breezes were milder even than those of the Canaries,
+and the waters always less salt; and the men, forgetting their fears of
+the monsters of the Sea of Darkness, would bathe alongside in the limpid
+blue.  The little crayfish was a “sure indication of land”; a tunny fish,
+killed by the company on the Nina, was taken to be an indication from the
+west, “where I hope in that exalted God, in whose hands are all
+victories, that land will very soon appear”; they saw another ringtail,
+“which is not accustomed to sleep on the sea”; two pelicans came to the
+ship, “which was an indication that land was near”; a large dark cloud
+appeared to the north, “which is a sign that land is near”; they saw one
+day a great deal of grass, “although the previous day they had not seen
+any”; they took a bird with their hands which was like a jay; “it was a
+river bird and not a sea bird”; they saw a whale, “which is an indication
+that they are near land, because they always remain near it”; afterwards
+a pelican came from the west-north-west and went to the south-east,
+“which was an indication that it left land to the west-north-west,
+because these birds sleep on land and in the morning they come to the sea
+in search of food, and do not go twenty leagues from land.”  And “at dawn
+two or three small land birds came singing to the ships; and afterwards
+disappeared before sunrise.”
+
+Such beautiful signs, interpreted by the light of their wishes, were the
+events of this part of the voyage.  In the meantime, they have their
+little differences.  Martin Alonso Pinzon, on Tuesday, September 18th,
+speaks from the Pinta to the Santa Maria, and says that he will not wait
+for the others, but will go and make the land, since it is so near; but
+apparently he does not get very far out of the way, the wind which wafts
+him wafting also the Santa Maria and the Nina.
+
+
+On September the 19th there was a comparison of dead-reckonings.  The
+Nina’s pilot made it 440 leagues from the Canaries, the Pinta’s 420
+leagues, and the Admiral’s pilot, doubtless instructed by the Admiral,
+made it 400.  On Sunday the 23rd they were getting into the seaweed and
+finding crayfish again; and there being no reasonable cause for complaint
+a scare was got up among the crew on an exceedingly ingenious point.  The
+wind having blown steadily from the east for a matter of three weeks,
+they said that it would never blow in any other direction, and that they
+would never be able to get back to Spain; but later in the afternoon the
+sea got up from the westward, as though in answer to their fears, and as
+if to prove that somewhere or other ahead of them there was a west wind
+blowing; and the Admiral remarks that “the high sea was very necessary to
+me, as it came to pass once before in the time when the Jews went out of
+Egypt with Moses, who took them from captivity.”  And indeed there was
+something of Moses in this man, who thus led his little rabble from a
+Spanish seaport out across the salt wilderness of the ocean, and
+interpreted the signs for them, and stood between them and the powers of
+vengeance and terror that were set about their uncharted path.
+
+But it appears that the good Admiral had gone just a little too far in
+interpreting everything they saw as a sign that they were approaching
+land; for his miserable crew, instead of being comforted by this fact,
+now took the opportunity to be angry because the signs were not
+fulfilled.  The more the signs pointed to their nearness to land, the
+more they began to murmur and complain because they did not see it.  They
+began to form together in little groups--always an ominous sign at sea
+--and even at night those who were not on deck got together in murmuring
+companies.  Some, of the things that they said, indeed, were not very far
+from the truth; among others, that it was “a great madness on their part
+to venture their lives in following out the madness of a foreigner who to
+make himself a great lord had risked his life, and now saw himself and
+all of them in great exigency and was deceiving so many people.”  They
+remembered that his proposition, or “dream” as they not inaptly call it,
+had been contradicted by many great and lettered men; and then followed
+some very ominous words indeed.  They held
+
+     [The substance of these murmurings is not in the abridged Journal,
+     but is given by Las Casas under the date of September 24.]
+
+that “it was enough to excuse them from whatever might be done in the
+matter that they had arrived where man had never dared to navigate, and
+that they were not obliged to go to the end of the world, especially as,
+if they delayed more, they would not be able to have provisions to
+return.”  In short, the best thing would be to throw him into the sea
+some night, and make a story that he had fallen, into the water while
+taking the position of a star with his astrolabe; and no one would ask
+any questions, as he was a foreigner.  They carried this talk to the
+Pinzons, who listened to them; after all, we have not had to wait long
+for trouble with the Pinzons!  “Of these Pinzons Christopher Columbus
+complains greatly, and of the trouble they had given him.”
+
+There is only one method of keeping down mutiny at sea, and of preserving
+discipline.  It is hard enough where the mutineers are all on one ship
+and the commander’s officers are loyal to him; but when they are
+distributed over three ships, the captains of two of which are willing to
+listen to them, the problem becomes grave indeed.  We have no details of
+how Columbus quieted them; but it is probable that his strong personality
+awed them, while his clever and plausible words persuaded them.  He was
+the best sailor of them all and they knew it; and in a matter of this
+kind the best and strongest man always wins, and can only in a pass of
+this kind maintain his authority by proving his absolute right to it.
+So he talked and persuaded and bullied and encouraged and cheered them;
+“laughing with them,” as Las Casas says, “while he was weeping at heart.”
+
+
+Probably as a result of this unpleasantness there was on the following
+day, Tuesday, September 25th, a consultation between: Martin Alonso
+Pinzon and the Admiral.  The Santa Maria closed up with the Pinta, and a
+chart was passed over on a cord.  There were islands marked on the chart
+in this region, possibly the islands reported by the shipwrecked pilot,
+possibly the island of Antilla; and Pinzon said he thought that they were
+somewhere in the region of them, and the Admiral said that he thought so
+too.  There was a deal of talk and pricking of positions on charts; and
+then, just as the sun was setting, Martin Alonso, standing on the stern
+of the Pinta, raised a shout and said that he saw land; asking
+(business-like Martin) at the same time for the reward which had been
+promised to the first one who should see land: They all saw it, a low
+cloud to the southwest, apparently about twenty-five leagues distant;
+and honest Christopher, in the emotion of the moment, fell on his knees
+in gratitude to God.  The crimson sunset of that evening saw the rigging
+of the three ships black with eager figures, and on the quiet air were
+borne the sounds of the Gloria in Excelsis, which was repeated by each
+ship’s company.
+
+The course was altered to the south-west, and they sailed in that
+direction seventeen leagues during the night; but in the morning there
+was no land to be seen.  The sunset clouds that had so often deceived the
+dwellers in the Canaries and the Azores, and that in some form or other
+hover at times upon all eagerly scanned horizons, had also deceived
+Columbus and every one of his people; but they created a diversion which
+was of help to the Admiral in getting things quiet again, for which in
+his devout soul he thanked the merciful providence of God.
+
+And so they sailed on again on a westward course.  They were still in the
+Sargasso Sea, and could watch the beautiful golden floating mass of the
+gulf-weed, covered with berries and showing, a little way under the clear
+water, bright green leaves.  The sea was as smooth as the river in
+Seville; there were frigate pelicans flying about, and John Dorys in the
+water; several gulls were seen; and a youth on board the Nina killed a
+pelican with a stone.  On Monday, October 1st, there was a heavy shower
+of rain; and Juan de la Cosa, Columbus’s pilot, came up to him with the
+doleful information that they had run 578 leagues from the island of
+Ferro.  According to Christopher’s doctored reckoning the distance
+published was 584 leagues; but his true reckoning, about which he said
+nothing to a soul, showed that they had gone 707 leagues.  The breeze
+still kept steady and the sea calm; and day after day, with the temper of
+the crews getting uglier and uglier, the three little vessels forged
+westward through the blue, weed-strewn waters, their tracks lying
+undisturbed far behind them.  On Saturday, October 6th, the Admiral was
+signalled by Alonso Pinzon, who wanted to change the course to the
+south-west.  It appears that, having failed to find the, islands of the
+shipwrecked pilot, they were now making for the island of Cipango, and
+that this request of Pinzon had something to do with some theory of his
+that they had better turn to the south to reach that island; while
+Columbus’s idea now evidently was--to push straight on to the mainland of
+Cathay.  Columbus had his way; but the grumbling and murmuring in creased
+among the crew.
+
+On the next day, Sunday, and perhaps just in time to avert another
+outbreak, there was heard the sound of a gun, and the watchers on the
+Santa Maria and the Pinta saw a puff of smoke coming from the Nina, which
+was sailing ahead, and hoisting a flag on her masthead.  This was the
+signal agreed upon for the discovery of land, and it seemed as though
+their search was at last at an end.  But it was a mistake.  In the
+afternoon the land that the people of the Nina thought they had seen had
+disappeared, and the horizon was empty except for a great flight of birds
+that was seen passing from the north to the south-west.  The Admiral,
+remembering how often birds had guided the Portuguese in the islands in
+their possessions, argued that the birds were either going to sleep on
+land or were perhaps flying from winter, which he assumed to be
+approaching in the land from whence they came.  He therefore altered.
+his course from west to west-south-west.  This course was entered upon an
+hour before sunset and continued throughout the night and the next day.
+“The sea was like the river of Seville,” says the Admiral; “the breezes
+as soft as at Seville in April, and very fragrant.”  More birds were to
+be seen, and there were many signs of land; but the crew, so often
+disappointed in their hopeful interpretations of the phenomena
+surrounding them, kept on murmuring and complaining.  On Tuesday, October
+9th, the wind chopped round a little and the course was altered, first to
+south-west and then at evening to a point north of west; and the journal
+records that “all night they heard birds passing.”  The next day Columbus
+resumed the west-southwesterly course and made a run of fifty-nine
+leagues; but the mariners broke out afresh in their discontent, and
+declined to go any farther.  They complained of the long voyage, and
+expressed their views strongly to the commander.  But they had to deal
+with a man who was determined to begin with, and who saw in the many
+signs of land that they had met with only an additional inducement to go
+on.  He told them firmly that with or without their consent he intended
+to go on until he had found the land he had come to seek.
+
+
+The next day, Thursday, October 11th, was destined to be for ever
+memorable in the history of the world.  It began ordinarily enough, with
+a west-south-west wind blowing fresh, and on a sea rather rougher than
+they had had lately.  The people on the Santa Maria saw some petrels and
+a green branch in the water; the Pinta saw a reed and two small sticks
+carved with iron, and one or two other pieces of reeds and grasses that
+had been grown on shore, as well as a small board.  Most wonderful of
+all, the people of the Nina saw “a little branch full of dog roses”; and
+it would be hard to estimate the sweet significance of this fragment of a
+wild plant from land to the senses of men who had been so long upon a sea
+from which they had thought never to land alive.  The day drew to its
+close; and after nightfall, according to their custom, the crew of the
+ships repeated the Salve Regina.  Afterwards the Admiral addressed the
+people and sailors of his ship, “very merry and pleasant,” reminding them
+of the favours God had shown them with regard to the weather, and begging
+them, as they hoped to see land very soon, within an hour or so, to keep
+an extra good look-out that night from the forward forecastle; and adding
+to the reward of an annuity of 10,000 maravedis, offered by the Queen to
+whoever should sight land first, a gift on his own account of a silk
+doublet.
+
+The moon was in its third quarter, and did not rise until eleven o’clock.
+The first part of the night was dark, and there was only a faint
+starlight into which the anxious eyes of the look-out men peered from the
+forecastles of the three ships.  At ten o’clock Columbus was walking on
+the poop of his vessel, when he suddenly saw a light right ahead.  The
+light seemed to rise and fall as though it were a candle or a lantern
+held in some one’s hand and waved up and down.  The Admiral called Pedro
+Gutierrez to him and asked him whether he saw anything; and he also saw
+the light.  Then he sent for Rodrigo Sanchez and asked him if he saw the
+light; but he did not, perhaps because from where he was standing it was
+occulted.  But the others were left in no doubt, for the light was seen
+once or twice more, and to the eyes of the anxious little group standing
+on the high stern deck of the Santa Maria it appeared unmistakably.  The
+Nina was not close at hand, and the Pinta had gone on in front hoping to
+make good her mistake; but there was no doubt on board the Santa Maria
+that the light which they had seen was a light like a candle or a torch
+waved slowly up and down.  They lost the light again; and as the hours in
+that night stole away and the moon rose slowly in the sky the seamen on
+the Santa Maria must have almost held their breath.
+
+At about two o’clock in the morning the sound of a gun was heard from the
+Pinta, who could be seen hoisting her flags; Rodrigo de Triana, the
+look-out on board of her, having reported land in sight; and there sure
+enough in the dim light lay the low shores of an island a few miles ahead
+of them.
+
+Immediately all sails were lowered, except a small trysail which enabled
+the ships to lie-to and stand slowly off and on, waiting for the
+daylight.  I suppose there was never a longer night than that; but dawn
+came at last, flooding the sky with lemon and saffron and scarlet and
+orange, until at last the pure gold of the sun glittered on the water.
+And when it rose it showed the sea-weary mariners an island lying in the
+blue sea ahead of them: the island of Guanahani; San Salvador, as it was
+christened by Columbus; or, to give it its modern name, Watling’s Island.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+LANDFALL
+
+During the night the ships had drifted a little with the current, and
+before the north-east wind.  When the look-out man on the Pinta first
+reported land in sight it was probably the north-east corner of the
+island, where the land rises to a height of 120 feet, that he saw.  The
+actual anchorage of Columbus was most likely to the westward of the
+island; for there was a strong north-easterly breeze, and as the whole of
+the eastern coast is fringed by a barrier reef, he would not risk his
+ships on a lee shore.  Finding himself off the north end of the island at
+sunrise, the most natural thing for him to do, on making sail again,
+would be to stand southward along the west side of the island looking for
+an anchorage.  The first few miles of the shore have rocky exposed
+points, and the bank where there is shoal water only extends half a mile
+from the shore.  Immediately beyond that the bottom shelves rapidly down
+to a depth of 2000 fathoms, so that if Columbus was sounding as he came
+south he would find no bottom there.  Below what are called the Ridings
+Rocks, however, the land sweeps to the south and east in a long sheltered
+bay, and to the south of these rocks there is good anchorage and firm
+holding-ground in about eight fathoms of water.
+
+We may picture them, therefore, approaching this land in the bright
+sunshine of the early morning, their ears, that had so long heard nothing
+but the slat of canvas and the rush and bubble of water under the prows,
+filled at last with the great resounding roar of the breakers on the
+coral reef; their eyes, that had so long looked upon blue emptiness and
+the star-spangled violet arch of night, feasting upon the living green of
+the foliage ashore; and the easterly breeze carrying to their eager
+nostrils the perfumes of land.  Amid an excitement and joyful
+anticipation that it is exhilarating even to think about the cables were
+got up and served and coiled on deck, and the anchors, which some of them
+had thought would never grip the bottom again, unstopped and cleared.
+The leadsman of the Santa Maria, who has been finding no bottom with his
+forty-fathom line, suddenly gets a sounding; the water shoals rapidly
+until the nine-fathom mark is unwetted, and the lead comes up with its
+bottom covered with brown ooze.  Sail is shortened; one after another the
+great ungainly sheets of canvas are clewed up or lowered down on deck;
+one after another the three helms are starboarded, and the three ships
+brought up to the wind.  Then with three mighty splashes that send the
+sea birds whirling and screaming above the rocks the anchors go down; and
+the Admiral stands on his high poop-deck, and looks long and searchingly
+at the fragment of earth, rock-rimmed, surf-fringed, and tree-crowned, of
+which he is Viceroy and Governor-General.
+
+
+Watling’s Island, as it is now called, or San Salvador, as Columbus named
+it, or Guanahani, as it was known to the aborigines, is situated in
+latitude 24 deg. 6’ N., and longitude 74 deg 26’ W., and is an
+irregularly shaped white sandstone islet in about the middle of the great
+Bahama Bank.  The space occupied by the whole group is shaped like an
+irregular triangle extending from the Navidad Bank in the Caribbean Sea
+at the south-east corner, to Bahama Island in Florida Strait on the
+north, about 200 miles.  The south side trends west by north for 600
+miles, and the north side north-west by north 720 miles.  Most of the
+islands and small rocks in this group, called Keys or Cays, are very low,
+and rise only a few feet above the sea; the highest is about 400 feet
+high.  They are generally situated on the edge of coral and sand banks,
+some of which are of a very dangerous character.  They are thinly wooded,
+except in the case of one or two of the larger islands which contain
+timber of moderate dimensions.  The climate of the Bahamas is mild and
+temperate, with refreshing sea breezes in the hottest months; and there
+is a mean temperature of 75 deg. from November to April.  Watling’s
+Island is about twelve miles in length by six in breadth, with rocky
+shores slightly indented.  The greater part of its area is occupied by
+salt-water lagoons, separated from one another by small wooded hills from
+too to 140 feet high.  There is plenty of grass; indeed the island is now
+considered to be the most fertile in the Bahamas, and raises an excellent
+breed of cattle and sheep.  In common with the other islands of the group
+it was originally settled by the Spaniards, and afterwards by the British,
+who were driven from the Bahamas again by the Spanish in the year 1641.
+After a great deal of changing hands they were ceded to Great Britain in
+1783, and have remained in her possession ever since.  In 1897 the
+population of the whole group was estimated at 52,000 the whites being in
+the proportion of one to six of the coloured population.  Watling’s
+Island contains about 600 inhabitants scattered over the surface, with a
+small settlement called Cockburn Town on the west side, nearly opposite
+the landfall of Columbus.  The seat of the local government is in the
+island of New Providence, and the inhabitants of Watling’s Island and of
+Rum Cay unite in sending one representative to the House of Assembly.  It
+is high water, full and change, at Watling’s Island at 7 h. 40 m., as it
+was in the days of Columbus; and these facts form about the sum of the
+world’s knowledge of and interest in Watling’s Island to-day.
+
+
+But it was a different matter on Friday morning, October 12, 1492, when,
+all having been made snug on board the Santa Maria, the Admiral of the
+Ocean Seas put on his armour and his scarlet cloak over it and prepared
+to go ashore.
+
+     [This date is reckoned in the old style.  The true astronomical date
+     would be October 21st, which is the modern anniversary of the
+     discovery]
+
+The boat was lowered and manned by a crew well armed, and Columbus took
+with him Rodrigo de Escovedo, the secretary to the expedition, and
+Rodrigo Sanchez his overseer; they also took on board Martin Alonso
+Pinzon and Vincenti Yanez Pinzon, the captains of the other two ships.
+As they rowed towards the shore they saw a few naked inhabitants, who
+hid themselves at their approach.  Columbus carried with him the royal
+standard, and the two captains each had a banner of the expedition,
+which was a square flag with an “F” and a “Y” upon either side, each
+letter being surmounted by the crown of the sovereigns and a green cross
+covering the whole.  Columbus assembled his little band around him and
+called upon them to bear witness that in the presence of them all he was
+taking possession of the island for the King and Queen of Spain; duly
+making depositions in writing on the spot, and having them signed and
+witnessed.  Then he gave the name of San Salvador to the island and said
+a prayer; and while this solemn little ceremony was in progress, the
+astonished natives crept out of their hiding and surrounded the strange
+white men.  They gesticulated and grovelled and pointed upwards,
+as though this gang of armed and bearded Spaniards, with the tall
+white-bearded Italian in the midst of them, had fallen from the skies.
+
+The first interest of the voyagers was in the inhabitants of this
+delightful land.  They found them well built, athletic-looking men, most
+of them young, with handsome bodies and intelligent faces.  Columbus,
+eager to begin his missionary work, gave them some red caps and some
+glass beads, with which he found them so delighted that he had good hopes
+of making converts, and from which he argued that “they were a people who
+would better be freed and converted to our Holy Faith by love than by
+force,” which sentence of his contains within itself the whole missionary
+spirit of the time.  These natives, who were the freest people in the
+world, were to be “freed”; freed or saved from the darkness of their
+happy innocence and brought to the light of a religion that had just
+evolved the Inquisition; freed by love if possible, and by red caps and
+glass beads; if not possible, then freed by force and with guns; but
+freed they were to be at all costs.  It is a tragic thought that, at the
+very first impact of the Old World upon this Eden of the West, this
+dismal error was set on foot and the first links in the chain of slavery
+forged.  But for the moment nothing of it was perceptible; nothing but
+red caps and glass beads, and trinkets and toys, and freeing by love.
+The sword that Columbus held out to them, in order to find out if they
+knew the use of weapons, they innocently grasped by the blade and so cut
+their fingers; and that sword, extended with knowledge and grasped with
+fearless ignorance, is surely an emblem of the spread of civilisation and
+of its doubtful blessings in the early stages.  Let us hear Columbus
+himself, as he recorded his first impression of Guanahani:
+
+     “Further, it appeared to me that they were a very poor people, in
+     everything.  They all go naked as their mothers gave them birth, and
+     the women also, although I only saw one of the latter who was very
+     young, and all those whom I saw were young men, none more than
+     thirty years of age.  They were very well built with very handsome
+     bodies, and very good faces.  Their hair was almost as coarse as
+     horses’ tails, and short, and they wear it over the eyebrows, except
+     a small quantity behind, which they wear long and never cut.  Some
+     paint themselves blackish, and they are of the colour of the
+     inhabitants of the Canaries, neither black nor white, and some paint
+     themselves white, some red, some whatever colour they find: and some
+     paint their faces, some all the body, some only the eyes, and some
+     only the nose.  They do not carry arms nor know what they are,
+     because I showed them swords and they took them by the edge and
+     ignorantly cut themselves.  They have no iron: their spears are
+     sticks without iron, and some of them have a fish’s tooth at the end
+     and others have other things.  They are all generally of good
+     height, of pleasing appearance and well built: I saw some who had
+     indications of wounds on their bodies, and I asked them by signs if
+     it was that, and they showed me that other people came there from
+     other islands near by and wished to capture them and they defended
+     themselves: and I believed and believe, that they come here from the
+     continental land to take them captive.  They must be good servants
+     and intelligent, as I see that they very quickly say all that is
+     said to them, and I believe that they would easily become
+     Christians, as it appeared to me that they had no sect.  If it
+     please our Lord, at the time of my departure, I will take six of
+     them from here to your Highnesses that they may learn to speak.
+     I saw no beast of any kind except parrots on this island.”
+
+They very quickly say all that is said to them, and they will very easily
+become good slaves; good Christians also it appears, since the Admiral’s
+research does not reveal the trace of any religious sect.  And finally
+“I will take six of them”; ostensibly that they may learn to speak the
+language, but really that they may form the vanguard of cargo after cargo
+of slaves ravished from their happy islands of dreams and sunshine and
+plenty to learn the blessings of Christianity under the whip and the
+sword.  It is all, alas, inevitable; was inevitable from the moment that
+the keel of Columbus’s boat grated upon the shingle of Guanahani.  The
+greater must prey upon the less, the stronger must absorb and dominate
+the weaker; and the happy gardens of the Golden Cyclades must be spoiled
+and wasted for the pleasure and enrichment of a corrupting civilisation.
+But while we recognise the inevitable, and enter into the joy and pride
+of Columbus and his followers on this first happy morning of their
+landing, we may give a moment’s remembrance to the other side of the
+picture, and admit that for this generation of innocents the discovery
+that was to be all gain for the Old World was to be all loss to them.
+In the meantime, decrees the Admiral, they are to be freed and converted;
+and “I will take six of them that they may learn to speak.”
+
+
+There are no paths or footprints left in the sea, and the water furrowed
+on that morning more than four hundred years ago by the keels of
+Columbus’s little fleet is as smooth and trackless as it was before they
+clove it.  Yet if you approach Guanahani from the east during the hours
+of darkness you also will see a light that waxes and wanes on the
+horizon.  What the light was that Columbus saw is not certain; it was
+probably the light from a torch held by some native woman from the door
+of her hut; but the light that you will see is from the lighthouse on
+Dixon Hill, where a tower of coral holds a lamp one hundred and sixty
+feet above the sea at the north-east point of the island.  It was erected
+in no sentimental spirit, but for very practical purposes, and at a date
+when Watling’s Island had not been identified with the Guanahani of
+Columbus’s landfall; and yet of all the monuments that have been raised
+to him I can think of nothing more appropriate than this lonely tower
+that stands by day amid the bright sunshine in the track of the trade
+wind, and by night throws its powerful double flash every half-minute
+across the dark lonely sea.  For it was by a light, although not of man’s
+kindling, that Columbus was guided upon his lonely voyage and through his
+many difficulties; amid all his trials and disappointments, dimly as it
+must have burned sometimes, it never quite went out.  Darkness was the
+name of the sea across which he took his way; darkness, from his
+religious point of view, was the state of the lands to which he
+journeyed; and, whatever its subsequent worth may have been, it was a
+burning fragment from the living torch of the Christian religion that he
+carried across the world with him, and by which he sought to kindle the
+fire of faith in the lands of his discovery.  So that there is a profound
+symbolism in those raying beams that now, night after night, month by
+month, and year after year, shine out across the sea from Watling’s
+Island in the direction of the Old World.
+
+
+In the preparations for this voyage, and in the conduct and
+accomplishment of it, the personality of the man Columbus stands clearly
+revealed.  He was seen at his best, as all men are who have a chance of
+doing the thing for which they are best fitted.  The singleness of aim
+that can accomplish so much is made manifest in his dogged search for
+means with which to make his voyage; and his Italian quality of
+unscrupulousness in the means employed to attain a good end was exercised
+to the full.  The, practical seaman in him carried him through the
+easiest part of his task, which was the actual sailing of his ships from
+Palos to Guanahani; Martin Alonso Pinzon could have done as much as that.
+But no Martin Alonso Pinzon or any other man of that time known to
+history had the necessary combination of defective and effective
+qualities that made Columbus, once he had conceived his glorious hazy
+idea, spend the best years of his life, first in acquiring the position
+that would make him listened to by people powerful enough to help him,
+and then in besieging them in the face of every rebuff and
+discouragement.  Another man, proposing to venture across the unknown
+ocean to unknown lands, would have required a fleet for his conveyance,
+and an army for his protection; but Columbus asked for what he thought he
+had some chance of getting, and for the barest equipment that would carry
+him across the water.  Another man would at least have had a bodyguard;
+but Columbus relied upon himself, and alone held his motley crew in the
+bonds of discipline.  A Pinzon could have navigated the fleet from Palos
+to Guanahani; but only a Columbus, only a man burning with belief is
+himself and in his quest, could have kept that superstitious crowd of
+loafers and malefactors and gaol-birds to their duties, and bent them to
+his will.  He was destined in after years for situations which were
+beyond his power to deal with, and for problems that were beyond his
+grasp; but here at least he was supreme, master of himself and of his
+material, and a ruler over circumstances.  The supreme thing that he had
+professed to be able to do and which he had guaranteed to do was, in the
+sublime simplicity of his own phrase, “to discover new lands,” and luck
+or no luck, help or hindrance, he did it at the very first attempt and in
+the space of thirty-five days.  And although it was from the Pinta that
+the gun was fired, and the first loom of the actual land seen in the
+early morning, I am glad to think that, of all the number of eager
+watching men, it was Columbus who first saw the dim tossing light that
+told him his journey was at an end.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE NEW WORLD
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE ENCHANTED ISLANDS
+
+Columbus did not intend to remain long at San Salvador.  His landfall
+there, although it signified the realisation of one part of his dream,
+was only the starting-point of his explorations in the New World.  Now
+that he had made good his undertaking to “discover new lands,” he had to
+make good his assurance that they were full of wealth and would swell the
+revenues of the King and Queen of Spain.  A brief survey of this first
+island was all he could afford time for; and after the first exquisite
+impression of the white beach, and the blue curve of the bay sparkling in
+the sunshine, and the soft prismatic colours of the acanthus beneath the
+green wall of the woods had been savoured and enjoyed, he was anxious to
+push on to the rich lands of the Orient of which he believed this island
+to be only an outpost.
+
+On the morning after his arrival the natives came crowding down to the
+beach and got down their canoes, which were dug out of the trunk of a
+single tree, and some of which were large enough to contain forty or
+forty-five men: They came paddling out to the ship, sometimes, in the
+case of the smaller canoes which only held one man, being upset by the
+surf, and swimming gaily round and righting their canoes again and
+bailing them out with gourds.  They brought balls of spun cotton, and
+parrots and spears.  All their possessions, indeed, were represented in
+the offerings they made to the strangers.  Columbus, whose eye was now
+very steadily fixed on the main chance, tried to find out if they had any
+gold, for he noticed that some of them wore in their noses a ring that
+looked as though it were made of that metal; and by making signs he asked
+them if there was any more of it to be had.  He understood them to say
+that to the south of the island there dwelt a king who had large vessels
+of gold, and a great many of them; he tried to suggest that some of the
+natives should come and show him the way, but he “saw that they were not
+interested in going.”
+
+The story of the Rheingold was to be enacted over again, and the whole of
+the evils that followed in its glittering train to be exemplified in this
+voyage of discovery.  To the natives of these islands, who guarded the
+yellow metal and loved it merely for its shining beauty, it was harmless
+and powerless; they could not buy anything with it, nor did they seek by
+its aid to secure any other enjoyments but the happiness of looking at it
+and admiring it.  As soon as the gold was ravished from their keeping,
+however, began the reign of lust and cruelty that always has attended and
+always will attend the knowledge that things can be bought with it.  In
+all its history, since first it was brought up from the dark bowels of
+the earth to glitter in the light of day, there is no more significant
+scene than this that took place on the bright sands of San Salvador so
+long ago--Columbus attentively examining the ring in the nose of a happy
+savage, and trying to persuade him to show him the place that it was
+brought from; and the savage “not interested in going.”
+
+
+From his sign-conversation with the natives Columbus understood that
+there was land to the south or the south-west, and also to the
+north-west, and that the people from the north-west went to the
+south-west in search of gold and precious stones.  In the meantime he
+determined to spend the Sunday in making a survey of the island, while
+the rest of Saturday was passed in barterings with the natives, who were
+very happy and curious to see all the strange things belonging to the
+voyagers; and so innocent were their ideas of value that “they give all
+they have for whatever thing may be given them.”  Columbus, however, who
+was busy making calculations, would not allow the members of the crew to
+take anything more on their own account, ordering that where any article
+of commerce existed in quantity it was to be acquired for the sovereigns
+and taken home to Spain.
+
+Early on Sunday morning a boat was prepared from each ship, and a little
+expedition began to row north about the island.  As they coasted the
+white rocky shores people came running to the beach and calling to them;
+“giving thanks to God,” says Columbus, although this is probably a flight
+of fancy.  When they saw that the boats were not coming to land they
+threw themselves into the water and came swimming out to them, bringing
+food and drink.  Columbus noticed a tongue of land lying between the
+north-west arm of the internal lagoon and the sea, and saw that by
+cutting a canal through it entrance could be secured to a harbour that
+would float “as many ships as there are in Christendom.”  He did not,
+apparently, make a complete circuit of the island, but returned in the
+afternoon to the ships, having first collected seven natives to take with
+him, and got under way again; and before night had fallen San Salvador
+had disappeared below the north-west horizon.
+
+About midday he reached another island to the southeast.  He sailed along
+the coast until evening, when he saw yet another island in the distance
+to the south-west; and he therefore lay-to for the night.  At dawn the
+next morning he landed on the island and took formal possession of it,
+naming it Santa Maria de la Concepcion, which is the Rum Cay of the
+modern charts.  As the wind chopped round and he found himself on a
+lee-shore he did not stay there, but sailed again before night.  Two
+of the unhappy prisoners from Guanahani at this point made good their
+escape by swimming to a large canoe which one of the natives of the new
+island had rowed out--a circumstance which worried Columbus not a
+little; since he feared it would give him a bad name with the natives.
+He tried to counteract it by loading with presents another native who
+came to barter balls of cotton, and sending him away again.
+
+The effect of all that he was seeing, of the bridge of islands that
+seemed to be stretching towards the south-west and leading him to the
+region of untold wealth, was evidently very stimulating and exciting to
+Columbus.  His Journal is almost incoherent where he attempts to set down
+all he has got to say.  Let us listen to him for a moment:
+
+     “These islands are very green and fertile, and the breezes are very
+     soft, and there may be many things which I do not know, because I
+     did not wish to stop, in order to discover and search many islands
+     to find gold.  And since these people make signs thus, that they
+     wear gold on their arms and legs,--and it is gold, because I showed
+     them some pieces which I have,--I cannot fail, with the aid of our
+     Lord, in finding it where it is native.  And being in the middle of
+     the gulf between these two islands, that is to say, the island of
+     Santa Maria and this large one, which I named Fernandina, I found a
+     man alone in a canoe who was going from the island of Santa Maria to
+     Fernandina, and was carrying a little of his bread which might have
+     been about as large as the fist, and a gourd of water, and a piece
+     of reddish earth reduced to dust and afterwards kneaded, and some
+     dry leaves--[Tobacco]--which must be a thing very much appreciated
+     among them, because they had already brought me some of them as a
+     present at San Salvador: and he was carrying a small basket of their
+     kind, in which he had a string of small glass beads and two blancas,
+     by which I knew that he came from the island of San Salvador, and
+     had gone from there to Santa Maria and was going to Fernandina.  He
+     came to the ship: I caused him to enter it, as he asked to do so,
+     and I had his canoe placed on the ship and had everything which he
+     was carrying guarded and I ordered that bread and honey be given him
+     to eat and something to drink.  And I will go to Fernandina thus and
+     will give him everything, which belongs to him, that he may give
+     good reports of us.  So that, when your Highnesses send here, our
+     Lord pleasing, those who come may receive honour and the Indians
+     will give them of everything which they have.”
+
+This hurried gabbling about gold and the aid of our Lord, interlarded
+with fragments of natural and geographical observation, sounds strangely
+across the gulf of time and impresses one with a disagreeable sense of
+bewildered greed--like that of a dog gulping at the delicacies in his
+platter and unwilling to do justice to one for fear the others should
+escape him; and yet it is a natural bewilderment, and one with which we
+must do our best to sympathise.
+
+Fernandina was the name which Columbus had already given to Long Island
+when he sighted it from Santa Maria; and he reached it in the evening of
+Tuesday, October 16th.  The man in the canoe had arrived before him; and
+the astute Admiral had the satisfaction of finding that once more his
+cleverness had been rewarded, and that the man in the canoe had given
+such glowing accounts of his generosity that there was no difficulty
+about his getting water and supplies.  While the barrels of water were
+being filled he landed and strolled about in the pleasant groves,
+observing the islanders and their customs, and finding them on the whole
+a little more sophisticated than those of San Salvador.  The women wore
+mantillas on their heads and “little pieces of cotton” round their
+loins-a sufficiently odd costume; and they appeared to Columbus to be a
+little more astute than the other islanders, for though they brought
+cotton in quantities to the ships they exacted payment of beads for it.
+In the charm and wonder of his walk in this enchanted land he was able
+for a moment to forget his hunger for gold and to admire the great
+branching palm-trees, and the fish that
+
+     “are here so different from ours that it is wonderful.  There are
+     some formed like cocks of the finest colours in the world, blue,
+     yellow, red and of all colours, and others tinted in a thousand
+     manners: and the colours are so fine, that there is not a man who
+     does not wonder at them, and who does not take great pleasure in
+     seeing them.  Also, there are whales.  I saw no beasts on land of
+     any kind except parrots and lizards.  A boy told me that he saw a
+     large snake.  I did not see sheep nor goats, nor any other beast;
+     although I have been here a very short time, as it is midday, still
+     if there had been any, I could not have missed seeing some.”
+
+Columbus was not a very good descriptive writer, and he has but two
+methods of comparison; either a thing is like Spain, or it is not like
+Spain.  The verdure was “in such condition as it is in the month of May
+in Andalusia; and the trees  were all as different from ours as day from
+night, and also the fruits and grasses and the stones and all the
+things.”  The essay written by a cockney child after a day at the seaside
+or in the country, is not greatly different from some of the verbatim
+passages of this journal; and there is a charm in that fact too, for it
+gives us a picture of Columbus, in spite of his hunt for gold and
+precious stones, wandering, still a child at heart, in the wonders of the
+enchanted world to which he had come.
+
+There was trouble on this day, because some of the crew had found an
+Indian with a piece of gold in his nose, and they got a scolding from
+Columbus for not detaining him and bartering with him for it.  There was
+bad weather also, with heavy rain and a threatening of tempest; there was
+a difference of opinion with Martin Alonso Pinzon about which way they
+should go round the island: but the next day the weather cleared, and the
+wind settled the direction of their course for them.  Columbus, whose eye
+never missed anything of interest to the sailor and navigator, notes thus
+early a fact which appears in every book of sailing directions for the
+Bahama Islands--that the water is so clear and limpid that the bottom can
+be seen at a great depth; and that navigation is thus possible and even
+safe among the rockstrewn coasts of the islands, when thus performed by
+sight and with the sun behind the ship.  He was also keenly alive to
+natural charm and beauty in the new lands that he was visiting, and there
+are unmistakable fragments of himself in the journal that speak
+eloquently of his first impressions.  “The singing of the little birds is
+such that it appears a man would wish never to leave here, and the flocks
+of parrots obscure the sun.”
+
+But life, even to the discoverer of a New World, does not consist of
+wandering in the groves, and listening to the singing birds, and smelling
+the flowers, and remembering the May nights of Andalusia.  There was gold
+to be found and the mainland of Cathay to be discovered, and a letter,
+written by the sovereigns at his earnest request, to be delivered to the
+Great Khan.  The natives had told him of an island called Samoete to the
+southward, which was said to contain a quantity of gold.  He sailed
+thither on the 19th, and called it Isabella; its modern name is Crooked
+Island.  He anchored here and found it to be but another step in the
+ascending scale of his delight; it was greener and more beautiful than
+any of the islands he had yet seen.  He spent some time looking for the
+gold, but could not find any; although he heard of the island of Cuba,
+which he took to be the veritable Cipango.  He weighed anchor on October
+24th and sailed south-west, encountering some bad weather on the way; but
+on Sunday the 28th he came up with the north coast of Cuba and entered
+the mouth of a river which is the modern Nuevitas.  To the island of Cuba
+he gave the name of Juana in honour of the young prince to whom his son
+Diego had been appointed a page.
+
+
+If the other islands had seemed beautiful to him, Cuba seemed like heaven
+itself.  The mountains grandly rising in the interior, the noble rivers
+and long sweeping plains, the headlands melting into the clear water, and
+the gorgeous colours and flowers and birds and insects on land acted like
+a charm on Columbus and his sailors.  As they entered the river they
+lowered a boat in order to go ahead and sound for an anchorage; and two
+native canoes put off from the shore, but, when they saw the boat
+approaching, fled again.  The Admiral landed and found two empty houses
+containing nets and hooks and fishing-lines, and one of the strange
+silent dogs, such as they had encountered on the other island--dogs that
+pricked their ears and wagged their tails, but that never barked.  The
+Admiral, in spite of his greed for gold and his anxiety to “free” the
+people of the island, was now acting much more discreetly, and with the
+genuine good sense which he always possessed and which was only sometimes
+obscured.  He would not allow anything in the empty houses to be
+disturbed or taken away, and whenever he saw the natives he tried to show
+them that he intended to do them no harm, and to win their good will by
+making them presents of beads and toys for which he would take no return.
+As he went on up the river the scenery became more and more enchanting,
+so that he felt quite unhappy at not being able to express all the
+wonders and beauties that he saw.  In the pure air and under the serene
+blue of the sky those matchless hues of blossom and foliage threw a
+rainbow-coloured garment on either bank of the river; the flamingoes, the
+parrots and woodpeckers and humming-birds calling to one another and
+flying among the tree-tops, made the upper air also seem alive and shot
+with all the colours of the rainbow.  Humble Christopher, walking amid
+these gorgeous scenes, awed and solemnised by the strangeness and
+magnificence of nature around him, tries to identify something that he
+knows; and thinks, that amid all these strange chorusings of unknown
+birds, he hears the familiar note of a nightingale.  Amid all his
+raptures, however, the main chance is not forgotten; everything that he
+sees he translates into some terms of practical utility.  Just as on the
+voyage out every seaweed or fish or flying bird that he saw was hailed by
+him as a sign that land was near, so amid the beauty of this virgin world
+everything that he sees is taken to indicate either that he is close upon
+the track of the gold, or that he must be in Cipango, or that the natives
+will be easy to convert to Christianity.  In the fragrance of the woods
+of Cuba, Columbus thought that he smelled Oriental spices, which Marco
+Polo had described as abounding in Cipango; when he walked by the shore
+and saw the shells of pearl oysters, he believed the island to be loaded
+with pearls and precious stones; when he saw a scrap of tinsel or bright
+metal adorning a native, he argued that there was a gold mine close at
+hand.  And so he went on in an increasing whirl of bewildering
+enchantment from anchorage to anchorage and from island to island, always
+being led on by that yellow will o’-the-wisp, gold, and always believing
+that the wealth of the Orient would be his on the morrow.  As he coasted
+along towards the west he entered the river which he called Rio de Mares.
+He found a large village here full of palm-branch houses furnished with
+chairs and hammocks and adorned with wooden masks and statues; but in
+spite of his gentleness and offer of gifts the inhabitants all fled to
+the mountains, while he and his men walked curiously through the deserted
+houses.
+
+On Tuesday, October 30th, Martin Alonso Pinzon, whose communications the
+Admiral was by this time beginning to dread, came with some exciting
+news.  It seemed that the Indians from San Salvador who were on board the
+Pinta had told him that beyond the promontory, named by Columbus the Cape
+of Palms, there was a river, four days’ journey upon which would bring
+one to the city of Cuba, which was very rich and large and abounded with
+gold; and that the king of that country was at war with a monarch whom
+they called Cami, and whom Pinzon identified with the Great Khan.  More
+than this, these natives assured him that the land they were on at
+present was the mainland itself, and that they could not be very far from
+Cathay.  Columbus for once found himself in agreement with Martin Alonso.
+The well-thumbed copy of Marco Polo was doubtless brought out, and
+abundant evidence found in it; and it was decided to despatch a little
+embassy to this city in order to gain information about its position and
+wealth.  When they continued their course, however, and rounded the cape,
+no river appeared; they sailed on, and yet promontory after promontory
+was opened ahead of them; and as the wind turned against them and the
+weather was very threatening they decided to turn back and anchor again
+in the Rio de Mares.
+
+Columbus was now, as he thought, hot upon the track of the Great Khan
+himself; and on the first of November he sent boats ashore and told the
+sailors to get information from the houses; but the inhabitants fled
+shyly into the woods.  Having once postulated the existence of the Great
+Khan in this immediate territory Columbus, as his habit was, found that
+everything fitted with the theory; and he actually took the flight of the
+natives, although it had occurred on a dozen other occasions, as a proof
+that they mistook his bands of men for marauding expeditions despatched
+by the great monarch himself.  He therefore recalled them, and sent a
+boat ashore with an Indian interpreter who, standing in the boat at the
+edge of the water, called upon the natives to draw near, and harangued
+them.  He assured them of the peaceable intentions of the great Admiral,
+and that he had nothing whatever to do with the Great Khan; which cannot
+very greatly have thrilled the Cubans, who knew no more about the Great
+Khan than they did about Columbus.  The interpreter then swam ashore and
+was well received; so well, that in the evening some sixteen canoes came
+off to the ships bringing cotton yarn and spears for traffic.  Columbus,
+with great astuteness, forbade any trading in cotton or indeed in
+anything at all except gold, hoping by this means to make the natives
+produce their treasures; and he would no doubt have been successful if
+the natives had possessed any gold, but as the poor wretches had nothing
+but the naked skins they stood up in, and the few spears and pots and
+rolls of cotton that they were offering, the Admiral’s astuteness was for
+once thrown away.  There was one man, however, with a silver ring in his
+nose, who was understood to say that the king lived four days’ journey in
+the interior, and that messengers had been sent to him to tell him of the
+arrival of the strange ships; which messengers would doubtless soon
+return bringing merchants with them to trade with the ships.  If this
+native was lying he showed great ingenuity in inventing the kind of story
+that his questioners wanted; but it is more likely that his utterances
+were interpreted by Columbus in the light of his own ardent beliefs.  At
+any rate it was decided to send at once a couple of envoys to this great
+city, and not to wait for the arrival of the merchants.  Two Spaniards,
+Rodrigo de Jerez and Luis de Torres, the interpreter to the expedition
+--who had so far found little use for his Hebrew and Chaldean--were chosen;
+and with them were sent two Indians, one from San Salvador and the other
+a local native who went as guide.  Red caps and beads and hawks’ bells
+were duly provided, and a message for the king was given to them telling
+him that Columbus was waiting with letters and presents from Spanish
+sovereigns, which he was to deliver personally.  After the envoys had
+departed, Columbus, whose ships were anchored in a large basin of deep
+water with a clean and steep beach, decided to take the opportunity of
+having the vessels careened.  Their hulls were covered with shell and
+weed; the caulking, which had been dishonestly done at Palos, had also
+to be attended to; so the ships were beached and hove down one at a time
+--an unnecessary precaution, as it turned out, for there was no sign of
+treachery on the part of the natives.  While the men were making fires to
+heat their tar they noticed that the burning wood sent forth a heavy
+odour which was like mastic; and the Admiral, now always busy with
+optimistic calculations, reckoned that there was enough in that vicinity
+to furnish a thousand quintals every year.  While the work on the ships
+was going forward he employed himself in his usual way, going ashore,
+examining the trees and vegetables and fruits, and holding such
+communication as he was able with the natives.  He was up every morning
+at dawn, at one time directing the work of his men, at another going
+ashore after some birds that he had seen; and as dawn comes early in
+those islands his day was probably a long one, and it is likely that he
+was in bed soon after dark.  On the day that he went shooting, Martin
+Alonso Pinzon was waiting for him on his return; this time not to make
+any difficulties or independent proposals, but to show him two pieces of
+cinnamon that one of his men had got from an Indian who was carrying a
+quantity of it.  “Why did the man not get it all from him?” says greedy
+Columbus.  “Because of the prohibition of the Admiral’s that no one
+should do any trading,” says Martin Alonso, and conceives himself to have
+scored; for truly these two men do not love one another.  The boatswain
+of the Pinta, adds Martin Alonso, has found whole trees of it.  “The
+Admiral then went there and found that it was not cinnamon.”  The Admiral
+was omnipotent; if he had said that it was manna they would have had to
+make it so, and as he chose to say that it was not cinnamon, we must take
+his word for it, as Martin Alonso certainly had to do; so that it was the
+Admiral who scored this time.  Columbus, however, now on the track of
+spices, showed some cinnamon and pepper to the natives; and the obliging
+creatures “said by signs that there was a great deal of it towards the
+south-east.”  Columbus then showed them some gold and pearls; and
+“certain old men” replied that in a place they called Bo-No there was any
+amount of gold; the people wore it in their ears and on their arms and
+legs, and there were pearls also, and large ships and merchandise--all to
+the south-east.  Finding this information, which was probably entirely
+untrue and merely a polite effort to do what was expected of them, well
+received, the natives added that “a long distance from there, there were
+men with one eye, and other men with dogs’ snouts who ate men, and that
+when they caught a man they beheaded him and drank his blood.” .  .  .
+Soon after this the Admiral went on board again and began to write up his
+Journal, solemnly entering all these facts in it.  It is the most
+childish nonsense; but after all, how interesting and credible it must
+have been!  To live thus smelling the most heavenly perfumes, breathing
+the most balmy air, viewing the most lovely scenes, and to be always hot
+upon the track of gold and pearls and spices and wealth and dog-nosed,
+blood-drinking monstrosities--what an adventure, what a vivid piece of
+living!
+
+
+After a few days--on Tuesday, November 6th--the two men who had been sent
+inland to the great and rich city came back again with their report.
+Alas for visions of the Great Khan!  The city turned out to be a village
+of fifty houses with twenty people in each house.  The envoys had been
+received with great solemnity; and all the men “as well as the women”
+came to see them, and lodged them in a fine house.  The chief people in
+the village came and kissed their hands and feet, hailing them as
+visitors from the skies, and seating them in two chairs, while they sat
+round on the floor.  The native interpreter, doubtless according to
+instructions, then told them “how the Christians lived and how they were
+good people”; and I would give a great deal to have heard that brief
+address.  Afterwards the men went out and the women came in, also kissing
+the hands and feet of the visitors, and “trying them to see if they were
+of flesh and of bone like themselves.”  The results were evidently so
+satisfactory that the strangers were implored to remain at least five
+days.  The real business of the expedition was then broached.  Had they
+any gold or pearls?  Had they any cinnamon or spices?  Answer, as usual:
+“No, but they thought there was a great deal of it to the south-east.”
+The interest of the visitors then evaporated, and they set out for the
+coast again; but they found that at least five hundred men and women
+wanted to come with them, since they believed that they were returning to
+heaven.  On their journey back the two Spaniards noticed many people
+smoking, as the Admiral himself had done a few days before; and this is
+the first known discovery of tobacco by Europeans.
+
+They saw a great many geese, and the strange dogs that did not bark, and
+they saw potatoes also, although they did not know what they were.
+Columbus, having heard this report, and contemplating these gentle
+amiable creatures, so willing to give all they had in return for a scrap
+of rubbish, feels his heart lifted in a pious aspiration that they might
+know the benefits of the Christian religion.  “I have to say, Most Serene
+Princes,” he writes,
+
+     “that by means of devout religious persons knowing their language
+     well, all would soon become Christians: and thus I hope in our Lord
+     that Your Highnesses will appoint such persons with great diligence
+     in order to turn to the Church such great peoples, and that they
+     will convert them, even as they have destroyed those who would not
+     confess the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit: and after their
+     days, as we are all mortal, they will leave their realms--in a very
+     tranquil condition and freed from heresy and wickedness, and will be
+     well received before the Eternal Creator, Whom may it please to give
+     them a long life and a great increase of larger realms and
+     dominions, and the will and disposition to spread the holy Christian
+     religion, as they have done up to the present time, Amen.  To-day I
+     will launch the ship and make haste to start on Thursday, in the
+     name of God, to go to the southeast and seek gold and spices, and
+     discover land.”
+                    Thus Christopher Columbus, in the Name of God,
+
+     November 11, 1492.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE EARTHLY PARADISE
+
+When Columbus weighed anchor on the 12th of November he took with him six
+captive Indians.  It was his intention to go in search of the island of
+Babeque, which the Indians alleged lay about thirty leagues to the
+east-south-east, and where, they said, the people gathered gold out of the
+sand with candles at night, and afterwards made bars of it with a hammer.
+They told him this by signs; and we have only one more instance of the
+Admiral’s facility in interpreting signs in favour of his own beliefs.
+It is only a few days later that in the same Journal he says, “The people
+of these lands do not understand me, nor do I nor any other person I have
+with me understand them; and these Indians I am taking with me, many
+times understand things contrary to what they are.”  It was a fault at
+any rate not exclusively possessed by the Indians, who were doubtless
+made the subject of many philological experiments on the part of the
+interpreter; all that they seemed to have learned at this time were
+certain religious gestures, such as making the Sign of the Cross, which
+they did continually, greatly to the edification of the crew.
+
+In order to keep these six natives in a good temper Columbus kidnapped
+“seven women, large and small, and three children,” in order, he alleged,
+that the men might conduct themselves better in Spain because of having
+their “wives” with them; although whether these assorted women were
+indeed the wives of the kidnapped natives must at the best be a doubtful
+matter.  The three children, fortunately, had their father and mother
+with them; but that was only because the father, having seen his wife and
+children kidnapped, came and offered to go with them of his own accord.
+This taking of the women raises a question which must be in the mind of
+any one who studies this extraordinary voyage--the question of the
+treatment of native women by the Spaniards.  Columbus is entirely silent
+on the subject; but taking into account the nature of the Spanish rabble
+that formed his company, and his own views as to the right which he had
+to possess the persons and goods of the native inhabitants, I am afraid
+that there can be very little doubt that in this matter there is a good
+reason, for his silence.  So far as Columbus himself was concerned, it is
+probable that he was innocent enough; he was not a sensualist by nature,
+and he was far too much interested and absorbed in the principal objects
+of his expedition, and had too great a sense of his own personal dignity,
+to have indulged in excesses that would, thus sanctioned by him, have
+produced a very disastrous effect on the somewhat rickety discipline of
+his crew.  He was too wise a master, however, to forbid anything that it
+was not in his power to prevent; and it is probable that he shut his eyes
+to much that, if he did not tolerate it, he at any rate regarded as a
+matter of no very great importance.  His crew had by this time learned to
+know their commander well enough not to commit under his eyes offences
+for which he would have been sure to punish them.
+
+
+For two days they ran along the coast with a fair wind; but on the 14th a
+head wind and heavy sea drove them into the shelter of a deep harbour
+called by Columbus Puerto del Principe, which is the modern Tanamo.  The
+number of islands off this part of the coast of Cuba confirmed Columbus
+in his profound geographical error; he took them to be “those innumerable
+islands which in the maps of the world are placed at the end of the
+east.”  He erected a great wooden cross on an eminence here, as he always
+did when he took possession of a new place, and made some boat excursions
+among the islands in the harbour.  On the 17th of November two of the six
+youths whom he had taken on board the week before swam ashore and
+escaped.  When he started again on his voyage he was greatly
+inconvenienced by the wind, which veered about between the north and
+south of east, and was generally a foul wind for him.  There is some
+difference of opinion as to what point of the wind the ships of
+Columbus’s time would sail on; but there is no doubt that they were
+extremely unhandy in anything approaching a head wind, and that they were
+practically no good at all at beating to windward.  The shape of their
+hulls, the ungainly erections ahead and astern, and their comparatively
+light hold on the water, would cause them to drift to leeward faster than
+they could work to windward.  In this head wind, therefore, Columbus
+found that he was making very little headway, although he stood out for
+long distances to the northward.  On Wednesday, November 21st, occurred a
+most disagreeable incident, which might easily have resulted in the
+Admiral’s never reaching Spain alive.  Some time in the afternoon he
+noticed the Pinta standing away ahead of him in a direction which was not
+the course which he was steering; and he signalled her to close up with
+him.  No answer, however, was made to his signal, which he repeated, but
+to which he failed to attract any response.  He was standing south at the
+time, the wind being well in the north-east; and Martin Alonso Pinzon,
+whose caravel pointed into the wind much better than the unhandy Santa
+Maria, was standing to the east.  When evening fell he was still in
+sight, at a distance of sixteen miles.  Columbus was really concerned,
+and fired lombards and flew more signals of invitation; but there was no
+reply.  In the evening he shortened sail and burned a torch all night,
+“because it appeared that Martin Alonso was returning to me; and the
+night was very clear, and there was a nice little breeze by which to come
+to me if he wished.”  But he did not wish, and he did not come.
+
+Martin Alonso has in fact shown himself at last in his true colours.  He
+has got the fastest ship, he has got a picked company of his own men from
+Palos; he has got an Indian on board, moreover, who has guaranteed to
+take him straight to where the gold is; and he has a very agreeable plan
+of going and getting it, and returning to Spain with the first news and
+the first wealth.  It is open mutiny, and as such cannot but be a matter
+of serious regret and trouble to the Admiral, who sits writing up his
+Journal by the swinging lamp in his little cabin.  To that friend and
+confidant he pours out his troubles and his long list of grievances
+against Martin Alonso; adding, “He has done and said many other things
+to me.”  Up on deck the torch is burning to light the wanderer back
+again, if only he will come; and there is “a nice little breeze” by which
+to come if he wishes; but Martin Alonso has wishes quite other than that.
+
+
+The Pinta was out of sight the next morning, and the little Nina was all
+that the Admiral had to rely upon for convoy.  They were now near the
+east end of the north coast of Cuba, and they stood in to a harbour which
+the Admiral called Santa Catalina, and which is now called Cayo de Moa.
+As the importance of the Nina to the expedition had been greatly
+increased by the defection of the Pinta, Columbus went on board and
+examined her.  He found that some of her spars were in danger of giving
+way; and as there was a forest of pine trees rising from the shore he was
+able to procure a new mizzen mast and latine yard in case it should be
+necessary to replace those of the Nina.  The next morning he weighed
+anchor at sunrise and continued east along the coast.  He had now arrived
+at the extreme end of Cuba, and was puzzled as to what course he should
+take.  Believing Cuba, as he did, to be the mainland of Cathay, he would
+have liked to follow the coast in its trend to the south-west, in the
+hope of coming upon the rich city of Quinsay; but on the other hand there
+was looming to the south-west some land which the natives with him
+assured him was Bohio, the place where all the gold was.  He therefore
+held on his course; but when the Indians found that he was really going
+to these islands they became very much alarmed, and made signs that the
+people would eat them if they went there; and, in order further to
+dissuade the Admiral, they added that the people there had only one eye,
+and the faces, of dogs.  As it did not suit Columbus to believe them he
+said that they were lying, and that he “felt” that the island must belong
+to the domain of the Great Khan.  He therefore continued his course,
+seeing many beautiful and enchanting bays opening before him, and longing
+to go into them, but heroically stifling his curiosity, “because he was
+detained more than he desired by the pleasure and delight he felt in
+seeing and gazing on the beauty and freshness of those countries wherever
+he entered, and because he did not wish to be delayed in prosecuting what
+he was engaged upon; and for these reasons he remained that night beating
+about and standing off and on until day.”  He could not trust himself,
+that is to say, to anchor in these beautiful harbours, for he knew he
+would be tempted to go ashore and waste valuable time exploring the
+woods; and so he remained instead, beating about in the open sea.
+
+As it was, what with contrary winds and his own indecision as to which
+course he should pursue, it was December the 6th before he came up with
+the beautiful island of Hayti, and having sent the Nina in front to
+explore for a harbour, entered the Mole Saint Nicholas, which he called
+Puerto Maria.  Towards the east he saw an island shaped like a turtle,
+and this island he named Tortuga; and the harbour, which he entered that
+evening on the hour of Vespers, he called Saint Nicholas, as it was the
+feast of that saint.  Once more his description flounders among
+superlatives: he thought Cuba was perfect; but he finds the new island
+more perfect still.  The climate is like May in Cordova; the tracts of
+arable land and fertile valleys and high mountains are like those in
+Castile; he finds mullet like those of Castile; soles and other fish like
+those in Castile; nightingales and other small birds like those in
+Castile; myrtle and other trees and grasses like those in Castile!  In
+short, this new land is so like Spain, only more wonderful and beautiful,
+that he christens it Espanola.
+
+They stayed two days in the harbour of Saint Nicholas, and then began to
+coast eastwards along the shores of Espaniola.  Their best progress was
+made at dawn and sunset, when the land breeze blew off the island; and
+during the day they encountered a good deal of colder weather and
+easterly winds, which made their progress slow.  Every day they put in at
+one or other of the natural harbours in which that beautiful coast
+abounds; every day they saw natives on the shores who generally fled at
+their approach, but were often prevailed upon to return and to converse
+with the natives on board the Admiral’s ship, and to receive presents and
+bring parrots and bits of gold in exchange.  On one day a party of men
+foraging ashore saw a beautiful young girl, who fled at their approach;
+and they chased her a long way through the woods, finally capturing her
+and bringing her on board.  Columbus “caused her to be clothed”
+--doubtless a diverting occupation for Rodrigo, Juan, Garcia, Pedro,
+William, and the rest of them, although for the poor, shy, trembling
+captive not diverting at all--and sent her ashore again loaded with beads
+and brass rings--to act as a decoy.  Having sown this good seed the
+Admiral waited for a night, and then sent a party of men ashore, “well
+prepared with arms and adapted for such an affair,” to have some
+conversation with the people.  The innocent harvest was duly reaped; the
+natives met the Spaniards with gifts of food and drink, and understanding
+that the Admiral would like to have a parrot, they sent as many parrots
+as were wanted.  The husband of the girl who had been captured and
+clothed came back with her to the shore with a large body of natives,
+in order to thank the Admiral for his kindness and clemency; and their
+confidence was not misplaced, as the Admiral did not at that moment wish
+to do any more kidnapping.  The Spaniards were more and more amazed and
+impressed with the beauty and fertility of these islands.  The lands were
+more lovely than the finest land in Castile; the rivers were large and
+wide, the trees green and full of fruit, the grasses knee-deep and
+starred with flowers; the birds sang sweetly all night; there were mastic
+trees and aloes and plantations of cotton.  There was fishing in plenty;
+and if there were not any gold mines immediately at hand, they here sure
+to be round the next headland or, at the farthest, in the next island.
+The people, too, charmed and delighted the Admiral, who saw in them a
+future glorious army of souls converted to the Christian religion.  They
+were taller and handsomer than the inhabitants of the other islands, and
+the women much fairer; indeed, if they had not been so much exposed to
+the sun, and if they could only be clothed in the decent garments of
+civilisation, the Admiral thought that their skins would be as white as
+those of the women of Spain--which was only another argument for bringing
+them within the fold of the Holy Catholic Church.  The men were powerful
+and apparently harmless; they showed no truculent or suspicious spirit;
+they had no knowledge of arms; a thousand of them would not face three
+Christians; and
+
+     “so they are suitable to be governed and made to work and sow and do
+     everything else that shall be necessary, and to build villages and
+     be taught to wear clothing and observe our customs.”
+
+At present, you see, they are but poor happy heathens, living in a
+paradise of their own, where the little birds sing all through the warm
+nights, and the rivers murmur through flowery meadows, and no one has any
+knowledge of arms or desire of such knowledge, and every one goes naked
+and unashamed.  High time, indeed, that they should be taught to wear
+clothing and observe our customs.
+
+
+The local chief came on a visit of state to the ship; and the Admiral
+paid him due honour, telling him that he came as an envoy from the
+greatest sovereigns in the world.  But this charming king, or cacique as
+they called him, would not believe this; he thought that Columbus was,
+for reasons of modesty, speaking less than the truth--a new charge to
+bring against our Christopher!  He believed that the Spaniards came from
+heaven, and that the realms of the sovereigns of Castile were in the
+heavens and not in this world.  He took some refreshment, as his
+councillors did also, little dreaming, poor wretches, what in after years
+was to come to them through all this palavering and exchanging of
+presents.  The immediate result of the interview, however, was to make
+intercourse with the natives much freer and pleasanter even than it had
+been before; and some of the sailors went fishing with the natives.
+It was then that they were shown some cane arrows with hardened points,
+which the natives said belonged to the people of ‘Caniba’, who, they
+alleged, came to the island to capture and eat the natives.  The Admiral
+did not believe it; his sublime habit of rejecting everything that did
+not fit in with his theory of the moment, and accepting everything that
+did, made him shake his head when this piece of news was brought to him.
+He could not get the Great Khan out of his head, and his present theory
+was that this island, being close to the mainland of Cathay, was visited
+by the armies of the Great Khan, and that it was his men who had used the
+arrows and made war upon the natives.  It was no good for the natives to
+show him some of their mutilated bodies, and to tell him that the
+cannibals ate them piecemeal; he had no use for such information.  His
+mind was like a sieve of which the size of the meshes could be adjusted
+at will; everything that was not germane to the idea of the moment fell
+through it, and only confirmative evidence remained; and at the moment he
+was not believing any stories which did not prove that the Great Khan
+was, so to speak, just round the corner.  If they talked about gold he
+would listen to them; and so the cacique brought him a piece of gold the
+size of his hand and, breaking it into pieces, gave it to him a bit at a
+time.  This the Admiral took to be sign of great intelligence.  They told
+him there was gold at Tortuga, but he preferred to believe that it came
+from Babeque, which may have been Jamaica and may have been nothing at
+all.
+
+But his theory was that it existed on Espanola only in small pieces
+because that country was so rich that the natives had no need for it;
+an economic theory which one grows dizzy in pondering.  At any rate
+“the Admiral believed that he was very near the fountainhead, and that
+Our Lord was about to show him where the gold originates.”
+
+On Tuesday, December 18th, the ships were all dressed in honour of a
+religious anniversary, and the cacique, hearing the firing of the
+lombards with which the festival was greeted, came down to the shore to
+see what was the matter.  As Columbus was sitting at dinner on deck
+beneath the poop the cacique arrived with all his people; and the account
+of his visit is preserved in Columbus’s own words.
+
+     “As he entered the ship he found that I was eating at the table
+     below the stern forecastle, and he came quickly to seat himself
+     beside me, and would not allow me to go to meet him or get up from
+     the table, but only that I should eat.  I thought that he would like
+     to eat some of our viands and I then ordered that things should be
+     brought him to eat.  And when he entered under the forecastle, he
+     signed with his hand that all his people should remain without, and
+     they did so with the greatest haste and respect in the world, and
+     all seated themselves on the deck, except two men of mature age whom
+     I took to be his counsellors and governors, and who came and seated
+     themselves at his feet: and of the viands which I placed before him
+     he took of each one as much as may be taken for a salutation, and
+     then he sent the rest to his people and they all ate some of it, and
+     he did the same with the drink, which he only touched to his mouth,
+     and then gave it to the others in the same way, and it was all done
+     in wonderful state and with very few words, and whatever he said,
+     according to what I was able to understand, was very formal and
+     prudent, and those two looked in his face and spoke for him and with
+     him, and with great respect.
+
+     “After eating, a page brought a belt which is like those of Castile
+     in shape, but of a different make, which he took and gave me, and
+     also two wrought pieces of gold, which were very thin, as I believe
+     they obtain very little of it here, although I consider they are
+     very near the place where it has its home, and that there is a great
+     deal of it.  I saw that a drapery that I had upon my bed pleased
+     him.  I gave it to him, and some very good amber beads which I wore
+     around my neck and some red shoes and a flask of orange-flower
+     water, with which he was so pleased it was wonderful; and he and his
+     governor and counsellors were very sorry that they did not
+     understand me, nor I them.  Nevertheless I understood that he told
+     me that if anything from here would satisfy me that all the island
+     was at my command.  I sent for some beads of mine, where as a sign I
+     have a ‘excelente’ of gold upon which the images of your Highnesses
+     are engraved, and showed it to him, and again told him the same as
+     yesterday, that your Highnesses command and rule over all the best
+     part of the world, and that there are no other such great Princes:
+     and I showed him the royal banners and the others with the cross,
+     which he held in great estimation: and he said to his counsellors
+     that your Highnesses must be great Lords, since you had sent me here
+     from so far without fear: and many other things happened which I did
+     not understand, except that I very well saw he considered everything
+     as very wonderful.”
+
+Later in the day Columbus got into talk with an old man who told him that
+there was a great quantity of gold to be found on some island about a
+hundred leagues away; that there was one island that was all gold; and
+that in the others there was such a quantity that they natives gathered
+it and sifted it with sieves and made it into bars.  The old man pointed
+out vaguely the direction in which this wonderful country lay; and if he
+had not been one of the principal persons belonging to the King Columbus
+would have detained him and taken him with him; but he decided that he
+had paid the cacique too much respect to make it right that he should
+kidnap one of his retinue.  He determined, however, to go and look for
+the gold.  Before he left he had a great cross erected in the middle of
+the Indian village; and as he made sail out of the harbour that evening
+he could see the Indians kneeling round the cross and adoring it.  He
+sailed eastward, anchoring for a day in the Bay of Acul, which he called
+Cabo de Caribata, receiving something like an ovation from the natives,
+and making them presents and behaving very graciously and kindly to them.
+
+It was at this time that Columbus made the acquaintance of a man whose
+character shines like a jewel amid the dismal scenes that afterwards
+accompanied the first bursting of the wave of civilisation on these happy
+shores.  This was the king of that part of the island, a young man named
+Guacanagari.  This king sent out a large canoe full of people to the
+Admiral’s ship, with a request that Columbus would land in his country,
+and a promise that the chief would give him whatever he had.  There
+must have been an Intelligence Department in the island, for the chief
+seemed to know what would be most likely to attract the Admiral; and with
+his messengers he sent out a belt with a large golden mask attached to
+it.  Unfortunately the natives on board the Admiral’s ship could not
+understand Guacanagari’s messengers, and nearly the whole of the day was
+passed in talking before the sense of their message was finally made out
+by means of signs.  In the evening some Spaniards were sent ashore to see
+if they could not get some gold; but Columbus, who had evidently had some
+recent experience of their avariciousness, and who was anxious to keep on
+good terms with the chiefs of the island, sent his secretary with them to
+see that they did nothing unjust or unreasonable.  He was scrupulous to
+see that the natives got their bits of glass and beads in exchange for
+the gold; and it is due to him to remember that now, as always, he was
+rigid in regulating his conduct with other men in accordance with his
+ideas of justice and honour, however elastic those ideas may seem to have
+been.  The ruffianly crew had in their minds only the immediate
+possession of what they could get from the Indians; the Admiral had in
+his mind the whole possession of the islands and the bodies and souls of
+its inhabitants.  If you take a piece of gold without giving a glass bead
+in exchange for it, it is called stealing; if you take a country and its
+inhabitants, and steal their peace from them, and give them blood and
+servitude in exchange for it, it is called colonisation and
+Empire-building.  Every one understands the distinction; but so few
+people see the difference that Columbus of all men may be excused for
+his unconsciousness of it.
+
+Indeed Columbus was seeing yellow at this point in his career.  The word
+“gold” is scattered throughout every page of his journal; he can
+understand nothing that the natives say to him except that there is a
+great quantity of gold somewhere about.  He is surrounded by natives
+pressing presents upon him, protesting their homage, and assuring him (so
+he thinks) that there are any amount of gold mines; and no wonder that
+the yellow light blinds his eyes and confounds his senses, and that
+sometimes, even when the sun has gone down and the natives have retired
+to their villages and he sits alone in the seclusion of his cabin, the
+glittering motes still dance before his eyes and he becomes mad, maudlin,
+ecstatic .  .  .  .  The light flickers in the lamp as the ship swings a
+little on the quiet tide and a night breeze steals through the cabin
+door; the sound of voices ashore sounds dimly across the water; the brain
+of the Admiral, overfilled with wonders and promises and hopes, sends its
+message to the trembling hand that holds the pen, and the incoherent
+words stream out on the ink.  “May our Lord in His mercy direct me until
+I find this gold, I say this Mine, because I have many people here who
+say that they know it.”
+
+On Christmas Eve a serious misfortune befell Columbus.  What with looking
+for gold, and trying to understand the people who talked about it, and
+looking after his ships, and writing up his journal, he had had
+practically no sleep for two days and a night; and at eleven o’clock on
+the 24th of December, the night being fine and his ship sailing along the
+coast with a light land breeze, he decided to lie down to get some sleep.
+There were no difficulties in navigation to be feared, because the ship’s
+boats had been rowed the day before a distance of about ten miles ahead
+on the course which they were then steering and had seen that there was
+open water all the way.  The wind fell calm; and the man at the helm,
+having nothing to do, and feeling sleepy, called a ship’s boy to him,
+gave him the helm, and went off himself to lie down.  This of course was
+against all rules; but as the Admiral was in his cabin and there was no
+one to tell them otherwise the watch on deck thought it a very good
+opportunity to rest.  Suddenly the boy felt the rudder catch upon
+something, saw the ship swinging, and immediately afterwards heard the
+sound of tide ripples.  He cried out; and in a moment Columbus, who was
+sleeping the light sleep of an anxious shipmaster, came tumbling up to
+see what was the matter.  The current, which flows in that place at a
+speed of about two knots, had carried the ship on to a sand bank, but she
+touched so quietly that it was hardly felt.  Close on the heels of,
+Columbus came the master of the ship and the delinquent watch; and the
+Admiral immediately ordered them to launch the ship’s boat--and lay out
+an anchor astern so that they could warp her off.  The wretches lowered
+the boat, but instead of getting the anchor on board rowed off in the
+direction of the Nina, which was lying a mile and a half to windward.
+As soon as Columbus saw what they were doing he ran to the side and,
+seeing that the tide was failing and that the ship had swung round across
+the bank, ordered the remainder of the crew to cut away the mainmast and
+throw the deck hamper overboard, in order to lighten the ship.  This took
+some time; the tide was falling, and the ship beginning to heel over on
+her beam; and by the time it was done the Admiral saw that it would be of
+no use, for the ship’s seams had opened and she was filling.
+
+At this point the miserable crew in the ship’s boat came back, the loyal
+people on the Nina having refused to receive them and sent them back to
+the assistance of the Admiral.  But it was now too late to do anything to
+save the ship; and as he did not know but that she might break up,
+Columbus decided to tranship the people to the Nina, who had by this time
+sent her own boat.  The whole company boarded the Nina, on which the
+Admiral beat about miserably till morning in the vicinity of his doomed
+ship.  Then he sent Diego de Arana, the brother of Beatriz and a trusty
+friend, ashore in a boat to beg the help of the King; and Guacanagari
+immediately sent his people with large canoes to unload the wrecked ship,
+which was done with great efficiency and despatch, and the whole of her
+cargo and fittings stored on shore under a guard.  And so farewell to the
+Santa Maria, whose bones were thenceforward to bleach upon the shores of
+Hayti, or incongruously adorn the dwellings of the natives.  She may have
+been “a bad sailer and unfit for discovery”; but no seaman looks without
+emotion upon the wreck of a ship whose stem has cut the waters of home,
+which has carried him safely over thousands of uncharted miles, and which
+has for so long been his shelter and sanctuary.
+
+
+At sunrise the kind-hearted cacique came down to the Nina, where Columbus
+had taken up his quarters, and with tears in his eyes begged the Admiral
+not to grieve at his losses, for that he, the cacique, would give him
+everything that he possessed; that he had already given two large houses
+to the Spaniards from the Santa Maria who had been obliged to encamp on
+shore, and that he would provide more accommodation and help if
+necessary.  In fact, the day which had been ushered in so disastrously
+turned into a very happy one; and before it was over Columbus had decided
+that, as he could not take the whole of his company home on the Nina, he
+would establish a settlement on shore so that the men who were left
+behind could collect gold and store it until more ships could be sent
+from Spain.  The natives came buzzing round anxious to barter whatever
+they had for hawks’ bells, which apparently were the most popular of the
+toys that had been brought for bartering; “they shouted and showed the
+pieces of gold, saying chuq, chuq, for hawks’ bells, as they are in a
+likely state to become crazy for them.”  The cacique was delighted to see
+that the Admiral was pleased with the gold that was brought to him, and
+he cheered him up by telling him that there was any amount in Cibao,
+which Columbus of course took for Cipango.  The cacique entertained
+Columbus to a repast on shore, at which the monarch wore a shirt and a
+pair of gloves that Columbus had given him; “and he rejoiced more over
+the gloves than anything that had been given him.”  Columbus was pleased
+with his clean and leisurely method of eating, and with his dainty
+rubbing of his hands with herbs after he had eaten.  After the repast
+Columbus gave a little demonstration of bow-and-arrow shooting and the
+firing of lombards and muskets, all of which astonished and impressed the
+natives.
+
+The afternoon was spent in deciding on a site for the fortress which was
+to be constructed; and Columbus had no difficulty in finding volunteers
+among the crews to remain in the settlement.  He promised to leave with
+them provisions of bread and wine for a year, a ship’s boat, seeds for
+sowing crops, and a carpenter, a caulker, a gunner, and a cooper.  Before
+the day was out he was already figuring up the profit that would arise
+out of his misfortune of the day before; and he decided that it was the
+act of God which had cast his ship away in order that this settlement
+should be founded.  He hoped that the settlers would have a ton of gold
+ready for him when he came back from Castile, so that, as he had said in
+the glittering camp of Santa Fe, where perhaps no one paid very much heed
+to him, there might be such a profit as would provide for the conquest of
+Jerusalem and the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre.  After all, if he was
+greedy for gold, he had a pious purpose for its employment.
+
+
+The last days of the year were very busy ones for the members of the
+expedition.  Assisted by the natives they were building the fort which,
+in memory of the day on which it was founded, Columbus called La
+Villa-de la Navidad.  The Admiral spent much time with King Guacanagari,
+who “loved him so much that it was wonderful,” and wished to cover him
+all over with gold before he went away, and begged him not to go before
+it was done.  On December 27th there was some good news; a caravel had
+been seen entering a harbour a little further along the coast; and as
+this could only mean that the Pinta had returned, Columbus borrowed a
+canoe from the king, and despatched a sailor in it to carry news of his
+whereabouts to the Pinta.  While it was away Guacanagari collected all
+the other kings and chiefs who were subject to him, and held a kind of
+durbar.  They all wore their crowns; and Guacanagari took off his crown
+and placed it on Columbus’s head; and the Admiral, not to be outdone,
+took from his own neck “a collar of good bloodstones and very beautiful
+beads of fine colours; which appeared very good in all parts, and placed
+it upon the King; and he took off a cloak of fine scarlet cloth which he
+had put on that day, and clothed the King with it; and he sent for some
+coloured buskins which he made him put on, and placed upon his finger a
+large silver ring”--all of which gives us a picturesque glimpse into the
+contents of the Admiral’s wardrobe, and a very agreeable picture of King
+Guacanagari, whom we must now figure as clothed, in addition to his
+shirt and gloves, in a pair of coloured buskins, a collar of
+bloodstones, a scarlet cloak and a silver ring.
+
+But the time was running short; the Admiral, hampered as he was by the
+possession of only one small ship, had now but one idea, which was to get
+back to Castile as quickly as possible, report the result of his
+discoveries, and come back again with a larger and more efficient
+equipment.  Before he departed he had an affectionate leave-taking with
+King Guacanagari; he gave him another shirt, and also provided a
+demonstration of the effect of lombards by having one loaded, and firing
+at the old Santa Maria where she lay hove down on the sandbank.  The shot
+went clean through her hull and fell into the sea beyond, and produced
+what might be called a very strong moral effect, although an unnecessary
+one, on the natives.  He then set about the very delicate business of
+organising the settlement.  In all, forty-two men were to remain behind,
+with Diego de Arana in the responsible position of chief lieutenant,
+assisted by Pedro Gutierrez and Rodrigo de Escovedo, the nephew of Friar
+Juan Perez of La Rabida.  To these three he delegated all his powers and
+authority as Admiral and Viceroy; and then, having collected the
+colonists, gave them a solemn address.  First, he reminded them of the
+goodness of God to them, and advised them to remain worthy of it by
+obeying the Divine command in all their actions.  Second, he ordered
+them, as a representative of the Sovereigns of Spain, to obey the captain
+whom he had appointed for them as they would have obeyed himself.  Third,
+he urged them to show respect and reverence towards King Guacanagari and
+his chiefs, and to the inferior chiefs, and to avoid annoying them or
+tormenting them, since they were to remain in a land that was as yet
+under native dominion; to “strive and watch by their soft and honest
+speech to gain their good-will and keep their friendship and love, so
+that he should find them as friendly and favourable and more so when he
+returned.”  Fourth, he commanded them “and begged them earnestly” to do
+no injury and use no force against any natives; to take nothing from them
+against their will; and especially to be on their guard to avoid injury
+or violence to the women, “by which they would cause scandal and set a
+bad example to the Indians and show the infamy of the Christians.”
+Fifth, he charged them not to scatter themselves or leave the place where
+they then were, but to remain together until he returned.  Sixth, he
+“animated” them to suffer their solitude and exile cheerfully and
+bravely, since they had willingly chosen it.  The seventh order was, that
+they should get help from the King to send boat expeditions in search of
+the gold mines; and lastly, he promised that he would petition the
+Sovereigns to honour them with special favours and rewards.  To this very
+manly, wise and humane address the people listened with some emotion,
+assuring Columbus that they placed their hopes in him, “begging him
+earnestly to remember them always, and that as quickly as he could he
+should give them the great joy which they anticipated from his coming
+again.”
+
+All of which things being done, the ships [ship--there was only the Nina]
+loaded and provisioned, and the Admiral’s final directions given, he
+makes his farewells and weighs anchor at sunrise on Friday, January 4.,
+1493.  Among the little crowd on the shore who watch the Nina growing
+smaller in the distance are our old friends Allard and William, tired of
+the crazy confinement of a ship and anxious for shore adventures.  They
+are to have their fill of them, as it happens; adventures that are to
+bring to the settlers a sudden cloud of blood and darkness, and for the
+islanders a brief return to their ancient peace.  But death waits for
+Allard and William in the sunshine and silence of Espanola.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE VOYAGE HOME
+
+Columbus did not stand out to sea on his homeward course immediately, but
+still coasted along the shores of the island as though he were loth to
+leave it, and as though he might still at some bend of a bay or beyond
+some verdant headland come upon the mines and jewels that he longed for.
+The mountain that he passed soon after starting he called Monte Christi,
+which name it bears to this day; and he saw many other mountains and
+capes and bays, to all of which he gave names.  And it was a fortunate
+chance which led him thus to stand along the coast of the island; for on
+January 6th the sailor who was at the masthead, looking into the clear
+water for shoals and rocks, reported that he saw the caravel Pinta right
+ahead.  When she came up with him, as they were in very shallow water not
+suitable for anchorage, Columbus returned to the bay of Monte Christi to
+anchor there.  Presently Martin Alonso Pinzon came on board to report
+himself--a somewhat crestfallen Martin, we may be sure, for he had failed
+to find the gold the hope of which had led him to break his honour as a
+seaman.  But the Martin Alonsos of this world, however sorry their
+position may be, will always find some kind of justification for it.  It
+must have been a trying moment for Martin Alonso as his boat from the
+Pinta drew near the Nina, and he saw the stalwart commanding figure of
+the white-haired Admiral walking the poop.  He knew very well that
+according to the law and custom of the sea Columbus would have been well
+within his right in shooting him or hanging him on the spot; but Martin
+puts on a bold face as, with a cold dread at his heart and (as likely as
+not) an ingratiating smile upon his face he comes up over the side.
+Perhaps, being in some ways a cleverer man than Christopher, he knew the
+Admiral’s weak points; knew that he was kind-hearted, and would remember
+those days of preparation at Palos when Martin Alonso had been his
+principal stay and help.  Martin’s story was that he had been separated
+from the Admiral against his will; that the crew insisted upon it, and
+that in any case they had only meant to go and find some gold and bring
+it back to the Admiral.  Columbus did not believe him for a moment, but
+either his wisdom or his weakness prevented him from saying so.  He
+reproached Martin Alonso for acting with pride and covetousness “that
+night when he went away and left him”; and Columbus could not think “from
+whence had come the haughty actions and dishonesty Martin had shown
+towards him on that voyage.”  Martin had done a good trade and had got a
+certain amount of gold; and no doubt he knew well in what direction to
+turn the conversation when it was becoming unpleasant to himself.  He
+told Columbus of an island to the south of Juana--[Cuba]--called
+Yamaye,--[Jamaica]--where pieces of gold were taken from the mines as
+large as kernels of wheat, and of another island towards the east which
+was inhabited only by women.
+
+The unpleasantness was passed over as soon as possible, although the
+Admiral felt that the sooner he got home the better, since he was
+practically at the mercy of the Pinzon brothers and their following from
+Palos.  He therefore had the Pinta beached and recaulked and took in wood
+and water, and continued his voyage on Tuesday, January 8th.  He says
+that “this night in the name of our Lord he will start on his journey
+without delaying himself further for any matter, since he had found what
+he had sought, and he did not wish to have more trouble with that Martin
+Alonso until their Highnesses learned the news of the voyage and what he
+has done.”  After that it will be another matter, and his turn will come;
+for then, he says, “I will not suffer the bad deeds of persons without
+virtue, who, with little respect, presume to carry out their own wills in
+opposition to those who did them honour.”  Indeed, for several days, the
+name of “that Martin Alonso” takes the place of gold in Columbus’s
+Journal.  There were all kinds of gossip about the ill deeds of Martin
+Alonso, who had taken four Indian men and two young girls by force; the
+Admiral releasing them immediately and sending them back to their homes.
+Martin Alonso, moreover, had made a rule that half the gold that was
+found was to be kept by himself; and he tried to get all the people of
+his ship to swear that he had been trading for only six days, but “his
+wickedness was so public that he could not hide it.”  It was a good thing
+that Columbus had his journal to talk to, for he worked off a deal of
+bitterness in it.  On Sunday, January 13th, when he had sent a boat
+ashore to collect some “ajes” or potatoes, a party of natives with their
+faces painted and with the plumes of parrots in their hair came and
+attacked the party from the boat; but on getting a slash or two with a
+cutlass they took to flight and escaped from the anger of the Spaniards.
+Columbus thought that they were cannibals or caribs, and would like to
+have taken some of them, but they did not come back, although afterwards
+he collected four youths who came out to the caravel with cotton and
+arrows.
+
+Columbus was very curious about the island of Matinino,--[Martinique]
+--which was the one said to be inhabited only by women, and he wished very
+much to go there; but the caravels were leaking badly, the crews were
+complaining, and he was reluctantly compelled to shape his course for
+Spain.  He sailed to the north-east, being anxious apparently to get into
+the region of westerly winds which he correctly guessed would be found to
+the north of the course he had sailed on his outward voyage.  By the 17th
+of January he was in the vicinity of the Sargasso Sea again, which this
+time had no terrors for him.  From his journal the word “gold” suddenly
+disappears; the Viceroy and Governor-General steps off the stage; and in
+his place appears the sea captain, watching the frigate birds and
+pelicans, noting the golden gulf-weed in the sea, and smelling the
+breezes that are once more as sweet as the breezes of Seville in May.  He
+had a good deal of trouble with his dead-reckoning at this time, owing to
+the changing winds and currents; but he made always from fifty to seventy
+miles a day in a direction between north-by-east and north-north-east.
+The Pinta was not sailing well, and he often had to wait for her to come
+up with him; and he reflected in his journal that if Martin Alonso Pinzon
+had taken as much pains to provide himself with a good mast in the Indies
+as he had to separate himself from the Admiral, the Pinta would have
+sailed better.
+
+And so he went on for several days, with the wind veering always south
+and south-west, and pointing pretty steadily to the north-east.  On
+February 4th he changed his course, and went as near due east as he
+could.  They now began to find themselves in considerable doubt as to
+their position.  The Admiral said he was seventy-five leagues to the
+south of Flores; Vincenti Pinzon and the pilots thought that they had
+passed the Azores and were in the neighbourhood of Madeira.  In other
+words, there was a difference of 600 miles between their estimates,
+and the Admiral remarks that “the grace of God permitting, as soon as
+land is seen, it will be known who has calculated the surest.”
+
+A great quantity of birds that began to fly about the ship made him think
+that they were near land, but they turned out to be the harbingers of a
+storm.  On Tuesday, February 12th, the sea and wind began to rise, and it
+continued to blow harder throughout that night and the next day.  The
+wind being aft he went under bare poles most of the night, and when day
+came hoisted a little sail; but the sea was terrible, and if he had not
+been so sure of the staunch little Nina he would have felt himself in
+danger of being lost.  The next day the sea, instead of going down,
+increased in roughness; there was a heavy cross sea which kept breaking
+right over the ship, and it became necessary to make a little sail in
+order to run before the wind, and to prevent the vessel falling back into
+the trough of the seas.  All through Thursday he ran thus under the half
+hoisted staysail, and he could see the Pinta running also before the
+wind, although since she presented more surface, and was able to carry a
+little more sail than the Nina, she was soon lost to sight.  The Admiral
+showed lights through the night, and this time there was no lack of
+response from Martin Alonso; and for some part of that dark and stormy
+night these two humanly freighted scraps of wood and cordage staggered
+through the gale showing lights to each other; until at last the light
+from the Pinta disappeared.  When morning came she was no longer to be
+seen; and the wind and the sea had if anything increased.  The Nina was
+now in the greatest danger.  Any one wave of the heavy cross sea, if it
+had broken fairly across her, would have sunk her; and she went swinging
+and staggering down into the great valleys and up into the hills, the
+steersman’s heart in his mouth, and the whole crew in an extremity of
+fear.  Columbus, who generally relied upon his seamanship, here invoked
+external aid, and began to offer bargains to the Almighty.  He ordered
+that lots should be cast, and that he upon whom the lot fell should make
+a vow to go on pilgrimage to Santa Maria de Guadaloupe carrying a white
+candle of five pounds weight.  Same dried peas were brought, one for
+every member of the crew, and on one of them a cross was marked with a
+knife; the peas were well shaken and were put into a cap.  The first to
+draw was the Admiral; he drew the marked pea, and he made the vow.  Lots
+were again drawn, this time for a greater pilgrimage to Santa Maria de
+Loretto in Ancona; and the lot fell on a seaman named Pedro de Villa,
+--the expenses of whose pilgrimage Columbus promised to pay.  Again lots
+were drawn for a pilgrimage to the shrine of Santa Clara of Moguer, the
+pilgrim to watch and pray for one night there; and again the lot fell on
+Columbus.  In addition to these, every one, since they took themselves
+for lost, made some special and private vow or bargain with God; and
+finally they all made a vow together that at the first land they reached
+they would go in procession in their shirts to pray at an altar of Our
+Lady.
+
+The scene thus conjured up is one peculiar to the time and condition of
+these people, and is eloquent and pathetic enough: the little ship
+staggering and bounding along before the wind, and the frightened crew,
+who had gone through so many other dangers, huddled together under the
+forecastle, drawing peas out of a cap, crossing themselves, making vows
+upon their knees, and seeking to hire the protection of the Virgin by
+their offers of candles and pilgrimages.  Poor Christopher, standing in
+his drenched oilskins and clinging to a piece of rigging, had his own
+searching of heart and examining of conscience.  He was aware of the
+feverish anxiety and impatience that he felt, now that he had been
+successful in discovering a New World, to bring home the news and fruits
+of it; his desire to prove true what he had promised was so great that,
+in his own graphic phrase, “it seemed to him that every gnat could
+disturb and impede it”; and he attributed this anxiety to his lack of
+faith in God.  He comforted himself, like Robinson Crusoe in a similar
+extremity, by considering on the other hand what favours God had shown
+him, and by remembering that it was to the glory of God that the fruits
+of his discovery were to be dedicated.  But in the meantime here he was
+in a ship insufficiently ballasted (for she was now practically empty of
+provisions, and they had found it necessary to fill the wine and water
+casks with salt water in order to trim her) and flying before a tempest
+such as he had never experienced in his life.  As a last resource, and in
+order to give his wonderful news a chance of reaching Spain in case the
+ship were lost, he went into his cabin and somehow or other managed to
+write on a piece of parchment a brief account of his discoveries, begging
+any one who might find it to carry it to the Spanish Sovereigns.  He tied
+up the parchment in a waxed cloth, and put it into a large barrel without
+any one seeing him, and then ordered the barrel to be thrown into the
+sea, which the crew took to be some pious act of sacrifice or devotion.
+Then he went back on deck and watched the last of the daylight going and
+the green seas swelling and thundering about his little ship, and thought
+anxiously of his two little boys at school in Cordova, and wondered what
+would become of them if he were lost.  The next morning the wind had
+changed a little, though it was still very high; but he was able to hoist
+up the bonnet or topsail, and presently the sea began to go down a
+little.  When the sun rose they saw land to the east-north-east.  Some of
+them thought it was Madeira, others the rock of Cintra in Portugal; the
+pilots said it was the coast of Spain, the Admiral thought it was the
+Azores; but at any rate it was land of some kind.  The sun was shining
+upon it and upon the tumbling sea; and although the waves were still
+raging mast-high and the wind still blowing a hard gale, the miserable
+crew were able to hope that, having lived through the night, they could
+live through the day also.  They had to beat about to make the land,
+which was now ahead of them, now on the beam, and now astern; and
+although they had first sighted it at sunrise on Friday morning it was
+early on Monday morning, February 18th, before Columbus was able to cast
+anchor off the northern coast of an island which he discovered to be the
+island of Santa Maria in the Azores.  On this day Columbus found time to
+write a letter to Luis de Santangel, the royal Treasurer, giving a full
+account of his voyage and discoveries; which letter he kept and
+despatched on the 4th of March, after he had arrived in Lisbon.  Since it
+contained a postscript written at the last moment we shall read it at
+that stage of our narrative.  The inhabitants of Santa Maria received the
+voyagers with astonishment, for they believed that nothing could have
+lived through the tempest that had been raging for the last fortnight.
+They were greatly excited by the story of the discoveries; and the
+Admiral, who had now quite recovered command of himself, was able to
+pride himself on the truth of his dead-reckoning, which had proved to be
+so much more accurate than that of the pilots.
+
+On the Tuesday evening three men hailed them from the shore, and when
+they were brought off to the ship delivered a message from the Portuguese
+Governor of the island, Juan de Castaneda, to the effect that he knew the
+Admiral very well, and that he was delighted to hear of his wonderful
+voyage.  The next morning Columbus, remembering the vow that had been
+made in the storm, sent half the crew ashore in their shirts to a little
+hermitage, which was on the other side of a point a short distance away,
+and asked the Portuguese messenger to send a priest to say Mass for them.
+While the members of the crew were at their prayers, however, they
+received a rude surprise.  They were suddenly attacked by the islanders,
+who had come up on horses under the command of the treacherous Governor,
+and taken prisoners.  Columbus waited unsuspectingly for the boat to come
+back with them, in order that he and the other half of the crew could go
+and perform their vow.
+
+When the boat did not come back he began to fear that some accident must
+have happened to it, and getting his anchor up he set sail for the point
+beyond which the hermitage was situated.  No sooner had he rounded the
+point than he saw a band of horsemen, who dismounted, launched the boat
+which was drawn up on the beach, and began to row out, evidently with the
+intention of attacking the Admiral.  When they came up to the Nina the
+man in command of them rose and asked Columbus to assure him of personal
+safety; which assurance was wonderingly given; and the Admiral inquired
+how it was that none of his own people were in the boat?  Columbus
+suspected treachery and tried to meet it with treachery also,
+endeavouring with smooth words to get the captain to come on board so
+that he could seize him as a hostage.  But as the Portuguese would not
+come on board Columbus told them that they were acting very unwisely in
+affronting his people; that in the land of the Sovereigns of Castile the
+Portuguese were treated with great honour and security; that he held
+letters of recommendation from the Sovereigns addressed to every ruler in
+the world, and added that he was their Admiral of the Ocean Seas and
+Viceroy of the Indies, and could show the Portuguese his commission to
+that effect; and finally, that if his people were not returned to him, he
+would immediately make sail for Spain with the crew that was left to him
+and report this insult to the Spanish Sovereigns.  To all of which the
+Portuguese captain replied that he did not know any Sovereigns of
+Castile; that neither they nor their letters were of any account in that
+island; that they were not afraid of Columbus; and that they would have
+him know that he had Portugal to deal with--edging away in the boat at
+the same time to a convenient distance from the caravel.  When he thought
+he was out of gunshot he shouted to Columbus, ordering him to take his
+caravel back to the harbour by command of the Governor of the island.
+Columbus answered by calling his crew to witness that he pledged his word
+not to descend from or leave his caravel until he had taken a hundred
+Portuguese to Castile, and had depopulated all their islands.  After
+which explosion of words he returned to the harbour and anchored there,
+“as the weather and wind were very unfavourable for anything else.”
+
+He was, however, in a very bad anchorage, with a rocky bottom which
+presently fouled his anchors; and on the Wednesday he had to make sail
+towards the island of San Miguel if order to try and find a better
+anchorage.
+
+But the wind and sea getting up again very badly he was obliged to beat
+about all night in a very unpleasant situation, with only three sailors
+who could be relied upon, and a rabble of gaol-birds and longshoremen who
+were of little use in a tempest but to draw lots and vow pilgrimages.
+Finding himself unable to make the island of San Miguel he decided to go
+back to Santa Maria and make an attempt to recover his boat and his crew
+and the anchor and cables he had lost there.
+
+In his Journal for this day, and amid all his anxieties, he found time to
+note down one of his curious visionary cosmographical reflections.  This
+return to a region of storms and heavy seas reminded him of the long
+months he had spent in the balmy weather and calm waters of his
+discovery; in which facts he found a confirmation of the theological idea
+that the Eden, or Paradise, of earth was “at the end of the Orient,
+because it is a most temperate place.  So that these lands which he had
+now discovered are at the end of the Orient.”  Reflections such as these,
+which abound in his writings, ought in themselves to be a sufficient
+condemnation of those who have endeavoured to prove that Columbus was a
+man of profound cosmographical learning and of a scientific mind.  A man
+who would believe that he had discovered the Orient because in the place
+where he had been he had found calm weather, and because the theologians
+said that the Garden of Eden must be in the Orient since it is a
+temperate place, would believe anything.
+
+Late on Thursday night, when he anchored again in the harbour of San
+Lorenzo at Santa Maria, a man hailed them from the rocks, and asked them
+not to go away.  Presently a boat containing five sailors, two priests,
+and a notary put off from the beach; and they asked for a guarantee of
+security in order that they might treat with the Admiral.  They slept on
+board that night, and in the morning asked him to show them his authority
+from the Spanish Sovereigns, which the Admiral did, understanding that
+they had asked for this formality in order to save their dignity.  He
+showed them his general letter from the King and Queen of Spain,
+addressed to “Princes and Lords of High Degree”; and being satisfied with
+this they went ashore and released the Admiral’s people, from whom he
+learned that what had been done had been done by command of the King of
+Portugal, and that he had issued an order to the Governors of all the
+Portuguese islands that if Columbus landed there on his way home he was
+to be taken prisoner.
+
+He sailed again on Sunday, February 24th, encountering heavy winds and
+seas, which troubled him greatly with fears lest some disaster should
+happen at the eleventh hour to interfere with his, triumph.  On Sunday,
+March 3rd, the wind rose to the force of a hurricane, and, on a sudden
+gust of violent wind splitting all the sails, the unhappy crew gathered
+together again and drew more lots and made more vows.  This time the
+pilgrimage was to be to the shrine of Santa Maria at Huelva, the pilgrim
+to go as before in his shirt; and the lot fell to the Admiral.  The rest
+of them made a vow to fast on the next Saturday on bread and water; but
+as they all thought it extremely unlikely that by that time they would be
+in need of any bodily sustenance the sacrifice could hardly have been a
+great one.  They scudded along under bare poles and in a heavy cross sea
+all that night; but at dawn on Monday they saw land ahead of them, which
+Columbus recognised as the rock of Cintra at Lisbon; and at Lisbon sure
+enough they landed some time during the morning.  As soon as they were
+inside the river the people came flocking down with stories of the gale
+and of all the wrecks that there had been on the coast.  Columbus hurried
+away from the excited crowds to write a letter to the King of Portugal,
+asking him for a safe conduct to Spain, and assuring him that he had come
+from the Indies, and not from any of the forbidden regions of Guinea.
+
+The next day brought a visit from no less a person than Bartholomew Diaz.
+Columbus had probably met him before in 1486, when Diaz had been a
+distinguished man and Columbus a man not distinguished; but now things
+were changed.  Diaz ordered Columbus to come on board his small vessel in
+order to go and report himself to the King’s officers; but Columbus
+replied that he was the Admiral of the Sovereigns of Castile, “that he
+did not render such account to such persons,” and that he declined to
+leave his ship.  Diaz then ordered him to send the captain of the Nina;
+but Columbus refused to send either the captain or any other person, and
+otherwise gave himself airs as the Admiral of the Ocean Seas.  Diaz then
+moderated his requests, and merely asked Columbus to show him his letter
+of authority, which Columbus did; and then Diaz went away and brought
+back with him the captain of the Portuguese royal yacht, who came in
+great state on board the shabby little Nina, with kettle-drums and
+trumpets and pipes, and placed himself at the disposal of Columbus.  It
+is a curious moment, this, in which the two great discoverers of their
+time, Diaz and Columbus, meet for an hour on the deck of a forty-ton
+caravel; a curious thing to consider that they who had performed such
+great feats of skill and bravery, one to discover the southernmost point
+of the old world and the other to voyage across an uncharted ocean to the
+discovery of an entirely new world, could find nothing better to talk
+about than their respective ranks and glories; and found no more
+interesting subject of discussion than the exact amount of state and
+privilege which should be accorded to each.
+
+
+During the day or two in which Columbus waited in the port crowds of
+people came down from Lisbon to see the little Nina, which was an object
+of much admiration and astonishment; to see the Indians also, at whom
+they greatly marvelled.  It was probably at this time that the letter
+addressed to Luis de Santangel, containing the first official account of
+the voyage, was despatched.
+
+                                   *
+                                 *****
+                                   *
+                                   *
+
+     “Sir: As I am sure you will be pleased at the great victory which
+     the Lord has given me in my voyage, I write this to inform you that
+     in twenty’ days I arrived in the Indies with the squadron which
+     their Majesties had placed under my command.  There I discovered
+     many islands, inhabited by a numerous population, and took
+     possession of them for their Highnesses, with public ceremony and
+     the royal flag displayed, without molestation.
+
+     “The first that I discovered I named San Salvador, in remembrance of
+     that Almighty Power which had so miraculously bestowed them.  The
+     Indians call it Guanahani.  To the second I assigned the name of
+     Santa Marie de Conception; to the third that of Fernandina; to the
+     fourth that of Isabella; to the fifth Juana; and so on, to every one
+     a new name.
+
+     “When I arrived at Juana, I followed the coast to the westward, and
+     found it so extensive that I considered it must be a continent and a
+     province of Cathay.  And as I found no towns or villages by the
+     seaside, excepting some small settlements, with the people of which
+     I could not communicate because they all ran away, I continued my
+     course to the westward, thinking I should not fail to find some
+     large town and cities.  After having coasted many leagues without
+     finding any signs of them, and seeing that the coast took me to the
+     northward, where I did not wish to go, as the winter was already set
+     in, I considered it best to follow the coast to the south and the
+     wind being also scant, I determined to lose no more time, and
+     therefore returned to a certain port, from whence I sent two
+     messengers into the country to ascertain whether there was any king
+     there or any large city.
+
+     “They travelled for three days, finding an infinite number of small
+     settlements and an innumerable population, but nothing like a city:
+     on which account--they returned.  I had tolerably well ascertained
+     from some Indians whom I had taken that this land was only an
+     island, so I followed the coast of it to the east 107 leagues, to
+     its termination.  And about eighteen leagues from this cape, to the
+     east, there was another island, to which I shortly gave the name of
+     Espanola.  I went to it, and followed the north coast of it, as I
+     had done that of Juana, for 178--[should be 188]--long leagues due
+     east.
+
+     “This island is very fertile, as well, indeed, as all the rest.  It
+     possesses numerous harbours, far superior to any I know in Europe,
+     and what is remarkable, plenty of large inlets.  The land is high,
+     and contains many lofty ridges and some very high mountains, without
+     comparison of the island of Centrefrey;--[Tenerife]--all of them
+     very handsome and of different forms; all of them accessible and
+     abounding in trees of a thousand kinds, high, and appearing as if
+     they would reach the skies.  And I am assured that the latter never
+     lose their fresh foliage, as far as I can understand, for I saw them
+     as fresh and flourishing as those of Spain in the month of May.
+     Some were in blossom, some bearing fruit, and others in other
+     states, according to their nature.
+
+     “The nightingale and a thousand kinds of birds enliven the woods
+     with their song, in the month of November, wherever I went.  There
+     are seven or eight kinds of palms, of various elegant forms, besides
+     various other trees, fruits, and herbs.  The pines of this island
+     are magnificent.  It has also extensive plains, honey, and a great
+     variety of birds and fruits.  It has many metal mines, and a
+     population innumerable.
+
+     “Espanola is a wonderful island, with mountains, groves, plains, and
+     the country generally beautiful and rich for planting and sowing,
+     for rearing sheep and cattle of all kinds, and ready for towns and
+     cities.  The harbours must be seen to be appreciated; rivers are
+     plentiful and large and of excellent water; the greater part of them
+     contain gold.  There is a great difference between the trees,
+     fruits, and herbs of this island and those of Juana.  In this island
+     there are many spices, and large mines of gold and other metals.
+
+     “The people of this island and of all the others which I have
+     discovered or heard of, both men and women, go naked as they were
+     born, although some of the women wear leaves of herbs or a cotton
+     covering made on purpose.  They have no iron or steel, nor any
+     weapons; not that they are not a well-disposed people and of fine
+     stature, but they are timid to a degree.  They have no other arms
+     excepting spears made of cane, to which they fix at the end a sharp
+     piece of wood, and then dare not use even these.  Frequently I had
+     occasion to send two or three of my men onshore to some settlement
+     for information, where there would be multitudes of them; and as
+     soon as they saw our people they would run away every soul, the
+     father leaving his child; and this was not because any one had done
+     them harm, for rather at every cape where I had landed and been able
+     to communicate with them I have made them presents of cloth and many
+     other things without receiving anything in return; but because they
+     are so timid.  Certainly, where they have confidence and forget
+     their fears, they are so open-hearted and liberal with all they
+     possess that it is scarcely to be believed without seeing it.  If
+     anything that they have is asked of them they never deny it; on the
+     contrary, they will offer it.  Their generosity is so great that
+     they would give anything, whether it is costly or not, for anything
+     of every kind that is offered them and be contented with it.  I was
+     obliged to prevent such worth less things being given them as pieces
+     of broken basins, broken glass, and bits of shoe-latchets, although
+     when they obtained them they esteemed them as if they had been the
+     greatest of treasures.  One of the seamen for a latchet received a
+     piece of gold weighing two dollars and a half, and others, for other
+     things of much less value, obtained more.  Again, for new silver
+     coin they would give everything they possessed, whether it was worth
+     two or three doubloons or one or two balls of cotton.  Even for
+     pieces of broken pipe-tubes they would take them and give anything
+     for them, until, when I thought it wrong, I prevented it.  And I
+     made them presents of thousands of things which I had, that I might
+     win their esteem, and also that they might be made good Christians
+     and be disposed to the service of Your Majesties and the whole
+     Spanish nation, and help us to obtain the things which we require
+     and of which there is abundance in their country.
+
+     “And these people appear to have neither religion nor idolatry,
+     except that they believe that good and evil come from the skies; and
+     they firmly believed that our ships and their crews, with myself,
+     came from the skies, and with this persuasion,--after having lost
+     their fears, they always received us.  And yet this does not proceed
+     from ignorance, for they are very ingenious, and some of them
+     navigate their seas in a wonderful manner and give good account of
+     things, but because they never saw people dressed or ships like
+     ours.
+
+     “And as soon as I arrived in the Indies, at the first island at
+     which I touched, I captured some of them, that we might learn from
+     them and obtain intelligence of what there was in those parts.  And
+     as soon as we understood each other they were of great service to
+     us; but yet, from frequent conversation which I had with them, they
+     still believe we came from the skies.  These were the first to
+     express that idea, and others ran from house to house, and to the
+     neighbouring villages, crying out, “Come and see the people from the
+     skies.”  And thus all of them, men and women, after satisfying
+     themselves of their safety, came to us without reserve, great and
+     small, bringing us something to eat and drink, and which they gave
+     to us most affectionately.
+
+     “They have many canoes in those islands propelled by oars, some of
+     them large and others small, and many of them with eight or ten
+     paddles of a side, not very wide, but all of one trunk, and a boat
+     cannot keep way with them by oars, for they are incredibly fast; and
+     with these they navigate all the islands, which are innumerable, and
+     obtain their articles of traffic.  I have seen some of these canoes
+     with sixty or eighty men in them, and each with a paddle.
+
+     “Among the islands I did not find much diversity of formation in the
+     people, nor in their customs, nor their language.  They all
+     understand each other, which is remarkable; and I trust Your
+     Highnesses will determine on their being converted to our faith, for
+     which they are very well disposed.
+
+     “I have already said that I went 107 leagues along the coast of
+     Juana, from east to west.  Thus, according to my track, it is larger
+     than England and Scotland together, for, besides these 107 leagues,
+     there were further west two provinces to which I did not go, one of
+     which is called Cibau, the people of which are born with tails;
+     which provinces must be about fifty or sixty leagues long, according
+     to what I can make out from the Indians I have with me, who know all
+     the islands.  The other island (Espanola) is larger in circuit than
+     the whole of Spain, from the Straits of Gibralter (the Columns) to
+     Fuentarabia in Biscay, as I sailed 138 long leagues in a direct line
+     from west to east.  Once known it must be desired, and once seen one
+     desires never to leave it; and which, being taken possession of for
+     their Highnesses, and the people being at present in a condition
+     lower than I can possibly describe, the Sovereigns of Castile may
+     dispose of it in any manner they please in the most convenient
+     places.  In this Espanola, and in the best district, where are gold
+     mines, and, on the other side, from thence to terra firma, as well
+     as from thence to the Great Khan, where everything is on a splendid
+     scale--I have taken possession of a large town, to which I gave the
+     name of La Navidad, and have built a fort in it, in every respect
+     complete.  And I have left sufficient people in it to take care of
+     it, with artillery and provisions for more than a year; also a boat
+     and coxswain with the equipments, in complete friendship with the
+     King of the islands, to that degree that he delighted to call me and
+     look on me as his brother.  And should they fall out with these
+     people, neither he nor his subjects know anything of weapons, and go
+     naked, as I have said, and they are the most timorous people in the
+     world.  The few people left there are sufficient to conquer the
+     country, and the island would thus remain without danger to them,
+     they keeping order among themselves.
+
+     “In all these islands it appeared to me the men are contented with
+     one wife, but to their governor or king they allow twenty.  The
+     women seem to work more than the men.  I have not been able to
+     discover whether they respect personal property, for it appeared to
+     me things were common to all, especially in the particular of
+     provisions.  Hitherto I have not seen in any of these islands any
+     monsters, as there were supposed to be; the people, on the contrary,
+     are generally well formed, nor are they black like those of the
+     Guinea, saving their hair, and they do not reside in places exposed
+     to the sun’s rays.  It is true that the sun is most powerful there,
+     and it is only twenty-six degrees from the equator.  In this last
+     winter those islands which were mountainous were cold, but they were
+     accustomed to it, with good food and plenty of spices and hot
+     nutriment.  Thus I have found no monsters nor heard of any, except
+     at an island which is the second in going to the Indies, and which
+     is inhabited by a people who are considered in all the islands as
+     ferocious, and who devour human flesh.  These people have many
+     canoes, which scour all the islands of India, and plunder all they
+     can.  They are not worse formed than the others, but they wear the
+     hair long like women, and use bows and arrows of the same kind of
+     cane, pointed with a piece of hard wood instead of iron, of which
+     they have none.  They are fierce compared with the other people, who
+     are in general but sad cowards; but I do not consider them in any
+     other way superior to them.  These are they who trade in women, who
+     inhabit the first island met with in going from Spain to the Indies,
+     in which there are no men whatever.  They have no effeminate
+     exercise, but bows and arrows, as before said, of cane, with which
+     they arm themselves, and use shields of copper, of which they have
+     plenty.
+
+     “There is another island, I am told, larger than Espanola, the
+     natives of which have no hair.  In this there is gold without limit,
+     and of this and the others I have Indians with me to witness.
+
+     “In conclusion, referring only to what has been effected by this
+     voyage, which was made with so much haste, Your Highnesses may see
+     that I shall find as much gold as desired with the very little
+     assistance afforded to me; there is as much spice and cotton as can
+     be wished for, and also gum, which hitherto has only been found in
+     Greece, in the island of Chios, and they may sell it as they please,
+     and the mastich, as much as may be desired, and slaves, also, who
+     will be idolators.  And I believe that I have rhubarb, and cinnamon,
+     and a thousand other things I shall find, which will be discovered
+     by those whom I have left behind, for I did not stop at any cape
+     when the wind enabled me to navigate, except at the town of Navidad,
+     where I was very safe and well taken care of.  And in truth much
+     more I should have done if the ships had served me as might have
+     been expected.  This is certain, that the Eternal God our Lord gives
+     all things to those who obey Him, and the victory when it seems
+     impossible, and this, evidently, is an instance of it, for although
+     people have talked of these lands, all was conjecture unless proved
+     by seeing them, for the greater part listened and judged more by
+     hearsay than by anything else.
+
+     “Since, then, our Redeemer has given this victory to our illustrious
+     King and Queen and celebrated their reigns by such a great thing,
+     all Christendom should rejoice and make great festivals, and give
+     solemn thanks to the Blessed Trinity, with solemn praises for the
+     exaltation of so much people to our holy faith; and next for the
+     temporal blessings which not only Spain but they will enjoy in
+     becoming Christians, and which last may shortly be accomplished.
+
+     “Written in the caravel off Santa Maria; on the eighteenth of
+     February, ninety-three.”
+
+The following postscript was added to the letter before it was
+despatched:
+
+     “After writing the above, being in the Castilian Sea (off the coast
+     of Castile), I experienced so severe a wind from south and
+     south-east that I have been obliged to run to-day into this port of
+     Lisbon, and only by a miracle got safely in, from whence I intended
+     to write to Your Highnesses.  In all parts of the Indies I have
+     found the weather like that of May, where I went in ninety-three
+     days, and returned in seventy-eight, saving these thirteen days of
+     bad weather that I have been detained beating about in this sea.
+     Every seaman here says that never was so severe a winter, nor such
+     loss of ships.”
+
+
+On the Friday a messenger came from the King in the person of Don Martin
+de Noronha, a relative of Columbus by marriage, and one who had perhaps
+looked down upon him in the days when he attended the convent chapel at
+Lisbon, but who was now the bearer of a royal invitation and in the
+position of a mere envoy.  Columbus repaired to Paraiso where the King
+was, and where he was received with great honour.
+
+King John might well have been excused if he had felt some mortification
+at this glorious and successful termination of a project which had been
+offered to him and which he had rejected; but he evidently behaved with
+dignity and a good grace, and did everything that he could to help
+Columbus.  It was extremely unlikely that he had anything to do with the
+insult offered to Columbus at the Azores, for though he was bitterly
+disappointed that the glory of this discovery belonged to Spain and not
+to Portugal, he was too much of a man to show it in this petty and
+revengeful manner.  He offered to convey Columbus by land into Spain; but
+the Admiral, with a fine dramatic sense, preferred to arrive by sea on
+board of all that was left of the fleet with which he had sailed.  He
+sailed for Seville on Wednesday, March 13th, but during the next day,
+when he was off Cape Saint Vincent, he evidently changed his mind and
+decided to make for Palos.  Sunrise on Friday saw him off the bar of
+Saltes, with the white walls of La Rabida shining on the promontory among
+the dark fir-trees.  During the hours in which he stood off and on
+waiting for the tide he was able to recognise again all the old landmarks
+and the scenes which had been so familiar to him in those busy days of
+preparation nine months before; and at midday he sailed in with the flood
+tide and dropped his anchor again in the mud of the river by Palos.
+
+The caravel had been sighted some time before, probably when she was
+standing off, the bar waiting for the tide; she was flying the Admiral’s
+flag and there was no mistaking her identity; and we can imagine the news
+spreading throughout the town of Palos, and reaching Huelva, and one by
+one the bells beginning to ring, and the places of business to be closed,
+and the people to come pouring out into the streets to be ready to greet
+their friends.  Some more impatient than the others would sail out in
+fishing-boats to get the first news; and I should be surprised to know
+that a boat did not put off from the little pier beneath La Rabida, to
+row round the point and out to where the Nina was lying--to beyond the
+Manto Bank.  When the flood began to make over the bar and to cover the
+long sandbank that stretches from the island of Saltes, the Nina came
+gliding in, greeted by every joyful sound and signal that the inhabitants
+of the two seaports could make.  Every one hurried down to Palos as the
+caravel rounded the Convent Point.  Hernando, Marchena, and good old Juan
+Perez were all there, we may be sure.  Such excitements, such triumphs as
+the bronzed, white-bearded Admiral steps ashore at last, and is seized by
+dozens of eager hands!  Such excitements as all the wives and inamoratas
+of the Rodrigos and Juans and Franciscos rush to meet the swarthy
+voyagers and cover them with embraces; such disappointments also, when it
+is realised that some two score of the company are still on a sunbaked
+island infinitely far over the western horizon.
+
+Tears of joy and grief, shouts and feastings, firing of guns and flying
+of flags, processions and receptions with these the deathless day is
+filled; and the little Nina, her purpose staunchly fulfilled, swings
+deserted on the turning tide, the ripples of her native Tinto making a
+familiar music under her bowsprit.
+
+
+And in the evening, with the last of the flood, another ship comes
+gliding round the point and up the estuary.  The inhabitants of Palos
+have all left the shore and are absorbed in the business of welcoming the
+great man; and there is no one left to notice or welcome the Pinta.  For
+it is she that, by a strange coincidence, and after many dangers and
+distresses endured since she had parted company from the Nina in the
+storm, now has made her native port on the very same day as the Nina.
+Our old friend Martin Alonso Pinzon is on board, all the fight and
+treachery gone out of him, and anxious only to get home unobserved.  For
+(according to the story) he had made the port of Bayona on the north-west
+coast of Spain, and had written a letter from there to the Sovereigns
+announcing his arrival and the discoveries that he had made; and it is
+said that he had received an unpleasant letter in return, reproaching him
+for not waiting for his commander and forbidding him to come to Court.
+This story is possible if his letter reached the Sovereigns after the
+letter from the Admiral; for it is probable that Columbus may have
+reported some of Martin’s doings to them.
+
+Be that as it may, there are no flags and guns for him as he comes
+creeping in up the river; his one anxiety is to avoid the Admiral and to
+get home as quickly and quietly as he can.  For he is ill, poor Martin
+Alonso; whether from a broken heart, as the early historians say, or from
+pure chagrin and disappointment, or, as is more likely, from some illness
+contracted on the voyage, it is impossible to say.  He has endured his
+troubles and hardships like all the rest of them; no less skilfully than
+Columbus has he won through that terrible tempest of February; and his
+foolish and dishonest conduct has deprived him not only of the rewards
+that he tried to steal, but of those which would otherwise have been his
+by right.  He creeps quietly ashore and to his home, where at any rate we
+may hope that there is some welcome for him; takes to his bed, turns his
+face to the wall; and dies in a few days.  So farewell to Martin Alonso,
+who has borne us company thus far.  He did not fail in the great matters
+of pluck and endurance and nautical judgment, but only in the small
+matters of honesty and decent manly conduct.  We will not weep for Martin
+Alonso; we will make our farewells in silence, and leave his deathbed
+undisturbed by any more accusations or reproaches.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE HOUR OF TRIUMPH
+
+From the moment when Columbus set foot on Spanish soil in the spring of
+1493 he was surrounded by a fame and glory which, although they were
+transient, were of a splendour such as few other men can have ever
+experienced.  He had not merely discovered a country, he had discovered a
+world.  He had not merely made a profitable expedition; he had brought
+the promise of untold wealth to the kingdom of Spain.  He had not merely
+made himself the master of savage tribes; he had conquered the
+supernatural, and overcome for ever those powers of darkness that had
+been thought to brood over the vast Atlantic.  He had sailed away in
+obscurity, he had returned in fame; he had departed under a cloud of
+scepticism and ridicule, he had come again in power and glory.  He had
+sailed from Palos as a seeker after hidden wealth, hidden knowledge; he
+returned as teacher, discoverer, benefactor.  The whole of Spain rang
+with his fame, and the echoes of it spread to Portugal, France, England,
+Germany, and Italy; and it reached the ears of his own family, who had
+now left the Vico Dritto di Ponticello in Genoa and were living at
+Savona.
+
+His life ashore in the first weeks following his return was a succession
+of triumphs and ceremonials.  His first care on landing had been to go
+with the whole of his crew to the church of Saint George, where a Te Deum
+was sung in honour of his return; and afterwards to perform those vows
+that he had made at sea in the hour of danger.  There was a certain
+amount of business to transact at Palos in connection with the paying of
+the ships’ crews, writing of reports to the Sovereigns, and so forth; and
+it is likely that he stayed with his friends at the monastery of La
+Rabida while this was being done.  The Court was at Barcelona; and it was
+probably only a sense of his own great dignity and importance that
+prevented Christopher from setting off on the long journey immediately.
+But he who had made so many pilgrimages to Court as a suitor could revel
+in a position that made it possible for him to hang back, and to be
+pressed and invited; and so when his business at Palos was finished he
+sent a messenger with his letters and reports to Barcelona, and himself,
+with his crew and his Indians and all his trophies, departed for Seville,
+where he arrived on Palm Sunday.
+
+His entrance into that city was only a foretaste of the glory in which he
+was to move across the whole of Spain.  He was met at the gates of the
+city by a squadron of cavalry commanded by an envoy sent by Queen
+Isabella; and a procession was formed of members of the crew carrying
+parrots, alive and stuffed, fruits, vegetables, and various other
+products of the New World.
+
+In a prominent place came the Indians, or rather four of them, for one
+had died on the day they entered Palos and three were too ill to leave
+that town; but the ones that took part in the procession got all the more
+attention and admiration.  The streets of Seville were crowded; crowded
+also were the windows, balconies, and roofs.  The Admiral was entertained
+at the house of the Count of Cifuentes, where his little museum of dead
+and live curiosities was also accommodated, and where certain favoured
+visitors were admitted to view it.  His two sons, Diego and Ferdinand,
+were sent from Cordova to join him; and perhaps he found time to visit
+Beatriz, although there is no record of his having been to Cordova or of
+her having come to Seville.
+
+
+Meanwhile his letters and messengers to the King and Queen had produced
+their due effect.  The almost incredible had come to pass, and they saw
+themselves the monarchs not merely of Spain, but of a new Empire that
+might be as vast as Europe and Africa together.  On the 30th of March
+they despatched a special messenger with a letter to Columbus, whose eyes
+must have sparkled and heart expanded when he read the superscription:
+“From the King and Queen to Don Christoval Colon, their Admiral of the
+Ocean Seas and Viceroy and Governor of the Islands discovered in the
+Indies.”  No lack of titles and dignities now!  Their Majesties express a
+profound sense of his ability and distinction, of the greatness of his
+services to them, to the Church, and to God Himself.  They hope that he
+will lose no time, but repair to Barcelona immediately, so that they can
+have the pleasure of hearing from his own lips an account of his
+wonderful expedition, and of discussing with him the preparations that
+must immediately be set on foot to fit out a new one.  On receiving this
+letter Christopher immediately drew up a list of what he thought
+necessary for the new expedition and, collecting all his retinue and his
+museum of specimens, started by road for Barcelona.
+
+Every one in Spain had by this time heard more or less exaggerated
+accounts of the discoveries, and the excitement in the towns and villages
+through which he passed was extreme.  Wherever he went he was greeted and
+feasted like a king returning from victorious wars; the people lined the
+streets of the towns and villages, and hung out banners, and gazed their
+fill at the Indians and at the strange sun-burned faces of the crew.  At
+Barcelona, where they arrived towards the end of April, the climax of
+these glittering dignities was reached.  When the King and Queen heard
+that Columbus was approaching the town they had their throne prepared
+under a magnificent pavilion, and in the hot sunshine of that April day
+they sat and waited the--coming of the great man.  A glittering troop of
+cavalry had been sent out to meet him, and at the gates of the town a
+procession was formed similar to that at Seville.  He had now six natives
+with him, who occupied an important place in the procession; sailors
+also, who carried baskets of fruit and vegetables from Espanola, with
+stuffed birds and animals, and a monstrous lizard held aloft on a stick.
+The Indians were duly decked out in all their paint and feathers; but if
+they were a wonder and marvel to the people of Spain, what must Spain
+have been to them with its great buildings and cities, its carriages and
+horses, its glittering dresses and armours, its splendour and luxury!
+We have no record of what the Indians thought, only of what the crowd
+thought who gaped upon them and upon the gaudy parrots that screeched and
+fluttered also in the procession.  Columbus came riding on horseback, as
+befitted a great Admiral and Viceroy, surrounded by his pilots and
+principal officers; and followed by men bearing golden belts, golden
+masks, nuggets of gold and dust of gold, and preceded by heralds,
+pursuivants, and mace-bearers.
+
+What a return for the man who three years before had been pointed at and
+laughed to scorn in this same brilliant society!  The crowds pressed so
+closely that the procession could hardly get through the streets; the
+whole population was there to witness it; and the windows and balconies
+and roofs of the houses, as well as the streets themselves, were thronged
+with a gaily dressed and wildly excited crowd.  At length the procession
+reaches the presence of the King and Queen and, crowning and
+unprecedented honour!  as the Admiral comes before them Ferdinand and
+Isabella rise to greet him.  Under their own royal canopy a seat is
+waiting for him; and when he has made his ceremonial greeting he is
+invited to sit in their presence and give an account of his voyage.
+
+He is fully equal to the situation; settles down to do himself and his
+subject justice; begins, we may be sure, with a preamble about the
+providence of God and its wisdom and consistency in preserving the
+narrator and preparing his life for this great deed; putting in a deal of
+scientific talk which had in truth nothing to do with the event, but was
+always applied to it in Columbus’s writings from this date onwards; and
+going on to describe the voyage, the sea of weeds, the landfall, his
+intercourse with the natives, their aptitude for labour and Christianity,
+and the hopes he has of their early conversion to the Catholic Church.
+And then follows a long description of the wonderful climate, “like May
+in Andalusia,” the noble rivers, and gorgeous scenery, the trees and
+fruits and flowers and singing birds; the spices and the cotton; and
+chief of all, the vast stores of gold and pearls of which the Admiral had
+brought home specimens.  At various stages in his narrative he produces
+illustrations; now a root of rhubarb or allspice; now a raw nugget of
+gold; now a piece of gold laboured into a mask or belt; now a native
+decorated with the barbaric ornaments that were the fashion in Espanola.
+These things, says Columbus, are mere first-fruits of the harvest that is
+to come; the things which he, like the dove that had flown across the sea
+from the Ark and brought back an olive leaf in its mouth, has brought
+back across the stormy seas to that Ark of civilisation from which he had
+flown forth.
+
+It was to Columbus an opportunity of stretching his visionary wings and
+creating with pompous words and images a great halo round himself of
+dignity and wonder and divine distinction,--an opportunity such as he
+loved, and such as he never failed to make use of.
+
+The Sovereigns were delighted and profoundly impressed.  Columbus wound
+up his address with an eloquent peroration concerning the glory to
+Christendom of these new discoveries; and there followed an impressive
+silence, during which the Sovereigns sank on their knees and raised hands
+and tearful eyes to heaven, an example in which they were followed by the
+whole of the assembly; and an appropriate gesture enough, seeing what was
+to come of it all.  The choir of the Chapel Royal sang a solemn Te Deum
+on the spot; and the Sovereigns and nobles, bishops, archbishops,
+grandees, hidalgos, chamberlains, treasurers, chancellors and other
+courtiers, being exhausted by these emotions, retired to dinner.
+
+
+During his stay at Barcelona Columbus was the guest of the
+Cardinal-Archbishop of Toledo, and moved thus in an atmosphere of
+combined temporal and spiritual dignity such as his soul loved.  Very
+agreeable indeed to him was the honour shown to him at this time.  Deep
+down in his heart there was a secret nerve of pride and vanity which
+throughout his life hitherto had been continually mortified and wounded;
+but he was able now to indulge his appetite for outward pomp and honour
+as much as he pleased.  When King Ferdinand went out to ride Columbus
+would be seen riding on one side of him, the young Prince John riding on
+the other side; and everywhere, when he moved among the respectful and
+admiring throng, his grave face was seen to be wreathed in complacent
+smiles.  His hair, which had turned white soon after he was thirty, gave
+him a dignified and almost venerable appearance, although he was only in
+his forty-third year; and combined with his handsome and commanding
+presence to excite immense enthusiasm among the Spaniards.  They forgot
+for the moment what they had formerly remembered and were to remember
+again--that he was a foreigner, an Italian, a man of no family and of
+poor origin. They saw in him the figure-head of a new empire and a new
+glory, an emblem of power and riches, of the dominion which their proud
+souls loved; and so there beamed upon him the brief fickle sunshine of
+their smiles and favour, which he in his delusion regarded as an earnest
+of their permanent honour and esteem.
+
+It is almost always thus with a man not born to such dignities, and who
+comes by them through his own efforts and labours.  No one would grudge
+him the short-lived happiness of these summer weeks; but although he
+believed himself to be as happy as a man can be, he appears to quietly
+contemplating eyes less happy and fortunate than when he stood alone on
+the deck of his ship, surrounded by an untrustworthy crew, prevailing by
+his own unaided efforts over the difficulties and dangers with which he
+was surrounded.  Court functions and processions, and the companionship
+of kings and cardinals, are indeed no suitable reward for the kind of
+work that he did.  Courtly dignities are suited to courtly services; but
+they are no suitable crown for rough labour and hardship at sea, or for
+the fulfilment of a man’s self by lights within him; no suitable crown
+for any solitary labour whatsoever, which must always be its own and only
+reward.
+
+
+It is to this period of splendour that the story of the egg, which is to
+some people the only familiar incident in Columbian biography, is
+attributed.  The story is that at a banquet given by the Cardinal-Arch
+bishop the conversation ran, as it always did in those days when he was
+present, on the subject of the Admiral’s discoveries; and that one of the
+guests remarked that it was all very well for Columbus to have done what
+he did, but that in a country like Spain, where there were so many men
+learned in science and cosmography, and many able mariners besides, some
+one else would certainly have been found who would have done the same
+thing.  Whereupon Columbus, calling for an egg, laid a wager that none of
+the company but him self could make it stand on its end without support.
+The egg was brought and passed round, and every one tried to make it
+stand on end, but without success.  When it came to Columbus he cracked
+the shell at one end, making a flat surface on which the egg stood
+upright; thus demonstrating that a thing might be wonderful, not because
+it was difficult or impossible, but merely because no one had ever
+thought of doing it before.  A sufficiently inane story, and by no means
+certainly true; but there is enough character in this little feat,
+ponderous, deliberate, pompous, ostentatious, and at bottom a trick and
+deceitful quibble, to make it accord with the grandiloquent public manner
+of Columbus, and to make it easily believable of one who chose to show
+himself in his speech and writings so much more meanly and pretentiously
+than he showed himself in the true acts and business of his life.
+
+
+But pomp and parade were not the only occupation of these Barcelona days.
+There were long consultations with Ferdinand and Isabella about the
+colonisation of the new lands; there were intrigues, and parrying of
+intrigues, between the Spanish and Portuguese Courts on the subject of
+the discoveries and of the representative rights of the two nations to be
+the religious saviours of the New World.  The Pope, to whose hands the
+heathen were entrusted by God to be handed for an inheritance to the
+highest and most religious bidder, had at that time innocently divided
+them into two portions, to wit: heathen to the south of Spain and
+Portugal, and heathen to the west of those places.  By the Bull of 1438,
+granted by Pope Martin V., the heathen to the west had been given to the
+Spanish, and the heathen to the south to the Portuguese, and the two
+crowns had in 1479 come to a working agreement.  Now, however, the
+existence of more heathen to the west of the Azores introduced a new
+complication, and Ferdinand sent a message to Pope Alexander VI. praying
+for a confirmation of the Spanish title to the new discoveries.
+
+This Pope, who was a native of Aragon and had been a subject of
+Ferdinand, was a stolid, perverse, and stubborn being; so much is
+advertised in his low forehead, impudent prominent nose, thick sensual
+lips, and stout bull neck.  This Pope considers the matter; considers,
+by such lights as he has, to whom he shall entrust the souls of these new
+heathen; considers which country, Spain or Portugal, is most likely to
+hold and use the same for the increase of the Christian faith in general,
+the furtherance of the Holy Catholic Church in special, and the
+aggrandisement of Popes in particular; and shrewdly decides that the
+country in which the.  Inquisition can flourish is the country to whom
+the heathen souls should be entrusted.  He therefore issues a Bull, dated
+May 3, 1493, granting to the Spanish the possession of all lands, not
+occupied by Christian powers, that lie west of a meridian drawn one
+hundred leagues to the westward of the Azores, and to the Portuguese
+possession of all similar lands lying to the eastward of that line.  He
+sleeps upon this Bull, and has inspiration; and on the morrow, May 4th,
+issues another Bull, drawing a line from the arctic to the antarctic
+pole, and granting to Spain all heathen inheritance to the westward of
+the same.  The Pope, having signed this Bull, considers it
+further-assisted, no doubt, by the Portuguese Ambassador at the Vatican,
+to whom it has been shown; realises that in the wording of the Bull an
+injustice has been done to Portugal, since Spain is allowed to fix very
+much at her own convenience the point at which the line drawn from pole
+to pole shall cut the equator; and also because, although Spain is given
+all the lands in existence within her territory, Portugal is only given
+the lands which she may actually have occupied.  Even the legal mind of
+the Pope, although much drowsed and blunted by brutish excesses,
+discerns faultiness in this document; and consequently on the same day
+issues a third Bull, in which the injustice to Portugal is redressed.
+Nothing so easy, thinks the Pope, as to issue Bulls; if you make a
+mistake in one Bull, issue another; and, having issued three Bulls in
+twenty-four hours, he desists for the present, having divided the
+earthly globe.
+
+Thus easy it is for a Pope to draw lines from pole to pole, and across
+the deep of the sea.  Yet the poles sleep still in their icy virginal
+sanctity, and the blue waves through which that papal line passes shift
+and shimmer and roll in their free salt loneliness, unaffected by his
+demarcation; the heathen also, it appears, since that distant day, have
+had something to say to their disposition.  If he had slept upon it
+another night, poor Pope, it might have occurred to him that west and
+east might meet on a meridian situated elsewhere on the globe than one
+hundred miles west of the Azores; and that the Portuguese, who for the
+moment had nothing heathen except Africa left to them, might according to
+his demarcation strike a still richer vein of heathendom than that
+granted to Spain.  But the holy Pontiff, bull neck, low forehead,
+impudent prominent nose, and sensual lips notwithstanding, is exhausted
+by his cosmographical efforts, and he lets it rest at that.  Later, when
+Spain discovers that her privileges have been abated, he will have to
+issue another Bull; but not to-day.  Sufficient unto the day are the
+Bulls thereof.  For the moment King proposes and Pope disposes; but the
+matter lies ultimately in the hands of the two eternal protagonists, man
+and God.
+
+
+In the meantime here are six heathen alive and well, or at any rate well
+enough to support, willy-nilly, the rite of holy baptism.  They must have
+been sufficiently dazed and bewildered by all that had happened to them
+since they were taken on board the Admiral’s ship, and God alone knows
+what they thought of it all, or whether they thought anything more than
+the parrots that screamed and fluttered and winked circular eyes in the
+procession with them.  Doubtless they were willing enough; and indeed,
+after all they had come through, a little cold water could not do them
+any harm.  So baptized they were in Barcelona; pompously baptized with
+infinite state and ceremony, the King and Queen and Prince Juan
+officiating as sponsors.  Queen Isabella, after the manner of queens,
+took a kindly feminine interest in these heathen, and in their brethren
+across the sea.  She had seen a good deal of conquest, and knew her
+Spaniard pretty intimately; and doubtless her maternal heart had some
+misgivings about the ultimate happiness of the gentle, handsome creatures
+who lived in the sunshine in that distant place.  She made their souls
+her especial care, and honestly believed that by providing for their
+spiritual conversion she was doing them the greatest service in her
+power.  She provided from her own private chapel vestments and altar
+furniture for the mission church in Espanola; she had the six exiles in
+Barcelona instructed under her eye; and she gave Columbus special orders
+to inflict severe punishments on any one who should offer the natives
+violence or injustice of any kind.  It must be remembered to her credit
+that in after days, when slavery and an intolerable bloody and brutish
+oppression had turned the paradise of Espanola into a shambles, she
+fought almost singlehanded, and with an ethical sense far in advance of
+her day, against the system of slavery practised by Spain upon the
+inhabitants of the New World.
+
+
+The dignities that had been provisionally granted to Columbus before his
+departure on the first voyage were now elaborately confirmed; and in
+addition he was given another title--that of Captain-General of the large
+fleet which was to be fitted out to sail to the new colonies.  He was
+entrusted with the royal seal, which gave him the right to grant letters
+patent, to issue commissions, and to Appoint deputies in the royal name.
+A coat-of-arms was also granted to him in which, in its original form,
+the lion and castle of Leon and Castile were quartered with islands of
+the sea or on a field azure, and five anchors or on a field azure.  This
+was changed from time to time, chiefly by Columbus himself, who
+afterwards added a continent to the islands, and modified the blazonry of
+the lion and castle to agree with those on the royal arms--a piece of
+ignorance and childish arrogance which was quite characteristic of him.
+
+
+
+     [A motto has since been associated with the coat-of-arms, although
+     it is not certain that Columbus adopted it in his lifetime.  In one
+     form it reads:
+                      “Por Castilla e por Leon
+                       Nueva Mundo hallo Colon.”]
+
+           (For Castile and Leon Columbus found a New World.)
+
+And in the other:
+
+                       “A Castilla y a Leon
+                        Nuevo Mundo dio Colon.”
+
+            (To Castile and Leon Columbus gave a New World.)
+
+
+Equally characteristic and less excusable was his acceptance of the
+pension of ten thousand maravedis which had been offered to the member of
+the expedition who should first sight land.  Columbus was granted a very
+large gratuity on his arrival in Barcelona, and even taking the product
+of the islands at a tenth part of their value as estimated by him, he
+still had every right to suppose himself one of the richest men in Spain.
+Yet he accepted this paltry pension of L8. 6s. 8d.  in our modern
+money (of 1900), which, taking the increase in the purchasing power of
+money at an extreme estimate, would not be more than the equivalent of
+$4000 now.  Now Columbus had not been the first person to see land; he
+saw the light, but it was Rodrigo de Triana, the look-out man on the
+Pinta, who first saw the actual land.  Columbus in his narrative to the
+King and Queen would be sure to make much of the seeing of the light, and
+not so much of the actual sighting of land; and he was on the spot, and
+the reward was granted to him.  Even if we assume that in strict equity
+Columbus was entitled to it, it was at least a matter capable of
+argument, if only Rodrigo de Triana had been there to argue it; and what
+are we to think of the Admiral of the Ocean Seas and Viceroy of the
+Indies who thus takes what can only be called a mean advantage of a poor
+seaman in his employ?  It would have been a competence and a snug little
+fortune to Rodrigo de Triana; it was a mere flea-bite to a man who was
+thinking in eighth parts of continents.  It may be true, as Oviedo
+alleges, that Columbus transferred it to Beatriz Enriquez; but he had no
+right to provide for her out of money that in all equity and decency
+ought to have gone to another and a poorer man.  His biographers, some of
+whom have vied with his canonisers in insisting upon seeing virtue in his
+every action, have gone to all kinds of ridiculous extremes in accounting
+for this piece of meanness.  Irving says that it was “a subject in which
+his whole ambition was involved”; but a plain person will regard it as an
+instance of greed and love of money.  We must not shirk facts like this
+if we wish to know the man as he really was.  That he was capable of
+kindness and generosity, and that he was in the main kind-hearted, we
+have fortunately no reason to doubt; and if I dwell on some of his less
+amiable characteristics it is with no desire to magnify them out of their
+due proportion.  They are part of that side of him that lay in shadow, as
+some side of each one of us lies; for not all by light nor all by shade,
+but by light and shade combined, is the image of a man made visible to
+us.
+
+
+It is quite of a piece with the character of Columbus that while he was
+writing a receipt for the look-out man’s money and thinking what a pretty
+gift it would make for Beatriz Enriquez he was planning a splendid and
+spectacular thank-offering for all the dignities to which he had been
+raised; and, brooding upon the vast wealth that was now to be his, that
+he should register a vow to furnish within seven years an expedition of
+four thousand horse and fifty thousand foot for the rescue of the Holy
+Sepulchre, and a similar force within five years after the first if it
+should be necessary.  It was probable that the vow was a provisional one,
+and that its performance was to be contingent on his actual receipt and
+possession of the expected money; for as we know, there was no money and
+no expedition.  The vow was in effect a kind of religious flourish much
+beloved by Columbus, undertaken seriously and piously enough, but
+belonging rather to his public than to his private side.  A much more
+simple and truly pious act of his was, not the promising of visionary but
+the sending of actual money to his old father in Savona, which he did
+immediately after his arrival in Spain.  The letter which he wrote with
+that kindly remittance, not being couched in the pompous terms which he
+thought suitable for princes, and doubtless giving a brief homely account
+of what he had done, would, if we could come by it, be a document beyond
+all price; but like every other record of his family life it has utterly
+perished.
+
+He wrote also from Barcelona to his two brothers, Bartholomew and
+Giacomo, or James, since we may as well give him the English equivalent
+of his name.  Bartholomew was in France, whither he had gone some time
+after his return from his memorable voyage with Bartholomew Diaz; he was
+employed as a map-maker at the court of Anne de Beaujeu, who was reigning
+in the temporary absence of her brother Charles VIII.  Columbus’s letter
+reached him, but much too late for him to be able to join in the second
+expedition; in fact he did not reach Seville until five months after it
+had sailed.  James, however, who was now twenty-five years old, was still
+at Savona; he, like Columbus, had been apprenticed to his father, but had
+apparently remained at home earning his living either as a wool-weaver or
+merchant.  He was a quiet, discreet young fellow, who never pushed
+himself forward very much, wore very plain clothes, and was apparently
+much overawed by the grandeur and dignity of his elder brother.  He was,
+however, given a responsible post in the new expedition, and soon had his
+fill of adventure.
+
+
+The business of preparing for the new expedition was now put in hand, and
+Columbus, having taken leave of Ferdinand and Isabella, went to Seville
+to superintend the preparations.  All the ports in Andalusia were ordered
+to supply such vessels as might be required at a reasonable cost, and the
+old order empowering the Admiral to press mariners into the service was
+renewed.  But this time it was unnecessary; the difficulty now was rather
+to keep down the number of applicants for berths in the expedition, and
+to select from among the crowd of adventurers who offered themselves
+those most suitable for the purposes of the new colony.  In this work
+Columbus was assisted by a commissioner whom the Sovereigns had appointed
+to superintend the fitting out of the expedition.  This man was a cleric,
+Juan Rodriguez de Fonseca, Archdeacon of Seville, a person of excellent
+family and doubtless of high piety, and of a surpassing shrewdness for
+this work.  He was of a type very commonly produced in Spain at this
+period; a very able organiser, crafty and competent, but not altogether
+trustworthy on a point of honour.  Like so many ecclesiastics of this
+stamp, he lived for as much power and influence as he could achieve; and
+though he was afterwards bishop of three sees successively, and became
+Patriarch of the Indies, he never let go his hold on temporal affairs.
+He began by being jealous of Columbus, and by objecting to the personal
+retinue demanded by the Admiral; and in this, if I know anything of the
+Admiral, he was probably justified.  The matter was referred to the
+Sovereigns, who ordered Fonseca to carry out the Admiral’s wishes; and
+the two were immediately at loggerheads.  When the Council for the Indies
+was afterwards formed Fonseca became head, of it, and had much power to
+make things pleasant or otherwise for Columbus.
+
+It became necessary now to raise a considerable sum of money for the new
+expedition.  Two-thirds of the ecclesiastical tithes were appropriated,
+and a large proportion of the confiscated property of the Jews who had
+been banished from Spain the year before; but this was not enough; and
+five million maravedis were borrowed from the Duke of Medina Sidonia in
+order to complete the financial supplies necessary for this very costly
+expedition.  There was a treasurer, Francisco Pinelo, and an accountant,
+Juan de Soria, who had charge of all the financial arrangements; but the
+whole of the preparations were conducted on a ruinously expensive scale,
+owing to the haste which the diplomatic relations with Portugal made
+necessary.  The provisioning was done by a Florentine merchant named
+Juonato Beradi, who had an assistant named Amerigo Vespucci--who, by a
+strange accident, was afterwards to give his name to the continent of the
+New World.
+
+
+While these preparations were going on the game of diplomacy was being
+played between the Courts of Spain and Portugal.  King John of Portugal
+had the misfortune to be badly advised; and he was persuaded that,
+although he had lost the right to the New World through his rejection of
+Columbus’s services when they were first offered to him, he might still
+discover it for himself, relying for protection on the vague wording of
+the papal Bulls.  He immediately began to prepare a fleet, nominally to
+go to the coast of Africa, but really to visit the newly discovered lands
+in the west.  Hearing of these preparations, King Ferdinand sent an
+Ambassador to the Portuguese Court; and King John agreed also to appoint
+an Ambassador to discuss the whole matter of the line of demarcation, and
+in the meantime not to allow any of his ships to sail to the west for a
+period of sixty days after his Ambassador had reached Barcelona.  There
+followed a good deal of diplomatic sharp practice; the Portuguese bribing
+the Spanish officials to give them information as to what was going on,
+and the Spaniards furnishing their envoys with double sets of letters and
+documents so that they could be prepared to counter any movement on the
+part of King John.  The idea of the Portuguese was that the line of
+demarcation should be a parallel rather than a meridian; and that
+everything north of the Canaries should belong to Spain and everything
+south to Portugal; but this would never do from the Spanish point of
+view.  The fact that a proposal had come from Portugal, however, gave
+Ferdinand an opportunity of delaying the diplomatic proceedings until his
+own expedition was actually ready to set sail; and he wrote to Columbus
+repeatedly, urging him to make all possible haste with his preparations.
+In the meantime he despatched a solemn embassy to Portugal, the purport
+of which, much beclouded and delayed by preliminary and impossible
+proposals, was to submit the whole question to the Pope for arbitration.
+And all the time he was busy petitioning the Pope to restore to Spain
+those concessions granted in the second Bull, but taken away again in the
+third.
+
+This, being much egged on to it, the Pope ultimately did; waking up on
+September 26th, the day after Columbus’s departure, and issuing another
+Bull in which the Spanish Sovereigns were given all lands and islands,
+discovered or not discovered, which might be found by sailing west and
+south.  Four Bulls; and after puzzling over them for a year, the Kings of
+Spain and Portugal decided to make their own Bull, and abide by it,
+which, having appointed commissioners, they did on June 7, 1494., when by
+the Treaty of Tordecillas the line of demarcation was finally fixed to
+pass from north to south through a point 370 leagues west of the Cape
+Verde Islands.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+GREAT EXPECTATIONS
+
+July, August, and September in the year 1493 were busy months for
+Columbus, who had to superintend the buying or building and fitting of
+ships, the choice and collection of stores, and the selection of his
+company.  There were fourteen caravels, some of them of low tonnage and
+light draught, and suitable for the navigation of rivers; and three large
+carracks, or ships of three to four hundred tons.  The number of
+volunteers asked for was a thousand, but at least two thousand applied
+for permission to go with the expedition, and ultimately some fourteen or
+fifteen hundred did actually go, one hundred stowaways being included in
+the number.  Unfortunately these adventurers were of a class compared
+with whom even the cut-throats and gaol-birds of the humble little
+expedition that had sailed the year before from Palos were useful and
+efficient.  The universal impression about the new lands in the West was
+that they were places where fortunes could be picked up like dirt, and
+where the very shores were strewn with gold and precious stones; and
+every idle scamp in Spain who had a taste for adventure and a desire to
+get a great deal of money without working for it was anxious to visit the
+new territory.  The result was that instead of artisans, farmers,
+craftsmen, and colonists, Columbus took with him a company at least half
+of which consisted of exceedingly well-bred young gentlemen who had no
+intention of doing any work, but who looked forward to a free and lawless
+holiday and an early return crowned with wealth and fortune.  Although
+the expedition was primarily for the establishment of a colony, no
+Spanish women accompanied it; and this was but one of a succession of
+mistakes and stupidities.
+
+The Admiral, however, was not to be so lonely a person as he had been on
+his first voyage; friends of his own choice and of a rank that made
+intimacy possible even with the Captain-General were to accompany him.
+There was James his brother; there was Friar Bernardo Buil, a Benedictine
+monk chosen by the Pope to be his apostolic vicar in the New World; there
+was Alonso de Ojeda, a handsome young aristocrat, cousin to the
+Inquisitor of Spain, who was distinguished for his dash and strength and
+pluck; an ideal adventurer, the idol of his fellows, and one of whose
+daring any number of credible and incredible tales were told.  There was
+Pedro Margarite, a well-born Aragonese, who was destined afterwards to
+cause much trouble; there was Juan Ponce de Leon, the discoverer of
+Florida; there was Juan de La Cosa, Columbus’s faithful pilot on the
+Santa Maria on his first voyage; there was Pedro de Las Casas, whose son,
+at this time a student in Seville, was afterwards to become the historian
+of the New World and the champion of decency and humanity there.  There
+was also Doctor Chanca, a Court physician who accompanied the expedition
+not only in his professional capacity but also because his knowledge of
+botany would enable him to make, a valuable report on the vegetables and
+fruits of the New World; there was Antonio de Marchena, one of Columbus’s
+oldest friends, who went as astronomer to the expedition.  And there was
+one Coma, who would have remained unknown to this day but that he wrote
+an exceedingly elegant letter to his friend Nicolo Syllacio in Italy,
+describing in flowery language the events of the second voyage; which
+letter, and one written by Doctor Chanca, are the only records of the
+outward voyage that exist.  The journal kept by Columbus on this voyage
+has been lost, and no copy of it remains.
+
+
+Columbus settled at Cadiz during the time in which he was engaged upon
+the fitting out of the expedition.  It was no light matter to superintend
+the appointment of the crews and passengers, every one of whom was
+probably interviewed by Columbus himself, and at the same time to keep
+level with Archdeacon Fonseca.  This official, it will be remembered,
+had a disagreement with Columbus as to the number of personal attendants
+he was to be allowed; and on the matter being referred to the King and
+Queen they granted Columbus the ridiculous establishment of ten footmen
+and twenty other servants.
+
+Naturally Fonseca held up his hands and wondered where it would all end.
+It was no easy matter, moreover, on receipt of letters from the Queen
+about small matters which occurred to her from time to time, to answer
+them fully and satisfactorily, and at the same time to make out all the
+lists of things that would likely be required both for provisioning the
+voyage and establishing a colony.  The provisions carried in those days
+were not very different from the provisions carried on deep-sea vessels
+at the present time--except that canned meat, for which, with its horrors
+and conveniences, the world may hold Columbus responsible, had not then
+been invented.  Unmilled wheat, salted flour, and hard biscuit formed the
+bulk of the provisions; salted pork was the staple--of the meat supply,
+with an alternative of salted fish; while cheese, peas, lentils and
+beans, oil and vinegar, were also carried, and honey and almonds and
+raisins for the cabin table.  Besides water a large provision of rough
+wine in casks was taken, and the dietary scale would probably compare
+favourably with that of the British and American mercantile service sixty
+years ago.  In addition a great quantity of seeds of all kinds were taken
+for planting in Espanola; sugar cane, rice, and vines also, and an
+equipment of agricultural implements, as well as a selection of horses
+and other domestic animals for breeding purposes.  Twenty mounted
+soldiers were also carried, and the thousand and one impedimenta of
+naval, military, and domestic existence.
+
+In the middle of all these preparations news came that a Portuguese
+caravel had set sail from Madeira in the direction of the new lands.
+Columbus immediately reported this to the King and Queen, and suggested
+detaching part of his fleet to pursue her; but instead King John was
+communicated with, and he declared that if the vessel had sailed as
+alleged it was without his knowledge and permission, and that he would
+send three ships after her to recall her--an answer which had to be
+accepted, although it opened up rather alarming possibilities of four
+Portuguese vessels reaching the new islands instead of one.  Whether
+these ships ever really sailed or not, or whether the rumour was merely a
+rumour and an alarm, is not certain; but Columbus was ordered to push on
+his preparations with the greatest possible speed, to avoid Portuguese
+waters, but to capture any vessels which he might find in the part of the
+ocean allotted to Spain, and to inflict summary punishment on the crews.
+As it turned out he never saw any Portuguese vessels, and before he had
+returned to Spain again the two nations had come to an amicable agreement
+quite independently of the Pope and his Bulls.  Spain undertook to make
+no discoveries to the east of the line of demarcation, and Portugal none
+to the west of it; and so the matter remained until the inhabitants of
+the discovered lands began to have a voice in their own affairs.
+
+
+With all his occupations Columbus found time for some amenities, and he
+had his two sons, Diego and Ferdinand, staying with him at Cadiz.  Great
+days they must have been for these two boys; days filled with excitement
+and commotion, with the smell of tar and the loading of the innumerable
+and fascinating materials of life; and many a journey they must have made
+on the calm waters of Cadiz harbour from ship to ship, dreaming of the
+distant seas that these high, quaintly carven prows would soon be
+treading, and the wonderful bays and harbours far away across the world
+into the waters of which their anchors were to plunge.
+
+
+September 24th, the day before the fleet sailed, was observed as a
+festival; and in full ceremonial the blessing of God upon the enterprise
+was invoked.  The ships were hung with flags and with dyed silks and
+tapestries; every vessel flew the royal standard; and the waters of the
+harbour resounded with the music of trumpets and harps and pipes and the
+thunder of artillery.  Some Venetian galleys happened to enter the
+harbour as the fleet was preparing to weigh, and they joined in the
+salutes and demonstrations which signalled the departure.  The Admiral
+hoisted his flag on the ‘Marigalante’, one of the largest of the ships;
+and somewhere among the smaller caravels the little Nina, re-caulked and
+re-fitted, was also preparing to brave again the dangers over which she
+had so staunchly prevailed.  At sunrise on the 25th the fleet weighed
+anchor, with all the circumstance and bustle and apparent confusion that
+accompanies the business of sailing-ships getting under weigh.  Up to the
+last minute Columbus had his two sons on board with him, and it was not
+until the ripples were beginning to talk under the bow of the Marigalante
+that he said good-bye to them and saw them rowed ashore.  In bright
+weather, with a favourable breeze, in glory and dignity, and with high
+hopes in his heart, the Admiral set out once more on the long sea-road.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE SECOND VOYAGE
+
+The second voyage of Columbus, profoundly interesting as it must have
+been to him and to the numerous company to whom these waters were a
+strange and new region, has not the romantic interest for us that his
+first voyage had.  To the faith that guided him on his first venture
+knowledge and certainty had now been added; he was going by a familiar
+road; for to the mariner a road that he has once followed is a road that
+he knows.  As a matter of fact, however, this second voyage was a far
+greater test of Columbus’s skill as a navigator than the first voyage had
+been.  If his navigation had been more haphazard he might never have
+found again the islands of his first discovery; and the fact that he made
+a landfall exactly where he wished to make it shows a high degree of
+exactness in his method of ascertaining latitude, and is another instance
+of his skill in estimating his dead-reckoning.  If he had been equipped
+with a modern quadrant and Greenwich chronometers he could not have made
+a quicker voyage nor a more exact landfall.
+
+It will be remembered that he had been obliged to hurry away from
+Espanola without visiting the islands of the Caribs as he had wished to
+do.  He knew that these islands lay to the south-east of Espanola, and on
+his second voyage he therefore took a course rather more southerly in
+order, to make them instead of Guanahani or Espanola.  From the day they
+left Spain his ships had pleasant light airs from the east and north-east
+which wafted them steadily but slowly on their course.  In a week they
+had reached the Grand Canary, where they paused to make some repairs to
+one of the ships which, was leaking.  Two days later they anchored at
+Gomera, and loaded up with such supplies as could be procured there
+better than in Spain.  Pigs, goats, sheep and cows were taken on board;
+domestic fowls also, and a variety of orchard plants and fruit seeds, as
+well as a provision of oranges, lemons, and melons.  They sailed from
+Gomera on the 7th of October, but the winds were so light that it was a
+week later before they had passed Ferro and were once more in the open
+Atlantic.
+
+On setting his course from Ferro Columbus issued sealed instructions to
+the captain of each ship which, in the event of the fleet becoming
+scattered, would guide them to the harbour of La Navidad in Espanola;
+but the captains had strict orders not to open these instructions unless
+their ships became separated from the fleet, as Columbus still wished to
+hold for himself the secret of this mysterious road to the west.  There
+were no disasters, however, and no separations.  The trade wind blew soft
+and steady, wafting them south and west; and because of the more
+southerly course steered on this voyage they did not even encounter the
+weed of the Sargasso Sea, which they left many leagues on their starboard
+hand.  The only incident of the voyage was a sudden severe hurricane, a
+brief summer tempest which raged throughout one night and terrified a
+good many of the voyagers, whose superstitious fears were only allayed
+when they saw the lambent flames of the light of Saint Elmo playing about
+the rigging of the Admiral’s ship.  It was just the Admiral’s luck that
+this phenomenon should be observed over his ship and over none of the
+others; it added to his prestige as a person peculiarly favoured by the
+divine protection, and confirmed his own belief that he held a heavenly
+as well as a royal commission.
+
+The water supply had been calculated a little too closely, and began to
+run low.  The hurried preparation of the ships had resulted as usual in
+bad work; most of them were leaking, and the crew were constantly at work
+at the pumps; and there was the usual discontent.  Columbus, however,
+knew by the signs as well as by his dead-reckoning that he was somewhere
+close to land; and with a fine demonstration of confidence he increased
+the ration of water, instead of lowering it, assuring the crews that they
+would be ashore in a day or two.  On Saturday evening, November 2nd,
+although no land was in sight, Columbus was so sure of his position that
+he ordered the fleet to take in sail and go on slowly until morning.  As
+the Sunday dawned and the sky to the west was cleared of the morning bank
+of clouds the look-out on the Marigalante reported land ahead; and sure
+enough the first sunlight of that day showed them a green and verdant
+island a few leagues away.
+
+As they approached it Columbus christened it Dominica in honour of the
+day on which it was discovered.  He sailed round it; but as there was no
+harbour, and as another island was in sight to the north, he sailed on in
+that direction.  This little island he christened Marigalante; and going
+ashore with his retinue he hoisted the royal banner, and formally took
+possession of the whole group of six islands which were visible from the
+high ground.  There were no inhabitants on the island, but the voyagers
+spent some hours wandering about its tangled woods and smelling the rich
+odours of spice, and tasting new and unfamiliar fruits.  They next sailed
+on to an island to the north which Columbus christened Guadaloupe as a
+memorial of the shrine in Estremadura to which he had made a pious
+pilgrimage.  They landed on this island and remained a week there, in the
+course of which they made some very remarkable discoveries.
+
+The villagers were not altogether unfriendly, although they were shy at
+first; but red caps and hawks’ bells had their usual effect.  There were
+signs of warfare, in the shape of bone-tipped arrows; there were tame
+parrots much larger than those of the northern islands; they found
+pottery and rough wood carving, and the unmistakable stern timber of a
+European vessel.  But they discovered stranger things than that.  They
+found human skulls used as household utensils, and gruesome fragments of
+human bodies, unmistakable remains of a feast; and they realised that at
+last they were in the presence of a man-eating tribe.  Later they came to
+know, something of the habits of the islanders; how they made raiding
+expeditions to the neighbouring islands, and carried off large numbers of
+prisoners, retaining the women as concubines and eating the men.  The
+boys were mutilated and fattened like capons, being employed as labourers
+until they had arrived at years of discretion, at which point they were
+killed and eaten, as these cannibal epicures did not care for the flesh
+of women and boys.  There were a great number of women on the island, and
+many of them were taken off to the ships--with their own consent,
+according to Doctor Chanca.  The men, however, eluded the Spaniards and
+would not come on board, having doubtless very clear views about the
+ultimate destination of men who were taken prisoners.  Some women from a
+neighbouring island, who had been captured by the cannibals, came to
+Columbus and begged to be taken on board his ship for protection; but
+instead of receiving them he decked them with ornaments and sent them
+ashore again.  The cannibals artfully stripped off their ornaments and
+sent them back to get some more.
+
+The peculiar habits of the islanders added an unusual excitement to shore
+leave, and there was as a rule no trouble in collecting the crews and
+bringing them off to the ships at nightfall.  But on one evening it was
+discovered that one of the captains and eight men had not returned.  An
+exploring party was sent of to search for them, but they came back
+without having found anything, except a village in the middle of the
+forest from which the inhabitants had fled at their approach, leaving
+behind them in the cooking pots a half-cooked meal of human remains--an
+incident which gave the explorers a distaste for further search.  Young
+Alonso de Ojeda, however, had no fear of the cannibals; this was just the
+kind of occasion in which he revelled; and he offered to take a party of
+forty men into the interior to search for the missing men.  He went right
+across the island, but was able to discover nothing except birds and
+fruits and unknown trees; and Columbus, in great distress of mind, had to
+give up his men for lost.  He took in wood and water, and was on the
+point of weighing anchor when the missing men appeared on the shore and
+signalled for a boat.  It appeared that they had got lost in a tangled
+forest in the interior, that they had tried to climb the trees in order
+to get their bearings by the stars, but without success; and that they
+had finally struck the sea-shore and followed it until they had arrived
+opposite the anchorage.
+
+They brought some women and boys with them, and the fleet must now have
+had a large number of these willing or unwilling captives.  This was the
+first organised transaction of slavery on the part of Columbus, whose
+design was to send slaves regularly back to Spain in exchange for the
+cattle and supplies necessary for the colonies.  There was not very much
+said now about religious conversion, but only about exchanging the
+natives for cattle.  The fine point of Christopher’s philosophy on this
+subject had been rubbed off; he had taken the first step a year ago on
+the beach at Guanahani, and after that the road opened out broad before
+him.  Slaves for cattle, and cattle for the islands; and wealth from
+cattle and islands for Spain, and payment from Spain for Columbus, and
+money from Columbus for the redemption of the Holy Sepulchre--these were
+the links in the chain of hope that bound him to his pious idea.  He had
+seen the same thing done by the Portuguese on the Guinea coast, and it
+never occurred to him that there was anything the matter with it.  On the
+contrary, at this time his idea was only to take slaves from among the
+Caribs and man-eating islanders as a punishment for their misdeeds; but
+this, like his other fine ideas, soon had to give way before the tide of
+greed and conquest.
+
+The Admiral was now anxious to get back to La Navidad, and discover the
+condition of the colony which he had left behind him there.  He therefore
+sailed from Guadaloupe on November 20th and steered to the north-west.
+His captive islanders told him that the mainland lay to the south; and if
+he had listened to them and sailed south he would have probably landed on
+the coast of South America in a fortnight.  He shaped his course instead
+to the north-west, passing many islands, but not pausing until the 14th,
+when he reached the island named by him Santa Cruz.  He found more Caribs
+here, and his men had a brush with them, one of the crew being wounded by
+a poisoned arrow of which he died in a few days.  The Carib Chiefs were
+captured and put in irons.  They sailed again and passed a group of
+islets which Columbus named after Saint Ursula and the Eleven Thousand
+Virgins; discovered Porto Rico also, in one of the beautiful harbours of
+which they anchored and stayed for two days.  Sailing now to the west
+they made land again on the 22nd of November; and coasting along it they
+soon sighted the mountain of Monte Christi, and Columbus recognised that
+he was on the north coast of Espanola.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE EARTHLY PARADISE REVISITED
+
+On the 25th November 1493, Columbus once more dropped his anchor in the
+harbour of Monte Christi, and a party was sent ashore to prospect for a
+site suitable for the new town which he intended to build, for he was not
+satisfied with the situation of La Navidad.  There was a large river
+close by; and while the party was surveying the land they came suddenly
+upon two dead bodies lying by the river-side, one with a rope round its
+neck and the other with a rope round its feet.  The bodies were too much
+decomposed to be recognisable; nevertheless to the party rambling about
+in the sunshine and stillness of that green place the discovery was a
+very gruesome one.  They may have thought much, but they said little.
+They returned to the ship, and resumed their search on the next day, when
+they found two more corpses, one of which was seen to have a large
+quantity of beard.  As all the natives were beardless this was a very
+significant and unpleasant discovery, and the explorers returned at once
+and reported what they had seen to Columbus.  He thereupon set sail for
+La Navidad, but the navigation off that part of the coast was necessarily
+slow because of the number of the shoals and banks, on one of which the
+Admiral’s ship had been lost the year before; and the short voyage
+occupied three days.
+
+They arrived at La Navidad late on the evening of the 27th--too late to
+make it advisable to land.  Some natives came out in a canoe, rowed round
+the Admiral’s ship, stopped and looked at it, and then rowed away again.
+When the fleet had anchored Columbus ordered two guns to be fired; but
+there was no response except from the echoes that went rattling among the
+islands, and from the frightened birds that rose screaming and circling
+from the shore.  No guns and no signal fires; no sign of human habitation
+whatever; and no sound out of the weird darkness except the lap of the
+water and the call of the birds .  .  .  .  The night passed in anxiety
+and depression, and in a certain degree of nervous tension, which was
+relieved at two or three o’clock in the morning by the sound of paddles
+and the looming of a canoe through the dusky starlight.  Native voices
+were heard from the canoe asking in a loud voice for the Admiral; and
+when the visitors had been directed to the Marigalante they refused to go
+on board until Columbus himself had spoken to them, and they had seen by
+the light of a lantern that it was the Admiral himself.  The chief of
+them was a cousin of Guacanagari, who said that the King was ill of a
+wound in his leg, or that he would certainly have come himself to welcome
+the Admiral.  The Spaniards?  Yes, they were well, said the young chief;
+or rather, he added ominously, those that remained were well, but some
+had died of illness, and some had been killed in quarrels that had arisen
+among them.  He added that the province had been invaded by two
+neighbouring kings who had burned many of the native houses.  This news,
+although grave, was a relief from the dreadful uncertainty that had
+prevailed in the early part of the night, and the Admiral’s company,
+somewhat consoled, took a little sleep.
+
+In the morning a party was sent ashore to La Navidad.  Not a boat was in
+sight, nor any native canoes; the harbour was silent and deserted.  When
+the party had landed and gone up to the place where the fort had been
+built they found no fort there; only the blackened and charred remains of
+a fort.  The whole thing had been burned level with the ground, and amid
+the blackened ruins they found pieces of rag and clothing.  The natives,
+instead of coming to greet them, lurked guiltily behind trees, and when
+they were seen fled away into the woods.  All this was very disquieting
+indeed, and in significant contrast to their behaviour of the year
+before.  The party from the ship threw buttons and beads and bells to the
+retiring natives in order to try and induce them to come forward, but
+only four approached, one of whom was a relation of Guacanagari.  These
+four consented to go into the boat and to be rowed out to the ship.
+Columbus then spoke to them through his interpreter; and they admitted
+what had been only too obvious to the party that went ashore--that the
+Spaniards were all dead, and that not one of the garrison remained.  It
+seemed that two neighbouring kings, Caonabo and Mayreni, had made an
+attack upon the fort, burned the buildings, and killed and wounded most
+of the defenders; and that Guacanagari, who had been fighting on their
+behalf, had also been wounded and been obliged to retire.  The natives
+offered to go and fetch Guacanagari himself, and departed with that
+object.
+
+In the greatest anxiety the Admiral and his company passed that day and
+night waiting for the King to come.  Early the next morning Columbus
+himself went ashore and visited the spot where the settlement had been.
+There he found destruction whole and complete, with nothing but a few
+rags of clothing as an evidence that the place had ever been inhabited by
+human beings.  As Guacanagari did not appear some of the Spaniards began
+to suspect that he had had a hand in the matter, and proposed immediate
+reprisal; but Columbus, believing still in the man who had “loved him so
+much that it was wonderful” did not take this view, and his belief in
+Guacanagari’s loyalty was confirmed by the discovery that his own
+dwelling had also been burned down.
+
+Columbus set some of his party searching in the ditch of the fort in case
+any treasure should have been buried there, as he had ordered it should
+be in event of danger, and while this was going on he walked along the
+coast for a few miles to visit a spot which he thought might be suitable
+for the new settlement.  At a distance of a mile or two he found a
+village of seven or eight huts from which the inhabitants fled at his
+approach, carrying such of their goods as were portable, and leaving the
+rest hidden in the grass.  Here were found several things that had
+belonged to the Spaniards and which were not likely to have been
+bartered; new Moorish mantles, stockings, bolts of cloth, and one of the
+Admiral’s lost anchors; other articles also, among them a dead man’s head
+wrapped up with great care in a small basket.  Shaking their own living
+heads, Columbus and his party returned.  Suddenly they came on some
+suspicious-looking mounds of earth over which new grass was growing.  An
+examination of these showed them to be the graves of eleven of the
+Spaniards, the remains of the clothing being quite sufficient to identify
+them.  Doctor Chanca, who examined them, thought that they had not been
+dead two months.  Speculation came to an end in the face of this eloquent
+certainty; there were the dead bodies of some of the colonists; and the
+voyagers knelt round with bare heads while the bodies were replaced in
+the grave and the ceremony of Christian burial performed over them.
+
+Little by little the dismal story was elicited from the natives, who
+became less timid when they saw that the Spaniards meant them no harm.
+It seemed that Columbus had no sooner gone away than the colonists began
+to abandon themselves to every kind of excess.  While the echo of the
+Admiral’s wise counsels was yet in their ears they began to disobey his
+orders.  Honest work they had no intention of doing, and although Diego
+Arana, their commander, did his best to keep order, and although one or
+two of the others were faithful to him and to Columbus, their authority
+was utterly insufficient to check the lawless folly of the rest.  Instead
+of searching for gold mines, they possessed themselves by force of every
+ounce of gold they could steal or seize from the natives, treating them
+with both cruelty and contempt.  More brutal excesses followed as a
+matter of course.  Guacanagari, in his kindly indulgence and generosity,
+had allowed them to take three native wives apiece, although he himself
+and his people were content with one.  But of course the Spaniards had
+thrown off all restraint, however mild, and ran amok among the native
+inhabitants, seizing their wives and seducing their daughters.  Upon this
+naturally followed dissensions among themselves, jealousy coming hot upon
+the heels of unlawful possession; and, in the words of Irving, “the
+natives beheld with astonishment the beings whom they had worshipped as
+descended from the skies abandoned to the grossest of earthly passions
+and raging against each other with worse than brutal ferocity.”
+
+Upon their strifes and dissensions followed another breach of the
+Admiral’s wise regulations; they no longer cared to remain together in
+the fort, but split up into groups and went off with their women into the
+woods, reverting to a savagery beside which the gentle existence of the
+natives was high civilisation.  There were squabbles and fights in which
+one or two of the Spaniards were killed; and Pedro Gutierrez and Rodrigo
+de Escovedo, whom Columbus had appointed as lieutenants to Arana, headed
+a faction of revolt against his authority, and took themselves off with
+nine other Spaniards and a great number of women.  They had heard a great
+deal about the mines of Cibao, and they decided to go in search of them
+and secure their treasures for themselves.  They went inland into a
+territory which was under the rule of King Caonabo, a very fierce Carib
+who was not a native of Espanola, but had come there as an adventurer and
+remained as a conqueror.  Although he resented the intrusion of the
+Spaniards into the island he would not have dared to come and attack them
+there if they had obeyed the Admiral’s orders and remained in the
+territory of Guacanagari; but when they came into his own country he had
+them in a trap, and it was easy for him to fall upon those foolish
+swaggering Spaniards and put them to death.  He then decided to go and
+take the fort.
+
+He formed an alliance with the neighbouring king, Mayreni, whose province
+was in the west of the island.  Getting together a force of warriors
+these two kings marched rapidly and stealthily through the, forest for
+several days until they arrived at its northern border.  They came in the
+dead of night to the neighbourhood of La Navidad, where the inhabitants
+of the fortress, some ten in number, were fast asleep.  Fast asleep were
+the remaining dozen or so of the Spaniards who were living in houses or
+huts in the neighbourhood; fast asleep also the gentle natives, not
+dreaming of troubles from any quarter but that close at hand.  The sweet
+silence of the tropical night was suddenly broken by frightful yells as
+Caonabo and his warriors rushed the fortress and butchered the
+inhabitants, setting fire to it and to the houses round about.  As their
+flimsy huts burst into flames the surprised Spaniards rushed out, only to
+be fallen upon by the infuriated blacks.  Eight of the Spaniards rushed
+naked into the sea and were drowned; the rest were butchered.
+Guacanagari manfully came to their assistance and with his own followers
+fought throughout the night; but his were a gentle and unwarlike people,
+and they were easily routed.  The King himself was badly wounded in the
+thigh, but Caonabo’s principal object seems to have been the destruction
+of the Spaniards, and when that was completed he and his warriors, laden
+with the spoils, retired.
+
+Thus Columbus, walking on the shore with his native interpreter, or
+sitting in his cabin listening with knitted brow to the accounts of the
+islanders, learns of the complete and utter failure of his first hopes.
+It has come to this.  These are the real first-fruits of his glorious
+conquest and discovery.  The New World has served but as a virgin field
+for the Old Adam.  He who had sought to bring light and life to these
+happy islanders had brought darkness and death; they had innocently
+clasped the sword he had extended to them and cut themselves.  The
+Christian occupation of the New World had opened with vice, cruelty, and
+destruction; the veil of innocence had been rent in twain, and could
+never be mended or joined again.  And the Earthly Paradise in which life
+had gone so happily, of which sun and shower had been the true rulers,
+and the green sprouting harvests the only riches, had been turned into a
+shambles by the introduction of human rule and civilised standards of
+wealth.  Gold first and then women, things beautiful and innocent in the
+happy native condition of the islands, had been the means of the
+disintegration and death of this first colony.  These are serious
+considerations for any coloniser; solemn considerations for a discoverer
+who is only on the verge and beginning of his empire-making; mournful
+considerations for Christopher as he surveys the blackened ruins of the
+fort, or stands bare-headed by the grass-covered graves.
+
+There seemed to be a certain hesitancy on the part of Guacanagari to
+present himself; for though he kept announcing his intention of coming to
+visit the Admiral he did not come.  A couple of days after the discovery
+of the remains, however, he sent a message to Columbus begging him to
+come and see him, which the Admiral accordingly did, accompanied by a
+formal retinue and carrying with him the usual presents.  Guacanagari was
+in bed sure enough complaining of a wounded leg, and he told the story of
+the settlement very much as Columbus had already heard it from the other
+natives.  He pointed to his own wounded leg as a sign that he had been
+loyal and faithful to his friendly promises; but when the leg was
+examined by the surgeon in order that it might be dressed no wound could
+be discovered, and it was obvious to Doctor Chanca that the skin had not
+been broken.  This seemed odd; Friar Buil was so convinced that the whole
+story was a deception that he wished the Admiral to execute Guacanagari
+on the spot.  Columbus, although he was puzzled, was by no means
+convinced that Guacanagari had been unfaithful to him, and decided to do
+nothing for the present.  He invited the cacique to come on board the
+flagship; which he did, being greatly interested by some of the Carib
+prisoners, notably a handsome woman, named by the Spaniards Dofia
+Catalina, with whom he held a long conversation.
+
+Relations between the Admiral and the cacique, although outwardly
+cordial, were altogether different from what they had been in, the happy
+days after their first meeting; the man seemed to shrink from all the
+evidence of Spanish power, and when they proposed to hang a cross round
+his neck the native king, much as he loved trinkets and toys, expressed a
+horror and fear of this jewel when he learned that it was an emblem of
+the Christian faith.  He had seen a little too much of the Christian
+religion; and Heaven only knows with what terror and depression the
+emblem of the cross inspired him.  He went ashore; and when a messenger
+was sent to search for him a few days afterwards, it was found that he
+had moved his whole establishment into the interior of the island.  The
+beautiful native woman Catalina escaped to shore and disappeared at the
+same time; and the two events were connected in the minds of some of the
+Spaniards, and held, wrongly as it turned out, to be significant of a
+deep plot of native treachery.
+
+The most urgent need was to build the new settlement and lay out a town.
+Several small parties were sent out to reconnoitre the coast in both
+directions, but none of them found a suitable place; and on December 7th
+the whole fleet sailed to the east in the hope of finding a better
+position.  They were driven by adverse winds into a harbour some thirty
+miles to the east of Monte Christi, and when they went ashore they
+decided that this was as good a site as any for the new town.  There was
+about a quarter of a mile of level sandy beach enclosed by headlands on
+either side; there was any amount of rock and stones for building, and
+there was a natural barrier of hills and mountains a mile or so inland
+that would protect a camp from that side.--The soil was very fertile,
+the vegetation luxuriant; and the mango swamps a little way inland
+drained into a basin or lake which provided an unlimited water supply.
+Columbus therefore set about establishing a little town, to which he gave
+the name of Isabella.  Streets and squares were laid out, and rows of
+temporary buildings made of wood and thatched with grass were hastily run
+up for the accommodation of the members of the expedition, while the
+foundations of three stone buildings were also marked out and the
+excavations put in hand.  These buildings were the church, the
+storehouse, and a residence for Columbus as Governor-General.  The stores
+were landed, the horses and cattle accommodated ashore, the provisions,
+ammunition, and agricultural implements also.  Labourers were set to
+digging out the foundations of the stone buildings, carpenters to cutting
+down trees and running up the light wooden houses that were to serve as
+barracks for the present; masons were employed in hewing stones and
+building landing-piers; and all the crowd of well-born adventurers were
+set to work with their hands, much to their disgust.  This was by no
+means the life they had imagined, and at the first sign of hard work they
+turned sulky and discontented.  There was, to be sure, some reason for
+their discontent.  Things had not quite turned out as Columbus had
+promised they should; there was no store of gold, nor any sign of great
+desire on the part of the natives to bring any; and to add to their other
+troubles, illness began to break out in the camp.  The freshly-turned
+rank soil had a bad effect on the health of the garrison; the lake, which
+had promised to be so pleasant a feature in the new town, gave off
+dangerous malarial vapours at night; and among the sufferers from this
+trouble was Columbus himself, who endured for some weeks all the pains
+and lassitude of the disagreeable fever.
+
+The ships were now empty and ready for the return voyage, and as soon as
+Columbus was better he set to work to face the situation.  After all his
+promises it would never do to send them home empty or in ballast; a cargo
+of stones from the new-found Indies would not be well received in Spain.
+The natives had told him that somewhere in the island existed the gold
+mines of Cibao, and he determined to make an attempt to find these, so
+that he could send his ships home laden with a cargo that would be some
+indemnity for the heavy cost of the expedition and some compensation for
+the bad news he must write with regard to his first settlement.  Young
+Ojeda was chosen to lead an expedition of fifteen picked men into the
+interior; and as the gold mines were said to be in a part of the island
+not under the command of Guacanagari, but in the territory of the dreaded
+Caonabo, there was no little anxiety felt about the expedition.
+
+Ojeda started in the beginning of January 1494, and marched southwards
+through dense forests until, having crossed a mountain range, he came
+down into a beautiful and fertile valley, where they were hospitably
+received by the natives.  They saw plenty of gold in the sand of the
+river that watered the valley, which sand the natives had a way of
+washing so that the gold was separated from it; and there seemed to be so
+much wealth there that Ojeda hurried back to the new city of Isabella to
+make his report to Columbus.  The effect upon the discontented colonists
+was remarkable.  Once more everything was right; wealth beyond the dreams
+of avarice was at their hand; and all they had to do was to stretch out
+their arms and take it.  Columbus felt that he need no longer delay the
+despatch of twelve of his ships on the homeward voyage.  If he had not
+got golden cargoes for them, at any rate he had got the next best thing,
+which was the certainty of gold; and it did not matter whether it was in
+the ships or in his storehouse.  He had news to send home at any rate,
+and a great variety of things to ask for in return, and he therefore set
+about writing his report to the Sovereigns.  Other people, as we know,
+were writing letters too; the reiterated promise of gold, and the
+marvellous anecdotes which these credulous settlers readily believed from
+the natives, such as that there was a rock close by out of which gold
+would burst if you struck it with a club, raised greed and expectation in
+Spain to a fever pitch, and prepared the reaction which followed.
+
+We may now read the account of the New World as Columbus sent it home to
+the King and Queen of Spain in the end of January 1494, and as they read
+it some weeks later.  Their comments, written in the margin of the
+original, are printed in italics at the end of each paragraph.  It was
+drawn up in the form of a memorandum, and entrusted to Antonio de Torres,
+who was commanding the return expedition.
+
+
+“What you, Antonio de Torres, captain of the ship Marigalante and Alcalde
+of the City of Isabella, are to say and supplicate on my part to the King
+and Queen, our Lords, is as follows:--
+
+     “First.  Having delivered the letters of credence which you carry
+     from me for their Highnesses, you will kiss for me their Royal feet
+     and hands and will recommend me to their Highnesses as to a King and
+     Queen, my natural Lords, in whose service I desire to end my days:
+     as you will be able to say this more fully to their Highnesses,
+     according to what you have seen and known of me.
+
+          [“Their Highnesses hold him in their favour.]
+
+     “Item.  Although by the letters I write to their Highnesses, and
+     also the father Friar Buil and the Treasurer, they will be able to
+     understand all that has been done here since our arrival, and this
+     very minutely and extensively: nevertheless, you will say to their
+     Highnesses on my part, that it has pleased God to give me such
+     favour in their service, that up to the present time.  I do not find
+     less, nor has less been found in anything than what I wrote and said
+     and affirmed to their Highnesses in the past: but rather, by the
+     Grace of God, I hope that it will appear, by works much more clearly
+     and very soon, because such signs and indications of spices have
+     been found on the shores of the sea alone, without having gone
+     inland, that there is reason that very much better results may be
+     hoped for: and this also may be hoped for in the mines of gold,
+     because by two persons only who went to investigate, each one on his
+     own part, without remaining there because there was not many people,
+     so many rivers have been discovered so filled with gold, that all
+     who saw it and gathered specimens of it with the hands alone, came
+     away so pleased and say such things in regard to its abundance, that
+     I am timid about telling it and writing it to their Highnesses: but
+     because Gorbalan, who was one of the discoverers, is going yonder,
+     he will tell what he saw, although another named Hojeda remains
+     here, a servant of the Duke of Medinaceli, a very discreet youth and
+     very prudent, who without doubt and without comparison even,
+     discovered much more according to the memorandum which he brought of
+     the rivers, saying that there is an incredible quantity in each one
+     of them for this their Highnesses may give thanks to God, since He
+     has been so favourable to them in all their affairs.
+
+          [“Their Highnesses give many thanks to God for this, and
+          consider as a very signal service all that the Admiral has done
+          in this matter and is doing: because they know that after God
+          they are indebted to him for all they have had, and will have
+          in this affair: and as they are writing him more fully about
+          this, they refer him to their letter.]
+
+     “Item. You will say to their Highnesses, although I already have
+     written it to them, that I desired greatly to be able to send them a
+     larger quantity of gold in this fleet, from that which it is hoped
+     may be gathered here, but the greater part of our people who are
+     here, have fallen suddenly ill: besides, this fleet cannot remain
+     here longer, both on account of the great expense it occasions and
+     because this time is suitable for those persons who are to bring the
+     things which are greatly needed here, to go and be able to return:
+     as, if they delay going away from here, those who are to return will
+     not be able to do so by May: and besides this, if I wished to
+     undertake to go to the mines or rivers now, with the well people who
+     are here, both on the sea and in the settlement on land, I would
+     have many difficulties and even dangers, because in order to go
+     twenty-three or twenty-four leagues from here where there are
+     harbours and rivers to cross, and in order to cover such a long
+     route and reach there at the time which would be necessary to gather
+     the gold, a large quantity of provisions would have to be carried,
+     which cannot be carried on the shoulders, nor are there beasts of
+     burden here which could be used for this purpose: nor are the roads
+     and passes sufficiently prepared, although I have commenced to get
+     them in readiness so as to be passable: and also it was very
+     inconvenient to leave the sick here in an open place, in huts, with
+     the provisions and supplies which are on land: for although these
+     Indians may have shown themselves to the discoverers and show
+     themselves every day, to be very simple and not malicious
+     nevertheless, as they come here among us each day, it did not appear
+     that it would be a good idea to risk losing these people and the
+     supplies.  This loss an Indian with a piece of burning wood would be
+     able to cause by setting fire to the huts, because they are always
+     going and coming by night and by day: on their account, we have
+     guards in the camp, while the settlement is open and defenceless.
+
+          [“That he did well.]
+
+     “Moreover, as we have seen among those who went by land to make
+     discoveries that the greater part fell sick after returning, and
+     some of them even were obliged to turn back on the road, it was also
+     reasonable to fear that the same thing would happen to those who are
+     well, who would now go, and as a consequence they would run the risk
+     of two dangers: the one, that of falling sick yonder, in the same
+     work, where there is no house nor any defence against that cacique
+     who is called Caonabb, who is a very bad man according to all
+     accounts, and much more audacious and who, seeing us there, sick and
+     in such disorder, would be able to undertake what he would not dare
+     if we were well: and with this difficulty there is another--that of
+     bringing here what gold we might obtain, because we must either
+     bring a small quantity and go and come each day and undergo the risk
+     of sickness, or it must be sent with some part of the people,
+     incurring the same danger of losing it.
+
+          [“He did well.]
+
+     “So that, you will say to their Highnesses, that these are the
+     causes why the fleet has not been at present detained, and why more
+     gold than the specimens has not been sent them: but confiding in the
+     mercy of God, who in everything and for everything has guided us as
+     far as here, these people will quickly become convalescent, as they
+     are already doing, because only certain places in the country suit
+     them and they then recover; and it is certain that if they had some
+     fresh meat in order to convalesce, all with the aid of God would
+     very quickly be on foot, and even the greater part would already be
+     convalescent at this time: nevertheless they will be re-established.
+     With the few healthy ones who remain here, each day work is done
+     toward enclosing the settlement and placing it in a state of some
+     defence and the supplies in safety, which will be accomplished in a
+     short time, because it is to be only a small dry wall.  For the
+     Indians are not a people to undertake anything unless they should
+     find us sleeping, even though they might have thought of it in the
+     manner in which they served the others who remained here.  Only on
+     account of their (the Spaniards’) lack of caution--they being so
+     few--and the great opportunities they gave the Indians to have and
+     do what they did, they would never have dared to undertake to injure
+     them if they had seen that they were cautious.  And this work being
+     finished, I will then undertake to go to the said rivers, either
+     starting upon the road from here and seeking the best possible
+     expedients, or going around the island by sea as far as that place
+     from which it is said it cannot be more than six or seven leagues to
+     the said rivers.  In such a manner that the gold can be gathered and
+     placed in security in some fortress or tower which can then be
+     constructed there, in order to keep it securely until the time when
+     the two caravels return here, and in order that then, with the first
+     suitable weather for sailing this course, it may be sent to a place
+     of safety.
+
+          [“That this is well and must be done in this manner.]
+
+     “Item.  You will say to their Highnesses, as has been said, that the
+     cause of the general sicknesses common to all is the change of water
+     and air, because we see that it extends to all conditions and few
+     are in danger: consequently, for the preservation of health, after
+     God, it is necessary that these people be provided with the
+     provisions to which they are accustomed in Spain, because neither
+     they, nor others who may come anew, will be able to serve their
+     Highnesses if they are not well: and this provision must continue
+     until a supply is accumulated here from what shall be sowed and
+     planted here.  I say wheat and barley, and vines, of which little
+     has been done this year because a site for the town could not be
+     selected before, and then when it was selected the few labourers who
+     were here became sick, and they, even though they had been well, had
+     so few and such lean and meagre beasts of burden, that they were
+     able to do but little: nevertheless, they have sown something, more
+     in order to try the soil which appears very wonderful, so that from
+     it some relief may be hoped in our necessities.  We are very sure,
+     as the result makes it apparent to us, that in this country wheat as
+     well as the vine will grow very well: but the fruit must be waited
+     for, which, if it corresponds to the quickness with which the wheat
+     grows and of some few vine-shoots which were planted, certainly will
+     not cause regret here for the productions of Andalusia or Sicily:
+     neither is it different with the sugar-canes according to the manner
+     in which some few that were planted have grown.  For it is certain
+     that the sight of the land of these islands, as well of the
+     mountains and sierras and waters as of the plains where there are
+     rich rivers, is so beautiful, that no other land on which the sun
+     shines can appear better or as beautiful.
+
+          [“Since the land is such, it must be managed that the greatest
+          possible quantity of all things shall be sown, and Don Juan de
+          Fonseca is to be written to send continually all that is
+          necessary for this purpose.]
+
+     “Item.  You will say that, inasmuch as much of the wine which the
+     fleet brought was wasted on this journey, and this, according to
+     what the greater number say, was because of the bad workmanship
+     which the coopers did in Seville, the greatest necessity we feel
+     here at the present time is for wines, and it is what we desire most
+     to have and although we may have biscuit as well as wheat sufficient
+     for a longer time, nevertheless it is necessary that a reasonable
+     quantity should also be sent, because the journey is long and
+     provision cannot be made each day and in the same manner some salted
+     meat, I say bacon, and other salt meat better than that we brought
+     on this journey.  It is necessary that each time a caravel comes
+     here, fresh meat shall be sent, and even more than that, lambs and
+     little ewe lambs, more females than males, and some little yearling
+     calves, male and female, and some he-asses and she-asses and some
+     mares for labour and breeding, as there are none of these animals
+     here of any value or which can be made use of by man.  And because I
+     apprehend that their Highnesses may not be, in Seville, and that the
+     officials or ministers will not provide these things without their
+     express order, and as it is necessary they should come at the first
+     opportunity, and as in consultation and reply the time for the
+     departure of the vessels-which must be here during all of Maywill be
+     past: you will say to their Highnesses that I charged and commanded
+     you to pledge the gold you are carrying yonder and place it in
+     possession of some merchant in Seville, who will furnish therefor
+     the necessary maravedis to load two caravels with wine and wheat and
+     the other things of which you are taking a memorandum; which
+     merchant will carry or send the said gold to their Highnesses that
+     they may see it and receive it, and cause what shall have been
+     expended for fitting out and loading of the said two caravels to be
+     paid: and in order to comfort and strengthen these people remaining
+     here, the utmost efforts must be made for the return of these
+     caravels for all the month of May, that the people before commencing
+     the summer may see and have some refreshment from these things,
+     especially the invalids: the things of which we are already in great
+     need here are such as raisins, sugar, almonds, honey and rice, which
+     should have been sent in large quantities and very little was sent,
+     and that which came is already used and consumed, and even the
+     greater part of the medicines which were brought from there, on
+     account of the multitude of sick people.  You are carrying memoranda
+     signed by my hand, as has been said, of things for the people in
+     good health as well as for the sick.  You will provide these things
+     fully if the money is sufficient, or at least the things which it is
+     most necessary to send at once, in order that the said two vessels
+     can bring them, and you can arrange with their Highnesses, to have
+     the remaining things sent by other vessels as quickly as possible.
+
+          [“Their Highnesses sent an order to Don Juan de Fonseca to
+          obtain at once information about the persons who committed the
+          fraud of the casks, and to cause all the damage to the wine to
+          be recovered from them, with the costs: and he must see that
+          the canes which are sent are of good quality, and that the
+          other things mentioned here are provided at once.]
+
+     “Item.  You will say to their Highnesses that as there is no
+     language here by means of which these people can be made to
+     understand our Holy Faith, as your Highnesses and also we who are
+     here desire, although we will do all we can towards it--I am sending
+     some of the cannibals in the vessels, men and women and male and
+     female children, whom their Highnesses can order placed with persons
+     from whom they can better learn the language, making use of them in
+     service, and ordering that little by little more pains be taken with
+     them than with other slaves, that they may learn one from the other:
+     if they do not see or speak with each other until some time has
+     passed, they will learn more quickly there than here, and will be
+     better interpreters--although we will not cease to do as much as
+     possible here.  It is true that as there is little intercourse
+     between these people from one island to another, there is some
+     difference in their language, according to how far distant they are
+     from each other.  And as, of the other islands, those of the
+     cannibals are very large and very well populated, it would appear
+     best to take some of their men and women and send them yonder to
+     Castile, because by taking them away, it may cause them to abandon
+     at once that inhuman custom which they have of eating men: and by
+     learning the language there in Castile, they will receive baptism
+     much more quickly, and provide for the safety of their souls.  Even
+     among the peoples who are not cannibals we shall gain great credit,
+     by their seeing that we can seize and take captive those from whom
+     they are accustomed to receive injuries, and of whom they are in
+     such terror that they are frightened by one man alone.  You will
+     certify to their Highnesses that the arrival here and sight of such
+     a fine fleet all together has inspired very great authority here and
+     assured very great security for future things: because all the
+     people on this great island and in the other islands, seeing the
+     good treatment which those who well behave receive, and the bad
+     treatment given to those who behave ill, will very quickly render
+     obedience, so that they can be considered as vassals of their
+     Highnesses.  And as now they not only do willingly whatever is
+     required of them by our people, but further, they voluntarily
+     undertake everything which they understand may please us, their
+     Highnesses may also be certain that in many respects, as much for
+     the present as for the future, the coming of this fleet has given
+     them a great reputation, and not less yonder among the Christian
+     princes: which their Highnesses will be better able to consider and
+     understand than I can tell them.
+
+          [“That he is to be told what has befallen the cannibals who
+          came here.  That it is very well and must be done in this
+          manner, but that he must try there as much as possible to bring
+          them to our Holy Catholic faith and do the same with the
+          inhabitants of the islands where he is.]
+
+     “Item.  You will say to their Highnesses that the safety of the
+     souls of the said cannibals, and further of those here, has inspired
+     the thought that the more there are taken yonder, the better it will
+     be, and their Highnesses can be served by it in this manner: having
+     seen how necessary the flocks and beasts of burden are here, for the
+     sustenance of the people who must be here, and even of all these
+     islands, their Highnesses can give licence and permission to a
+     sufficient number of caravels to come here each year, and bring the
+     said flocks and other supplies and things to settle the country and
+     make use of the land: and this at reasonable prices at the expense
+     of those who bring them: and these things can be paid for in slaves
+     from among these cannibals, a very proud and comely people, well
+     proportioned and of good intelligence, who having been freed from
+     that inhumanity, we believe will be better than any other slaves.
+     They will be freed from this cruelty as soon as they are outside
+     their country, and many of them can be taken with the row-boats
+     which it is known how to build here: it being understood, however,
+     that a trustworthy person shall be placed on each one of the
+     caravels coming here, who shall forbid the said caravels to stop at
+     any other place or island than this place, where the loading and
+     unloading of all the merchandise must be done.  And further, their
+     Highnesses will be able to establish their rights over these slaves
+     which are taken from here yonder to Spain.  And you will bring or
+     send a reply to this, in order that the necessary preparations may
+     be made here with more confidence if it appears well to their
+     Highnesses.
+
+          [“This project must be held in abeyance for the present until
+          another method is suggested from there, and the Admiral may
+          write what he thinks in regard to it.]
+
+     “Item.  Also you will say to their Highnesses that it is more
+     profitable and costs less to hire the vessels as the merchants hire
+     them for Flanders, by tons, rather than in any other manner:
+     therefore I charged you to hire the two caravels which you are to
+     send here, in this manner: and all the others which their Highnesses
+     send here can be hired thus, if they consider it for their service
+     but I do not intend to say this of those vessels which are to come
+     here with their licence, for the slave trade.
+
+          [“Their Highnesses order Don Juan de Fonseca to hire the
+          caravels in this manner if it can be done.]
+
+     “Item.  You will say to their Highnesses, that to avoid any further
+     cost, I bought these caravels of which you are taking a memorandum
+     in order to retain them here with these two ships: that is to say
+     the Gallega and that other, the Capitana, of which I likewise
+     purchased the three-eighths from the master of it, for the price
+     given in the said memorandum which you are taking, signed by my
+     hand.  These ships not only will give authority and great security
+     to the people who are obliged to remain inland and make arrangements
+     with the Indians to gather the gold, but they will also be of
+     service in any other dangerous matter which may arise with a strange
+     people; besides the caravels are necessary for the discovery of the
+     mainland and the other islands which lie between here and there: and
+     you will entreat their Highnesses to order the maravedis which these
+     ships cost, paid at the times which they have been promised, because
+     without doubt they will soon receive what they cost, according to
+     what I believe and hope in the mercy of God.
+
+          [“The Admiral has done well, and to tell him that the sum has
+          been paid here to the one who sold the ship, and Don Juan de
+          Fonseca has been ordered to pay for the two caravels which the
+          Admiral bought.]
+
+     “Item.  You will say to their Highnesses, and will supplicate on my
+     part as humbly as possible, that it may please them to reflect on
+     what they will learn most fully from the letters and other writings
+     in regard to the peace and tranquillity and concord of those who are
+     here: and that for the service of their Highnesses such persons may
+     be selected as shall not be suspected, and who will give more
+     attention to the matters for which they are sent than to their own
+     interests: and since you saw and knew everything in regard to this
+     matter, you will speak and will tell their Highnesses the truth
+     about all the things as you understood them, and you will endeavour
+     that the provision which their Highnesses make in regard to it shall
+     come with the first ships if possible, in order that there may be no
+     scandals here in a matter of so much importance in the service of
+     their Highnesses.
+
+          [“Their Highnesses are well informed in regard to this matter,
+          and suitable provision will be made for everything.]
+
+     “Item.  You will tell their Highnesses of the situation of this
+     city, and the beauty of the surrounding province as you saw and
+     understood it, and how I made you its Alcade, by the powers which I
+     have for same from their Highnesses: whom I humbly entreat to hold
+     the said provision in part satisfaction of your services, as I hope
+     from their Highnesses.
+
+          [“It pleases their Highnesses that you shall be Alcade.]
+
+     “Item.  Because Mosen Pedro Margarite, servant of their Highnesses,
+     has done good service, and I hope he will do the same henceforward
+     in matters which are entrusted to him, I have been pleased to have
+     him remain here, and also Gaspar and Beltran, because they are
+     recognised servants of their Highnesses, in order to intrust them
+     with matters of confidence.  You will specialty entreat their
+     Highnesses in regard to the said Mosen Pedro, who is married and has
+     children, to provide him with some charge in the order of Santiago,
+     whose habit he wears, that his wife and children may have the
+     wherewith to live.  In the same manner you will relate how well and
+     diligently Juan Aguado, servant of their Highnesses, has rendered
+     service in everything which he has been ordered to do, and that I
+     supplicate their Highnesses to have him and the aforesaid persons in
+     their charge and to reward them.
+
+          [“Their Highnesses order 30,000 maravedis to be assigned to
+          Mosen Pedro each year, and to Gaspar and Beltran, to each one,
+          15,000 maravedis each year, from the present, August 15, 1494,
+          henceforward: and thus the Admiral shall cause to be paid to
+          them whatever must be paid yonder in the Indies, and Don Juan
+          de Fonseca whatever must be paid here: and in regard to Juan
+          Iguado, their Highnesses will hold him in remembrance.]
+
+     “Item.  You will tell their Highnesses of the labour performed by
+     Dr. Chanca, confronted with so many invalids, and still more because
+     of the lack of provisions and nevertheless, he acts with great
+     diligence and charity in everything pertaining to his office.  And
+     as their Highnesses referred to me the salary which he was to
+     receive here, because, being here, it is certain that he cannot take
+     or receive anything from any one, nor earn money by his office as he
+     earned it in Castile, or would be able to earn it being at his ease
+     and living in a different manner from the way he lives here;
+     therefore, notwithstanding he swears that he earned more there,
+     besides the salary which their Highnesses gave him, I did not wish
+     to allow more than 50,000 maravedis each year for the work he
+     performs here while he remains here.  This I entreat their
+     Highnesses to order allowed to him with the salary from here, and
+     that, because he says and affirms that all the physicians of their
+     Highnesses who are employed in Royal affairs or things similar to
+     this, are accustomed to have by right one day’s wages in all the
+     year from all the people.  Nevertheless, I have been informed and
+     they tell me, that however this may be, the custom is to give them a
+     certain sum, fixed according to the will and command of their
+     Highnesses in compensation for that day’s wages.  You will entreat
+     their Highnesses to order provision made as well in the matter of
+     the salary as of this custom, in such manner that the said Dr.
+     Chanca may have reason to be satisfied.
+
+          [“Their Highnesses are pleased in regard to this matter of Dr.
+          Chanca, and that he shall be paid what the Admiral has assigned
+          him, together with his salary.
+          “In regard to the day’s wages of the physicians, they are not
+          accustomed to receive it, save where the King, our Lord, may be
+          in persona.]
+
+     “Item.  You will say to their Highnesses that Coronel is a man for
+     the service of their Highnesses in many things, and how much service
+     he has rendered up to the present in all the most necessary matters,
+     and the need we feel of him now that he is sick; and that rendering
+     service in such a manner, it is reasonable that he should receive
+     the fruit of his service, not only in future favours, but in his
+     present salary, so that he and those who are here may feel that
+     their service profits them; because, so great is the labour which
+     must be performed here in gathering the gold that the persons who
+     are so diligent are not to be held in small consideration; and as,
+     for his skill, he was provided here by me with the office of
+     Alguacil Mayor of these Indies; and since in the provision the
+     salary is left blank, you will say that I supplicate their
+     Highnesses to order it filled in with as large an amount as they may
+     think right, considering his services, confirming to him the
+     provision I have given him here, and assuring it to him annually.
+
+          [“Their Highnesses order that 15,000 maravedis more than his
+          salary shall be assigned him each year, and that it shall be
+          paid to him with his salary.]
+
+     “In the same manner you will tell their Highnesses how the lawyer
+     Gil Garcia came here for Alcalde Mayor and no salary has been named
+     or assigned to him; and he is a capable person, well educated and
+     diligent, and is very necessary here; that I entreat their
+     Highnesses to order his salary named and assigned, so that he can
+     sustain himself, and that it may be paid from the money allowed for
+     salaries here.
+
+          “[Their Highnesses order 20,000 maravedis besides his salary
+          assigned to him each year, as long as he remains yonder, and
+          that it shall be paid him when his salary is paid.]
+
+     “Item.  You will say to their Highnesses, although it is already
+     written in the letters, that I do not think it will be possible to
+     go to make discoveries this year, until these rivers in which gold
+     is found are placed in the most suitable condition for the service
+     of their Highnesses, as afterwards it can be done much better.
+     Because it is a thing which no one can do without my presence,
+     according to my will or for the service of their Highnesses, however
+     well it may be done, as it is doubtful what will be satisfactory to
+     a man unless he is present.
+
+          [“Let him endeavour that the amount of this gold may be known
+          as precisely as possible.]
+
+     “Item.  You will say to their Highnesses that the Squires who came
+     from Granada showed good horses in the review which took place at
+     Seville, and afterward at the embarkation I did not see them because
+     I was slightly unwell, and they replaced them with such horses that
+     the best of them do not appear to be worth 2000 maravedis, as they
+     sold the others and bought these; and this was done in the same way
+     to many people as I very well saw yonder, in the reviews at Seville.
+     It appears that Juan de Soria, after he had been given the money for
+     the wages, for some interest of his own substituted others in place
+     of those I expected to find here, and I found people whom I had
+     never seen.  In this matter he was guilty of great wickedness, so
+     that I do not know if I should complain of him alone.  On this
+     account, having seen that the expenses of these Squires have been
+     defrayed until now, besides their wages and also wages for their
+     horses, and it is now being done: and they are persons who, when
+     they are sick or when they do not desire to do so, will not allow
+     any use to be made of their horses save by themselves: and their,
+     Highnesses do not desire that these horses should be purchased of
+     them, but that they should be used in the service of their
+     Highnesses: and it does not appear to them that they should do
+     anything or render any service except on horseback, which at the
+     present time is not much to the purpose: on this account, it seems
+     that it would be better to buy the horses from them, since they are
+     of so little value, and not have these disagreements with them every
+     day.  Therefore their Highnesses may determine this as will best
+     serve them.
+
+          [“Their Highnesses order Don Juan de Fonseca to inform himself
+          in regard to this matter of the horses, and if it shall be
+          found true that this fraud was committed, those persons shall
+          be sent to their Highnesses to be punished: and also he is to
+          inform himself in regard to what is said of the other people,
+          and send the result in the examination to their Highnesses; and
+          in regard to these Squires, their Highnesses command that they
+          remain there and render service, since they belong to the
+          guards and servants of their Highnesses: and their Highnesses
+          order the Squires to give up the horses each time it is
+          necessary and the Admiral orders it, and if the horses receive
+          any injury through others using them, their Highnesses order
+          that the damage shall be paid to them by means of the Admiral.]
+
+     “Item.  You will say to their Highnesses that more than 200 persons
+     have come here without wages, and there are some of them who render
+     good service.  And as it is ordered that the others rendering
+     similar service should be paid: and as for these first three years
+     it would be of great benefit to have 1000 men here to settle, and
+     place this island and the rivers of gold in very great security, and
+     even though there were 100 horsemen nothing would be lost, but
+     rather it seems necessary, although their Highnesses will be able to
+     do without these horsemen until gold is sent: nevertheless, their
+     Highnesses must send to say whether wages shall be paid to these 200
+     persons, the same as to the others rendering good service, because
+     they are certainly necessary, as I have said in the beginning of
+     this memorandum.
+
+          [“In regard to these 200 persons, who are here said to have
+          gone without wages, their Highnesses order that they shall take
+          the places of those who went for wages, who have failed or
+          shall fail to fulfil their engagements, if they are skilful and
+          satisfactory to the Admiral.  And their Highnesses order the
+          Purser (Contador) to enrol them in place of those who fail to
+          fulfil their engagements, as the Admiral shall instruct him.]
+
+     “Item.  As the cost of these people can be in some degree lightened
+     and the better part of the expense could be avoided by the same
+     means employed by other Princes in other places: it appears, that it
+     would be well to order brought in the ships, besides the other
+     things which are for the common maintenance and the medicines, shoes
+     and the skins from which to order the shoes made, common shirts and
+     others, jackets, linen, sack-coats, trowsers and cloths suitable for
+     wearing apparel, at reasonable prices: and other things like
+     conserves which are not included in rations and are for the
+     preservation of health, which things all the people here would
+     willingly receive to apply on their wages and if these were
+     purchased yonder in Spain by faithful Ministers who would act for
+     the advantage of their Highnesses, something would be saved.
+     Therefore you will learn the will of their Highnesses about this
+     matter, and if it appears to them to be of benefit to them, then it
+     must be placed in operation.
+
+          [“This arrangement is to be in abeyance until the Admiral
+          writes more fully, and at another time they will send to order
+          Don Juan de Fonseca with Jimeno de Bribiesca to make provision
+          for the same.]
+
+     “Item.  You will say to their Highnesses that inasmuch as yesterday
+     in the review people were found who were without arms, which I think
+     happened in part by that exchange which took place yonder in
+     Seville, or in the harbour when those who presented themselves armed
+     were left, and others were taken who gave something to those who
+     made the exchange, it seems that it would be well to order 200
+     cuirasses sent, and 100 muskets and 100 crossbows, and a large
+     quantity of arsenal supplies, which is what we need most, and all
+     these arms can be given to those who are unarmed.
+
+          [“Already Don Juan de Fonseca has been written to make
+          provision for this.]
+
+     “Item.  Inasmuch as some artisans who came here, such as masons and
+     other workmen, are married and have wives yonder in Spain, and would
+     like to have what is owing them from their wages given to their
+     wives or to the persons to whom they will send their requirements in
+     order that they may buy for them the things which they need here I
+     supplicate their Highnesses to order it paid to them, because it is
+     for their benefit to have these persons provided for here.
+
+          [“Their Highnesses have already sent orders to Don Juan de
+          Fonseca to make provision for this matter.]
+
+     “Item.  Because, besides the other things which are asked for there
+     according to the memoranda which you are carrying signed by my hand,
+     for the maintenance of the persons in good health as well as for the
+     sick ones, it would be very well to have fifty casks of molasses
+     (miel de azucar) from the island of Madeira, as it is the best
+     sustenance in the world and the most healthful, and it does not
+     usually cost more than two ducats per cask, without the cask: and if
+     their Highnesses order some caravel to stop there in returning, it
+     can be purchased and also ten cases of sugar, which is very
+     necessary; as this is the best season of the year to obtain it, I
+     say between the present time and the month of April, and to obtain
+     it at a reasonable price.  If their Highnesses command it, the order
+     could be given, and it would not be known there for what place it is
+     wanted.
+
+          [“Let Don Juan de Fonseca make provision for this matter.]
+
+     “Item.  You will say to their Highnesses that although the rivers
+     contain gold in the quantity related by those who have seen it, yet
+     it is certain that the gold is not engendered in the rivers but
+     rather on the land, the waters of the rivers which flow by the mines
+     bringing it enveloped in the sands: and as among these rivers which
+     have been discovered there are some very large ones, there are
+     others so small that they are fountains rather than rivers, which
+     are not more than two fingers of water in depth, and then the source
+     from which they spring may be found: for this reason not only
+     labourers to gather it in the sand will be profitable, but others to
+     dig for it in the earth, which will be the most particular operation
+     and produce a great quantity.  And for this, it will be well for
+     their Highnesses to send labourers, and from among those who work
+     yonder in Spain in the mines of Almaden, that the work may be done
+     in both ways.  Although we will not await them here, as with the
+     labourers we have here we hope, with the aid of God, once the people
+     are in good health, to amass a good quantity of gold to be sent on
+     the first caravels which return.
+
+          [“This will be fully provided for in another manner.  In the
+          meantime their Highnesses order Don Yuan de Fonseca to send the
+          best miners he can obtain; and to write to Almaden to have the
+          greatest possible number taken from there and sent.]
+
+     “Item.  You will entreat their Highnesses very humbly on my part, to
+     consider Villacorta as speedily recommended to them, who, as their
+     Highnesses know, has rendered great service in this business, and
+     with a very good will, and as I know him, he is a diligent person
+     and very devoted to their service: it will be a favour to me if he
+     is given some confidential charge for which he is fitted, and where
+     he can show his desire to serve them and his diligence: and this you
+     will obtain in such a way that Villacorta may know by the result,
+     that what he has done for me when I needed him profits him in this
+     manner.
+
+          [“It will be done thus.]
+
+     “Item.  That the said Mosen Pedro and Gaspar and Beltran and others
+     who have remained here gave up the captainship of caravels, which
+     have now returned, and are not receiving wages: but because they are
+     persons who must be employed in important matters and of confidence,
+     their compensation, which must be different from the others, has not
+     been determined.  You will entreat their Highnesses on my part to
+     determine what is to be given them each year, or by the month,
+     according to their service.
+
+     “Done in the city of Isabella, January 30, 1494.
+
+          [“This has already been replied to above, but as it is stated
+          in the said item that they enjoy their salary, from the present
+          time their Highnesses order that their wages shall be paid to
+          all of them from the time they left their captainships.”]
+
+
+This document is worth studying, written as it was in circumstances that
+at one moment looked desperate and at another were all hope.  Columbus
+was struggling manfully with difficulties that were already beginning to
+be too much for him.  The Man from Genoa, with his guiding star of faith
+in some shore beyond the mist and radiance of the West--see into what
+strange places and to what strange occupations this star has led him!
+The blue visionary eyes, given to seeing things immediately beyond the
+present horizon, must fix themselves on accounts and requisitions, on the
+needs of idle, aristocratic, grumbling Spaniards; must fix themselves
+also on that blank void in the bellies of his returning ships, where the
+gold ought to have been.  The letter has its practical side; the
+requisitions are made with good sense and a grasp of the economic
+situation; but they have a deeper significance than that.  All this talk
+about little ewe lambs, wine and bacon (better than the last lot, if it
+please your Highnesses), little yearling calves, and fifty casks of
+molasses that can be bought a ducat or two cheaper in Madeira in the
+months of April and May than at any other time or place, is only half
+real.  Columbus fills his Sovereigns’ ears with this clamour so that he
+shall not hear those embarrassing questions that will inevitably be asked
+about the gold and the spices.  He boldly begins his letter with the old
+story about “indications of spices” and gold “in incredible quantities,”
+with a great deal of “moreover” and “besides,” and a bold, pompous,
+pathetic “I will undertake”; and then he gets away from that subject by
+wordy deviations, so that to one reading his letter it really might seem
+as though the true business of the expedition was to provide Coronel,
+Mosen Pedro, Gaspar, Beltran, Gil Garcia, and the rest of them with work
+and wages.  Everything that occurs to him, great or little, that makes it
+seem as though things were humming in the new settlement, he stuffs into
+this document, shovelling words into the empty hulls of the ships, and
+trying to fill those bottomless pits with a stream of talk.  A system of
+slavery is boldly and bluntly sketched; the writer, in the hurry and
+stress of the moment, giving to its economic advantages rather greater
+prominence than to its religious glories.  The memorandum, for all its
+courageous attempt to be very cool and orderly and practical, gives us,
+if ever a human document did, a picture of a man struggling with an
+impossible situation which he will not squarely face, like one who should
+try to dig up the sea-shore and keep his eyes shut the while.
+
+In the royal comments written against the document one seems to trace the
+hand of Isabella rather than of Ferdinand.  Their tone is matter-of-fact,
+cool, and comforting, like the coolness of a woman’s hand placed on a
+feverish brow.  Isabella believed in him; perhaps she read between the
+lines of this document, and saw, as we can see, how much anxiety and
+distress were written there; and her comments are steadying and
+encouraging.  He has done well; what he asks is being attended to; their
+Highnesses are well informed in regard to this and that matter; suitable
+provision will be made for everything; but let him endeavour that the
+amount of this gold may be known as precisely as possible.  There is no
+escaping from that.  The Admiral (no one knows it better than himself)
+must make good his dazzling promises, and coin every boastful word into a
+golden excelente of Spain.  Alas!  he must no longer write about the lush
+grasses, the shining rivers, the brightly coloured parrots, the gaudy
+flies and insects, the little singing birds, and the nights that are like
+May in Cordova.  He must find out about the gold; for it has come to grim
+business in the Earthly Paradise.
+
+
+
+
+DESPERATE REMEDIES
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE VOYAGE TO CUBA
+
+The sight of the greater part of their fleet disappearing in the
+direction of home threw back the unstable Spanish colony into doubt and
+despondency.  The brief encouragement afforded by Ojeda’s report soon
+died away, and the actual discomforts of life in Isabella were more
+important than visionary luxuries that seemed to recede into the distance
+with the vanishing ships.  The food supply was the cause of much
+discomfort; the jobbery and dishonesty which seem inseparable from the
+fitting out of a large expedition had stored the ships with bad wine and
+imperfectly cured provisions; and these combined with the unhealthy
+climate to produce a good deal of sickness.  The feeling against
+Columbus, never far below the Spanish surface, began to express itself
+definitely in treacherous consultations and plots; and these were
+fomented by Bernal Diaz, the comptroller of the colony, who had access to
+Columbus’s papers and had seen the letter sent by him to Spain.  Columbus
+was at this time prostrated by an attack of fever, and Diaz took the
+opportunity to work the growing discontent up to the point of action.  He
+told the colonists that Columbus had painted their condition in far too
+favourable terms; that he was deceiving them as well as the Sovereigns;
+and a plot was hatched to seize the ships that remained and sail for
+home, leaving Columbus behind to enjoy the riches that he had falsely
+boasted about.  They were ready to take alarm at anything, and to believe
+anything one way or the other; and as they had believed Ojeda when he
+came back with his report of riches, now they believed Cado, the assayer,
+who said that even such gold as had been found was of a very poor and
+worthless quality.  The mutiny developed fast; and a table of charges
+against Columbus, which was to be produced in Spain as a justification
+for it, had actually been drawn up when the Admiral, recovering from his
+illness, discovered what was on foot.  He dealt promptly and firmly with
+it in his quarterdeck manner, which was always far more effective than
+his viceregal manner.  Diaz was imprisoned and lodged in chains on board
+one of the ships, to be sent to Spain for trial; and the other
+ringleaders were punished also according to their deserts.  The guns and
+ammunition were all stored together on one ship under a safe guard, and
+the mutiny was stamped out.  But the Spaniards did not love Columbus any
+the better for it; did not any the more easily forgive him for being in
+command of them and for being a foreigner.
+
+
+But it would never do for the colony to stagnate in Isabella, and
+Columbus decided to make a serious attempt, not merely to discover the
+gold of Cibao, but to get it.  He therefore organised a military
+expedition of about 400 men, including artificers, miners, and carriers,
+with the little cavalry force that had been brought out from Spain.
+Every one who had armour wore it, flags and banners were carried, drums
+and trumpets were sounded; the horses were decked out in rich caparisons,
+and as glittering and formidable a show was made as possible.  Leaving
+his brother James in command of the settlement, Columbus set out on the
+12th of March to the interior of the island.  Through the forest and up
+the mountainside a road was cut by pioneers from among the aristocratic
+adventurers who had come with the party; which road, the first made in
+the New World, was called El Puerto de los Hidalgos.  The formidable,
+glittering cavalcade inspired the natives with terror and amazement; they
+had never seen horses before, and when one of the soldiers dismounted it
+seemed to them as though some terrifying two-headed, six-limbed beast had
+come asunder.  What with their fright of the horses and their desire to
+possess the trinkets that were carried they were very friendly and
+hospitable, and supplied the expedition with plenty of food.  At last,
+after passing mountain ranges that made their hearts faint, and rich
+valleys that made them hopeful again, the explorers came to the mountains
+of Cibao, and passing over the first range found themselves in a little
+valley at the foot of the hills where a river wound round a fertile plain
+and there was ample accommodation for an encampment.  There were the
+usual signs of gold, and Columbus saw in the brightly coloured stones of
+the river-bed evidence of unbounded wealth in precious stones.  At last
+he had come to the place!  He who had doubted so much, and whose faith
+had wavered, had now been led to a place where he could touch and handle
+the gold and jewels of his desire; and he therefore called the place
+Saint Thomas.  He built a fort here, leaving a garrison of fifty-six men
+under the command of Pedro Margarite to collect gold from the natives,
+and himself returned to Isabella, which he reached at the end of March.
+
+
+Enforced absence from the thing he has organised is a great test of
+efficiency in any man.  The world is full of men who can do things
+themselves; but those who can organise from the industry of their men a
+machine which will steadily perform the work whether the organiser is
+absent or present are rare indeed.  Columbus was one of the first class.
+His own power and personality generally gave him some kind of mastery
+over any circumstances in which he was immediately concerned; but let him
+be absent for a little time, and his organisation went to pieces.  No one
+was better than he at conducting a one-man concern; and his conduct of
+the first voyage, so long as he had his company under his immediate
+command, was a model of efficiency.  But when the material under his
+command began to grow and to be divided into groups his life became a
+succession of ups and downs.  While he was settling and disciplining one
+group mutiny and disorder would attack the other; and when he went to
+attend to them, the first one immediately fell into confusion again.  He
+dealt with the discontent in Isabella, organising the better disposed
+part of it in productive labour, and himself marching the malcontents
+into something like discipline and order, leaving them at Saint Thomas,
+as we have seen, usefully collecting gold.  But while he was away the
+people at Isabella had got themselves into trouble again, and when he
+arrived there on the morning of March 29th he found the town in a
+deplorable condition.  The lake beside which the city had been built, and
+which seemed so attractive and healthy a spot, turned out to be nothing
+better than a fever trap.  Drained from the malarial marshes, its sickly
+exhalations soon produced an epidemic that incapacitated more than half
+the colony and interrupted the building operations.  The time of those
+who were well was entirely occupied with the care of those who were sick,
+and all productive work was at a standstill.  The reeking virgin soil had
+produced crops in an incredibly short time, and the sowings of January
+were ready for reaping in the beginning of April.  But there was no one
+to reap them, and the further cultivation of the ground had necessarily
+been neglected.
+
+The faint-hearted Spaniards, who never could meet any trouble without
+grumbling, were now in the depths of despair and angry discontent;
+and it had not pleased them to be put on a short allowance of even the
+unwholesome provisions that remained from the original store.  A couple
+of rude hand-mills had been erected for the making of flour, and as food
+was the first necessity Columbus immediately put all the able-bodied men
+in the colony, whatever their rank, to the elementary manual work of
+grinding.  Friar Buil and the twelve Benedictine brothers who were with
+him thought this a wise order, assuming of course that as clerics they
+would not be asked to work.  But great was their astonishment, and loud
+and angry their criticism of the Admiral, when they found that they also
+were obliged to labour with their hands.  But Columbus was firm; there
+were absolutely no exceptions made; hidalgo and priest had to work
+alongside of sailor and labourer; and the curses of the living mingled
+with those of the dying on the man whose boastful words had brought them
+to such a place and such a condition.
+
+It was only in the nature of things that news should now arrive of
+trouble at Saint Thomas.  Gold and women again; instead of bartering or
+digging, the Spaniards had been stealing; and discipline had been
+relaxed, with the usual disastrous results with regard to the women of
+the adjacent native tribes.  Pedro Margarite sent a nervous message to
+Columbus expressing his fear that Caonabo, the native king, should be
+exasperated to the point of attacking them again.  Columbus therefore
+despatched Ojeda in command of a force of 350 armed men to Saint Thomas
+with instructions that he was to take over the command of that post,
+while Margarite was to take out an expedition in search of Caonabo whom,
+with his brothers, Margarite was instructed to capture at all costs.
+
+Having thus set things going in the interior, and once more restored
+Isabella to something like order, he decided to take three ships and
+attempt to discover the coast of Cathay.  The old Nina, the San Juan, and
+the Cordera, three small caravels, were provisioned for six months and
+manned by a company of fifty-two men.  Francisco Nino went once more with
+the Admiral as pilot, and the faithful Juan de la Cosa was taken to draw
+charts; one of the monks also, to act as chaplain.  The Admiral had a
+steward, a secretary, ten seamen and six boys to complete the company on
+the Nina.  The San Juan was commanded by Alonso Perez Roldan and the
+Cordera by Christoval Nino.  Diego was again left in command of the
+colony, with four counsellors, Friar Buil, Fernandez Coronel, Alonso
+Sanchez Carvajal, and Juan de Luxan, to assist his authority.
+
+The Admiral sailed on April 24th, steering to the westward and touching
+at La Navidad before he bore away to the island of Cuba, the southern
+shore of which it was now his intention to explore.  At one of his first
+anchorages he discovered a native feast going on, and when the boats from
+his ships pulled ashore the feasters fled in terror--the hungry Spaniards
+finishing their meal for them.  Presently, however, the feasters were
+induced to come back, and Columbus with soft speeches made them a
+compensation for the food that had been taken, and produced a favourable
+impression, as his habit was; with the result that all along the coast he
+was kindly received by the natives, who supplied him with food and fresh
+fruit in return for trinkets.  At the harbour now known as Santiago de
+Cuba, where he anchored on May 2nd, he had what seemed like authentic
+information of a great island to the southward which was alleged to be
+the source of all the gold.  The very compasses of Columbus’s ships seem
+by this time to have become demagnetised, and to have pointed only to
+gold; for no sooner had he heard this report than he bore away to the
+south in pursuit of that faint yellow glitter that had now quite taken
+the place of the original inner light of faith.
+
+
+The low coast of Jamaica, hazy and blue at first, but afterwards warming
+into a golden belt crowned by the paler and deeper greens of the foliage,
+was sighted first by Columbus on Sunday, May 4th; and he anchored the
+next day in the beautiful harbour of Saint Anne, to which he gave the
+name of Santa Gloria.  To the island itself he gave the name of Santiago,
+which however has never displaced its native name of Jamaica.  The dim
+blue mountains and clumps of lofty trees about the bay were wonderful
+even to Columbus, whose eyes must by this time have been growing
+accustomed to the beauty of the West Indies, and he lost his heart to
+Jamaica from the first moment that his eyes rested on its green and
+golden shores.  Perhaps he was by this time a little out of conceit with
+Hayti; but be that as it may he retracted all the superlatives he had
+ever used for the other lands of his discovery, and bestowed them in his
+heart upon Jamaica.
+
+He was not humanly so well received as he had been on the other islands,
+for when he cast anchor the natives came out in canoes threatening
+hostilities and had to be appeased with red caps and hawks’ bells.  Next
+day, however, Columbus wished to careen his ships, and sailed a little to
+the west until he found a suitable beach at Puerto Bueno; and as he
+approached the shore some large canoes filled with painted and feathered
+warriors came out and attacked his ships, showering arrows and javelins,
+and whooping and screaming at the Spaniards.  The guns were discharged,
+and an armed party sent ashore in a boat, and the natives were soon put
+to flight.  There was no renewal of hostilities; the next day the local
+cacique came down offering provisions and help; presents were exchanged,
+and cordial relations established.  Columbus noticed that the Jamaicans
+seemed to be a much more virile community than either the Cubans or the
+people of Espanola.  They had enormous canoes hollowed out of single
+mahogany trees, some of them 96 feet long and 8 feet broad, which they
+handled with the greatest ease and dexterity; they had a merry way with
+them too, were quick of apprehension and clever at expressing their
+meaning, and in their domestic utensils and implements they showed an
+advance in civilisation on the other islanders of the group.  Columbus
+did some trade with the islanders as he sailed along the coast, but he
+does not seem to have believed much in the gold story, for after sailing
+to the western point of the island he bore away to the north again and
+sighted the coast of Cuba on the 18th of May.
+
+
+The reason why Columbus kept returning to the coast of Cuba was that he
+believed it to be the mainland of Asia.  The unlettered natives, who had
+never read Marco Polo, told him that it was an island, although no man
+had ever seen the end of it; but Columbus did not believe them, and
+sailed westward in the belief that he would presently come upon the
+country and city of Cathay.  Soon he found himself in the wonderful
+labyrinth of islets and sandbanks off the south coast; and because of the
+wonderful colours of their flowers and climbing plants he called them
+Jardin de la Reina or Queen’s Garden.  Dangerous as the navigation
+through these islands was, he preferred to risk the shoals and sandbanks
+rather than round them out at sea to the southward, for he believed them
+to be the islands which, according to Marco Polo, lay in masses along the
+coast of Cathay.  In this adventure he had a very hard time of it; the
+lead had to be used all the time, the ships often had to be towed, the
+wind veered round from every quarter of the compass, and there were
+squalls and tempests, and currents that threatened to set them ashore.
+By great good fortune, however, they managed to get through the
+Archipelago without mishap.  By June 3rd they were sailing along the
+coast again, and Columbus had some conversation with an old cacique who
+told him of a province called Mangon (or so Columbus understood him) that
+lay to the west.  Sir John Mandeville had described the province of Mangi
+as being the richest in Cathay; and of course, thought the Admiral, this
+must be the place.  He went westward past the Gulf of Xagua and got into
+the shallow sandy waters, now known as the Jardinillos Bank, where the
+sea was whitened with particles of sand.  When he had got clear of this
+shoal water he stood across a broad bay towards a native settlement where
+he was able to take in yams, fruit, fish, and fresh water.
+
+But this excitement and hard work were telling on the Admiral, and when a
+native told him that there was a tribe close by with long tails, he
+believed him; and later, when one of his men, coming back from a shore
+expedition, reported that he had seen some figures in a forest wearing
+white robes, Columbus believed that they were the people with the tails,
+who wore a long garment to conceal them.
+
+
+He was moving in a world of enchantment; the weather was like no weather
+in any known part of the world; there were fogs, black and thick, which
+blew down suddenly from the low marshy land, and blew away again as
+suddenly; the sea was sometimes white as milk, sometimes black as pitch,
+sometimes purple, sometimes green; scarlet cranes stood looking at them
+as they slid past the low sandbanks; the warm foggy air smelt of roses;
+shoals of turtles covered the waters, black butterflies circled in the
+mist; and the fever that was beginning to work in the Admiral’s blood
+mounted to his brain, so that in this land of bad dreams his fixed ideas
+began to dominate all his other faculties, and he decided that he must
+certainly be on the coast of Cathay, in the magic land described by Marco
+Polo.
+
+
+There is nothing which illustrates the arbitrary and despotic government
+of sea life so well as the nautical phrase “make it so.”  The very hours
+of the day, slipping westward under the keel of an east-going ship, are
+“made” by rigid decree; the captain takes his observation of sun or
+stars, and announces the position of the ship to be at a certain spot on
+the surface of the globe; any errors of judgment or deficiencies of
+method are covered by the words “make it so.”  And in all the elusive
+phenomena surrounding him the fevered brain of the Admiral discerned
+evidence that he was really upon the coast of Asia, although there was no
+method by which he could place the matter beyond a doubt.  The word Asia
+was not printed upon the sands of Cuba, as it might be upon a map; the
+lines of longitude did not lie visibly across the surface of the sea;
+there was nothing but sea and land, the Admiral’s charts, and his own
+conviction.  Therefore Columbus decided to “make it so.”  If there was no
+other way of being sure that this was the coast of Cathay, he would
+decree it to be the coast of Cathay by a legal document and by oaths and
+affidavits.  He would force upon the members of his expedition a
+conviction at least equal to his own; and instead of pursuing any further
+the coast that stretched interminably west and south-west, he decided to
+say, in effect, and once and for all, “Let this be the mainland of Asia.”
+
+He called his secretary to him and made him draw up a form of oath or
+testament, to which every member of the expedition was required to
+subscribe, affirming that the land off which they were then lying (12th
+June 1494), was the mainland of the Indies and that it was possible to
+return to Spain by land from that place; and every officer who should
+ever deny it in the future was laid under a penalty of ten thousand
+maravedis, and every ship’s boy or seaman under a penalty of one hundred
+lashes; and in addition, any member of the expedition denying it in the
+future was to have his tongue cut out.
+
+No one will pretend that this was the action of a sane man; neither will
+any one wonder that Columbus was something less than sane after all he
+had gone through, and with the beginnings of a serious illness already in
+his blood.  His achievement was slipping from his grasp; the gold had not
+been found, the wonders of the East had not been discovered; and it was
+his instinct to secure something from the general wreck that seemed to be
+falling about him, and to force his own dreams to come true, that caused
+him to cut this grim and fantastic legal caper off the coast of Cuba.  He
+thought it at the time unlikely, seeing the difficulties of navigation
+that he had gone through, which he might be pardoned for regarding as
+insuperable to a less skilful mariner, that any one should ever come that
+way again; even he himself said that he would never risk his life again
+in such a place.  He wished his journey, therefore, not to have been made
+in vain; and as he himself believed that he had stood on the mainland of
+Asia he took care to take back with him the only kind of evidence that
+was possible namely, the sworn affidavits of the ships’ crews.
+
+
+Perhaps in his madness he would really have gone on and tried to reach
+the Golden Chersonesus of Ptolemy, which according to Marco Polo lay just
+beyond, and so to steer homeward round Ceylon and the Cape of Good Hope;
+in which case he would either have been lost or would have discovered
+Mexico.  The crews, however, would not hear of the voyage being continued
+westward.  The ships were leaking and the salt water was spoiling the
+already doubtful provisions and he was forced to turn back.  He stood to
+the south-east, and reached the Isle of Pines, to which he gave the name
+of Evangelista, where the water-casks were filled, and from there he
+tried to sail back to the east.  But he found himself surrounded by
+islands and banks in every direction, which made any straight course
+impossible.  He sailed south and east and west and north, and found
+himself always back again in the middle of this charmed group of islands.
+He spent almost a month trying to escape from them, and once his ship
+went ashore on a sandbank and was only warped off with the greatest
+difficulty.  On July 7th he was back again in the region of the “Queen’s
+Gardens,” from which he stood across to the coast of Cuba.
+
+He anchored and landed there, and being in great distress and difficulty
+he had a large cross erected on the mainland, and had mass said.  When
+the Spaniards rose from their knees they saw an old native man observing
+them; and the old man came and sat down beside Columbus and talked to him
+through the interpreter.  He told him that he had been in Jamaica and
+Espanola as well as in Cuba, and that the coming of the Spaniards had
+caused great distress to the people of the islands.
+
+He then spoke to Columbus about religion, and the gist of what he said
+was something like this: “The performance of your worship seems good to
+me.  You believe that this life is not everything; so do we; and I know
+that when this life is over there are two places reserved for me, to one
+of which I shall certainly go; one happy and beautiful, one dreadful and
+miserable.  Joy and kindness reign in the one place, which is good enough
+for the best of men; and they will go there who while they have lived on
+the earth have loved peace and goodness, and who have never robbed or
+killed or been unkind.  The other place is evil and full of shadows, and
+is reserved for those who disturb and hurt the sons of men; how important
+it is, therefore, that one should do no evil or injury in this world!”
+
+Columbus replied with a brief statement of his own theological views, and
+added that he had been sent to find out if there were any persons in
+those islands who did evil to others, such as the Caribs or cannibals,
+and that if so he had come to punish them.  The effect of this ingenuous
+speech was heightened by a gift of hawks’ bells and pieces of broken
+glass; upon receiving which the good old man fell down on his knees, and
+said that the Spaniards must surely have come from heaven.
+
+
+A few days later the voyage to the, south-east was resumed, and some
+progress was made along the coast.  But contrary winds arose which made
+it impossible for the ships to round Cape Cruz, and Columbus decided to
+employ the time of waiting in completing his explorations in Jamaica.
+He therefore sailed due south until he once more sighted the beautiful
+northern coast of that island, following it to the west and landing, as
+his custom was, whenever he saw a good harbour or anchorage.  The wind
+was still from the east, and he spent a month beating to the eastward
+along the south coast of the island, fascinated by its beauty, and
+willing to stay and explore it, but prevented by the discontent of his
+crews, who were only anxious to get back to Espanola.  He had friendly
+interviews with many of the natives of Jamaica, and at almost the last
+harbour at which he touched a cacique with his wife and family and
+complete retinue came off in canoes to the ship, begging Columbus to take
+him and his household back to Spain.
+
+Columbus considers this family, and thinks wistfully how well they would
+look in Barcelona.  Father dressed in a cap of gold and green jewels,
+necklace and earrings of the same; mother decked out in similar regalia,
+with the addition of a small cotton apron; two sons and five brothers
+dressed principally in a feather or two; two daughters mother-naked,
+except that the elder, a handsome girl of eighteen, wears a jewelled
+girdle from which depends a tablet as big as an ivy leaf, made of various
+coloured stones embroidered on cotton.  What an exhibit for one of the
+triumphal processions: “Native royal family, complete”!  But Columbus
+thinks also of the scarcity of provisions on board his ships, and wonders
+how all these royalties would like to live on a pint of sour wine and a
+rotten biscuit each per day.  Alas! there is not sour wine and rotten
+biscuit enough for his own people; it is still a long way to Espanola;
+and he is obliged to make polite excuses, and to say that he will come
+back for his majesty another time.
+
+
+It was on the 20th of August that Columbus, having the day before seen
+the last of the dim blue hills of Jamaica, sighted again the long
+peninsula of Hayti, called by him Cape San Miguel, but known to us as
+Cape Tiburon; although it was not until he was hailed by a cacique who
+called out to him “Almirante, Almirante,” that the seaworn mariners
+realised with joy that the island must be Espanola.  But they were a long
+way from Isabella yet.  They sailed along the south coast, meeting
+contrary winds, and at one point landing nine men who were to cross the
+island, and try to reach Isabella by land.  Week followed week, and they
+made very poor progress.  In the beginning of September they were caught
+in a severe tempest, which separated the ships for a time, and held the
+Admiral weather-bound for eight days.  There was an eclipse of the moon
+during this period, and he took advantage of it to make an observation
+for longitude, by which he found himself to be 5 hrs. 23 min., or 80 deg.
+40’, west of Cadiz.  In this observation there is an error of eighteen
+degrees, the true longitude of the island of Saona, where the observation
+was taken, being 62 deg. 20’ west of Cadiz; and the error is accounted
+for partly by the inaccuracy of the tables of Regiomontanus and partly by
+the crudity and inexactness of the Admiral’s methods.  On the 24th of
+September they at last reached the easternmost point of Espanola, named
+by Columbus San Rafael.  They stood to the east a little longer, and
+discovered the little island of Mona, which lies between Espanola and
+Puerto Rico; and from thence shaped their course west-by-north for
+Isabella.  And no sooner had the course been set for home than the
+Admiral suddenly and completely collapsed; was carried unconscious to his
+cabin; and lay there in such extremity that his companions gave him up
+for lost.
+
+It is no ordinary strain to which poor Christopher has succumbed.  He has
+been five months at sea, sharing with the common sailors their bad food
+and weary vigils, but bearing alone on his own shoulders a weight of
+anxiety of which they knew nothing.  Watch has relieved watch on his
+ships, but there has been no one to relieve him, or to lift the burden
+from his mind.  The eyes of a nation are upon him, watchful and jealous
+eyes that will not forgive him any failure; and to earn their approval he
+has taken this voyage of five months, during which he has only been able
+to forget his troubles in the brief hours of slumber.  Strange uncharted
+seas, treacherous winds and currents, drenching surges have all done
+their part in bringing him to this pass; and his body, now starved on
+rotten biscuits, now glutted with unfamiliar fruits, has been preyed upon
+by the tortured mind as the mind itself has been shaken and loosened by
+the weakness of the body.  He lies there in his cabin in a deep stupor;
+memory, sight, and all sensation completely gone from him; dead but for
+the heart that beats on faintly, and the breath that comes and goes
+through the parted lips.  Nino, de la Cosa, and the others come and look
+at him, shake their heads, and go away again.  There is nothing to be
+done; perhaps they will get him back to Isabella in time to bury him
+there; perhaps not.
+
+And meanwhile they are back again in calm and safe waters, and coasting a
+familiar shore; and the faithful little Nina, shaking out her wings in
+the sunny breezes, trips under the guidance of unfamiliar hands towards
+her moorings in the Bay of Isabella.  It is a sad company that she
+carries; for in the cabin, deaf and blind and unconscious, there lies the
+heart and guiding spirit of the New World.  He does not hear the talking
+of the waters past the Nina’s timbers, does not hear the stamping on the
+deck and shortening of sail and unstopping of cables and getting out of
+gear; does not hear the splash of the anchor, nor the screams of birds
+that rise circling from the shore.  Does not hear the greetings and the
+news; does not see bending over him a kind, helpful, and well-beloved
+face.  He sees and hears and knows nothing; and in that state of rest and
+absence from the body they carry him, still living and breathing, ashore.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE CONQUEST OF ESPANOLA
+
+We must now go back to the time when Columbus, having made what
+arrangements he could for the safety of Espanola, left it under the
+charge of his brother James.  Ojeda had duly marched into the interior
+and taken over the command of Fort St. Thomas, thus setting free
+Margarite, according to his instructions, to lead an expedition for
+purposes of reconnoitre and demonstration through the island.  These, at
+any rate, were Margarite’s orders, duly communicated to him by Ojeda; but
+Margarite will have none of them.  Well born, well educated, well bred,
+he ought at least to have the spirit to carry out orders so agreeable to
+a gentleman of adventure; but unfortunately, although Margarite is a
+gentleman by birth, he is a low and dishonest dog by nature.  He cannot
+take the decent course, cannot even play the man, and take his share in
+the military work of the colony.  Instead of cutting paths through the
+forest, and exhibiting his military strength in an orderly and proper way
+as the Admiral intended he should, he marches forth from St. Thomas, on
+hearing that Columbus has sailed away, and encamps no further off than
+the Vega Real, that pleasant place of green valleys and groves and
+murmuring rivers.  He encamps there, takes up his quarters there, will
+not budge from there for any Admiral; and as for James Columbus and his
+counsellors, they may go to the devil for all Margarite cares.  One of
+them at least, he knows--Friar Buil--is not such a fool as to sit down
+under the command of that solemn-faced, uncouth young snip from Genoa;
+and doubtless when he is tired of the Vega Real he and Buil can arrange
+something between them.  In the meantime, here is a very beautiful
+sunshiny place, abounding in all kinds of provisions; food for more than
+one kind of appetite, as he has noticed when he has thrust his rude way
+into the native houses and seen the shapely daughters of the islanders.
+He has a little army of soldiers to forage for him; they can get him food
+and gold, and they are useful also in those other marauding expeditions
+designed to replenish the seraglio that he has established in his camp;
+and if they like to do a little marauding and woman-stealing on their own
+account, it is no affair of his, and may keep the devils in a good
+temper.  Thus Don Pedro Margarite to himself.
+
+The peaceable and gentle natives soon began to resent these gross doings.
+To robbery succeeded outrage, and to outrage murder--all three committed
+in the very houses of the natives; and they began to murmur, to withhold
+that goodwill which the Spaniards had so sorely tried, and to develop a
+threatening attitude that was soon communicated to the natives in the
+vicinity of Isabella, and came under the notice of James Columbus and his
+council.  Grave, bookish, wool-weaving young James, not used to military
+affairs, and not at all comfortable in his command, can think of no other
+expedient than--to write a letter to Margarite remonstrating with him for
+his licentious excesses and reminding him of the Admiral’s instructions,
+which were being neglected.
+
+Margarite receives the letter and reads it with a contemptuous laugh.  He
+is not going to be ordered about by a family of Italian wool-weavers, and
+the only change in his conduct is that he becomes more and more careless
+and impudent, extending the area of his lawless operations, and making
+frequent visits to Isabella itself, swaggering under the very nose of
+solemn James, and soon deep in consultation with Friar Buil.
+
+At this moment, that is to say very soon after the departure of
+Christopher on his voyage to Cuba and Jamaica, three ships dropped anchor
+in the Bay of Isabella.  They were laden with the much-needed supplies
+from Spain, and had been sent out under the command of Bartholomew
+Columbus.  It will be remembered that when Christopher reached Spain
+after his first voyage one of his first cares had been to write to
+Bartholomew, asking him to join him.  The letter, doubtless after many
+wanderings, had found Bartholomew in France at the court of Charles
+VIII., by whom he was held in some esteem; in fact it was Charles who
+provided him with the necessary money for his journey to Spain, for
+Bartholomew had not greatly prospered, in spite of his voyage with Diaz
+to the Cape of Good Hope and of his having been in England making
+exploration proposals at the court of Henry VII.  He had arrived in Spain
+after Columbus had sailed again, and had presented himself at court with
+his two nephews, Ferdinand and Diego, both of whom were now in the
+service of Prince Juan as pages.  Ferdinand and Isabella seem to have
+received Bartholomew kindly.  They liked this capable navigator, who had
+much of Christopher’s charm of manner, and was more a man of the world
+than he.  Much more practical also; Ferdinand would be sure to like him
+better than he liked Christopher, whose pompous manner and long-winded
+speeches bored him.  Bartholomew was quick, alert, decisive and
+practical; he was an accomplished navigator--almost as accomplished as
+Columbus, as it appeared.  He was offered the command of the three ships
+which were being prepared to go to Espanola with supplies; and he duly
+arrived there after a prosperous voyage.  It will be remembered that
+Christopher had, so far as we know, kept the secret of the road to the
+new islands; and Bartholomew can have had nothing more to guide him than
+a rough chart showing the islands in a certain latitude, and the distance
+to be run towards them by dead-reckoning.  That he should have made an
+exact landfall and sailed into the Bay of Isabella, never having been
+there before, was a certificate of the highest skill in navigation.
+
+Unfortunately it was James who was in charge of the colony; Bartholomew
+had no authority, for once his ships had arrived in port his mission was
+accomplished until Christopher should return and find him employment.
+He was therefore forced to sit still and watch his young brother
+struggling with the unruly Spaniards.  His presence, however, was no
+doubt a further exasperation to the malcontents.  There existed in
+Isabella a little faction of some of the aristocrats who had never,
+forgiven Columbus for employing them in degrading manual labour; who had
+never forgiven him in fact for being there at all, and in command over
+them.  And now here was another woolweaver, or son of a wool-weaver, come
+to put his finger in the pie that Christopher has apparently provided so
+carefully for himself and his family.
+
+Margarite and Buil and some others, treacherous scoundrels all of them,
+but clannish to their own race and class, decide that they will put up
+with it no longer; they are tired of Espanola in any case, and Margarite,
+from too free indulgence among the native women, has contracted an
+unpleasant disease, and thinks that a sea voyage and the attentions of a
+Spanish doctor will be good for him.  It is easy for them to put their
+plot into execution.  There are the ships; there is nothing, for them to
+do but take a couple of them, provision them, and set sail for Spain,
+where they trust to their own influence, and the story they will be able
+to tell of the falseness of the Admiral’s promises, to excuse their
+breach of discipline.  And sail they do, snapping their fingers at the
+wool-weavers.
+
+James and Bartholomew were perhaps glad to be rid of them, but their
+relief was tempered with anxiety as to the result on Christopher’s
+reputation and favour when the malcontents should have made their false
+representations at Court.  The brothers were powerless to do anything in
+that matter, however, and the state of affairs in Espanola demanded their
+close attention.  Margarite’s little army, finding itself without even
+the uncertain restraint of its commander, now openly mutinied and
+abandoned itself to the wildest excesses.  It became scattered and
+disbanded, and little groups of soldiers went wandering about the
+country, robbing and outraging and carrying cruelty and oppression among
+the natives.  Long-suffering as these were, and patiently as they bore
+with the unspeakable barbarities of the Spanish soldiers, there came a
+point beyond which their forbearance would not go.  An aching spirit of
+unforgiveness and revenge took the place of their former gentleness and
+compliance; and here and there, when the Spaniards were more brutal and
+less cautious than was their brutal and incautious habit, the natives
+fell upon them and took swift and bloody revenge.  Small parties found
+themselves besieged and put to death whole villages, whose hospitality
+had been abused, cut off wandering groups of the marauders and burned the
+houses where they lodged.  The disaffection spread; and Caonabo, who had
+never abated his resentment at the Spanish intrusion into the island,
+thought the time had come to make another demonstration of native power.
+
+Fortunately for the Spaniards his object was the fort of St. Thomas,
+commanded by the alert Ojeda; and this young man, who was not easily to
+be caught napping, had timely intelligence of his intention.  When
+Caonabo, mustering ten thousand men, suddenly surrounded the fort and
+prepared to attack it, he found the fifty Spaniards of the garrison more
+than ready for him, and his naked savages dared not advance within the
+range of the crossbows and arquebuses.  Caonabo tried to besiege the
+station, watching every gorge and road through which supplies could reach
+it, but Ojeda made sallies and raids upon the native force, under which
+it became thinned and discouraged; and Caonabo had finally to withdraw to
+his own territory.
+
+But he was not yet beaten.  He decided upon another and much larger
+enterprise, which was to induce the other caciques of the island to
+co-operate with him in an attack upon Isabella, the population of which
+he knew would have been much thinned and weakened by disease.  The
+island was divided into five native provinces.  The northeastern part,
+named Marien, was under the rule of Guacanagari, whose headquarters were
+near the abandoned La Navidad.  The remaining eastern part of the
+island, called Higuay, was under a chief named Cotabanama.  The western
+province was Xaragua, governed by one Behechio, whose sister, Anacaona,
+was the wife of Caonabo.  The middle of the island was divided into two
+provinces-that which extended from the northern coast to the Cibao
+mountains and included the Vega Real being governed by Guarionex, and
+that which extended from the Cibao mountains to the south being governed
+by Caonabo.  All these rulers were more or less embittered by the
+outrages and cruelties of the Spaniards, and all agreed to join with
+Caonabo except Guacanagari.  That loyal soul, so faithful to what he
+knew of good, shocked and distressed as he was by outrages from which
+his own people had suffered no less than the others, could not bring
+himself to commit what he regarded as a breach of the laws of
+hospitality.  It was upon his shores that Columbus had first landed; and
+although it was his own country and his own people whose wrongs were to
+be avenged, he could not bring himself to turn traitor to the grave
+Admiral with whom, in those happy days of the past, he had enjoyed so
+much pleasant intercourse.  His refusal to co-operate delayed the plan
+of Caonabo, who directed the island coalition against Guacanagari
+himself in order to bring him to reason.  He was attacked by the
+neighbouring chiefs; one of his wives was killed and another captured;
+but still he would not swerve from his ideal of conduct.
+
+
+The first thing that Columbus recognised when he opened his eyes after
+his long period of lethargy and insensibility was the face of his brother
+Bartholomew bend-over him where he lay in bed in his own house at
+Espanola.  Nothing could have been more welcome to him, sick, lonely and
+discouraged as he was, than the presence of that strong, helpful brother;
+and from the time when Bartholomew’s friendly face first greeted him he
+began to get better.  His first act, as soon as he was strong enough to
+sign a paper, was to appoint Bartholomew to the office of Adelantado, or
+Lieutenant-Governor--an indiscreet and rather tactless proceeding which,
+although it was not outside his power as a bearer of the royal seal, was
+afterwards resented by King Ferdinand as a piece of impudent encroachment
+upon the royal prerogative.  But Columbus was unable to transact business
+himself, and James was manifestly of little use; the action was natural
+enough.
+
+In the early days of his convalescence he had another pleasant
+experience, in the shape of a visit from Guacanagari, who came to express
+his concern at the Admiral’s illness, and to tell him the story of what
+had been going on in his absence.  The gentle creature referred again
+with tears to the massacre at La Navidad, and again asserted that
+innocence of any hand in it which Columbus had happily never doubted; and
+he told him also of the secret league against Isabella, of his own
+refusal to join it, and of the attacks to which he had consequently been
+subjected.  It must have been an affecting meeting for these two, who
+represented the first friendship formed between the Old World and the
+New, who were both of them destined to suffer in the impact of
+civilisation and savagery, and whose names and characters were happily
+destined to survive that impact, and to triumph over the oblivion of
+centuries.
+
+
+So long as the native population remained hostile and unconquered by
+kindness or force, it was impossible to work securely at the development
+of the colony; and Columbus, however regretfully, had come to feel that
+circumstances more or less obliged him to use force.  At first he did not
+quite realise the gravity of the position, and attempted to conquer or
+reconcile the natives in little groups.  Guarionex, the cacique of the
+Vega Real, was by gifts and smooth words soothed back into a friendship
+which was consolidated by the marriage of his daughter with Columbus’s
+native interpreter.  It was useless, how ever, to try and make friends
+with Caonabo, that fierce irreconcilable; and it was felt that only by
+stratagem could he be secured.  No sooner was this suggested than Ojeda
+volunteered for the service.  Amid the somewhat slow-moving figures of
+our story this man appears as lively as a flea; and he dances across our
+pages in a sensation of intrepid feats of arms that make his great
+popularity among the Spaniards easily credible to us.  He did not know
+what fear was; he was always ready for a fight of any kind; a quarrel in
+the streets of Madrid, a duel, a fight with a man or a wild beast,
+a brawl in a tavern or a military expedition, were all the same to him,
+if only they gave him an opportunity for fighting.  He had a little
+picture of the Virgin hung round his neck, by which he swore, and to
+which he prayed; he had never been so much as scratched in all his
+affrays, and he believed that he led a charmed life.  Who would go out
+against Caonabo, the Goliath of the island?  He, little David Ojeda, he
+would go out and undertake to fetch the giant back with him; and all he
+wanted was ten men, a pair of handcuffs, a handful of trinkets, horses
+for the whole of his company, and his little image or picture of the
+Virgin.
+
+Columbus may have smiled at this proposal, but he knew his man; and Ojeda
+duly departed with his horses and his ten men.  Plunging into the forest,
+he made his way through sixty leagues of dense undergrowth until he
+arrived in the very heart of Caonabo’s territory and presented himself at
+the chiefs house.  The chief was at home, and, not unimpressed by the
+valour of Ojeda, who represented himself as coming on a friendly mission,
+received him under conditions of truce.  He had an eye for military
+prowess, this Caonabo, and something of the lion’s heart in him; he
+recognised in Ojeda the little man who kept him so long at bay outside
+Fort St. Thomas; and, after the manner of lion-hearted people, liked him
+none the worse for that.
+
+Ojeda proposes that the King should accompany him to Isabella to make
+peace.  No, says Caonabo.  Then Ojeda tries another way.  There is a
+poetical side to this big fighting savage, and often in more friendly
+days, when the bell in the little chapel of Isabella has been ringing for
+Vespers, the cacique has been observed sitting alone on some hill
+listening, enchanted by the strange silver voice that floated to him
+across the sunset.  The bell has indeed become something of a personality
+in the island: all the neighbouring savages listen to its voice with awe
+and fascination, pausing with inclined heads whenever it begins to speak
+from its turret.
+
+Ojeda talks to Caonabo about the bell, and tells him what a wonderful
+thing it is; tells him also that if he will come with him to Isabella he
+shall have the bell for a present.  Poetry and public policy struggle
+together in Caonabo’s heart, but poetry wins; the great powerful savage,
+urged thereto by his childish lion-heart, will come to Isabella if they
+will give him the bell.  He sets forth, accompanied by a native retinue,
+and by Ojeda and his ten horsemen.  Presently they come to a river and
+Ojeda produces his bright manacles; tells the King that they are royal
+ornaments and that he has been instructed to bestow them upon Caonabo as
+a sign of honour.  But first he must come alone to the river and bathe,
+which he does.  Then he must sit with Ojeda upon his horse; which he
+does.  Then he must have fitted on to him the shining silver trinkets;
+which he does, the great grinning giant, pleased with his toys.  Then, to
+show him what it is like to be on a horse, Ojeda canters gently round in
+widening and ever widening circles; a turn of his spurred heels, and the
+canter becomes a gallop, the circle becomes a straight line, and Caonabo
+is on the road to Isabella.  When they are well beyond reach of the
+natives they pause and tie Caonabo securely into his place; and by this
+treachery bring him into Isabella, where he is imprisoned in the
+Admiral’s house.
+
+The sulky giant, brought thus into captivity, refuses to bend his proud,
+stubborn heart into even a form of submission.  He takes no notice of
+Columbus, and pays him no honour, although honour is paid to himself as
+a captive king.  He sits there behind his bars gnawing his fingers,
+listening to the voice of the bell that has lured him into captivity,
+and thinking of the free open life which he is to know no more.  Though
+he will pay no deference to the Admiral, will not even rise when he
+enters his presence, there is one person he holds in honour, and that is
+Ojeda.  He will not rise when the Admiral comes; but when Ojeda comes,
+small as he is, and without external state, the chief makes his obeisance
+to him.  The Admiral he sets at defiance, and boasts of his destruction
+of La Navidad, and of his plan to destroy Isabella; Ojeda he respects and
+holds in honour, as being the only man in the island brave enough to come
+into his house and carry him off a captive.  There is a good deal of the
+sportsman in Caonabo.
+
+The immediate result of the capture of Caonabo was to rouse the islanders
+to further hostilities, and one of the brothers of the captive king led a
+force of seven thousand men to the vicinity of St. Thomas, to which
+Ojeda, however, had in the meantime returned.  His small force was
+augmented by some men despatched by Bartholomew Columbus on receipt of an
+urgent message; and in command of this force Ojeda sallied forth against
+the natives and attacked them furiously on horse and on foot, killing a
+great part of them, taking others prisoner, and putting the rest to
+flight.  This was the beginning of the end of the island resistance.  A
+month or two later, when Columbus was better, he and Bartholomew together
+mustered the whole of their available army and marched out in search of
+the native force, which he knew had been rallied and greatly augmented.
+
+The two forces met near the present town of Santiago, in the plain known
+as the Savanna of Matanza.  The Spanish force was divided into three main
+divisions, under the command of Christopher and Bartholomew Columbus and
+Ojeda respectively.  These three divisions attacked the Indians
+simultaneously from different points, Ojeda throwing his cavalry upon
+them, riding them down, and cutting them to pieces.  Drums were beaten
+and trumpets blown; the guns were fired from the cover of the trees; and
+a pack of bloodhounds, which had been sent out from Spain with
+Bartholomew, were let loose upon the natives and tore their bodies to
+pieces.  It was an easy and horrible victory.  The native force was
+estimated by Columbus at one hundred thousand men, although we shall
+probably be nearer the mark if we reduce that estimate by one half.
+
+The powers of hell were let loose that day into the Earthly Paradise.
+The guns mowed red lines of blood through the solid ranks of the natives;
+the great Spanish horses trod upon and crushed their writhing bodies, in
+which arrows and lances continually stuck and quivered; and the ferocious
+dogs, barking and growling, seized the naked Indians by the throat,
+dragged them to the ground, and tore out their very entrails .  .  .  .
+Well for us that the horrible noises of that day are silent now; well for
+the world that that place of bloodshed and horror has grown green again;
+better for us and for the world if those cries had never been heard, and
+that quiet place had never received a stain that centuries of green
+succeeding springtides can never wash away.
+
+
+It was some time before this final battle that the convalescence of the
+Admiral was further assisted by the arrival of four ships commanded by
+Antonio Torres, who must have passed, out of sight and somewhere on the
+high seas, the ships bearing Buil and Margarite back to Spain.  He
+brought with him a large supply of fresh provisions for the colony, and a
+number of genuine colonists, such as fishermen, carpenters, farmers,
+mechanics, and millers.  And better still he brought a letter from the
+Sovereigns, dated the 16th of August 1494, which did much to cheer the
+shaken spirits of Columbus.  The words with which he had freighted his
+empty ships had not been in vain; and in this reply to them he was warmly
+commended for his diligence, and reminded that he enjoyed the unshaken
+confidence of the Sovereigns.  They proposed that a caravel should sail
+every month from Spain and from Isabella, bearing intelligence of the
+colony and also, it was hoped, some of its products.  In a general letter
+addressed to the colony the settlers were reminded of the obedience they
+owed to the Admiral, and were instructed to obey him in all things under
+the penalty of heavy fines.  They invited Columbus to come back if he
+could in order to be present at the convention which was to establish the
+line of demarcation between Spanish and Portuguese possessions; or if he
+could not come himself to send his brother Bartholomew.  There were
+reasons, however, which made this difficult.  Columbus wished to despatch
+the ships back again as speedily as possible, in order that news of him
+might help to counteract the evil rumours that he knew Buil and Margarite
+would be spreading.  He himself was as yet (February 1494) too ill to
+travel; and during his illness Bartholomew could not easily be spared.
+It was therefore decided to send home James, who could most easily be
+spared, and whose testimony as a member of the governing body during the
+absence of the Admiral on his voyage to Cuba might be relied upon to
+counteract the jealous accusations of Margarite and Buil.
+
+Unfortunately there was no golden cargo to send back with him.  As much
+gold as possible was scraped together, but it was very little.  The usual
+assortment of samples of various island products was also sent; but still
+the vessels were practically empty.  Columbus must have been painfully
+conscious that the time for sending samples had more than expired, and
+that the people in Spain might reasonably expect some of the actual
+riches of which there had been so many specimens and promises.  In
+something approaching desperation, he decided to fill the empty holds of
+the ships with something which, if it was not actual money, could at
+least be made to realise money.  From their sunny dreaming life on the
+island five hundred natives were taken and lodged in the dark holds of
+the caravels, to be sent to Spain and sold there for what they would
+fetch.  Of course they were to be “freed” and converted to Christianity
+in the process; that was always part of the programme, but it did not
+interfere with business.  They were not man-eating Caribs or fierce
+marauding savages from neighbouring islands, but were of the mild and
+peaceable race that peopled Espanola.  The wheels of civilisation were
+beginning to turn in the New World.
+
+After the capture of Caonabo and the massacre of April 25th Columbus
+marched through the island, receiving the surrender and submission of the
+terrified natives.  At the approach of his force the caciques came out
+and sued for peace; and if here and there there was a momentary
+resistance, a charge of cavalry soon put an end to it.  One by one the
+kings surrendered and laid down their arms, until all the island rulers
+had capitulated with the exception of Behechio, into whose territory
+Columbus did not march, and who sullenly retired to the south-western
+corner of the island.  The terms of peace were harsh enough, and were
+suggested by the dilemma of Columbus in his frantic desire to get
+together some gold at any cost.  A tribute of gold-dust was laid upon
+every adult native in the island.  Every three months a hawk’s bell full
+of gold was to be brought to the treasury at Isabella, and in the case 39
+of caciques the measure was a calabash.  A receipt in the form of a brass
+medal was fastened to the neck of every Indian when he paid his tribute,
+and those who could not show the medal with the necessary number of marks
+were to be further fined and punished.  In the districts where there was
+no gold, 25 lbs. of cotton was accepted instead.
+
+This levy was made in ignorance of the real conditions under which the
+natives possessed themselves of the gold.  What they had in many cases
+represented the store of years, and in all but one or two favoured
+districts it was quite impossible for them to keep up the amount of the
+tribute.  Yet the hawks’ bells, which once had been so eagerly coveted
+and were now becoming hated symbols of oppression, had to be filled
+somehow; and as the day of payment drew near the wretched natives, who
+had formerly only sought for gold when a little of it was wanted for a
+pretty ornament, had now to work with frantic energy in the river sands;
+or in other cases, to toil through the heat of the day in the cotton
+fields which they had formerly only cultivated enough to furnish their
+very scant requirements of use and adornment.  One or two caciques,
+knowing that their people could not possibly furnish the required amount
+of gold, begged that its value in grain might be accepted instead; but
+that was not the kind of wealth that Columbus was seeking.  It must be
+gold or nothing; and rather than receive any other article from the
+gold-bearing districts, he consented to take half the amount.
+
+
+Thus step by step, and under the banner of the Holy Catholic religion,
+did dark and cruel misery march through the groves and glades of the
+island and banish for ever its ancient peace.  This long-vanished race
+that was native to the island of Espanola seems to have had some of the
+happiest and most lovable qualities known to dwellers on this planet.
+They had none of the brutalities of the African, the paralysing wisdom of
+the Asian, nor the tragic potentialities of the European peoples.  Their
+life was from day to day, and from season to season, like the life of
+flowers and birds.  They lived in such order and peaceable community as
+the common sense of their own simple needs suggested; they craved no
+pleasures except those that came free from nature, and sought no wealth
+but what the sun gave them.  In their verdant island, near to the heart
+and source of light, surrounded by the murmur of the sea, and so enriched
+by nature that the idea, of any other kind of riches never occurred to
+them, their existence went to a happy dancing measure like that of the
+fauns and nymphs in whose charmed existence they believed.  The sun and
+moon were to them creatures of their island who had escaped from a cavern
+by the shore and now wandered free in the upper air, peopling it with
+happy stars; and man himself they believed to have sprung from crevices
+in the rocks, like the plants that grew tall and beautiful wherever there
+was a handful of soil for their roots.  Poor happy children!  You are all
+dead a long while ago now, and have long been hushed in the great humming
+sleep and silence of Time; the modern world has no time nor room for
+people like you, with so much kindness and so little ambition .  .  .  .
+Yet their free pagan souls were given a chance to be penned within the
+Christian fold; the priest accompanied the gunner and the bloodhound, the
+missionary walked beside the slave-driver; and upon the bewildered
+sun-bright surface of their minds the shadow of the cross was for a moment
+thrown.  Verily to them the professors of Christ brought not peace, but a
+sword.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+UPS AND DOWNS
+
+While Columbus was toiling under the tropical sun to make good his
+promises to the Crown, Margarite and Buil, having safely come home to
+Spain from across the seas, were busy setting forth their view of the
+value of his discoveries.  It was a view entirely different from any that
+Ferdinand and Isabella had heard before, and coming as it did from two
+men of position and importance who had actually been in Espanola, and
+were loyal and religious subjects of the Crown, it could not fail to
+receive, if not immediate and complete credence, at any rate grave
+attention.  Hitherto the Sovereigns had only heard one side of the
+matter; an occasional jealous voice may have been raised from the
+neighbourhood of the Pinzons or some one else not entirely satisfied with
+his own position in the affair; but such small cries of dissent had
+naturally had little chance against the dignified eloquence of the
+Admiral.
+
+Now, however, the matter was different.  People who were at least the
+equals of Columbus in intelligence, and his superiors by birth and
+education, had seen with their own eyes the things of which he had
+spoken, and their account differed widely from his.  They represented
+things in Espanola as being in a very bad way indeed, which was true
+enough; drew a dismal picture of an overcrowded colony ravaged with
+disease and suffering from lack of provisions; and held forth at length
+upon the very doubtful quality of the gold with which the New World was
+supposed to abound.  More than this, they brought grave charges against
+Columbus himself, representing him as unfit to govern a colony, given to
+favouritism, and, worst of all, guilty of having deliberately
+misrepresented for his own ends the resources of the colony.  This as we
+know was not true.  It was not for his own ends, or for any ends at all
+within the comprehension of men like Margarite and Buil, that poor
+Christopher had spoken so glowingly out of a heart full of faith in what
+he had seen and done.  Purposes, dim perhaps, but far greater and loftier
+than any of which these two mean souls had understanding, animated him
+alike in his discoveries and in his account of them; although that does
+not alter the unpleasant fact that at the stage matters had now reached
+it seemed as though there might have been serious misrepresentation.
+
+Ferdinand and Isabella, thus confronted with a rather difficult
+situation, acted with great wisdom and good sense.  How much or how
+little they believed we do not know, but it was obviously their duty,
+having heard such an account from responsible officers, to investigate
+matters for themselves without assuming either that the report was true
+or untrue.  They immediately had four caravels furnished with supplies,
+and decided to appoint an agent to accompany the expedition, investigate
+the affairs of the colony, and make a report to them.  If the Admiral was
+still absent when their agent reached the colony he was to be entrusted
+with the distribution of the supplies which were being sent out; for
+Columbus’s long absence from Espanola had given rise to some fears for
+his safety.
+
+The Sovereigns had just come to this decision (April 1495) when a letter
+arrived from the Admiral himself, announcing his return to Espanola after
+discovering the veritable mainland of Asia, as the notarial document
+enclosed with the letter attested.  Torres and James Columbus had arrived
+in Spain, bearing the memorandum which some time ago we saw the Admiral
+writing; and they were able to do something towards allaying the fears of
+the Sovereigns as to the condition of the colony.  The King and Queen,
+nevertheless, wisely decided to carry out their original intention, and
+in appointing an agent they very handsomely chose one of the men whom
+Columbus had recommended to them in his letter--Juan Aguado.  This action
+shows a friendliness to Columbus and confidence in him that lead one to
+suspect that the tales of Margarite and Buil had been taken with a grain
+of salt.
+
+At the same time the Sovereigns made one or two orders which could not
+but be unwelcome to Columbus.  A decree was issued making it lawful for
+all native-born Spaniards to make voyages of discovery, and to settle in
+Espanola itself if they liked.  This was an infringement of the original
+privileges granted to the Admiral--privileges which were really absurd,
+and which can only have been granted in complete disbelief that anything
+much would come of his discovery.  It took Columbus two years to get this
+order modified, and in the meantime a great many Spanish adventurers, our
+old friends the Pinzons among them, did actually make voyages and added
+to the area explored by the Spaniards in Columbus’s lifetime.  Columbus
+was bitterly jealous that any one should be admitted to the western
+ocean, which he regarded as his special preserve, except under his
+supreme authority; and he is reported to have said that once the way to
+the West had been pointed out “even the very tailors turned explorers.”
+There, surely, spoke the long dormant woolweaver in him.
+
+The commission given to Aguado was very brief, and so vaguely worded
+that it might mean much or little, according to the discretion of the
+commissioner and the necessities of the case as viewed by him.  “We send
+to you Juan Aguada, our Groom of the Chambers, who will speak to you on
+our part.  We command you to give him faith and credit.”  A letter was
+also sent to Columbus in which he was instructed to reduce the number of
+people dependent on the colony to five hundred instead of a thousand; and
+the control of the mines was entrusted to one Pablo Belvis, who was sent
+out as chief metallurgist.  As for the slaves that Columbus had sent
+home, Isabella forbade their sale until inquiry could be made into the
+condition of their capture, and the fine moral point involved was
+entrusted to the ecclesiastical authorities for examination and solution.
+Poor Christopher, knowing as he did that five hundred heretics were being
+burned every year by the Grand Inquisitor, had not expected this
+hair-splitting over the fate of heathens who had rebelled against Spanish
+authority; and it caused him some distress when he heard of it.  The
+theologians, however, proved equal to the occasion, and the slaves were
+duly sold in Seville market.
+
+
+Aguado sailed from Cadiz at the end of August 1495, and reached Espanola
+in October.  James Columbus (who does not as yet seem to be in very great
+demand anywhere, and who doubtless conceals behind his grave visage much
+honest amazement at the amount of life that he is seeing) returned with
+him.  Aguado, on arriving at Isabella, found that Columbus was absent
+establishing forts in the interior of the island, Bartholomew being left
+in charge at Isabella.
+
+Aguado, who had apparently been found faithful in small matters, was
+found wanting in his use of the authority that had been entrusted to him.
+It seems to have turned his head; for instead of beginning quietly to
+investigate the affairs of the colony as he had been commanded to do he
+took over from Bartholomew the actual government, and interpreted his
+commission as giving him the right to supersede the Admiral himself.  The
+unhappy colony, which had no doubt been enjoying some brief period of
+peace under the wise direction of Bartholomew, was again thrown into
+confusion by the doings of Aguado.  He arrested this person, imprisoned
+that; ordered that things should be done this way, which had formerly
+been done that way; and if they had formerly been done that way, then he
+ordered that they should be done this way--in short he committed every
+mistake possible for a man in his situation armed with a little brief
+authority.  He did not hesitate to let it be known that he was there to
+examine the conduct of the Admiral himself; and we may be quite sure that
+every one in the colony who had a grievance or an ill tale to carry,
+carried it to Aguado.  His whole attitude was one of enmity and
+disloyalty to the Admiral who had so handsomely recommended him to the
+notice of the Sovereigns; and so undisguised was his attitude that even
+the Indians began to lodge their complaints and to see a chance by which
+they might escape from the intolerable burden of the gold tribute.
+
+It was at this point that Columbus returned and found Aguado ruling in
+the place of Bartholomew, who had wisely made no protest against his own
+deposition, but was quietly waiting for the Admiral to return.  Columbus
+might surely have been forgiven if he had betrayed extreme anger and
+annoyance at the doings of Aguado; and it is entirely to his credit that
+he concealed such natural wrath as he may have felt, and greeted Aguado
+with extreme courtesy and ceremony as a representative of the Sovereigns.
+He made no protest, but decided to return himself to Spain and confront
+the jealousy and ill-fame that were accumulating against him.
+
+Just as the ships were all ready to sail, one of the hurricanes which
+occur periodically in the West Indies burst upon the island, lashing the
+sea into a wall of advancing foam that destroyed everything before it.
+Among other things it destroyed three out of the four ships, dashing them
+on the beach and reducing them to complete wreckage.  The only one that
+held to her anchor and, although much battered and damaged, rode out the
+gale, was the Nina, that staunch little friend that had remained faithful
+to the Admiral through so many dangers and trials.  There was nothing for
+it but to build a new ship out of the fragments of the wrecks, and to
+make the journey home with two ships instead of with four.
+
+
+At this moment, while he was waiting for the ship to be completed,
+Columbus heard a piece of news of a kind that never failed to rouse his
+interest.  There was a young Spaniard named Miguel Diaz who had got into
+disgrace in Isabella some time before on account of a duel, and had
+wandered into the island until he had come out on the south coast at the
+mouth of the river Ozama, near the site of the present town of Santo
+Domingo.  There he had fallen in love with a female cacique and had made
+his home with her.  She, knowing the Spanish taste, and anxious to please
+her lover and to retain him in her territory, told him of some rich
+gold-mines that there were in the neighbourhood, and suggested that he
+should inform the Admiral, who would perhaps remove the settlement from
+Isabella to the south coast.  She provided him with guides and sent him
+off to Isabella, where, hearing that his antagonist had recovered, and
+that he himself was therefore in no danger of punishment, he presented
+himself with his story.
+
+Columbus immediately despatched Bartholomew with a party to examine the
+mines; and sure enough they found in the river Hayna undoubted evidence
+of a wealth far in excess of that contained in the Cibao gold-mines.
+Moreover, they had noticed two ancient excavations about which the
+natives could tell them nothing, but which made them think that the mines
+had once been worked.
+
+Columbus was never backward in fitting a story and a theory to whatever
+phenomena surrounded him; and in this case he was certain that the
+excavations were the work of Solomon, and that he had discovered the gold
+of Ophir.  “Sure enough,” thinks the Admiral, “I have hit it this time;
+and the ships came eastward from the Persian Gulf round the Golden
+Chersonesus, which I discovered this very last winter.”  Immediately, as
+his habit was, Columbus began to build castles in Spain.  Here was a fine
+answer to Buil and Margarite!  Without waiting a week or two to get any
+of the gold this extraordinary man decided to hurry off at once to Spain
+with the news, not dreaming that Spain might, by this time, have had a
+surfeit of news, and might be in serious need of some simple, honest
+facts.  But he thought his two caravels sufficiently freighted with this
+new belief--the belief that he had discovered the Ophir of Solomon.
+
+The Admiral sailed on March 10th, 1496, carrying with him in chains the
+vanquished Caonabo and other natives.  He touched at Marigalante and at
+Guadaloupe, where his people had an engagement with the natives, taking
+several prisoners, but releasing them all again with the exception of one
+woman, a handsome creature who had fallen in love with Caonabo and
+refused to go.  But for Caonabo the joys of life and love were at an end;
+his heart and spirit were broken.  He was not destined to be paraded as a
+captive through the streets of Spain, and it was somewhere in the deep
+Atlantic that he paid the last tribute to the power that had captured and
+broken him.  He died on the voyage, which was longer and much more full
+of hardships than usual.  For some reason or other Columbus did not take
+the northerly route going home, but sailed east from Gaudaloupe,
+encountering the easterly trade winds, which delayed him so much that the
+voyage occupied three months instead of six weeks.
+
+Once more he exhibited his easy mastery of the art of navigation and his
+extraordinary gift for estimating dead-reckoning.  After having been out
+of sight of land for eight weeks, and while some of the sailors thought
+they might be in the Bay of Biscay, and others that they were in the
+English Channel, the Admiral suddenly announced that they were close to
+Cape Saint Vincent.
+
+No land was in sight, but he ordered that sail should be shortened that
+evening; and sure enough the next morning they sighted the land close by
+Cape Saint Vincent.  Columbus managed his landfalls with a fine dramatic
+sense as though they were conjuring tricks; and indeed they must have
+seemed like conjuring tricks, except that they were almost always
+successful.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+IN SPAIN AGAIN
+
+The loiterers about the harbour of Cadiz saw a curious sight on June
+11th, 1496, when the two battered ships, bearing back the voyagers from
+the Eldorado of the West, disembarked their passengers.  There were some
+220 souls on board, including thirty Indians: and instead of leaping
+ashore, flushed with health, and bringing the fortunes which they had
+gone out to seek, they crawled miserably from the boats or were carried
+ashore, emaciated by starvation, yellow with disease, ragged and unkempt
+from poverty, and with practically no possessions other than the clothes
+they stood up in.  Even the Admiral, now in his forty-sixth year, hardly
+had the appearance that one would expect in a Viceroy of the Indies.  His
+white hair and beard were rough and matted, his handsome face furrowed by
+care and sunken by illness and exhaustion, and instead of the glittering
+armour and uniform of his office he wore the plain robe and girdle of the
+Franciscan order--this last probably in consequence of some vow or other
+he had made in an hour of peril on the voyage.
+
+One lucky coincidence marked his arrival.  In the harbour, preparing to
+weigh anchor, was a fleet of three little caravels, commanded by Pedro
+Nino, about to set out for Espanola with supplies and despatches.
+Columbus hurried on board Nino’s ship, and there read the letters from
+the Sovereigns which it had been designed he should receive in Espanola.
+The letters are not preserved, but one can make a fair guess at their
+contents.  Some searching questions would certainly be asked, kind
+assurances of continued confidence would doubtless be given, with many
+suggestions for the betterment of affairs in the distant colony.  Only
+their result upon the Admiral is known to us.  He sat down there and then
+and wrote to Bartholomew, urging him to secure peace in the island by
+every means in his power, to send home any caciques or natives who were
+likely to give trouble, and most of all to push on with the building of a
+settlement on the south coast where the new mines were, and to have a
+cargo of gold ready to send back with the next expedition.  Having
+written this letter, the Admiral saw the little fleet sail away on June
+17th, and himself prepared with mingled feelings to present himself
+before his Sovereigns.
+
+While he was waiting for their summons at Los Palacios, a small town near
+Seville, he was the guest of the curate of that place, Andrez Bernaldez,
+who had been chaplain to Christopher’s old friend DEA, the Archbishop of
+Seville.  This good priest evidently proved a staunch friend to Columbus
+at this anxious period of his life, for the Admiral left many important
+papers in his charge when he again left Spain, and no small part of the
+scant contemporary information about Columbus that has come down to us is
+contained in the ‘Historia de los Reyes Catolicos’, which Bernaldez wrote
+after the death of Columbus.
+
+
+Fickle Spain had already forgotten its first sentimental enthusiasm over
+the Admiral’s discoveries, and now was only interested in their financial
+results.  People cannot be continually excited about a thing which they
+have not seen, and there were events much nearer home that absorbed the
+public interest.  There was the trouble with France, the contemplated
+alliance of the Crown Prince with Margaret of Austria, and of the Spanish
+Princess Juana with Philip of Austria; and there were the designs of
+Ferdinand upon the kingdom of Naples, which was in his eyes a much more
+desirable and valuable prize than any group of unknown islands beyond the
+ocean.
+
+Columbus did his very best to work up enthusiasm again.  He repeated the
+performance that had been such a success after his first voyage--the kind
+of circus procession in which the natives were marched in column
+surrounded by specimens of the wealth of the Indies.  But somehow it did
+not work so well this time.  Where there had formerly been acclamations
+and crowds pressing forward to view the savages and their ornaments,
+there were now apathy and a dearth of spectators.  And although Columbus
+did his very best, and was careful to exhibit every scrap of gold that he
+had brought, and to hang golden collars and ornaments about the necks of
+the marching Indians, his exhibition was received either in ominous
+silence or, in some quarters, with something like derision.  As I have
+said before, there comes a time when the best-disposed debtors do not
+regard themselves as being repaid by promises, and when the most
+enthusiastic optimist desires to see something more than samples.
+It was only old Colon going round with his show again--flamingoes,
+macaws, seashells, dye-woods, gums and spices; some people laughed,
+and some were angry; but all were united in thinking that the New World
+was not a very profitable speculation.
+
+Things were a little better, however, at Court.  Isabella certainly
+believed still in Columbus; Ferdinand, although he had never been
+enthusiastic, knew the Admiral too well to make the vulgar mistake of
+believing him an impostor; and both were too polite and considerate to
+add to his obvious mortification and distress by any discouraging
+comments.  Moreover, the man himself had lost neither his belief in the
+value of his discoveries nor his eloquence in talking of them; and when
+he told his story to the Sovereigns they could not help being impressed,
+not only with his sincerity but with his ability and single-heartedness
+also.  It was almost the same old story, of illimitable wealth that was
+just about to be acquired, and perhaps no one but Columbus could have
+made it go down once more with success; but talking about his exploits
+was never any trouble to him, and his astonishing conviction, the lofty
+and dignified manner in which he described both good and bad fortune, and
+the impressive way in which he spoke of the wealth of the gold of Ophir
+and of the far-reaching importance of his supposed discovery of the
+Golden Chersonesus and the mainland of Asia, had their due effect on his
+hearers.
+
+It was always his way, plausible Christopher, to pass lightly over the
+premises and to dwell with elaborate detail on the deductions.  It was by
+no means proved that he had discovered the mines of King Solomon; he had
+never even seen the place which he identified with them; it was in fact
+nothing more than an idea in his own head; but we may be sure that he
+took it as an established fact that he had actually discovered the mines
+of Ophir, and confined his discussion to estimates of the wealth which
+they were likely to yield, and of what was to be done with the wealth
+when the mere details of conveying it from the mines to the ships had
+been disposed of.  So also with the Golden Chersonesus.  The very name
+was enough to stop the mouths of doubters; and here was the man himself
+who had actually been there, and here was a sworn affidavit from every
+member of his crew to say that they had been there too.  This kind of
+logic is irresistible if you only grant the first little step; and
+Columbus had the art of making it seem an act of imbecility in any of his
+hearers to doubt the strength of the little link by which his great
+golden chains of argument were fastened to fact and truth.
+
+For Columbus everything depended upon his reception by the Sovereigns at
+this time.  Unless he could re-establish his hold upon them and move to a
+still more secure position in their confidence he was a ruined man and
+his career was finished; and one cannot but sympathise with him as he
+sits there searching his mind for tempting and convincing arguments, and
+speaking so calmly and gravely and confidently in spite of all the doubts
+and flutterings in his heart.  Like a tradesman setting out his wares,
+he brought forth every inducement he could think of to convince the
+Sovereigns that the only way to make a success of what they had already
+done was to do more; that the only way to make profitable the money that
+had already been spent was to spend more; that the only way to prove the
+wisdom of their trust in him was to trust him more.  One of his
+transcendent merits in a situation of this kind was that he always had
+something new and interesting to propose.  He did not spread out his
+hands and say, “This is what I have done: it is the best I can do; how
+are you going to treat me?”  He said in effect, “This is what I have
+done; you will see that it will all come right in time; do not worry
+about it; but meanwhile I have something else to propose which I think
+your Majesties will consider a good plan.”
+
+His new demand was for a fleet of six ships, two of which were to convey
+supplies to Espanola, and the other four to be entrusted to him for the
+purpose of a voyage of discovery towards the mainland to the south of
+Espanola, of which he had heard consistent rumours; which was said to be
+rich in gold, and (a clever touch) to which the King of Portugal was
+thinking of sending a fleet, as he thought that it might lie within the
+limits of his domain of heathendom.  And so well did he manage, and so
+deeply did he impress the Sovereigns with his assurance that this time
+the thing amounted to what is vulgarly called “a dead certainty,” that
+they promised him he should have his ships.
+
+But promise and performance, as no one knew better than Columbus, are
+different things; and it was a long while before he got his ships.  There
+was the usual scarcity of money, and the extensive military and
+diplomatic operations in which the Crown was then engaged absorbed every
+maravedi that Ferdinand could lay his hands on.  There was an army to be
+maintained under the Pyrenees to keep watch over France; fleets had to be
+kept patrolling both the Mediterranean and Atlantic seaboards; and there
+was a whole armada required to convey the princesses of Spain and Austria
+to their respective husbands in connection with the double matrimonial
+alliance arranged between the two countries.  And when at last, in
+October 1496, six million maravedis were provided wherewith Columbus
+might equip his fleet, they were withdrawn again under very mortifying
+circumstances.  The appropriation had just been made when a letter
+arrived from Pedro Nino, who had been to Espanola and come back again,
+and now wrote from Cadiz to the Sovereigns, saying that his ships were
+full of gold.  He did not present himself at Court, but went to visit his
+family at Huelva; but the good news of his letter was accepted as an
+excuse for this oversight.
+
+No one was better pleased than the Admiral.  “What did I tell you?”  he
+says; “you see the mines of Hayna are paying already.”  King Ferdinand,
+equally pleased, and having an urgent need of money in connection with
+his operations against France, took the opportunity to cancel the
+appropriation of the six million maravedis, giving Columbus instead an
+order for the amount to be paid out of the treasure brought home by Nino.
+Alas, the mariner’s boast of gold had been a figure of speech.  There was
+no gold; there was only a cargo of slaves, which Nino deemed the
+equivalent of gold; and when Bartholomew’s despatches came to be read he
+described the affairs of Espanola as being in very much the same
+condition as before.  This incident produced a most unfortunate
+impression.  Even Columbus was obliged to keep quiet for a little while;
+and it is likely that the mention of six million maravedis was not
+welcomed by him for some time afterwards.
+
+After the wedding of Prince Juan in March 1497, when Queen Isabella had
+more time to give to external affairs, the promise to Columbus was again
+remembered, and his position was considered in detail.  An order was made
+(April 23rd, 1497), restoring to the Admiral the original privileges
+bestowed upon him at Santa Fe.  He was offered a large tract of land in
+Espanola, with the title of Duke; but much as he hankered after titular
+honours, he was for once prudent enough to refuse this gift.  His reason
+was that it would only further damage his influence, and give apparent
+justification to those enemies who said that the whole enterprise had
+been undertaken merely in his own interests; and it is possible also that
+his many painful associations with Espanola, and the bloodshed and
+horrors that he had witnessed there, had aroused in his superstitious
+mind a distaste for possessions and titles in that devastated Paradise.
+Instead, he accepted a measure of relief from the obligations incurred by
+his eighth share in the many unprofitable expeditions that had been sent
+out during the last three years, agreeing for the next three years to
+receive an eighth share of the gross income, and a tenth of the net
+profits, without contributing anything to the cost.  His appointment of
+Bartholomew to the office of Adelantado, which had annoyed Ferdinand, was
+now confirmed; the universal license which had been granted to Spanish
+subjects to settle in the new lands was revoked in so far as it infringed
+the Admiral’s privileges; and he was granted a force of 330 officers,
+soldiers, and artificers to be at his personal disposal in the
+prosecution of his next voyage.
+
+The death of Prince Juan in October 1497 once more distracted the
+attention of the Court from all but personal matters; and Columbus
+employed the time of waiting in drafting a testamentary document in which
+he was permitted to create an entail on his title and estates in favour
+of his two sons and their heirs for ever.  This did not represent his
+complete or final testament, for he added codicils at various times,
+the latest being executed the day before his death.  The document is
+worth studying; it reveals something of the laborious, painstaking mind
+reaching out down the rivers and streams of the future that were to flow
+from the fountain of his own greatness; it reveals also his triple
+conception of the obligations of human life in this world--the
+cultivation and retention of temporal dignity, the performance of pious
+and charitable acts, and the recognition of duty to one’s family.  It was
+in this document that Columbus formulated the curious cipher which he
+always now used in signing his name, and of which various readings are
+given in the Appendix.  He also enjoined upon his heir the duty of using
+the simple title which he himself loved and used most--“The Admiral.”
+
+After the death of Prince Juan, Queen Isabella honoured Columbus by
+attaching his two sons to her own person as pages; and her friendship
+must at this time have gone far to compensate him for the coolness shown
+towards him by the public at large.  He might talk as much as he pleased,
+but he had nothing to show for all his talk except a few trinkets, a
+collection of interesting but valueless botanical specimens, and a
+handful of miserable slaves.  Lives and fortunes had been wrecked on the
+enterprise, which had so far brought nothing to Spain but the promise of
+luxurious adventure that was not fulfilled and of a wealth and glory that
+had not been realised.  It must have been a very humiliating circumstance
+to Columbus that in the preparations which he was now (February 1498)
+making for the equipment of his new expedition a great difficulty was
+found in procuring ships and men.  Not even before the first voyage had
+so much reluctance been shown to risk life and property in the
+enterprise.  Merchants and sailors had then been frightened of dangers
+which they did not know; now, it seemed, the evils of which they did know
+proved a still greater deterrent.  The Admiral was at this time the guest
+of his friend Bernaldez, who has told us something of his difficulties;
+and the humiliating expedient of seizing ships under a royal order had
+finally to be adopted.  But it would never have done to impress the
+colonists also; that would have been too open a confession of failure for
+the proud Admiral to tolerate.
+
+Instead he had recourse to the miserable plan of which he had made use in
+Palos; the prisons were opened, and criminals under sentence invited to
+come forth and enjoy the blessings of colonial life.  Even then there was
+not that rush from the prison doors that might have been expected, and
+some desperate characters apparently preferred the mercies of a Spanish
+prison to what they had heard of the joys of the Earthly Paradise.  Still
+a number of criminals did doubtfully crawl forth and furnish a retinue
+for the great Admiral and Viceroy.  Trembling, suspicious, and with more
+than half a mind to go back to their bonds, some part of the human vermin
+of Spain was eventually cajoled and chivied on board the ships.
+
+The needs of the colony being urgent, and recruiting being slow, two
+caravels laden with provisions were sent off in advance; but even for
+this purpose there was a difficulty about money, and good Isabella
+furnished the expense, at much inconvenience, from her private purse.
+
+Columbus had to supervise everything himself; and no wonder that by the
+end of May, when he was ready to sail, his patience and temper were
+exhausted and his much-tried endurance broke down under the petty
+gnatlike irritations of Fonseca and his myrmidons.  It was on the deck of
+his own ship, in the harbour of San Lucar, that he knocked down and
+soundly kicked Ximeno de Breviesca, Fonseca’s accountant, whose nagging
+requisitions had driven the Admiral to fury.
+
+After all these years of gravity and restraint and endurance, this
+momentary outbreak of the old Adam in our hero is like a breath of wind
+through an open window.
+
+To the portraits of Columbus hanging in the gallery of one’s imagination
+this must surely be added; in which Christopher, on the deck of his ship,
+with the royal standard and the Admiral’s flag flying from his masthead,
+is observed to be soundly kicking a prostrate accountant.  The incident
+is worthy of a date, which is accordingly here given, as near as may be--
+May 29, 1498.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE THIRD VOYAGE
+
+Columbus was at sea again; firm ground to him, although so treacherous
+and unstable to most of us; and as he saw the Spanish coast sinking down
+on the horizon he could shake himself free from his troubles, and feel
+that once more he was in a situation of which he was master.  He first
+touched at Porto Santo, where, if the story of his residence there be
+true, there must have been potent memories for him in the sight of the
+long white beach and the plantations, with the Governor’s house beyond.
+He stayed there only a few hours and then crossed over to Madeira,
+anchoring in the Bay of Funchal, where he took in wood and water.  As it
+was really unnecessary for him to make a port so soon after leaving,
+there was probably some other reason for his visit to these islands;
+perhaps a family reason; perhaps nothing more historically important than
+the desire to look once more on scenes of bygone happiness, for even on
+the page of history every event is not necessarily big with significance.
+From Madeira he took a southerly course to the Canary Islands, and on
+June 16th anchored at Gomera, where he found a French warship with two
+Spanish prizes, all of which put to sea as the Admiral’s fleet
+approached.  On June 21st, when he sailed from Gomera, he divided his
+fleet of six vessels into two squadrons.  Three ships were despatched
+direct to Espanola, for the supplies which they carried were urgently
+needed there.  These three ships were commanded by trustworthy men: Pedro
+de Arana, a brother of Beatriz, Alonso Sanchez de Carvajal, and Juan
+Antonio Colombo--this last no other than a cousin of Christopher’s from
+Genoa.  The sons of Domenico’s provident younger brother had not
+prospered, while the sons of improvident Domenico were now all in high
+places; and these three poor cousins, hearing of Christopher’s greatness,
+and deciding that use should be made of him, scraped together enough
+money to send one of their number to Spain.  The Admiral always had a
+sound family feeling, and finding that cousin Antonio had sea experience
+and knew how to handle a ship he gave him command of one of the caravels
+on this voyage--a command of which he proved capable and worthy.  From
+these three captains, after giving them full sailing directions for
+reaching Espanola, Columbus parted company off the island of Ferro.  He
+himself stood on a southerly course towards the Cape Verde Islands.
+
+His plan on this voyage was to find the mainland to the southward, of
+which he had heard rumours in Espanola.  Before leaving Spain he had
+received a letter from an eminent lapidary named Ferrer who had travelled
+much in the east, and who assured him that if he sought gold and precious
+stones he must go to hot lands, and that the hotter the lands were, and
+the blacker the inhabitants, the more likely he was to find riches there.
+This was just the kind of theory to suit Columbus, and as he sailed
+towards the Cape Verde Islands he was already in imagination gathering
+gold and pearls on the shores of the equatorial continent.
+
+He stayed for about a week at the Cape Verde Islands, getting in
+provisions and cattle, and curiously observing the life of the Portuguese
+lepers who came in numbers to the island of Buenavista to be cured there
+by eating the flesh and bathing in the blood of turtles.  It was not an
+inspiriting week which he spent in that dreary place and enervating
+climate, with nothing to see but the goats feeding among the scrub, the
+turtles crawling about the sand, and the lepers following the turtles.
+It began to tell on the health of the crew, so he weighed anchor on July
+5th and stood on a southwesterly course.
+
+This third voyage, which was destined to be the most important of all,
+and the material for which had cost him so much time and labour, was
+undertaken in a very solemn and determined spirit.  His health, which he
+had hoped to recover in Spain, had been if anything damaged by his
+worryings with officialdom there; and although he was only forty-seven
+years of age he was in some respects already an old man.  He had entered,
+although happily he did not know it, on the last decade of his life; and
+was already beginning to suffer from the two diseases, gout and
+ophthalmia, which were soon to undermine his strength and endurance.
+Religion of a mystical fifteenth-century sort was deepening in him;
+he had undertaken this voyage in the name of the Holy Trinity; and to
+that theological entity he had resolved to dedicate the first new land
+that he should sight.
+
+For ten days light baffling winds impeded his progress; but at the end of
+that time the winds fell away altogether, and the voyagers found
+themselves in that flat equatorial calm known to mariners as the
+Doldrums.  The vertical rays of the sun shone blisteringly down upon
+them, making the seams of the ships gape and causing the unhappy crews
+mental as well as bodily distress, for they began to fear that they had
+reached that zone of fire which had always been said to exist in the
+southern ocean.
+
+Day after day the three ships lay motionless on the glassy water, with
+wood-work so hot as to burn the hands that touched it, with the meat
+putrefying in the casks below, and the water running from the loosened
+casks, and no one with courage and endurance enough to venture into the
+stifling hold even to save the provisions.  And through all this the
+Admiral, racked with gout, had to keep a cheerful face and assure his
+prostrate crew that they would soon be out of it.
+
+There were showers of rain sometimes, but the moisture in that baking
+atmosphere only added to its stifling and enervating effects.  All the
+while, however, the great slow current of the Atlantic was moving
+westward, and there came a day when a heavenly breeze, stirred in the
+torrid air and the musical talk of ripples began to rise again from the
+weedy stems of the ships.  They sailed due west, always into a cooler and
+fresher atmosphere; but still no land was sighted, although pelicans
+and smaller birds were continually seen passing from south-west to
+north-east.  As provisions were beginning to run low, Columbus decided
+on the 31st July to alter his course to north-by-east, in the hope of
+reaching the island of Dominica.  But at mid-day his servant Alonso
+Perez, happening to go to the masthead, cried out that there was land in
+sight; and sure enough to the westward there rose three peaks of land
+united at the base.  Here was the kind of coincidence which staggers
+even the unbeliever.  Columbus had promised to dedicate the first land
+he saw to the Trinity; and here was the land, miraculously provided when
+he needed it most, three peaks in one peak, in due conformity with the
+requirements of the blessed Saint Athanasius.  The Admiral was deeply
+affected; the God of his belief was indeed a good friend to him; and he
+wrote down his pious conviction that the event was a miracle, and
+summoned all hands to sing the Salve Regina, with other hymns in praise
+of God and the Virgin Mary.  The island was duly christened La Trinidad.
+By the hour of Compline (9 o’clock in the evening) they had come up with
+the south coast of the island, but it was the next day before the
+Admiral found a harbour where he could take in water.  No natives were
+to be seen, although there were footprints on the shore and other signs
+of human habitation.
+
+He continued all day to sail slowly along the shore of the island, the
+green luxuriance of which astonished him; and sometimes he stood out from
+the coast to the southward as he made a long board to round this or that
+point.  It must have been while reaching out in this way to the southward
+that he saw a low shore on his port hand some sixty miles to the south of
+Trinidad, and that his sight, although he did not know it, rested for the
+first time on the mainland of South America.  The land seen was the low
+coast to the west of the Orinoco, and thinking that it was an island he
+gave it the name of Isla Sancta.
+
+On the 2nd of August they were off the south-west of Trinidad, and saw
+the first inhabitants in the shape of a canoe full of armed natives, who
+approached the ships with threatening gestures.  Columbus had brought out
+some musicians with him, possibly for the purpose of impressing the
+natives, and perhaps with the idea of making things a little more
+cheerful in Espanola; and the musicians were now duly called upon to give
+a performance, a tambourine-player standing on the forecastle and beating
+the rhythm for the ships’ boys to dance to.  The effect was other than
+was anticipated, for the natives immediately discharged a thick flight of
+arrows at the musicians, and the music and dancing abruptly ceased.
+Eventually the Indians were prevailed upon to come on board the two
+smaller ships and to receive gifts, after which they departed and were
+seen no more.  Columbus landed and made some observations of the
+vegetation and climate of Trinidad, noticing that the fruits and-trees
+were similar to those of Espanola, and that oysters abounded, as well as
+“very large, infinite fish, and parrots as large as hens.”
+
+He saw another peak of the mainland to the northwest, which was the
+peninsula of Paria, and to which Columbus, taking it to be another
+island, gave the name of Isla de Gracia.  Between him and this land lay a
+narrow channel through which a mighty current was flowing--that press of
+waters which, sweeping across the Atlantic from Africa, enters the
+Caribbean Sea, sprays round the Gulf of Mexico, and turns north again in
+the current known as the Gulf Stream.  While his ships were anchored at
+the entrance to this channel and Columbus was wondering how he should
+cross it, a mighty flood of water suddenly came down with a roar, sending
+a great surging wave in front of it.  The vessels were lifted up as
+though by magic; two of them dragged their anchors from the bottom, and
+the other one broke her cable.  This flood was probably caused by a
+sudden flush of fresh water from one of the many mouths of the Orinoco;
+but to Columbus, who had no thought of rivers in his mind, it was very
+alarming.  Apparently, however, there was nothing for it but to get
+through the channel, and having sent boats on in front to take soundings
+and see that there was clear water he eventually piloted his little
+squadron through, with his heart in his mouth and his eyes fixed on the
+swinging eddies and surging circles of the channel.  Once beyond it he
+was in the smooth water of the Gulf of Paria.  He followed the westerly
+coast of Trinidad to the north until he came to a second channel narrower
+than the first, through which the current boiled with still greater
+violence, and to which he gave the name of Dragon’s Mouth.  This is the
+channel between the northwesterly point of Trinidad and the eastern
+promontory of Paria.  Columbus now began to be bewildered, for he
+discovered that the water over the ship’s side was fresh water, and he
+could not make out where it came from.  Thinking that the peninsula of
+Paria was an island, and not wishing to attempt the dangerous passage of
+the Dragon’s Mouth, he decided to coast along the southern shore of the
+land opposite, hoping to be able to turn north round its western
+extremity.
+
+
+Sweeter blew the breezes, fresher grew the water, milder and more balmy
+the air, greener and deeper the vegetation of this beautiful region.  The
+Admiral was ill with the gout, and suffering such pain from his eyes that
+he was sometimes blinded by it; but the excitement of the strange
+phenomena surrounding him kept him up, and his powers of observation,
+always acute, suffered no diminution.  There were no inhabitants to be
+seen as they sailed along the coast, but monkeys climbed and chattered in
+the trees by the shore, and oysters were found clinging to the branches
+that dipped into the water.  At last, in a bay where they anchored to
+take in water, a native canoe containing three, men was seen cautiously
+approaching; and the men, who were shy, were captured by the device of a
+sailor jumping on to the gunwale of the canoe and overturning it, the
+natives being easily caught in the water, and afterwards soothed and
+captivated by the unfailing attraction of hawks’ bells.  They were tall
+men with long hair, and they told Columbus that the name of their country
+was Paria; and when they were asked about other inhabitants they pointed
+to the west and signified that there was a great population in that
+direction.
+
+On the 10th of August 1498 a party landed on this coast and formally took
+possession of it in the name of the Sovereigns of Spain.  By an unlucky
+chance Columbus himself did not land.  His eyes were troubling him so
+much that he was obliged to lie down in his cabin, and the formal act of
+possession was performed by a deputy.  If he had only known!  If he could
+but have guessed that this was indeed the mainland of a New World that
+did not exist even in his dreams, what agonies he would have suffered
+rather than permit any one else to pronounce the words of annexation!
+But he lay there in pain and suffering, his curious mystical mind
+occupied with a conception very remote indeed from the truth.
+
+
+For in that fertile hotbed of imagination, the Admiral’s brain, a new and
+staggering theory had gradually been taking shape.  As his ships had been
+wafted into this delicious region, as the airs had become sweeter, the
+vegetation more luxuriant, and the water of the sea fresher,--he had
+solemnly arrived at the conclusion that he was approaching the region of
+the true terrestrial Paradise: the Garden of Eden that some of the
+Fathers had declared to be situated in the extreme east of the Old World,
+and in a region so high that the flood had not overwhelmed it.  Columbus,
+thinking hard in his cabin, blood and brain a little fevered, comes to
+the conclusion that the world is not round but pear-shaped.  He knows
+that all this fresh water in the sea must come from a great distance and
+from no ordinary river; and he decides that its volume and direction have
+been acquired in its fall from the apex of the pear, from the very top of
+the world, from the Garden of Eden itself.  It was a most beautiful
+conception; a theory worthy to be fitted to all the sweet sights and
+sounds in the world about him; but it led him farther and farther away
+from the truth, and blinded him to knowledge and understanding of what he
+had actually accomplished.
+
+He had thought the coast of Cuba the mainland, and he now began to
+consider it at least possible that the peninsula of Paria was mainland
+also--another part of the same continent.  That was the truth--Paria was
+the mainland--and if he had not been so bemused by his dreams and
+theories he might have had some inkling of the real wonder and
+significance of his discovery.  But no; in his profoundly unscientific
+mind there was little of that patience which holds men back from
+theorising and keeps them ready to receive the truth.  He was patient
+enough in doing, but in thinking he was not patient at all.  No sooner
+had he observed a fact than he must find a theory which would bring it
+into relation with the whole of his knowledge; and if the facts would not
+harmonise of themselves he invented a scheme of things by which they were
+forced into harmony.  He was indeed a Darwinian before his time, an adept
+in the art of inventing causes to fit facts, and then proving that the
+facts sprang from the causes; but his origins were tangible, immovable
+things of rock and soil that could be seen and visited by other men, and
+their true relation to the terrestrial phenomena accurately established;
+so that his very proofs were monumental, and became themselves the
+advertisements of his profound misjudgment.  But meanwhile he is the
+Admiral of the Ocean Seas, and can “make it so”; and accordingly, in a
+state of mental instability, he makes the Gulf of Paria to be a slope of
+earth immediately below the Garden of Eden, although fortunately he does
+not this time provide a sworn affidavit of trembling ships’ boys to
+confirm his discovery.
+
+Meanwhile also here were pearls; the native women wore ropes of them all
+over their bodies, and a fair store of them were bartered for pieces of
+broken crockery.  Asked as usual about the pearls the natives, also as
+usual, pointed vaguely to the west and south-west, and explained that
+there were more pearls in that direction.  But the Admiral would not
+tarry.  Although he believed that he was within reach of Eden and pearls,
+he was more anxious to get back to Espanola and send the thrilling news
+to Spain than he was to push on a little farther and really assure
+himself of the truth.  How like Christopher that was!  Ideas to him were
+of more value than facts, as indeed they are to the world at large; but
+one is sometimes led to wonder whether he did not sometimes hesitate to
+turn his ideas into facts for very fear that they should turn out to be
+only ideas.  Was he, in his relations with Spain and the world, a trader
+in the names rather than the substance of things?  We have seen him going
+home to Spain and announcing the discovery of the Golden Chersonesus,
+although he had only discovered what he erroneously supposed to be an
+indication of it; proclaiming the discovery of the Ophir of Solomon
+without taking the trouble to test for himself so tremendous an
+assumption; and we now see him hurrying away to dazzle Spain with the
+story that he has discovered the Garden of Eden, without even trying to
+push on for a few days more to secure so much as a cutting from the Tree
+of Life.
+
+These are grave considerations; for although happily the Tree of Life is
+now of no importance to any human being, the doings of Admiral
+Christopher were of great importance to himself and to his fellow-men at
+that time, and are still to-day, through the infinite channels in which
+human thought and action run and continue thoughout the world, of grave
+importance to us.  Perhaps this is not quite the moment, now that the
+poor Admiral is lying in pain and weakness and not quite master of his
+own mind, to consider fully how he stands in this matter of honesty; we
+will leave it for the present until he is well again, or better still,
+until his tale of life and action is complete, and comes as a whole
+before the bar of human judgment.
+
+
+On August 11th Columbus turned east again after having given up the
+attempt to find a passage to the north round Paria.  There were practical
+considerations that brought him to this action.  As the water was growing
+shoaler and shoaler he had sent a caravel of light draft some way further
+to the westward, and she reported that there lay ahead of her a great
+inner bay or gulf consisting of almost entirely fresh water.  Provisions,
+moreover, were running short, and were, as usual, turning bad; the
+Admiral’s health made vigorous action of any kind impossible for him; he
+was anxious about the condition of Espanola--anxious also, as we have
+seen, to send this great news home; and he therefore turned back and
+decided to risk the passage of the Dragon’s Mouth.  He anchored in the
+neighbouring harbour until the wind was in the right quarter, and with
+some trepidation put his ships into the boiling tideway.  When they were
+in the middle of the passage the wind fell to a dead calm, and the ships,
+with their sails hanging loose, were borne on the dizzy surface of
+eddies, overfalls, and whirls of the tide.  Fortunately there was deep
+water in the passage, and the strength of the current carried them safely
+through.  Once outside they bore away to the northward, sighting the
+islands of Tobago and Grenada and, turning westward again, came to the
+islands of Cubagua and Margarita, where three pounds of pearls were
+bartered from the natives.  A week after the passage of the Dragon’s
+Mouth Columbus sighted the south coast of Espanola, which coast he made
+at a point a long way to the east of the new settlement that he had
+instructed Bartholomew to found; and as the winds were contrary, and he
+feared it might take him a long time to beat up against them, he sent a
+boat ashore with a letter which was to be delivered by a native messenger
+to the Adelantado.  The letter was delivered; a few days later a caravel
+was sighted which contained Bartholomew himself; and once more, after a
+long separation, these two friends and brothers were united.
+
+
+The see-saw motion of all affairs with which Columbus had to do was in
+full swing.  We have seen him patching up matters in Espanola; hurrying
+to Spain just in time to rescue his damaged reputation and do something
+to restore it; and now when he had come back it was but a sorry tale that
+Bartholomew had to tell him.  A fortress had been built at the Hayna
+gold-mines, but provisions had been so scarce that there had been
+something like a famine among the workmen there; no digging had been
+done, no planting, no making of the place fit for human occupation and
+industry.  Bartholomew had been kept busy in collecting the native
+tribute, and in planning out the beginnings of the settlement at the
+mouth of the river Ozema, which was at first called the New Isabella, but
+was afterwards named San Domingo in honour of old Domenico at Savona.
+The cacique Behechio had been giving trouble; had indeed marched out with
+an army against Bartholomew, but had been more or less reconciled by the
+intervention of his sister Anacaona, widow of the late Caonabo, who had
+apparently transferred her affections to Governor Bartholomew.  The
+battle was turned into a friendly pagan festival--one of the last ever
+held on that once happy island--in which native girls danced in a green
+grove, with the beautiful Anacaona, dressed only in garlands, carried on
+a litter in their midst.
+
+But in the Vega Real, where a chapel had been built by the priests of the
+neighbouring settlement who were beginning to make converts, trouble had
+arisen in consequence of an outrage on the wife of the cacique Guarionex.
+The chapel was raided, the shrine destroyed, and the sacred vessels
+carried off.  The Spaniards seized a number of Indians whom they
+suspected of having had a hand in the desecration, and burned them at the
+stake in the most approved manner of the Inquisition--a hideous
+punishment that fanned the remaining embers of the native spirit into
+flame, and produced a hostile combination of Guarionex and several other
+caciques, whose rebellion it took the Adelantado some trouble and display
+of arms to quench.
+
+But the worst news of all was the treacherous revolt of Francisco Roldan,
+a Spaniard who had once been a servant of the Admiral’s, and who had been
+raised by him to the office of judge in the island--an able creature,
+but, like too many recipients of Christopher’s favour, a treacherous
+rascal at bottom.  As soon as the Admiral’s back was turned Roldan had
+begun to make mischief, stirring up the discontent that was never far
+below the surface of life in the colony, and getting together a large
+band of rebellious ruffians.  He had a plan to murder Bartholomew
+Columbus and place himself at the head of the colony, but this fell
+through.  Then, in Bartholomew’s absence, he had a passage with James
+Columbus, who had now returned to the island and had resumed his.
+official duties at Isabella.  Bartholomew, who was at another part of the
+coast collecting tribute, had sent a caravel laden with cotton to
+Isabella, and well-meaning James had her drawn up on the beach.  Roldan
+took the opportunity to represent this innocent action as a sign of the
+intolerable autocracy of the Columbus family, who did not even wish a
+vessel to be in a condition to sail for Spain with news of their
+misdeeds.  Insolent Roldan formally asks James to send the caravel to
+Spain with supplies; poor James refuses and, perhaps being at bottom
+afraid of Roldan and his insolences, despatches him to the Vega Real with
+a force to bring to order some caciques who had been giving trouble.
+Possibly to his surprise, although not to ours, Roldan departs with
+alacrity at the head of seventy armed men.  Honest, zealous James, no
+doubt; but also, we begin to fear, stupid James.
+
+
+The Vega Real was the most attractive part of the colony, and the scene
+of infinite idleness and debauchery in the early days of the Spanish
+settlement.  As Margarite and other mutineers had acted, so did Roldan
+and his soldiers now act, making sallies against several of the chain of
+forts that stretched across the island, and even upon Isabella itself;
+and returning to the Vega to the enjoyment of primitive wild pleasures.
+Roldan and Bartholomew Columbus stalked each other about the island with
+armed forces for several months, Roldan besieging Bartholomew in the
+fortress at the Vega, which he had occupied in Roldan’s absence, and
+trying to starve him out there.  The arrival in February 1498 of the two
+ships which had been sent out from Spain in advance, and which brought
+also the news of the Admiral’s undamaged favour at Court, and of the
+royal confirmation of Bartholomew’s title, produced for the moment a good
+moral effect; Roldan went and sulked in the mountains, refusing to have
+any parley or communication with the Adelantado, declining indeed to
+treat with any one until the Admiral himself should return.  In the
+meantime his influence with the natives was strong enough to produce a
+native revolt, which Bartholomew had only just succeeded in suppressing
+when Christopher arrived on August 30th.
+
+The Admiral was not a little distressed to find that the three ships from
+which he had parted company at Ferro had not yet arrived.  His own voyage
+ought to have taken far longer than theirs; they had now been nine weeks
+at sea, and there was nothing to account for their long delay.  When at
+last they did appear, however they brought with them only a new
+complication.  They had lost their way among the islands and had been
+searching about for Espanola, finally making a landfall there on the
+coast of Xaragua, the south-western province of the island, where Roldan
+and his followers were established.  Roldan had received them and,
+concealing the fact of his treachery, procured a large store of
+provisions from them, his followers being meanwhile busy among the crews
+of the ships inciting them to mutiny and telling them of the oppression
+of the Admiral’s rule and the joys of a lawless life.  The gaol-birds
+were nothing loth; after eight weeks at sea a spell ashore in this
+pleasant land, with all kinds of indulgences which did not come within
+the ordinary regimen of convicts and sailors, greatly appealing to them.
+The result was that more than half of the crews mutinied and joined
+Roldan, and the captains were obliged to put to sea with their small
+loyal remnant.  Carvajal remained behind in order to try to persuade
+Roldan to give himself up; but Roldan had no such idea, and Carvajal had
+to make his way by land to San Domingo, where he made his report to the
+Admiral.  Roldan has in fact delivered a kind of ultimatum.  He will
+surrender to no one but the Admiral, and that only on condition that he
+gets a free pardon.  If negotiations are opened, Roldan will treat with
+no one but Carvajal.  The Admiral, whose grip of the situation is getting
+weaker and weaker, finds himself in a difficulty.  His loyal army is only
+some seventy strong, while Roldan has, of disloyal settlers, gaol-birds,
+and sailors, much more than that.  The Admiral, since he cannot reduce
+his enemy’s force by capturing them, seeks to do it by bribing them; and
+the greatest bribe that he can think of to offer to these malcontents is
+that any who like may have a free passage home in the five caravels which
+are now waiting to return to Spain.  To such a pass have things come in
+the paradise of Espanola!  But the rabble finds life pleasant enough in
+Xaragua, where they are busy with indescribable pleasures; and for the
+moment there is no great response to this invitation to be gone.
+Columbus therefore despatches his ships, with such rabble of colonists,
+gaol-birds, and mariners as have already had their fill both of pain and
+pleasure, and writes his usual letter to the Sovereigns--half full of the
+glories of the new discoveries he has made, the other half setting forth
+the evil doings of Roldan, and begging that he may be summoned to Spain
+for trial there.  Incidentally, also, he requests a further licence for
+two years for the capture and despatch of slaves to Spain.  So the
+vessels sail back on October 18, 1498, and the Admiral turns wearily to
+the task of disentangling the web of difficulty that has woven itself
+about him.
+
+Carvajal and Ballester--another loyal captain--were sent with a letter to
+Roldan urging him to come to terms, and Carvajal and Ballester added
+their own honest persuasions.  But Roldan was firm; he wished to be quit
+of the Admiral and his rule, and to live independently in the island; and
+of his followers, although some here and there showed signs of
+submission, the greater number were so much in love with anarchy that
+they could not be counted upon.  For two months negotiations of a sort
+were continued, Roldan even presenting himself under a guarantee of
+safety at San Domingo, where he had a fruitless conference with the
+Admiral; where also he had an opportunity of observing what a sorry state
+affairs in the capital were in, and what a mess Columbus was making of it
+all.  Roldan, being a simple man, though a rascal, had only to remain
+firm in order to get his way against a mind like the Admiral’s, and get
+his way he ultimately did.  The Admiral made terms of a kind most
+humiliating to him, and utterly subversive of his influence and
+authority.  The mutineers were not only to receive a pardon but a
+certificate (good Heavens!) of good conduct.  Caravels were to be sent to
+convey them to Spain; and they were to be permitted to carry with them
+all the slaves that they had collected and all the native young women
+whom they had ravished from their homes.
+
+Columbus signs this document on the 21st of November, and promises that
+the ships shall be ready in fifty days; and then, at his wits’ end, and
+hearing of irregularities in the interior of the island, sets off with
+Bartholomew to inspect the posts and restore them to order.  In his
+absence the see-saw, in due obedience to the laws that govern all
+see-saws, gives a lurch to the other side, and things go all wrong again
+in San Domingo.  The preparations for the despatch of the caravels are
+neglected as soon as his back is turned; not fifty days, but nearly one
+hundred days elapse before they are ready to sail from San Domingo to
+Xaragua.  Even then they are delayed by storms and head-winds; and when
+they do arrive Roldan and his company will not embark in them.  The
+agreement has been broken; a new one must be made.  Columbus, returning
+to San Domingo after long and harassing struggles on the other end of
+the see-saw, gets news of this deadlock, and at the same time has news
+from Fonseca in Spain of a far from agreeable character.  His complaints
+against the people under him have been received by the Sovereigns and
+will be duly considered, but their Majesties have not time at the moment
+to go into them.  That is the gist of it, and very cold cheer it is for
+the Admiral, balancing himself on this turbulent see-saw with anxious
+eyes turned to Spain for encouragement and approval.
+
+
+In the depression that followed the receipt of this letter he was no
+match for Roldan.  He even himself took a caravel and sailed towards
+Xaragua, where he was met by Roldan, who boarded his ship and made his
+new proposals.  Their impudence is astounding; and when we consider that
+the Admiral had in theory absolute powers in the island, the fact that
+such proposals could be made, not to say accepted, shows how far out of
+relation were his actual with his nominal powers.  Roldan proposed that
+he should be allowed to give a number of his friends a free passage to
+Spain; that to all who should remain free grants of land should be given;
+and (a free pardon and certificate of good conduct contenting him no
+longer) that a proclamation should be made throughout the island
+admitting that all the charges of disloyalty and mutiny which had been
+brought against him and his followers were without foundation; and,
+finally, that he should be restored to his office of Alcalde Mayor or
+chief magistrate.
+
+Here was a bolus for Christopher to swallow; a bolus compounded of his
+own words, his own acts, his hope, dignity, supremacy.  In dismal
+humiliation he accepted the terms, with the addition of a clause more
+scandalous still--to the effect that the mutineers reserved the right,
+in case the Admiral should fail in the exact performance of any of his
+promises, to enforce them by compulsion of arms or any other method they
+might think fit.  This precious document was signed on September 28, 1499
+just twelve months after the agreement which it was intended to replace;
+and the Admiral, sailing dismally back to San Domingo, ruefully pondered
+on the fruits of a year’s delay.  Even then he was trying to make excuses
+for himself, such as he made afterwards to the Sovereigns when he tried
+to explain that this shameful capitulation was invalid.  That he signed
+under compulsion; that he was on board a ship, and so was not on his
+viceregal territory; that the rebels had already been tried, and that he
+had not the power to revoke a sentence which bore the authority of the
+Crown; that he had not the power to dispose of the Crown property
+--desperate, agonised shuffling of pride and self-esteem in the coils of
+trial and difficulty.  Enough of it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+AN INTERLUDE
+
+A breath of salt air again will do us no harm as a relief from these
+perilous balancings of Columbus on the see-saw at Espanola.  His true
+work in this world had indeed already been accomplished.  When he smote
+the rock of western discovery many springs flowed from it, and some were
+destined to run in mightier channels than that which he himself followed.
+Among other men stirred by the news of Columbus’s first voyage there was
+one walking the streets of Bristol in 1496 who was fired to a similar
+enterprise--a man of Venice, in boyhood named Zuan Caboto, but now known
+in England, where he has some time been settled, as Captain John Cabot.
+A sailor and trader who has travelled much through the known sea-roads
+of this world, and has a desire to travel upon others not so well known.
+He has been in the East, has seen the caravans of Mecca and the goods
+they carried, and, like Columbus, has conceived in his mind the roundness
+of the world as a practical fact rather than a mere mathematical theory.
+Hearing of Columbus’s success Cabot sets what machinery in England he has
+access to in motion to secure for him patents from King Henry VII.; which
+patents he receives on March 5, 1496.  After spending a long time in
+preparation, and being perhaps a little delayed by diplomatic protests
+from the Spanish Ambassador in London, he sails from Bristol in May 1497.
+
+After sailing west two thousand leagues Cabot found land in the
+neighbourhood of Cape Breton, and was thus in all probability the first
+discoverer, since the Icelanders, of the mainland of the New World.  He
+turned northward, sailed through the strait of Belle Isle, and came home
+again, having accomplished his task in three months.  Cabot, like
+Columbus, believed he had seen the territory of the Great Khan, of whom
+he told the interested population of Bristol some strange things.  He
+further told them of the probable riches of this new land if it were
+followed in a southerly direction; told them some lies also, it appears,
+since he said that the waters there were so dense with fish that his
+vessels could hardly move in them.  He received a gratuity of L10 and a
+pension, and made a great sensation in Bristol by walking about the city
+dressed in fine silk garments.  He took other voyages also with his son
+Sebastian, who followed with him the rapid widening stream of discovery
+and became Pilot Major of Spain, and President of the Congress appointed
+in 1524 to settle the conflicting pretensions of various discoverers; but
+so far as our narrative is concerned, having sailed across from Bristol
+and discovered the mainland of the New World some years before Columbus
+discovered it, John Cabot sails into oblivion.
+
+
+Another great conquest of the salt unknown taken place a few days before
+Columbus sailed on his third voyage.  The accidental discovery of the
+Cape by Bartholomew Diaz in 1486 had not been neglected by Portugal; and
+the achievements of Columbus, while they cut off Portuguese enterprise
+from the western ocean, had only stimulated it to greater activity within
+its own spheres.  Vasco da Gama sailed from Lisbon in July 1497; by the
+end of November he had rounded the Cape of Good Hope; and in May 1498,
+after a long voyage full of interest, peril, and hardship he had landed
+at Calicut on the shores of the true India.  He came back in 1499 with a
+battered remnant, his crew disabled by sickness and exhaustion, and half
+his ships lost; but he had in fact discovered a road for trade and
+adventure to the East that was not paved with promises, dreams, or mad
+affidavits, but was a real and tangible achievement, bringing its reward
+in commerce and wealth for Portugal.  At that very moment Columbus was
+groping round the mainland of South America, thinking it to be the coast
+of Cathay, and the Garden of Eden, and God knows what other
+cosmographical--theological abstractions; and Portugal, busy with her
+arrangements for making money, could afford for the moment to look on
+undismayed at the development of the mine of promises discovered by the
+Spanish Admiral.
+
+
+The anxiety of Columbus to communicate the names of things before he had
+made sure of their substance received another rude chastisement in the
+events that followed the receipt in Spain of his letter announcing the
+discovery of the Garden of Eden and the land of pearls.  People in Spain
+were not greatly interested in his theories of the terrestrial Paradise;
+but more than one adventurer pricked up his ears at the name of pearls,
+and among the first was our old friend Alonso de Ojeda, who had returned
+some time before from Espanola and was living in Spain.  His position as
+a member of Columbus’s force on the second voyage and the distinction he
+had gained there gave him special opportunities of access to the letters
+and papers sent home by Columbus; and he found no difficulty in getting
+Fonseca to show him the maps and charts of the coast of Paria sent back
+by the Admiral, the veritable pearls which had been gathered, and the
+enthusiastic descriptions of the wealth of this new coast.  Knowing
+something of Espanola, and of the Admiral also, and reading in the
+despatches of the turbulent condition of the colony, he had a shrewd idea
+that Columbus’s hands would be kept pretty full in Espanola itself, and
+that he would have no opportunity for some time to make any more voyages
+of discovery.  He therefore represented to Fonseca what a pity it would
+be if all this revenue should remain untapped just because one man had
+not time to attend to it, and he proposed that he should take out an
+expedition at his own cost and share the profits with the Crown.
+
+This proposal was too tempting to be refused; unlike the expeditions of
+Columbus, which were all expenditure and no revenue, it promised a chance
+of revenue without any expenditure at all.  The Paria coast, having been
+discovered subsequent to the agreement made with Columbus, was considered
+by Fonseca to be open to private enterprise; and he therefore granted
+Ojeda a licence to go and explore it.  Among those who went with him were
+Amerigo Vespucci and Columbus’s old pilot, Juan de la Cosa, as well as
+some of the sailors who had been with the Admiral on the coast of Paria
+and had returned in the caravels which had brought his account of it back
+to Spain.  Ojeda sailed on May 20, 1499; made a landfall some hundreds of
+miles to the eastward of the Orinoco, coasted thence as far as the island
+of Trinidad, and sailed along the northern coast of the peninsula of
+Paria until he came to a country where the natives built their hots on
+piles in the water, and to which he gave the name of Venezuela.  It was
+by his accidental presence on this voyage that Vespucci, the
+meat-contractor, came to give his name to America--a curious story of
+international jealousies, intrigues, lawsuits, and lies which we have not
+the space to deal with here.  After collecting a considerable quantity of
+pearls Ojeda, who was beginning to run short of provisions, turned
+eastward again and sought the coast of Espanola, where we shall presently
+meet with him again.
+
+
+And Ojeda was not the only person in Spain who was enticed by Columbus’s
+glowing descriptions to go and look for the pearls of Paria.  There was
+in fact quite a reunion of old friends of his and ours in the western
+ocean, though they went thither in a spirit far different from that of
+ancient friendship.  Pedro Alonso Nino, who had also been on the Paria
+coast with Columbus, who had come home with the returning ships, and
+whose patience (for he was an exceedingly practical man) had perhaps been
+tried by the strange doings of the Admiral in the Gulf of Paria, decided
+that he as well as any one else might go and find some pearls.  Nino is a
+poor man, having worked hard in all his voyagings backwards and forwards
+across the Atlantic; but he has a friend with money, one Luis Guerra, who
+provides him with the funds necessary for fitting out a small caravel
+about the size of his old ship the Nifta.  Guerra, who has the money,
+also has a brother Christoval; and his conditions are that Christoval
+shall be given the command of the caravel.  Practical Niflo does not care
+so long as he reaches the place where the pearls are.  He also applies to
+Fonseca for licence to make discoveries; and, duly receiving it, sails
+from Palos in the beginning of June 1499, hot upon the track of Ojeda.
+
+They did a little quiet discovery, principally in the domain of human
+nature, caroused with the friendly natives, but attended to business all
+the time; with the result that in the following April they were back in
+Spain with a treasure of pearls out of which, after Nifio had been made
+independent for life and Guerra, Christoval, and the rest of them had
+their shares, there remained a handsome sum for the Crown.  An extremely
+practical, businesslike voyage this; full of lessons for our poor
+Christopher, could he but have known and learned them.
+
+
+Yet another of our old friends profited by the Admiral’s discovery.  What
+Vincenti Yafiez Pinzon has been doing all these years we have no record;
+living at Palos, perhaps, doing a little of his ordinary coasting
+business, administering the estates of his brother Martin Alonso, and,
+almost for a certainty, talking pretty big about who it was that really
+did all the work in the discovery of the New World.  Out of the obscurity
+of conjecture he emerges into fact in December 1499, when he is found at
+Palos fitting out four caravels for the purpose of exploring farther
+along the coast of the southern mainland.  That he also was after pearls
+is pretty certain; but on the other hand he was more of a sailor than an
+adventurer, was a discoverer at heart, and had no small share of the
+family taste for sea travel.  He took a more southerly course than any of
+the others and struck the coast of America south of the equator on
+January 20, 1500.  He sailed north past the mouths of the Amazon and
+Orinoco through the Gulf of Paria, and reached Espanola in June 1500.
+He only paused there to take in provisions, and sailed to the west in
+search of further discoveries; but he lost two of his caravels in a gale
+and had to put back to Espanola.
+
+He sailed thence for Palos, and reached home in September 1500, having
+added no inconsiderable share to the mass of new geographical knowledge
+that was being accumulated.  In later years he took a high place in the
+maritime world of Spain.
+
+
+And finally, to complete the account of the chief minor discoveries of
+these two busy years, we must mention Pedro Alvarez Cabral of Portugal,
+who was despatched in March 1, 1500 from Lisbon to verify the discoveries
+of Da Gama.  He reached Calicut six months later, losing on the voyage
+four of his caravels and most of his company.  Among the lost was
+Bartholomew Diaz, the first discoverer of the Cape of Good Hope, who was
+on this voyage in a subordinate capacity, and whose bones were left to
+dissolve in the stormy waters that beat round the Cape whose barrier he
+was the first to pass.  The chief event of this voyage, however, was not
+the reaching of Calicut nor the drowning of Diaz (which was chiefly of
+importance to himself, poor soul!) but the discovery of Brazil, which
+Cabral made in following the southerly course too far to the west.
+He landed there, in the Bay of Porto Seguro, on May 1, 1500, and took
+formal possession of the land for the Crown of Portugal, naming it Vera
+Cruz, or the Land of the True Cross.
+
+In the assumption of Columbus and his contemporaries all these doings
+were held to detract from the glory of his own achievements, and were the
+subject of endless affidavits, depositions, quarrels, arguments, proofs
+and claims in the great lawsuit that was in after years carried on
+between the Crown of Spain and the heirs of Columbus concerning his
+titles and revenues.  We, however, may take a different view.  With the
+exception of the discoveries of the Cape of Good Hope and the coast of
+Brazil all these enterprises were directly traceable to Columbus’s own
+achievements and were inspired by his example.  The things that a man can
+do in his own person are limited by the laws of time and space; it is
+only example and influence that are infinite and illimitable, and in
+which the spirit of any achievement can find true immortality.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE THIRD VOYAGE-(continued)
+
+It may perhaps be wearisome to the reader to return to the tangled and
+depressing situation in Espanola, but it cannot be half so wearisome as
+it was for Columbus, whom we left enveloped in that dark cloud of error
+and surrender in which he sacrificed his dignity and good faith to the
+impudent demands of a mutinous servant.  To his other troubles in San
+Domingo the presence of this Roldan was now added; and the reinstated
+Alcalde was not long in making use of the victory he had gained.  He bore
+himself with intolerable arrogance and insolence, discharging one of
+Columbus’s personal bodyguard on the ground that no one should hold any
+office on the island except with his consent.  He demanded grants of land
+for himself and his followers, which Columbus held himself obliged to
+concede; and the Admiral, further to pacify him, invented a very
+disastrous system of repartimientos, under which certain chiefs were
+relieved from paying tribute on condition of furnishing feudal service to
+the settlers--a system which rapidly developed into the most cruel and
+oppressive kind of slavery.  The Admiral at this time also, in despair of
+keeping things quiet by his old methods of peace and conciliation,
+created a kind of police force which roamed about the island, exacting
+tribute and meting out summary punishment to all defaulters.  Among other
+concessions weakly made to Roldan at this time was the gift of the Crown
+estate of Esperanza, situated in the Vega Real, whither he betook himself
+and embarked on what was nothing more nor less than a despotic reign,
+entirely ignoring the regulations and prerogatives of the Admiral, and
+taking prisoners and administering punishment just as he pleased.  The
+Admiral was helpless, and thought of going back to Spain, but the
+condition of the island was such that he did not dare to leave it.
+Instead, he wrote a long letter to the Sovereigns, full of complaints
+against other people and justifications of himself, in the course of
+which he set forth those quibbling excuses for his capitulation to Roldan
+which we have already heard.  And there was a pathetic request at the end
+of the letter that his son Diego might be sent out to him.  As I have
+said, Columbus was by this time a prematurely old man, and feeling the
+clouds gathering about him, and the loneliness and friendlessness of his
+position at Espanola, he instinctively looked to the next generation for
+help, and to the presence of his own son for sympathy and comfort.
+
+
+It was at this moment (September 5, 1499) that a diversion arose in the
+rumour that four caravels had been seen off the western end of Espanola
+and duly reported to the Admiral; and this announcement was soon followed
+by the news that they were commanded by Ojeda, who was collecting
+dye-wood in the island forests.  Columbus, although he had so far as we
+know had no previous difficulties with Ojeda, had little cause now to
+credit any adventurer with kindness towards himself; and Ojeda’s secrecy
+in not reporting himself at San Domingo, and, in fact, his presence on
+the island at all without the knowledge of the Admiral, were sufficient
+evidence that he was there to serve his own ends.  Some gleam of
+Christopher’s old cleverness in handling men was--now shown by his
+instructing Roldan to sally forth and bring Ojeda to order.  It was a
+case of setting a thief to catch a thief and, as it turned out, was not
+a bad stroke.  Roldan, nothing loth, sailed round to that part of the
+coast where Ojeda’s ships were anchored, and asked to see his licence;
+which was duly shown to him and rather took the wind out of his sails.
+He heard a little gossip from Ojeda, moreover, which had its own
+significance for him.  The Queen was ill; Columbus was in disgrace;
+there was talk of superseding him.  Ojeda promised to sail round to San
+Domingo and report himself; but instead, he sailed to the east along the
+coast of Xaragua, where he got into communication with some discontented
+Spanish settlers and concocted a scheme for leading them to San Domingo
+to demand redress for their imagined grievances.  Roldan, however, who
+had come to look for Ojeda, discovered him at this point; and there
+ensued some very pretty play between the two rascals, chiefly in
+trickery and treachery, such as capturing each other’s boats and
+emissaries, laying traps for one another, and taking prisoner one
+another’s crews.  The end of it was that Ojeda left the island without
+having reported himself to Columbus, but not before he had completed his
+business--which was that of provisioning his ships and collecting
+dye-wood and slaves.
+
+And so exit Ojeda from the Columbian drama.  Of his own drama only one
+more act remained to be played; which, for the sake of our past interest
+in him, we will mention here.  Chiefly on account of his intimacy with
+Fonseca he was some years later given a governorship in the neighbourhood
+of the Gulf of Darien; Juan de la Cosa accompanying him as unofficial
+partner.  Ojeda has no sooner landed there than he is fighting the
+natives; natives too many for him this time; Ojeda forced to hide in the
+forest, where he finds the body of de la Cosa, who has come by a shocking
+death.  Ojeda afterwards tries to govern his colony, but is no good at
+that; cannot govern his own temper, poor fellow.  Quarrels with his crew,
+is put in irons, carried to Espanola, and dies there (1515) in great
+poverty and eclipse.  One of the many, evidently, who need a strong
+guiding hand, and perish without it.
+
+It really began to seem as though Roldan, having had his fling and
+secured the excessive privileges that he coveted, had decided that
+loyalty to Christopher was for the present the most profitable policy;
+but the mutinous spirit that he had cultivated in his followers for his
+own ends could not be so readily converted into this cheap loyalty.  More
+trouble was yet to come of this rebellion.  There was in the island a
+young Spanish aristocrat, Fernando de Guevara by name, one of the many
+who had come out in the hope of enjoying himself and making a fortune
+quickly, whose more than outrageously dissolute life in San Domingo had
+caused Columbus to banish him thence; and he was now living near Xaragua
+with a cousin of his, Adrian de Moxeca, who had been one of the
+ringleaders in Roldan’s conspiracy.  Within this pleasant province of
+Xaragua lived, as we have seen, Anacaona, the sister of Caonabo, the Lord
+of the House of Gold.  She herself was a beautiful woman, called by her
+subjects Bloom of the Gold; and she had a still more beautiful daughter,
+Higuamota, who appears in history, like so many other women, on account
+of her charms and what came of them.
+
+Of pretty Higuamota, who once lived like a dryad among the groves of
+Espanola and has been dead now for so long, we know nothing except that
+she was beautiful, which, although she doubtless did not think so while
+she lived, turns out to have been the most important thing about her.
+Young Guevara, coming to stay with his cousin Adrian, becomes a visitor
+at the house of Anacaona; sees the pretty daughter and falls in love with
+her.  Other people also, it appears, have been in a similar state, but
+Higuamota is not very accessible; a fact which of course adds to the
+interest of the chase, and turns dissolute Fernando’s idle preference
+into something like a passion.  Roldan, who has also had an eye upon her,
+and apparently no more than an eye, discovers that Fernando, in order to
+gratify his passion, is proposing to go the absurd length of marrying the
+young woman, and has sent for a priest for that purpose.  Roldan,
+instigated thereto by primitive forces, thinks it would be impolitic for
+a Spanish grandee to marry with a heathen; very well, then, Fernando will
+have her baptized--nothing simpler when water and a priest are handy.
+Roldan, seeing that the young man is serious, becomes peremptory, and
+orders him to leave Xaragua.  Fernando ostentatiously departs, but is
+discovered a little later actually living in the house of Anacaona, who
+apparently is sympathetic to Love’s young dream.  Once more ordered away,
+this time with anger and threats, Guevara changes his tune and implores
+Roldan to let him stay, promising that he will give up the marriage
+project and also, no doubt, the no-marriage project.  But Guevara has
+sympathisers.  The mutineers have not forgiven Roldan for deserting them
+and becoming a lawful instead of an unlawful ruler.  They are all on the
+side of Guevara, who accordingly moves to the next stage of island
+procedure, and sets on foot some kind of plot to kill Roldan and the
+Admiral.  Fortunately where there is treachery it generally works both
+ways; this plot came to the ears of the authorities; the conspirators
+were arrested and sent to San Domingo.
+
+This action came near to bringing the whole island about Columbus’s ears.
+Adrian de Moxeca was furious at what he conceived to be the treachery of
+Roldan, for Roldan was in such a pass that the barest act of duty was
+necessarily one of treachery to his friends.  Moxeca took the place of
+chief rebel that Roldan had vacated; rallied the mutineers round him, and
+was on the point of starting for Concepcion, one of the chain of forts
+across the island where Columbus was at present staying, when the Admiral
+discovered his plan.  All that was strongest and bravest in him rose up
+at this menace.  His weakness and cowardice were forgotten; and with the
+spirit of an old sea-lion he sallied forth against the mutineers.  He had
+only a dozen men on whom he could rely, but he armed them well and
+marched secretly and swiftly under cloud of night to the place where
+Moxeca and his followers were encamped in fond security, and there
+suddenly fell upon them, capturing Moxeca and the chief ringleaders.  The
+rest scattered in terror and escaped.  Moxeca was hurried off to the
+battlements of San Domingo and there, in the very midst of a longdrawn
+trembling confession to the priest in attendance, was swung off the
+ramparts and hanged.  The others, although also condemned to death, were
+kept in irons in the fortress, while Christopher and Bartholomew, roused
+at last to vigorous action, scoured the island hunting down the
+remainder, killing some who resisted, hanging others on the spot, and
+imprisoning the remainder at San Domingo.
+
+After these prompt measures peace reigned for a time in the island, and
+Columbus was perhaps surprised to see what wholesome effects could be
+produced by a little exemplary severity.  The natives, who under the
+weakness of his former rule had been discontented and troublesome, now
+settled down submissively to their yoke; the Spaniards began to work in
+earnest on their farms; and there descended upon island affairs a brief
+St. Martin’s Summer of peace before the final winter of blight and death
+set in.  The Admiral, however, was obviously in precarious health; his
+ophthalmia became worse, and the stability of his mind suffered.  He had
+dreams and visions of divine help and comfort, much needed by him, poor
+soul, in all his tribulations and adversities.  Even yet the cup was not
+full.
+
+
+We must now turn back to Spain and try to form some idea of the way in
+which the doings of Columbus were being regarded there if we are to
+understand the extraordinary calamity that was soon to befall him.  It
+must be remembered first of all that his enterprise had never really been
+popular from the first.  It was carried out entirely by the energy and
+confidence of Queen Isabella, who almost alone of those in power believed
+in it as a thing which was certain to bring ultimate glory, as well as
+riches and dominion, to Spain and the Catholic faith.  As we have seen,
+there had been a brief ebullition of popular favour when Columbus
+returned from his first voyage, but it was a popularity excited solely by
+the promises of great wealth that Columbus was continually holding forth.
+When those promises were not immediately fulfilled popular favour
+subsided; and when the adventurers who had gone out to the new islands on
+the strength of those promises had returned with shattered health and
+empty pockets there was less chance than ever of the matter being
+regarded in its proper light by the people of Spain.  Columbus had either
+found a gold mine or he had found nothing--that was the way in which the
+matter was popularly regarded.  Those who really understood the
+significance of his discoveries and appreciated their scientific
+importance did not merely stay at home in Spain and raise a clamour; they
+went out in the Admiral’s footsteps and continued the work that he had
+begun.  Even King Ferdinand, for all his cleverness, had never understood
+the real lines on which the colony should have been developed.  His eyes
+were fixed upon Europe; he saw in the discoveries of Columbus a means
+rather than an end; and looked to them simply as a source of revenue with
+the help of which he could carry on his ambitious schemes.  And when, as
+other captains made voyages confirming and extending the work of
+Columbus, he did begin to understand the significance of what had been
+done, he realised too late that the Admiral had been given powers far in
+excess of what was prudent or sensible.
+
+During all the time that Columbus and his brothers were struggling with
+the impossible situation at Espanola there was but one influence at work
+in Spain, and that was entirely destructive to the Admiral.  Every
+caravel that came from the New World brought two things.  It brought a
+crowd of discontented colonists, many of whom had grave reasons for their
+discontent; and it brought letters from the Admiral in which more and
+more promises were held out, but in which also querulous complaints
+against this and that person, and against the Spanish settlers generally,
+were set forth at wearisome length.  It is not remarkable that the people
+of Spain, even those who were well disposed towards Columbus, began to
+wonder if these two things were not cause and effect.  The settlers may
+have been a poor lot, but they were the material with which Columbus had
+to deal; he had powers enough, Heaven knew, powers of life and death; and
+the problem began to resolve itself in the minds of those at the head of
+affairs in Spain in the following terms.  Given an island, rich and
+luxuriant beyond the dreams of man; given a native population easily
+subdued; given settlers of one kind or another; and given a Viceroy with
+unlimited powers--could he or could he not govern the island?  It was a
+by no means unfair way of putting the case, and there is little justice
+in the wild abuse that has been hurled at Ferdinand and Isabella on this
+ground.  Columbus may have been the greatest genius in the world; very
+possibly they admitted it; but in the meanwhile Spain was resounding with
+the cries of the impoverished colonists who had returned from his ocean
+Paradise.  No doubt the Sovereigns ignored them as much as they possibly
+could; but when it came to ragged emaciated beggars coming in batches of
+fifty at a time and sitting in the very courts of the Alhambra,
+exhibiting bunches of grapes and saying that that was all they could
+afford to live upon since they had come back from the New World, some
+notice had to be taken of it.  Even young Diego and Ferdinand, the
+Admiral’s sons, came in for the obloquy with which his name was
+associated; the colonial vagabonds hung round the portals of the palace
+and cried out upon them as they passed so that they began to dislike
+going out.  Columbus, as we know, had plenty of enemies who had access to
+the King and Queen; and never had enemies an easier case to urge.  Money
+was continually being spent on ships and supplies; where was the return
+for it?  What about the Ophir of Solomon?  What about the Land of Spices?
+What about the pearls?  And if you want to add a touch of absurdity, what
+about the Garden of Eden and the Great Khan?
+
+To the most impartial eyes it began to appear as though Columbus were
+either an impostor or a fool.  There is no evidence that Ferdinand and
+Isabella thought that he was an impostor or that he had wilfully deceived
+them; but there is some evidence that they began to have an inkling as to
+what kind of a man he really was, and as to his unfitness for governing a
+colony.  Once more something had to be done.  The sending out of a
+commissioner had not been a great success before, but in the difficulties
+of the situation it seemed the only thing.  Still there was a good deal
+of hesitation, and it is probable that Isabella was not yet fully
+convinced of the necessity for this grave step.  This hesitation was
+brought to an end by the arrival from Espanola of the ships bearing the
+followers of Roldan, who had been sent back under the terms of Columbus’s
+feeble capitulation.  The same ships brought a great quantity of slaves,
+which the colonists were able to show had been brought by the permission
+of the Admiral; they carried native girls also, many of them pregnant,
+many with new-born babies; and these also came with the permission of the
+Admiral.  The ships further carried the Admiral’s letter complaining of
+the conspiracy of Roldan and containing the unfortunate request for a
+further licence to extend the slave trade.  These circumstances were
+probably enough to turn the scale of Isabella’s opinion against the
+Admiral’s administration.  The presence of the slaves particularly
+angered her kind womanly heart.  “What right has he to give away my
+vassals?”  she exclaimed, and ordered that they should all be sent back,
+and that in addition all the other slaves who had come home should be
+traced and sent back; although of course it was impossible to carry out
+this last order.
+
+At any rate there was no longer any hesitation about sending out a
+commissioner, and the Sovereigns chose one Francisco de Bobadilla, an
+official of the royal household, for the performance of this difficult
+mission.  As far as we can decipher him he was a very ordinary official
+personage; prejudiced, it is possible, against an administration that had
+produced such disastrous results and which offended his orderly official
+susceptibilities; otherwise to be regarded as a man exactly honest in the
+performance of what he conceived to be his duties, and entirely
+indisposed to allow sentiment or any other extraneous matter to interfere
+with such due performance.  We shall have need to remember, when we see
+him at work in Espanola, that he was not sent out to judge between
+Columbus and his Sovereigns or between Columbus and the world, but to
+investigate the condition of the colony and to take what action he
+thought necessary.  The commission which he bore to the Admiral was in
+the following terms:
+
+     “The King and the Queen: Don Christopher Columbus, our Admiral of
+     the Ocean-sea.  We have directed Francisco de Bobadilla, the bearer
+     of this, to speak to you for us of certain things which he will
+     mention: we request you to give him faith and credence and to obey
+     him.  From Madrid, May 26, ‘99.  I THE KING.  I THE QUEEN.  By their
+     command.  Miguel Perez de Almazan.”
+
+In addition Bobadilla bore with him papers and authorities giving him
+complete control and possession of all the forts, arms, and royal
+property in the island, in case it should be necessary for him to use
+them; and he also had a number of blank warrants which were signed, but
+the substance of which was not filled in.  This may seem very dreadful to
+us, with our friendship for the poor Admiral; but considering the grave
+state of affairs as represented to the King and Queen, who had their
+duties to their colonial subjects as well as to Columbus, there was
+nothing excessive in it.  If they were to send out a commissioner at all,
+and if they were satisfied, as presumably they were, that the man they
+had chosen was trustworthy, it was only right to make his authority
+absolute.  Thus equipped Francisco de Bobadilla sailed from Spain in July
+1500.
+
+
+
+
+TOWARDS THE SUNSET
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+DEGRADATION
+
+The first things seen by Francisco de Bobadilla when he entered the
+harbour of San Domingo on the morning of the 23rd of August 1500 were the
+bodies of several Spaniards, hanging from a gibbet near the water-side
+--a grim confirmation of what he had heard about the troubled state of the
+island.  While he was waiting for the tide so that he might enter the
+harbour a boat put off from shore to ascertain who was on board the
+caravels; and it was thus informally that Bobadilla first announced that
+he had come to examine into the state of the island.  Columbus was not at
+San Domingo, but was occupied in settling the affairs of the Vega Real;
+Bartholomew also was absent, stamping out the last smouldering embers of
+rebellion in Xaragua; and only James was in command to deal with this
+awkward situation.
+
+Bobadilla did not go ashore the first day, but remained on board his ship
+receiving the visits of various discontented colonists who, getting early
+wind of the purpose of his visit, lost no time in currying favour with
+him, Probably he heard enough that first day to have damned the
+administration of a dozen islands; but also we must allow him some
+interest in the wonderful and strange sights that he was seeing; for
+Espanola, which has perhaps grown wearisome to us, was new to him.  He
+had brought with him an armed body-guard of twenty-five men, and in the
+other caravel were the returned slaves, babies and all, under the charge
+of six friars.  On the day following his arrival Bobadilla landed and
+heard mass in state, afterwards reading out his commission to the
+assembled people.  Evidently he had received a shocking impression of the
+state of affairs in the island; that is the only explanation of the
+action suddenly taken by him, for his first public act was to demand from
+James the release of all the prisoners in the fortress, in order that
+they and their accusers should appear before him.
+
+James is in a difficulty; and, mule-like, since he does not know which
+way to turn, stands stock still.  He can do nothing, he says, without the
+Admiral’s consent.  The next day Bobadilla, again hearing mass in state,
+causes further documents to be read showing that a still greater degree
+of power had been entrusted to his hands.  Mule-like, James still stands
+stock still; the greatest power on earth known to him is his eldest
+brother, and he will not, positively dare not, be moved by anything less
+than that.  He refuses to give up the prisoners on any grounds
+whatsoever, and Bobadilla has to take the fortress by assault--an easy
+enough matter since the resistance is but formal.
+
+The next act of Bobadilla’s is not quite so easy to understand.  He
+quartered himself in Columbus’s house; that perhaps was reasonable enough
+since there may not have been another house in the settlement fit to
+receive him; but he also, we are told, took possession of all his papers,
+public and private, and also seized the Admiral’s store of money and
+began to pay his debts with it for him, greatly to the satisfaction of
+San Domingo.  There is an element of the comic in this interpretation of
+a commissioner’s powers; and it seemed as though he meant to wind up the
+whole Columbus business, lock, stock, and barrel.  It would not be in
+accordance with our modern ideas of honour that a man’s private papers
+should be seized unless he were suspected of treachery or some criminal
+act; but apparently Bobadilla regarded it as necessary.  We must remember
+that although he had only heard one side of the case it was evidently so
+positive, and the fruits of misgovernment were there so visibly before
+his eyes, that no amount of evidence in favour of Columbus would make him
+change his mind as to his fitness to govern.  Poor James, witnessing
+these things and unable to do anything to prevent them, finds himself
+suddenly relieved from the tension of the situation.  Since inaction is
+his note, he shall be indulged in it; and he is clapped in irons and cast
+into prison.  James can hardly believe the evidence of his senses.  He
+has been studying theology lately, it appears, with a view to entering
+the Church and perhaps being some day made Bishop of Espanola, but this
+new turn of affairs looks as though there were to be an end of all
+careers for him, military and ecclesiastical alike.
+
+Christopher at Fort Concepcion had early news of the arrival of
+Bobadilla, but in the hazy state of his mind he did not regard it as an
+event of sufficient importance to make his immediate presence at San
+Domingo advisable.  The name of Bobadilla conveyed nothing to him; and
+when he heard that he had come to investigate, he thought that he came
+to set right some disputed questions between the Admiral and other
+navigators as to the right of visiting Espanola and the Paria coast.
+As the days went on, however, he heard more disquieting rumours; grew at
+last uneasy, and moved to a fort nearer San Domingo in case it should be
+necessary for him to go there.  An officer met him on the road bearing
+the proclamations issued by Bobadilla, but not the message from the
+Sovereigns requiring the Admiral’s obedience to the commissioner.
+Columbus wrote to the commissioner a curious letter, which is not
+preserved, in which he sought to gain time; excusing himself from
+responsibility for the condition of the island, and assuring Bobadilla
+that, as he intended to return to Spain almost immediately, he
+(Bobadilla) would have ample opportunity for exercising his command in
+his absence.  He also wrote to the Franciscan friars who had accompanied
+Bobadilla asking them to use their influence--the Admiral having some
+vague connection with the Franciscan order since his days at La Rabida.
+
+No reply came to any of these letters, and Columbus sent word that he
+still regarded his authority as paramount in the island.  For reply to
+this he received the Sovereigns’ message to him which we have seen,
+commanding him to put himself under the direction of Bobadilla.  There
+was no mistaking this; there was the order in plain words; and with I
+know not what sinkings of heart Columbus at last set out for San Domingo.
+Bobadilla had expected resistance, but the Admiral, whatever his faults,
+knew how to behave with, dignity in a humiliating position; and he came
+into the city unattended on August 23, 1500.  On the outskirts of the
+town he was met by Bobadilla’s guards, arrested, put in chains, and
+lodged in the fortress, the tower of which exists to this day.  He seemed
+to himself to be the victim of a particularly petty and galling kind of
+treachery, for it was his own cook, a man called Espinoza, who riveted
+his gyves upon him.
+
+There remained Bartholomew to be dealt with, and he, being at large and
+in command of the army, might not have proved such an easy conquest, but
+that Christopher, at Bobadilla’s request, wrote and advised him to submit
+to arrest without any resistance.  Whether Bartholomew acquiesced or not
+is uncertain; what is certain is that he also was captured and placed in
+irons, and imprisoned on one of the caravels.  James in one caravel,
+Bartholomew in another, and Christopher in the fortress, and all in
+chains--this is what it has come to with the three sons of old Domenico.
+
+The trial was now begun, if trial that can be called which takes place in
+the absence of the culprit or his representative.  It was rather the
+hearing of charges against Christopher and his brothers; and we may be
+sure that every discontented feeling in the island found voice and was
+formulated into some incriminating charge.  Columbus was accused of
+oppressing the Spanish settlers by making them work at harsh and
+unnecessary labour; of cutting down their allowance of food, and
+restricting their liberty; of punishing them cruelly and unduly; of
+waging wars unjustly with the natives; of interfering with the conversion
+of the natives by hastily collecting them and sending them home as
+slaves; of having secreted treasures which should have been delivered to
+the Sovereigns--this last charge, like some of the others, true.  He had
+an accumulation of pearls of which he had given no account to Fonseca,
+and the possession of which he excused by the queer statement that he was
+waiting to announce it until he could match it with an equal amount of
+gold!  He was accused of hating the Spaniards, who were represented as
+having risen in the late rebellion in order to protect the natives and
+avenge their own wrongs--, and generally of having abused his office in
+order to enrich his own family and gratify his own feelings.  Bobadilla
+appeared to believe all these charges; or perhaps he recognised their
+nature, and yet saw that there was a sufficient degree of truth in them
+to disqualify the Admiral in his position as Viceroy.  In all these
+affairs his right-hand man was Roldan, whose loyalty to Columbus, as we
+foresaw, had been short-lived.  Roldan collects evidence; Roldan knows
+where he can lay his hands on this witness; Roldan produces this and that
+proof; Roldan is here, there, and everywhere--never had Bobadilla found
+such a useful, obliging man as Roldan.  With his help Bobadilla soon
+collected a sufficient weight of evidence to justify in his own mind his
+sending Columbus home to Spain, and remaining himself in command of the
+island.
+
+The caravels having been made ready, and all the evidence drawn up and
+documented, it only remained to embark the prisoners and despatch them to
+Spain.  Columbus, sitting in his dungeon, suffering from gout and
+ophthalmic as well as from misery and humiliation, had heard no news;
+but he had heard the shouting of the people in the streets, the beating
+of drums and blowing of horns, and his own name and that of his brothers
+uttered in derision; and he made sure that he was going to be executed.
+Alonso de Villegio, a nephew of Bishop Fonseca’s, had been appointed to
+take charge of the ships returning to Spain; and when he came into the
+prison the Admiral thought his last hour had come.
+
+“Villegio,” he asked sadly, “where are you taking me?”
+
+“I am taking you to the ship, your Excellency, to embark,” replied the
+other.
+
+“To embark?” repeated the Admiral incredulously.  “Villegio! are you
+speaking the truth?”
+
+“By the life of your Excellency what I say is true,” was the reply, and
+the news came with a wave of relief to the panic-stricken heart of the
+Admiral.
+
+In the middle of October the caravels sailed from San Domingo, and the
+last sounds heard by Columbus from the land of his discovery were the
+hoots and jeers and curses hurled after him by the treacherous,
+triumphant rabble on the shore.  Villegio treated him and his brothers
+with as much kindness as possible, and offered, when they had got well
+clear of Espanola, to take off the Admiral’s chains.  But Columbus, with
+a fine counterstroke of picturesque dignity, refused to have them
+removed.  Already, perhaps, he had realised that his subjection to this
+cruel and quite unnecessary indignity would be one of the strongest
+things in his favour when he got to Spain, and he decided to suffer as
+much of it as he could.  “My Sovereigns commanded me to submit to what
+Bobadilla should order.  By his authority I wear these chains, and I
+shall continue to wear them until they are removed by order of the
+Sovereigns; and I will keep them afterwards as reminders of the reward I
+have received for my services.”  Thus the Admiral, beginning to pick up
+his spirits again, and to feel the better for the sea air.
+
+The voyage home was a favourable one and in the course of it Columbus
+wrote the following letter to a friend of his at Court, Dona Juana de la
+Torre, who had been nurse to Prince Juan and was known by him to be a
+favourite of the Queen:
+
+     “MOST VIRTUOUS LADY,--Though my complaint of the world is new, its
+     habit of ill-using is very ancient.  I have had a thousand struggles
+     with it, and have thus far withstood them all, but now neither arms
+     nor counsels avail me, and it cruelly keeps me under water.  Hope in
+     the Creator of all men sustains me: His help was always very ready;
+     on another occasion, and not long ago, when I was still more
+     overwhelmed, He raised me with His right arm, saying, ‘O man of
+     little faith, arise: it is I; be not afraid.’
+
+     “I came with so much cordial affection to serve these Princes, and
+     have served them with such service, as has never been heard of or
+     seen.
+
+     “Of the new heaven and earth which our Lord made, when Saint John
+     was writing the Apocalypse, after what was spoken by the mouth of
+     Isaiah, He made me the messenger, and showed me where it lay.  In
+     all men there was disbelief, but to the Queen, my Lady, He gave the
+     spirit of understanding, and great courage, and made her heiress of
+     all, as a dear and much loved daughter.  I went to take possession
+     of all this in her royal name.  They sought to make amends to her
+     for the ignorance they had all shown by passing over their little
+     knowledge and talking of obstacles and expenses.  Her Highness, on
+     the other hand, approved of it, and supported it as far as she was
+     able.
+
+     “Seven years passed in discussion and nine in execution.  During
+     this time very remarkable and noteworthy things occurred whereof no
+     idea at all had been formed.  I have arrived at, and am in, such a
+     condition that there is no person so vile but thinks he may insult
+     me: he shall be reckoned in the world as valour itself who is
+     courageous enough not to consent to it.
+
+     “If I were to steal the Indies or the land which lies towards them,
+     of which I am now speaking, from the altar of Saint Peter, and give
+     them to the Moors, they could not show greater enmity towards me in
+     Spain.  Who would believe such a thing where there was always so
+     much magnanimity?
+
+     “I should have much desired to free myself from this affair had it
+     been honourable towards my Queen to do so.  The support of our Lord
+     and of her Highness made me persevere: and to alleviate in some
+     measure the sorrows which death had caused her, I undertook a fresh
+     voyage to the new heaven and earth which up to that time had
+     remained hidden; and if it is not held there in esteem like the
+     other voyages to the Indies, that is no wonder, because it came to
+     be looked upon as my work.
+
+     “The Holy Spirit inflamed Saint Peter and twelve others with him,
+     and they all contended here below, and their toils and hardships
+     were many, but last of all they gained the victory.
+
+     “This voyage to Paria I thought would somewhat appease them on
+     account of the pearls, and of the discovery of gold in Espanola.
+     I ordered the pearls to be collected and fished for by people with
+     whom an arrangement was made that I should return for them, and, as
+     I understood, they were to be measured by the bushel.  If I did not
+     write about this to their Highnesses, it was because I wished to
+     have first of all done the same thing with the gold.
+
+     “The result to me in this has been the same as in many other things;
+     I should not have lost them nor my honour, if I had sought my own
+     advantage, and had allowed Espanola to be ruined, or if my
+     privileges and contracts had been observed.  And I say just the same
+     about the gold which I had then collected, and [for] which with such
+     great afflictions and toils I have, by divine power, almost
+     perfected [the arrangements].
+
+     “When I went from Paria I found almost half the people from Espanola
+     in revolt, and they have waged war against me until now, as against
+     a Moor; and the Indians on the other side grievously [harassed me].
+     At this time Hojeda arrived and tried to put the finishing stroke:
+     he said that their Highnesses had sent him with promises of gifts,
+     franchises and pay: he gathered together a great band, for in the
+     whole of Espanola there are very few save vagabonds, and not one
+     with wife and children.  This Hojeda gave me great trouble; he was
+     obliged to depart, and left word that he would soon return with more
+     ships and people, and that he had left the Royal person of the
+     Queen, our Lady, at the point of death.  Then Vincente Yanez arrived
+     with four caravels; there was disturbance and mistrust but no
+     mischief: the Indians talked of many others at the Cannibals
+     [Caribbee Islands] and in Paria; and afterwards spread the news of
+     six other caravels, which were brought by a brother of the Alcalde,
+     but it was with malicious intent.  This occurred at the very last,
+     when the hope that their Highnesses would ever send any ships to the
+     Indies was almost abandoned, nor did we expect them; and it was
+     commonly reported that her Highness was dead.
+
+     “A certain Adrian about this time endeavoured to rise in rebellion
+     again, as he had done previously, but our Lord did not permit his
+     evil purpose to succeed.  I had purposed in myself never to touch a
+     hair of anybody’s head, but I lament to say that with this man,
+     owing to his ingratitude, it was not possible to keep that resolve
+     as I had intended: I should not have done less to my brother, if he
+     had sought to kill me, and steal the dominion which my King and
+     Queen had given me in trust.
+
+     “This Adrian, as it appears, had sent Don Ferdinand to Xaragua to
+     collect some of his followers, and there a dispute arose with the
+     Alcalde from which a deadly contest ensued, and he [Adrian] did not
+     effect his purpose.  The Alcalde seized him and a part of his band,
+     and the fact was that he would have executed them if I had not
+     prevented it; they were kept prisoners awaiting a caravel in which
+     they might depart.  The news of Hojeda which I told them made them
+     lose the hope that he would now come again.
+
+     “For six months I had been prepared to return to their Highnesses
+     with the good news of the gold, and to escape from governing a
+     dissolute people Who fear neither God nor their King and Queen,
+     being full of vices and wickedness.
+
+     “I could have paid the people in full with six hundred thousand, and
+     for this purpose I had four millions of tenths and somewhat more,
+     besides the third of the gold.
+
+     “Before my departure I many times begged their Highnesses to send
+     there, at my expense, some one to take charge of the administration
+     of justice; and after finding the Alcalde in arms I renewed my
+     supplications to have either some troops or at least some servant of
+     theirs with letters patent; for my reputation is such that even if I
+     build churches and hospitals, they will always be called dens of
+     thieves.
+
+     “They did indeed make provision at last, but it was the very
+     contrary of what the matter demanded: it may be successful, since it
+     was according to their good pleasure.
+
+     “I was there for two years without being able to gain a decree of
+     favour for myself or for those who went there, yet this man brought
+     a coffer full: whether they will all redound to their [Highnesses]
+     service, God knows.  Indeed, to begin with, there are exemptions for
+     twenty years, which is a man’s lifetime; and gold is collected to
+     such an extent that there was one person who became worth five marks
+     in four hours; whereof I will speak more fully later on.
+
+     “If it would please their Highnesses to remove the grounds of a
+     common saying of those who know my labours, that the calumny of the
+     people has done me more harm than much service and the maintenance
+     of their [Highnesses] property and dominion has done me good, it
+     would be a charity, and I should be re-established in my honour, and
+     it would be talked about all over the world: for the undertaking is
+     of such a nature that it must daily become more famous and in higher
+     esteem.
+
+     “When the Commander Bobadilla came to Santo Domingo, I was at La
+     Vega, and the Adelantado at Xaragua, where that Adrian had made a
+     stand, but then all was quiet, and the land rich and all men at
+     peace.  On the second day after his arrival, he created himself
+     Governor, and appointed officers and made executions, and proclaimed
+     immunities of gold and tenths and in general of everything else for
+     twenty years, which is a man’s lifetime, and that he came to pay
+     everybody in full up to that day, even though they had not rendered
+     service; and he publicly gave notice that, as for me, he had charge
+     to send me in irons, and my brothers likewise, as he has done, and
+     that I should nevermore return thither, nor any other of my family:
+     alleging a thousand disgraceful and discourteous things about me.
+     All this took place on the second day after his arrival, as I have
+     said, and while I was absent at a distance, without my knowing
+     either of him or of his arrival.
+
+     “Some letters of their Highnesses signed in blank, of which he
+     brought a number, he filled up and sent to the Alcalde and to his
+     company with favours and commendations: to me he never sent either
+     letter or messenger, nor has he done so to this day.  Imagine what
+     any one holding my office would think when one who endeavoured to
+     rob their Highnesses, and who has done so much evil and mischief, is
+     honoured and favoured, while he who maintained it at such risks is
+     degraded.
+
+     “When I heard this I thought that this affair would be like that of
+     Hojeda or one of the others, but I restrained myself when I learnt
+     for certain from the friars that their Highnesses had sent him.  I
+     wrote to him that his arrival was welcome, and that I was prepared
+     to go to the Court and had sold all I possessed by auction; and that
+     with respect to the immunities he should not be hasty, for both that
+     matter and the government I would hand over to him immediately as
+     smooth as my palm.  And I wrote to the same effect to the friars,
+     but neither he nor they gave me any answer.  On the contrary, he put
+     himself in a warlike attitude, and compelled all who went there to
+     take an oath to him as Governor; and they told me that it was for
+     twenty years.
+
+     “Directly I knew of those immunities, I thought that I would repair
+     such a great error and that he would be pleased, for he gave them
+     without the need or occasion necessary in so vast a matter: and he
+     gave to vagabond people what would have been excessive for a man who
+     had brought wife and children.  So I announced by word and letters
+     that he could not use his patents because mine were those in force;
+     and I showed them the immunities which John Aguado brought.
+
+     “All this was done by me in order to gain time, so that their
+     Highnesses might be informed of the condition of the country, and
+     that they might have an opportunity of issuing fresh commands as to
+     what would best promote their service in that respect.
+
+     “It is useless to publish such immunities in the Indies: to the
+     settlers who have taken up residence it is a pure gain, for the best
+     lands are given to them, and at a low valuation they will be worth
+     two-hundred thousand at the end of the four years when the period of
+     residence is ended, without their digging a spadeful in them.  I
+     would not speak thus if the settlers were married, but there are not
+     six among them all who are not on the look-out to gather what they
+     can and depart speedily.  It would be a good thing if they should go
+     from Castile, and also if it were known who and what they are, and
+     if the country could be settled with honest people.
+
+     “I had agreed with those settlers that they should pay the third of
+     the gold, and the tenths, and this at their own request; and they
+     received it as a great favour from their Highnesses.  I reproved
+     them when I heard that they ceased to do this, and hoped that the
+     Commander would do likewise, and he did the contrary.
+
+     “He incensed them against me by saying that I wanted to deprive them
+     of what their Highnesses had given them; and he endeavoured to set
+     them at variance with me, and did so; and he induced them to write
+     to their Highnesses that they should never again send me back to the
+     government, and I likewise make the same supplication to them for
+     myself and for my whole family, as long as there are not different
+     inhabitants.  And he together with them ordered inquisitions
+     concerning me for wickednesses the like whereof were never known in
+     hell.  Our Lord, who rescued Daniel and the three children, is
+     present with the same wisdom and power as He had then, and with the
+     same means, if it should please Him and be in accordance with His
+     will.
+
+     “I should know how to remedy all this, and the rest of what has been
+     said and has taken place since I have been in the Indies, if my
+     disposition would allow me to seek my own advantage, and if it
+     seemed honourable to me to do so, but the maintenance of justice and
+     the extension of the dominion of her Highness has hitherto kept me
+     down.  Now that so much gold is found, a dispute arises as to which
+     brings more profit, whether to go about robbing or to go to the
+     mines.  A hundred castellanos are as easily obtained for a woman as
+     for a farm, and it is very general, and there are plenty of dealers
+     who go about looking for girls: those from nine to ten are now in
+     demand, and for all ages a good price must be paid.
+
+     “I assert that the violence of the calumny of turbulent persons has
+     injured me more than my services have profited me; which is a bad
+     example for the present and for the future.  I take my oath that a
+     number of men have gone to the Indies who did not deserve water in
+     the sight of God and of the world; and now they are returning
+     thither, and leave is granted them.
+
+     “I assert that when I declared that the Commander could not grant
+     immunities, I did what he desired, although I told him that it was
+     to cause delay until their Highnesses should, receive information
+     from the country, and should command anew what might be for their
+     service.
+
+     “He excited their enmity against me, and he seems, from what took
+     place and from his behaviour, to have come as my enemy and as a very
+     vehement one; or else the report is true that he has spent much to
+     obtain this employment.  I do not know more about it than what I
+     hear.  I never heard of an inquisitor gathering rebels together and
+     accepting them, and others devoid of credit and unworthy of it, as
+     witnesses against their Governor.
+
+     “If their Highnesses were to make a general inquisition there, I
+     assure you that they would look upon it as a great wonder that the
+     island does not founder.
+
+     “I think your Ladyship will remember that when, after losing my
+     sails, I was driven into Lisbon by a tempest, I was falsely accused
+     of having gone there to the King in order to give him the Indies.
+     Their Highnesses afterwards learned the contrary, and that it was
+     entirely malicious.
+
+     “Although I may know but little, I do not think any one considers me
+     so stupid as not to know that even if the Indies were mine I could
+     not uphold myself without the help of some Prince.
+
+     “If this be so, where could I find better support and security than
+     in the King and Queen, our Lords, who have raised me from nothing to
+     such great honour, and are the most exalted Princes of the world on
+     sea and on land, and who consider that I have rendered them service,
+     and who preserve to me my privileges and rewards: and if any one
+     infringes them, their Highnesses increase them still more, as was
+     seen in the case of John Aguado; and they order great honour to be
+     conferred upon me, and, as I have already said, their Highnesses
+     have received service from me, and keep my sons in their household;
+     all which could by no means happen with another prince, for where
+     there is no affection, everything else fails.
+
+     “I have now spoken thus in reply to a malicious slander, but against
+     my will, as it is a thing which should not recur to memory even in
+     dreams; for the Commander Bobadilla maliciously seeks in this way to
+     set his own conduct and actions in a brighter light; but I shall
+     easily show him that his small knowledge and great cowardice,
+     together with his inordinate cupidity, have caused him to fail
+     therein.
+
+     “I have already said that I wrote to him and to the friars, and
+     immediately set out, as I told him, almost alone, because all the
+     people were with the Adelantado, and likewise in order to prevent
+     suspicion on his part.  When he heard this, he seized Don Diego and
+     sent him on board a caravel loaded with irons, and did the same to
+     me upon my arrival, and afterwards to the Adelantado when he came;
+     nor did I speak to him any more, nor to this day has he allowed any
+     one to speak to me; and I take my oath that I cannot understand why
+     I am made a prisoner.
+
+     “He made it his first business to seize the gold, which he did
+     without measuring or weighing it and in my absence; he said that he
+     wanted it to pay the people, and according to what I hear he
+     assigned the chief part to himself and sent fresh exchangers for the
+     exchanges.  Of this gold I had put aside certain specimens, very big
+     lumps, like the eggs of geese, hens, and pullets, and of many other
+     shapes, which some persons had collected in a short space of time,
+     in order that their Highnesses might be gladdened, and might
+     comprehend the business upon seeing a quantity of large stones full
+     of gold.  This collection was the first to be given away, with
+     malicious intent, so that their Highnesses should not hold the
+     matter in any account until he has feathered his nest, which he is
+     in great haste to do.  Gold which is for melting diminishes at the
+     fire: some chains which would weigh about twenty marks have never
+     been seen again.
+
+     “I have been more distressed about this matter of the gold than even
+     about the pearls, because I have not brought it to her Highness.
+
+     “The Commander at once set to work upon anything which he thought
+     would injure me.  I have already said that with six hundred thousand
+     I could pay every one without defrauding anybody, and that I had
+     more than four millions of tenths and constabulary [dues] without
+     touching the gold.  He made some free gifts which are ridiculous,
+     though I believe that he began by assigning the chief part to
+     himself.  Their Highnesses will find it out when they order an
+     account to be obtained from him, especially if I should be present
+     thereat.  He does nothing but reiterate that a large sum is owing,
+     and it is what I have said, and even less.  I have been much
+     distressed that there should be sent concerning me an inquisitor who
+     is aware that if the inquisition which he returns is very grave he
+     will remain in possession of the government.
+
+     “Would that it had pleased our Lord that their Highnesses had sent
+     him or some one else two years ago, for I know that I should now be
+     free from scandal and infamy, and that my honour would not be taken
+     from me, nor should I lose it.  God is just, and will make known the
+     why and the wherefore.
+
+     “They judge me over there as they would a governor who had gone to
+     Sicily, or to a city or town placed under regular government, and
+     where the laws can be observed in their entirety without fear of
+     ruining everything; and I am greatly injured thereby.
+
+     “I ought to be judged as a captain who went from Spain to the Indies
+     to conquer a numerous and warlike people, whose customs and religion
+     are very contrary to ours; who live in rocks and mountains, without
+     fixed settlements, and not like ourselves: and where, by the Divine
+     Will, I have placed under the dominion of the King and Queen, our
+     Sovereigns, a second world, through which Spain, which was reckoned
+     a poor country, has become the richest.
+
+     “I ought to be judged as a captain who for such a long time up to
+     this day has borne arms without laying them aside for an hour, and
+     by gentlemen adventurers and by custom, and not by letters, unless
+     they were from Greeks or Romans or others of modern times of whom
+     there are so many and such noble examples in Spain; or otherwise I
+     receive great injury, because in the Indies there is neither town
+     nor settlement.
+
+     “The gate to the gold and pearls is now open, and plenty of
+     everything--precious stones, spices and a thousand other things--may
+     be surely expected, and never could a worse misfortune befall me:
+     for by the name of our Lord the first voyage would yield them just
+     as much as would the traffic of Arabia Felix as far as Mecca, as I
+     wrote to their Highnesses by Antonio de Tomes in my reply respecting
+     the repartition of the sea and land with the Portuguese; and
+     afterwards it would equal that of Calicut, as I told them and put in
+     writing at the monastery of the Mejorada.
+
+     “The news of the gold that I said I would give is, that on the day
+     of the Nativity, while I was much tormented, being harassed by
+     wicked Christians and by Indians, and when I was on the point of
+     giving up everything, and if possible escaping from life, our Lord
+     miraculously comforted me and said, ‘Fear not violence, I will
+     provide for all things: the seven years of the term of the gold have
+     not elapsed, and in that and in everything else I will afford thee a
+     remedy.’
+
+     “On that day I learned that there were eighty leagues of land with
+     mines at every point thereof.  The opinion now is that it is all
+     one.  Some have collected a hundred and twenty castellanos in one
+     day, and others ninety, and even the number of two hundred and fifty
+     has been reached.  From fifty to seventy, and in many more cases
+     from fifteen to fifty, is considered a good day’s work, and many
+     carry it on.  The usual quantity is from six to twelve, and any one
+     obtaining less than this is not satisfied. It seems to me that these
+     mines are like others, and do not yield equally every day.  The
+     mines are new, and so are the workers: it is the opinion of
+     everybody that even if all Castile were to go there, every
+     individual, however inexpert he might be, would not obtain less than
+     one or two castellanos daily, and now it is only commencing.  It is
+     true that they keep Indians, but the business is in the hands of the
+     Christians.  Behold what discernment Bobadilla had, when he gave up
+     everything for nothing, and four millions of tenths, without any
+     reason or even being requested, and without first notifying it to
+     their Highnesses.  And this is not the only loss.
+
+     “I know that my errors have not been committed with the intention of
+     doing evil, and I believe that their Highnesses regard the matter
+     just as I state it: and I know and see that they deal mercifully
+     even with those who maliciously act to their disservice.  I believe
+     and consider it very certain that their clemency will be both
+     greater and more abundant towards me, for I fell therein through
+     ignorance and the force of circumstances, as they will know fully
+     hereafter; and I indeed am their creature, and they will look upon
+     my services, and will acknowledge day by day that they are much
+     profited.  They will place everything in the balance, even as Holy
+     Scripture tells us good and evil will be at the day of judgment.
+
+     “If, however, they command that another person do judge me, which I
+     cannot believe, and that it be by inquisition in the Indies, I very
+     humbly beseech them to send thither two conscientious and honourable
+     persons at my expense, who I believe will easily, now that gold is
+     discovered, find five marks in four hours.  In either case it is
+     needful for them to provide for this matter.
+
+     “The Commander on his arrival at San Domingo took up his abode in my
+     house, and just as he found it so he appropriated everything to
+     himself.  Well and good; perhaps he was in want of it.  A pirate
+     never acted thus towards a merchant.  About my papers I have a
+     greater grievance, for he has so completely deprived me of them that
+     I have never been able to obtain a single one from him; and those
+     that would have been most useful in my exculpation are precisely
+     those which he has kept most concealed.  Behold the just and honest
+     inquisitor!  Whatever he may have done, they tell me that there has
+     been an end to justice, except in an arbitrary form.  God, our Lord,
+     is present with His strength and wisdom, as of old, and always
+     punishes in the end, especially ingratitude and injuries.”
+
+We must keep in mind the circumstances in which this letter was written
+if we are to judge it and the writer wisely.  It is a sad example of
+querulous complaint, in which everything but the writer’s personal point
+of view is ignored.  No one indeed is more terrible in this world than
+the Man with a Grievance.  How rarely will human nature in such
+circumstances retire into the stronghold of silence!  Columbus is asking
+for pity; but as we read his letter we incline to pity him on grounds
+quite different from those which he represented.  He complains that the
+people he was sent to govern have waged war against him as against a
+Moor; he complains of Ojeda and of Vincenti Yanez Pinzon; of Adrian de
+Moxeca, and of every other person whom it was his business to govern and
+hold in restraint.  He complains of the colonists--the very people, some
+of them, whom he himself took and impressed from the gaols and purlieus
+of Cadiz; and then he mingles pious talk about Saint Peter and Daniel in
+the den of lions with notes on the current price of little girls and big
+lumps of gold like the eggs of geese, hens, and pullets.  He complains
+that he is judged as a man would be judged who had been sent out to
+govern a ready-made colony, and represents instead that he went out to
+conquer a numerous and warlike people “whose custom and religion are very
+contrary to ours, and who lived in rocks and mountains”; forgetting that
+when it suited him for different purposes he described the natives as so
+peaceable and unwarlike that a thousand of them would not stand against
+one Christian, and that in any case he was sent out to create a
+constitution and not merely to administer one.  Very sore indeed is
+Christopher as he reveals himself in this letter, appealing now to his
+correspondent, now to the King and Queen, now to that God who is always
+on the side of the complainant.  “God our Lord is present with His
+strength and wisdom, as of old, and always punishes in the end,
+especially ingratitude and injuries.”  Not boastfulness and weakness, let
+us hope, or our poor Admiral will come off badly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+CRISIS IN THE ADMIRAL’S LIFE
+
+Columbus was not far wrong in his estimate of the effect likely to be
+produced by his manacles, and when the ships of Villegio arrived at Cadiz
+in October, the spectacle of an Admiral in chains produced a degree of
+commiseration which must have exceeded his highest hopes.  He was now in
+his fiftieth year and of an extremely venerable appearance, his kindling
+eye looking forth from under brows of white, his hair and beard
+snow-white, his face lined and spiritualised with suffering and sorrow.
+It must be remembered that before the Spanish people he had always
+appeared in more or less state.  They had not that intimacy with him, an
+intimacy which perhaps brought contempt, which the people in Espanola
+enjoyed; and in Spain, therefore, the contrast between his former
+grandeur and this condition of shame and degradation was the more
+striking.  It was a fact that the people of Spain could not neglect. It
+touched their sense of the dramatic and picturesque, touched their
+hearts also perhaps--hearts quick to burn, quick to forget.  They had
+forgotten him before, now they burned with indignation at the picture of
+this venerable and much-suffering man arriving in disgrace.
+
+His letter to Dofia Juana, hastily despatched by him, probably through
+the office of some friendly soul on board, immediately on his arrival at
+Cadiz, was the first news from the ship received by the King and Queen,
+and naturally it caused them a shock of surprise.  It was followed by the
+despatches from Bobadilla and by a letter from the Alcalde of Cadiz
+announcing that Columbus and his brothers were in his custody awaiting
+the royal orders.  Perhaps Ferdinand and Isabella had already repented
+their drastic action and had entertained some misgivings as to its
+results; but it is more probable that they had put it out of their heads
+altogether, and that their hasty action now was prompted as much by the
+shock of being recalled to a consciousness of the troubled state of
+affairs in the New World as by any real regret for what they had done.
+Moreover they had sent out Bobadilla to quiet things down; and the first
+result of it was that Spain was ringing with the scandal of the Admiral’s
+treatment.  In that Spanish world, unsteadfast and unstable, when one end
+of the see-saw was up the other must be down; and it was Columbus who now
+found himself high up in the heavens of favour, and Bobadilla who was
+seated in the dust.  Equipoise any kind was apparently a thing
+impossible; if one man was right the other man must be wrong; no excuses
+for Bobadilla; every excuse for the Admiral.
+
+The first official act, therefore, was an order for the immediate release
+of the Admiral and his brothers, followed by an invitation for him to
+proceed without delay to the Court at Granada, and an order for the
+immediate payment to him of the sum of 2000 ducats [perhaps $250,000 in
+the year 2000  D.W.] this last no ungenerous gift to a Viceroy whose
+pearl accounts were in something less than order.  Perhaps Columbus had
+cherished the idea of appearing dramatically before the very Court in his
+rags and chains; but the cordiality of their letter as well as the gift
+of money made this impossible.  Instead, not being a man to do things by
+halves, he equipped himself in his richest and most splendid garments,
+got together the requisite number of squires and pages, and duly
+presented himself at Granada in his full dignity.  The meeting was an
+affecting one, touched with a humanity which has survived the intervening
+centuries, as a touch of true humanity will when details of mere parade
+and etiquette have long perished.  Perhaps the Admiral, inspired with a
+deep sense of his wrongs, meant to preserve a very stiff and cold
+demeanour at the beginning of this interview; but when he looked into the
+kind eyes of Isabella and saw them suffused with tears at the thought of
+his sorrows all his dignity broke down; the tears came to his own eyes,
+and he wept there naturally like a child.  Ferdinand looking on kind but
+uncomfortable; Isabella unaffectedly touched and weeping; the Admiral, in
+spite of his scarlet cloak and golden collar and jewelled sword, in spite
+of equerries, squires, pages and attendants, sobbing on his knees like a
+child or an old man-these were the scenes and kindly emotions of this
+historic moment.
+
+
+The tears were staunched by kindly royal words and handkerchiefs supplied
+by attendant pages; sobbings breaking out again, but on the whole soon
+quieted; King and Queen raising the gouty Christopher from his knees,
+filling the air with kind words of sympathy, praise, and encouragement;
+the lonely worn heart, somewhat arid of late, and parched from want of
+human sympathy, much refreshed by this dew of kindness.  The Admiral was
+soon himself again, and he would not have been himself if upon recovering
+he had not launched out into what some historians call a “lofty and
+dignified vindication of his loyalty and zeal.”  No one, indeed, is
+better than the Admiral at such lofty and dignified vindications.  He
+goes into the whole matter and sets forth an account of affairs at
+Espanola from his own point of view; and can even (so high is the
+thermometer of favour) safely indulge in a little judicious
+self-depreciation, saying that if he has erred it has not been from want
+of zeal but from want of experience in dealing with the kind of material
+he has been set to govern.  All this is very human, natural, and
+understandable; product of that warm emotional atmosphere, bedewed with
+tears, in which the Admiral finds himself; and it is not long before the
+King and Queen, also moved to it by the emotional temperature, are
+expressing their unbroken and unbounded confidence in him and
+repudiating the acts of Bobadilla, which they declare to have been
+contrary to their instructions; undertaking also that he shall be
+immediately dismissed from his post.  Poor Bobadilla is not here in the
+warm emotional atmosphere; he had his turn of it six months ago, when no
+powers were too high or too delicate to be entrusted to him; he is out
+in the cold at the other end of the see-saw, which has let him down to
+the ground with a somewhat sudden thump.
+
+
+Columbus, relying on the influence of these emotions, made bold to ask
+that his property in the island should be restored to him, which was
+immediately granted; and also to request that he should be reinstated in
+his office of Viceroy and allowed to return at once in triumph to
+Espanola.  But emotions are unstable things; they present a yielding
+surface which will give to any extent, but which, when it has hardened
+again after the tears have evaporated, is often found to be in much the
+same condition as before.  At first promises were made that the whole
+matter should be fully gone into; but when it came to cold fact,
+Ferdinand was obliged to recognise that this whole business of discovery
+and colonisation had become a very different thing to what it had been
+when Columbus was the only discoverer; and he was obviously of opinion
+that, as Columbus’s office had once been conveniently withdrawn from him,
+it would only be disastrous to reinstate him in it.  Of course he did not
+say so at once; but reasons were given for judicious delay in the
+Admiral’s reappointment.  It was represented to him that the colony,
+being in an extremely unsettled state, should be given a short period of
+rest, and also that it would be as well for him to wait until the people
+who had given him so much trouble in the island could be quietly and
+gradually removed.  Two years was the time mentioned as suitable for an
+interregnum, and it is probable that it was the intention of Isabella,
+although not of Ferdinand, to restore Columbus to his office at the end
+of that time.
+
+
+In the meantime it became necessary to appoint some one to supersede
+Bobadilla; for the news that arrived periodically from Espanola during
+the year showed that he had entirely failed in his task of reducing the
+island to order.  For the wholesome if unequal rigours of Columbus
+Bobadilla had substituted laxness and indulgence, with the result that
+the whole colony was rapidly reduced to a state of the wildest disorder.
+Vice and cruelty were rampant; in fact the barbarities practised upon the
+natives were so scandalous that even Spanish opinion, which was never
+very sympathetic to heathen suffering, was thoroughly shocked and
+alarmed.  The Sovereigns therefore appointed Nicholas de Ovando to go out
+and take over the command, with instructions to use very drastic means
+for bringing the colony to order.  How he did it we shall presently see;
+in the meantime all that was known of him (the man not having been tried
+yet) was that he was a poor knight of Calatrava, a man respected in royal
+circles for the performance of minor official duties, but no very popular
+favourite; honest according to his lights--lights turned rather low and
+dim, as was often the case in those days.  A narrow-minded man also,
+without sympathy or imagination, capable of cruelty; a tough,
+stiff-necked stock of a man, fit to deal with Bobadilla perhaps, but
+hardly fit to deal with the colony.  Spain in those days was not a
+nursery of administration.  Of all the people who were sent out
+successively to govern Espanola and supersede one another, the only one
+who really seems to have had the necessary natural ability, had he but
+been given the power, was Bartholomew Columbus; but unfortunately things
+were in such a state that the very name of Columbus was enough to bar a
+man from acceptance as a governor of Espanola.
+
+It was not for any lack of powers and equipment that this procession of
+governors failed in their duties.  We have seen with what authority
+Bobadilia had been entrusted; and Ovando had even greater advantages.
+The instructions he received showed that the needs of the new colonies
+were understood by Ferdinand and Isabella, if by no one else.  Ovando was
+not merely appointed Governor of Espanola but of the whole of the new
+territory discovered in the west, his seat of government being San
+Domingo.  He was given the necessary free hand in the matters of
+punishment, confiscation, and allotment of lands.  He was to revoke the
+orders which had been made by Bobadilla reducing the proportion of gold
+payable to the Crown, and was empowered to take over one-third of the.
+gold that was stored on the island, and one-half of what might be found
+in the future.  The Crown was to have a monopoly of all trade, and
+ordinary supplies were only to be procured through the Crown agent.
+On the other hand, the natives were to be released from slavery, and
+although forced to work in the mines, were to be paid for their labour
+--a distinction which in the working out did not produce much difference.
+A body of Franciscan monks accompanied Ovando for the purpose of tackling
+the religious question with the necessary energy; and every regulation
+that the kind heart of Isabella could think of was made for the happiness
+and contentment of the Indians.
+
+Unhappily the real mischief had already been done.  The natives, who had
+never been accustomed to hard and regular work under the conditions of
+commerce and greed, but had only toiled for the satisfaction of their own
+simple wants, were suffering cruelly under the hard labour in the mines,
+and the severe driving of their Spanish masters.  Under these unnatural
+conditions the native population was rapidly dying off, and there was
+some likelihood that there would soon be a scarcity of native labour.
+These were the circumstances in which the idea of importing black African
+labour to the New World was first conceived--a plan which was destined to
+have results so tremendous that we have probably not yet seen their full
+and ghastly development.  There were a great number of African negro
+slaves at that time in Spain; a whole generation of them had been born in
+slavery in Spain itself; and this generation was bodily imported to
+Espanola to relieve and assist the native labour.
+
+
+These preparations were not made all at once; and it was more than a year
+after the return of Columbus before Ovando was ready to sail.  In the
+meantime Columbus was living in Granada, and looking on with no very
+satisfied eye at the plans which were being made to supersede him, and
+about which he was probably not very much consulted; feeling very sore
+indeed, and dividing his attention between the nursing of his grievances
+and other even less wholesome occupations.  There was any amount of
+smiling kindness for him at Court, but very little of the satisfaction
+that his vanity and ambition craved; and in the absence of practical
+employment he fell back on visionary speculations.  He made great friends
+at this time with a monk named Gaspar Gorricio, with whose assistance he
+began to make some kind of a study of such utterances of the Prophets and
+the Fathers as he conceived to have a bearing on his own career.
+
+Columbus was in fact in a very queer way at this time; and what with his
+readings and his meditatings and his grievances, and his visits to his
+monkish friend in the convent of Las Cuevas, he fell into a kind of
+intellectual stupor, of which the work called ‘Libro de las Profecias,’
+or Book of the Prophecies, in which he wrote down such considerations as
+occurred to him in his stupor, was the result.  The manuscript of this
+work is in existence, although no human being has ever ventured to
+reprint the whole of it; and we would willingly abstain from mentioning
+it here if it were not an undeniable act of Columbus’s life.  The
+Admiral, fallen into theological stupor, puts down certain figures upon
+paper; discovers that St. Augustine said that the world would only last
+for 7000 years; finds that some other genius had calculated that before
+the birth of Christ it had existed for 5343 years and 318 days; adds 1501
+years from the birth of Christ to his own time; adds up, and finds that
+the total is 6844 years; subtracts, and discovers that this earthly globe
+can only last 155 years longer.  He remembers also that, still according
+to the Prophets, certain things must happen before the end of the world;
+Holy Sepulchre restored to Christianity, heathen converted, second coming
+of Christ; and decides that he himself is the man appointed by God and
+promised by the Prophets to perform these works.  Good Heavens! in what
+an entirely dark and sordid stupor is our Christopher now sunk--a
+veritable slough and quag of stupor out of which, if he does not manage
+to flounder himself, no human hand can pull him.
+
+
+But amid his wallowings in this slough of stupor, when all else, in him
+had been well-nigh submerged by it, two dim lights were preserved towards
+which, although foundered up to the chin, he began to struggle; and by
+superhuman efforts did at last extricate himself from the theological
+stupor and get himself blown clean again by the salt winds before he
+died.  One light was his religion; not to be confounded with theological
+stupor, but quite separate from it in my belief; a certain steadfast and
+consuming faith in a Power that could see and understand and guide him to
+the accomplishment of his purpose.  This faith had been too often a good
+friend and help to Christopher for him to forget it very long, even while
+he was staggering in the quag with Isaiah, Jeremiah, and the Fathers; and
+gradually, as I say, he worked himself out into the region of activity
+again.  First, thinking it a pity that his flounderings in the slough
+should be entirely wasted, he had a copy of his precious theological work
+made and presented it to the Sovereigns, with a letter urging them (since
+he himself was unable to do it) to undertake a crusade for the recovery
+of the Holy Sepulchre--not an altogether wild proposal in those days.
+But Ferdinand had other uses for his men and his money, and contented
+himself with despatching Peter Martyr on a pacific mission to the Grand
+Soldan of Egypt.
+
+The other light left unquenched in Columbus led him back to the firm
+ground of maritime enterprise; he began to long for the sea again, and
+for a chance of doing something to restore his reputation.  An infinitely
+better and more wholesome frame of mind this; by all means let him mend
+his reputation by achievement, instead of by writing books in a
+theological trance or stupor, and attempting to prove that he was chosen
+by the Almighty.  He now addressed himself to the better task of getting
+himself chosen by men to do something which should raise him again in
+their esteem.
+
+
+His maritime ambition was no doubt stimulated at this time by witnessing
+the departure of Ovando, in February 1502, with a fleet of thirty-five
+ships and a company of 2500 people.  It was not in the Admiral’s nature
+to look on without envy at an equipment the like of which he himself had
+never been provided with, and he did not restrain his sarcasms at its
+pomp and grandeur, nor at the ease with which men could follow a road
+which had once been pointed out to them.  Ovando had a great body-guard
+such as Columbus had never had; and he also carried with him a great
+number of picked married men with their families, all with knowledge of
+some trade or craft, whose presence in the colony would be a guarantee
+of permanence and steadiness.  He perhaps remembered his own crowd of
+ruffians and gaol-birds, and realised the bitterness of his own mistakes.
+It was a very painful moment for him, and he was only partially
+reconciled to it by the issue of a royal order to Ovando under which he
+was required to see to the restoration of the Admiral’s property.  If it
+had been devoted to public purposes it was to be repaid him from the
+royal funds; but if it had been merely distributed among the colonists
+Bobadilla was to be made responsible for it.  The Admiral was also
+allowed to send out an agent to represent him and look after his
+interests; and he appointed Alonso de Carvajal to this office.
+
+
+Ovando once gone, the Admiral could turn again to his own affairs.
+It is true there were rumours that the whole fleet had perished, for it
+encountered a gale very soon after leaving Cadiz, and a great quantity of
+the deck hamper was thrown overboard and was washed on the shores of
+Spain; and the Sovereigns were so bitterly distressed that, as it is
+said, they shut them selves up for eight days.  News eventually came,
+however, that only one ship had been lost and that the rest had proceeded
+safely to San Domingo.  Columbus, much recovered in body and mind, now
+began to apply for a fleet for himself.  He had heard of the discovery by
+the Portuguese of the southern route to India; no doubt he had heard also
+much gossip of the results of the many private voyages of discovery that
+were sailing from Spain at this time; and he began to think seriously
+about his own discoveries and the way in which they might best be
+extended.  He thought much of his voyage to the west of Trinidad and of
+the strange pent-up seas and currents that he had discovered there.  He
+remembered the continual westward trend of the current, and how all the
+islands in that sea had their greatest length east and west, as though
+their shores had been worn into that shape by the constant flowing of the
+current; and it was not an unnatural conclusion for him to suppose that
+there was a channel far to the west through which these seas poured and
+which would lead him to the Golden Chersonesus.  He put away from him
+that nightmare madness that he transacted on the coast of Cuba.  He knew
+very well that he had not yet found the Golden Chersonesus and the road
+to India; but he became convinced that the western current would lead him
+there if only he followed it long enough.  There was nothing insane about
+this theory; it was in fact a very well-observed and well-reasoned
+argument; and the fact that it happened to be entirely wrong is no
+reflection on the Admiral’s judgment.  The great Atlantic currents at
+that time had not been studied; and how could he know that the western
+stream of water was the northern half of a great ocean current which
+sweeps through the Caribbean Sea, into and round the Gulf of Mexico, and
+flows out northward past Florida in the Gulf Stream?
+
+His applications for a fleet were favourably received by the King and
+Queen, but much frowned upon by certain high officials of the Court.
+They were beginning to regard Columbus as a dangerous adventurer who,
+although he happened to have discovered the western islands, had brought
+the Spanish colony there to a dreadful state of disorder; and had also,
+they alleged, proved himself rather less than trustworthy in matters of
+treasure.  Still in the summer days of 1501 he was making himself very
+troublesome at Court with constant petitions and letters about his rights
+and privileges; and Ferdinand was far from unwilling to adopt a plan by
+which they would at least get rid of him and keep him safely occupied at
+the other side of the world at the cost of a few caravels.  There was,
+besides, always an element of uncertainty.  His voyage might come to
+nothing, but on the other hand the Admiral was no novice at this game of
+discovery, and one could not tell but that something big might come of
+it.  After some consideration permission was given to him to fit out a
+fleet of four ships, and he proceeded to Seville in the autumn of 1501
+to get his little fleet ready.  Bartholomew was to come with him, and his
+son Ferdinand also, who seems to have much endeared himself to the
+Admiral in these dark days, and who would surely be a great comfort to
+him on the voyage.  Beatriz Enriquez seems to have passed out of his
+life; certainly he was not living with her either now or on his last
+visit to Spain; one way or another, that business is at an end for him.
+Perhaps poor Beatriz, seeing her son in such a high place at Court, has
+effaced herself for his sake; perhaps the appointment was given on
+condition of such effacement; we do not know.
+
+
+Columbus was in no hurry over his preparations.  In the midst of them he
+found time to collect a whole series of documents relating to his titles
+and dignities, which he had copied and made into a great book which he
+called his “Book of Privileges,” and the copies of which were duly
+attested before a notary at Seville on January 5, 1502.  He wrote many
+letters to various friends of his, chiefly in relation to these
+privileges; not interesting or illuminating letters to us, although very
+important to busy Christopher when he wrote them.  Here is one written to
+Nicolo Oderigo, a Genoese Ambassador who came to Spain on a brief mission
+in the spring of 1502, and who, with certain other residents in Spain, is
+said to have helped Columbus in his preparations for his fourth voyage:
+
+     “Sir,--The loneliness in which you have left us cannot be described.
+     I gave the book containing my writings to Francisco de Rivarol that
+     he may send it to you with another copy of letters containing
+     instructions.  I beg you to be so kind as to write Don Diego in
+     regard to the place of security in which you put them.  Duplicates
+     of everything will be completed and sent to you in the same manner
+     and by the same Francisco.  Among them you will find a new document.
+     Their Highnesses promised to give all that belongs to me and to
+     place Don Diego in possession of everything, as you will see.  I
+     wrote to Senor Juan Luis and to Sefora Catalina.  The letter
+     accompanies this one.  I am ready to start in the name of the Holy
+     Trinity as soon as the weather is good.  I am well provided with
+     everything.  If Jeronimo de Santi Esteban is coming, he must await
+     me and not embarrass himself with anything, for they will take away
+     from him all they can and silently leave him.  Let him come here and
+     the King and the Queen will receive him until I come.  May our Lord
+     have you in His holy keeping.
+
+               “Done at Seville, March 21, 1502.
+               “At your command.
+
+                                                    .S.
+                                                  .S.A.S.
+                                                  Xpo FERENS.”
+
+
+His delays were not pleasing to Ferdinand, who wanted to get rid of him,
+and he was invited to hurry his departure; but he still continued to go
+deliberately about his affairs, which he tried to put in order as far as
+he was able, since he thought it not unlikely that he might never see
+Spain again.  Thinking thus of his worldly duties, and his thoughts
+turning to his native Genoa, it occurred to him to make some benefaction
+out of the riches that were coming to him by which his name might be
+remembered and held in honour there.  This was a piece of practical
+kindness the record of which is most precious to us; for it shows the
+Admiral in a truer and more human light than he often allowed to shine
+upon him.  The tone of the letter is nothing; he could not forbear
+letting the people of Genoa see how great he was.  The devotion of his
+legacy to the reduction of the tax on simple provisions was a genuine
+charity, much to be appreciated by the dwellers in the Vico Dritto di
+Ponticello, where wine and provision shops were so very necessary to
+life.  The letter was written to the Directors of the famous Bank of
+Saint George at Genoa.
+
+     “VERY NOBLE LORDS,--Although my body is here, my heart is
+     continually yonder.  Our Lord has granted me the greatest favour he
+     has granted any one since the time of David.  The results of my
+     undertaking already shine, and they would make a great light if the
+     obscurity of the Government did not conceal them.  I shall go again
+     to the Indies in the name of the Holy Trinity, to return
+     immediately.  And as I am mortal, I desire my son Don Diego to give
+     to you each year, for ever, the tenth part of all the income
+     received, in payment of the tax on wheat, wine, and other
+     provisions.  If this tenth amounts to anything, receive it, and if
+     not, receive my will for the deed.  I beg you as a favour to have
+     this son of mine in your charge.  Nicolo de Oderigo knows more about
+     my affairs than I myself.  I have sent him the copy of my privileges
+     and letters, that he may place them in safe keeping.  I would be
+     glad if you could see them.  The King and the Queen, my Lords, now
+     wish to honour me more than ever.  May the Holy Trinity guard your
+     noble persons, and increase the importance of your very magnificent
+     office.
+               “Done in Seville, April a, 1502.
+
+     “The High-Admiral of the Ocean-Sea and Viceroy and Governor-General
+     of the islands and mainland of Asia and the Indies, belonging to the
+     King and Queen, my Lords, and the Captain-General of the Sea, and a
+     Member of their Council.
+
+                                               .S.
+                                             .S.A.S.
+                                              X M Y
+                                            Xpo FERENS.”
+
+
+Columbus was anxious to touch at Espanola on his voyage to the West; but
+he was expressly forbidden to do so, as it was known that his presence
+there could not make for anything but confusion; he was to be permitted,
+however, to touch there on his return journey.  The Great Khan was not
+out of his mind yet; much in it apparently, for he took an Arabian
+interpreter with him so that he could converse with that monarch.  In
+fact he did not hesitate to announce that very big results indeed were to
+come of this voyage of his; among other things he expected to
+circumnavigate the globe, and made no secret of his expectation.  In the
+meantime he was expected to find some pearls in order to pay for the
+equipment of his fleet; and in consideration of what had happened to the
+last lot of pearls collected by him, an agent named Diego de Porras was
+sent along with him to keep an account of the gold and precious stones
+which might be discovered.  Special instructions were issued to Columbus
+about the disposal of these commodities.  He does not seem to have minded
+these somewhat humiliating precautions; he had a way of rising above
+petty indignities and refusing to recognise them which must have been of
+great assistance to his self-respect in certain troubled moments in his
+life.
+
+His delays, however, were so many that in March 1502 the Sovereigns were
+obliged to order him to depart without any more waiting.  Poor
+Christopher, who once had to sue for the means with which to go, whose
+departures were once the occasion of so much state and ceremony, has now
+to be hustled forth and asked to go away.  Still he does not seem to
+mind; once more, as of old, his gaze is fixed beyond the horizon and his
+mind is filled with one idea.  They may not think much of him in Spain
+now, but they will when he comes back; and he can afford to wait.
+Completing his preparations without undignified haste he despatched
+Bartholomew with his four little vessels from Seville to Cadiz, where the
+Admiral was to join them.  He took farewell of his son Diego and of his
+brother James; good friendly James, who had done his best in a difficult
+position, but had seen quite enough of the wild life of the seas and was
+now settled in Seville studying hard for the Church.  It had always been
+his ambition, poor James; and, studying hard in Seville, he did in time
+duly enter the sacred pale and become a priest--by which we may see that
+if our ambitions are only modest enough we may in time encompass them.
+Sometimes I think that James, enveloped in priestly vestments, nodding in
+the sanctuary, lulled by the muttering murmur of the psalms or dozing
+through a long credo, may have thought himself back amid the brilliant
+sunshine and strange perfumes of Espanola; and from a dream of some nymph
+hiding in the sweet groves of the Vega may have awakened with a sigh to
+the strident Alleluias of his brother priests.  At any rate, farewell to
+James, safely seated beneath the Gospel light, and continuing to sit
+there until, in the year 1515, death interrupts him.  We are not any more
+concerned with James in his priestly shelter, but with those elder
+brothers of his who are making ready again to face the sun and the
+surges.
+
+Columbus’s ships were on the point of sailing when word came that the
+Moors were besieging a Portuguese post on the coast of Morocco, and, as
+civility was now the order of the day between Spain and Portugal, the
+Admiral was instructed to call on his way there and afford some relief.
+This he did, sailing from Cadiz on the 9th or 10th of May to Ercilla on
+the Morocco coast, where he anchored on the 13th.  But the Moors had all
+departed and the siege was over; so Columbus, having sent Bartholomew and
+some of his officers ashore on a civil visit, which was duly returned,
+set out the same day on his last voyage.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE LAST VOYAGE
+
+The four ships that made up the Admiral’s fleet on his fourth and last
+voyage were all small caravels, the largest only of seventy tons and the
+smallest only of fifty.  Columbus chose for his flagship the Capitana,
+seventy tons, appointing Diego Tristan to be his captain.  The next best
+ship was the Santiago de Palos under the command of Francisco Porras;
+Porras and his brother Diego having been more or less foisted on to
+Columbus by Morales, the Royal Treasurer, who wished to find berths for
+these two brothers-in-law of his.  We shall hear more of the Porras
+brothers.  The third ship was the Gallega, sixty tons, a very bad sailer
+indeed, and on that account entrusted to Bartholomew Columbus, whose
+skill in navigation, it was hoped, might make up for her bad sailing
+qualities.  Bartholomew had, to tell the truth, had quite enough of the
+New World, but he was too loyal to Christopher to let him go alone,
+knowing as he did his precarious state of health and his tendency to
+despondency.  The captain of the Gallega was Pedro de Terreros, who had
+sailed with the Admiral as steward on all his other voyages and was now
+promoted to a command.  The fourth ship was called the Vizcaina, fifty
+tons, and was commanded by Bartolome Fieschi, a friend of Columbus’s from
+Genoa, and a very sound, honourable man.  There were altogether 143 souls
+on board the four caravels.
+
+The fleet as usual made the Canary Islands, where they arrived on the
+20th of May, and stopped for five days taking in wood and water and fresh
+provisions.  Columbus was himself again--always more himself at sea than
+anywhere else; he was following a now familiar road that had no
+difficulties or dangers for him; and there is no record of the voyage out
+except that it was quick and prosperous, with the trade wind blowing so
+steadily that from the time they left the Canaries until they made land
+twenty days later they had hardly to touch a sheet or a halliard.  The
+first land they made was the island of Martinique, where wood and water
+were taken in and the men sent ashore to wash their linen.  To young
+Ferdinand, but fourteen years old, this voyage was like a fairy tale come
+true, and his delight in everything that he saw must have added greatly
+to Christopher’s pleasure and interest in the voyage.  They only stayed a
+few days at Martinique and then sailed westward along the chain of
+islands until they came to Porto Rico, where they put in to the sunny
+harbour which they had discovered on a former voyage.
+
+It was at this point that Columbus determined, contrary to his precise
+orders, to stand across to Espanola.  The place attracted him like a
+magnet; he could not keep away from it; and although he had a good enough
+excuse for touching there, it is probable that his real reason was a very
+natural curiosity to see how things were faring with his old enemy
+Bobadilla.  The excuse was that the Gallega, Bartholomew’s ship, was so
+unseaworthy as to be a drag on the progress of the rest of the fleet and
+a danger to her own crew.  In the slightest sea-way she rolled almost
+gunwale under, and would not carry her sail; and Columbus’s plan was to
+exchange her for a vessel out of the great fleet which he knew had by
+this time reached Espanola and discharged its passengers.
+
+
+He arrived off the harbour of San Domingo on the 29th of June in very
+threatening weather, and immediately sent Pedro de Terreros ashore with a
+message to Ovando, asking to be allowed to purchase or exchange one of
+the vessels that were riding in the harbour, and also leave to shelter
+his own vessels there during the hurricane which he believed to be
+approaching.  A message came back that he was neither permitted to buy a
+ship nor to enter the harbour; warning him off from San Domingo, in fact.
+
+With this unfavourable message Terreros also brought back the news of the
+island.  Ovando had been in San Domingo since the 15th of April, and had
+found the island in a shocking state, the Spanish population having to a
+man devoted itself to idleness, profligacy, and slave-driving.  The only
+thing that had prospered was the gold-mining; for owing to the licence
+that Bobadilla had given to the Spaniards to employ native labour to an
+unlimited extent there had been an immense amount of gold taken from the
+mines.  But in no other respect had island affairs prospered, and Ovando
+immediately began the usual investigation.  The fickle Spaniards, always
+unfaithful to whoever was in authority over them, were by this time tired
+of Bobadilla, in spite of his leniency, and they hailed the coming of
+Ovando and his numerous equipment with enthusiasm.  Bobadilla had also by
+this time, we may suppose, had enough of the joys of office; at any rate
+he showed no resentment at the coming of the new Governor, and handed
+over the island with due ceremony.  The result of the investigation of
+Ovando, however, was to discover a state of things requiring exemplary
+treatment; friend Roldan was arrested, with several of his allies, and
+put on board one of the ships to be sent back to Spain for trial.  The
+cacique Guarionex, who had been languishing in San Domingo in chains for
+a long time, was also embarked on one of the returning ships; and about
+eighteen hundred-weights of gold which had been collected were also
+stowed into cases and embarked.  Among this gold there was a nugget
+weighing 35 lbs. which had been found by a native woman in a river, and
+which Ovando was sending home as a personal offering to his Sovereigns;
+and some further 40 lbs. of gold belonging to Columbus, which Carvajal
+had recovered and placed in a caravel to be taken to Spain for the
+Admiral.  The ships were all ready to sail, and were anchored off the
+mouth of the river when Columbus arrived in San Domingo.
+
+When he found that he was not to be allowed to enter the harbour himself
+Columbus sent a message to Ovando warning him that a hurricane was coming
+on, and begging him to take measures for the safety of his large fleet.
+This, however, was not done, and the fleet put to sea that evening.  It
+had only got so far as the eastern end of Espanola when the hurricane, as
+predicted by Columbus, duly came down in the manner of West Indian
+hurricanes, a solid wall of wind and an advancing wave of the sea which
+submerged everything in its path.  Columbus’s little fleet, finding
+shelter denied them, had moved a little way along the coast, the Admiral
+standing close in shore, the others working to the south for sea-room;
+and although they survived the hurricane they were scattered, and only
+met several days later, in an extremely battered condition, at the
+westerly end of the island.  But the large home-going fleet had not
+survived.  The hurricane, which was probably from the north-east, struck
+them just as they lost the lee of the island, and many of them, including
+the ships with the treasure of gold and the caravels bearing Roldan,
+Bobadilla, and Guarionex, all went down at once and were never seen or
+heard of again.  Other ships survived for a little while only to founder
+in the end; a few, much shattered, crept back to the shelter of San
+Domingo; but only one, it is said, survived the hurricane so well as to
+be able to proceed to Spain; and that was the one which carried Carvajal
+and Columbus’s little property of gold.  The Admiral’s luck again; or the
+intervention of the Holy Trinity--whichever you like.
+
+After the shattering experience of the storm, Columbus, although he did
+not return to San Domingo, remained for some time on the coast of
+Espanola repairing his ships and resting his exhausted crews.  There were
+threatenings of another storm which delayed them still further, and it
+was not until the middle of July that the Admiral was able to depart on
+the real purpose of his voyage.  His object was to strike the mainland
+far to the westward of the Gulf of Paria, and so by following it back
+eastward to find the passage which he believed to exist.  But the winds
+and currents were very baffling; he was four days out of sight of land
+after touching at an island north of Jamaica; and finally, in some
+bewilderment, he altered his course more and more northerly until he
+found his whereabouts by coming in sight of the archipelago off the
+south-western end of Cuba which he had called the Gardens.  From here he
+took a departure south-west, and on the 30th of July came in sight of a
+small island off the northern coast of Honduras which he called Isla de
+Pinos, and from which he could see the hills of the mainland.  At this
+island he found a canoe of immense size with a sort of house or caboose
+built amidships, in which was established a cacique with his family and
+dependents; and the people in the canoe showed signs of more advanced
+civilisation than any seen by Columbus before in these waters.  They wore
+clothing, they had copper hatchets, and bells, and palm-wood swords in
+the edges of which were set sharp blades of flint.  They had a fermented
+liquor, a kind of maize beer which looked like English ale; they had some
+kind of money or medium of exchange also, and they told the Admiral that
+there was land to the west where all these things existed and many more.
+It is strange and almost inexplicable that he did not follow this trail
+to the westward; if he had done so he would have discovered Mexico.  But
+one thing at a time always occupied him to the exclusion of everything
+else; his thoughts were now turned to the eastward, where he supposed the
+Straits were; and the significance of this canoe full of natives was lost
+upon him.
+
+They crossed over to the mainland of Honduras on August 15th, Bartholomew
+landing and attending mass on the beach as the Admiral himself was too
+ill to go ashore.  Three days later the cross and banner of Castile were
+duly erected on the shores of the Rio Tinto and the country was formally
+annexed.  The natives were friendly, and supplied the ships with
+provisions; but they were very black and ugly, and Columbus readily
+believed the assertion of his native guide that they were cannibals.
+They continued their course to the eastward, but as the gulf narrowed the
+force of the west-going current was felt more severely.  Columbus,
+believing that the strait which he sought lay to the eastward, laboured
+against the current, and his difficulties were increased by the bad
+weather which he now encountered.  There were squalls and hurricanes,
+tempests and cross-currents that knocked his frail ships about and almost
+swamped them.  Anchors and gear were lost, the sails were torn out of the
+bolt-ropes, timbers were strained; and for six weeks this state of
+affairs went on to an accompaniment of thunder and lightning which added
+to the terror and discomfort of the mariners.
+
+This was in August and the first half of September--six weeks of the
+worst weather that Columbus had ever experienced.  It was the more
+unfortunate that his illness made it impossible for him to get actively
+about the ship; and he had to have a small cabin or tent rigged up on
+deck, in which he could lie and direct the navigation.  It is bad enough
+to be as ill as he was in a comfortable bed ashore; it is a thousand
+times worse amid the discomforts of a small boat at sea; but what must it
+have been thus to have one’s sick-bed on the deck of a cockle-shell which
+was being buffeted and smashed in unknown seas, and to have to think and
+act not for oneself alone but for the whole of a suffering little fleet!
+No wonder the Admiral’s distress of mind was great; but oddly enough his
+anxieties, as he recorded them in a letter, were not so much on his own
+account as on behalf of others.  The terrified seamen making vows to the
+Virgin and promises of pilgrimages between their mad rushes to the sheets
+and furious clinging and hauling; his son Ferdinand, who was only
+fourteen, but who had to endure the same pain and fatigue as the rest of
+them, and who was enduring it with such pluck that “it was as if he had
+been at sea eighty years”; the dangers of Bartholomew, who had not wanted
+to come on this voyage at all, but was now in the thick of it in the
+worst ship of the squadron, and fighting for his life amid tempests and
+treacherous seas; Diego at home, likely to be left an orphan and at the
+mercy of fickle and doubtful friends--these were the chief causes of the
+Admiral’s anxiety.  All he said about himself was that “by my misfortune
+the twenty years of service which I gave with so much fatigue and danger
+have profited me so little that to-day I have in Castile no roof, and if
+I wished to dine or sup or sleep I have only the tavern for my last
+refuge, and for that, most of the time, I would be unable to pay the
+score.”  Not cheerful reflections, these, to add to the pangs of acute
+gout and the consuming anxieties of seamanship under such circumstances.
+Dreadful to him, these things, but not dreadful to us; for they show us
+an Admiral restored to his true temper and vocation, something of the old
+sea hero breaking out in him at last through all these misfortunes, like
+the sun through the hurrying clouds of a stormy afternoon.
+
+
+Forty days of passage through this wilderness of water were endured
+before the sea-worn mariners, rounding a cape on September 12th, saw
+stretching before them to the southward a long coast of plain and
+mountain which they were able to follow with a fair wind.  Gradually the
+sea went down; the current which had opposed them here aided them, and
+they were able to recover a little from the terrible strain of the last
+six weeks.  The cape was called by Columbus ‘Gracios de Dios’; and on the
+16th of September they landed at the entrance to a river to take in
+water.  The boat which was sent ashore, however, capsized on the sandy
+bar of the entrance, two men being drowned, and the river was given the
+name of Rio de Desastre.  They found a better anchorage, where they
+rested for ten days, overhauled their stores, and had some intercourse
+with the natives and exploration on shore.  Some incidents occurred which
+can best be described in the Admiral’s own language as he recorded them
+in his letter to the Sovereigns.
+
+     “ . . . When I reached there, they immediately sent me two young
+     girls dressed in rich garments.  The older one might not have been
+     more than eleven years of age and the other seven; both with so much
+     experience, so much manner, and so much appearance as would have
+     been sufficient if they had been public women for twenty years.
+     They bore with them magic powder and other things belonging to their
+     art.  When they arrived I gave orders that they should be adorned
+     with our things and sent them immediately ashore.  There I saw a
+     tomb within the mountain as large as a house and finely worked with
+     great artifice, and a corpse stood thereon uncovered, and, looking
+     within it, it seemed as if he stood upright.  Of the other arts they
+     told me that there was excellence.  Great and little animals are
+     there in quantities, and very different from ours; among which I saw
+     boars of frightful form so that a dog of the Irish breed dared not
+     face them.  With a cross-bow I had wounded an animal which exactly
+     resembles a baboon only that it was much larger and has a face like
+     a human being.  I had pierced it with an arrow from one side to the
+     other, entering in the breast and going out near the tail, and
+     because it was very ferocious I cut off one of the fore feet which
+     rather seemed to be a hand, and one of the hind feet.  The boars
+     seeing this commenced to set up their bristles and fled with great
+     fear, seeing the blood of the other animal.  When I saw this I
+     caused to be thrown them the ‘uegare,’--[Peccary]--certain animals
+     they call so, where it stood, and approaching him, near as he was to
+     death, and the arrow still sticking in his body, he wound his tail
+     around his snout and held it fast, and with the other hand which
+     remained free, seized him by the neck as an enemy.  This act, so
+     magnificent and novel, together with the fine country and hunting of
+     wild beasts, made me write this to your Majesties.”
+
+
+The natives at this anchorage of Cariari were rather suspicious, but
+Columbus seized two of them to act as guides in his journey further down
+the coast.  Weighing anchor on October 5th he worked along the Costa Rica
+shore, which here turns to the eastward again, and soon found a tribe of
+natives who wore large ornaments of gold.  They were reluctant to part
+with the gold, but as usual pointed down the coast and said that there
+was much more gold there; they even gave a name to the place where the
+gold could be found--Veragua; and for once this country was found to have
+a real existence.  The fleet anchored there on October 17th, being
+greeted by defiant blasts of conch shells and splashing of water from the
+indignant natives.  Business was done, however: seventeen gold discs in
+exchange for three hawks’ bells.
+
+Still Columbus went on in pursuit of his geographical chimera; even gold
+had no power to detain him from the earnest search for this imaginary
+strait.  Here and there along the coast he saw increasing signs of
+civilisation--once a wall built of mud and stone, which made him think of
+Cathay again.  He now got it into his head that the region he was in was
+ten days’ journey from the Ganges, and that it was surrounded by water;
+which if it means anything means that he thought he was on a large island
+ten days’ sail to the eastward of the coast of India.  Altogether at sea
+as to the facts, poor Admiral, but with heart and purpose steadfast and
+right enough.
+
+They sailed a little farther along the coast, now between narrow islands
+that were like the streets of Genoa, where the boughs of trees on either
+hand brushed the shrouds of the ships; now past harbours where there were
+native fairs and markets, and where natives were to be seen mounted on
+horses and armed with swords; now by long, lonely stretches of the coast
+where there was nothing to be seen but the low green shore with the
+mountains behind and the alligators basking at the river mouths.  At last
+(November 2nd) they arrived at the cape known as Nombre de Dios, which
+Ojeda had reached some time before in his voyage to the West.
+
+The coast of the mainland had thus been explored from the Bay of Honduras
+to Brazil, and Columbus was obliged to admit that there was no strait.
+Having satisfied himself of that he decided to turn back to Veragua,
+where he had seen the natives smelting gold, in order to make some
+arrangement for establishing a colony there.  The wind, however, which
+had headed him almost all the way on his easterly voyage, headed him
+again now and began to blow steadily from the west.  He started on his
+return journey on the 5th of December, and immediately fell into almost
+worse troubles than he had been in before.  The wood of the ships had
+been bored through and through by seaworms, so that they leaked very
+badly; the crews were sick, provisions were spoilt, biscuits rotten.
+Young Ferdinand Columbus, if he did not actually make notes of this
+voyage at the time, preserved a very lively recollection of it, and it is
+to his Historie, which in its earlier passages is of doubtful
+authenticity, that we owe some of the most human touches of description
+relating to this voyage.  Any passage in his work relating to food or
+animals at this time has the true ring of boyish interest and
+observation, and is in sharp contrast to the second-hand and artificial
+tone of the earlier chapters of his book.  About the incident of the
+howling monkey, which the Admiral’s Irish hound would not face, Ferdinand
+remarks that it “frighted a good dog that we had, but frighted one of our
+wild boars a great deal more”; and as to the condition of the biscuits
+when they turned westward again, he says that they were “so full of
+weevils that, as God shall help me, I saw many that stayed till night to
+eat their sop for fear of seeing them.”
+
+After experiencing some terrible weather, in the course of which they had
+been obliged to catch sharks for food and had once been nearly
+overwhelmed by a waterspout, they entered a harbour where, in the words
+of young Ferdinand, “we saw the people living like birds in the tops of
+the trees, laying sticks across from bough to bough and building their
+huts upon them; and though we knew not the reason of the custom we
+guessed that it was done for fear of their enemies, or of the griffins
+that are in this island.”  After further experiences of bad weather they
+made what looked like a suitable harbour on the coast of Veragua, which
+harbour, as they entered it on the day of the Epiphany (January 9, 1503),
+they named Belem or Bethlehem.  The river in the mouth of which they were
+anchored, however, was subject to sudden spouts and gushes of water from
+the hills, one of which occurred on January 24th and nearly swamped the
+caravels.  This spout of water was caused by the rainy season, which had
+begun in the mountains and presently came down to the coast, where it
+rained continuously until the 14th of February.  They had made friends
+with the Quibian or chief of the country, and he had offered to conduct
+them to the place where the gold mines were; so Bartholomew was sent off
+in the rain with a boat party to find this territory.  It turned out
+afterwards that the cunning Quibian had taken them out of his own country
+and showed them the gold mined of a neighbouring chief, which were not so
+rich as his own.
+
+Columbus, left idle in the absence of Bartholomew, listening to the
+continuous drip and patter of the rain on the leaves and the water,
+begins to dream again--to dream of gold and geography.  Remembers that
+David left three thousand quintals of gold from the Indies to Solomon for
+the decoration of the Temple; remembers that Josephus said it came from
+the Golden Chersonesus; decides that enough gold could never have been
+got from the mines of Hayna in Espanola; and concludes that the Ophir of
+Solomon must be here in Veragua and not there in Espanola.  It was always
+here and now with Columbus; and as he moved on his weary sea pilgrimages
+these mythical lands with their glittering promise moved about with him,
+like a pillar of fire leading him through the dark night of his quest.
+
+
+The rain came to an end, however, the sun shone out again, and activity
+took the place of dreams with Columbus and with his crew.  He decided to
+found a settlement in this place, and to make preparations for seizing
+and working the gold mines.  It was decided to leave a garrison of eighty
+men, and the business of unloading the necessary arms and provisions and
+building houses ashore was immediately begun.  Hawks’ bells and other
+trifles were widely distributed among the natives, with special toys and
+delicacies for the Quibian, in order that friendly relations might be
+established from the beginning; and special regulations were framed to
+prevent the possibility of any recurrence of the disasters that overtook
+the settlers of Isabella.
+
+Such are the orderly plans of Columbus; but the Quibian has his plans
+too, which are found to be of quite a different nature.  The Quibian does
+not like intruders, though he likes their hawks’ bells well enough; he is
+not quite so innocent as poor Guacanagari and the rest of them were; he
+knows that gold is a thing coveted by people to whom it does not belong,
+and that trouble follows in its train.  Quibian therefore decides that
+Columbus and his followers shall be exterminated--news of which intention
+fortunately came to the ears of Columbus in time, Diego Mendez and
+Rodrigo de Escobar having boldly advanced into the Quibian’s village and
+seen the warlike preparations.  Bartholomew, returning from his visit to
+the gold mines, was informed of this state of affairs.  Always quick to
+strike, Bartholomew immediately started with an armed force, and advanced
+upon the village so rapidly that the savages were taken by surprise,
+their headquarters surrounded, and the Quibian and fifty of his warriors
+captured.  Bartholomew triumphantly marched the prisoners back, the
+Quibian being entrusted to the charge of Juan Sanchez, who was rowing him
+in a little boat.  The Quibian complained that his bonds were hurting
+him, and foolish Sanchez eased them a little; Quibian, with a quick
+movement, wriggled overboard and dived to the bottom; came up again
+somewhere and reached home alive.  No one saw him come up, however, and
+they thought had had been drowned.
+
+Columbus now made ready to depart, and the caravels having been got over
+the shallow bar, their loading was completed and they were ready to sail.
+On April 6th Diego Tristan was sent in charge of a boat with a message to
+Bartholomew, who was to be left in command of the settlement; but when
+Tristan had rounded the point at the entrance to the river and come in
+sight of the shore he had an unpleasant surprise; the settlement was
+being savagely attacked by the resurrected Quibian and his followers.
+The fight had lasted for three hours, and had been going badly against
+the Spaniards, when Bartholomew and Diego Mendes rallied a little force
+round them and, calling to Columbus’s Irish dog which had been left with
+them, made a rush upon the savages and so terrified them that they
+scattered.  Bartholomew with eight of the other Spaniards was wounded,
+and one was killed; and it was at this point that Tristan’s boat arrived
+at the settlement.  Having seen the fight safely over, he went on up the
+river to get water, although he was warned that it was not safe; and sure
+enough, at a point a little farther up the river, beyond some low green
+arm of the shore, he met with a sudden and bloody death.  A cloud of
+yelling savages surrounded his boat hurling javelins and arrows, and only
+one seaman, who managed to dive into the water and crawl ashore, escaped
+to bring the evil tidings.
+
+The Spaniards under Bartholomew’s command broke into a panic, and taking
+advantage of his wounded condition they tried to make sail on their
+caravel and join the ships of Columbus outside; but since the time of the
+rains the river had so much gone down that she was stuck fast in the
+sand.  They could not even get a boat over the bar, for there was a heavy
+cross sea breaking on it; and in the meantime here they were, trapped
+inside this river, the air resounding with dismal blasts of the natives’
+conch-shells, and the natives themselves dancing round and threatening to
+rush their position; while the bodies of Tristan and his little crew were
+to be seen floating down the stream, feasted upon by a screaming cloud of
+birds.  The position of the shore party was desperate, and it was only by
+the greatest efforts that the wounded Adelantado managed to rally his
+crew and get them to remove their little camp to an open place on the
+shore, where a kind of stockade was made of chests, casks, spars, and the
+caravel’s boat.  With this for cover, the Spanish fire-arms, so long as
+there was ammunition for them, were enough to keep the natives at bay.
+
+
+Outside the bar, in his anchorage beyond the green wooded point, the
+Admiral meanwhile was having an anxious time.  One supposes the entrance
+to the river to have been complicated by shoals and patches of broken
+water extending some considerable distance, so that the Admiral’s
+anchorage would be ten or twelve miles away from the camp ashore, and of
+course entirely hidden from it.  As day after day passed and Diego
+Tristan did not return, the Admiral’s anxiety increased.  Among the three
+caravels that now formed his little squadron there was only one boat
+remaining, the others, not counting one taken by Tristan and one left
+with Bartholomew, having all been smashed in the late hurricanes.  In the
+heavy sea that was running on the bar the Admiral dared not risk his last
+remaining boat; but in the mean time he was cut off from all news of the
+shore party and deprived of any means of finding out what had happened to
+Tristan.  And presently to these anxieties was added a further disaster.
+It will be remembered that when the Quibian had been captured fifty
+natives had been taken with him; and these were confined in the
+forecastle of the Capitana and covered by a large hatch, on which most of
+the crew slept at night.  But one night the natives collected a heap of
+big stones from the ballast of the ship, and piled them up to a kind of
+platform beneath the hatch; some of the strongest of them got upon the
+platform and set their backs horizontally against the hatch, gave a great
+heave and, lifted it off.  In the confusion that followed, a great many
+of the prisoners escaped into the sea, and swam ashore; the rest were
+captured and thrust back under the hatch, which was chained down; but
+when on the following morning the Spaniards went to attend to this
+remnant it was found that they had all hanged themselves.
+
+This was a great disaster, since it increased the danger of the garrison
+ashore, and destroyed all hope of friendship with the natives.  There was
+something terrible and powerful, too, in the spirit of people who could
+thus to a man make up their minds either to escape or die; and the
+Admiral must have felt that he was in the presence of strange, powerful
+elements that were far beyond his control.  At any moment, moreover, the
+wind might change and put him on a lee shore, or force him to seek safety
+in sea-room; in which case the position of Bartholomew would be a very
+critical one.  It was while things were at this apparent deadlock that a
+brave fellow, Pedro Ledesma, offered to attempt to swim through the surf
+if the boat would take him to the edge of it.  Brave Pedro, his offer
+accepted, makes the attempt; plunges into the boiling surf, and with
+mighty efforts succeeds in reaching the shore; and after an interval is
+seen by his comrades, who are waiting with their boat swinging on the
+edge of the surf, to be returning to them; plunges into the sea, comes
+safely through the surf again, and is safely hauled on board, having
+accomplished a very real and satisfactory bit of service.
+
+The story he had to tell the Admiral was as we know not a pleasant one
+--Tristan and his men dead, several of Bartholomew’s force, including the
+Adelantado himself, wounded, and all in a state of panic and fear at the
+hostile natives.  The Spaniards would do nothing to make the little
+fortress safer, and were bent only on escaping from the place of horror.
+Some of them were preparing canoes in which to come out to the ships when
+the sea should go down, as their one small boat was insufficient; and
+they swore that if the Admiral would not take them they would seize their
+own caravel and sail out themselves into the unknown sea as soon as they
+could get her floated over the bar, rather than remain in such a dreadful
+situation.  Columbus was in a very bad way.  He could not desert
+Bartholomew, as that would expose him to the treachery of his own men
+and the hostility of the savages.  He could not reinforce him, except by
+remaining himself with the whole of his company; and in that case there
+would be no means of sending the news of his rich discovery to Spain.
+There was nothing for it, therefore, but to break up the settlement and
+return some other time with a stronger force sufficient to occupy the
+country.  And even this course had its difficulties; for the weather
+continued bad, the wind was blowing on to the shore, the sea was--so
+rough as to make the passage of the bar impossible, and any change for
+the worse in the weather would probably drive his own crazy ships ashore
+and cut off all hope of escape.
+
+The Admiral, whose health was now permanently broken, and who only had
+respite from his sufferings in fine weather and when he was relieved from
+a burden of anxieties such as had been continually pressing on him now
+for three months, fell into his old state of sleeplessness, feverishness,
+and consequent depression; and it, these circumstances it is not
+wonderful that the firm ground of fact began to give a little beneath him
+and that his feet began to sink again into the mire or quag of stupor.
+Of these further flounderings in the quag he himself wrote an account to
+the King and Queen, so we may as well have it in his own words.
+
+     “I mounted to the top of the ship crying out with a weak voice,
+     weeping bitterly, to the commanders of your Majesties’ army, and
+     calling again to the four winds to help; but they did not answer me.
+     Tired out, I fell asleep and sighing I heard a voice very full of
+     pity which spoke these words:  O fool!  and slow to believe and to
+     serve Him, thy God and the God of all.  What did He more for Moses?
+     and for David His servant?  Since thou wast born He had always so
+     great care for thee.  When He saw thee in an age with which He was
+     content He made thy name sound marvellously through the world.  The
+     Indies, which are so rich apart of the world, He has given to thee
+     as thine.  Thou hast distributed them wherever it has pleased thee;
+     He gave thee power so to do.  Of the bonds of the ocean which were
+     locked with so strong chains He gave thee the keys, and thou wast
+     obeyed in all the land, and among the Christians thou hast acquired
+     a good and honourable reputation.  What did He more for the people
+     of Israel when He brought them out of Egypt?  or yet for David, whom
+     from being a shepherd He made King of Judea?  Turn to Him and
+     recognise thine error, for His mercy is infinite.  Thine old age
+     will be no hindrance to all great things.  Many very great
+     inheritances are in His power.  Abraham was more than one hundred
+     years old when he begat Isaac and also Sarah was not young.  Thou
+     art calling for uncertain aid.  Answer me, who has afflicted thee so
+     much and so many times--God or the world?  The privileges and
+     promises which God makes He never breaks to any one; nor does He say
+     after having received the service that His intention was not so and
+     it is to be understood in another manner: nor imposes martyrdom to
+     give proof of His power.  He abides by the letter of His word.  All
+     that He promises He abundantly accomplishes.  This is His way.  I
+     have told thee what the Creator hath done for thee and does for all.
+     Now He shows me the reward and payment of thy suffering and which
+     thou hast passed in the service of others.  And thus half dead, I
+     heard everything; but I could never find an answer to make to words
+     so certain, and only I wept for my errors.  He, who ever he might
+     be, finished speaking, saying: Trust and fear not, for thy
+     tribulations are written in marble and not without reason.”
+
+
+Mere darkness of stupor; not much to be deciphered from it, nor any
+profitable comment to be made on it, except that it was our poor
+Christopher’s way of crying out his great suffering and misery.  We must
+not notice it, much as we should like to hold out a hand of sympathy and
+comfort to him; must not pay much attention to this dark eloquent
+nonsense--merely words, in which the Admiral never does himself justice.
+Acts are his true conversation; and when he speaks in that language all
+men must listen.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+HEROIC ADVENTURES BY LAND AND SEA
+
+No man ever had a better excuse for his superstitions than the Admiral;
+no sooner had he got done with his Vision than the wind dropped, the sun
+came out, the sea fell, and communication with the land was restored.
+While he had been sick and dreaming one of his crew, Diego Mendez, had
+been busy with practical efforts in preparation for this day of fine
+weather; he had made a great raft out of Indian canoes lashed together,
+with mighty sacks of sail cloth into which the provisions might be
+bundled; and as soon as the sea had become calm enough he took this raft
+in over the bar to the settlement ashore, and began the business of
+embarking the whole of the stores and ammunition of Bartholomew’s
+garrison.  By this practical method the whole establishment was
+transferred from the shore to the ships in the space of two days, and
+nothing was left but the caravel, which it was found impossible to float
+again.  It was heavy work towing the raft constantly backwards and
+forwards from the ships to the shore, but Diego Mendez had the
+satisfaction of being the last man to embark from the deserted
+settlement, and to see that not an ounce of stores or ammunition had been
+lost.
+
+Columbus, always quick to reward the services of a good man, kissed Diego
+Mendez publicly--on both cheeks, and (what doubtless pleased him much
+better) gave him command of the caravel of which poor Tristan had been
+the captain.
+
+With a favourable wind they sailed from this accursed shore at the end of
+April 1503.  It is strange, as Winsor points out, that in the name of
+this coast should be preserved the only territorial remembrance of
+Columbus, and that his descendant the Duke of Veragua should in his title
+commemorate one of the most unfortunate of the Admiral’s adventures.  And
+if any one should desire a proof of the utterly misleading nature of most
+of Columbus’s writings about himself, let him know that a few months
+later he solemnly wrote to the Sovereigns concerning this very place that
+“there is not in the world a country whose inhabitants are more timid;
+and the whole place is capable of being easily put into a state of
+defence.  Your people that may come here, if they should wish to become
+masters of the products of other lands, will have to take them by force
+or retire empty-handed.  In this country they will simply have to trust
+their persons in the hands of the savages.”  The facts being that the
+inhabitants were extremely fierce and warlike and irreconcilably hostile;
+that the river was a trap out of which in the dry season there was no
+escape, and the harbour outside a mere shelterless lee shore; that it
+would require an army and an armada to hold the place against the
+natives, and that any one who trusted himself in their hands would
+share the fate of the unhappy Diego Tristan.  One may choose between
+believing that the Admiral’s memory had entirely failed him (although he
+had not been backward in making a minute record, of all his sufferings)
+or that he was craftily attempting to deceive the Sovereigns.  My own
+belief is that he was neither trying to deceive anybody nor that he had
+forgotten anything, but that he was simply incapable of uttering the bare
+truth when he had a pen in his hand.
+
+
+From their position on the coast of Veragua Espanola bore almost due
+north; but Columbus was too good a seaman to attempt to make the island
+by sailing straight for it.  He knew that the steady west-going current
+would set him far down on his course, and he therefore decided to work up
+the coast a long way to the eastward before standing across for Espanola.
+The crew grumbled very much at this proceeding, which they did not
+understand; in fact they argued from it that the Admiral was making
+straight for Spain, and this, in the crazy condition of the vessels,
+naturally alarmed them.  But in his old high-handed, secret way the
+Admiral told them nothing; he even took away from the other captains all
+the charts that they had made of this coast, so that no one but himself
+would be able to find the way back to it; and he took a kind of pleasure
+in the complete mystification thus produced on his fellow-voyagers.
+“None of them could explain whither I went nor whence I came; they did
+not know the way to return thither,” he writes, somewhat childishly.
+
+But he was not back in Espanola yet, and his means for getting there were
+crumbling away beneath his feet.  One of the three remaining caravels was
+entirely riddled by seaworms and had to be abandoned at the harbour
+called Puerto Bello; and the company was crowded on to two ships.  The
+men now became more than ever discontented at the easterly course, and on
+May 1st, when he had come as far east as the Gulf of Darien, Columbus
+felt obliged to bear away to the north, although as it turned out he had
+not nearly made enough easting.  He stood on this course, for nine days,
+the west-going current setting him down all the time; and the first land
+that he made, on May 10th, was the group of islands off the western end
+of Cuba which he had called the Queen’s Gardens.
+
+He anchored for six days here, as the crews were completely exhausted;
+the ships’ stores were reduced to biscuits, oil, and vinegar; the vessels
+leaked like sieves, and the pumps had to be kept going continually.  And
+no sooner had they anchored than a hurricane came on, and brought up a
+sea so heavy that the Admiral was convinced that his ships could not live
+within it.  We have got so accustomed to reading of storms and tempests
+that it seems useless to try and drive home the horror and terror of
+them; but here were these two rotten ships alone at the end of the world,
+far beyond the help of man, the great seas roaring up under them in the
+black night, parting their worn cables, snatching away their anchors from
+them, and finally driving them one upon the other to grind and strain and
+prey upon each other, as though the external conspiracy of the elements
+against them both were not sufficient!  One writes or reads the words,
+but what does it mean to us? and can we by any conceivable effort of
+imagination realise what it meant to this group of human beings who lived
+through that night so many hundred years ago--men like ourselves with
+hearts to sink and faint, capable of fear and hunger, capable of misery,
+pain, and endurance?  Bruised and battered, wet by the terrifying surges,
+and entirely uncomforted by food or drink, they did somehow endure these
+miseries; and were to endure worse too before they were done with it.
+
+Their six days’ sojourn amid the Queen’s Gardens, then, was not a great
+success; and as soon as they were able they set sail again, standing
+eastward when the wind permitted them.  But wind and current were against
+them and all through the month of May and the early part of June they
+struggled along the south coast of Cuba, their ships as full of holes as
+a honeycomb, pumps going incessantly, and in addition the worn-out seamen
+doing heroic labour at baling with buckets and kettles.  Lee helm!  Down
+go the buckets and kettles and out run the wretched scarecrows of seamen
+to the weary business of tacking ship, letting go, brailing up, hauling
+in, and making fast for the thousandth time; and then back to the pumps
+and kettles again.  No human being could endure this for an indefinite
+time; and though their diet of worms represented by the rotten biscuit
+was varied with cassava bread supplied by friendly natives, the Admiral
+could not make his way eastward further than Cape Cruz.  Round that cape
+his leaking, strained vessels could not be made to look against the wind
+and the tide.  Could hardly indeed be made to float or swim upon the
+water at all; and the Admiral had now to consider, not whether he could
+sail on a particular point of the compass, but whether he could by any
+means avoid another course which the fates now proposed to him--namely, a
+perpendicular course to the bottom of the sea.  It was a race between the
+water and the ships, and the only thing the Admiral could think of was to
+turn southward across to Jamaica, which he did on June 23rd, putting into
+Puerto Bueno, now called Dry Harbour.  But there was no food there, and
+as his ships were settling deeper and deeper in the water he had to make
+sail again and drive eastwards as far as Puerto Santa Gloria, now called
+Don Christopher’s Cove.  He was just in time.  The ships were run ashore
+side by side on a sandy beach, the pumps were abandoned, and in one tide
+the ships were full of water.  The remaining anchor cables were used to
+lash the two ships together so that they would not move; although there
+was little fear of that, seeing the weight of water that was in them.
+Everything that could be saved was brought up on deck, and a kind of
+cabin or platform which could be fortified was rigged on the highest part
+of the ships.  And so no doubt for some days, although their food was
+almost finished, the wretched and exhausted voyagers could stretch their
+cramped limbs, and rest in the warm sun, and listen, from their safe
+haven on the firm sands, to the hated voice of the sea.
+
+
+Thanks to careful regulations made by the Admiral, governing the
+intercourse between the Spaniards and the natives ashore, friendly
+relations were soon established, and the crews were supplied with cassava
+bread and fruit in abundance.  Two officials superintended every purchase
+of provisions to avoid the possibility of any dispute, for in the event
+of even a momentary hostility the thatched-roof structures on the ships
+could easily have been set on fire, and the position of the Spaniards,
+without shelter amid a hostile population, would have been a desperate
+one.  This disaster, however, was avoided; but the Admiral soon began to
+be anxious about the supply of provisions from the immediate
+neighbourhood, which after the first few days began to be irregular.
+There were a large number of Spaniards to be fed, the natives never kept
+any great store of provisions for themselves, and the Spaniards were
+entirely at their mercy for, provisions from day to day.  Diego Mendez,
+always ready for active and practical service, now offered to take three
+men and make a journey through the island to arrange for the purchase of
+provisions from different villages, so that the men on the ships would
+not be dependent upon any one source.  This offer was gratefully
+accepted; and Mendez, with his lieutenants well supplied with toys and
+trinkets, started eastward along the north coast of Jamaica.  He made no
+mistakes; he was quick and clever at ingratiating himself with the
+caciques, and he succeeded in arranging with three separate potentates to
+send regular supplies of provisions to the men on the ships.  At each
+place where he made this arrangement he detached one of his assistants
+and sent him back with the first load of provisions, so that the regular
+line of carriage might be the more quickly established; and when they had
+all gone he borrowed a couple of natives and pushed on by himself until
+he reached the eastern end of the island.  He made friends here with a
+powerful cacique named Amerro, from whom he bought a large canoe, and
+paid for it with some of the clothing off his back.  With the canoe were
+furnished six Indians to row it, and Mendez made a triumphant journey
+back by sea, touching at the places where his depots had been established
+and seeing that his commissariat arrangements were working properly.  He
+was warmly received on his return to the ships, and the result of his
+efforts was soon visible in the daily supplies of food that now regularly
+arrived.
+
+Thus was one difficulty overcome; but it was not likely that either
+Columbus himself or any of his people would be content to remain for ever
+on the beach of Jamaica.  It was necessary to establish communication
+with Espanola, and thence with Spain; but how to do it in the absence of
+ships or even boats?  Columbus, pondering much upon this matter, one day
+calls Diego Mendez aside; walks him off, most likely, under the great
+rustling trees beyond the beach, and there tells him his difficulty.
+“My son,” says he, “you and I understand the difficulties and dangers of
+our position here better than any one else.  We are few; the Indians are
+many; we know how fickle and easily irritated they are, and how a
+fire-brand thrown into our thatched cabins would set the whole thing
+ablaze. It is quite true that you have very cleverly established a
+provision supply, but it is dependent entirely upon the good nature of
+the natives and it might cease to-morrow.  Here is my plan: you have a
+good canoe; why should some one not go over to Espanola in it and send
+back a ship for us?”
+
+Diego Mendez, knowing very well what is meant, looks down upon the
+ground.  His spoken opinion is that such a journey is not merely
+difficult but impossible journey in a frail native canoe across one
+hundred and fifty miles of open and rough sea; although his private
+opinion is other than that.  No, he cannot imagine such a thing being
+done; cannot think who would be able to do it.
+
+Long silence from the Admiral; eloquent silence, accompanied by looks no
+less eloquent.
+
+“Admiral,” says Mendez again, “you know very well that I have risked my
+life for you and the people before and would do it again.  But there are
+others who have at least as good a right to this great honour and peril
+as I have; let me beg of you, therefore, to summon all the company
+together, make this proposal to them, and see if any one will undertake
+it.  If not, I will once more risk my life.”
+
+The proposal being duly made to the assembled crews, every one, as
+cunning Mendez had thought, declares it impossible; every one hangs back.
+Upon which Diego Mendez with a fine gesture comes forward and volunteers;
+makes his little dramatic effect and has his little ovation.  Thoroughly
+Spanish this, significant of that mixture of vanity and bravery, of
+swagger and fearlessness, which is characteristic of the best in Spain.
+It was a desperately brave thing to venture upon, this voyage from
+Jamaica to Espanola in a native canoe and across a sea visited by
+dreadful hurricanes; and the volunteer was entitled to his little piece
+of heroic drama.
+
+While Mendez was making his preparations, putting a false keel on the
+canoe and fixing weather boards along its gunwales to prevent its
+shipping seas, fitting a mast and sail and giving it a coat of tar, the
+Admiral retired into his cabin and busied himself with his pen.  He wrote
+one letter to Ovando briefly describing his circumstances and requesting
+that a ship should be sent for his relief; and another to the Sovereigns,
+in which a long rambling account was given of the events of the voyage,
+and much other matter besides, dismally eloquent of his floundering in
+the quag.  Much in it--about Solomon and Josephus, of the Abbot Joachim,
+of Saint Jerome and the Great Khan; more about the Holy Sepulchre and the
+intentions of the Almighty in that matter; with some serious practical
+concern for the rich land of Veragua which he had discovered, lest it
+should share the fate of his other discoveries and be eaten up by idle
+adventurers.  “Veragua,” he says, “is not a little son which may be given
+to a stepmother to nurse.  Of Espanola and Paria and all the other lands
+I never think without the tears falling from my eyes; I believe that the
+example of these ought to serve for the others.”  And then this passage:
+
+     “The good and sound purpose which I always had to serve your
+     Majesties, and the dishonour and unmerited ingratitude, will not
+     suffer the soul to be silent although I wished it, therefore I ask
+     pardon of your Majesties.  I have been so lost and undone; until now
+     I have wept for others that your Majesties might have compassion on
+     them; and now may the heavens weep for me and the earth weep for me
+     in temporal affairs; I have not a farthing to make as an offering in
+     spiritual affairs.  I have remained here on the Indian islands in
+     the manner I have before said in great pain and infirmity, expecting
+     every day death, surrounded by innumerable savages full of cruelty
+     and by our enemies, and so far from the sacraments of the Holy
+     Mother Church that I believe the soul will be forgotten when it
+     leaves the body.  Let them weep for me who have charity, truth and
+     justice.  I did not undertake this voyage of navigation to gain
+     honour or material things, that is certain, because the hope already
+     was entirely lost; but I did come to serve your Majesties with
+     honest intention and with good charitable zeal, and I do not lie.”
+
+Poor old heart, older than its years, thus wailing out its sorrows to
+ears none too sympathetic; sad old voice, uplifted from the bright shores
+of that lonely island in the midst of strange seas!  It will not come
+clear to the head alone; the echoes of this cry must reverberate in the
+heart if they are to reach and animate the understanding.
+
+
+At this time also the Admiral wrote to his friend Gaspar Gorricio.  For
+the benefit of those who may be interested I give the letter in English.
+
+
+     REVEREND AND VERY DEVOUT FATHER:
+
+     “If my voyage should be as conducive to my personal health and the
+     repose of my house as it seems likely to be conducive to the
+     aggrandisement of the royal Crown of the King and Queen, my Lords,
+     I might hope to live more than a hundred years.  I have not time to
+     write more at length.  I hope that the bearer of this letter may be
+     a person of my house who will tell you verbally more than can be
+     told in a thousand papers, and also Don Diego will supply
+     information.  I beg as a favour of the Father Prior and all the
+     members of your religious house, that they remember me in all their
+     prayers.
+
+     “Done on the island of Jamaica, July 7, 1503.
+     “I am at the command of your Reverence.
+
+                                               .S.
+                                             .S.A.S.  XMY
+                                              Xpo FERENS.”
+
+
+Diego Mendez found some one among the Spaniards to accompany him, but his
+name is not recorded.  The six Indians were taken to row the canoe.  They
+had to make their way at first against the strong currents along the
+northern coast of Jamaica, so as to reach its eastern extremity before
+striking across to Espanola.  At one point they met a flotilla of Indian
+canoes, which chased them and captured them, but they escaped.  When they
+arrived at the end of the easterly point of Jamaica, now known as Morant
+Point, they had to wait two or three days for calm weather and a
+favourable wind to waft them across to Espanola, and while thus waiting
+they were suddenly surrounded and captured by a tribe of hostile natives,
+who carried them off some nine or ten miles into the island, and
+signified their intention of killing them.
+
+But they began to quarrel among themselves as to how they should divide
+the spoils which they had captured with the canoe, and decided that the
+only way of settling the dispute was by some elaborate trial of hazard
+which they used.  While they were busy with their trial Diego Mendez
+managed to escape, got back to the canoe, and worked his way back in it
+alone to the harbour where the Spaniards were encamped.  The other
+Spaniard who was with him probably perished, for there is no record of
+what became of him--an obscure life lost in a brave enterprise.
+
+One would have thought that Mendez now had enough of canoe voyages, but
+he had no sooner got back than he offered to set out again, only
+stipulating that an armed force should march along the coast by land to
+secure his safety until he could stand across to Espanola.  Bartholomew
+Columbus immediately put himself at the head of a large and well-armed
+party for this purpose, and Bartolomeo Fieschi, the Genoese captain of
+one of the lost caravels, volunteered to accompany Mendez in a second
+canoe.  Each canoe was now manned by six Spanish volunteers and ten
+Indians to row; Fieschi, as soon as they had reached the coast of
+Espanola, was to bring the good news to the Admiral; while Mendez must go
+on to San Domingo, procure a ship, and himself proceed to Spain with the
+Admiral’s letters.  The canoes were provisioned with water, cassava
+bread, and fish; and they departed on this enterprise some time in August
+1503.
+
+Their passage along the coast was protected by Bartholomew Columbus, who
+marched along with them on the shore.  They waited a few days at the end
+of the island for favourable weather, and finally said farewell to the
+good Adelantado, who we may be sure stood watching them until they were
+well out of sight.
+
+
+There was not a cloud in the sky when the canoes stood out to sea; the
+water was calm, and reflected the blistering heat of the sun.  It was not
+a pleasant situation for people in an open boat; and Mendez and Fieschi
+were kept busy, as Irving says, “animating the Indians who navigated
+their canoes, and who frequently paused at their labour.”  The poor
+Indians, evidently much in need of such animation, would often jump into
+the water to escape the intolerable heat, and after a short immersion
+there would return to their task.  Things were better when the sun went
+down, and the cool night came on; half the Indians then slept and half
+rowed, while half of the Spaniards also slept and the other half, I
+suppose, “animated.”  Irving also says that the animating half “kept
+guard with their weapons in hand, ready to defend themselves in the case
+of any perfidy on the part of their savage companions”; such perfidy
+being far enough from the thoughts of the savage companions, we may
+imagine, whose energies were entirely occupied with the oars.
+
+The next day was the same: savage companions rowing, Spaniards animating;
+Spaniards and savage companions alike drinking water copiously without
+regard for the smallness of their store.  The second night was very hot,
+and the savage companions finished the water, with the result that on the
+third day the thirst became a torment, and at mid-day the poor companions
+struck work.  Artful Mendez, however, had concealed two small kegs of
+water in his canoe, the contents of which he now administered in small
+doses, so that the poor Indians were enabled to take to their oars again,
+though with vigour much abated.  Presumably the Spaniards had put up
+their weapons by this time, for the only perfidy shown on the part of the
+savage companions was that one of them died in the following night and
+had to be thrown overboard, while others lay panting on the bottom of the
+canoes; and the Spaniards had to take their turn at the oars, although
+they were if anything in a worse case than the Indians.
+
+Late in the night, however, the moon rose, and Mendez had the joy of
+seeing its lower disc cut by a jagged line which proved to be the little
+islet or rock of Navassa, which lies off the westerly end of Espanola.
+New hope now animated the sufferers, and they pushed on until they were
+able to land on this rock, which proved to be without any vegetation
+whatsoever, but on the surface of which there were found some precious
+pools of rain-water.  Mendez was able to restrain the frantic appetites
+of his fellow-countrymen, but the savage companions were less wise, and
+drank their fill; so that some of them died in torment on the spot, and
+others became seriously ill.  The Spaniards were able to make a fire of
+driftwood, and boil some shell-fish, which they found on shore, and they
+wisely spent the heat of the day crouching in the shade of the rocks, and
+put off their departure until the evening.  It was then a comparatively
+easy journey for them to cross the dozen miles that separated them from
+Espanola, and they landed the next day in a pleasant harbour near Cape
+Tiburon.  Fieschi, true to his promise, was then ready to start back for
+Jamaica with news of the safe accomplishment of the voyage; but the
+remnant of the crews, Spaniards and savage companions alike, had had
+enough of it, and no threats or persuasions would induce them to embark
+again.  Mendez, therefore, left his friends to enjoy some little repose
+before continuing their journey to San Domingo, and, taking six natives
+of Espanola to row his canoe; set off along the coast towards the
+capital.  He had not gone half-way when he learned that Ovando was not
+there, but was in Xaragua, so he left his canoe and struck northward
+through the forest until he arrived at the Governor’s camp.
+
+Ovando welcomed Mendez cordially, praised him for his plucky voyage, and
+expressed the greatest concern at the plight of the Admiral; but he was
+very busy at the moment, and was on the point of transacting a piece of
+business that furnished a dismal proof of the deterioration which had
+taken place in him.  Anacaona--the lady with the daughter whom we
+remember--was now ruling over the province of Xaragua, her brother having
+died; and as perhaps her native subjects had been giving a little trouble
+to the Governor, he had come to exert his authority.  The narrow official
+mind, brought into contact with native life, never develops in the
+direction of humanity; and Ovando had now for some time made the great
+discovery that it was less trouble to kill people than to try to rule
+over them wisely.  There had evidently always been a streak of Spanish
+cruelty in him, which had been much developed by his residence in
+Espanola; and to cruelty and narrow officialdom he now added treachery of
+a very monstrous and horrible kind.
+
+He announced his intention of paying a state visit to Anacaona, who
+thereupon summoned all her tributary chiefs to a kind of levee held in
+his honour.  In the midst of the levee, at a given signal, Ovando’s
+soldiers rushed in, seized the caciques, fastened them to the wooden
+pillars of the house, and set the whole thing on fire; the caciques being
+thus miserably roasted alive.  While this was going on the atrocious work
+was completed by the soldiers massacring every native they could see
+--children, women, and old men included--and Anacaona herself was taken
+and hanged.
+
+All these things Diego Mendez had to witness; and when they were over,
+Ovando still had excuses for not hurrying to the relief of the Admiral.
+He had embarked on a campaign of extermination against the natives, and
+he followed up his atrocities at Xaragua by an expedition to the eastern
+end of Espanola, where very much the same kind of business was
+transacted.  Weeks and months passed in this bloody cruelty, and there
+was always an excuse for putting off Mendez.  Now it was because of the
+operations which he dignified by the name of wars, and now because he had
+no ship suitable for sending to Jamaica; but the truth was that Ovando,
+the springs of whose humanity had been entirely dried up during his
+disastrous reign in Espanola, did not want Columbus to see with his own
+eyes the terrible state of the island, and was callous enough to leave
+him either to perish or to find his own way back to the world.  It was
+only when news came that a fleet of caravels was expected from Spain that
+Ovando could no longer prevent Mendez from going to San Domingo and,
+purchasing one of them.
+
+Ovando had indeed lost all but the outer semblance of a man; the soul or
+animating part of him had entirely gone to corruption.  He had no
+interest in rescuing the Admiral; he had, on the contrary, great interest
+in leaving him unrescued; but curiosity as to his fate, and fear as to
+his actions in case he should return to Espanola, induced the Governor to
+make some effort towards spying cut his condition.  He had a number of
+trained rascals under his command--among them Diego de Escobar, one of
+Roldan’s bright brigade; and Ovando had no sooner seen Mendez depart on
+his journey to San Domingo than he sent this Escobar to embark in a small
+caravel on a visit to Jamaica in order to see if the Admiral was still
+alive.  The caravel had to be small, so that there could be no chance of
+bringing off the 130 men who had been left to perish there; and various
+astute instructions were given to Escobar in order to prevent his arrival
+being of any comfort or assistance to the shipwrecked ones.  And so
+Escobar sailed; and so, in the month of March 1504, eight months after
+the vanishing of Mendez below the eastern horizon, the miserable company
+encamped on the two decaying ships on the sands at Puerto Santa Gloria
+descried with joyful excitement the sails of a Spanish caravel standing
+in to the shore.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE ECLIPSE OF THE MOON
+
+We must now return to the little settlement on the coast of Jamaica
+--those two wornout caravels, lashed together with ropes and bridged by an
+erection of wood and thatch, in which the forlorn little company was
+established.  In all communities of men so situated there are alternate
+periods of action and reaction, and after the excitement incidental to
+the departure of Mendez, and the return of Bartholomew with the news that
+he had got safely away, there followed a time of reaction, in which the
+Spaniards looked dismally out across the empty sea and wondered when, if
+ever, their salvation would come.  Columbus himself was now a confirmed
+invalid, and could hardly ever leave his bed under the thatch; and in his
+own condition of pain and depression his influence on the rest of the
+crew must inevitably have been less inspiriting than it had formerly
+been.  The men themselves, moreover, began to grow sickly, chiefly on
+account of the soft vegetable food, to which they were not accustomed,
+and partly because of their cramped quarters and the moist, unhealthy
+climate, which was the very opposite of what they needed after their long
+period of suffering and hardship at sea.
+
+As the days and weeks passed, with no occupation save the daily business
+of collecting food that gradually became more and more nauseous to them,
+and of straining their eyes across the empty blue of the sea in an
+anxious search for the returning canoes of Fieschi, the spirits of the
+castaways sank lower and lower.  Inevitably their discontent became
+articulate and broke out into murmurings.  The usual remedy for this
+state of affairs is to keep the men employed at some hard work; but there
+was no work for them to do, and the spirit of dissatisfaction had ample
+opportunity to spread.  As usual it soon took the form of hostility to
+the Admiral.  They seem to have borne him no love or gratitude for his
+masterly guiding of them through so many dangers; and now when he lay ill
+and in suffering his treacherous followers must needs fasten upon him the
+responsibility for their condition.  After a month or two had passed, and
+it became certain that Fieschi was not coming back, the castaways could
+only suppose that he and Mendez had either been captured by natives or
+had perished at sea, and that their fellow-countrymen must still be
+without news of the Admiral’s predicament.  They began to say also that
+the Admiral was banished from Spain; that there was no desire or
+intention on the part of the Sovereigns to send an expedition to his
+relief; even if they had known of his condition; and that in any case
+they must long ago have given him up for lost.
+
+When the pot boils the scum rises to the surface, and the first result of
+these disloyal murmurings and agitations was to bring into prominence the
+two brothers, Francisco and Diego de Porras, who, it will be remembered,
+owed their presence with the expedition entirely to the Admiral’s good
+nature in complying with the request of their brother-in-law Morales, who
+had apparently wished to find some distant occupation for them.  They had
+been given honourable posts as officers, in which they had not proved
+competent; but the Admiral had always treated them with kindness and
+courtesy, regarding them more as guests than as servants.  Who or what
+these Porras brothers were, where they came from, who were their father
+and mother, or what was their training, I do not know; it is enough for
+us to know that the result of it all had been the production of a couple
+of very mean scoundrels, who now found an opportunity to exercise their
+scoundrelism.
+
+When they discovered the nature of the murmuring and discontent among the
+crew they immediately set them to work it up into open mutiny.  They
+represented that, as Mendez had undoubtedly perished, there was no hope
+of relief from Espanola; that the Admiral did not even expect such
+relief, knowing that the island was forbidden ground to him.  They
+insinuated that he was as well content to remain in Jamaica as anywhere
+else, since he had to undergo a period of banishment until his friends at
+Court could procure his forgiveness.  They were all, said the Porras
+brothers, being made tools for the Admiral’s convenience; as he did not
+wish to leave Jamaica himself, he was keeping them all there, to perish
+as likely as not, and in the meantime to form a bodyguard, and establish
+a service for himself.  The Porras brothers suggested that, under these
+circumstances, it would be as well to take a fleet of native canoes from
+the Indians and make their own way to Espanola; the Admiral would never
+undertake the voyage himself, being too helpless from the gout; but it
+would be absurd if the whole company were to be allowed to perish because
+of the infirmities of one man.  They reminded the murmurers that they
+would not be the first people who had rebelled with success against the
+despotic rule of Columbus, and that the conduct of the Sovereigns on a
+former occasion afforded them some promise that those who rebelled again
+would receive something quite different from punishment.
+
+Christmas passed, the old year went out in this strange, unhomelike
+place, and the new year came in.  The Admiral, as we have seen, was now
+almost entirely crippled and confined to his bed; and he was lying alone
+in his cabin on the second day of the year when Francisco de Porras
+abruptly entered.  Something very odd and flurried about Porras; he jerks
+and stammers, and suddenly breaks out into a flood of agitated speech, in
+which the Admiral distinguishes a stream of bitter reproach and
+impertinence.  The thing forms itself into nothing more or less than a
+hurried, gabbling complaint; the people are dissatisfied at being kept
+here week after week with no hope of relief; they accuse the Admiral of
+neglecting their interests; and so on.  Columbus, raising himself in his
+bed, tries to pacify Porras; gives him reasons why it is impossible for
+them to depart in canoes; makes every endeavour, in short, to bring this
+miserable fellow back to his duties.  He is watching Porras’s eye all the
+time; sees that he is too excited to be pacified by reason, and suspects
+that he has considerable support behind him; and suggests that the crew
+had better all be assembled and a consultation held as to the best course
+to pursue.
+
+It is no good to reason with mutineers; and the Admiral has no sooner
+made this suggestion than he sees that it was a mistake.  Porras scoffs
+at it; action, not consultation, is what he demands; in short he presents
+an ultimatum to the Admiral--either to embark with the whole company at
+once, or stay behind in Jamaica at his own pleasure.  And then, turning
+his back on Columbus and raising his voice, he calls out, “I am for
+Castile; those who choose may follow me!”
+
+The shout was a signal, and immediately from every part of the vessel
+resounded the voices of the Spaniards, crying out that they would follow
+Porras.  In the midst of the confusion Columbus hobbled out of his bed
+and staggered on to the deck; Bartholomew seized his weapons and prepared
+for action; but the whole of the crew was not mutinous, and there was a
+large enough loyal remnant to make it unwise for the chicken-hearted
+mutineers to do more for the moment than shout: Some of them, it is true,
+were heard threatening the life of the Admiral, but he was hurried back
+to his bed by a few of the faithful ones, and others of them rushed up to
+the fierce Bartholomew, and with great difficulty persuaded him to drop
+his lance and retire to Christopher’s cabin with him while they dealt
+with the offenders.  They begged Columbus to let the scoundrels go if
+they wished to, as the condition of those who remained would be improved
+rather than hurt by their absence, and they would be a good riddance.
+They then went back to the deck and told Porras and his followers that
+the sooner they went the better, and that nobody would interfere with
+their going as long as they offered no one any violence.
+
+The Admiral had some time before purchased some good canoes from the
+natives, and the mutineers seized ten of these and loaded them with
+native provisions.  Every effort was made to add to the number of the
+disloyal ones; and when they saw their friends making ready to depart
+several of these did actually join.  There were forty-eight who finally
+embarked with the brothers Porras; and there would have been more, but
+that so many of them were sick and unable to face the exposure of the
+voyage.  As it was, those who remained witnessed with no very cheerful
+emotions the departure of their companions, and even in some cases fell
+to tears and lamentations.  The poor old Admiral struggled out of his bed
+again, went round among the sick and the loyal, cheering them and
+comforting them, and promising to use every effort of the power left to
+him to secure an adequate reward for their loyalty when he should return
+to Spain.
+
+We need only follow the career of Porras and his deserters for the
+present far enough to see them safely off the premises and out of the way
+of the Admiral and our narrative.  They coasted along the shore of
+Jamaica to the eastward as Mendez had done, landing whenever they had a
+mind to, and robbing and outraging the natives; and they took a
+particularly mean and dirty revenge on the Admiral by committing all
+their robbings and outragings as though under his authority, assuring the
+offended Indians that what they did they did by his command and that what
+they took he would pay for; so that as they went along they sowed seeds
+of grievance and hostility against the Admiral.  They told the natives,
+moreover, that Columbus was an enemy of all Indians, and that they would
+be very well advised to kill him and get him out of the way.
+
+They had not managed very well with the navigation of the canoes; and
+while they were waiting for fine weather at the eastern end of the island
+they collected a number of natives to act as oarsmen.  When they thought
+the weather suitable they put to sea in the direction of Espanola.  They
+were only about fifteen miles from the shore, however, when the wind
+began to head them and to send up something of a sea; not rough, but
+enough to make the crank and overloaded canoes roll heavily, for they had
+not been prepared, as those of Mendez were, with false keels and
+weather-boards.  The Spaniards got frightened and turned back to
+Jamaica; but the sea became rougher, the canoes rolled more and more,
+they often shipped a quantity of water, and the situation began to look
+serious.  All their belongings except arms and provisions were thrown
+overboard; but still, as the wind rose and the sea with it, it became
+obvious that unless the canoes were further lightened they would not
+reach the shore in safety. Under these circumstances the Spaniards
+forced the natives to leap into the water, where they swam about like
+rats as well as they could, and then came back to the canoes in order to
+hold on and rest themselves. When they did this the Spaniards slashed at
+them with their swords or cut off their hands, so that one by one they
+fell back and, still swimming about feebly as well as they could with
+their bleeding hands or stumps of arms, the miserable wretches perished
+and sank at last.
+
+By this dreadful expedient the Spaniards managed to reach Jamaica again,
+and when they landed they immediately fell to quarrelling as to what they
+should do next.  Some were for trying to make the island of Cuba, the
+wind being favourable for that direction; others were for returning and
+making their submission to the Admiral; others for going back and seizing
+the remainder of his arms and stores; others for staying where they were
+for the present, and making another attempt to reach Espanola when the
+weather should be more favourable.  This last plan, being the counsel of
+present inaction, was adopted by the majority of the rabble; so they
+settled themselves at a neighbouring Indian village, behaving in: the
+manner with which we are familiar.  A little later, when the weather was
+calm, they made another attempt at the voyage, but were driven back in
+the same way; and being by this time sick of canoe voyages, they
+abandoned the attempt, and began to wander back westward through the
+island, maltreating the natives as before, and sowing seeds of bitter
+rancour and hostility against the Admiral; in whose neighbourhood we
+shall unfortunately hear of them again.
+
+In the meantime their departure had somewhat relieved the condition of
+affairs on board the hulks.  There were more provisions and there was
+more peace; the Admiral, rising above his own infirmities to the
+necessities of the occasion, moved unweariedly among the sick, cheering
+them and nursing them back into health and good humour, so that gradually
+the condition of the little colony was brought into better order and
+health than it had enjoyed since its establishment.
+
+But now unfortunately the evil harvest sown by the Porras gang in their
+journey to the east of the island began to ripen.  The supplies of
+provisions, which had hitherto been regularly brought by the natives,
+began to appear with less punctuality, and to fall off both in quantity
+and quality.  The trinkets with which they were purchased had now been
+distributed in such quantities that they began to lose their novelty and
+value; sometimes the natives demanded a much higher price for the
+provisions they brought, and (having by this time acquired the art of
+bargaining) would take their stores away again if they did not get the
+price they asked.
+
+But even of this device they soon grew weary; from being irregular, the
+supplies of provisions from some quarters ceased altogether, and the
+possibilities of famine began to stare the unhappy castaways in the face.
+It must be remembered that they were in a very weak physical condition,
+and that among the so-called loyal remnant there were very few who were
+not invalids; and they were unable to get out into the island and forage
+for themselves.  If the able-bodied handful were to sally forth in search
+of provisions, the hulks would be left defenceless and at the mercy of
+the natives, of whose growing hostility the Admiral had by this time
+discovered abundant evidence.  Thus little by little the food supply
+diminished until there was practically nothing left, and the miserable
+company of invalids were confronted with the alternative of either dying
+of starvation or desperately attempting a canoe voyage.
+
+
+It was from this critical situation that the spirit and resource of
+Columbus once more furnished a way of escape, and in these circumstances
+that he invented and worked a device that has since become famous--the
+great Eclipse Trick.  Among his small library in the cabin of the ship
+was the book containing the astronomical tables of Regiomontanus; and
+from his study of this work he was aware that an eclipse of the moon was
+due on a certain date near at hand.  He sent his Indian interpreter to
+visit the neighbouring caciques, summoning them to a great conference to
+be held on the evening of the eclipse, as the Admiral had matters of
+great importance to reveal to them.  They duly arrived on the evening
+appointed; not the caciques alone, but large numbers of the native
+population, well prepared for whatever might take place.  Columbus then
+addressed them through his interpreter, informing him that he was under
+the protection of a God who dwelt in the skies and who rewarded all who
+assisted him and punished all his enemies.  He made an effective use of
+the adventures of Mendez and Porras, pointing out that Mendez, who took
+his voyage by the Admiral’s orders, had got away in safety, but that
+Porras and his followers, who had departed in disobedience and mutiny,
+had been prevented by the heavenly power from achieving their object.  He
+told them that his God was angry with them for their hostility and for
+their neglect to supply him with provisions; and that in token of his
+anger he was going to send them a dreadful punishment, as a sign of which
+they would presently see the moon change colour and lose its light, and
+the earth become dark.
+
+This address was spun out as long as possible; but even so it was
+followed by an interval in which, we may be sure, Columbus anxiously eyed
+the serene orb of night, and doubtless prayed that Regiomontanus might
+not have made a mistake in his calculations.  Some of the Indians were
+alarmed, some of them contemptuous; but it was pretty clearly realised on
+both sides that matters between them had come to a head; and probably if
+Regiomontanus, who had worked out these tables of figures and
+calculations so many years ago in his German home, had done his work
+carelessly or made a mistake, Columbus and his followers would have been
+massacred on the spot.  But Regiomontanus, God bless him!  had made no
+mistake.  Sure enough, and punctually to the appointed time, the dark
+shadow began to steal over the moon’s disc; its light gradually faded,
+and a ghostly darkness crept over the face of the world.  Columbus,
+having seen that all was right with the celestial machinery, had retired
+to his cabin; and presently he found himself besieged there in the dark
+night by crowds of natives frantically bringing what provisions they had
+and protesting their intention of continuing to bring them for the rest
+of their lives.  If only the Admiral would ask his God to forgive them,
+there was no limit to the amount of provisions that he might have!  The
+Admiral, piously thankful, and perhaps beginning to enjoy the situation a
+little, kept himself shut up in his cabin as though communing with the
+implacable deity, while the darkness deepened over the land and the shore
+resounded with the howling and sobbing of the terrified natives.  He kept
+a look-out on the sky; and when he saw that the eclipse was about to pass
+away, he came out and informed the natives that God had decided to pardon
+them on condition of their remaining faithful in the matter of
+provisions, and that as a sign of His mercy He would restore the light.
+The beautiful miracle went on through its changing phases; and, watching
+in the darkness, the terrified natives saw the silver edge of the moon
+appearing again, the curtain that had obscured it gradually rolling away,
+and land and sea lying visible to them and once more steeped in the
+serene light which they worshipped.  It is likely that Christopher slept
+more soundly that night than he had slept for many nights before.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+RELIEF OF THE ADMIRAL
+
+There was no further difficulty about provisions, which were punctually
+brought by the natives on the old terms; but the familiar, spirit of
+sedition began to work again among the unhappy Spaniards, and once more a
+mutiny, led this time by the apothecary Bernardo, took form--the
+intention being to seize the remaining canoes and attempt to reach
+Espanola.  This was the point at which matters had arrived, in March
+1504, when as the twilight was falling one evening a cry was raised that
+there was a ship in sight; and presently a small caravel was seen
+standing in towards the shore.  All ideas of mutiny were forgotten, and
+the crew assembled in joyful anticipation to await, as they thought, the
+coming of their deliverers.  The caravel came on with the evening breeze;
+but while it was yet a long way off the shore it was seen to be lying to;
+a boat was lowered and rowed towards the harbour.
+
+As the boat drew near Columbus could recognise in it Diego de Escobar,
+whom he remembered having condemned to death for his share in the
+rebellion of Roldan.  He was not the man whom Columbus would have most
+wished to see at that moment.  The boat came alongside the hulks, and a
+barrel of wine and a side of bacon, the sea-compliment customary on such
+occasions, was handed up.  Greatly to the Admiral’s surprise, however,
+Escobar did not come on board, but pushed his boat off and began to speak
+to Columbus from a little distance.  He told him that Ovando was greatly
+distressed at the Admiral’s misfortunes; that he had been much occupied
+by wars in Espanola, and had not been able to send a message to him
+before; that he greatly regretted he had no ship at present large enough
+to bring off the Admiral and his people, but that he would send one as
+soon as he had it.  In the meantime the Admiral was to be assured that
+all his affairs in Espanola were being attended to faithfully, and that
+Escobar was instructed to bring back at once any letters which the
+Admiral might wish to write.
+
+The coolness and unexpectedness of this message completely took away
+the breath of the unhappy Spaniards, who doubtless stood looking in
+bewilderment from Escobar to Columbus, unable to believe that the caravel
+had not been sent for their relief.  Columbus, however, with a
+self-restraint which cannot be too highly praised, realised that Escobar
+meant what he said, and that by protesting against his action or trying
+to interfere with it he would only be putting himself in the wrong.  He
+therefore retired immediately to his cabin and wrote a letter to Ovando,
+in which he drew a vivid picture of the distress of his people, reported
+the rebellion of the Porras brothers, and reminded Ovando that he relied
+upon the fulfilment of his promise to send relief.  The letter was
+handed over to Escobar, who rowed back with it to his caravel and
+immediately sailed away with it into the night.
+
+
+Before he could retire to commune with his own thoughts or to talk with
+his faithful brother, Columbus had the painful duty of speaking to his
+people, whose puzzled and disappointed faces must have cost him some
+extra pangs.  He told them that he was quite satisfied with the message
+from Ovando, that it was a sign of kindness on his part thus to send them
+news in advance that relief was coming, that their situation was now
+known in San Domingo, and that vessels would soon be here to take them
+away.  He added that he himself was so sure of these things that he had
+refused to go back with Escobar, but had preferred to remain with them
+and share their lot until relief should come.  This had the desired
+effect of cheering the Spaniards; but it was far from representing the
+real sentiments of Columbus on the subject.  The fact that Escobar had
+been chosen to convey this strange empty message of sympathy seemed to
+him suspicious, and with his profound distrust of Ovando Columbus began
+to wonder whether some further scheme might not be on foot to damage him
+in the eyes of the Sovereigns.  He was convinced that Ovando had meant to
+let him starve on the island, and that the real purpose of Escobar’s
+visit had been to find out what condition the Admiral was in, so that
+Ovando might know how to act.  It is very hard to get at the truth of
+what these two men thought of each other.  They were both suspicious,
+each was playing for his own hand, and Ovando was only a little more
+unscrupulous than Columbus; but there can be no doubt that whatever his
+motives may have been Ovando acted with abominable treachery and cruelty
+in leaving the Admiral unrelieved for nearly nine months.
+
+
+Columbus now tried to make use of the visit of Escobar to restore to
+allegiance the band of rebels that were wandering about in the
+neighbourhood under the leadership of the Porras brothers.  Why he should
+have wished to bring them back to the ships is not clear, for by all
+accounts he was very well rid of them; but probably his pride as a
+commander was hurt by the thought that half of his company had defied his
+authority and were in a state of mutiny.  At any rate he sent out an
+ambassador to Porras, offering to receive the mutineers back without any
+punishment, and to give them a free passage to Espanola in the vessels
+which were shortly expected, if they would return to their allegiance
+with him.
+
+The folly of this overture was made manifest by the treatment which it
+received.  It was bad enough to make advances to the Porras brothers, but
+it was still worse to have those advances repulsed, and that is what
+happened.  The Porras brothers, being themselves incapable of any
+single-mindedness, affected not to believe in the sincerity of the
+Admiral’s offer; they feared that he was laying some kind of trap for
+them; moreover, they were doing very well in their lawless way, and
+living very comfortably on the natives; so they told Columbus’s
+ambassadors that his offer was declined.  At the same time they
+undertook to conduct themselves in an amicable and orderly manner on
+condition that, when the vessels arrived, one of them should be
+apportioned to the exclusive use of the mutineers; and that in the
+meantime the Admiral should share with them his store of provisions
+and trinkets, as theirs were exhausted.
+
+This was the impertinent decision of the Porras brothers; but it did not
+quite commend itself to their followers, who were fearful of the possible
+results if they should persist in their mutinous conduct.  They were very
+much afraid of being left behind in the island, and in any case, having
+attempted and failed in the main object of their mutiny, they saw no
+reason why they should refuse a free pardon.  But the Porras brothers
+lied busily.  They said that the Admiral was merely laying a trap in
+order to get them into his power, and that he would send them home to
+Spain in chains; and they even went so far as to assure their
+fellow-rebels that the story of a caravel having arrived was not really
+true; but that Columbus, who was an adept in the arts of necromancy, had
+really made his people believe that they had seen a caravel in the dusk;
+and that if one had really arrived it would not have gone away so
+suddenly, nor would the Admiral and his brother and son have failed to
+take their passage in it.
+
+To consolidate the effect of these remarkable statements on the still
+wavering mutineers, the Porras brothers decided to commit them to an open
+act of violence which would successfully alienate them from the Admiral.
+They formed them, therefore, into an armed expedition, with the idea of
+seizing the stores remaining on the wreck and taking the Admiral
+personally.  Columbus fortunately got news of this, as he nearly always
+did when there was treachery in the wind; and he sent Bartholomew to try
+to persuade them once more to return to their duty--a vain and foolish
+mission, the vanity and folly of which were fully apparent to
+Bartholomew.  He duly set out upon it; but instead of mild words he took
+with him fifty armed men--the whole available able-bodied force, in
+fact--and drew near to the position occupied by the rebels.
+
+
+The exhortation of the Porras brothers had meanwhile produced its effect,
+and it was decided that six of the strongest men among the mutineers
+should make for Bartholomew himself and try to capture or kill him.  The
+fierce Adelantado, finding himself surrounded by six assailants, who
+seemed to be directing their whole effort against his life, swung his
+sword in a berserk rage and slashed about him, to such good purpose that
+four or five of his assailants soon lay round him killed or wounded.  At
+this point Francisco de Porras rushed in and cleft the shield held by
+Bartholomew, severely wounding the hand that held it; but the sword.
+stuck in the shield, and while Porras was endeavouring to draw it out
+Bartholomew and some others closed upon him, and after a sharp struggle
+took him prisoner.  The battle, which was a short one, had been meanwhile
+raging fiercely among the rest of the forces; but when the mutineers saw
+their leader taken prisoner, and many of their number lying dead or
+wounded, they scattered and fled, but not before Bartholomew’s force had
+taken several prisoners.  It was then found that, although the rebels had
+suffered heavily, none of Bartholomew’s men were killed, and only one
+other besides himself was wounded.  The next day the mutineers all came
+in to surrender, submitting an abject oath of allegiance; and Columbus,
+always strangely magnanimous to rebels and insurgents, pardoned them all
+with the exception of Francisco de Porras, who, one is glad to know, was
+confined in irons to be sent to Spain for trial.
+
+
+This submission, which was due to the prompt action of Bartholomew rather
+than to the somewhat feeble diplomacy of the Admiral, took place on March
+20th, and proved somewhat embarrassing to Columbus.  He could put no
+faith in the oaths and protestations of the mutineers; and he was very
+doubtful about the wisdom of establishing them once more on the wrecks
+with the hitherto orderly remnant.  He therefore divided them up into
+several bands, and placing each under the command of an officer whom he
+could trust, he supplied them with trinkets and despatched them to
+different parts of the island, for the purpose of collecting provisions
+and carrying on barter with the natives.  By this means the last month or
+two of this most trying and exciting sojourn on the island of Jamaica
+were passed in some measure of peace; and towards the end of June it was
+brought to an end by the arrival of two caravels.  One of them was the
+ship purchased by Diego Mendez out of the three which had arrived from
+Spain; and the other had been despatched by Ovando in deference, it is
+said, to public feeling in San Domingo, which had been so influenced by
+Mendez’s account of the Admiral’s heroic adventures that Ovando dared not
+neglect him any longer.  Moreover, if it had ever been his hope that the
+Admiral would perish on the island of Jamaica, that hope was now doomed
+to frustration, and, as he was to be rescued in spite of all, Ovando no
+doubt thought that he might as well, for the sake of appearances, have a
+hand in the rescue.
+
+The two caravels, laden with what was worth saving from the two abandoned
+hulks, and carrying what was left of the Admiral’s company, sailed from
+Jamaica on June 28, 1504.  Columbus’s joy, as we may imagine, was deep
+and heartfelt.  He said afterwards to Mendez that it was the happiest day
+of his life, for that he had never hoped to leave the place alive.
+
+The mission of Mendez, then, had been successful, although he had had to
+wait for eight months to fulfil it.  He himself, in accordance with
+Columbus’s instructions, had gone to Spain in another caravel of the
+fleet out of which he had purchased the relieving ship; and as he passes
+out of our narrative we may now take our farewell of him.  Among the many
+men employed in the Admiral’s service no figure stands out so brightly as
+that of Diego Mendez; and his record, almost alone of those whose service
+of the Admiral earned them office and distinction, is unblotted by any
+stain of crime or treachery.  He was as brave as a lion and as faithful
+as a dog, and throughout his life remained true to his ideal of service
+to the Admiral and his descendants.  He was rewarded by King Ferdinand
+for his distinguished services, and allowed to bear a canoe on his
+coat-of-arms; he was with the Admiral at his death-bed at Valladolid,
+and when he himself came to die thirty years afterwards in the same
+place he made a will in which he incorporated a brief record of the
+events of the adventurous voyage in which he had borne the principal
+part, and also enshrined his devotion to the name and family of
+Columbus.  His demands for himself were very modest, although there is
+reason to fear that they were never properly fulfilled.  He was
+curiously anxious to be remembered chiefly by his plucky canoe voyage;
+and in giving directions for his tomb, and ordering that a stone should
+be placed over his remains, he wrote: “In the centre of the said stone
+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 three hundred
+leagues, and let some letters be placed above it saying: Canoa.”  The
+epitaph that he chose for himself was in the following sense:
+
+                   Here lies the Honourable Gentleman
+
+                              DIEGO MENDEZ
+
+             He greatly served the royal crown of Spain in
+             the discovery and conquest of the Indies with
+                the Admiral Don Christopher Columbus of
+               glorious memory who discovered them, and
+              afterwards by himself, with his own ships,
+                         at his own expense.
+                            He died, etc.
+                  He begs from charity a PATERNOSTER
+                           and an AVE MARIA.
+
+
+Surely he deserves them, if ever an honourable gentleman did.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE HERITAGE OF HATRED
+
+Although the journey from Jamaica to Espanola had been accomplished in
+four days by Mendez in his canoe, the caravels conveying the party
+rescued from Puerto Santa Gloria were seven weary weeks on this short
+voyage; a strong north-west wind combining with the west-going current to
+make their progress to the north-west impossible for weeks at a time.  It
+was not until the 13th of August 1503 that they anchored in the harbour
+of San Domingo, and Columbus once more set foot, after an absence of more
+than two years, on the territory from the governorship of which he had
+been deposed.
+
+He was well enough received by Ovando, who came down in state to meet
+him, lodged him in his own house, and saw that he was treated with the
+distinction suitable to his high station.  The Spanish colony, moreover,
+seemed to have made something of a hero of Columbus during his long
+absence, and they received him with enthusiasm.  But his satisfaction in
+being in San Domingo ended with that.  He was constantly made to feel
+that it was Ovando and not he who was the ruler there;--and Ovando
+emphasised the difference between them by numerous acts of highhanded
+authority, some of them of a kind calculated to be extremely mortifying
+to the Admiral.  Among these things he insisted upon releasing Porras,
+whom Columbus had confined in chains; and he talked of punishing those
+faithful followers of Columbus who had taken part in the battle between
+Bartholomew and the rebels, because in this fight some of the followers
+of Porras had been killed.  Acts like these produced weary bickerings and
+arguments between Ovando and Columbus, unprofitable to them, unprofitable
+to us.  The Admiral seems now to have relapsed into a condition in which
+he cared only for two things, his honours and his emoluments.  Over every
+authoritative act of Ovando’s there was a weary squabble between him and
+the Admiral, Ovando claiming his right of jurisdiction over the whole
+territory of the New World, including Jamaica, and Columbus insisting
+that by his commission and letters of authority he had been placed in
+sole charge of the members of his own expedition.
+
+And then, as regards his emoluments, the Admiral considered himself (and
+not without justice) to have been treated most unfairly.  By the
+extravagant terms of his original agreement he was, as we know, entitled
+to a share of all rents and dues, as well as of the gold collected; but
+it had been no one’s business to collect these for him, and every one’s
+business to neglect them.  No one had cared; no one had kept any accounts
+of what was due to the Admiral; he could not find out what had been paid
+and what had not been paid.  He accused Ovando of having impeded his
+agent Carvajal in his duty of collecting the Admiral’s revenues, and of
+disobeying the express orders of Queen Isabella in that matter; and so
+on-a state of affairs the most wearisome, sordid, and unprofitable in
+which any man could be involved.
+
+And if Columbus turned his eyes from the office in San Domingo inland to
+that Paradise which he had entered twelve years before, what change and
+ruin, dreary, horrible and complete, did he not discover!  The birds
+still sang, and the nights were still like May in Cordova; but upon that
+happy harmony the sound of piteous cries and shrieks had long since
+broken, and along and black December night of misery had spread its pall
+over the island.  Wherever he went, Columbus found the same evidence of
+ruin and desolation.  Where once innumerable handsome natives had
+thronged the forests and the villages, there were now silence and smoking
+ruin, and the few natives that he met were emaciated, terrified, dying.
+Did he reflect, I wonder, that some part of the responsibility of all
+this horror rested on him?  That many a system of island government, the
+machinery of which was now fed by a steady stream of human lives, had
+been set going by him in ignorance, or greed of quick commercial returns?
+It is probable that he did not; for he now permanently regarded himself
+as a much-injured man, and was far too much occupied with his own wrongs
+to realise that they were as nothing compared with the monstrous stream
+of wrong and suffering that he had unwittingly sent flowing into the
+world.
+
+In the island under Ovando’s rule Columbus saw the logical results of his
+own original principles of government, which had recognised the right of
+the Christians to possess the persons and labours of the heathen natives.
+Las Casas, who was living in Espanola as a young priest at this time, and
+was destined by long residence there and in the West Indies to qualify
+himself as their first historian, saw what Columbus saw, and saw also the
+even worse things that happened in after years in Cuba and Jamaica; and
+it is to him that we owe our knowledge of the condition of island affairs
+at this time.  The colonists whom Ovando had brought out had come very
+much in the spirit that in our own day characterised the rush to the
+north-western goldfields of America.  They brought only the slightest
+equipment, and were no sooner landed at San Domingo than they set out
+into the island like so many picnic parties, being more careful to carry
+vessels in which to bring back the gold they were to find than proper
+provisions and equipment to support them in the labour of finding it.
+The roads, says Las Casas, swarmed like ant-hills with these adventurers
+rushing forth to the mines, which were about twenty-five miles distant
+from San Domingo; they were in the highest spirits, and they made it a
+kind of race as to who should get there first.  They thought they had
+nothing to do but to pick up shining lumps of gold; and when they found
+that they had to dig and delve in the hard earth, and to dig
+systematically and continuously, with a great deal of digging for very
+little gold, their spirits fell.  They were not used to dig; and it
+happened that most of them began in an unprofitable spot, where they
+digged for eight days without finding any gold.  Their provisions were
+soon exhausted; and in a week they were back again in San Domingo, tired,
+famished, and bitterly disappointed.  They had no genius for steady
+labour; most of them were virtually without means; and although they
+lived in San Domingo, on what they had as long as possible, they were
+soon starving there, and selling the clothes off their backs to procure
+food.  Some of them took situations with the other settlers, more fell
+victims to the climate of the island and their own imprudences and
+distresses; and a thousand of them had died within two years.
+
+Ovando had revived the enthusiasm for mining by two enactments.  He
+reduced the share of discovered gold payable to the Crown, and he
+developed Columbus’s system of forced labour to such an extent that the
+mines were entirely worked by it.  To each Spaniard, whether mining or
+farming, so many natives were allotted.  It was not called slavery; the
+natives were supposed to be paid a minute sum, and their employers were
+also expected to teach them the Christian religion.  That was the plan.
+The way in which it worked was that, a body of native men being allotted
+to a Spanish settler for a period, say, of six or eight months--for the
+enactment was precise in putting a period to the term of slavery--the
+natives would be marched off, probably many days’ journey from their
+homes and families, and set to work under a Spanish foreman.  The work,
+as we have already seen, was infinitely harder than that to which they
+were accustomed; and most serious of all, it was done under conditions
+that took all the heart out of the labour.  A man will toil in his own
+garden or in tilling his own land with interest and happiness, not
+counting the hours which he spends there; knowing in fact that his work
+is worth doing, because he is doing it for a good reason.  But put the
+same man to work in a gang merely for the aggrandisement of some other
+over-man; and the heart and cheerfulness will soon die out of him.
+
+It was so with these children of the sun.  They were put to work ten
+times harder than any they had ever done before, and they were put to it
+under the lash.  The light diet of their habit had been sufficient to
+support them in their former existence of happy idleness and dalliance,
+and they had not wanted anything more than their cassava bread and a
+little fish and fruit; now, however, they were put to work at a pressure
+which made a very different kind of feeding necessary to them, and this
+they did not get.  Now and then a handful of pork would be divided among
+a dozen of them, but they were literally starved, and were accustomed to
+scramble like dogs for the bones that were thrown from the tables of the
+Spaniards, which bones they ground up and mixed with their, bread so that
+no portion of them might be lost.  They died in numbers under these hard
+conditions, and, compared with their lives, their deaths must often have
+been happy.  When the time came for them to go home they were generally
+utterly worn out and crippled, and had to face a long journey of many
+days with no food to support them but what they could get on the journey;
+and the roads were strewn with the dead bodies of those who fell by the
+way.
+
+And far worse things happened to them than labour and exhaustion.  It
+became the custom among the Spaniards to regard the lives of the natives
+as of far less value than those of the dogs that were sometimes set upon
+them in sport.  A Spaniard riding along would make a wager with his
+fellow that he would cut the head off a native with one stroke of his
+sword; and many attempts would be laughingly made, and many living bodies
+hideously mutilated and destroyed, before the feat would be accomplished.
+Another sport was one similar to pigsticking as it is practised in India,
+except that instead of pigs native women and children were stuck with the
+lances.  There was no kind of mutilation and monstrous cruelty that was
+not practised.  If there be any powers of hell, they stalked at large
+through the forests and valleys of Espanola.  Lust and bloody cruelty, of
+a kind not merely indescribable but unrealisable by sane men and women,
+drenched the once happy island with anguish and terror.  And in payment
+for it the Spaniards undertook to teach the heathen the Christian
+religion.
+
+
+The five chiefs who had ruled with justice and wisdom over the island of
+Espanola in the early days of Columbus were all dead, wiped out by the
+wave of wild death and cruelty that had swept over the island.  The
+gentle Guacanagari, when he saw the desolation that was beginning to
+overwhelm human existence, had fled into the mountains, hiding his face
+in shame from the sons of men, and had miserably died there.  Caonabo,
+Lord of the House of Gold, fiercest and bravest of them all, who first
+realised that the Spaniards were enemies to the native peace, after
+languishing in prison in the house of Columbus at Isabella for some time,
+had died in captivity during the voyage to Spain.  Anacaona his wife, the
+Bloom of the Gold, that brave and beautiful woman, whose admiration of
+the Spaniards had by their bloody cruelties been turned into detestation,
+had been shamefully betrayed and ignominiously hanged.  Behechio, her
+brother, the only cacique who did not sue for peace after the first
+conquest of the island by Christopher and Bartholomew Columbus, was dead
+long ago of wounds and sorrow.  Guarionex, the Lord of the Vega Real, who
+had once been friendly enough, who had danced to the Spanish pipe and
+learned the Paternoster and Ave Maria, and whose progress in conversion
+to Christianity the seduction of his wives by those who were converting
+him had interrupted, after wandering in the mountains of Ciguay had been
+imprisoned in chains, and drowned in the hurricane of June 30, 1502.
+
+The fifth chief, Cotabanama, Lord of the province of Higua, made the last
+stand against Ovando in defence of the native right to existence, and was
+only defeated after severe battles and dreadful slaughters.  His
+territory was among the mountains, and his last insurrection was caused,
+as so many others had been, by the intolerable conduct of the Spaniards
+towards the wives and daughters of the Indians.  Collecting all his
+warriors, Cotabanama attacked the Spanish posts in his neighbourhood.
+At every engagement his troops were defeated and dispersed, but only to
+collect again, fight again with even greater fury, be defeated and
+dispersed again, and rally again against the Spaniards.  They literally
+fought to the death.  After every battle the Spaniards made a massacre of
+all the natives they could find, old men, children, and pregnant women
+being alike put to the sword or burned in their houses.  When their
+companions fell beside them, instead of being frightened they became more
+furious; and when they were wounded they would pluck the arrows out of
+their bodies and hurl them back at the Spaniards, falling dead in the
+very act.  After one such severe defeat and massacre the natives
+scattered for many months, hiding among the mountains and trying to
+collect and succour their decimated families; but the Spaniards, who with
+their dogs grew skilful at tracking the Indians and found it pleasant
+sport, came upon them in the places of refuge where little groups of them
+were sheltering their women and children, and there slowly and cruelly
+slaughtered them, often with the addition of tortures and torments in
+order to induce them to reveal the whereabouts of other bands.  When it
+was possible the Spaniards sometimes hanged thirteen of them in a row in
+commemoration of their Blessed Saviour and the Twelve Apostles; and while
+they were hanging, and before they had quite died, they would hack at
+them with their swords in order to test the edge of the steel.  At the
+last stand, when the fierceness and bitterness of the contest rose to a
+height on both sides, Cotabanama was captured and a plan made to broil
+him slowly to death; but for some reason this plan was not carried out,
+and the brave chief was taken to San Domingo and publicly hanged like a
+thief.
+
+
+After that there was never any more resistance; it was simply a case of
+extermination, which the Spaniards easily accomplished by cutting of the
+heads of women as they passed by, and impaling infants and little
+children on their lances as they rode through the villages.  Thus, in the
+twelve years since the discovery of Columbus, between half a million and
+a million natives, perished; and as the Spanish colonisation spread
+afterwards from island to island, and the banner of civilisation and
+Christianity was borne farther abroad throughout the Indies, the same
+hideous process was continued.  In Cuba, in Jamaica, throughout the
+Antilles, the cross and the sword, the whip-lash and the Gospel advanced
+together; wherever the Host was consecrated, hideous cries of agony and
+suffering broke forth; until happily, in the fulness of time, the dire
+business was complete, and the whole of the people who had inhabited this
+garden of the world were exterminated and their blood and race wiped from
+the face of the earth .  .  .  .  Unless, indeed, blood and race and hatred
+be imperishable things; unless the faithful Earth that bred and reared
+the race still keeps in her soil, and in the waving branches of the trees
+and the green grasses, the sacred essences of its blood and hatred;
+unless in the full cycle of Time, when that suffering flesh and blood
+shall have gone through all the changes of substance and condition, from
+corruption and dust through flowers and grasses and trees and animals
+back into the living body of mankind again, it shall one day rise up
+terribly to avenge that horror of the past.  Unless Earth and Time
+remember, O Children of the Sun!  for men have forgotten, and on the soil
+of your Paradise the African negro, learned in the vices of Europe,
+erects his monstrous effigy of civilisation and his grotesque mockery of
+freedom; unless it be through his brutish body, into which the blood and
+hatred with which the soil of Espanola was soaked have now passed, that
+they shall dreadfully strike at the world again.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE ADMIRAL COMES HOME
+
+On September 12, 1504., Christopher Columbus did many things for the last
+time.  He who had so often occupied himself in ports and harbours with
+the fitting out of ships and preparations for a voyage now completed at
+San Domingo the simple preparations for the last voyage he was to take.
+The ship he had come in from Jamaica had been refitted and placed under
+the command of Bartholomew, and he had bought another small caravel in
+which he and his son were to sail.  For the last time he superintended
+those details of fitting out and provisioning which were now so familiar
+to him; for the last time he walked in the streets of San Domingo and
+mingled with the direful activities of his colony; he looked his last
+upon the place where the vital scenes of his life had been set, for the
+last time weighed anchor, and took his last farewell of the seas and
+islands of his discovery.  A little steadfast looking, a little straining
+of the eyes, a little heart-aching no doubt, and Espanola has sunk down
+into the sea behind the white wake of the ships; and with its fading away
+the span of active life allotted to this man shuts down, and his powerful
+opportunities for good or evil are withdrawn.
+
+There was something great and heroic about the Admiral’s last voyage.
+Wind and sea rose up as though to make a last bitter attack upon the man
+who had disclosed their mysteries and betrayed their secrets.  He had
+hardly cleared the island before the first gale came down upon him and
+dismasted his ship, so that he was obliged to transfer himself and his
+son to Bartholomew’s caravel and send the disabled vessel back to
+Espanola.  The shouting sea, as though encouraged by this triumph, hurled
+tempest after tempest upon the one lonely small ship that was staggering
+on its way to Spain; and the duel between this great seaman and the vast
+elemental power that he had so often outwitted began in earnest.  One
+little ship, one enfeebled man to be destroyed by the power of the sea:
+that was the problem, and there were thousands of miles of sea-room, and
+two months of time to solve it in!  Tempest after tempest rose and drove
+unceasingly against the ship.  A mast was sprung and had to be cut away;
+another, and the woodwork from the forecastles and high stern works had
+to be stripped and lashed round the crazy mainmast to preserve it from
+wholesale destruction.  Another gale, and the mast had to be shortened,
+for even reinforced as it was it would not bear the strain; and so
+crippled, so buffeted, this very small ship leapt and staggered on her
+way across the Atlantic, keeping her bowsprit pointed to that region of
+the foamy emptiness where Spain was.
+
+The Admiral lay crippled in his cabin listening to the rush and bubble of
+the water, feeling the blows and recoils of the unending battle,
+hearkening anxiously to the straining of the timbers and the vessel’s
+agonised complainings under the pounding of the seas.  We do not know
+what his thoughts were; but we may guess that they looked backward rather
+than forward, and that often they must have been prayers that the present
+misery would come somehow or other to an end.  Up on deck brother
+Bartholomew, who has developed some grievous complaint of the jaws and
+teeth--complaint not known to us more particularly, but dreadful enough
+from that description--does his duty also, with that heroic manfulness
+that has marked his whole career; and somewhere in the ship young
+Ferdinand is sheltering from the sprays and breaking seas, finding his
+world of adventure grown somewhat gloomy and sordid of late, and feeling
+that he has now had his fill of the sea .  .  .  .  Shut your eyes and
+let the illusions of time and place fade from you; be with them for a
+moment on this last voyage; hear that eternal foaming and crashing of
+great waves, the shrieking of wind in cordage, the cracking and slatting
+of the sails, the mad lashing of loose ropes; the painful swinging, and
+climbing up and diving down, and sinking and staggering and helpless
+strivings of the small ship in the waste of water.  The sea is as empty
+as chaos, nothing for days and weeks but that infinite tumbling surface
+and heaven of grey storm-clouds; a world of salt surges encircled by
+horizons of dim foam.  Time and place are nothing; the agony and pain of
+such moments are eternal.
+
+But the two brothers, grim and gigantic in their sea power, subtle as the
+wind itself in their sea wit, win the battle.  Over the thousands of
+miles of angry surges they urge that small ship towards calm and safety;
+until one day the sea begins to abate a little, and through the spray and
+tumult of waters the dim loom of land is seen.  The sea falls back
+disappointed and finally conquered by Christopher Columbus, whose ship,
+battered, crippled, and strained, comes back out of the wilderness of
+waters and glides quietly into the smooth harbour of San Lucar, November
+7, 1504.  There were no guns or bells to greet the Admiral; his only
+salute was in the thunder of the conquered seas; and he was carried
+ashore to San Lucar, and thence to Seville, a sick and broken man.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+THE LAST DAYS
+
+Columbus, for whom rest and quiet were the first essentials, remained in
+Seville from November 1504 to May 1505, when he joined the Court at
+Segovia and afterwards at Salamanca and Valladolid, where he remained
+till his death in May 1506.  During this last period, when all other
+activities were practically impossible to him, he fell into a state of
+letter-writing--for the most part long, wearisome complainings and
+explainings in which he poured out a copious flood of tears and self-pity
+for the loss of his gold.
+
+It has generally been claimed that Columbus was in bitter penury and want
+of money, but a close examination of the letters and other documents
+relating to this time show that in his last days he was not poor in any
+true sense of the word.  He was probably a hundred times richer than any
+of his ancestors had ever been; he had, money to give and money to spend;
+the banks honoured his drafts; his credit was apparently indisputable.
+But compared with the fabulous wealth to which he would by this time have
+been entitled if his original agreement with the Crown of Spain had been
+faithfully carried out he was no doubt poor.  There is no evidence that
+he lacked any comfort or alleviation that money could buy; indeed he
+never had any great craving for the things that money can buy--only for
+money itself.  There must have been many rich people in Spain who would
+gladly have entertained him in luxury and dignity; but he was not the
+kind of man to set much store by such things except in so far as they
+were a decoration and advertisement of his position as a great man.  He
+had set himself to the single task of securing what he called his rights;
+and in these days of sunset he seems to have been illumined by some
+glimmer of the early glory of his first inspiration.  He wanted the
+payment of his dues now, not so much for his own enrichment, but as a
+sign to the world that his great position as Admiral and Viceroy was
+recognised, so that his dignities and estates might be established and
+consolidated in a form which he would be able to transmit to his remote
+posterity.
+
+Since he wrote so copiously and so constantly in these last days, the
+best picture of his mood and condition is afforded in his letters to his
+son Diego; letters which, in spite of their infinitely wearisome
+recapitulation and querulous complaint, should be carefully read by those
+who wish to keep in touch with the Admiral to the end.
+
+     Letter written by CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS to DON DIEGO, his Son,
+     November 21, 1504.
+
+     “VERY DEAR SON,--I received your letter by the courier.  You did
+     well in remaining yonder to remedy our affairs somewhat and to
+     employ yourself now in our business.  Ever since I came to Castile,
+     the Lord Bishop of Palencia has shown me favour and has desired that
+     I should be honoured.  Now he must be entreated that it may please
+     him to occupy himself in remedying my many grievances and in
+     ordering that the agreement and letters of concession which their
+     Highnesses gave me be fulfilled, and that I be indemnified for so
+     many damages.  And he may be certain that if their Highnesses do
+     this, their estate and greatness will be multiplied to them in an
+     incredible degree.  And it must not appear to him that forty
+     thousand pesos in gold is more than a representation of it; because
+     they might have had a much greater quantity if Satan had not
+     hindered it by impeding my design; for, when I was taken away from
+     the Indies, I was prepared to give them a sum of gold incomparable
+     to forty thousand pesos.  I make oath, and this may be for thee
+     alone, that the damage to me in the matter of the concessions their
+     Highnesses have made to me, amounts to ten millions each year, and
+     never can be made good.  You see what will be, or is, the injury to
+     their Highnesses in what belongs to them, and they do not perceive
+     it.  I write at their disposal and will strive to start yonder.  My
+     arrival and the rest is in the hands of our Lord.  His mercy is
+     infinite.  What is done and is to be done, St. Augustine says is
+     already done before the creation of the world.  I write also to
+     these other Lords named in the letter of Diego Mendez.  Commend me
+     to their mercy and tell them of my going as I have said above.  For
+     certainly I feel great fear, as the cold is so inimical to this, my
+     infirmity, that I may have to remain on the road.
+
+     “I was very much pleased to hear the contents of your letter and
+     what the King our Lord said, for which you kissed his royal hands.
+     It is certain that I have served their Highnesses with as much
+     diligence and love as though it had been to gain Paradise, and more,
+     and if I have been at fault in anything it has been because it was
+     impossible or because my knowledge and strength were not sufficient.
+     God, our Lord, in such a case, does not require more from persons
+     than the will.
+
+     “At the request of the Treasurer Morales, I left two brothers in the
+     Indies, who are called Porras.  The one was captain and the other
+     auditor.  Both were without capacity for these positions: and I was
+     confident that they could fill them, because of love for the person
+     who sent them to me.  They both became more vain than they had been.
+     I forgave them many incivilities, more than I would do with a
+     relation, and their offences were such that they merited another
+     punishment than a verbal reprimand.  Finally they reached such a
+     point that even had I desired, I could not have avoided doing what I
+     did.  The records of the case will prove whether I lie or not.  They
+     rebelled on the island of Jamaica, at which I was as much astonished
+     as I would be if the sun’s rays should cast darkness.  I was at the
+     point of death, and they martyrised me with extreme cruelty during
+     five months and without cause.  Finally I took them all prisoners,
+     and immediately set them free, except the captain, whom I was
+     bringing as a prisoner to their Highnesses.  A petition which they
+     made to me under oath, and which I send you with this letter, will
+     inform you at length in regard to this matter, although the records
+     of the case explain it fully.  These records and the Notary are
+     coming on another vessel, which I am expecting from day to day.  The
+     Governor in Santo Domingo took this prisoner.--His courtesy
+     constrained him to do this.  I had a chapter in my instructions in
+     which their Highnesses ordered all to obey me, and that I should
+     exercise civil and criminal justice over all those who were with me:
+     but this was of no avail with the Governor, who said that it was not
+     understood as applying in his territory.  He sent the prisoner to
+     these Lords who have charge of the Indies without inquiry or record
+     or writing.  They did not receive him, and both brothers go free.
+     It is not wonderful to me that our Lord punishes.  They went there
+     with shameless faces.  Such wickedness or such cruel treason were
+     never heard of.  I wrote to their Highnesses about this matter in
+     the other letter, and said that it was not right for them to consent
+     to this offence.  I also wrote to the Lord Treasurer that I begged
+     him as a favour not to pass sentence on the testimony given by these
+     men until he heard me.  Now it will be well for you to remind him of
+     it anew.  I do, not know how they dare to go before him with such an
+     undertaking.  I have written to him about it again and have sent him
+     the copy of the oath, the same as I send to you and likewise to
+     Doctor Angulo and the Licentiate Zapata.  I commend myself to the
+     mercy of all, with the information that my departure yonder will
+     take place in a short time.
+
+     “I would be glad to receive a letter from their Highnesses and to
+     know what they order.  You must procure such a letter if you see the
+     means of so doing.  I also commend myself to the Lord Bishop and to
+     Juan Lopez, with the reminder of illness and of the reward for my
+     services.
+
+     “You must read the letters which go with this one in order to act in
+     conformity with what they say.  Acknowledge the receipt of his
+     letter to Diego Mendez.  I do not write him as he will learn
+     everything from you, and also because my illness prevents it.
+
+     “It would be well for Carbajal and Jeronimo--[Jeronimo de Aguero, a
+     landowner in Espanola and a friend of Columbus]--to be at the-Court
+     at this time, and talk of our affairs with these Lords and with the
+     Secretary.
+
+     “Done in Seville, November 21.
+
+     “Your father who loves you more than himself.
+
+                                                    .S.
+                                                  .S.A.S.
+                                                    XMY
+                                                 Xpo FERENS.”
+
+     “I wrote again to their Highnesses entreating them to order that
+     these people who went with me should be paid, because they are poor
+     and it is three years since they left their homes.  The news which
+     they bring is more than extraordinary.  They have endured infinite
+     dangers and hardships.  I did not wish to rob the country, so as not
+     to cause scandal, because reason advises its being populated, and
+     then gold will be obtained freely without scandal.  Speak of this to
+     the Secretary and to the Lord Bishop and to Juan Lopez and to
+     whomever you think it advisable to do so.”
+
+
+The Bishop of Palencia referred to in this letter is probably Bishop
+Fonseca--probably, because it is known that he did become Bishop of
+Palencia, although there is a difference of opinion among historians as
+to whether the date of his translation to that see was before or after
+this letter.  No matter, except that one is glad to think that an old
+enemy--for Fonseca and Columbus had bitter disagreements over the fitting
+out of various expeditions--had shown himself friendly at last.
+
+
+     Letter written by CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS to DON DIEGO, November 28,
+     1504.
+
+     “VERY DEAR SON,--I received your letters of the 15th of this month.
+     It is eight days since I wrote you and sent the letter by a courier.
+     I enclosed unsealed letters to many other persons, in order that you
+     might see them, and having read them, seal and deliver them.
+     Although this illness of mine troubles me greatly, I am preparing
+     for my departure in every way.  I would very much like to receive
+     the reply from their Highnesses and wish you might procure it: and
+     also I wish that their Highnesses would provide for the payment of
+     these poor people, who have passed through incredible hardships and
+     have brought them such great news that infinite thanks should be
+     given to God, our Lord, and they should rejoice greatly over it.
+     If I [lie ?] the ‘Paralipomenon’--[ The Book of Chronicles]--and
+     the Book of Kings and the Antiquities of Josephus, with very many
+     others, will tell what they know of this.  I hope in our Lord to
+     depart this coming week, but you must not write less often on that
+     account.  I have not heard from Carbajal and Jeronimo.  If they are
+     there, commend me to them.  The time is such that both Carbajals
+     ought to be at Court, if illness does not prevent them.  My regards
+     to Diego Mendez.
+
+     “I believe that his truth and efforts will be worth as much as the
+     lies of the Porras brothers.  The bearer of this letter is Martin de
+     Gamboa.  I am sending by him a letter to Juan Lopez and a letter of
+     credit.  Read the letter to Lopez and then give it to him.  If you
+     write me, send the letters to Luis de Soria that he may send them
+     wherever I am, because if I go in a litter, I believe it will be by
+     La Plata.--[The old Roman road from Merida to Salamanca.]--May our
+     Lord have you in His holy keeping.  Your uncle has been very sick
+     and is now, from trouble with his jaws and his teeth.
+
+     “Done in Seville, November 28.
+
+     “Your father who loves you more than himself.
+
+                                                    .S.
+                                                  .S.A.S.
+                                                    XMY
+                                                 Xpo FERENS.”
+
+
+Bartholomew Columbus and Ferdinand were remaining with Christopher at
+Seville; Bartholomew probably very nearly as ill as the Admiral, although
+we do not hear so many complaints about it.  At any rate Diego, being ay
+Court, was the great mainstay of his father; and you can see the sick man
+sitting there alone with his grievances, and looking to the next
+generation for help in getting them redressed.  Diego, it is to be
+feared, did not receive these letters with so much patience and attention
+as he might have shown, nor did he write back to his invalid father with
+the fulness and regularity which the old man craved.  It is a fault
+common to sons.  Those who are sons will know that it does not
+necessarily imply lack of affection on Diego’s part; those who are
+fathers will realise how much Christopher longed for verbal assurance of
+interest and affection, even though he did not doubt their reality.  News
+of the serious illness of Queen Isabella had evidently reached Columbus,
+and was the chief topic of public interest.
+
+
+     Letter written by CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS to DON DIEGO, his Son,
+     December 1, 1504.
+
+     “VERY DEAR SON,--Since I received your letter of November 15 I have
+     heard nothing from you.  I wish that you would write me more
+     frequently.  I would like to receive a letter from you each hour.
+     Reason must tell you that now I have no other repose.  Many couriers
+     come each day, and the news is of such a nature and so abundant that
+     on hearing it all my hair stands on end; it is so contrary to what
+     my soul desires.  May it please the Holy Trinity to give health to
+     the Queen, our Lady, that she may settle what has already been
+     placed under discussion.  I wrote you by another courier Thursday,
+     eight days ago.  The courier must already be on his way back here.
+     I told you in that letter that my departure was certain, but that
+     the hope of my arrival there, according to experience, was very
+     uncertain, because my sickness is so bad, and the cold is so well
+     suited to aggravate it, that I could not well avoid remaining in
+     some inn on the road.  The litter and everything were ready.  The
+     weather became so violent that it appeared impossible to every one
+     to start when it was getting so bad, and that it was better for so
+     well-known a person as myself to take care of myself and try to
+     regain my health rather than place myself in danger.  I told you in
+     those letters what I now say, that you decided well in remaining
+     there (at such a time), and that it was right to commence occupying
+     yourself with our affairs; and reason strongly urges this.  It
+     appears to me that a good copy should be made of the chapter of that
+     letter which their Highnesses wrote me where they say they will
+     fulfil their promises to me and will place you in possession of
+     everything: and that this copy should be given to them with another
+     writing telling of my sickness, and that it is now impossible for me
+     to go and kiss their Royal feet and hands, and that the Indies are
+     being lost, and are on fire in a thousand places, and that I have
+     received nothing, and am receiving nothing, from the revenues
+     derived from them, and that no one dares to accept or demand
+     anything there for me, and I am living upon borrowed funds.  I spent
+     the money which I got there in bringing those people who went with
+     me back to their homes, for it would be a great burden upon my
+     conscience to have left them there and to have abandoned them.  This
+     must be made known to the Lord Bishop of Palencia, in whose favour
+     I have so much confidence, and also to the Lord Chamberlain.
+     I believed that Carbajal and Jeronimo would be there at such a time.
+     Our Lord is there, and He will order everything as He knows it to be
+     best for us.
+
+     “Carbajal reached here yesterday.  I wished to send him immediately
+     with this same order, but he excused himself profusely, saying that
+     his wife was at the point of death.  I shall see that he goes,
+     because he knows a great deal about these affairs.  I will also
+     endeavour to have your brother and your uncle go to kiss the hands
+     of Their Highnesses, and give them an account of the voyage if my
+     letters are not sufficient.  Take good care of your brother.  He has
+     a good disposition, and is no longer a boy.  Ten brothers would not
+     be too many for you.  I never found better friends to right or to
+     left than my brothers.  We must strive to obtain the government of
+     the Indies and then the adjustment of the revenues.  I gave you a
+     memorandum which told you what part of them belongs to me.  What
+     they gave to Carbajal was nothing and has turned to nothing.
+     Whoever desires to do so takes merchandise there, and so the eighth
+     is nothing, because, without contributing the eighth, I could send
+     to trade there without rendering account or going in company with
+     any one.  I said a great many times in the past that the
+     contribution of the eighth would come to nothing.  The eighth and
+     the rest belongs to me by reason of the concession which their
+     Highnesses made to me, as set forth in the book of my Privileges,
+     and also the third and the tenth.  Of the tenth I received nothing,
+     except the tenth of what their Highnesses receive; and it must be
+     the tenth of all the gold and other things which are found and
+     obtained, in whatever manner it may be, within this Admiralship, and
+     the tenth of all the merchandise which goes and comes from there,
+     after the expenses are deducted.  I have already said that in the
+     Book of Privileges the reason for this and for the rest which is
+     before the Tribunal of the Indies here in Seville, is clearly set
+     forth.
+
+     “We must strive to obtain a reply to my letter from their
+     Highnesses, and to have them order that these people be paid.  I
+     wrote in regard to this subject four days ago, and sent the letter
+     by Martin de Gamboa, and you must have seen the letter of Juan Lopez
+     with your own.
+
+     “It is said here that it has been ordered that three or four Bishops
+     of the Indies shall be sent or created, and that this matter is
+     referred to the Lord Bishop of Palencia.  After having commended me
+     to his Worship, tell him that I believe it will best serve their
+     Highnesses for me to talk with him before this matter is settled.
+
+     “Commend me to Diego Mendez, and show him this letter.  My illness
+     permits me to write only at night, because in the daytime my hands
+     are deprived of strength.  I believe that a son of Francisco Pinelo
+     will carry this letter.  Entertain him well, because he does
+     everything for me that he can, with much love and a cheerful
+     goodwill.  The caravel which broke her mast in starting from Santo
+     Domingo has arrived in the Algarves.  She brings the records of the
+     case of the Porras brothers.  Such ugly things and such grievous
+     cruelty as appear in this matter never were seen.  If their
+     Highnesses do not punish it, I do not know who will dare to go out
+     in their service with people.
+
+     “To-day is Monday.  I will endeavour to have your uncle and brother
+     start to-morrow.  Remember to write me very often, and tell Diego
+     Mendez to write at length.  Each day messengers go from here yonder.
+     May our Lord have you in His Holy keeping.
+
+     “Done in Seville, December 1.
+
+     “Your father who loves you as himself.
+
+                                                    .S.
+                                                  .S.A.S.
+                                                    XMY
+                                                 Xpo FERENS.”
+
+
+The gout from which the Admiral suffered made riding impossible to him,
+and he had arranged to have himself carried to Court on a litter when he
+was able to move.  There is a grim and dismal significance in the
+particular litter that had been chosen: it was no other than the funeral
+bier which belonged to the Cathedral of Seville and had been built for
+Cardinal Mendoza.  A minute of the Cathedral Chapter records the granting
+to Columbus of the use of this strange conveyance; but one is glad to
+think that he ultimately made his journey in a less grim though more
+humble method.  But what are we to think of the taste of a man who would
+rather travel in a bier, so long as it had been associated with the
+splendid obsequies of a cardinal, than in the ordinary litter of
+every-day use?  It is but the old passion for state and splendour thus
+dismally breaking out again.
+
+He speaks of living on borrowed funds and of having devoted all his
+resources to the payment of his crew; but that may be taken as an
+exaggeration.  He may have borrowed, but the man who can borrow easily
+from banks cannot be regarded as a poor man.  One is nevertheless
+grateful for these references, since they commemorate the Admiral’s
+unfailing loyalty to those who shared his hardships, and his unwearied
+efforts to see that they received what was due to them.  Pleasant also
+are the evidences of warm family affection in those simple words of
+brotherly love, and the affecting advice to Diego that he should love his
+brother Ferdinand as Christopher loved Bartholomew.  It is a pleasant
+oasis in this dreary, sordid wailing after thirds and tenths and eighths.
+Good Diego Mendez, that honourable gentleman, was evidently also at Court
+at this time, honestly striving, we may be sure, to say a good word for
+the Admiral.
+
+Some time after this letter was written, and before the writing of the
+next, news reached Seville of the death of Queen Isabella.  For ten years
+her kind heart had been wrung by many sorrows.  Her mother had died in
+1496; the next year her only son and heir to the crown had followed; and
+within yet another year had died her favourite daughter, the Queen of
+Portugal.  Her other children were all scattered with the exception of
+Juana, whose semi-imbecile condition caused her parents an anxiety
+greater even than that caused by death.  As Isabella’s life thus closed
+sombrely in, she applied herself more closely and more narrowly to such
+pious consolations as were available.  News from Flanders of the
+scandalous scenes between Philip and Juana in the summer of 1504 brought
+on an illness from which she really never recovered, a kind of feverish
+distress of mind and body in which her only alleviation was the
+transaction of such business as was possible for her in the direction of
+humanity and enlightenment.  She still received men of intellect and
+renown, especially travellers.  But she knew that her end was near, and
+as early as October she had made her will, in which her wishes as to the
+succession and government of Castile were clearly laid down.  There was
+no mention of Columbus in this will, which afterwards greatly mortified
+him; but it is possible that the poor Queen had by this time, even
+against her wish, come to share the opinions of her advisers that the
+rule of Columbus in the West Indies had not brought the most humane and
+happy results possible to the people there.
+
+During October and November her life thus beat itself away in a
+succession of duties faithfully performed, tasks duly finished,
+preparations for the great change duly made.  She died, as she would have
+wished to die, surrounded by friends who loved and admired her, and
+fortified by the last rites of the Church for her journey into the
+unknown.  Date, November 26, 1504, in the fifty-fourth year of her age.
+
+Columbus had evidently received the news from a public source, and felt
+mortified that Diego should not have written him a special letter.
+
+
+     Letter written by CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS to DON DIEGO, his Son,
+     December 3, 1504.
+
+     “VERY DEAR SON,--I wrote you at length day before yesterday and sent
+     it by Francisco Pinelo, and with this letter I send you a very full
+     memorandum.  I am very much astonished not to receive a letter from
+     you or from any one else, and this astonishment is shared by all who
+     know me.  Every one here has letters, and I, who have more reason to
+     expect them, have none.  Great care should be taken about this
+     matter.  The memorandum of which I have spoken above says enough,
+     and on this account I do not speak more at length here.  Your
+     brother and your uncle and Carbajal are going yonder.  You will
+     learn from them what is not said here.  May our Lord have you in His
+     Holy keeping.
+
+     “Done in Seville, December 3.
+
+     “Your father who loves you more than himself.
+
+                                                    .S.
+                                                  .S.A.S.
+                                                    XMY
+                                                 Xpo FERENS.”
+
+
+     Document of COLUMBUS addressed to his Son, DIEGO, and intended to
+     accompany the preceding letter.
+
+     “A memorandum for you, my very dear son, Don Diego, of what occurs
+     to me at the present time which must be done:--The principal thing
+     is, affectionately and with great devotion to commend the soul of
+     the Queen, our Lady, to God.  Her life was always Catholic and Holy
+     and ready for all the things of His holy service, and for this
+     reason it must be believed that she is in His holy glory and beyond
+     the desires of this rough and wearisome world.  Then the next thing
+     is to be watchful and exert one’s self in the service of the King,
+     our Lord, and to strive to keep him from being troubled.  His
+     Highness is the head of Christendom.  See the proverb which says
+     that when the head aches, all the members ache.  So that all good
+     Christians should entreat that he may have long life and health: and
+     those of us who are obliged to serve him more than others must join
+     in this supplication with great earnestness and diligence.  This
+     reason prompts me now with my severe illness to write you what I am
+     writing here, that his Highness may dispose matters for his service:
+     and for the better fulfilment I am sending your brother there, who,
+     although he is a child in days, is not a child in understanding; and
+     I am sending your uncle and Carbajal, so that if this, my writing,
+     is not sufficient, they, together with yourself, can furnish verbal
+     evidence.  In my opinion there is nothing so necessary for the
+     service of his Highness as the disposition and remedying of the
+     affair of the Indies.
+
+     “His Highness must now have there more than 40,000 or 50,000 gold
+     pieces.  I learned when I was there that the Governor had no desire
+     to send it to him.  It is believed among the other people as well
+     that there will be 150,000 pesos more, and the mines are very rich
+     and productive.  Most of the people there are common and ignorant,
+     and care very little for the circumstances.  The Governor is very
+     much hated by all of them, and it is to be feared that they may at
+     some time rebel.  If this should occur, which God forbid, the remedy
+     for the matter would then be difficult: and so it would be if
+     injustice were used toward them, either here or in other places,
+     with the great fame of the gold.  My opinion is that his Highness
+     should investigate this affair quickly and by means of a person who
+     is interested and who can go there with 150 or 200 people well
+     equipped, and remain there until it is well settled and without
+     suspicion, which cannot be done in less than three months: and that
+     an endeavour be made to raise two or three forces there.  The gold
+     there is exposed to great risk, as there are very few people to
+     protect it.  I say that there is a proverb here which says that the
+     presence of the owner makes the horse fat.  Here and wherever I may
+     be, I shall serve their Highnesses with joy, until my soul leaves
+     this body.
+
+     “Above I said that his Highness is the head of the Christians, and
+     that it is necessary for him to occupy himself in preserving them
+     and their lands.  For this reason people say that he cannot thus
+     provide a good government for all these Indies, and that they are
+     being lost and do not yield a profit, neither are they being handled
+     in a reasonable manner.  In my opinion it would serve him to intrust
+     this matter to some one who is distressed over the bad treatment of
+     his subjects.
+
+     “I wrote a very long letter to his Highness as soon as I arrived
+     here, fully stating the evils which require a prompt and efficient
+     remedy at once.  I have received no reply, nor have I seen any
+     provision made in the matter.  Some vessels are detained in San
+     Lucar by the weather.  I have told these gentlemen of the Board of
+     Trade that they must order them held until the King, our Lord, makes
+     provision in the matter, either by some person with other people,
+     or by writing.  This is very necessary and I know what I say.  It is
+     necessary that the authorities should order all the ports searched
+     diligently, to see that no one goes yonder to the Indies without
+     licence.  I have already said that there is a great deal of gold
+     collected in straw houses without any means of defence, and there
+     are many disorderly people in the country, and that the Governor is
+     hated, and that little punishment is inflicted and has been
+     inflicted upon those who have committed crimes and have come out
+     with their treasonable conduct approved.
+
+     “If his Highness decides to make some provision, it must be done at
+     once, so that these vessels may not be injured.
+
+     “I have heard that three Bishops are to be elected and sent to
+     Espanola.  If it pleases his Highness to hear me before concluding
+     this matter, I will tell in what manner God our Lord may be well
+     served and his Highness served and satisfied.
+
+     “I have given lengthy consideration to the provision for Espanola:”
+
+
+Yes, the Queen is in His Holy Glory, and beyond the desires of this rough
+and wearisome world; but we are not; we are still in a world where fifty
+thousand gold pieces can be of use to us, and where a word spoken in
+season, even in such a season of darkness, may have its effect with the
+King.  A strange time to talk to the King about gold; and perhaps Diego
+was wiser and kinder than his father thought in not immediately taking
+this strange document to King Ferdinand.
+
+
+     Letter written by CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS to DON DIEGO, his Son,
+     December 13, 1504
+
+     “VERY DEAR SON,--It is now eight days since your uncle and your
+     brother and Carbajal left here together, to kiss the royal hands of
+     his Highness, and to give an account of the voyage, and also to aid
+     you in the negotiation of whatever may prove to be necessary there.
+
+     “Don Ferdinand took from here 150 ducats to be expended at his
+     discretion.  He will have to spend some of it, but he will give you
+     what he has remaining.  He also carries a letter of credit for these
+     merchants.  You will see that it is very necessary to be careful in
+     dealing with them, because I had trouble there with the Governor, as
+     every one told me that I had there 11,000 or 12,000 castellanos, and
+     I had only 4000.  He wished to charge me with things for which I am
+     not indebted, and I, confiding in the promise of their Highnesses,
+     who ordered everything restored to me, decided to leave these
+     charges in the hope of calling him to account for them.  If any one
+     has money there, they do not dare ask for it, on account of his
+     haughtiness.  I very well know that after my departure he must have
+     received more than 5000 castellanos.  If it were possible for you to
+     obtain from his Highness an authoritative letter to the Governor,
+     ordering him to send the money without delay and a full account of
+     what belongs to me, by the person I might send there with my power
+     of attorney, it would be well; because he will not give it in any
+     other manner, neither to my friend Diaz or Velasquez, and they dare
+     not even speak of it to him.  Carbajal will very well know how this
+     must be done.  Let him see this letter.  The 150 ducats which Luis
+     de Soria sent you when I came are paid according to his desire.
+
+     “I wrote you at length and sent the letter by Don Ferdinand, also a
+     memorandum.  Now that I have thought over the matter further, I say
+     that, since at the time of my departure their Highnesses said over
+     their signature and verbally, that they would give me all that
+     belongs to me, according to my privileges--that the claim for the
+     third or the tenth and eighth mentioned in the memorandum must be
+     relinquished, and instead the chapter of their letter must be shown
+     where they write what I have said, and all that belongs to me must
+     be required, as you have it in writing in the Book of Privileges, in
+     which is also set forth the reason for my receiving the third,
+     eighth, and tenth; as there is always an opportunity to reduce the
+     sum desired by a person, although his Highness says in his letter
+     that he wishes to give me all that belongs to me.  Carbajal will
+     understand me very well if he sees this letter, and every one else
+     as well, as it is very clear.  I also wrote to his Highness and
+     finally reminded him that he must provide at once for this affair of
+     the Indies, that the people there may not be disturbed, and also
+     reminding him of the promise stated above.  You ought to see the
+     letter.
+
+     “With this letter I send you another letter of credit for the said
+     merchants.  I have already explained to you the reasons why expenses
+     should be moderated.  Show your uncle due respect, and treat your
+     brother as an elder brother should treat a younger.  You have no
+     other brother, and praised be our Lord, he is such a one as you need
+     very much.  He has proved and proves to be very intelligent.  Honour
+     Carbajal and Jeronimo and Diego Mendez.  Commend me to them all.  I
+     do not write them as there is nothing to write and this messenger is
+     in haste.  It is frequently rumoured here that the Queen, whom God
+     has, has left an order that I be restored to the possession of the
+     Indies.  On arrival, the notary of the fleet will send you the
+     records and the original of the case of the Porras brothers.  I have
+     received no news from your uncle and brother since they left.  The
+     water has been so high here that the river entered the city.
+
+     “If Agostin Italian and Francisco de Grimaldo do not wish to give
+     you the money you need, look for others there who are willing to
+     give it to you.  On the arrival here of your signature I will at
+     once pay them all that you have received: for at present there is
+     not a person here by whom I can send you money.
+
+     “Done to-day, Friday, December 13, 1504
+
+     “Your father who loves you more than himself.
+
+                                                    .S.
+                                                  .S.A.S.
+                                                    XMY
+                                                 Xpo FERENS.”
+
+
+     Letter written by CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS to his Son, DON DIEGO,
+     December 21, 1504.
+
+     “VERY DEAR SON, The Lord Adelantado and your brother and Carbajal
+     left here sixteen days ago to go to the Court.  They have not
+     written me since.  Don Ferdinand carried 150 ducats.  He must spend
+     what is necessary, and he carries a letter, that the merchants may
+     furnish you with money.  I have sent you another letter since, with
+     the endorsement of Francisco de Ribarol, by Zamora, the courier, and
+     told you that if you had made provision for yourself by means of my
+     letter, not to use that of Francisco de Ribarol.  I say the same now
+     in regard to another letter which I send you with this one, for
+     Francisco Doria, which letter I send you for greater security that
+     you may not fail to be provided with money.  I have already told you
+     how necessary it is to be careful in the expenditure of the money,
+     until their Highnesses give us law and justice.  I also told you
+     that I had spent 1200 castellanos in bringing these people to
+     Castile, of which his Highness owes me the greater part, and I wrote
+     him in regard to it asking him to order the account settled.
+
+     “If possible I should like to receive letters here each day.  I
+     complain of Diego Mendez and of Jeronimo, as they do not write me:
+     and then of the others who do not write when they arrive there.  We
+     must strive to learn whether the Queen, whom God has in His keeping,
+     said anything about me in her will, and we must hurry the Lord
+     Bishop of Palencia, who caused the possession of the Indies by their
+     Highnesses and my remaining in Castile, for I was already on my way
+     to leave it.  And the Lord Chamberlain of his Highness must also be
+     hurried.  If by chance the affair comes to discussion, you must
+     strive to have them see the writing which is in the Book of
+     Privileges, which shows the reason why the third, eighth, and tenth
+     are owing me, as I told you in another letter.
+
+     “I have written to the Holy Father in regard to my voyage, as he
+     complained of me because I did not write him.  I send you a copy of
+     the letter.  I would like to have the King, our Lord, or the Lord
+     Bishop of Palencia see it before I send the letter, in order to
+     avoid false representations.
+
+     “Camacho has told a thousand falsehoods about me.  To my regret I
+     ordered him arrested.  He is in the church.  He says that after the
+     Holidays are past, he will go there if he is able.  If I owe him, he
+     must show by what reason; for I make oath that I do not know it, nor
+     is it true.
+
+     “If without importunity a licence can be procured for me to go on
+     mule-back, I will try to leave for the Court after January, and I
+     will even go without this licence.  But haste must be made that the
+     loss of the Indies, which is now imminent, may not take place.  May
+     our Lord have you in His keeping.
+
+     “Done to-day, December 21.
+
+     “Your father who loves you more than himself.
+
+                                                    .S.
+                                                  .S.A.S.
+                                                    XMY
+                                                 Xpo FERENS.”
+
+
+     “This tenth which they give me is not the tenth which was promised
+     me.  The Privileges tell what it is, and there is also due me the
+     tenth of the profit derived from merchandise and from all other
+     things, of which I have received nothing.  Carbajal understands me
+     well.  Also remind Carbajal to obtain a letter from his Highness for
+     the Governor, directing him to send his accounts and the money I
+     have there, at once.  And it would be well that a Repostero of his
+     Highness should go there to receive this money, as there must be a
+     large amount due me.  I will strive to have these gentlemen of the
+     Board of Trade send also to say to the Governor that he must send my
+     share together with the gold belonging to their Highnesses.  But the
+     remedy for the other matter must not be neglected there on this
+     account.  I say that 7000 or 8000 pesos must have passed to my
+     credit there, which sum has been received since I left, besides the
+     other money which was not given to me.
+
+     “To my very dear son Don Diego at the Court.”
+
+
+All this struggling for the due payment of eighths and tenths makes
+wearisome reading, and we need not follow the Admiral into his
+distinctions between one kind of tenth and another.  There is something
+to be said on his side, it must be remembered; the man had not received
+what was due to him; and although he was not in actual poverty, his only
+property in this world consisted of these very thirds and eighths and
+tenths.  But if we are inclined to think poorly of the Admiral for his
+dismal pertinacity, what are we to think of the people who took advantage
+of their high position to ignore consistently the just claims made upon
+them?
+
+There is no end to the Admiral’s letter-writing at this time.
+Fortunately for us his letter to the Pope has been lost, or else we
+should have to insert it here; and we have had quite enough of his
+theological stupors.  As for the Queen’s will, there was no mention of
+the Admiral in it; and her only reference to the Indies showed that she
+had begun to realise some of the disasters following his rule there, for
+the provisions that are concerned with the New World refer exclusively to
+the treatment of the natives, to whose succour, long after they were past
+succour, the hand of Isabella was stretched out from the grave.  The
+licence to travel on mule-back which the Admiral asked for was made
+necessary by a law which had been passed forbidding the use of mules for
+this purpose throughout Spain.  There had been a scarcity of horses for
+mounting the royal cavalry, and it was thought that the breeding of
+horses had been neglected on account of the greater cheapness and utility
+of mules.  It was to encourage the use and breeding of horses that an
+interdict was laid on the use of mules, and only the very highest persons
+in the land were allowed to employ them.
+
+
+Letter written by CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS to his Son, DON DIEGO,
+December 29, 1504.
+
+     “VERY DEAR SON,--I wrote you at length and sent it by Don Ferdinand,
+     who left to go yonder twenty-three days ago to-day, with the Lord
+     Adelantado and Carbajal, from whom I have since heard nothing.
+     Sixteen days ago to-day I wrote you and sent it by Zamora, the
+     courier, and I sent you a letter of credit for these merchants
+     endorsed by Francisco de Ribarol, telling them to give you the money
+     you might ask for.  And then, about eight days ago, I sent you by
+     another courier a letter endorsed by Francisco Soria, and these
+     letters are directed to Pantaleon and Agostin Italian, that they may
+     give it to you.  And with these letters goes a copy of a letter
+     which I wrote to the Holy Father in regard to the affairs of the
+     Indies, that he might not complain of me any more.  I sent this copy
+     for his Highness to see, or the Lord Bishop of Palencia, so as to
+     avoid false representations.  The payment of the people who went
+     with me has been delayed.  I have provided for them here what I have
+     been able.  They are poor and obliged to go in order to earn a
+     living.  They decided to go yonder.  They have been told here that
+     they will be dealt with as favourably as possible, and this is
+     right, although among them there are some who merit punishment more
+     than favours.  This is said of the rebels.  I gave these people a
+     letter for the Lord Bishop of Palencia.  Read it, and if it is
+     necessary for them to go and petition his Highness, urge your uncle
+     and brother and Carbajal to read it also, so that you can all help
+     them as much as possible.  It is right and a work of mercy, for no
+     one ever earned money with so many dangers and hardships and no one
+     has ever rendered such great service as these people.  It is said
+     that Camacho and Master Bernal wish to go there--two creatures for
+     whom God works few miracles: but if they go, it will be to do harm
+     rather than good.  They can do little because the truth always
+     prevails, as it did in Espanola, from which wicked people by means
+     of falsehoods have prevented any profit being received up to the
+     present time.  It is said that this Master Bernal was the beginning
+     of the treason.  He was taken and accused of many misdemeanours,
+     for each one of which he deserved to be quartered.  At the request
+     of your uncle and of others he was pardoned, on condition that if he
+     ever said the least word against me and my state the pardon should
+     be revoked and he should be under condemnation.  I send you a copy
+     of the case in this letter.  I send you a legal document about
+     Camacho.  For more than eight days he has not left the church on
+     account of his rash statements and falsehoods.  He has a will made
+     by Terreros, and other relatives of the latter have another will of
+     more recent date, which renders the first will null, as far as the
+     inheritance is concerned: and I am entreated to enforce the latter
+     will, so that Camacho will be obliged to restore what he has
+     received.  I shall order a legal document drawn up and served upon
+     him, because I believe it is a work of mercy to punish him, as he is
+     so unbridled in his speech that some one must punish him without the
+     rod: and it will not be so much against the conscience of the
+     chastiser, and will injure him more.  Diego Mendez knows Master
+     Bernal and his works very well.  The Governor wished to imprison him
+     at Espanola and left him to my consideration.  It is said that he
+     killed two men there with medicines in revenge for something of less
+     account than three beans.  I would be glad of the licence to travel
+     on muleback and of a good mule, if they can be obtained without
+     difficulty.  Consult all about our affairs, and tell them that I do
+     not write them in particular on account of the great pain I feel
+     when writing.  I do not say that they must do the same, but that
+     each one must write me and very often, for I feel great sorrow that
+     all the world should have letters from there each day, and I have
+     nothing, when I have so many people there.  Commend me to the Lord
+     Adelantado in his favour, and give my regards to your brother and to
+     all the others.
+
+     “Done at Seville, December 29.
+
+     “Your father who loves you more than himself.
+
+                                                    .S.
+                                                  .S.A.S.
+                                                    XMY
+                                                 Xpo FERENS.”
+
+
+“I say further that if our affairs are to be settled according to
+conscience, that the chapter of the letter which their Highnesses wrote
+me when I departed, in which they say they will order you placed in
+possession, must be shown; and the writing must also be shown which is in
+the Book of Privileges, which shows how in reason and in justice the
+third and eighth and the tenth are mine.  There will always be
+opportunity to make reductions from this amount.”
+
+Columbus’s requests were not all for himself; nothing could be more
+sincere or generous than the spirit in which he always strove to secure
+the just payment of his mariners.
+
+Otherwise he is still concerned with the favour shown to those who were
+treasonable to him.  Camacho was still hiding in a church, probably from
+the wrath of Bartholomew Columbus; but Christopher has more subtle ways
+of punishment.  A legal document, he considers, will be better than a
+rod; “it will not be so much against the conscience of the chastiser, and
+will injure him (the chastised) more.”
+
+
+     Letter written by CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS to DON DIEGO, his Son,
+     January 18, 1505.
+
+     “VERY DEAR SON,--I wrote you at length by the courier who will
+     arrive there to-day, and sent you a letter for the Lord Chamberlain.
+     I intended to inclose in it a copy of that chapter of the letter
+     from their Highnesses in which they say they will order you placed
+     in possession; but I forgot to do it here.  Zamora, the courier,
+     came.  I read your letter and also those of your uncle and brother
+     and Carbajal, and felt great pleasure in learning that they had
+     arrived well, as I had been very anxious about them.  Diego Mendez
+     will leave here in three or four days with the order of payment
+     prepared.  He will take a long statement of everything and I will
+     write to Juan Velasquez.  I desire his friendship and service.  I
+     believe that he is a very honourable gentleman.  If the Lord Bishop
+     of Palencia has come, or comes, tell him how much pleased I have
+     been with his prosperity, and that if I go there I must stop with
+     his Worship even if he does not wish it, and that we must return to
+     our first fraternal love.  And that he could not refuse it because
+     my service will force him to have it thus.  I said that the letter
+     for the Holy Father was sent that his Worship might see it if he was
+     there, and also the Lord Archbishop of Seville, as the King might
+     not have opportunity to read it.  I have already told you that the
+     petition to their Highnesses must be for the fulfilment of what they
+     wrote me about the possession and of the rest which was promised me.
+     I said that this chapter of the letter must be shown them and said
+     that it must not be delayed, and that this is advisable for an
+     infinite number of reasons.  His Highness may believe that, however
+     much he gives me, the increase of his exalted dominions and revenue
+     will be in the proportion of 100 to 1, and that there is no
+     comparison between what has been done and what is to be done.  The
+     sending of a Bishop to Espanola must be delayed until I speak to his
+     Highness.  It must not be as in the other cases when it was thought
+     to mend matters and they were spoiled.  There have been some cold
+     days here and they have caused me great fatigue and fatigue me now.
+     Commend me to the favour of the Lord Adelantado.  May our Lord guard
+     and bless you and your brother.  Give my regards to Carbajal and
+     Jeronimo.  Diego Mendez will carry a full pouch there.  I believe
+     that the affair of which you wrote can be very easily managed.  The
+     vessels from the Indies have not arrived from Lisbon.  They brought
+     a great deal of gold, and none for me.  So great a mockery was never
+     seen, for I left there 60,000 pesos smelted.  His Highness should
+     not allow so great an affair to be ruined, as is now taking place.
+     He now sends to the Governor a new provision.  I do not know what it
+     is about.  I expect letters each day.  Be very careful about
+     expenditures, for it is necessary.
+
+     “Done January 18.
+     “Your father who loves you more than himself.
+
+
+There is playful reference here to Fonseca, with whom Columbus was
+evidently now reconciled; and he was to be buttonholed and made to read
+the Admiral’s letter to the Pope.  Diego Mendez is about to start, and is
+to make a “long statement”; and in the meantime the Admiral will write as
+many long letters as he has time for.  Was there no friend at hand, I
+wonder, with wit enough to tell the Admiral that every word he wrote
+about his grievances was sealing his doom, so far as the King was
+concerned?  No human being could have endured with patience this
+continuous heavy firing at long range to which the Admiral subjected his
+friends at Court; every post that arrived was loaded with a shrapnel of
+grievances, the dull echo of which must have made the ears of those who
+heard it echo with weariness.  Things were evidently humming in Espanola;
+large cargoes of negroes had been sent out to take the place of the dead
+natives, and under the harsh driving of Ovando the mines were producing
+heavily.  The vessels that arrived from the Indies brought a great deal
+of gold; “but none for me.”
+
+
+     Letter written by CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS to his Son, DON DIEGO,
+     February 5, 1505.
+
+     “VERY DEAR SON,--Diego Mendez left here Monday, the 3rd of this
+     month.  After his departure I talked with Amerigo Vespucci, the
+     bearer of this letter, who is going yonder, where he is called in
+     regard to matters of navigation.  He was always desirous of pleasing
+     me.  He is a very honourable man.  Fortune has been adverse to him
+     as it has been to many others.  His labours have not profited him as
+     much as reason demands.  He goes for me, and is very desirous of
+     doing something to benefit me if it is in his power.  I do not know
+     of anything in which I can instruct him to my benefit, because I do
+     not know what is wanted of him there.  He is going with the
+     determination to do everything for me in his power.  See what he can
+     do to profit me there, and strive to have him do it; for he will do
+     everything, and will speak and will place it in operation: and it
+     must all be done secretly so that there may be no suspicion.
+
+     “I have told him all that could be told regarding this matter, and
+     have informed him of the payment which has been made to me and is
+     being made.  This letter is for the Lord Adelantado also, that he
+     may see how Amerigo Vespucci can be useful, and advise him about it.
+     His Highness may believe that his ships went to the best and richest
+     of the Indies, and if anything remains to be learned more than has
+     been told, I will give the information yonder verbally, because it
+     is impossible to give it in writing.  May our Lord have you in his
+     Holy keeping.
+
+     “Done in Seville, February 5.
+
+     “Your father who loves you more than himself.
+
+
+This letter has a significance which raises it out of the ruck of this
+complaining correspondence.  Amerigo Vespucci had just returned from his
+long voyage in the West, when he had navigated along an immense stretch
+of the coast of America, both north and south, and had laid the
+foundations of a fame which was, for a time at least, to eclipse that of
+Columbus.  Probably neither of the two men realised it at this interview,
+or Columbus would hardly have felt so cordially towards the man who was
+destined to rob him of so much glory.  As a matter of fact the practical
+Spaniards were now judging entirely by results; and a year or two later,
+when the fame of Columbus had sunk to insignificance, he was merely
+referred to as the discoverer of certain islands, while Vespucci, who
+after all had only followed in his lead, was hailed as the discoverer of
+a great continent.  Vespucci has been unjustly blamed for this state of
+affairs, although he could no more control the public estimate of his
+services than Columbus could.  He was a more practical man than Columbus,
+and he made a much better impression on really wise and intelligent men;
+and his discoveries were immediately associated with trade and colonial
+development, while Columbus had little to show for his discoveries during
+his lifetime but a handful of gold dust and a few cargoes of slaves.  At
+any rate it was a graceful act on the part of Vespucci, whose star was in
+the ascendant, to go and seek out the Admiral, whose day was fast verging
+to night; it was one of those disinterested actions that live and have a
+value of their own, and that shine out happily amid the surrounding murk
+and confusion.
+
+
+     Letter signed by CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS to DON DIEGO, his Son,
+     February 25, 1505.
+
+     “VERY DEAR SON,--The Licientiate de Zea is a person whom I desire to
+     honour.  He has in his charge two men who are under prosecution at
+     the hands of justice, as shown by the information which is inclosed
+     in this letter.  See that Diego Mendez places the said petition with
+     the others, that they may be given to his Highness during Holy Week
+     for pardon.  If the pardon is granted, it is well, and if not, look
+     for some other manner of obtaining it.  May our Lord have you in His
+     Holy keeping.  Done in Seville, February 25, 1505.  I wrote you and
+     sent it by Amerigo Vespucci.  See that he sends you the letter
+     unless you have already received it.
+
+     “Your father.
+                    Xpo FERENS.//”
+
+
+This is the last letter of Columbus known to us otherwise an entirely
+unimportant document, dealing with the most transient affairs.  With it
+we gladly bring to an end this exposure of a greedy and querulous period,
+which speaks so eloquently for itself that the less we say and comment on
+it the better.
+
+In the month of May the Admiral was well enough at last to undertake the
+journey to Segovia.  He travelled on a mule, and was accompanied by his
+brother Bartholomew and his son Ferdinand.  When he reached the Court he
+found the King civil and outwardly attentive to his recitals, but
+apparently content with a show of civility and outward attention.
+Columbus was becoming really a nuisance; that is the melancholy truth.
+The King had his own affairs to attend to; he was already meditating a
+second marriage, and thinking of the young bride he was to bring home to
+the vacant place of Isabella; and the very iteration of Columbus’s
+complaints and demands had made them lose all significance for the King.
+He waved them aside with polite and empty promises, as people do the
+demands of importunate children; and finally, to appease the Admiral and
+to get rid of the intolerable nuisance of his applications, he referred
+the whole question, first to Archbishop DEA, and then to the body of
+councillors which had been appointed to interpret Queen Isabella’s will.
+The whole question at issue was whether or not the original agreement
+with Columbus, which had been made before his discoveries, should be
+carried out.  The King, who had foolishly subscribed to it simply as a
+matter of form, never believing that anything much could come of it, was
+determined that it should not be carried out, as it would give Columbus a
+wealth and power to which no mere subject of a crown was entitled.  The
+Admiral held fast to his privileges; the only thing that he would consent
+to submit to arbitration was the question of his revenues; but his titles
+and territorial authorities he absolutely stuck to.  Of course the
+council did exactly what the King had done.  They talked about the thing
+a great deal, but they did nothing.  Columbus was an invalid and broken
+man, who might die any day, and it was obviously to their interest to
+gain time by discussion and delay--a cruel game for our Christopher, who
+knew his days on earth to be numbered, and who struggled in that web of
+time in which mortals try to hurry the events of the present and delay
+the events of the future.  Meanwhile Philip of Austria and his wife
+Juana, Isabella’s daughter, had arrived from Flanders to assume the crown
+of Castile, which Isabella had bequeathed to them.  Columbus saw a chance
+for himself in this coming change, and he sent Bartholomew as an envoy to
+greet the new Sovereigns, and to enlist their services on the Admiral’s
+behalf.  Bartholomew was very well received, but he was too late to be of
+use to the Admiral, whom he never saw again; and this is our farewell to
+Bartholomew, who passes out of our narrative here.  He went to Rome after
+Christopher’s death on a mission to the Pope concerning some fresh
+voyages of discovery; and in 1508 he made, so far as we know, his one
+excursion into romance, when he assisted at the production of an
+illegitimate little girl--his only descendant.  He returned to Espanola
+under the governorship of his nephew Diego, and died there in 1514
+--stern, valiant, brotherly soul, whose devotion to Christopher must be
+for ever remembered and honoured with the name of the Admiral.
+
+
+From Segovia Columbus followed the Court to Salamanca and thence to
+Valladolid, where his increasing illness kept him a prisoner after the
+Court had left to greet Philip and Juana.  He had been in attendance upon
+it for nearly a year, and without any results: and now, as his infirmity
+increased, he turned to the settling of his own affairs, and drawing up
+of wills and codicils--all very elaborate and precise.  In these
+occupations his worldly affairs were duly rounded off; and on May 19,
+1506, having finally ratified a will which he had made in Segovia a year
+before, in which the descent of his honours was entailed upon Diego and
+his heirs, or failing him Ferdinand and his heirs, or failing him
+Bartholomew and his heirs, he turned to the settlement of his soul.
+
+His illness had increased gradually but surely, and he must have known
+that he was dying.  He was not without friends, among them the faithful
+Diego Mendez, his son Ferdinand, and a few others.  His lodging was in a
+small house in an unimportant street of Valladolid, now called the “Calle
+de Colon”; the house, .No. 7, still standing, and to be seen by curious
+eyes.  As the end approached, the Admiral, who was being attended by
+Franciscan monks, had himself clothed in a Franciscan habit; and so, on
+the 20th May 1506, he lay upon his bed, breathing out his life.
+
+               .  .  .  And as strange thoughts
+               Grow with a certain humming in my ears,
+               About the life before I lived this life,
+               And this life too, Popes, Cardinals, and priests,
+               Your tall pale mother with her talking eyes
+               And new-found agate urns fresh as day .  .  .
+
+.  .  .  we do not know what his thoughts were, as the shadows grew
+deeper about him, as the sounds of the world, the noises from the sunny
+street, grew fainter, and the images and sounds of memory clearer and
+louder.  Perhaps as he lay there with closed eyes he remembered things
+long forgotten, as dying people do; sounds and smells of the Vico Dritto
+di Ponticelli, and the feel of the hot paving-stones down which his
+childish feet used to run to the sea; noises of the sea also, the
+drowning swish of waters and sudden roar of breakers sounding to
+anxiously strained ears in the still night; bright sunlit pictures of
+faraway tropical shores, with handsome olive figures glistening in the
+sun; the sight of strange faces, the sound of strange speech, the smell
+of a strange land; the glitter of gold; the sudden death-shriek breaking
+the stillness of some sylvan glade; the sight of blood on the grass
+.  .  .  The Admiral’s face undergoes a change; there is a stir in the
+room; some one signs to the priest Gaspar, who brings forth his sacred
+wafer and holy oils and administers the last sacraments.  The wrinkled
+eyelids flutter open, the sea-worn voice feebly frames the responses;
+the dying eyes are fixed on the crucifix; and--“In manus tuas Domine
+commendo spiritum meum.”  The Admiral is dead.
+
+He was in his fifty-sixth year, already an old man in body and mind; and
+his death went entirely unmarked except by his immediate circle of
+friends.  Even Peter Martyr, who was in Valladolid just before and just
+after it, and who was writing a series of letters to various
+correspondents giving all the news of his day, never thought it worth
+while to mention that Christopher Columbus was dead.  His life flickered
+out in the completest obscurity.  It is not even known where he was first
+buried; but probably it was in the Franciscan convent at Valladolid.
+This, however, was only a temporary resting-place; and a few years later
+his body was formally interred in the choir of the monastery of Las
+Cuevas at Seville, there to lie for thirty years surrounded by continual
+chauntings.  After that it was translated to the cathedral in San
+Domingo; rested there for 250 years, and then, on the cession of that
+part of the island to France, the body was removed to Cuba.  But the
+Admiral was by this time nothing but a box of bones and dust, as also
+were brother Bartholomew and son Diego, and Diego’s son, all collected
+together in that place.  There were various examinations of the
+bone-boxes; one, supposed to be the Admiral’s, was taken to Cuba and
+solemnly buried there; and lately, after the conquest of the island in
+the Spanish-American War, this box of bones was elaborately conveyed to
+Seville, where it now rests.
+
+But in the meanwhile the Chapter of the cathedral in San Domingo had made
+new discoveries and examinations; had found another box of bones, which
+bore to them authentic signs that the dust it contained was the Admiral’s
+and not his grandson’s; and in spite of the Academy of History at Madrid,
+it is indeed far from unlikely that the Admiral’s dust does not lie in
+Spain or Cuba, but in San Domingo still.  Whole books have been written
+about these boxes of bones; learned societies have argued about them,
+experts have examined the bones and the boxes with microscopes; and
+meantime the dust of Columbus, if we take the view that an error was
+committed in the transference to Cuba, is not even collected all in one
+box.  A sacrilegious official acquired some of it when the boxes were
+opened, and distributed it among various curiosity-hunters, who have
+preserved it in caskets of crystal and silver.  Thus a bit of him is worn
+by an American lady in a crystal locket; a pinch of him lies
+in a glass vial in a New York mansion; other pinches in the Lennox
+Library, New York, in the Vatican, and in the University of Pavia.  In
+such places, if the Admiral should fail to appear at the first note of
+their trumpets, must the Angels of the Resurrection make search.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE MAN COLUMBUS
+
+It is not in any leaden box or crystal vase that we must search for the
+true remains of Christopher Columbus.  Through these pages we have
+traced, so far as has been possible, the course of his life, and followed
+him in what he did; all of which is but preparation for our search for
+the true man, and just estimate of what he was.  We have seen, dimly,
+what his youth was; that he came of poor people who were of no importance
+to the world at large; that he earned his living as a working man; that
+he became possessed of an Idea; that he fought manfully and diligently
+until he had realised it; and that then he found himself in a position
+beyond his powers to deal with, not being a strong enough swimmer to hold
+his own in the rapid tide of events which he himself had set flowing; and
+we have seen him sinking at last in that tide, weighed down by the very
+things for which he had bargained and stipulated.  If these pages had
+been devoted to a critical examination of the historical documents on
+which his life-story is based we should also have found that he
+continually told lies about himself, and misrepresented facts when the
+truth proved inconvenient to him; that he was vain and boastful to a
+degree that can only excite our compassion.  He was naturally and
+sincerely pious, and drew from his religion much strength and spiritual
+nourishment; but he was also capable of hypocrisy, and of using the
+self-same religion as a cloak for his greed and cruelty.  What is the
+final image that remains in our minds of such a man?  To answer this
+question we must examine his life in three dimensions.  There was its
+great outline of rise, zenith, and decline; there was its outward
+history in minute detail, and its conduct in varying circumstances; and
+there was the inner life of the man’s soul, which was perhaps simpler
+than some of us think.  And first, as to his life as a single thing.  It
+rose in poverty, it reached a brief and dazzling zenith of glory, it set
+in clouds and darkness; the fame of it suffered a long night of eclipse,
+from which it was rescued and raised again to a height of glory which
+unfortunately was in sufficiently founded on fact; and as a reaction
+from this, it has been in danger of becoming entirely discredited, and
+the man himself denounced as a fraud.  The reason for these surprising
+changes is that in those fifty-five years granted to Columbus for the
+making of his life he did not consistently listen to that inner voice
+which alone can hold a man on any constructive path.  He listened to it
+at intervals, and he drew his inspiration from it; but he shut his ears
+when it had served him, when it had brought him what he wanted.  In his
+moments of success he guided himself by outward things; and thus he was
+at one moment a seer and ready to be a martyr, and at the next moment he
+was an opportunist, watching to see which way the wind would blow, and
+ready to trim his sails in the necessary direction.  Such conduct of a
+man’s life does not make for single light or for true greatness; rather
+for dim, confused lights, and lofty heights obscured in cloud.
+
+If we examine his life in detail we find this alternating principle of
+conduct revealed throughout it.  He was by nature clever, kind-hearted,
+rather large-souled, affectionate, and not very honest; all the acts
+prompted by his nature bear the stamp of these qualities.  To them his
+early years had probably added little except piety, sharp practice, and
+that uncomfortable sense, often bred amid narrow and poor surroundings,
+that one must keep a sharp look-out for oneself if one is to get a share
+of the world’s good things.  Something in his blood, moreover, craved for
+dignity and the splendour of high-sounding titles; craved for power also,
+and the fulfilment of an arrogant pride.  All these things were in his
+Ligurian blood, and he breathed them in with the very air of Genoa.  His
+mind was of the receptive rather than of the constructive kind, and it
+was probably through those long years spent between sea voyages and brief
+sojourns with his family in Genoa or Savona that he conceived that vague
+Idea which, as I have tried to show, formed the impulse of his life
+during its brief initiative period.  Having once received this Idea of
+discovery and like all other great ideas, it was in the air at the time
+and was bound to take shape in some human brain--he had all his native
+and personal qualities to bring to its support.  The patience to await
+its course he had learned from his humble and subordinate life.  The
+ambition to work for great rewards was in his blood and race; and to
+belief in himself, his curious vein of mystical piety was able to add the
+support of a ready belief in divine selection.  This very time of waiting
+and endurance of disappointments also helped to cultivate in his
+character two separate qualities--an endurance or ability to withstand
+infinite hardship and disappointment; and also a greedy pride that
+promised itself great rewards for whatever should be endured.
+
+In all active matters Columbus was what we call a lucky man.  It was luck
+that brought him to Guanahani; and throughout his life this element of
+good luck continually helped him.  He was lucky, that is to say, in his
+relation with inanimate things; but in his relations with men he was
+almost as consistently unlucky.  First of all he was probably a bad judge
+of men.  His humble origin and his lack of education naturally made him
+distrustful.  He trusted people whom he should have regarded with
+suspicion, and he was suspicious of those whom he ought to have known he
+could trust.  If people pleased him, he elevated them with absurd
+rapidity to stations far beyond their power to fill, and then wondered
+that they sometimes turned upon him; if they committed crimes against
+him, he either sought to regain their favour by forgiving them, or else
+dogged them with a nagging, sulky resentment, and expected every one else
+to punish them also.  He could manage men if he were in the midst of
+them; there was something winning as well as commanding about his actual
+presence, and those who were devoted to him would have served him to the
+death.  But when he was not on the spot all his machineries and affairs
+went to pieces; he had no true organising ability; no sooner did he take
+his hand off any affair for which he was responsible than it immediately
+came to confusion.  All these defects are to be attributed to his lack of
+education and knowledge of the world.  Mental discipline is absolutely
+necessary for a man who would discipline others; and knowledge of the
+world is essential for one who would successfully deal with men, and
+distinguish those whom he can from those whom he cannot trust.  Defects
+of this nature, which sometimes seem like flaws in the man’s character,
+may be set down to this one disability--that he was not educated and was
+not by habit a man of the world.
+
+All his sins of misgovernment, then, may be condoned on the ground that
+governing is a science, and that Columbus had never learned it.  What we
+do find, however, is that the inner light that had led him across the
+seas never burned clearly for him again, and was never his guide in the
+later part of his life.  Its radiance was quenched by the gleam of gold;
+for there is no doubt that Columbus was a victim of that baleful
+influence which has caused so much misery in this world.  He was greedy
+of gold for himself undoubtedly; but he was still more greedy of it for
+Spain.  It was his ambition to be the means of filling the coffers of the
+Spanish Sovereigns and so acquiring immense dignity and glory for
+himself.  He believed that gold was in itself a very precious and
+estimable thing; he knew that masses and candles could be bought for it,
+and very real spiritual privileges; and as he made blunder after blunder,
+and saw evil after evil heaping itself on his record in the New World, he
+became the more eager and frantic to acquire such a treasure of gold that
+it would wipe out the other evils of his administration.  And once
+involved in that circle, there was no help for him.
+
+The man himself was a simple man; capable, when the whole of his various
+qualities were directed upon one single thing, of that greatness which is
+the crown of simplicity.  Ambition was the keynote of his life; not an
+unworthy keynote, by any means, if only the ambition be sound; but one
+serious defect of Columbus’s ambition was that it was retrospective
+rather than perspective.  He may have had, before he sailed from Palos,
+an ambition to be the discoverer of a New World; but I do not think he
+had.  He believed there were islands or land to be discovered in the West
+if only he pushed on far enough; and he was ambitious to find them and
+vindicate his belief.  Afterwards, when he had read a little more, and
+when he conceived the plan of pretending that he had all along meant to
+discover the Indies and a new road to the East, he acted in accordance
+with that pretence; he tried to make his acts appear retrospectively as
+though they had been prompted by a design quite different from that by
+which they had really been prompted.  When he found that his discovery
+was regarded as a great scientific feat, he made haste to pretend that it
+had all along been meant as such, and was in fact the outcome of an
+elaborate scientific theory.  In all this there is nothing for praise or
+admiration.  It indicates the presence of moral disease; but fortunately
+it is functional rather than organic disease.  He was right and sound at
+heart; but he spread his sails too readily to the great winds of popular
+favour, and the result was instability to himself, and often danger of
+shipwreck to his soul.
+
+The ultimate test of a man’s character is how he behaves in certain
+circumstances when there is no great audience to watch him, and when
+there is no sovereign close at hand with bounties and rewards to offer.
+In a word, what matters most is a man’s behaviour, not as an admiral, or
+a discoverer, or a viceroy, or a courtier, but as a man.  In this respect
+Columbus’s character rings true.  If he was little on little occasions,
+he was also great on great occasions.  The inner history of his fourth
+voyage, if we could but know it and could take all the circumstances into
+account, would probably reveal a degree of heroic endurance that has
+never been surpassed in the history of mankind.  Put him as a man face to
+face with a difficulty, with nothing but his wits to devise with and his
+two hands to act with, and he is never found wanting.  And that is the
+kind of man of whom discoverers are made.  The mere mathematician may
+work out the facts with the greatest accuracy and prove the existence of
+land at a certain point; but there is great danger that he may be knocked
+down by a club on his first landing on the beach, and never bring home
+any news of his discovery.  The great courtier may do well for himself
+and keep smooth and politic relations with kings; the great administrator
+may found a wonderful colony; but it is the man with the wits and the
+hands, and some bigness of heart to tide him over daunting passages, that
+wins through the first elementary risks of any great discovery.  Properly
+considered, Columbus’s fame should rest simply on the answer to the
+single question, “Did he discover new lands as he said he would?”  That
+was the greatest thing he could do, and the fact that he failed to do a
+great many other things afterwards, failed the more conspicuously because
+his attempts were so conspicuous, should have no effect on our estimate
+of his achievement.  The fame of it could no more be destroyed by himself
+than it can be destroyed by us.
+
+True understanding of a man and estimate of his character can only be
+arrived at by methods at once more comprehensive and more subtle than
+those commonly employed among men.  Everything that he sees, does, and
+suffers has its influence on the moulding of his character; and he must
+be considered in relation to his physical environment, no less than to
+his race and ancestry.  Christopher Columbus spent a great part of his
+active life on the sea; it was sea-life which inspired him with his great
+Idea, it was by the conquest of the sea that he realised it; it was on
+the sea that all his real triumphs over circumstance and his own weaker
+self were won.  The influences at work upon a man whose life is spent on
+the sea are as different from those at work upon one who lives on the
+fields as the environment of a gannet is different from the environment
+of a skylark: and yet how often do we really attempt to make due
+allowance for this great factor and try to estimate the extent of its
+moulding influence?
+
+To live within sound or sight of the sea is to be conscious of a voice or
+countenance that holds you in unyielding bonds.  The voice, being
+continuous, creeps into the very pulses and becomes part of the pervading
+sound or silence of a man’s environment; and the face, although it never
+regards him, holds him with its changes and occupies his mind with its
+everlasting riddle.  Its profound inattention to man is part of its power
+over his imagination; for although it is so absorbed and busy, and has
+regard for sun and stars and a melancholy frowning concentration upon the
+foot of cliffs, it is never face to face with man: he can never come
+within the focus of its great glancing vision.  It is somewhere beyond
+time and space that the mighty perspective of those focal rays comes to
+its point; and they are so wide and eternal in their sweep that we should
+find their end, could we but trace them, in a condition far different
+from that in which our finite views and ethics have place.  In the man
+who lives much on the sea we always find, if he be articulate, something
+of the dreamer and the mystic; that very condition of mind, indeed, which
+we have traced in Columbus, which sometimes led him to such heights, and
+sometimes brought him to such variance with the human code.
+
+A face that will not look upon you can never give up its secret to you;
+and the face of the sea is like the face of a picture or a statue round
+which you may circle, looking at it from this point and from that, but
+whose regard is fixed on something beyond and invisible to you; or it is
+like the face of a person well known to you in life, a face which you
+often see in various surroundings, from different angles, now
+unconscious, now in animated and smiling intercourse with some one else,
+but which never turns upon you the light of friendly knowledge and
+recognition; in a word, it is unconscious of you, like all elemental
+things.  In the legend of the Creation it is written that when God saw
+the gathering together of the waters which he called the Seas, he saw
+that it was good; and he perhaps had the right to say so.  But the man
+who uses the sea and whose life’s pathway is laid on its unstable surface
+can hardly sum up his impressions of it so simply as to say that it is
+good.  It is indeed to him neither good nor bad; it is utterly beyond and
+outside all he knows or invents of good and bad, and can never have any
+concern with his good or his bad.  It remains the pathway and territory
+of powers and mysteries, thoughts and energies on a gigantic and
+elemental scale; and that is why the mind of man can never grapple with
+the unconsciousness of the sea or his eye meet its eye.  Yet it is the
+mariner’s chief associate, whether as adversary or as ally; his attitude
+to things outside himself is beyond all doubt influenced by his attitude
+towards it; and a true comprehension of the man Columbus must include a
+recognition of this constant influence on him, and of whatever effect
+lifelong association with so profound and mysterious an element may have
+had on his conduct in the world of men.  Better than many documents as an
+aid to our understanding of him would be intimate association with the
+sea, and prolonged contemplation of that face with which he was so
+familiar.  We can never know the heart of it, but we can at least look
+upon the face, turned from us though it is, upon which he looked.  Cloud
+shadows following a shimmer of sunlit ripples; lines and runes traced on
+the surface of a blank calm; salt laughter of purple furrows with the
+foam whipping off them; tides and eddies, whirls, overfalls, ripples,
+breakers, seas mountains high-they are but movements and changing
+expressions on an eternal countenance that once held his gaze and wonder,
+as it will always hold the gaze and wonder of those who follow the sea.
+
+So much of the man Christopher Columbus, who once was and no longer is;
+perished, to the last bone and fibre of him, off the face of the earth,
+and living now only by virtue of such truth as there was in him; who once
+manfully, according to the light that he had, bore Christ on his
+shoulders across stormy seas, and found him often, in that dim light, a
+heavy and troublesome burden; who dropped light and burden together on
+the shores of his discovery, and set going in that place of peace such a
+conflagration as mankind is not likely to see again for many a
+generation, if indeed ever again, in this much-tortured world, such
+ancient peace find place.
+
+
+
+
+PG ETEXT EDITOR’S BOOKMARKS:
+
+A man standing on the sea-shore
+Absent for a little time, and his organisation went to pieces
+All days, however hard, have an evening, and all journeys an end
+Amerigo Vespucci
+And every one goes naked and unashamed
+At last extricate himself from the theological stupor
+Attempts that have been made to glorify him socially
+Bede, in the eighth century, established it finally (sphericity)
+Began to offer bargains to the Almighty
+Believed that the Spaniards came from heaven
+Biography which obscures the truth with legends and pretences
+Cannibal epicures did not care for the flesh of women and boys
+Christian era denied the theory of the roundness of the earth
+Columbus, calling for an egg, laid a wager
+Columbus never once mentions his wife
+Columbus’s habit of being untruthful in regard to his own past
+Cooling off in his enthusiasm as the pastime became a task
+Desire to get a great deal of money without working for it
+Diminishing object to the wet eyes of his mother, sailed away
+Dogs wagged their tails, but that never barked
+Establishment of ten footmen and twenty other servants
+Exchanging the natives for cattle
+First known discovery of tobacco by Europeans
+First organised transaction of slavery on the part of Columbus
+Freed by force and with guns
+Having issued three Bulls in twenty-four hours, he desisted
+He had a way of rising above petty indignities
+He was a great stickler for the observances of religion
+Hearts quick to burn, quick to forget
+Heretics were being burned every year by the Grand Inquisitor
+High time, indeed, that they should be taught to wear clothing
+Idea of importing black African labour to the New World
+Ideas to him were of more value than facts
+If there were no results, there would be no rewards
+Inclined to be pompous
+Irving: so inaccurate, so untrue to life, and so profoundly dull
+Islands in that sea had their greatest length east and west
+Juan Ponce de Leon, the discoverer of Florida
+Learn the blessings of Christianity under the whip
+Lives happily in our dreams, as blank as sunshine
+Logic is irresistible if you only grant the first little step
+Loose way in which the term India was applied in the Middle Ages
+Man with a Grievance
+Man of single rather than manifold ideas
+More than a touch of crafty and elaborate dissimulation
+Nautical phrase “make it so.”
+Never to deal with subordinates
+No more troubled by any wonder, sleeps at last
+No Spanish women accompanied it (2d expedition)
+Nothing so ludicrous as an Idea to those who do not share it
+Only confirmative evidence remained
+Patience which holds men back from theorising
+Presence of the owner makes the horse fat
+Professors of Christ brought not peace, but a sword
+Religion has in our days fallen into decay
+Saw potatoes also, although they did not know what they were
+Sea of Darkness
+Seeking to hire the protection of the Virgin
+She must either sin or be celibate
+Shifts and deceits that he practised
+Spaniards sometimes hanged thirteen of them in a row
+Spaniards undertook to teach the heathen the Christian religion
+St. Chrysostom opposed the theory of the earth’s roundness
+Stayed till night to eat their sop for fear of seeing (weevils)
+Stuffed so full indeed that eyes and ears are closed
+Tasks that are the common heritage of all small boys
+Terror and amazement; they had never seen horses before
+The cross and the sword, the whip-lash and the Gospel
+The great thing in those days was to discover something
+The missionary walked beside the slave-driver
+The terrified seamen making vows to the Virgin
+Theologians, however, proved equal to the occasion
+There is deception and untruth somewhere
+They saw the past in the light of the present
+Took himself and the world very seriously
+Vague longing and unrest that is the life-force of the world
+When the pot boils the scum rises to the surface
+Who never could meet any trouble without grumbling
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg’s Christopher Columbus, Complete, by Filson Young
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diff --git a/4116-0.zip b/4116-0.zip
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+<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
+
+<!DOCTYPE html
+   PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+   "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd" >
+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
+  <head>
+    <title>
+      CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS, Complete
+    </title>
+    <link rel="coverpage" href="images/cover.jpg" />
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+
+    body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify}
+    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; }
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+    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
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+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
+    .indent5   { margin-left: 5%;}
+    .indent10  { margin-left: 10%;}
+    .indent15  { margin-left: 15%;}
+    .indent20  { margin-left: 20%;}
+    .indent30  { margin-left: 30%;}
+    div.fig    { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
+    div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; }
+    .figleft   {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;}
+    .figright  {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;}
+    .pagenum   {display:inline; font-size: 100%; font-style:normal;
+               margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%;
+               text-align: right;}
+    .side      { float: left; font-size: 75%; width: 25%; padding-left: 0.8em;
+               border-left: dashed thin; text-align: left;
+               text-indent: 0; font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;
+               font-weight: bold; color: black; background: #eeeeee; border: solid 1px;}
+    p.pfirst, p.noindent {text-indent: 0}
+    span.dropcap         { float: left; margin: 0 0.1em 0 0; line-height: 1 }
+    pre        { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
+
+</style>
+  </head>
+  <body>
+    <h2>
+      CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS, Complete
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+Project Gutenberg's Christopher Columbus, Complete, by Filson Young
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Christopher Columbus, Complete
+
+Author: Filson Young
+
+Release Date: October 7, 2006 [EBook #4116]
+Last Updated: August 24, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS, COMPLETE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS
+    </h1>
+    <h1>
+      AND THE NEW WORLD OF HIS DISCOVERY
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      A NARRATIVE BY FILSON YOUNG
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+      <img alt="bookcover.jpg (150K)" src="images/bookcover.jpg"
+      style="width:100%;" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="frontpiece" id="frontpiece"></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+      <img alt="frontpiece.jpg (42K)" src="images/frontpiece.jpg"
+      style="width:100%;" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+      <img alt="titlepage.jpg (38K)" src="images/titlepage.jpg"
+      style="width:100%;" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      TO
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+      THE RIGHT HON. SIR HORACE PLUNKETT,
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+      K.C.V.O., D.C.L., F.R.S.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MY DEAR HORACE,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Often while I have been studying the records of colonisation in the New
+      World I have thought of you and your difficult work in Ireland; and I have
+      said to myself, &ldquo;What a time he would have had if he had been
+      Viceroy of the Indies in 1493!&rdquo; There, if ever, was the chance for a
+      Department such as yours; and there, if anywhere, was the place for the
+      Economic Man. Alas! there war only one of him; William Ires or Eyre, by
+      name, from the county Galway; and though he fertilised the soil he did it
+      with his blood and bones. A wonderful chance; and yet you see what came of
+      it all. It would perhaps be stretching truth too far to say that you are
+      trying to undo some of Columbus&rsquo;s work, and to stop up the hole he
+      made in Ireland when he found a channel into which so much of what was
+      best in the Old Country war destined to flow; for you and he have each
+      your places in the great circle of Time and Compensation, and though you
+      may seem to oppose one another across the centuries you are really
+      answering the same call and working in the same vineyard. For we all set
+      out to discover new worlds; and they are wise who realise early that human
+      nature has roots that spread beneath the ocean bed, that neither latitude
+      nor longitude nor time itself can change it to anything richer or stranger
+      than what it is, and that furrows ploughed in it are furrows ploughed in
+      the sea sand. Columbus tried to pour the wine of civilisation into very
+      old bottles; you, more wisely, are trying to pour the old wine of our
+      country into new bottles. Yet there is no great unlikeness between the two
+      tasks: it is all a matter of bottling; the vintage is the same, infinite,
+      inexhaustible, and as punctual as the sun and the seasons. It was Columbus&rsquo;s
+      weakness as an administrator that he thought the bottle was everything; it
+      is your strength that you care for the vintage, and labour to preserve its
+      flavour and soft fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yours, <br /><br />FILSON YOUNG. <br /><br />RUAN MINOR, September 1906.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      PREFACE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The writing of historical biography is properly a work of partnership, to
+      which public credit is awarded too often in an inverse proportion to the
+      labours expended. One group of historians, labouring in the obscurest
+      depths, dig and prepare the ground, searching and sifting the documentary
+      soil with infinite labour and over an area immensely wide. They are
+      followed by those scholars and specialists in history who give their lives
+      to the study of a single period, and who sow literature in the furrows of
+      research prepared by those who have preceded them. Last of all comes the
+      essayist, or writer pure and simple, who reaps the harvest so laboriously
+      prepared. The material lies all before him; the documents have been
+      arranged, the immense contemporary fields of record and knowledge examined
+      and searched for stray seeds of significance that may have blown over into
+      them; the perspective is cleared for him, the relation of his facts to
+      time and space and the march of human civilisation duly established; he
+      has nothing to do but reap the field of harvest where it suits him, grind
+      it in the wheels of whatever machinery his art is equipped with, and come
+      before the public with the finished product. And invariably in this
+      unequal partnership he reaps most richly who reaps latest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I am far from putting this narrative forward as the fine and ultimate
+      product of all the immense labour and research of the historians of
+      Columbus; but I am anxious to excuse myself for my apparent presumption in
+      venturing into a field which might more properly be occupied by the expert
+      historian. It would appear that the double work of acquiring the facts of
+      a piece of human history and of presenting them through the medium of
+      literature can hardly ever be performed by one and the same man. A
+      lifetime must be devoted to the one, a year or two may suffice for the
+      other; and an entirely different set of qualities must be employed in the
+      two tasks. I cannot make it too clear that I make no claim to have added
+      one iota of information or one fragment of original research to the expert
+      knowledge regarding the life of Christopher Columbus; and when I add that
+      the chief collection of facts and documents relating to the subject, the
+      &lsquo;Raccolta Columbiana,&rsquo;&mdash;[Raccolta di Documenti e Studi
+      Publicati dalla R. Commissione Colombiana, etc. Auspice il Ministero della
+      Publica Istruzione. Rome, 1892-4.]&mdash;is a work consisting of more than
+      thirty folio volumes, the general reader will be the more indulgent to me.
+      But when a purely human interest led me some time ago to look into the
+      literature of Columbus, I was amazed to find what seemed to me a striking
+      disproportion between the extent of the modern historians&rsquo; work on
+      that subject and the knowledge or interest in it displayed by what we call
+      the general reading public. I am surprised to find how many well-informed
+      people there are whose knowledge of Columbus is comprised within two
+      beliefs, one of them erroneous and the other doubtful: that he discovered
+      America, and performed a trick with an egg. Americans, I think, are a
+      little better informed on the subject than the English; perhaps because
+      the greater part of modern critical research on the subject of Columbus
+      has been the work of Americans. It is to bridge the immense gap existing
+      between the labours of the historians and the indifference of the modern
+      reader, between the Raccolta Columbiana, in fact, and the story of the
+      egg, that I have written my narrative.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is customary and proper to preface a work which is based entirely on
+      the labours of other people with an acknowledgment of the sources whence
+      it is drawn; and yet in the case of Columbus I do not know where to begin.
+      In one way I am indebted to every serious writer who has even remotely
+      concerned himself with the subject, from Columbus himself and Las Casas
+      down to the editors of the Raccolta. The chain of historians has been so
+      unbroken, the apostolic succession, so to speak, has passed with its
+      heritage so intact from generation to generation, that the latest
+      historian enshrines in his work the labours of all the rest. Yet there are
+      necessarily some men whose work stands out as being more immediately
+      seizable than that of others; in the period of whose care the lamp of
+      inspiration has seemed to burn more brightly. In a matter of this kind I
+      cannot pretend to be a judge, but only to state my own experience and
+      indebtedness; and in my work I have been chiefly helped by Las Casas,
+      indirectly of course by Ferdinand Columbus, Herrera, Oviedo, Bernaldez,
+      Navarrete, Asensio, Mr. Payne, Mr. Harrisse, Mr. Vignaud, Mr. Winsor, Mr.
+      Thacher, Sir Clements Markham, Professor de Lollis, and S. Salvagnini. It
+      is thus not among the dusty archives of Seville, Genoa, or San Domingo
+      that I have searched, but in the archive formed by the writings of modern
+      workers. To have myself gone back to original sources, even if I had been
+      competent to do so, would have been in the case of Columbian research but
+      a waste of time and a doing over again what has been done already with
+      patience, diligence, and knowledge. The historians have been committed to
+      the austere task of finding out and examining every fact and document in
+      connection with their subject; and many of these facts and documents are
+      entirely without human interest except in so far as they help to establish
+      a date, a name, or a sum of money. It has been my agreeable and lighter
+      task to test and assay the masses of bed-rock fact thus excavated by the
+      historians for traces of the particular ore which I have been seeking. In
+      fact I have tried to discover, from a reverent examination of all these
+      monographs, essays, histories, memoirs, and controversies concerning what
+      Christopher Columbus did, what Christopher Columbus was; believing as I do
+      that any labour by which he can be made to live again, and from the dust
+      of more than four hundred years be brought visibly to the mind&rsquo;s
+      eye, will not be entirely without use and interest. Whether I have
+      succeeded in doing so or not I cannot be the judge; I can only say that
+      the labour of resuscitating a man so long buried beneath mountains of
+      untruth and controversy has some times been so formidable as to have
+      seemed hopeless. And yet one is always tempted back by the knowledge that
+      Christopher Columbus is not only a name, but that the human being whom we
+      so describe did actually once live and walk in the world; did actually
+      sail and look upon seas where we may also sail and look; did stir with his
+      feet the indestructible dust of this old Earth, and centre in himself, as
+      we all do, the whole interest and meaning of the Universe. Truly the most
+      commonplace fact, yet none the less amazing; and often when in the dust of
+      documents he has seemed most dead and unreal to me I have found courage
+      from the entertainment of some deep or absurd reflection; such as that he
+      did once undoubtedly, like other mortals, blink and cough and blow his
+      nose. And if my readers could realise that fact throughout every page of
+      this book, I should say that I had succeeded in my task.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To be more particular in my acknowledgments. In common with every modern
+      writer on Columbus&mdash;and modern research on the history of Columbus is
+      only thirty years old&mdash;I owe to the labours of Mr. Henry Harrisse,
+      the chief of modern Columbian historians, the indebtedness of the
+      gold-miner to the gold-mine. In the matters of the Toscanelli
+      correspondence and the early years of Columbus I have followed more
+      closely Mr. Henry Vignaud, whose work may be regarded as a continuation
+      and reexamination&mdash;in some cases destructive&mdash;of that of Mr.
+      Harrisse. Mr. Vignaud&rsquo;s work is happily not yet completed; we all
+      look forward eagerly to the completion of that part of his &lsquo;Etudes
+      Critiques&rsquo; dealing with the second half of the Admiral&rsquo;s life;
+      and Mr. Vignaud seems to me to stand higher than all modern workers in
+      this field in the patient and fearless discovery of the truth regarding
+      certain very controversial matters, and also in ability to give a sound
+      and reasonable interpretation to those obscurer facts or deductions in
+      Columbus&rsquo;s life that seem doomed never to be settled by the aid of
+      documents alone. It may be unseemly in me not to acknowledge indebtedness
+      to Washington Irving, but I cannot conscientiously do so. If I had been
+      writing ten or fifteen years ago I might have taken his work seriously;
+      but it is impossible that anything so one-sided, so inaccurate, so untrue
+      to life, and so profoundly dull could continue to exist save in the
+      absence of any critical knowledge or light on the subject. All that can be
+      said for him is that he kept the lamp of interest in Columbus alive for
+      English readers during the period that preceded the advent of modern
+      critical research. Mr. Major&rsquo;s edition&rsquo; of Columbus&rsquo;s
+      letters has been freely consulted by me, as it must be by any one
+      interested in the subject. Professor Justin Winsor&rsquo;s work has
+      provided an invaluable store of ripe scholarship in matters of cosmography
+      and geographical detail; Sir Clements Markham&rsquo;s book, by far the
+      most trustworthy of modern English works on the subject, and a valuable
+      record of the established facts in Columbus&rsquo;s life, has proved a
+      sound guide in nautical matters; while the monograph of Mr. Elton, which
+      apparently did not promise much at first, since the author has followed
+      some untrustworthy leaders as regards his facts, proved to be full of a
+      fragrant charm produced by the writer&rsquo;s knowledge of and interest in
+      sub-tropical vegetation; and it is delightfully filled with the names of
+      gums and spices. To Mr. Vignaud I owe special thanks, not only for the
+      benefits of his research and of his admirable works on Columbus, but also
+      for personal help and encouragement. Equally cordial thanks are due to Mr.
+      John Boyd Thacher, whose work, giving as it does so large a selection of
+      the Columbus documents both in facsimile, transliteration, and
+      translation, is of the greatest service to every English writer on the
+      subject of Columbus. It is the more to be regretted, since the documentary
+      part of Mr. Thacher&rsquo;s work is so excellent, that in his critical
+      studies he should have seemed to ignore some of the more important results
+      of modern research. I am further particularly indebted to Mr. Thacher and
+      to his publishers, Messrs. Putnam&rsquo;s Sons, for permission to
+      reproduce certain illustrations in his work, and to avail myself also of
+      his copies and translations of original Spanish and Italian documents. I
+      have to thank Commendatore Guido Biagi, the keeper of the Laurentian
+      Library in Florence, for his very kind help and letters of introduction to
+      Italian librarians; Mr. Raymond Beazley, of Merton College, Oxford, for
+      his most helpful correspondence; and Lord Dunraven for so kindly bringing,
+      in the interests of my readers, his practical knowledge of navigation and
+      seamanship to bear on the first voyage of Columbus. Finally my work has
+      been helped and made possible by many intimate and personal kindnesses
+      which, although they are not specified, are not the less deeply
+      acknowledged.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      September 1906.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+<a href="#frontpiece">"LES CONQUERANTS"</a>  Frontpiece By NORMAN WILKINSON
+<a href="#genoastreet">SAINT ANDREW&rsquo;S GATE</a>
+<a href="#genoastreet2">STREET IN GENOA</a>
+<a href="#p113">LA RABIDA</a>
+<a href="#p127">PALOS HARBOUR</a>
+<a href="#p141">THE SEA ASTROLABE</a>
+<a href="#p143">PORTUGUESE MAPPEMONDE</a>
+<a href="#behaimglobe">BEHAIM&rsquo;S GLOBE</a>
+<a href="#p163">WATLING&rsquo;S ISLAND</a>
+<a href="#p227">CARAVEL. (FIFTEENTH CENTURY</a>
+<a href="#espanola">MAP OF ESPANOLA</a>
+<a href="#fourvoyages">THE FOUR VOYAGES OF COLUMBUS</a>
+
+<a href="#portrait">CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS</a>&mdash;Frontispiece Volume II.
+<a href="#crudemap">MAP OF THE NORTHERN COAST OF ESPANOLA</a>&mdash;Drawn by COLUMBUS
+<a href="#veragua">VERAGUA</a>
+<a href="#facsimile">FACSIMILE LETTER OF COLUMBUS</a>
+<a href="#westindies">THE WEST INDIES</a>
+<a href="#isabella">ISABELLA OF CASTILE</a>
+<a href="#ferdinand">FERDINAND OF ARRAGON</a>
+<a href="#deathplace">HOUSE AT VALLADOLID WHERE COLUMBUS DIED</a>
+</pre>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      CONTENTS
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a href="#bk1">BOOK I.</a>
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      THE INNER LIGHT
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I &nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#ch1">THE STREAM OF THE WORLD</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      II &nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#ch2">THE HOME IN GENOA</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      III &nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#ch3">YOUNG CHRISTOPHER</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      IV &nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#ch4">DOMENICO</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      V &nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#ch5">SEA THOUGHTS</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      VI &nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#ch6">IN PORTUGAL</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      VII &nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#ch7">ADVENTURES BODILY AND SPIRITUAL</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      VIII &nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#ch8">THE FIRE KINDLES</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      IX &nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#ch9">WANDERINGS WITH AN IDEA</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      X &nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#ch10">OUR LADY OF LA RABIDA</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      XI &nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#ch11">THE CONSENT OF SPAIN</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      XII &nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#ch12">THE PREPARATIONS AT PALOS</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      XIII &nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#ch13">EVENTS OF THE FIRST VOYAGE</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      XIV &nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#ch14">LANDFALL</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a href="#bk2">BOOK II.</a>
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      THE NEW WORLD
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I &nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#ch1b">THE ENCHANTED ISLANDS</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      II &nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#ch2b">THE EARTHLY PARADISE</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      III &nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#ch3b">THE VOYAGE HOME</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      IV &nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#ch4b">THE HOUR OF TRIUMPH</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      V &nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#ch5b">GREAT EXPECTATIONS</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      VI &nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#ch6b">THE SECOND VOYAGE</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      VII &nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#ch7b">THE EARTHLY PARADISE REVISITED</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a href="#bk3">BOOK III.</a>
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      DESPERATE REMEDIES
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I &nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#ch1c">THE VOYAGE TO CUBA</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      II &nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#ch2c">THE CONQUEST OF ESPANOLA</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      III &nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#ch3c">UPS AND DOWNS</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      IV &nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#ch4c">IN SPAIN AGAIN</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      V &nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#ch5c">THE THIRD VOYAGE</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      VI &nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#ch6c">AN INTERLUDE</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      VII &nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#ch7c">THE THIRD VOYAGE</a> (continued)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a href="#bk4">BOOK IV.</a>
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      TOWARDS THE SUNSET
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I &nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#ch1d">DEGRADATION</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      II &nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#ch2d">CRISIS IN THE ADMIRAL&rsquo;S LIFE</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      III &nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#ch3d">THE LAST VOYAGE</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      IV &nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#ch4d">HEROIC ADVENTURES BY LAND AND SEA</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      V &nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#ch5d">THE ECLIPSE OF THE MOON</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      VI &nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#ch6d">RELIEF OF THE ADMIRAL</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      VII &nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#ch7d">THE HERITAGE OF HATRED</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      VIII &nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#ch8d">THE ADMIRAL COMES HOME</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      IX &nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#ch9d">THE LAST DAYS</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      X &nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#ch10d">THE MAN COLUMBUS</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      THY WAY IS THE SEA,<br /><br /> AND THY PATH IN THE GREAT WATERS,<br /><br />
+      AND THY FOOTSTEPS ARE NOT KNOWN.<br /><br />
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="bk1" id="bk1"></a>BOOK I.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE INNER LIGHT
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="ch1" id="ch1"></a>CHAPTER I
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE STREAM OF THE WORLD
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A man standing on the sea-shore is perhaps as ancient and as primitive a
+      symbol of wonder as the mind can conceive. Beneath his feet are the stones
+      and grasses of an element that is his own, natural to him, in some degree
+      belonging to him, at any rate accepted by him. He has place and condition
+      there. Above him arches a world of immense void, fleecy sailing clouds,
+      infinite clear blueness, shapes that change and dissolve; his day comes
+      out of it, his source of light and warmth marches across it, night falls
+      from it; showers and dews also, and the quiet influence of stars. Strange
+      that impalpable element must be, and for ever unattainable by him; yet
+      with its gifts of sun and shower, its furniture of winged life that
+      inhabits also on the friendly soil, it has links and partnerships with
+      life as he knows it and is a complement of earthly conditions. But at his
+      feet there lies the fringe of another element, another condition, of a
+      vaster and more simple unity than earth or air, which the primitive man of
+      our picture knows to be not his at all. It is fluent and unstable, yet to
+      be touched and felt; it rises and falls, moves and frets about his very
+      feet, as though it had a life and entity of its own, and was engaged upon
+      some mysterious business. Unlike the silent earth and the dreaming clouds
+      it has a voice that fills his world and, now low, now loud, echoes
+      throughout his waking and sleeping life. Earth with her sprouting fruits
+      behind and beneath him; sky, and larks singing, above him; before him, an
+      eternal alien, the sea: he stands there upon the shore, arrested,
+      wondering. He lives,&mdash;this man of our figure; he proceeds, as all
+      must proceed, with the task and burden of life. One by one its miracles
+      are unfolded to him; miracles of fire and cold, and pain and pleasure; the
+      seizure of love, the terrible magic of reproduction, the sad miracle of
+      death. He fights and lusts and endures; and, no more troubled by any
+      wonder, sleeps at last. But throughout the days of his life, in the very
+      act of his rude existence, this great tumultuous presence of the sea
+      troubles and overbears him. Sometimes in its bellowing rage it terrifies
+      him, sometimes in its tranquillity it allures him; but whatever he is
+      doing, grubbing for roots, chipping experimentally with bones and stones,
+      he has an eye upon it; and in his passage by the shore he pauses, looks,
+      and wonders. His eye is led from the crumbling snow at his feet, past the
+      clear green of the shallows, beyond the furrows of the nearer waves, to
+      the calm blue of the distance; and in his glance there shines again that
+      wonder, as in his breast stirs the vague longing and unrest that is the
+      life-force of the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What is there beyond? It is the eternal question asked by the finite of
+      the infinite, by the mortal of the immortal; answer to it there is none
+      save in the unending preoccupation of life and labour. And if this old
+      question was in truth first asked upon the sea-shore, it was asked most
+      often and with the most painful wonder upon western shores, whence the
+      journeying sun was seen to go down and quench himself in the sea. The
+      generations that followed our primitive man grew fast in knowledge, and
+      perhaps for a time wondered the less as they knew the more; but we may be
+      sure they never ceased to wonder at what might lie beyond the sea. How
+      much more must they have wondered if they looked west upon the waters, and
+      saw the sun of each succeeding day sink upon a couch of glory where they
+      could not follow? All pain aspires to oblivion, all toil to rest, all
+      troubled discontent with what is present to what is unfamiliar and far
+      away; and no power of knowledge and scientific fact will ever prevent
+      human unhappiness from reaching out towards some land of dreams of which
+      the burning brightness of a sea sunset is an image. Is it very hard to
+      believe, then, that in that yearning towards the miracle of a sun quenched
+      in sea distance, felt and felt again in human hearts through countless
+      generations, the westward stream of human activity on this planet had its
+      rise? Is it unreasonable to picture, on an earth spinning eastward, a
+      treadmill rush of feet to follow the sinking light? The history of man&rsquo;s
+      life in this world does not, at any rate, contradict us. Wisdom,
+      discovery, art, commerce, science, civilisation have all moved west across
+      our world; have all in their cycles followed the sun; have all, in their
+      day of power, risen in the East and set in the West.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This stream of life has grown in force and volume with the passage of
+      ages. It has always set from shore to sea in countless currents of
+      adventure and speculation; but it has set most strongly from East to West.
+      On its broad bosom the seeds of life and knowledge have been carried
+      throughout the world. It brought the people of Tyre and Carthage to the
+      coasts and oceans of distant worlds; it carried the English from Jutland
+      across cold and stormy waters to the islands of their conquest; it carried
+      the Romans across half the world; it bore the civilisation of the far East
+      to new life and virgin western soils; it carried the new West to the old
+      East, and is in our day bringing back again the new East to the old West.
+      Religions, arts, tradings, philosophies, vices and laws have been borne, a
+      strange flotsam, upon its unchanging flood. It has had its springs and
+      neaps, its trembling high-water marks, its hour of affluence, when the
+      world has been flooded with golden humanity; its ebb and effluence also,
+      when it has seemed to shrink and desert the kingdoms set upon its shores.
+      The fifteenth century in Western Europe found it at a pause in its
+      movements: it had brought the trade and the learning of the East to the
+      verge of the Old World, filling the harbours of the Mediterranean with
+      ships and the monasteries of Italy and Spain with wisdom; and in the
+      subsequent and punctual decadence that followed this flood, there gathered
+      in the returning tide a greater energy and volume which was to carry the
+      Old World bodily across the ocean. And yet, for all their wisdom and
+      power, the Spanish and Portuguese were still in the attitude of our
+      primitive man, standing on the sea-shore and looking out in wonder across
+      the sea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The flood of the life-stream began to set again, and little by little to
+      rise and inundate Western Europe, floating off the galleys and caravels of
+      King Alphonso of Portugal, and sending them to feel their way along the
+      coasts of Africa; a little later drawing the mind of Prince Henry the
+      Navigator to devote his life to the conquest and possession of the
+      unknown. In his great castle on the promontory of Sagres, with the voice
+      of the Atlantic thundering in his ears, and its mists and sprays bounding
+      his vision, he felt the full force of the stream, and stretched his arms
+      to the mysterious West. But the inner light was not yet so brightly
+      kindled that he dared to follow his heart; his ships went south and south
+      again, to brave on each voyage the dangers and terrors that lay along the
+      unknown African coast, until at length his captains saw the Cape of Good
+      Hope. South and West and East were in those days confusing terms; for it
+      was the East that men were thinking of when they set their faces to the
+      setting sun, and it was a new road to the East that they sought when they
+      felt their way southward along the edge of the world. But the rising tide
+      of discovery was working in that moment, engaging the brains of
+      innumerable sages, stirring the wonder of innumerable mariners; reaching
+      also, little by little, to quarters less immediately concerned with the
+      business of discovery. Ships carried the strange tidings of new coasts and
+      new islands from port to port throughout the Mediterranean; Venetians on
+      the lagoons, Ligurians on the busy trading wharves of Genoa, were
+      discussing the great subject; and as the tide rose and spread, it floated
+      one ship of life after another that was destined for the great business of
+      adventure. Some it inspired to dream and speculate, and to do no more than
+      that; many a heart also to brave efforts and determinations that were
+      doomed to come to nothing and to end only in failure. And among others who
+      felt the force and was swayed and lifted by the prevailing influence,
+      there lived, some four and a half centuries ago, a little boy playing
+      about the wharves of Genoa, well known to his companions as Christoforo,
+      son of Domenico the wool-weaver, who lived in the Vico Dritto di
+      Ponticello.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="ch2" id="ch2"></a>CHAPTER II.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE HOME IN GENOA
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is often hard to know how far back we should go in the ancestry of a
+      man whose life and character we are trying to reconstruct. The life that
+      is in him is not his own, but is mysteriously transmitted through the life
+      of his parents; to the common stock of his family, flesh of their flesh,
+      bone of their bone, character of their character, he has but added his own
+      personality. However far back we go in his ancestry, there is something of
+      him to be traced, could we but trace it; and although it soon becomes so
+      widely scattered that no separate fraction of it seems to be recognisable,
+      we know that, generations back, we may come upon some sympathetic fact,
+      some reservoir of the essence that was him, in which we can find the
+      source of many of his actions, and the clue, perhaps, to his character.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the case of Columbus we are spared this dilemma. The past is reticent
+      enough about the man himself; and about his ancestors it is almost silent.
+      We know that he had a father and grandfather, as all grandsons of Adam
+      have had; but we can be certain of very little more than that. He came of
+      a race of Italian yeomen inhabiting the Apennine valleys; and in the vale
+      of Fontanabuona, that runs up into the hills behind Genoa, the two streams
+      of family from which he sprang were united. His father from one hamlet,
+      his mother from another; the towering hills behind, the Mediterranean
+      shining in front; love and marriage in the valley; and a little boy to
+      come of it whose doings were to shake the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His family tree begins for us with his grandfather, Giovanni Colombo of
+      Terra-Rossa, one of the hamlets in the valley&mdash;concerning whom many
+      human facts may be inferred, but only three are certainly known; that he
+      lived, begot children, and died. Lived, first at Terra Rossa, and
+      afterwards upon the sea-shore at Quinto; begot children in number three&mdash;Antonio,
+      Battestina, and Domenico, the father of our Christopher; and died, because
+      one of the two facts in his history is that in the year 1444 he was not
+      alive, being referred to in a legal document as quondam, or, as we should
+      say, &ldquo;the late.&rdquo; Of his wife, Christopher&rsquo;s grandmother,
+      since she never bought or sold or witnessed anything requiring the record
+      of legal document, history speaks no word; although doubtless some
+      pleasant and picturesque old lady, or lady other than pleasant and
+      picturesque, had place in the experience or imagination of young
+      Christopher. Of the pair, old Quondam Giovanni alone survives the
+      obliterating drift of generations, which the shores and brown slopes of
+      Quinto al Mare, where he sat in the sun and looked about him, have also
+      survived. Doubtless old Quondam could have told us many things about
+      Domenico, and his over-sanguine buyings and sellings; have perhaps told us
+      something about Christopher&rsquo;s environment, and cleared up our doubts
+      concerning his first home; but he does not. He will sit in the sun there
+      at Quinto, and sip his wine, and say his Hail Marys, and watch the sails
+      of the feluccas leaning over the blue floor of the Mediterranean as long
+      as you please; but of information about son or family, not a word. He is
+      content to have survived, and triumphantly twinkles his two dates at us
+      across the night of time. 1440, alive; 1444, not alive any longer: and so
+      hail and farewell, Grandfather John.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of Antonio and Battestina, the uncle and aunt of Columbus, we know next to
+      nothing. Uncle Antonio inherited the estate of Terra-Rossa, Aunt
+      Battestina was married in the valley; and so no more of either of them;
+      except that Antonio, who also married, had sons, cousins of Columbus, who
+      in after years, when he became famous, made themselves unpleasant, as poor
+      relations will, by recalling themselves to his remembrance and suggesting
+      that something might be done for them. I have a belief, supported by no
+      historical fact or document, that between the families of Domenico and
+      Antonio there was a mild cousinly feud. I believe they did not like each
+      other. Domenico, as we shall see presently, was sanguine and venturesome,
+      a great buyer and seller, a maker of bargains in which he generally came
+      off second best. Antonio, who settled in Terra-Rossa, the paternal
+      property, doubtless looked askance at these enterprises from his
+      vantage-ground of a settled income; doubtless also, on the occasion of
+      visits exchanged between the two families, he would comment upon the
+      unfortunate enterprises of his brother; and as the children of both
+      brothers grew up, they would inherit and exaggerate, as children will,
+      this settled difference between their respective parents. This, of course,
+      may be entirely untrue, but I think it possible, and even likely; for
+      Columbus in after life displayed a very tender regard for members of his
+      family, but never to our knowledge makes any reference to these cousins of
+      his, till they send emissaries to him in his hour of triumph. At any rate,
+      among the influences that surrounded him at Genoa we may reckon this uncle
+      and aunt and their children&mdash;dim ghosts to us, but to him real
+      people, who walked and spoke, and blinked their eyes and moved their
+      limbs, like the men and women of our own time. Less of a ghost to us,
+      though still a very shadowy and doubtful figure, is Domenico himself,
+      Christopher&rsquo;s father. He at least is a man in whom we can feel a
+      warm interest, as the one who actually begat and reared the man of our
+      story. We shall see him later, and chiefly in difficulties; executing
+      deeds and leases, and striking a great variety of legal attitudes, to the
+      witnessing of which various members of his family were called in. Little
+      enough good did they to him at the time, poor Domenico; but he was a
+      benefactor to posterity without knowing it, and in these grave notarial
+      documents preserved almost the only evidence that we have as to the early
+      days of his illustrious son. A kind, sanguine man, this Domenico, who, if
+      he failed to make a good deal of money in his various enterprises, at
+      least had some enjoyment of them, as the man who buys and sells and
+      strikes legal attitudes in every age desires and has. He was a wool-carder
+      by trade, but that was not enough for him; he must buy little bits of
+      estates here and there; must even keep a tavern, where he and his wife
+      could entertain the foreign sailors and hear the news of the world; where
+      also, although perhaps they did not guess it, a sharp pair of ears were
+      also listening, and a pair of round eyes gazing, and an inquisitive face
+      set in astonishment at the strange tales that went about.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is one fragment of fact about this Domenico that greatly enlarges
+      our knowledge of him. He was a wool-weaver, as we know; he also kept a
+      tavern, and no doubt justified the adventure on the plea that it would
+      bring him customers for his woollen cloth; for your buyer and seller never
+      lacks a reason either for his selling or buying. Presently he is buying
+      again; this time, still with striking of legal attitudes, calling together
+      of relations, and accompaniments of crabbed Latin notarial documents, a
+      piece of ground in the suburbs of Genoa, consisting of scrub and
+      undergrowth, which cannot have been of any earthly use to him. But also,
+      according to the documents, there went some old wine-vats with the land.
+      Domenico, taking a walk after Mass on some feast-day, sees the land and
+      the wine-vats; thinks dimly but hopefully how old wine-vats, if of no use
+      to any other human creature, should at least be of use to a tavern-keeper;
+      hurries back, overpowers the perfunctory objections of his complaisant
+      wife, and on the morrow of the feast is off to the notary&rsquo;s office.
+      We may be sure the wine-vats lay and rotted there, and furnished no
+      monetary profit to the wool-weaving tavern-keeper; but doubtless they
+      furnished him a rich profit of another kind when he walked about his
+      newly-acquired property, and explained what he was going to do with the
+      wine-vats.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And besides the weaving of wool and pouring of wine and buying and selling
+      of land, there were more human occupations, which Domenico was not the man
+      to neglect. He had married, about the year 1450, one Susanna, a daughter
+      of Giacomo of Fontana-Rossa, a silk weaver who lived in the hamlet near to
+      Terra-Rossa. Domenico&rsquo;s father was of the more consequence of the
+      two, for he had, as well as his home in the valley, a house at Quinto,
+      where he probably kept a felucca for purposes of trade with Alexandria and
+      the Islands. Perhaps the young people were married at Quinto, but if so
+      they did not live there long, moving soon into Genoa, where Domenico could
+      more conveniently work at his trade. The wool-weavers at that time lived
+      in a quarter outside the old city walls, between them and the outer
+      borders of the city, which is now occupied by the park and public gardens.
+      Here they had their dwellings and workshops, their schools and
+      institutions, receiving every protection and encouragement from the
+      Signoria, who recognised the importance of the wool trade and its allied
+      industries to Genoa. Cloth-weavers, blanket-makers, silk-weavers, and
+      velvet-makers all lived in this quarter, and held their houses under the
+      neighbouring abbey of San Stefano. There are two houses mentioned in
+      documents which seem to have been in the possession of Domenico at
+      different times. One was in the suburbs outside the Olive Gate; the other
+      was farther in, by St. Andrew&rsquo;s Gate, and quite near to the sea. The
+      house outside the Olive Gate has disappeared; and it was probably here
+      that our Christopher first saw the light, and pleased Domenico&rsquo;s
+      heart with his little cries and struggles. Neither the day nor even the
+      year is certainly known, but there is most reason to believe that it was
+      in the year 1451. They must have moved soon afterwards to the house in the
+      Vico Dritto di Ponticello, No. 37, in which most of Christopher&rsquo;s
+      childhood was certainly passed. This is a house close to St. Andrew&rsquo;s
+      Gate, which gate still stands in a beautiful and ruinous condition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From the new part of Genoa, and from the Via XX Settembre, you turn into
+      the little Piazza di Ponticello just opposite the church of San Stefano.
+      In a moment you are in old Genoa, which is to-day in appearance virtually
+      the same as the place in which Christopher and his little brothers and
+      sisters made the first steps of their pilgrimage through this world. If
+      the Italian, sun has been shining fiercely upon you, in the great modern
+      thoroughfare, you will turn into this quarter of narrow streets and high
+      houses with grateful relief. The past seems to meet you there; and from
+      the Piazza, gay with its little provision-shops and fruit stalls, you walk
+      up the slope of the Vico Dritto di Ponticello, leaving the sunlight behind
+      you, and entering the narrow street like a traveller entering a mountain
+      gorge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /> <a name="genoastreet" id="genoastreet"></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+      <img alt="genoastreet.jpg (54K)" src="images/genoastreet.jpg"
+      style="width:100%;" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is a very curious street this; I suppose there is no street in the
+      world that has more character. Genoa invented sky-scrapers long before
+      Columbus had discovered America, or America had invented steel frames for
+      high building; but although many of the houses in the Vico Dritto di
+      Ponticello are seven and eight storeys high, the width of the street from
+      house-wall to house-wall does not average more than nine feet. The street
+      is not straight, moreover; it winds a little in its ascent to the old city
+      wall and St. Andrew&rsquo;s Gate, so that you do not even see the sky much
+      as you look forward and upwards. The jutting cornices of the roofs, often
+      beautifully decorated, come together in a medley of angles and corners
+      that practically roof the street over; and only here and there do you see
+      a triangle or a parallelogram of the vivid brilliant blue that is the sky.
+      Besides being seven or eight storeys high, the houses are the narrowest in
+      the world; I should think that their average width on the street front is
+      ten feet. So as you walk up this street where young Christopher lived you
+      must think of it in these three dimensions towering slices of houses, ten
+      or twelve feet in width: a street often not more than eight and seldom
+      more than fifteen feet in width; and the walls of the houses themselves,
+      painted in every colour, green and pink and grey and white, and trellised
+      with the inevitable green window-shutters of the South, standing like
+      cliffs on each side of you seven or eight rooms high. There being so
+      little horizontal space for the people to live there, what little there is
+      is most economically used; and all across the tops of the houses, high
+      above your head, the cliffs are joined by wires and clothes-lines from
+      which thousands of brightly-dyed garments are always hanging and
+      fluttering; higher still, where the top storeys of the houses become
+      merged in roof, there are little patches of garden and greenery, where
+      geraniums and delicious tangling creepers uphold thus high above the
+      ground the fertile tradition of earth. You walk slowly up the paved
+      street. One of its characteristics, which it shares with the old streets
+      of most Italian towns, is that it is only used by foot-passengers, being
+      of course too narrow for wheels; and it is paved across with flagstones
+      from door to door, so that the feet and the voices echo pleasantly in it,
+      and make a music of their own. Without exception the ground floor of every
+      house is a shop&mdash;the gayest, busiest most industrious little shops in
+      the world. There are shops for provisions, where the delightful macaroni
+      lies in its various bins, and all kinds of frugal and nourishing foods are
+      offered for sale. There are shops for clothes and dyed finery; there are
+      shops for boots, where boots hang in festoons like onions outside the
+      window&mdash;I have never seen so many boot-shops at once in my life as I
+      saw in the streets surrounding the house of Columbus. And every shop that
+      is not a provision-shop or a clothes-shop or a boot-shop, is a wine-shop&mdash;or
+      at least you would think so, until you remember, after you have walked
+      through the street, what a lot of other kinds of shops you have seen on
+      your way. There are shops for newspapers and tobacco, for cheap jewellery,
+      for brushes, for chairs and tables and articles of wood; there are shops
+      with great stacks and piles of crockery; there are shops for cheese and
+      butter and milk&mdash;indeed from this one little street in Genoa you
+      could supply every necessary and every luxury of a humble life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /> <a name="genoastreet2" id="genoastreet2"></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+      <img alt="genoastreet2.jpg (71K)" src="images/genoastreet2.jpg"
+      style="width:100%;" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As you still go up, the street takes a slight bend; and immediately before
+      you, you see it spanned by the lofty crumbled arch of St. Andrew&rsquo;s
+      Gate, with its two mighty towers one on each side. Just as you see it you
+      are at Columbus&rsquo;s house. The number is thirty-seven; it is like any
+      of the other houses, tall and narrow; and there is a slab built into the
+      wall above the first storey, on which is written this inscription:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      NVLLA DOMVS TITVLO DIGNIOR<br /> HEIC<br /> PATERNIS IN AEDIBV<br />
+      CHRISTOPHORVS COLVMBVS<br /> PVERITIAM<br /> PRIMAMQVE IVVENTAM TRANSEGIT
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You stop and look at it; and presently you become conscious of a
+      difference between it and all the other houses. They are all alert, busy,
+      noisy, crowded with life in every storey, oozing vitality from every
+      window; but of all the narrow vertical strips that make up the houses of
+      the street, this strip numbered thirty-seven is empty, silent, and dead.
+      The shutters veil its windows; within it is dark, empty of furniture, and
+      inhabited only by a memory and a spirit. It is a strange place in which to
+      stand and to think of all that has happened since the man of our thoughts
+      looked forth from these windows, a common little boy. The world is very
+      much alive in the Vico Dritto di Ponticello; the little freshet of life
+      that flows there flows loud and incessant; and yet into what oceans of
+      death and silence has it not poured since it carried forth Christopher on
+      its stream! One thinks of the continent of that New World that he
+      discovered, and all the teeming millions of human lives that have sprung
+      up and died down, and sprung up again, and spread and increased there; all
+      the ploughs that have driven into its soil, the harvests that have
+      ripened, the waving acres and miles of grain that have answered the call
+      of Spring and Autumn since first the bow of his boat grated on the shore
+      of Guanahani. And yet of the two scenes this narrow shuttered house in a
+      bye-street of Genoa is at once the more wonderful and more credible; for
+      it contains the elements of the other. Walls and floors and a roof, a
+      place to eat and sleep in, a place to work and found a family, and give
+      tangible environment to a human soul&mdash;there is all human enterprise
+      and discovery, effort, adventure, and life in that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If Christopher wanted to go down to the sea he would have to pass under
+      the Gate of St. Andrew, with the old prison, now pulled down to make room
+      for the modern buildings, on his right, and go down the Salita del Prione,
+      which is a continuation of the Vico Dritto di Ponticello. It slopes
+      downwards from the Gate as the first street sloped upwards to it; and it
+      contains the same assortment of shops and of houses, the same mixture of
+      handicrafts and industries, as were seen in the Vico Dritto di Ponticello.
+      Presently he would come to the Piazza dell&rsquo; Erbe, where there is no
+      grass, but only a pleasant circle of little houses and shops, with already
+      a smack of the sea in them, chiefly suggested by the shops of
+      instrument-makers, where to-day there are compasses and sextants and
+      chronometers. Out of the Piazza you come down the Via di San Donato and
+      into the Piazza of that name, where for over nine centuries the church of
+      San Donato has faced the sun and the weather. From there Christopher&rsquo;s
+      young feet would follow the winding Via di San Bernato, a street also
+      inhabited by craftsmen and workers in wood and metal; and at the last turn
+      of it, a gash of blue between the two cliffwalls of houses, you see the
+      Mediterranean.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here, then, between the narrow little house by the Gate and the clamour
+      and business of the sea-front, our Christopher&rsquo;s feet carried him
+      daily during some part of his childish life. What else he did, what he
+      thought and felt, what little reflections he had, are but matters of
+      conjecture. Genoa will tell you nothing more. You may walk over the very
+      spot where he was born; you may unconsciously tread in the track of his
+      vanished feet; you may wander about the wharves of the city, and see the
+      ships loading and unloading&mdash;different ships, but still trafficking
+      in commodities not greatly different from those of his day; you may climb
+      the heights behind Genoa, and look out upon the great curving Gulf from
+      Porto Fino to where the Cape of the western Riviera dips into the sea; you
+      may walk along the coast to Savona, where Domenico had one of his many
+      habitations, where he kept the tavern, and whither Christopher&rsquo;s
+      young feet must also have walked; and you may come back and search again
+      in the harbour, from the old Mole and the Bank of St. George to where the
+      port and quays stretch away to the medley of sailing-ships and steamers;
+      but you will not find any sign or trace of Christopher. No echo of the
+      little voice that shrilled in the narrow street sounds in the Vico Dritto;
+      the houses stand gaunt and straight, with a brilliant strip of blue sky
+      between their roofs and the cool street beneath; but they give you nothing
+      of what you seek. If you see a little figure running towards you in a blue
+      smock, the head fair-haired, the face blue-eyed and a little freckled with
+      the strong sunshine, it is not a real figure; it is a child of your dreams
+      and a ghost of the past. You may chase him while he runs about the wharves
+      and stumbles over the ropes, but you will never catch him. He runs before
+      you, zigzagging over the cobbles, up the sunny street, into the narrow
+      house; out again, running now towards the Duomo, hiding in the porch of
+      San Stefano, where the weavers held their meetings; back again along the
+      wharves; surely he is hiding behind that mooring-post! But you look, and
+      he is not there&mdash;nothing but the old harbour dust that the wind stirs
+      into a little eddy while you look. For he belongs not to you or me, this
+      child; he is not yet enslaved to the great purpose, not yet caught up into
+      the machinery of life. His eye has not yet caught the fire of the sun
+      setting on a western sea; he is still free and happy, and belongs only to
+      those who love him. Father and mother, brothers Bartolomeo and Giacomo,
+      sister Biancinetta, aunts, uncles, and cousins possibly, and possibly for
+      a little while an old grandmother at Quinto&mdash;these were the people to
+      whom that child belonged. The little life of his first decade, unviolated
+      by documents or history, lives happily in our dreams, as blank as
+      sunshine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="ch3" id="ch3"></a>CHAPTER III.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      YOUNG CHRISTOPHER
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Christopher was fourteen years old when he first went to sea. That is his
+      own statement, and it is one of the few of his autobiographical utterances
+      that we need not doubt. From it, and from a knowledge of certain other
+      dates, we are able to construct some vague picture of his doings before he
+      left Italy and settled in Portugal. Already in his young heart he was
+      feeling the influence that was to direct and shape his destiny; already,
+      towards his home in Genoa, long ripples from the commotion of maritime
+      adventure in the West were beginning to spread. At the age of ten he was
+      apprenticed to his father, who undertook, according to the indentures, to
+      provide him with board and lodging, a blue gabardine and a pair of good
+      shoes, and various other matters in return for his service. But there is
+      no reason to suppose that he ever occupied himself very much with
+      wool-weaving. He had a vocation quite other than that, and if he ever did
+      make any cloth there must have been some strange thoughts and imaginings
+      woven into it, as he plied the shuttle. Most of his biographers, relying
+      upon a doubtful statement in the life of him written by his son Ferdinand,
+      would have us send him at the age of twelve to the distant University of
+      Pavia, there, poor mite, to sit at the feet of learned professors studying
+      Latin, mathematics, and cosmography; but fortunately it is not necessary
+      to believe so improbable a statement. What is much more likely about his
+      education&mdash;for education he had, although not of the superior kind
+      with which he has been credited&mdash;is that in the blank, sunny time of
+      his childhood he was sent to one of the excellent schools established by
+      the weavers in their own quarter, and that there or afterwards he came
+      under some influence, both religious and learned, which stamped him the
+      practical visionary that he remained throughout his life. Thereafter,
+      between his sea voyagings and expeditions about the Mediterranean coasts,
+      he no doubt acquired knowledge in the only really practical way that it
+      can be acquired; that is to say, he received it as and when he needed it.
+      What we know is that he had in later life some knowledge of the works of
+      Aristotle, Julius Caesar, Seneca, Pliny, and Ptolemy; of Ahmet-Ben-Kothair
+      the Arabic astronomer, Rochid the Arabian, and the Rabbi Samuel the Jew;
+      of Isadore the Spaniard, and Bede and Scotus the Britons; of Strabo the
+      German, Gerson the Frenchman, and Nicolaus de Lira the Italian. These
+      names cover a wide range, but they do not imply university education. Some
+      of them merely suggest acquaintance with the &lsquo;Imago Mundi&rsquo;;
+      others imply that selective faculty, the power of choosing what can help a
+      man&rsquo;s purpose and of rejecting what is useless to it, that is one of
+      the marks of genius, and an outward sign of the inner light.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We must think of him, then, at school in Genoa, grinding out the tasks
+      that are the common heritage of all small boys; working a little at the
+      weaving, interestedly enough at first, no doubt, while the importance of
+      having a loom appealed to him, but also no doubt rapidly cooling off in
+      his enthusiasm as the pastime became a task, and the restriction of indoor
+      life began to be felt. For if ever there was a little boy who loved to
+      idle about the wharves and docks, here was that little boy. It was here,
+      while he wandered about the crowded quays and listened to the medley of
+      talk among the foreign sailors, and looked beyond the masts of the ships
+      into the blue distance of the sea, that the desire to wander and go abroad
+      upon the face of the waters must first have stirred in his heart. The
+      wharves of Genoa in those days combined in themselves all the richness of
+      romance and adventure, buccaneering, trading, and treasure-snatching, that
+      has ever crowded the pages of romance. There were galleys and caravels,
+      barques and feluccas, pinnaces and caraccas. There were slaves in the
+      galleys, and bowmen to keep the slaves in subjection. There were
+      dark-bearded Spaniards, fair-haired Englishmen; there were Greeks, and
+      Indians, and Portuguese. The bales of goods on the harbour-side were
+      eloquent of distant lands, and furnished object lessons in the only
+      geography that young Christopher was likely to be learning. There was
+      cotton from Egypt, and tin and lead from Southampton. There were butts of
+      Malmsey from Candia; aloes and cassia and spices from Socotra; rhubarb
+      from Persia; silk from India; wool from Damascus, raw wool also from
+      Calais and Norwich. No wonder if the little house in the Vico Dritto di
+      Ponticello became too narrow for the boy; and no wonder that at the age of
+      fourteen he was able to have his way, and go to sea. One can imagine him
+      gradually acquiring an influence over his father, Domenico, as his will
+      grew stronger and firmer&mdash;he with one grand object in life, Domenico
+      with none; he with a single clear purpose, and Domenico with innumerable
+      cloudy ones. And so, on some day in the distant past, there were farewells
+      and anxious hearts in the weaver&rsquo;s house, and Christopher, member of
+      the crew of some trading caravel or felucca, a diminishing object to the
+      wet eyes of his mother, sailed away, and faded into the blue distance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They had lost him, although perhaps they did not realise it; from the
+      moment of his first voyage the sea claimed him as her own. Widening
+      horizons, slatting of cords and sails in the wind, storms and stars and
+      strange landfalls and long idle calms, thunder of surges, tingle of spray,
+      and eternal labouring and threshing and cleaving of infinite waters&mdash;these
+      were to be his portion and true home hereafter. Attendances at Court,
+      conferences with learned monks and bishops, sojourns on lonely islands,
+      love under stars in the gay, sun-smitten Spanish towns, governings and
+      parleyings in distant, undreamed-of lands&mdash;these were to be but
+      incidents in his true life, which was to be fulfilled in the solitude of
+      sea watches.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he left his home on this first voyage, he took with him one other
+      thing besides the restless longing to escape beyond the line of sea and
+      sky. Let us mark well this possession of his, for it was his companion and
+      guiding-star throughout a long and difficult life, his chart and compass,
+      astrolabe and anchor, in one. Religion has in our days fallen into decay
+      among men of intellect and achievement. The world has thrown it, like a
+      worn garment or an old skin, from off its body, the thing itself being no
+      longer real and alive, and in harmony with the life of an age that
+      struggles towards a different kind of truth. It is hard, therefore, for us
+      to understand exactly how the religion of Columbus entered so deeply into
+      his life and brooded so widely over his thoughts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hardest of all is it for people whose only experience of religion is of
+      Puritan inheritance to comprehend how, in the fifteenth century, the
+      strong intellect was strengthened, and the stout heart fortified, by the
+      thought of hosts of saints and angels hovering above a man&rsquo;s
+      incomings and outgoings to guide and protect him. Yet in an age that
+      really had the gift of faith, in which religion was real and vital, and
+      part of the business of every man&rsquo;s daily life; in which it stood
+      honoured in the world, loaded with riches, crowned with learning, wielding
+      government both temporal and spiritual, it was a very brave panoply for
+      the soul of man. The little boy in Genoa, with the fair hair and blue eyes
+      and grave freckled face that made him remarkable among his dark
+      companions, had no doubt early received and accepted the vast mysteries of
+      the Christian faith; and as that other mystery began to grow in his mind,
+      and that idea of worlds that might lie beyond the sea-line began to take
+      shape in his thoughts, he found in the holy wisdom of the prophets, and
+      the inspired writings of the fathers, a continual confirmation of his
+      faith. The full conviction of these things belongs to a later period of
+      his life; but probably, during his first voyagings in the Mediterranean,
+      there hung in his mind echoes of psalms and prophecies that had to do with
+      things beyond the world of his vision and experience. The sun, whose going
+      forth is to the end of heaven, his circuit back to the end of it, and from
+      whose heat there is nothing hid; the truth, holy and prevailing, that
+      knows no speech nor language where its voice is not heard; the great and
+      wide sea, with its creeping things innumerable, and beasts small and great&mdash;no
+      wonder if these things impressed him, and if gradually, as his way fell
+      clearer before him, and the inner light began to shine more steadily, he
+      came to believe that he had a special mission to carry the torch of the
+      faith across the Sea of Darkness, and be himself the bearer of a truth
+      that was to go through all the earth, and of words that were to travel to
+      the world&rsquo;s end.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In this faith, then, and with this equipment, and about the year 1465,
+      Christopher Columbus began his sea travels. His voyages would be doubtless
+      at first much along the coasts, and across to Alexandria and the Islands.
+      There would be returnings to Genoa, and glad welcomings by the little
+      household in the narrow street; in 1472 and 1473 he was with his father at
+      Savona, helping with the wool-weaving and tavern-keeping; possibly also
+      there were interviews with Benincasa, who was at that time living in
+      Genoa, and making his famous sea-charts. Perhaps it was in his studio that
+      Christopher first saw a chart, and first fell in love with the magic that
+      can transfer the shapes of oceans and continents to a piece of paper. Then
+      he would be off again in another ship, to the Golden Horn perhaps, or the
+      Black Sea, for the Genoese had a great Crimean trade. This is all
+      conjecture, but very reasonable conjecture; what we know for a fact is
+      that he saw the white gum drawn from the lentiscus shrubs in Chio at the
+      time of their flowering; that fragrant memory is preserved long afterwards
+      in his own writings, evoked by some incident in the newly-discovered
+      islands of the West. There are vague rumours and stories of his having
+      been engaged in various expeditions&mdash;among them one fitted out in
+      Genoa by John of Anjou to recover the kingdom of Naples for King Rene of
+      Provence; but there is no reason to believe these rumours: good reason to
+      disbelieve them, rather.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The lives that the sea absorbs are passed in a great variety of adventure
+      and experience, but so far as the world is concerned they are passed in a
+      profound obscurity; and we need not wonder that of all the mariners who
+      used those seas, and passed up and down, and held their course by the
+      stars, and reefed their sails before the sudden squalls that came down
+      from the mountains, and shook them out again in the calm sunshine that
+      followed, there is no record of the one among their number who was
+      afterwards to reef and steer and hold his course to such mighty purpose.
+      For this period, then, we must leave him to the sea, and to the vast
+      anonymity of sea life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="ch4" id="ch4"></a>CHAPTER IV.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      DOMENICO
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Christopher is gone, vanished over that blue horizon; and the tale of life
+      in Genoa goes on without him very much as before, except that Domenico has
+      one apprentice less, and, a matter becoming of some importance in the
+      narrow condition of his finances, one boy less to feed and clothe. For
+      good Domenico, alas! is no economist. Those hardy adventures of his in the
+      buying and selling line do not prosper him; the tavern does not pay;
+      perhaps the tavern-keeper is too hospitable; at any rate, things are not
+      going well. And yet Domenico had a good start; as his brother Antonio has
+      doubtless often told him, he had the best of old Giovanni&rsquo;s
+      inheritance; he had the property at Quinto, and other property at
+      Ginestreto, and some ground rents at Pradella; a tavern at Savona, a shop
+      there and at Genoa&mdash;really, Domenico has no excuse for his
+      difficulties. In 1445 he was selling land at Quinto, presumably with the
+      consent of old Giovanni, if he was still alive; and if he was not living,
+      then immediately after his death, in the first pride of possession.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In 1450 he bought a pleasant house at Quarto, a village on the sea-shore
+      about a mile to the west of Quinto and about five miles to the east of
+      Genoa. It was probably a pure speculation, as he immediately leased the
+      house for two years, and never lived in it himself, although it was a
+      pleasant place, with an orchard of olives and figs and various other trees&mdash;&lsquo;arboratum
+      olivis ficubus et aliis diversis arboribus&rsquo;. His next recorded
+      transaction is in 1466, when he went security for a friend, doubtless with
+      disastrous results. In 1473 he sold the house at the Olive Gate, that
+      suburban dwelling where probably Christopher was born, and in 1474 he
+      invested the proceeds of that sale in a piece of land which I have
+      referred to before, situated in the suburbs of Savona, with which were
+      sold those agreeable and useless wine-vats. Domenico was living at Savona
+      then, and the property which he so fatuously acquired consisted of two
+      large pieces of land on the Via Valcalda, containing a few vines, a
+      plantation of fruit-trees, and a large area of shrub and underwood. The
+      price, however, was never paid in full, and was the cause of a lawsuit
+      which dragged on for forty years, and was finally settled by Don Diego
+      Columbus, Christopher&rsquo;s son, who sent a special authority from
+      Hispaniola.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Owing, no doubt, to the difficulties that this un fortunate purchase
+      plunged him into, Domenico was obliged to mortgage his house at St. Andrew&rsquo;s
+      Gate in the year 1477; and in 1489 he finally gave it up to Jacob
+      Baverelus, the cheese-monger, his son-in-law. Susanna, who had been the
+      witness of his melancholy transactions for so many years, and possibly the
+      mainstay of that declining household, died in 1494; but not, we may hope,
+      before she had heard of the fame of her son Christopher. Domenico, in
+      receipt of a pension from the famous Admiral of the Ocean, and no doubt
+      talking with a deal of pride and inaccuracy about the discovery of the New
+      World, lived on until 1498; when he died also, and vanished out of this
+      world. He had fulfilled a noble destiny in being the father of Christopher
+      Columbus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="ch5" id="ch5"></a>CHAPTER V.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      SEA THOUGHTS
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The long years that Christopher Columbus spent at sea in making voyages to
+      and from his home in Genoa, years so blank to us, but to him who lived
+      them so full of life and active growth, were most certainly fruitful in
+      training and equipping him for that future career of which as yet,
+      perhaps, he did not dream. The long undulating waves of the Mediterranean,
+      with land appearing and dissolving away in the morning and evening mists,
+      the business of ship life, harsh and rough in detail, but not too
+      absorbing to the mind of a common mariner to prevent any thoughts he might
+      have finding room to grow and take shape; sea breezes, sea storms, sea
+      calms; these were the setting of his knowledge and experience as he fared
+      from port to port and from sea to sea. He is a very elusive figure in that
+      environment of misty blue, very hard to hold and identify, very shy of our
+      scrutiny, and inaccessible even to our speculation. If we would come up
+      with him, and place ourselves in some kind of sympathy with the thoughts
+      that were forming in his brain, it is necessary that we should, for the
+      moment, forget much of what we know of the world, and assume the imperfect
+      knowledge of the globe that man possessed in those years when Columbus was
+      sailing the Mediterranean.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That the earth was a round globe of land and water was a fact that, after
+      many contradictions and uncertainties, intelligent men had by this time
+      accepted. A conscious knowledge of the world as a whole had been a part of
+      human thought for many hundreds of years; and the sphericity of the earth
+      had been a theory in the sixth century before Christ. In the fourth
+      century Aristotle had watched the stars and eclipses; in the third century
+      Eratosthenes had measured a degree of latitude, and measured it wrong;&mdash;[Not
+      so very wrong. D.W.]&mdash;in the second century the philosopher Crates
+      had constructed a rude sort of globe, on which were marked the known
+      kingdoms of the earth, and some also unknown. With the coming of the
+      Christian era the theory of the roundness of the earth began to be denied;
+      and as knowledge and learning became gathered into the hands of the Church
+      they lost something of their clarity and singleness, and began to be used
+      arbitrarily as evidence for or against other and less material theories.
+      St. Chrysostom opposed the theory of the earth&rsquo;s roundness; St.
+      Isidore taught it; and so also did St. Augustine, as we might expect from
+      a man of his wisdom who lived so long in a monastery that looked out to
+      sea from a high point, and who wrote the words &lsquo;Ubi magnitudo, ibi
+      veritas&rsquo;. In the sixth century of the Christian era Bishop Cosmas
+      gave much thought to this matter of a round world, and found a new
+      argument which to his mind (poor Cosmas!) disposed of it very clearly; for
+      he argued that, if the world were round, the people dwelling at the
+      antipodes could not see Christ at His coming, and that therefore the earth
+      was not round. But Bede, in the eighth century, established it finally as
+      a part of human knowledge that the earth and all the heavenly bodies were
+      spheres, and after that the fact was not again seriously disputed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What lay beyond the frontier of the known was a speculation inseparable
+      from the spirit of exploration. Children, and people who do not travel,
+      are generally content, when their thoughts stray beyond the paths trodden
+      by their feet, to believe that the greater world is but a continuation on
+      every side of their own environment; indeed, without the help of sight or
+      suggestion, it is almost impossible to believe anything else. If you stand
+      on an eminence in a great plain and think of the unseen country that lies
+      beyond the horizon, trying to visualise it and imagine that you see it,
+      the eye of imagination can only see the continuance or projection of what
+      is seen by the bodily sight. If you think, you can occupy the invisible
+      space with a landscape made up from your own memory and knowledge: you may
+      think of mountain chains and rivers, although there are none visible to
+      your sight, or you may imagine vast seas and islands, oceans and
+      continents. This, however, is thought, not pure imagination; and even so,
+      with every advantage of thought and knowledge, you will not be able to
+      imagine beyond your horizon a space of sea so wide that the farther shore
+      is invisible, and yet imagine the farther shore also. You will see America
+      across the Atlantic and Japan across the Pacific; but you cannot see, in
+      one single effort of the imagination, an Atlantic of empty blue water
+      stretching to an empty horizon, another beyond that equally vast and
+      empty, another beyond that, and so on until you have spanned the thousand
+      horizons that lie between England and America. The mind, that is to say,
+      works in steps and spans corresponding to the spans of physical sight; it
+      cannot clear itself enough from the body, or rise high enough beyond
+      experience, to comprehend spaces so much vaster than anything ever seen by
+      the eye of man. So also with the stretching of the horizon which bounded
+      human knowledge of the earth. It moved step by step; if one of Prince
+      Henry&rsquo;s captains, creeping down the west coast of Africa, discovered
+      a cape a hundred miles south of the known world, the most he could
+      probably do was to imagine that there might lie, still another hundred
+      miles farther south, another cape; to sail for it in faith and hope, to
+      find it, and to imagine another possibility yet another hundred miles
+      away. So far as experience went back, faith could look forward. It is thus
+      with the common run of mankind; yesterday&rsquo;s march is the measure of
+      to-morrow&rsquo;s; as much as they have done once, they may do again; they
+      fear it will be not much more; they hope it may be not much less.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The history of the exploration of the world up to the day when Columbus
+      set sail from Palos is just such a history of steps. The Phoenicians
+      coasting from harbour to harbour through the Mediterranean; the Romans
+      marching from camp to camp, from country to country; the Jutes venturing
+      in their frail craft into the stormy northern seas, making voyages a
+      little longer and more daring every time, until they reached England; the
+      captains of Prince Henry of Portugal feeling their way from voyage to
+      voyage down the coast of Africa&mdash;there are no bold flights into the
+      incredible here, but patient and business-like progress from one
+      stepping-stone to another. Dangers and hardships there were, and brave
+      followings of the faint will-o&rsquo;-the-wisp of faith in what lay
+      beyond; but there were no great launchings into space. They but followed a
+      line that was the continuance or projection of the line they had hitherto
+      followed; what they did was brave and glorious, but it was reasonable.
+      What Columbus did, on the contrary, was, as we shall see later, against
+      all reason and knowledge. It was a leap in the dark towards some star
+      invisible to all but him; for he who sets forth across the desert sand or
+      sea must have a brighter sun to guide him than that which sets and rises
+      on the day of the small man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Our familiarity with maps and atlases makes it difficult for us to think
+      of the world in other terms than those of map and diagram; knowledge and
+      science have focussed things for us, and our imagination has in
+      consequence shrunk. It is almost impossible, when thinking of the earth as
+      a whole, to think about it except as a picture drawn, or as a small globe
+      with maps traced upon it. I am sure that our imagination has a far
+      narrower angle&mdash;to borrow a term from the science of lenses&mdash;than
+      the imagination of men who lived in the fifteenth century. They thought of
+      the world in its actual terms&mdash;seas, islands, continents, gulfs,
+      rivers, oceans. Columbus had seen maps and charts&mdash;among them the
+      famous &lsquo;portolani&rsquo; of Benincasa at Genoa; but I think it
+      unlikely that he was so familiar with them as to have adopted their terms
+      in his thoughts about the earth. He had seen the Mediterranean and sailed
+      upon it before he had seen a chart of it; he knew a good deal of the world
+      itself before he had seen a map of it. He had more knowledge of the actual
+      earth and sea than he had of pictures or drawings of them; and therefore,
+      if we are to keep in sympathetic touch with him, we must not think too
+      closely of maps, but of land and sea themselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The world that Columbus had heard about as being within the knowledge of
+      men extended on the north to Iceland and Scandinavia, on the south to a
+      cape one hundred miles south of the Equator, and to the east as far as
+      China and Japan. North and South were not important to the spirit of that
+      time; it was East and West that men thought of when they thought of the
+      expansion and the discovery of the world. And although they admitted that
+      the earth was a sphere, I think it likely that they imagined (although the
+      imagination was contrary to their knowledge) that the line of West and
+      East was far longer, and full of vaster possibilities, than that of North
+      and South. North was familiar ground to them&mdash;one voyage to England,
+      another to Iceland, another to Scandinavia; there was nothing impossible
+      about that. Southward was another matter; but even here there was no
+      ambition to discover the limit of the world. It is an error continually
+      made by the biographers of Columbus that the purpose of Prince Henry&rsquo;s
+      explorations down the coast of Africa was to find a sea road to the West
+      Indies by way of the East. It was nothing of the kind. There was no idea
+      in the minds of the Portuguese of the land which Columbus discovered, and
+      which we now know as the West Indies. Mr. Vignaud contends that the
+      confusion arose from the very loose way in which the term India was
+      applied in the Middle Ages. Several Indias were recognised. There was an
+      India beyond the Ganges; a Middle India between the Ganges and the Indus;
+      and a Lesser India, in which were included Arabia, Abyssinia, and the
+      countries about the Red Sea. These divisions were, however, quite vague,
+      and varied in different periods. In the time of Columbus the word India
+      meant the kingdom of Prester John, that fabulous monarch who had been the
+      subject of persistent legends since the twelfth century; and it was this
+      India to which the Portuguese sought a sea road. They had no idea of a
+      barrier cape far to the south, the doubling of which would open a road for
+      them to the west; nor were they, as Mr. Vignaud believes, trying to open a
+      route for the spice trade with the Orient. They had no great spice trade,
+      and did not seek more; what they did seek was an extension of their
+      ordinary trade with Guinea and the African coast. To the maritime world of
+      the fifteenth century, then, the South as a geographical region and as a
+      possible point of discovery had no attractions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To the west stretched what was known as the Sea of Darkness, about which
+      even the cool knowledge of the geographers and astronomers could not think
+      steadily. Nothing was known about it, it did not lead anywhere, there were
+      no people there, there was no trade in that direction. The tides of
+      history and of life avoided it; only now and then some terrified mariner,
+      blown far out of his course, came back with tales of sea monsters and
+      enchanted disappearing islands, and shores that receded, and coasts upon
+      which no one could make a landfall. The farthest land known to the west
+      was the Azores; beyond that stretched a vague and impossible ocean of
+      terror and darkness, of which the Arabian writer Xerif al Edrisi, whose
+      countrymen were the sea-kings of the Middle Ages, wrote as follows:
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;The ocean encircles the ultimate bounds of the inhabited earth,
+        and all beyond it is unknown. No one has been able to verify anything
+        concerning it, on account of its difficult and perilous navigation, its
+        great obscurity, its profound depth, and frequent tempests; through fear
+        of its mighty fishes and its haughty winds; yet there are many islands
+        in it, some peopled, others uninhabited. There is no mariner who dares
+        to enter into its deep waters; or if any have done so, they have merely
+        kept along its coasts, fearful of departing from them. The waves of this
+        ocean, although they roll as high as mountains, yet maintain themselves
+        without breaking; for if they broke it would be impossible for a ship to
+        plough them.&rdquo;
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      It is another illustration of the way in which discovery and imagination
+      had hitherto gone by steps and not by flights, that geographical knowledge
+      reached the islands of the Atlantic (none of which were at a very great
+      distance from the coast of Europe or from each other) at a comparatively
+      early date, and stopped there until in Columbus there was found a man with
+      faith strong enough to make the long flight beyond them to the unknown
+      West. And yet the philosophers, and later the cartographers, true to their
+      instinct for this pedestrian kind of imagination, put mythical lands and
+      islands to the westward of the known islands as though they were really
+      trying to make a way, to sink stepping stones into the deep sea that would
+      lead their thoughts across the unknown space. In the Catalan map of the
+      world, which was the standard example of cosmography in the early days of
+      Columbus, most of these mythical islands are marked. There was the island
+      of Antilia, which was placed in 25 deg. 35&rsquo; W., and was said to have
+      been discovered by Don Roderick, the last of the Gothic kings of Spain,
+      who fled there after his defeat by the Moors. There was the island of the
+      Seven Cities, which is sometimes identified with this Antilia, and was the
+      object of a persistent belief or superstition on the part of the
+      inhabitants of the Canary Islands. They saw, or thought they saw, about
+      ninety leagues to the westward, an island with high peaks and deep
+      valleys. The vision was intermittent; it was only seen in very clear
+      weather, on some of those pure, serene days of the tropics when in the
+      clear atmosphere distant objects appear to be close at hand. In cloudy,
+      and often in clear weather also, it was not to be seen at all; but the
+      inhabitants of the Canaries, who always saw it in the same place, were so
+      convinced of its reality that they petitioned the King of Portugal to
+      allow them to go and take possession of it; and several expeditions were
+      in fact despatched, but none ever came up with that fairy land. It was
+      called the island of the Seven Cities from a legend of seven bishops who
+      had fled from Spain at the time of the Moorish conquest, and, landing upon
+      this island, had founded there seven splendid cities. There was the island
+      of St. Brandan, called after the Saint who set out from Ireland in the
+      sixth century in search of an island which always receded before his
+      ships; this island was placed several hundred miles to the west of the
+      Canaries on maps and charts through out the fifteenth and sixteenth
+      centuries. There was the island of Brazil, to the west of Cape St.
+      Vincent; the islands of Royllo, San Giorgio, and Isola di Mam; but they
+      were all islands of dreams, seen by the eyes of many mariners in that
+      imaginative time, but never trodden by any foot of man. To Columbus,
+      however, and the mariners of his day, they were all real places, which a
+      man might reach by special good fortune or heroism, but which, all things
+      considered, it was not quite worth the while of any man to attempt to
+      reach. They have all disappeared from our charts, like the Atlantis of
+      Plato, that was once charted to the westward of the Straits of Gibraltar,
+      and of which the Canaries were believed to be the last peaks unsubmerged.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sea myths and legends are strange things, and do not as a rule persist in
+      the minds of men unless they have had some ghostly foundation; so it is
+      possible that these fabled islands of the West were lands that had
+      actually been seen by living eyes, although their position could never be
+      properly laid down nor their identity assured. Of all the wandering seamen
+      who talked in the wayside taverns of Atlantic seaports, some must have had
+      strange tales to tell; tales which sometimes may have been true, but were
+      never believed. Vague rumours hung about those shores, like spray and mist
+      about a headland, of lands seen and lost again in the unknown and
+      uncharted ocean. Doubtless the lamp of faith, the inner light, burned in
+      some of these storm-tossed men; but all they had was a glimpse here and
+      there, seen for a moment and lost again; not the clear sight of faith by
+      which Columbus steered his westward course.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The actual outposts of western occupation, then, were the Azores, which
+      were discovered by Genoese sailors in the pay of Portugal early in the
+      fourteenth century; the Canaries, which had been continuously discovered
+      and rediscovered since the Phoenicians occupied them and Pliny chose them
+      for his Hesperides; and Madeira, which is believed to have been discovered
+      by an Englishman under the following very romantic and moving
+      circumstances.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the reign of Edward the Third a young man named Robert Machin fell in
+      love with a beautiful girl, his superior in rank, Anne Dorset or d&rsquo;Urfey
+      by name. She loved him also, but her relations did not love him; and
+      therefore they had Machin imprisoned upon some pretext or other, and
+      forcibly married the young lady to a nobleman who had a castle on the
+      shores of the Bristol Channel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The marriage being accomplished, and the girl carried away by her
+      bridegroom to his seat in the West, it was thought safe to release Machin.
+      Whereupon he collected several friends, and they followed the
+      newly-married couple to Bristol and laid their plans for an abduction. One
+      of the friends got himself engaged as a groom in the service of the
+      unhappy bride, and found her love unchanged, and if possible increased by
+      the present misery she was in. An escape was planned; and one day, when
+      the girl and her groom were riding in the park, they set spurs to their
+      horses, and galloped off to a place on the shores of the Bristol Channel
+      where young Robert had a boat on the beach and a ship in the offing. They
+      set sail immediately, intending to make for France, where the reunited
+      lovers hoped to live happily; but it came on to blow when they were off
+      the Lizard, and a southerly gale, which lasted for thirteen days, drove
+      them far out of their course.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The bride, from her joy and relief, fell into a state of the gloomiest
+      despondency, believing that the hand of God was turned against her, and
+      that their love would never be enjoyed. The tempest fell on the fourteenth
+      day, and at the break of morning the sea-worn company saw trees and land
+      ahead of them. In the sunrise they landed upon an island full of noble
+      trees, about which flights of singing birds were hovering, and in which
+      the sweetest fruits, the most lovely flowers, and the purest and most
+      limpid waters abounded. Machin and his bride and their friends made an
+      encampment on a flowery meadow in a sheltered valley, where for three days
+      they enjoyed the sweetness and rest of the shore and the companionship of
+      all kinds of birds and beasts, which showed no signs of fear at their
+      presence. On the third day a storm arose, and raged for a night over the
+      island; and in the morning the adventurers found that their ship was
+      nowhere to be seen. The despair of the little company was extreme, and was
+      increased by the condition of poor Anne, upon whom terror and remorse
+      again fell, and so preyed upon her mind that in three days she was dead.
+      Her lover, who had braved so much and won her so gallantly, was turned to
+      stone by this misfortune. Remorse and aching desolation oppressed him;
+      from the moment of her death he scarcely ate nor spoke; and in five days
+      he also was dead, surely of a broken heart. They buried him beside his
+      mistress under a spreading tree, and put up a wooden cross there, with a
+      prayer that any Christians who might come to the island would build a
+      chapel to Jesus the Saviour. The rest of the party then repaired their
+      little boat and put to sea; were cast upon the coast of Morocco, captured
+      by the Moors, and thrown into prison. With them in prison was a Spanish
+      pilot named Juan de Morales, who listened attentively to all they could
+      tell him about the situation and condition of the island, and who after
+      his release communicated what he knew to Prince Henry of Portugal. The
+      island of Madeira was thus rediscovered in 1418, and in 1425 was colonised
+      by Prince Henry, who appointed as Governor Bartolomeo de Perestrello,
+      whose daughter was afterwards to become the wife of Columbus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So much for the outposts of the Old World. Of the New World, about the
+      possibility of which Columbus is beginning to dream as he sails the
+      Mediterranean, there was no knowledge and hardly any thought. Though new
+      in the thoughts of Columbus, it was very old in itself; generations of men
+      had lived and walked and spoken and toiled there, ever since men came upon
+      the earth; sun and shower, the thrill of the seasons, birth and life and
+      death, had been visiting it for centuries and centuries. And it is quite
+      possible that, long before even the civilisation that produced Columbus
+      was in its dawn, men from the Old World had journeyed there. There are two
+      very old fragments of knowledge which indicate at least the possibility of
+      a Western World of which the ancients had knowledge. There is a fragment,
+      preserved from the fourth century before Christ, of a conversation between
+      Silenus and Midas, King of Phrygia, in which Silenus correctly describes
+      the Old World&mdash;Europe, Asia, and Africa&mdash;as being surrounded by
+      the sea, but also describes, far to the west of it, a huge island, which
+      had its own civilisation and its own laws, where the animals and the men
+      were of twice our stature, and lived for twice our years. There is also
+      the story told by Plato of the island of Atlantis, which was larger than
+      Africa and Asia together, and which in an earthquake disappeared beneath
+      the waves, producing such a slime upon the surface that no ship was able
+      to navigate the sea in that place. This is the story which the priests of
+      Sais told to Solon, and which was embodied in the sacred inscriptions in
+      their temples. It is strange that any one should think of this theory of
+      the slime who had not seen or heard of the Sargasso Sea&mdash;that great
+      bank of floating seaweed that the ocean currents collect and retain in the
+      middle of the basin of the North Atlantic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Egyptians, the Tartars, the Canaanites, the Chinese, the Arabians, the
+      Welsh, and the Scandinavians have all been credited with the colonisation
+      of America; but the only race from the Old World which had almost
+      certainly been there were the Scandinavians. In the year 983 the coast of
+      Greenland was visited by Eric the Red, the son of a Norwegian noble, who
+      was banished for the crime of murder. Some fifteen years later Eric&rsquo;s
+      son Lief made an expedition with thirty-five men and a ship in the
+      direction of the new land. They came to a coast where there were nothing
+      but ice mountains having the appearance of slate; this country they named
+      Helluland&mdash;that is, Land of Slate. This country is our Newfoundland.
+      Standing out to sea again, they reached a level wooded country with white
+      sandy cliffs, which they called Markland, or Land of Wood, which is our
+      Nova Scotia. Next they reached an island east of Markland, where they
+      passed the winter, and as one of their number who had wandered some
+      distance inland had found vines and grapes, Lief named the country Vinland
+      or Vine Land, which is the country we call New England. The Scandinavians
+      continued to make voyages to the West and South; and finally Thorfinn
+      Karlsefne, an Icelander, made a great expedition in the spring of 1007
+      with ships and material for colonisation. He made much progress to the
+      southwards, and the Icelandic accounts of the climate and soil and
+      characteristics of the country leave no doubt that Greenland and Nova
+      Scotia were discovered and colonised at this time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It must be remembered, however, that then and in the lifetime of Columbus
+      Greenland was supposed to&mdash;be a promontory of the coast of Europe,
+      and was not connected in men&rsquo;s minds with a western continent. Its
+      early discovery has no bearing on the significance of Columbus&rsquo;s
+      achievement, the greatness of which depends not on his having been the
+      first man from the Old World to set foot upon the shores of the New, but
+      on the fact that by pure faith and belief in his own purpose he did set
+      out for and arrive in a world where no man of his era or civilisation had
+      ever before set foot, or from which no wanderer who may have been blown
+      there ever returned. It is enough to claim for him the merit of discovery
+      in the true sense of the word. The New World was covered from the Old by a
+      veil of distance, of time and space, of absence, invisibility, virtual
+      non-existence; and he discovered it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="ch6" id="ch6"></a>CHAPTER VI.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      IN PORTUGAL
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is no reason to believe that before his twenty-fifth year Columbus
+      was anything more than a merchant or mariner, sailing before the mast, and
+      joining one ship after another as opportunities for good voyages offered
+      themselves. A change took place later, probably after his marriage, when
+      he began to adapt himself rapidly to a new set of surroundings, and to
+      show his intrinsic qualities; but all the attempts that have been made to
+      glorify him socially&mdash;attempts, it must be remembered, in which he
+      himself and his sons were in after years the leaders&mdash;are entirely
+      mistaken. That strange instinct for consistency which makes people desire
+      to see the outward man correspond, in terms of momentary and arbitrary
+      credit, with the inner and hidden man of the heart, has in truth led to
+      more biographical injustice than is fully realised. If Columbus had been
+      the man some of his biographers would like to make him out&mdash;the
+      nephew or descendant of a famous French Admiral, educated at the
+      University of Pavia, belonging to a family of noble birth and high social
+      esteem in Genoa, chosen by King Rene to be the commander of naval
+      expeditions, learned in scientific lore, in the classics, in astronomy and
+      in cosmography, the friend and correspondent of Toscanelli and other
+      learned scientists&mdash;we should find it hard indeed to forgive him the
+      shifts and deceits that he practised. It is far more interesting to think
+      of him as a common craftsman, of a lowly condition and poor circumstances,
+      who had to earn his living during the formative period of his life by the
+      simplest and hardest labour of the hand. The qualities that made him what
+      he was were of a very simple kind, and his character owed its strength,
+      not to any complexity or subtlety of training and education, but rather to
+      that very bareness and simplicity of circumstance that made him a man of
+      single rather than manifold ideas. He was not capable of seeing both sides
+      of a question; he saw only one side. But he came of a great race; and it
+      was the qualities of his race, combined with this simplicity and even
+      perhaps vacancy of mind, that gave to his idea, when once the seed of it
+      had lodged in his mind, so much vigour in growth and room for expansion.
+      Think of him, then, at the age of twenty-five as a typical plebeian
+      Genoese, bearing all the characteristic traits of his century and people&mdash;the
+      spirit of adventure, the love of gold and of power, a spirit of mysticism,
+      and more than a touch of crafty and elaborate dissimulation, when that
+      should be necessary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had been at sea for ten or eleven years, making voyages to and from
+      Genoa, with an occasional spell ashore and plunge into the paternal
+      affairs, when in the year 1476 he found himself on board a Genoese vessel
+      which formed one of a convoy going, to Lisbon. This convoy was attacked
+      off Cape St. Vincent by Colombo, or Colomb, the famous French corsair, of
+      whom Christopher himself has quite falsely been called a relative. Only
+      two of the Genoese vessels escaped, and one of these two was the ship
+      which carried Columbus. It arrived at Lisbon, where Columbus went ashore
+      and took up his abode.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This, so far as can be ascertained, is the truth about the arrival of
+      Columbus in Portugal. The early years of an obscure man who leaps into
+      fame late in life are nearly always difficult to gather knowledge about,
+      because not only are the annals of the poor short and simple and in most
+      cases altogether unrecorded, but there is always that instinct, to which I
+      have already referred, to make out that the circumstances of a man who
+      late in life becomes great and remarkable were always, at every point in
+      his career, remarkable also. We love to trace the hand of destiny guiding
+      her chosen people, protecting them from dangers, and preserving them for
+      their great moment. It is a pleasant study, and one to which the facts
+      often lend themselves, but it leads to a vicious method of biography which
+      obscures the truth with legends and pretences that have afterwards
+      laboriously to be cleared away. It was so in the case of Columbus. Before
+      his departure on his first voyage of discovery there is absolutely no
+      temporary record of him except a few dates in notarial registers. The
+      circumstances of his life and his previous conditions were supplied
+      afterwards by himself and his contemporaries; and both he and they saw the
+      past in the light of the present, and did their best to make it fit a
+      present so wonderful and miraculous. The whole trend of recent research on
+      the subject of Columbus has been unfortunately in the direction of proving
+      the complete insincerity of his own speech and writings about his early
+      life, and the inaccuracy of Las Casas writings his contemporary
+      biographer, and the first historian of the West Indies. Those of my
+      readers, then, who are inclined to be impatient with the meagreness of the
+      facts with which I am presenting them, and the disproportionate amount of
+      theory to fact with regard to these early years of Columbus, must remember
+      three things. First, that the only record of the early years of Columbus
+      was written long after those years had passed away, and in circumstances
+      which did not harmonise with them; second, that there is evidence, both
+      substantive and presumptive, that much of those records, even though it
+      came from the hands of Columbus and his friends, is false and must be
+      discarded; and third, that the only way in which anything like the truth
+      can be arrived at is by circumstantial and presumptive evidence with
+      regard to dates, names, places, and events upon which the obscure life of
+      Columbus impinged. Columbus is known to have written much about himself,
+      but very little of it exists or remains in his own handwriting. It remains
+      in the form of quotation by others, all of whom had their reasons for not
+      representing quite accurately what was, it must be feared, not even itself
+      a candid and accurate record. The evidence for these very serious
+      statements is the subject of numberless volumes and monographs, which
+      cannot be quoted here; for it is my privilege to reap the results, and not
+      to reproduce the material, of the immense research and investigation to
+      which in the last fifty years the life of Columbus has been subjected.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We shall come to facts enough presently; in the meantime we have but the
+      vaguest knowledge of what Columbus did in Lisbon. The one technical
+      possession which he obviously had was knowledge of the sea; he had also a
+      head on his shoulders, and plenty of judgment and common sense; he had
+      likely picked up some knowledge of cartography in his years at Genoa,
+      since (having abandoned wool-weaving) he probably wished to make progress
+      in the profession of the sea; and it is, therefore, believed that he
+      picked up a living in Lisbon by drawing charts and maps. Such a living
+      would only be intermittent; a fact that is indicated by his periodic
+      excursions to sea again, presumably when funds were exhausted. There were
+      other Genoese in Lisbon, and his own brother Bartholomew was with him
+      there for a time. He may actually have been there when Columbus arrived,
+      but it was more probable that Columbus, the pioneer of the family, seeing
+      a better field for his brother&rsquo;s talent in Lisbon than in Genoa,
+      sent for him when he himself was established there. This Bartholomew, of
+      whom we shall see a good deal in the future, is merely an outline at this
+      stage of the story; an outline that will later be filled up with human
+      features and fitted with a human character; at present he is but a brother
+      of Christopher, with a rather bookish taste, a better knowledge of
+      cartography than Christopher possessed, and some little experience of the
+      book-selling trade. He too made charts in Lisbon, and sold books also, and
+      no doubt between them the efforts of the brothers, supplemented by the
+      occasional voyages of Christopher, obtained them a sufficient livelihood.
+      The social change, in the one case from the society of Genoese
+      wool-weavers, and in the other from the company of merchant sailors, must
+      have been very great; for there is evidence that they began to make
+      friends and acquaintances among a rather different class than had been
+      formerly accessible to them. The change to a new country also and to a new
+      language makes a deep impression at the age of twenty-five; and although
+      Columbus in his sea-farings had been in many ports, and had probably
+      picked up a knowledge both of Portuguese and of Spanish, his establishment
+      in the Portuguese capital could not fail to enlarge his outlook upon life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is absolutely no record of his circumstances in the first year of
+      his life at Lisbon, so we may look once more into the glass of imagination
+      and try to find a picture there. It is very dim, very minute, very, very
+      far away. There is the little shop in a steep Lisbon street, somewhere
+      near the harbour we may be sure, with the shadows of the houses lying
+      sharp on the white sunlight of the street; the cool darkness of the shop,
+      with its odour of vellum and parchment, its rolls of maps and charts; and
+      somewhere near by the sounds and commotion of the wharves and the
+      shipping. Often, when there was a purchaser in the shop, there would be
+      talk of the sea, of the best course from this place to that, of the
+      entrance to this harbour and the other; talk of the western islands too,
+      of the western ocean, of the new astrolabe which the German Muller of
+      Konigsberg, or Regiomontanus, as they called him in Portugal, had modified
+      and improved. And if there was sometimes an evening walk, it would surely
+      be towards the coast or on a hill above the harbour, with a view of the
+      sun being quenched in the sea and travelling down into the unknown,
+      uncharted West.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="ch7" id="ch7"></a>CHAPTER VII.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      ADVENTURES BODILY AND SPIRITUAL
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Columbus had not been long in Portugal before he was off again to sea,
+      this time on a longer voyage than any he had yet undertaken. Our knowledge
+      of it depends on his own words as reported by Las Casas, and, like so much
+      other knowledge similarly recorded, is not to be received with absolute
+      certainty; but on the whole the balance of probability is in favour of its
+      truth. The words in which this voyage is recorded are given as a quotation
+      from a letter of Columbus, and, stripped of certain obvious interpolations
+      of the historian, are as follows:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;In the month of February, and in the year 1477, I navigated as
+        far as the island of Tile [Thule], a hundred leagues; and to this
+        island, which is as large as England, the English, especially those of
+        Bristol, go with merchandise; and when I was there the sea was not
+        frozen over, although there were very high tides, so much so that in
+        some parts the sea rose twenty-five &lsquo;brazas&rsquo;, and went down
+        as much, twice during the day.&rdquo;
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      The reasons for doubting that this voyage took place are due simply to
+      Columbus&rsquo;s habit of being untruthful in regard to his own past
+      doings, and his propensity for drawing the long bow; and the reason that
+      has been accepted by most of his biographers who have denied the truth of
+      this statement is that, in the year 1492, when Columbus was addressing the
+      King and Queen of Spain on his qualifications as a navigator, and when he
+      wished to set forth his experience in a formidable light, he said nothing
+      about this voyage, but merely described his explorations as having
+      extended from Guinea on the south to England on the north. A shrewd
+      estimate of Columbus&rsquo;s character makes it indeed seem incredible
+      that, if he had really been in Iceland, he should not have mentioned the
+      fact on this occasion; and yet there is just one reason, also quite
+      characteristic of Columbus, that would account for the suppression. It is
+      just possible that when he was at Thule, by which he meant Iceland, he may
+      have heard of the explorations in the direction of Greenland and
+      Newfoundland; and that, although by other navigators these lands were
+      regarded as a part of the continent of Europe, he may have had some
+      glimmerings of an idea that they were part of land and islands in the
+      West; and he was much too jealous of his own reputation as the great and
+      only originator of the project for voyaging to the West, to give away any
+      hints that he was not the only person to whom such ideas had occurred.
+      There is deception and untruth somewhere; and one must make one&rsquo;s
+      choice between regarding the story in the first place as a lie, or
+      accepting it as truth, and putting down Columbus&rsquo;s silence about it
+      on a later occasion to a rare instinct of judicious suppression. There are
+      other facts in his life, to which, we shall come later, that are in
+      accordance with this theory. There is no doubt, moreover, that Columbus
+      had a very great experience of the sea, and was one of the greatest
+      practical seamen, if not the greatest, that has ever lived; and it would
+      be foolish to deny, except for the greatest reasons, that he made a voyage
+      to the far North, which was neither unusual at the time nor a very great
+      achievement for a seaman of his experience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Christopher returned from these voyages, of which we know nothing except
+      the facts that he has given us, towards the end of 1477; and it was
+      probably in the next year that an event very important in his life and
+      career took place. Hitherto there has been no whisper of love in that
+      arduous career of wool-weaving, sailoring, and map-making; and it is not
+      unlikely that his marriage represents the first inspiration of love in his
+      life, for he was, in spite of his southern birth, a cool-blooded man, for
+      whom affairs of the heart had never a very serious interest. But at
+      Lisbon, where he began to find himself with some footing and place in the
+      world, and where the prospect of at least a livelihood began to open out
+      before him, his thoughts took that turn towards domesticity and family
+      life which marks a moment in the development of almost every man. And now,
+      since he has at last to emerge from the misty environment of sea-spray
+      that has veiled him so long from our intimate sight, we may take a close
+      look at him as he was in this year 1478.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Unlike the southern Italians, he was fair in colouring; a man rather above
+      the middle height, large limbed, of a shapely breadth and proportion, and
+      of a grave and dignified demeanour. His face was ruddy, and inclined to be
+      freckled under the exposure to the sun, his hair at this age still fair
+      and reddish, although in a few years later it turned grey, and became
+      white while he was still a young man. His nose was slightly aquiline, his
+      face long and rather full; his eyes of a clear blue, with sharply defined
+      eyebrows&mdash;seamen&rsquo;s eyes, which get an unmistakable light in
+      them from long staring into the sea distances. Altogether a handsome and
+      distinguished-looking young man, noticeable anywhere, and especially among
+      a crowd of swarthy Portuguese. He was not a lively young man; on the
+      contrary, his manner was rather heavy, and even at times inclined to be
+      pompous; he had a very good opinion of himself, had the clear calculating
+      head and tidy intellectual methods of the able mariner; was shrewd and
+      cautious&mdash;in a word, took himself and the world very seriously. A
+      strictly conventional man, as the conventions of his time and race went;
+      probably some of his gayer and lighter-hearted contemporaries thought him
+      a dull enough dog, who would not join in a carouse or a gallant adventure,
+      but would probably get the better of you if he could in any commercial
+      deal. He was a great stickler for the observances of religion; and never a
+      Sunday or feast-day passed, when he was ashore, without finding him, like
+      the dutiful son of the Church that he was, hearing Mass and attending at
+      Benediction. Not, indeed, a very attractive or inspiring figure of a man;
+      not the man whose company one would likely have sought very much, or whose
+      conversation one would have found very interesting. A man rather whose
+      character was cast in a large and plain mould, without those many facets
+      which add so much to the brightness of human intercourse, and which
+      attract and reflect the light from other minds; a man who must be tried in
+      large circumstances, and placed in a big setting, if his qualities are to
+      be seen to advantage . . . . I seem to see him walking up from the shop
+      near the harbour at Lisbon towards the convent of Saints; walking gravely
+      and firmly, with a dignified demeanour, with his best clothes on, and
+      glad, for the moment, to be free of his sea acquaintances, and to be
+      walking in the direction of that upper-class world after which he has a
+      secret hankering in his heart. There are a great many churches in Lisbon
+      nearer his house where he might hear Mass on Sundays; but he prefers to
+      walk up to the rich and fashionable convent of Saints, where everybody is
+      well dressed, and where those kindling eyes of his may indulge a cool
+      taste for feminine beauty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While the chapel bell is ringing other people are hurrying through the
+      sunny Lisbon streets to Mass at the convent. Among the fashionable throng
+      are two ladies, one young, one middle-aged; they separate at the church
+      door, and the younger one leaves her mother and takes her place in the
+      convent choir. This is Philippa Moniz, who lives alone with her mother in
+      Lisbon, and amuses herself with her privileges as a cavaliera, or dame, in
+      one of the knightly orders attached to the rich convent of Saints. Perhaps
+      she has noticed the tall figure of the young Genoese in the strangers&rsquo;
+      part of the convent, perhaps not; but his roving blue eye has noticed her,
+      and much is to come of it. The young Genoese continues his regular and
+      exemplary attendance at the divine Office, the young lady is zealous in
+      observing her duties in the choir; some kind friend introduces them; the
+      audacious young man makes his proposals, and, in spite of the melancholy
+      protests of the young lady&rsquo;s exceedingly respectable and
+      highly-connected relatives, the young people are betrothed and actually
+      married before the elders have time to recover breath from their first
+      shock at the absurdity of the suggestion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is a very curious fact in connection with his marriage that is
+      worthy of our consideration. In all his voluminous writings, letters,
+      memoirs, and journals, Columbus never once mentions his wife. His sole
+      reference to her is in his will, made at Valladolid many years later, long
+      after her death; and is contained in the two words &ldquo;my wife.&rdquo;
+      He ordains that a chapel shall be erected and masses said for the repose
+      of the souls of his father, his mother, and his wife. He who wrote so
+      much, did not write of her; he who boasted so much, never boasted of her;
+      he who bemoaned so much, never bemoaned her. There is a blank silence on
+      his part about everything connected with his marriage and his wife. I like
+      to think that it was because this marriage, which incidentally furnished
+      him with one of the great impulses of his career, was in itself placid and
+      uneventful, and belongs to that mass of happy days that do not make
+      history. Columbus was not a passionate man. I think that love had a very
+      small place in his life, and that the fever of passion was with him brief
+      and soon finished with; but I am sure he was affectionate, and grateful
+      for any affection and tenderness that were bestowed upon him. He was much
+      away too, at first on his voyages to Guinea and afterwards on the business
+      of his petitions to the Portuguese and Spanish Courts; and one need not be
+      a cynic to believe that these absences did nothing to lessen the affection
+      between him and his wife. Finally, their married life was a short one; she
+      died within ten years, and I am sure did not outlive his affections; so
+      that there may be something solemn, some secret memories of the aching joy
+      and sorrow that her coming into his life and passing out of it brought
+      him, in this silence of Columbus concerning his wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This marriage was, in the vulgar idiom of to-day, a great thing for
+      Columbus. It not only brought him a wife; it brought him a home, society,
+      recognition, and a connection with maritime knowledge and adventure that
+      was of the greatest importance to him. Philippa Moniz Perestrello was the
+      daughter of Bartolomeo Perestrello, who had been appointed hereditary
+      governor of the island of Porto Santo on its colonisation by Prince Henry
+      in 1425 and who had died there in 1457. Her grandfather was Gil Ayres
+      Moniz, who was secretary to the famous Constable Pereira in the reign of
+      John I, and is chiefly interesting to us because he founded the chapel of
+      the &ldquo;Piedad&rdquo; in the Carmelite Monastery at Lisbon, in which
+      the Moniz family had the right of interment for ever, and in which the
+      body of Philippa, after her brief pilgrimage in this world was over, duly
+      rested; and whence her son ordered its disinterment and re-burial in the
+      church of Santa Clara in San Domingo. Philippa&rsquo;s mother, Isabel
+      Moniz, was the second or third wife of Perestrello; and after her husband&rsquo;s
+      death she had come to live in Lisbon. She had another daughter, Violante
+      by name, who had married one Mulier, or Muliartes, in Huelva; and a son
+      named Bartolomeo, who was the heir to the governorship of Porto Santo; but
+      as he was only a little boy at the time of his father&rsquo;s death his
+      mother ceded the governorship to Pedro Correa da Cunha, who had married
+      Iseult, the daughter of old Bartolomeo by his first wife. The governorship
+      was thus kept in the family during the minority of Bartolomeo, who resumed
+      it later when he came of age.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This Isabel, mother of Philippa, was a very important acquaintance indeed
+      for Columbus. It must be noted that he left the shop and poor Bartholomew
+      to take care of themselves or each other, and went to live in the house of
+      his mother-in-law. This was a great social step for the wool-weaver of
+      Genoa; and it was probably the result of a kind of compromise with his
+      wife&rsquo;s horrified relatives at the time of her marriage. It was
+      doubtless thought impossible for her to go and live over the chart-maker&rsquo;s
+      shop; and as you can make charts in one house as well as another, it was
+      decided that Columbus should live with his mother-in-law, and follow his
+      trade under her roof. Columbus, in fact, seems to have been fortunate in
+      securing the favour of his female relatives-in-law, and it was probably
+      owing to the championship of Philippa&rsquo;s mother that a marriage so
+      much to his advantage ever took place at all. His wife had many
+      distinguished relatives in the neighbourhood of Lisbon; her cousin was
+      archbishop at this very time; but I can neither find that their marriage
+      was celebrated with the archiepiscopal blessing or that he ever got much
+      help or countenance from the male members of the Moniz family. Archbishops
+      even today do not much like their pretty cousins marrying a man of
+      Columbus&rsquo;s position, whether you call him a woolweaver, a sailor, a
+      map-maker, or a bookseller. &ldquo;Adventurer&rdquo; is perhaps the truest
+      description of him; and the word was as much distrusted in the best
+      circles in Lisbon in the fifteenth century as it is to-day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Those of his new relatives, however, who did get to know him soon began to
+      see that Philippa had not made such a bad bargain after all. With the
+      confidence and added belief in himself that the recognition and
+      encouragement of those kind women brought him, Columbus&rsquo;s mind and
+      imagination expanded; and I think it was probably now that he began to
+      wonder if all his knowledge and seamanship, his quite useful smattering of
+      cartography and cosmography, his real love of adventure, and all his
+      dreams and speculations concerning the unknown and uncharted seas, could
+      not be turned to some practical account. His wife&rsquo;s step-sister
+      Iseult and her husband had, moreover, only lately returned to Lisbon from
+      their long residence in Porto Santo; young Bartolomeo Perestrello, her
+      brother, was reigning there in their stead, and no doubt sending home
+      interesting accounts of ships and navigators that put in at Madeira; and
+      all the circumstances would tend to fan the spark of Columbus&rsquo;s
+      desire to have some adventure and glory of his own on the high seas. He
+      would wish to show all these grandees, with whom his marriage had brought
+      him acquainted, that you did not need to be born a Perestrello&mdash;or
+      Pallastrelli, as the name was in its original Italian form&mdash;to make a
+      name in the world. Donna Isabel, moreover, was never tired of talking
+      about Porto Santo and her dead husband, and of all the voyages and sea
+      adventures that had filled his life. She was obviously a good teller of
+      tales, and had all the old history and traditions of Madeira at her
+      fingers&rsquo; ends; the story of Robert Machin and Anne Dorset; the story
+      of the isle of Seven Cities; and the black cloud on the horizon that
+      turned out in the end to be Madeira. She told Christopher how her husband,
+      when he had first gone to Porto Santo, had taken there a litter of
+      rabbits, and how the rabbits had so increased that in two seasons they had
+      eaten up everything on the island, and rendered it uninhabitable for some
+      time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She brought out her husband&rsquo;s sea-charts, memoranda, and log-books,
+      the sight of which still farther inflamed Christopher&rsquo;s curiosity
+      and ambition. The great thing in those days was to discover something, if
+      it was only a cape down the African coast or a rock in the Atlantic. The
+      key to fame, which later took the form of mechanical invention, and later
+      still of discovery in the region of science, took the form then of actual
+      discovery of parts of the earth&rsquo;s surface. The thing was in the air;
+      news was coming in every day of something new seen, something new charted.
+      If others had done so much, and the field was still half unexplored, could
+      not he do something also? It was not an unlikely thought to occur to the
+      mind of a student of sea charts and horizons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="ch8" id="ch8"></a>CHAPTER VIII.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE FIRE KINDLES
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next step in Columbus&rsquo;s career was a move to Porto Santo, which
+      probably took place very soon after his marriage&mdash;that is to say, in
+      the year 1479. It is likely that he had the chance of making a voyage
+      there; perhaps even of commanding a ship, for his experience of the sea
+      and skill as a navigator must by this time have raised him above the rank
+      of an ordinary seaman; and in that case nothing would be more natural than
+      that he should take his young wife with him to visit her brother
+      Bartolomeo, and to see the family property. It is one of the charms of the
+      seaman&rsquo;s profession that he travels free all over the world; and if
+      he has no house or other fixed possessions that need to be looked after he
+      has the freedom of the world, and can go where he likes free of cost.
+      Porto Santo and Madeira, lying in the track of the busiest trade on the
+      Atlantic coast, would provide Columbus with an excellent base from which
+      to make other voyages; so it was probably with a heart full of eager
+      anticipation for the future, and sense of quiet happiness in the present,
+      that in the year 1479 Signor Cristoforo Colombo (for he did not yet call
+      himself Senor Cristoval Colon) set out for Porto Santo&mdash;a lonely rock
+      some miles north of Madeira. Its southern shore is a long sweeping bay of
+      white sand, with a huddle of sand-hills beyond, and cliffs and peaks of
+      basalt streaked with lava fringing the other shores. When Columbus and his
+      bride arrived there the place was almost as bare as it is to-day. There
+      were the governor&rsquo;s house; the settlement of Portuguese who worked
+      in the mills and sugar-fields; the mills themselves, with the cultivated
+      sugar-fields behind them; and the vineyards, with the dwarf Malmsey vines
+      pegged down to the ground, which Prince Henry had imported from Candia
+      fifty years before. The forest of dragon-trees that had once covered the
+      island was nearly all gone. The wood had all been used either for
+      building, making boats, or for fuel; and on the fruit of the few trees
+      that were left a herd of pigs was fattened. There was frequent
+      communication by boat with Madeira, which was the chief of all the
+      Atlantic islands, and the headquarters of the sugar trade; and Porto Santo
+      itself was a favourite place of call for passing ships. So that it was by
+      no means lonely for Christopher Columbus and his wife, even if they had
+      not had the society of the governor and his settlement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We can allow him about three years in Porto Santo, although for a part of
+      this time at least he must have been at sea. I think it not unlikely that
+      it was the happiest time of his life. He was removed from the
+      uncomfortable environment of people who looked down upon him because of
+      his obscure birth; he was in an exquisite climate; and living by the
+      sea-shore, as a sailor loves to do; he got on well with Bartolomeo, who
+      was no doubt glad enough of the company of this grave sailor who had seen
+      so much and had visited so many countries; above all he had his wife
+      there, his beautiful, dear, proud Philippa, all to himself, and out of
+      reach of those abominable Portuguese noblemen who paid so much attention
+      to her and so little to him, and made him so jealous; and there was a
+      whispered promise of some one who was coming to make him happier still. It
+      is a splendid setting, this, for the sea adventurer; a charming picture
+      that one has of him there so long ago, walking on the white shores of the
+      great sweeping bay, with the glorious purple Atlantic sparkling and
+      thundering on the sands, as it sparkles and thunders to-day. A place empty
+      and vivid, swept by the mellow winds; silent, but for the continuous roar
+      of the sea; still, but for the scuttling of the rabbits among the
+      sand-hills and the occasional passage of a figure from the mills up to the
+      sugar-fields; but brilliant with sunshine and colour and the bright
+      environment of the sea. It was upon such scenes that he looked during this
+      happy pause in his life; they were the setting of Philippa&rsquo;s dreams
+      and anxieties as the time of motherhood drew near; and it was upon them
+      that their little son first opened his eyes, and with the boom of the
+      Atlantic breakers that he first mingled his small voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is but a moment of rest and happiness; for Christopher the scene is
+      soon changed, and he must set forth upon a voyage again, while Philippa is
+      left, with a new light in her eyes, to watch over the atom that wakes and
+      weeps and twists and struggles and mews, and sleeps again, in her charge.
+      Sleep well, little son! Yet a little while, and you too shall make voyages
+      and conquests; new worlds lie waiting for you, who are so greatly
+      astonished at this Old World; far journeys by land and sea, and the
+      company of courtiers and kings; and much honour from the name and deeds of
+      him who looked into your eyes with a laugh and, a sob, and was so very
+      large and overshadowing! But with her who quietly sings to you, whose
+      hands soothe and caress you, in whose eyes shines that wonderful light of
+      mother&rsquo;s love&mdash;only a little while longer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While Diego, as this son was christened, was yet only a baby in his
+      cradle, Columbus made an important voyage to the, coast of Guinea as all
+      the western part of the African continent was then called. His solid and
+      practical qualities were by this time beginning to be recognised even by
+      Philippa&rsquo;s haughty family, and it was possibly through the interest
+      of her uncle, Pedro Noronhas, a distinguished minister of the King of
+      Portugal, that he got the command of a caravel in the expedition which set
+      out for Guinea in December 1481. A few miles from Cape Coast Castle, and
+      on the borders of the Dutch colony, there are to-day the ruined remains of
+      a fort; and it is this fort, the fortress of St. George, that the
+      expedition was sent out to erect. On the 11th of December the little fleet
+      set sail for [from? D.W.] Lisbon&mdash;ten caravels, and two barges or
+      lighters laden with the necessary masonry and timber-work for the fort.
+      Columbus was in command of one of the caravels, and the whole fleet was
+      commanded by the Portuguese Admiral Azumbaga. They would certainly see
+      Porto Santo and Madeira on their way south, although they did not call
+      there; and Philippa was no doubt looking out for them, and watching from
+      the sand-hills the fleet of twelve ships going by in the offing. They
+      called at Cape Verde, where the Admiral was commissioned to present one of
+      the negro kings with some horses and hawks, and incidentally to obtain his
+      assent to a treaty. On the 19th of January 1482, having made a very good
+      voyage, they, landed just beyond the Cape of the Three Points, and
+      immediately set about the business of the expedition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a state reception, with Admiral Azumbaga walking in front in
+      scarlet and brocade, followed by his captains, Columbus among them,
+      dressed in gorgeous tunics and cloaks with golden collars and, well hidden
+      beneath their finery, good serviceable cuirasses. The banner of Portugal
+      was ceremoniously unfurled and dis played from the top of a tall tree. An
+      altar was erected and consecrated by the chaplain to the expedition, and a
+      mass was sung for the repose of the soul of Prince Henry. The Portugal
+      contingent were then met by Caramansa, the king of the country, who came,
+      surrounded by a great guard of blacks armed with assegais, their bodies
+      scantily decorated with monkey fur and palm leaves. The black monarch must
+      have presented a handsome appearance, for his arms and legs were decked
+      with gold bracelets and rings, he had a kind of dog-collar fitted with
+      bells round his neck, and some pieces of gold were daintily twisted into
+      his beard. With these aids to diplomacy, and doubtless also with the help
+      of a dram or two of spirits or of the wine of Oporto, the treaty was soon
+      concluded, and a very shrewd stroke of business accomplished for the King
+      of Portugal; for it gave him the sole right of exchanging gaudy rubbish
+      from Portugal for the precious gold of Ethiopia. When the contents of the
+      two freight-ships had been unloaded they were beached and broken up by the
+      orders of King John, who wished it to be thought that they had been
+      destroyed in the whirlpools of that dangerous sea, and that the navigation
+      of those rough waters was only safe for the caravels of the Navy. The fort
+      was built in twenty days, and the expedition returned, laden with gold and
+      ivory; Admiral Azumbaga remained behind in command of the garrison.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This voyage, which was a bold and adventurous one for the time, may be
+      regarded as the first recognition of Columbus as a man of importance, for
+      the expedition was manned and commanded by picked men; so it was for all
+      reasons a very fortunate one for him, although the possession of the
+      dangerous secret as to the whereabouts of this valuable territory might
+      have proved to be not very convenient to him in the future.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Columbus went back to Porto Santo with his ambitions thoroughly kindled.
+      He had been given a definite command in the Portuguese Navy; he had been
+      sailing with a fleet; he had been down to the mysterious coast of Africa;
+      he had been trafficking with strange tribes; he had been engaged in a
+      difficult piece of navigation such as he loved; and on the long dreamy
+      days of the voyage home, the caravels furrowing the blue Atlantic before
+      the steady trade-wind, he determined that he would find some way of
+      putting his knowledge to use, and of earning distinction for himself.
+      Living, as he had been lately, in Atlantic seaports overlooking the
+      western ocean it is certain that the idea of discovering something in that
+      direction occupied him more and more. What it was that he was to discover
+      was probably very vague in his mind, and was likely not designated by any
+      name more exact than &ldquo;lands.&rdquo; In after years he tried to show
+      that it was a logical and scientific deduction which led him to go and
+      seek the eastern shore of the Indian continent by sailing west; but we may
+      be almost certain that at this time he thought of no such thing. He had no
+      exact scientific knowledge at this date. His map making had taught him
+      something, and naturally he had kept his ears open, and knew all the
+      gossip and hearsay about the islands of the West; and there gradually grew
+      in his mind the intuition or conviction&mdash;I refuse to call it an
+      opinion&mdash;that, over that blue verge of the West, there was land to be
+      found. How this seed of conviction first lodged in his mind it would be
+      impossible to say; in any one of the steps through which we have followed
+      him, it might have taken its root; but there it was, beginning to occupy
+      his mind very seriously indeed; and he began to look out, as all men do
+      who wish to act upon faith or conviction which they cannot demonstrate to
+      another person, for some proofs that his conviction was a sound one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And now, just at the moment when he needs it most, comes an incident that,
+      to a man of his religious and superstitious habit, seems like the pointing
+      finger of Providence. The story of the shipwrecked pilot has been
+      discredited by nearly all the modern biographers of Columbus, chiefly
+      because it does not fit in with their theory of his scientific studies and
+      the alleged bearing of these on his great discovery; but it is given by
+      Las Casas, who says that it was commonly believed by Columbus&rsquo;s
+      entourage at Hispaniola. Moreover, amid all the tangles of theory and
+      argument in which the achievement of Columbus has been involved, this
+      original story of shipwrecked mariners stands out with a strength and
+      simplicity that cannot be entirely disregarded by the historian who
+      permits himself some light of imagination by which to work. It is more
+      true to life and to nature that Columbus should have received his last
+      impulse, the little push that was to set his accumulated energy and
+      determination in motion, from a thing of pure chance, than that he should
+      have built his achievement up in a logical superstructure resting on a
+      basis of profound and elaborate theory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the year following Columbus&rsquo;s return from Guinea, then, he, and
+      probably his family, had gone over to Madeira from Porto Santo, and were
+      staying there. While they were there a small ship put in to Madeira, much
+      battered by storms and bad weather, and manned by a crew of five sick
+      mariners. Columbus, who was probably never far from the shore at Funchal
+      when a ship came into the harbour, happened to see them. Struck by their
+      appearance, and finding them in a quite destitute and grievously invalid
+      condition, he entertained them in his house until some other provision
+      could be made for them. But they were quite worn out. One by one they
+      succumbed to weakness and illness, until one only, a pilot from Huelva,
+      was left. He also was sinking, and when it was obvious that his end was
+      near at hand, he beckoned his good host to his bedside, and, in gratitude
+      for all his kindness, imparted to him some singular knowledge which he had
+      acquired, and with which, if he had lived, he had hoped to win distinction
+      for himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The pilot&rsquo;s story, in so far as it has been preserved, and taking
+      the mean of four contemporary accounts of it, was as follows. This man,
+      whose name is doubtful, but is given as Alonso Sanchez, was sailing on a
+      voyage from one of the Spanish ports to England or Flanders. He had a crew
+      of seventeen men. When they had got well out to sea a severe easterly gale
+      sprung up, which drove the vessel before it to the westward. Day after day
+      and week after week, for twenty-eight days, this gale continued. The
+      islands were all left far behind, and the ship was carried into a region
+      far beyond the limits of the ocean marked on the charts. At last they
+      sighted some islands, upon one of which they landed and took in wood and
+      water. The pilot took the bearings of the island, in so far as he was
+      able, and made some observations, the only one of which that has remained
+      being that the natives went naked; and, the wind having changed, set forth
+      on his homeward voyage. This voyage was long and painful. The wind did not
+      hold steady from the west; the pilot and his crew had a very hazy notion
+      of where they were; their dead reckoning was confused; their provisions
+      fell short; and one by one the crew sickened and died until they were
+      reduced to five or six&mdash;the ones who, worn out by sickness and
+      famine, and the labours of working the ship short-handed and in their
+      enfeebled condition, at last made the island of Madeira, and cast anchor
+      in the beautiful bay of Funchal, only to die there. All these things we
+      may imagine the dying man relating in snatches to his absorbed listener;
+      who felt himself to be receiving a pearl of knowledge to be guarded and
+      used, now that its finder must depart upon the last and longest voyage of
+      human discovery. Such observations as he had made&mdash;probably a few
+      figures giving the bearings of stars, an account of dead reckoning, and a
+      quite useless and inaccurate chart or map&mdash;the pilot gave to his
+      host; then, having delivered his soul of its secret, he died. This is the
+      story; not an impossible or improbable one in its main outlines. Whether
+      the pilot really landed on one of the Antilles is extremely doubtful,
+      although it is possible. Superstitious and storm-tossed sailors in those
+      days were only too ready to believe that they saw some of the fabled
+      islands of the Atlantic; and it is quite possible that the pilot simply
+      announced that he had seen land, and that the details as to his having
+      actually set foot upon it were added later. That does not seem to me
+      important in so far as it concerns Columbus. Whether it were true or not,
+      the man obviously believed it; and to the mind of Columbus, possessed with
+      an idea and a blind faith in something which could not be seen, the whole
+      incident would appear in the light of a supernatural sign. The bit of
+      paper or parchment with the rude drawing on it, even although it were the
+      drawing of a thing imagined and not of a thing seen, would still have for
+      him a kind of authority that he would find it hard to ignore. It seems
+      unnecessary to disbelieve this story. It is obviously absurd to regard it
+      as the sole origin of Columbus&rsquo;s great idea; it probably belongs to
+      that order of accidents, small and unimportant in themselves, which are so
+      often associated with the beginnings of mighty events. Walking on the
+      shore at Madeira or Porto Santo, his mind brooding on the great and
+      growing idea, Columbus would remember one or two other instances which, in
+      the light of his growing conviction and know ledge, began to take on a
+      significant hue. He remembered that his wife&rsquo;s relative, Pedro
+      Correa, who had come back from Porto Santo while Columbus was living in
+      Lisbon, had told him about some strange flotsam that came in upon the
+      shores of the island. He had seen a piece of wood of a very dark colour
+      curiously carved, but not with any tool of metal; and some great canes had
+      also come ashore, so big that, every joint would hold a gallon of wine.
+      These canes, which were utterly unlike any thing known in Europe or the
+      islands of the Atlantic, had been looked upon as such curiosities that
+      they had been sent to the King at Lisbon, where they remained, and where
+      Columbus himself afterwards saw them. Two other stories, which he heard
+      also at this time, went to strengthen his convictions. One was the tale of
+      Martin Vincenti, a pilot in the Portuguese Navy, who had found in the sea,
+      four hundred and twenty leagues to the west of Cape St. Vincent, another
+      piece of wood, curiously carved, that had evidently not been laboured with
+      an iron instrument. Columbus also remembered that the inhabitants of the
+      Azores had more than once found upon their coasts the trunks of huge
+      pine-trees, and strangely shaped canoes carved out of single logs; and,
+      most significant of all, the people of Flares had taken from the water the
+      bodies of two dead men, whose faces were of a strange broad shape, and
+      whose features differed from those of any known race of mankind. All these
+      objects, it was supposed, were brought by westerly winds to the shores of
+      Europe; it was not till long afterwards, when the currents of the Atlantic
+      came to be studied, that the presence of such flotsam came to be
+      attributed to the ocean currents, deflected by the Cape of Good Hope and
+      gathered in the Gulf of Mexico, which are sprayed out across the Atlantic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The idea once fixed in his mind that there was land at a not impossible
+      distance to the west, and perhaps a sea-road to the shores of Asia itself,
+      the next thing to be done, was to go and discover it. Rather a formidable
+      task for a man without money, a foreigner in a strange land, among people
+      who looked down upon him because of his obscure birth, and with no
+      equipment except a knowledge of the sea, a great mastery of the art and
+      craft of seamanship, a fearless spirit of adventure, and an inner light!
+      Some one else would have to be convinced before anything could be done;
+      somebody who would provide ships and men and money and provisions.
+      Altogether rather a large order; for it was not an unusual thing in those
+      days for master mariners, tired of the shore, to suggest to some grandee
+      or other the desirability of fitting out a ship or two to go in search of
+      the isle of St. Brandon, or to look up Antilia, or the island of the Seven
+      Cities. It was very hard to get an audience even for such a reasonable
+      scheme as that; but to suggest taking a flotilla straight out to the west
+      and into the Sea of Darkness, down that curving hill of the sea which it
+      might be easy enough to slide down, but up which it was known that no ship
+      could ever climb again, was a thing that hardly any serious or
+      well-informed person would listen to. A young man from Genoa, without a
+      knowledge either of the classics or of the Fathers, and with no other
+      argument except his own fixed belief and some vague talk about bits of
+      wood and shipwrecked mariners, was not the person to inspire the
+      capitalists of Portugal. Yet the thing had to be done. Obviously it could
+      not be done at Porto Santo, where there were no ships and no money.
+      Influence must be used; and Columbus knew that his proposals, if they were
+      to have even a chance of being listened to, must be presented in some
+      high-flown and elaborate form, giving reasons and offering inducements and
+      quoting authorities. He would have to get some one to help him in that; he
+      would have to get up some scientific facts; his brother Bartholomew could
+      help him, and some of those disagreeable relatives-in-law must also be
+      pressed into the service of the Idea. Obviously the first thing was to go
+      back to Lisbon; which accordingly Columbus did, about the year 1483.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="ch9" id="ch9"></a>CHAPTER IX.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      WANDERINGS WITH AN IDEA
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man to whom Columbus proposed to address his request for means with
+      which to make a voyage of discovery was no less a person than the new King
+      of Portugal. Columbus was never a man of petty or small ideas; if he were
+      going to do a thing at all, he went about it in a large and comprehensive
+      way; and all his life he had a way of going to the fountainhead, and of
+      making flights and leaps where other men would only climb or walk, that
+      had much to do with his ultimate success. King John, moreover, had shown
+      himself thoroughly sympathetic to the spirit of discovery; Columbus, as we
+      have seen, had already been employed in a trusted capacity in one of the
+      royal expeditions; and he rightly thought that, since he had to ask the
+      help of some one in his enterprise, he might as well try to enlist the
+      Crown itself in the service of his great Idea. He was not prepared,
+      however, to go directly to the King and ask for ships; his proposal would
+      have to be put in a way that would appeal to the royal ambition, and would
+      also satisfy the King that there was really a destination in view for the
+      expedition. In other words Columbus had to propose to go somewhere; it
+      would not do to say that he was going west into the Atlantic Ocean to look
+      about him. He therefore devoted all his energies to putting his proposal
+      on what is called a business footing, and expressing his vague, sublime
+      Idea in common and practical terms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The people who probably helped him most in this were his brother
+      Bartholomew and Martin Behaim, the great authority on scientific
+      navigation, who had been living in Lisbon for some time and with whom
+      Columbus was acquainted. Behaim, who was at this time about forty eight
+      years of age, was born at Nuremberg, and was a pupil of Regiomontanus, the
+      great German astronomer. A very interesting man, this, if we could
+      decipher his features and character; no mere star-gazing visionary, but a
+      man of the world, whose scientific lore was combined with a wide and
+      liberal experience of life. He was not only learned in cosmography and
+      astronomy, but he had a genius for mechanics and made beautiful
+      instruments; he was a merchant also, and combined a little business with
+      his scientific travels. He had been employed at Lisbon in adapting the
+      astrolabe of Regiomontanus for the use of sailors at sea; and in these
+      labours he was assisted by two people who were destined to have a weighty
+      influence on the career of Columbus&mdash;Doctors Rodrigo and Joseph,
+      physicians or advisers to the King, and men of great academic reputation.
+      There was nothing known about cosmography or astronomy that Behaim did not
+      know; and he had just come back from an expedition on which he had been
+      despatched, with Rodrigo and Joseph, to take the altitude of the sun in
+      Guinea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Columbus was not the man to neglect his opportunities, and there can be no
+      doubt that as soon as his purpose had established itself in his mind he
+      made use of every opportunity that presented itself for improving his
+      meagre scientific knowledge, in order that his proposal might be set forth
+      in a plausible form. In other words, he got up the subject. The whole of
+      his geographical reading with regard to the Indies up to this time had
+      been in the travels of Marco Polo; the others&mdash;whose works he quoted
+      from so freely in later years were then known to him only by name, if at
+      all. Behaim, however, could tell him a good deal about the supposed
+      circumference of the earth, the extent of the Asiatic continent, and so
+      on. Every new fact that Columbus heard he seized and pressed into the
+      service of his Idea; where there was a choice of facts, or a difference of
+      opinion between scientists, he chose the facts that were most convenient,
+      and the opinions that fitted best with his own beliefs. The very word
+      &ldquo;Indies&rdquo; was synonymous with unbounded wealth; there certainly
+      would be riches to tempt the King with; and Columbus, being a religious
+      man, hit also on the happy idea of setting forth the spiritual glory of
+      carrying the light of faith across the Sea of Darkness, and making of the
+      heathen a heritage for the Christian Church. So that, what with one thing
+      and another, he soon had his proposals formally arranged.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Imagine him, then, actually at Court, and having an audience of the King,
+      who could scarcely believe his ears. Here was a man, of whom he knew
+      nothing but that his conduct of a caravel had been well spoken of in the
+      recent expedition to Guinea, actually proposing to sail out west into the
+      Atlantic and to cross the unknown part of the world. Certainly his
+      proposals seemed plausible, but still&mdash;. The earth was round, said
+      Columbus, and therefore there was a way from East to West and from West to
+      East. The prophet Esdras, a scientific authority that even His Majesty
+      would hardly venture to doubt, had laid it down that only one-seventh of
+      the earth was covered by waters. From this fact Columbus deduced that the
+      maritime space extending westward between the shores of Europe and eastern
+      coast of Asia could not be large; and by sailing westward he proposed to
+      reach certain lands of which he claimed to have knowledge. The sailors&rsquo;
+      tales, the logs of driftwood, the dead bodies, were all brought into the
+      proposals; in short, if His Majesty would grant some ships, and consent to
+      making Columbus Admiral over all the islands that he might discover, with
+      full viceregal state, authority, and profit, he would go and discover
+      them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There are two different accounts of what the King said when this proposal
+      was made to him. According to some authorities, John was impressed by
+      Columbus&rsquo;s proposals, and inclined to provide him with the necessary
+      ships, but he could not assent to all the titles and rewards which
+      Columbus demanded as a price for his services. Barros, the Portuguese
+      historian, on the other hand, represents that the whole idea was too
+      fantastic to be seriously entertained by the King for a moment, and that
+      although he at once made up his mind to refuse the request he preferred to
+      delegate his refusal to a commission. Whatever may be the truth as to King
+      John&rsquo;s opinions, the commission was certainly appointed, and
+      consisted of three persons, to wit: Master Rodrigo, Master Joseph the Jew,
+      and the Right Reverend Cazadilla, Bishop of Ceuta.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before these three learned men must Columbus now appear, a little less
+      happy in his mind, and wishing that he knew more Latin. Master Rodrigo,
+      Master Joseph the Jew, the Right Reverend Cazadilla: three pairs of cold
+      eyes turned rather haughtily on the Genoese adventurer; three brains much
+      steeped in learning, directed in judgment on the Idea of a man with no
+      learning at all. The Right Reverend Cazadilla, being the King&rsquo;s
+      confessor, and a bishop into the bargain, could speak on that matter of
+      converting the heathen; and he was of opinion that it could not be done.
+      Joseph the Jew, having made voyages, and worked with Behaim at the
+      astrolabe, was surely an authority on navigation; and he was of opinion
+      that it could not be done. Rodrigo, being also a very learned man, had
+      read many books which Columbus had not read; and he was of opinion that it
+      could not be done. Three learned opinions against one Idea; the Idea is
+      bound to go. They would no doubt question Columbus on the scientific
+      aspect of the matter, and would soon discover his grievous lack of
+      academic knowledge. They would quote fluently passages from writers that
+      he had not heard of; if he had not heard of them, they seemed to imply, no
+      wonder he made such foolish proposals. Poor Columbus stands there puzzled,
+      dissatisfied, tongue-tied. He cannot answer these wiseacres in their own
+      learned lingo; what they say, or what they quote, may be true or it may
+      not; but it has nothing to do with his Idea. If he opens his mouth to
+      justify himself, they refute him with arguments that he does not
+      understand; there is a wall between them. More than a wall; there is a
+      world between them! It is his &lsquo;credo&rsquo; against their &lsquo;ignoro&rsquo;;
+      it is, his &lsquo;expecto&rsquo; against their &lsquo;non video&rsquo;.
+      Yet in his &lsquo;credo&rsquo; there lies a power of which they do not
+      dream; and it rings out in a trumpet note across the centuries, saluting
+      the life force that opposes its irresistible &ldquo;I will&rdquo; to the
+      feeble &ldquo;Thou canst not&rdquo; of the worldly-wise. Thus, in about
+      the year 1483, did three learned men sit in judgment upon our ignorant
+      Christopher. Three learned men: Doctors Rodrigo, Joseph the Jew, and the
+      Right Reverend Cazadilla, Bishop of Ceuta; three risen, stuffed to the
+      eyes and ears with learning; stuffed so full indeed that eyes and ears are
+      closed with it. And three men, it would appear, wholly destitute of
+      mother-wit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After all his preparations this rebuff must have been a serious blow to
+      Columbus. It was not his only trouble, moreover. During the last year he
+      had been earning nothing; he was already in imagination the Admiral of the
+      Ocean Seas; and in the anticipation of the much higher duties to which he
+      hoped to be devoted it is not likely that he would continue at his humble
+      task of making maps and charts. The result was that he got into debt, and
+      it was absolutely necessary that something should be done. But a darker
+      trouble had also almost certainly come to him about this time. Neither the
+      day nor the year of Philippa&rsquo;s death is known; but it is likely that
+      it occurred soon after Columbus&rsquo;s failure at the Portuguese Court,
+      and immediately before his departure into Spain. That anonymous life,
+      fulfilling itself so obscurely in companionship and motherhood, as softly
+      as it floated upon the page of history, as softly fades from it again.
+      Those kind eyes, that encouraging voice, that helping hand and friendly
+      human soul are with him no longer; and after the interval of peace and
+      restful growth that they afforded Christopher must strike his tent and go
+      forth upon another stage of his pilgrimage with a heavier and sterner
+      heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two things are left to him: his son Diego, now an articulate little
+      creature with character and personality of his own, and with strange,
+      heart-breaking reminiscences of his mother in voice and countenance and
+      manner&mdash;that is one possession; the other is his Idea. Two things
+      alive and satisfactory, amid the ruin and loss of other possessions; two
+      reasons for living and prevailing. And these two possessions Columbus took
+      with him when he set out for Spain in the year 1485.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His first care was to take little Diego to the town of Huelva, where there
+      lived a sister of Philippa&rsquo;s who had married a Spaniard named
+      Muliartes. This done, he was able to devote himself solely to the
+      furtherance of his Idea. For this purpose he went to Seville, where he
+      attached himself for a little while to a group of his countrymen who were
+      settled there, among them Antonio and Alessandro Geraldini, and made such
+      momentary living as was possible to him by his old trade. But the Idea
+      would not sleep. He talked of nothing else; and as men do who talk of an
+      idea that possesses them wholly, and springs from the inner light of
+      faith, he interested and impressed many of his hearers. Some of them
+      suggested one thing, some another; but every one was agreed that it would
+      be a good thing if he could enlist the services of the great Count
+      (afterwards Duke) of Medini Celi, who had a palace at Rota, near Cadiz.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This nobleman was one of the most famous of the grandees of Spain, and
+      lived in mighty state upon his territory along the sea-shore, serving the
+      Crown in its wars and expeditions with the power and dignity of an ally
+      rather than of a subject. His domestic establishment was on a princely
+      scale, filled with chamberlains, gentlemen-at-arms, knights, retainers,
+      and all the panoply of social dignity; and there was also place in his
+      household for persons of merit and in need of protection. To this great
+      man came Columbus with his Idea. It attracted the Count, who was a judge
+      of men and perhaps of ideas also; and Columbus, finding some hope at last
+      in his attitude, accepted the hospitality offered to him, and remained at
+      Rota through the winter of 1485-86. He had not been very hopeful when he
+      arrived there, and had told the Count that he had thought of going to the
+      King of France and asking for help from him; but the Count, who found
+      something respectable and worthy of consideration in the Idea of a man who
+      thought nothing of a journey in its service from one country to another
+      and one sovereign to another, detained him, and played with the Idea
+      himself. Three or four caravels were nothing to the Count of Medina Eeli;
+      but on the other hand the man was a grandee and a diplomat, with a nice
+      sense of etiquette and of what was due to a reigning house. Either there
+      was nothing in this Idea, in which case his caravels would be employed to
+      no purpose, or there was so much in it that it was an undertaking, not
+      merely for the Count of Medina Celi, but for the Crown of Castile. Lands
+      across the ocean, and untold gold and riches of the Indies, suggested
+      complications with foreign Powers, and transactions with the Pope himself,
+      that would probably be a little too much even for the good Count;
+      therefore with a curious mixture of far-sighted generosity and shrewd
+      security he wrote to Queen Isabella, recommending Columbus to her, and
+      asking her to consider his Idea; asking her also, in case anything should
+      come of it, to remember him (the Count), and to let him have a finger in
+      the pie. Thus, with much literary circumstance and elaboration of
+      politeness, the Count of Medina Celi to Queen Isabella.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Follows an interval of suspense, the beginning of a long discipline of
+      suspense to which Columbus was to be subjected; and presently comes a
+      favourable reply from the Queen, commanding that Columbus should be sent
+      to her. Early in 1486 he set out for Cordova, where the Court was then
+      established, bearing another letter from the Count in which his own
+      private requests were repeated, and perhaps a little emphasised. Columbus
+      was lodged in the house of Alonso de Quintanilla, Treasurer to the Crown
+      of Castile, there to await an audience with Queen Isabella.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While he is waiting, and getting accustomed to his new surroundings, let
+      us consider these two monarchs in whose presence he is soon to appear, and
+      upon whose decision hangs some part of the world&rsquo;s destiny. Isabella
+      first; for in that strange duet of government it is her womanly soprano
+      that rings most clearly down the corridors of Time. We discern in her a
+      very busy woman, living a difficult life with much tact and judgment, and
+      exercising to some purpose that amiable taste for &ldquo;doing good&rdquo;
+      that marks the virtuous lady of station in every age. This, however, was a
+      woman who took risks with her eyes open, and steered herself cleverly in
+      perilous situations, and guided others with a firm hand also, and in other
+      ways made good her claim to be a ruler. The consent and the will of her
+      people were her great strength; by them she dethroned her niece and
+      ascended the throne of Castile. She had the misfortune to be at variance
+      with her husband in almost every matter of policy dear to his heart; she
+      opposed the expulsion of the Jews and the establishment of the
+      Inquisition; but when she failed to get her way, she was still able to
+      preserve her affectionate relations with her husband without disagreement
+      and with happiness. If she had a fault it was the common one of being too
+      much under the influence of her confessors; but it was a fault that was
+      rarely allowed to disturb the balance of her judgment. She liked clever
+      people also; surrounded herself with men of letters and of science,
+      fostered all learned institutions, and delighted in the details of civil
+      administration. A very dignified and graceful figure, that could equally
+      adorn a Court drawing-room or a field of battle; for she actually went
+      into the field, and wore armour as becomingly as silk and ermine. Firm,
+      constant, clever, alert, a little given to fussiness perhaps, but
+      sympathetic and charming, with some claims to genius and some approach to
+      grandeur of soul: so much we may say truly of her inner self. Outwardly
+      she was a woman well formed, of medium height, a very dignified and
+      graceful carriage, eyes of a clear summer blue, and the red and gold of
+      autumn in her hair&mdash;these last inherited from her English
+      grandmother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ferdinand of Aragon appears not quite so favourably in our pages, for he
+      never thought well of Columbus or of his proposals; and when he finally
+      consented to the expedition he did so with only half a heart, and against
+      his judgment. He was an extremely enterprising, extremely subtle,
+      extremely courageous, and according to our modern notions, an extremely
+      dishonest man; that is to say, his standards of honour were not those
+      which we can accept nowadays. He thought nothing of going back on a
+      promise, provided he got a priestly dispensation to do so; he juggled with
+      his cabinets, and stopped at nothing in order to get his way; he had a
+      craving ambition, and was lacking in magnanimity; he loved dominion, and
+      cared very little for glory. A very capable man; so capable that in spite
+      of his defects he was regarded by his subjects as wise and prudent; so
+      capable that he used his weaknesses of character to strengthen and further
+      the purposes of his reign. A very cold man also, quick and sure in his
+      judgments, of wide understanding and grasp of affairs; simple and austere
+      in dress and diet, as austerity was counted in that period of splendour;
+      extremely industrious, and close in his observations and judgments of men.
+      To the bodily eye he appeared as a man of middle size, sturdy and
+      athletic, face burned a brick red with exposure to the sun and open air;
+      hair and eyebrows of a bright chestnut; a well-formed and not unkindly
+      mouth; a voice sharp and unmelodious, issuing in quick fluent speech. This
+      was the man that earned from the Pope, for himself and his successors, the
+      title of &ldquo;Most Catholic Majesty.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Queen was very busy indeed with military preparations; but in the
+      midst of her interviews with nobles and officers, contractors and state
+      officials, she snatched a moment to receive the person Christopher
+      Columbus. With that extreme mental agility which is characteristic of busy
+      sovereigns all the force of this clever woman&rsquo;s mind was turned for
+      a moment on Christopher, whose Idea had by this time invested him with a
+      dignity which no amount of regal state could abash. There was very little
+      time. The Queen heard what Columbus had to say, cutting him short, it is
+      likely, with kindly tact, and suppressing his tendency to launch out into
+      long-winded speeches. What she saw she liked; and, being too busy to give
+      to this proposal the attention that it obviously merited, she told
+      Columbus that the matter would be fully gone into and that in the meantime
+      he must regard himself as the guest of the Court. And so, in the
+      countenance of a smile and a promise, Columbus bows himself out. For the
+      present he must wait a little and his hot heart must contain itself while
+      other affairs, looming infinitely larger than his Idea on the royal
+      horizon, receive the attention of the Court.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was not the happiest moment, indeed, in which to talk of ships and
+      charts, and lonely sea-roads, and faraway undiscovered shores. Things at
+      home were very real and lively in those spring days at Cordova. The war
+      against the Moors had reached a critical stage; King Ferdinand was away
+      laying siege to the city of Loxa, and though the Queen was at Cordova she
+      was entirely occupied with the business of collecting and forwarding
+      troops and supplies to his aid. The streets were full of soldiers; nobles
+      and grandees from all over the country were arriving daily with their
+      retinues; glitter and splendour, and the pomp of warlike preparation,
+      filled the city. Early in June the Queen herself went to the front and
+      joined her husband in the siege of Moclin; and when this was victoriously
+      ended, and they had returned in triumph to Cordova, they had to set out
+      again for Gallicia to suppress a rebellion there. When that was over they
+      did not come back to Cordova at all, but repaired at once to Salamanca to
+      spend the winter there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the house of Alonso de Quintanilla, however, Columbus was not
+      altogether wasting his time. He met there some of the great persons of the
+      Court, among them the celebrated Pedro Gonzalez de Mendoza, Archbishop of
+      Toledo and Grand Cardinal of Spain. This was far too great a man to be at
+      this time anything like a friend of Columbus; but Columbus had been
+      presented to him; the Cardinal would know his name, and what his business
+      was; and that is always a step towards consideration. Cabrero, the royal
+      Chamberlain, was also often a fellow-guest at the Treasurer&rsquo;s table;
+      and with him Columbus contracted something like a friendship. Every one
+      who met him liked him; his dignity, his simplicity of thought and manner,
+      his experience of the sea, and his calm certainty and conviction about the
+      stupendous thing which he proposed to do, could not fail to attract the
+      liking and admiration of those with whom he came in contact. In the
+      meantime a committee appointed by the Queen sat upon his proposals. The
+      committee met under the presidentship of Hernando de Talavera, the prior
+      of the monastery of Santa Maria del Prado, near Valladolid, a pious
+      ecclesiastic, who had the rare quality of honesty, and who was therefore a
+      favourite with Queen Isabella; she afterwards created him Archbishop of
+      Granada. He was not, however, poor honest soul! quite the man to grasp and
+      grapple with this wild scheme for a voyage across the ocean. Once more
+      Columbus, as in Portugal, set forth his views with eloquence and
+      conviction; and once more, at the tribunal of learning, his unlearned
+      proposals were examined and condemned. Not only was Columbus&rsquo;s Idea
+      regarded as scientifically impossible, but it was also held to come
+      perilously near to heresy, in its assumption of a state of affairs that
+      was clearly at variance with the writings of the Fathers and the sacred
+      Scriptures themselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This new disappointment, bitter though it was, did not find Columbus in
+      such friendless and unhappy circumstances as those in which he left
+      Portugal. He had important friends now, who were willing and anxious to
+      help him, and among them was one to whom he turned, in his profound
+      depression, for religious and friendly consolation. This was Diego de DEA,
+      prior of the Dominican convent of San Estevan at Salamanca, who was also
+      professor of theology in the university there and tutor to the young
+      Prince Juan. Of all those who came in contact with Columbus at this time
+      this man seems to have understood him best, and to have realised where his
+      difficulty lay. Like many others who are consumed with a burning idea
+      Columbus was very probably at this time in danger of becoming possessed
+      with it like a monomaniac; and his new friends saw that if he were to make
+      any impression upon the conservative learning of the time to which a
+      decision in such matters was always referred he must have some opportunity
+      for friendly discussion with learned men who were not inimical to him, and
+      who were not in the position of judges examining a man arraigned before
+      them and pleading for benefits.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the Court went to Salamanca at the end of 1486, DEA arranged that
+      Columbus should go there too, and he lodged him in a country farm called
+      Valcuebo, which belonged to his convent and was equi-distant from it and
+      the city. Here the good Dominican fathers came and visited him, bringing
+      with them professors from the university, who discussed patiently with
+      Columbus his theories and ambitions, and, himself all conscious,
+      communicated new knowledge to him, and quietly put him right on many a
+      scientific point. There were professors of cosmography and astronomy in
+      the university, familiar with the works of Alfraganus and Regiomontanus.
+      It is likely that it was at this time that Columbus became possessed of d&rsquo;Ailly&rsquo;s
+      &lsquo;Imago Mundi&rsquo;, which little volume contained a popular resume
+      of the scientific views of Strabo, Pliny, Ptolemy, and others, and was
+      from this time forth Columbus&rsquo;s constant companion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here at Valcuebo and later, when winter came, in the great hall of the
+      Dominican convent at Salamanca, known as the &ldquo;De Profundis&rdquo;
+      hall, where the monks received guests and held discussions, the Idea of
+      Columbus was ventilated and examined. He heard what friendly sceptics had
+      to say about it; he saw the kind of argument that he would have to oppose
+      to the existing scientific and philosophical knowledge on cosmography.
+      There is no doubt that he learnt a good deal at this time; and more
+      important even than this, he got his project known and talked about; and
+      he made powerful friends, who were afterwards to be of great use to him.
+      The Marquesa de Moya, wife of his friend Cabrera, took a great liking to
+      him; and as she was one of the oldest and closest friends of the Queen, it
+      is likely that she spoke many a good word for Columbus in Isabella&rsquo;s
+      ear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By the time the Court moved to Cordova early in 1487, Columbus was once
+      more hopeful of getting a favourable hearing. He followed the Court to
+      Cordova, where he received a gracious message from the Queen to the effect
+      that she had not forgotten him, and that as soon as her military
+      preoccupations permitted it, she would go once more, and more fully, into
+      his proposals. In the meantime he was attached to the Court, and received
+      a quarterly payment of 3000 maravedis. It seemed as though the
+      unfavourable decision of Talavera&rsquo;s committee had been forgotten.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the meantime he was to have a change of scene. Isabella followed
+      Ferdinand to the siege of Malaga, where the Court was established; and as
+      there were intervals in which other than military business might be
+      transacted, Columbus was ordered to follow them in case his affairs should
+      come up for consideration. They did not; but the man himself had an
+      experience that may have helped to keep his thoughts from brooding too
+      much on his unfulfilled ambition. Years afterwards, when far away on
+      lonely seas, amid the squalor of a little ship and the staggering buffets
+      of a gale, there would surely sometimes leap into his memory a brightly
+      coloured picture of this scene in the fertile valley of Malaga: the silken
+      pavilions of the Court, the great encampment of nobility with its arms and
+      banners extending in a semicircle to the seashore, all glistening and
+      moving in the bright sunshine. There was added excitement at this time at
+      an attempt to assassinate Ferdinand and Isabella, a fanatic Moor having
+      crept up to one of the pavilions and aimed a blow at two people whom he
+      mistook for the King and Queen. They turned out to be Don Alvaro de
+      Portugal, who was dangerously wounded, and Columbus&rsquo;s friend, the
+      Marquesa de Moya, who was unhurt; but it was felt that the King and Queen
+      had had a narrow escape. The siege was raised on the 18th of August, and
+      the sovereigns went to spend the winter at Zaragoza; and Columbus, once
+      more condemned to wait, went back to Cordova.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was here that he contracted his second and, so far as we know, his last
+      romantic attachment. The long idle days of summer and autumn at Cordova,
+      empty of all serious occupation, gave nature an opportunity for indulging
+      her passion for life and continuity. Among Christopher&rsquo;s friends at
+      Cordova was the family of Arana, friendly hospitable souls, by some
+      accounts noble and by others not noble, and certainly in somewhat poor
+      circumstances, who had welcomed him to their house, listened to his plans
+      with enthusiasm, and formed a life-long friendship with him. Three members
+      of this family are known to us&mdash;two brothers, Diego and Pedro, both
+      of whom commanded ships in Columbus&rsquo;s expeditions, and a sister
+      Beatriz. Columbus was now a man of six-and-thirty, while she was little
+      more than a girl; he was handsome and winning, distinguished by the daring
+      and importance of his scheme, full of thrilling and romantic talk of
+      distant lands; a very interesting companion, we may be sure. No wonder she
+      fell in love with Christopher; no wonder that he, feeling lonely and
+      depressed by the many postponements of his suit at Court, and in need of
+      sympathy and encouragement, fell in these blank summer days into an
+      intimacy that flamed into a brief but happy passion. Why Columbus never
+      married Beatriz de Arana we cannot be sure, for it is almost certain that
+      his first wife had died some time before. Perhaps he feared to involve
+      himself in any new or embarrassing ties; perhaps he loved unwillingly, and
+      against his reason; perhaps&mdash;although the suggestion is not a happy
+      one&mdash;he by this time did not think poor Beatriz good enough for the
+      Admiral-elect of the Ocean Seas; perhaps (and more probably) Beatriz was
+      already married and deserted, for she bore the surname of Enriquez; and in
+      that case, there being no such thing as a divorce in the Catholic Church,
+      she must either sin or be celibate. But however that may be, there was an
+      uncanonical alliance between them which evidently did not in the least
+      scandalise her brothers and which resulted in the birth of Ferdinand
+      Columbus in the following year. Christopher, so communicative and
+      discursive upon some of his affairs, is as reticent about Beatriz as he
+      was about Philippa. Beatriz shares with his legitimate wife the curious
+      distinction of being spoken of by Columbus to posterity only in his will,
+      which was executed at Valladolid the day before he died. In the dry ink
+      and vellum of that ancient legal document is his only record of these two
+      passions. The reference to Beatriz is as follows:
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;And I direct him [Diego] to make provision for Beatriz Enriquez,
+        mother of D. Fernando, my son, that she may be able to live honestly,
+        being a person to whom I am under very great obligation. And this shall
+        be done for the satisfaction of my conscience, because this matter
+        weighs heavily upon my soul. The reason for which it is not fitting to
+        write here.&rdquo;
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      About the condition of Beatriz, temporal and spiritual, there has been
+      much controversy; but where the facts are all so buried and inaccessible
+      it is unseemly to agitate a veil which we cannot lift, and behind which
+      Columbus himself sheltered this incident of his life. &ldquo;Acquainted
+      with poverty&rdquo; is one fragment of fact concerning her that has come
+      down to us; acquainted also with love and with happiness, it would seem,
+      as many poor persons undoubtedly are. Enough for us to know that in the
+      city of Cordova there lived a woman, rich or poor, gentle or humble,
+      married or not married, who brought for a time love and friendly
+      companionship into the life of Columbus; that she gave what she had for
+      giving, without stint or reserve, and that she became the mother of a son
+      who inherited much of what was best in his father, and but for whom the
+      world would be in even greater darkness than it is on the subject of
+      Christopher himself. And so no more of Beatriz Enriquez de Arana, whom
+      &ldquo;God has in his keeping&rdquo;&mdash;and has had now these many
+      centuries of Time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus passed the summer and autumn of 1487; precious months, precious years
+      slipping by, and the great purpose as yet unfulfilled and seemingly no
+      nearer to fulfilment. It is likely that Columbus kept up his applications
+      to the Court, and received polite and delaying replies. The next year
+      came, and the Court migrated from Zaragoza to Murcia, from Murcia to
+      Valladolid, from Valladolid to Medina del Campo. Columbus attended it in
+      one or other of these places, but without result. In August Beatriz gave
+      birth to a son, who was christened Ferdinand, and who lived to be a great
+      comfort to his father, if not to her also. But the miracle of paternity
+      was not now so new and wonderful as it had been; the battle of life, with
+      its crosses and difficulties, was thick about him; and perhaps he looked
+      into this new-comer&rsquo;s small face with conflicting thoughts, and
+      memories of the long white beach and the crashing surf at Porto Santo, and
+      regret for things lost&mdash;so strangely mingled and inconsistent are the
+      threads of human thought. At last he decided to turn his face elsewhere.
+      In September 1488 he went to Lisbon, for what purpose it is not certain;
+      possibly in connection with the affairs of his dead wife; and probably
+      also in the expectation of seeing his brother Bartholomew, to whom we may
+      now turn our attention for a moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After the failure of Columbus&rsquo;s proposals to the King of Portugal in
+      1486, and the break-up of his home there, Bartholomew had also left
+      Lisbon. Bartholomew Diaz, a famous Portuguese navigator, was leaving for
+      the African coast in August, and Bartholomew Columbus is said to have
+      joined his small expedition of three caravels. As they neared the latitude
+      of the Cape which he was trying to make, he ran into a gale which drove
+      him a long way out of his course, west and south.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The wind veered round from north-east to north-west, and he did not strike
+      the land again until May 1487. When he did so his crew insisted upon his
+      returning, as they declined to go any further south. He therefore turned
+      to the west, and then made the startling discovery that in the course of
+      the tempest he had been blown round the Cape, and that the land he had
+      made was to the eastward of it; and he therefore rounded it on his way
+      home. He arrived back in Lisbon in December 1488, when Columbus met his
+      brother again, and was present at the reception of Diaz by the King of
+      Portugal. They had a great deal to tell each other, these two brothers; in
+      the two years and a half that had gone since they had parted a great deal
+      had happened to them; and they both knew a good deal more about the great
+      question in which they, were interested than they had known when last they
+      talked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is to this period that I attribute the inception, if not the execution,
+      of the forgery of the Toscanelli correspondence, if, as I believe, it was
+      a forgery. Christopher&rsquo;s unpleasant experiences before learned
+      committees and commissions had convinced him that unless he were armed
+      with some authoritative and documentary support for his theories they had
+      little chance of acceptance by the learned. The, Idea was right; he knew
+      that; but before he could convince the academic mind, he felt that it must
+      have the imprimatur of a mind whose learning could not be impugned.
+      Therefore it is not an unfair guess&mdash;and it can be nothing more than
+      a guess&mdash;that Christopher and Bartholomew at this point laid their
+      heads together, and decided that the next time Christopher had to appear
+      before a commission he would, so to speak, have something &ldquo;up his
+      sleeve.&rdquo; It was a risky thing to do, and must in any case be used
+      only as a very last resource; which would account for the fact that the
+      Toscanelli correspondence was never used at all, and is not mentioned in
+      any document known to men written until long after Columbus&rsquo;s death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But these summers and winters of suspense are at last drawing to a close,
+      and we must follow Christopher rapidly through them until the hour of his
+      triumph. He was back in Spain in the spring of 1489, his travelling
+      expenses being defrayed out of the royal purse; and a little later he was
+      once more amid scenes of war at the siege of Baza, and, if report is true,
+      taking a hand himself, not without distinction. It was there that he saw
+      the two friars from the convent of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, who
+      brought a message from the Grand Soldan of Egypt, threatening the
+      destruction of the Sepulchre if the Spanish sovereigns did not desist from
+      the war against Granada; and it was there that in his simple and pious
+      mind he formed the resolve that if ever his efforts should be crowned with
+      success, and he himself become rich and powerful, he would send a crusade
+      for the rescue of the Holy Sepulchre. And it was there that, on the 22nd
+      of December, he saw Boabdil, the elder of the two rival Kings of Granada,
+      surrender all his rights and claims to Spain. Surely now there will be a
+      chance for him? No; there is another interruption, this time occasioned by
+      the royal preparations for the marriage of the Princess Isabella to the
+      heir of Portugal. Poor Columbus, sickened and disappointed by these
+      continual delays, irritated by a sense of the waste of his precious time,
+      follows the Court about from one place to another, raising a smile here
+      and a scoff there, and pointed at by children in the street. There, is
+      nothing so ludicrous as an Idea to those who do not share it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Another summer, another winter, lost out of a life made up of a limited
+      number of summers and winters; a few more winters and summers, thinks
+      Christopher, and I shall be in a world where Ideas are not needed, and
+      where there is nothing left to discover! Something had to be done. In the
+      beginning of 1491 there was only one thing spoken of at Court&mdash;the
+      preparations for the siege of Granada, which did not interest Columbus at
+      all. The camp of King Ferdinand was situated at Santa Fe, a few miles to
+      the westward of Granada, and Columbus came here late in the year,
+      determined to get a final answer one way or the other to his question. He
+      made his application, and the busy monarchs once more adopted their usual
+      polite tactics. They appointed a junta, which was presided over by no less
+      a person than the Cardinal of Spain, Gonzales de Mendoza: Once more the
+      weary business was gone through, but Columbus must have had some hopes of
+      success, since he did not produce his forged Toscanelli correspondence. It
+      was no scruple of conscience that held him back, we may be sure; the
+      crafty Genoese knew nothing about such scruples in the attainment of a
+      great object; he would not have hesitated to adopt any means to secure an
+      end which he felt to be so desirable. So it is probable that either he was
+      not quite sure of his ground and his courage failed him, or that he had
+      hopes, owing to his friendship with so many of the members of the junta,
+      that a favourable decision would at last be arrived at. In this he was
+      mistaken. The Spanish prelates again quoted the Fathers of the Church, and
+      disposed of his proposals simply on the ground that they were heretical.
+      Much talk, and much wagging of learned heads; and still no mother-wit or
+      gleam of light on this obscurity of learning. The junta decided against
+      the proposals, and reported its decision to the King and Queen. The
+      monarchs, true to their somewhat hedging methods when there was anything
+      to be gained by hedging, informed Columbus that at present they were too
+      much occupied with the war to grant his requests; but that, when the
+      preoccupations and expenses of the campaign were a thing of the past, they
+      might again turn their attention to his very interesting suggestion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was at this point that the patience of Columbus broke down. Too many
+      promises had been made to him, and hope had been held out to him too often
+      for him to believe any more in it. Spain, he decided, was useless; he
+      would try France; at least he would be no worse off there. But he had
+      first of all to settle his affairs as well as possible. Diego, now a
+      growing boy nearly eleven years old, had been staying with Beatriz at
+      Cordova, and going to school there; Christopher would take him back to his
+      aunt&rsquo;s at Huelva before he went away. He set out with a heavy heart,
+      but with purpose and determination unimpaired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="ch10" id="ch10"></a>CHAPTER X.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      OUR LADY OF LA RABIDA
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is a long road from Santa Fe to Huelva, a long journey to make on foot,
+      and the company of a sad heart and a little talking boy, prone to sudden
+      weariness and the asking of innumerable difficult questions, would not
+      make it very much shorter. Every step that Christopher took carried him
+      farther away from the glittering scene where his hopes had once been so
+      bright, and were now fallen to the dust; and every step brought him nearer
+      that unknown destiny as to which he was in great darkness of mind, and
+      certain only that there was some small next thing constantly to be done:
+      the putting down of one foot after another, the request for food and
+      lodging at the end of each short day&rsquo;s march, the setting out again
+      in the morning. That walk from Santa Fe, so real and painful and wearisome
+      and long a thing to Christopher and Diego, is utterly blank and
+      obliterated for us. What he thought and felt and suffered are things quite
+      dead; what he did-namely, to go and do the immediate thing that it seemed
+      possible and right for him to do&mdash;is a living fact to-day, for it
+      brought him, as all brave and honest doing will, a little nearer to his
+      destiny, a little nearer to the truthful realisation of what was in him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At about a day&rsquo;s journey from Huelva, where the general slope of the
+      land begins to fall towards the sea, two small rivers, the Odiel and the
+      Tinto, which have hitherto been making music each for itself through the
+      pleasant valleys and vineyards of Andalusia, join forces, and run with a
+      deeper stream towards the sea at Palos. The town of Palos lay on the banks
+      of the river; a little to the south of it, and on the brow of a rocky
+      promontory dark with pine trees, there stood the convent of Our Lady of La
+      Rabida. Stood, on this November evening in the year 1491; had stood in
+      some form or other, and used for varying purposes, for many years and
+      centuries before that, even to the time of the Romans; and still stands, a
+      silent and neglected place, yet to be visited and seen by such as are
+      curious. To the door of this place comes Christopher as darkness falls,
+      urged thereto by the plight of Diego, who is tired and hungry. Christopher
+      rings the bell, and asks the porter for a little bread and water for the
+      child, and a lodging for them both. There is some talk at the door; the
+      Franciscan lay brother being given, at all times in the history of his
+      order, to the pleasant indulgence of gossiping conversation, when that is
+      lawful; and the presence of a stranger, who speaks with a foreign accent,
+      being at all times a incident of interest and even of excitement in the
+      quiet life of a monastery. The moment is one big with import to the human
+      race; it marks a period in the history of our man; the scene is worth
+      calling up. Dark night, with sea breezes moaning in the pine trees,
+      outside; raying light from within falling on the lay brother leaning in
+      the doorway and on the two figures standing without: on Christopher,
+      grave, subdued, weary, yet now as always of pleasant and impressive
+      address, and on the small boy who stands beside him round-eyed and
+      expectant, his fatigue for the moment forgotten in curiosity and
+      anticipation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /> <a name="p113" id="p113"></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+      <img alt="p113.jpg (49K)" src="images/p113.jpg" style="width:100%;" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/p113.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
+    </h5>
+<p>
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</p>
+   
+    <p>
+      While they are talking comes no less a person than the Prior of the
+      monastery, Friar Juan Perez, bustling round, good-natured busybody that he
+      is, to see what is all this talk at the door. The Prior, as is the habit
+      of monks, begins by asking questions. What is the stranger&rsquo;s name?
+      Where does he come from? Where is he going to? What is his business? Is
+      the little boy his son? He has actually come from Santa Fe? The Prior,
+      loving talk after the manner of his kind, sees in this grave and
+      smooth-spoken stranger rich possibilities of talk; possibilities that
+      cannot possibly be exhausted to-night, it being now hard on the hour of
+      Compline; the stranger must come in and rest for tonight at least, and
+      possibly for several nights. There is much bustle and preparation; the
+      travellers are welcomed with monkish hospitality; Christopher, we may be
+      sure, goes and hears the convent singing Compline, and offers up devout
+      prayers for a quiet night and for safe conduct through this vale of tears;
+      and goes thankfully to bed with the plainsong echoing in his ears, and
+      some stoic sense that all days, however hard, have an evening, and all
+      journeys an end.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next morning the talk begins in earnest, and Christopher, never a very
+      reserved man, finds in the friendly curiosity of the monks abundant
+      encouragement to talk; and before very long he is in full swing with his
+      oft-told story. The Prior is delighted with it; he has not heard anything
+      so interesting for a long time. Moreover, he has not always been in a
+      convent; he was not so long ago confessor to Queen Isabella herself, and
+      has much to communicate and ask concerning that lady. Columbus&rsquo;s
+      proposal does not strike him as being unreasonable at all; but he has a
+      friend in Palos, a very learned man indeed, Doctor Garcia Hernandez, who
+      often comes and has a talk with him; he knows all about astronomy and
+      cosmography; the Prior will send for him. And meanwhile there must be no
+      word of Columbus&rsquo;s departure for a few days at any rate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Presently Doctor Garcia Hernandez arrives, and the whole story is gone
+      over again. They go at it hammer and tongs, arguments and
+      counter-arguments, reasons for and against, encouragements, and
+      objections. The result is that Doctor Garcia Hernandez, whose learning
+      seems not yet quite to have blinded or deafened him, thinks well of the
+      scheme; thinks so well of it that he protests it will be a thousand pities
+      if the chance of carrying it out is lost to Spain. The worthy Prior, who
+      has been somewhat out of it while the talk about degrees and latitudes has
+      been going on, here strikes in again; he will use his influence. Perhaps
+      the good man, living up here among the pine trees and the sea winds, and
+      involved in the monotonous round of Prime, Lauds, Nones, Vespers, has a
+      regretful thought or two of the time when he moved in the splendid
+      intricacy of Court life; at any rate he is not sorry to have an
+      opportunity of recalling himself to the attention of Her Majesty, for the
+      spiritual safety of whose soul he was once responsible; perhaps, being (in
+      spite of his Nones and Vespers) a human soul, he is glad of an opportunity
+      of opposing the counsels of his successor, Talavera. In a word, he will
+      use his Influence. Then follow much drafting of letters, and laying of
+      heads together, and clatter of monkish tongues; the upshot of which is
+      that a letter is written in which Perez urges his daughter in the Lord in
+      the strongest possible terms not to let slip so glorious an opportunity,
+      not only of fame and increment to her kingdom, but of service to the
+      Church and the kingdom of Heaven itself. He assures her that Columbus is
+      indeed about to depart from the country, but that he (Perez) will detain
+      him at La Rabida until he has an answer from the Queen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A messenger to carry the letter was found in the person of Sebastian
+      Rodriguez, a pilot of the port, who immediately set off to Santa Fe. It is
+      not likely that Columbus, after so many rebuffs, was very hopeful; but in
+      the meantime, here he was amid the pious surroundings in which the
+      religious part of him delighted, and in a haven of rest after all his
+      turmoils and trials. He could look out to sea over the flecked waters of
+      that Atlantic whose secrets he longed to discover; or he could look down
+      into the busy little port of Palos, and watch the ships sailing in and out
+      across the bar of Saltes. He could let his soul, much battered and torn of
+      late by trials and disappointments, rest for a time on the rock of
+      religion; he could snuff the incense in the chapel to his heart&rsquo;s
+      content, and mingle his rough top-gallant voice with the harsh croak of
+      the monks in the daily cycle of prayer and praise. He could walk with
+      Diego through the sandy roads beneath the pine trees, or through the
+      fields and vineyards below; and above all he could talk to the company
+      that good Perez invited to meet him&mdash;among them merchants and sailors
+      from Palos, of whom the chief was Martin Alonso Pinzon, a wealthy
+      landowner and navigator, whose family lived then at Palos, owning the
+      vineyards round about, and whose descendants live there to this day.
+      Pinzon was a listener after Columbus&rsquo;s own heart; he not only
+      believed in his project, but offered to assist it with money, and even to
+      accompany the expedition himself. Altogether a happy and peaceful time, in
+      which hopes revived, and the inner light that, although it had now and
+      then flickered, had never gone out, burned up again in a bright and steady
+      flame.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the end of a fortnight, and much sooner than had been expected, the
+      worthy pilot returned with a letter from the Queen. Eager hands seized it
+      and opened it; delight beamed from the eyes of the good Prior. The Queen
+      was most cordial to him, thanked him for his intervention, was ready to
+      listen to him and even to be convinced by him; and in the meantime
+      commanded his immediate appearance at the Court, asking that Columbus
+      would be so good as to wait at La Rabida until he should hear further from
+      her. Then followed such a fussing and fuming, such a running hither and
+      thither, and giving and taking of instructions and clatter of tongues as
+      even the convent of La Rabida had probably never known. Nothing will serve
+      the good old busybody, although it is now near midnight, but that he must
+      depart at once. He will not wait for daylight; he will not, the good
+      honest soul! wait at all. He must be off at once; he must have this, he
+      must have that; he will take this, he will leave that behind; or no, he
+      will take that, and leave this behind. He must have a mule, for his old
+      feet will not bear him fast enough; ex-confessors of Her Majesty,
+      moreover, do not travel on foot; and after more fussing and running hither
+      and thither a mule is borrowed from one Juan Rodriguez Cabezudo of Moguer;
+      and with a God-speed from the group standing round the lighted doorway,
+      the old monk sets forth into the night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is a strange thing to consider what unimportant flotsam sometimes
+      floats visibly upon the stream of history, while the gravest events are
+      sunk deep beneath its flood. We would give a king&rsquo;s ransom to know
+      events that must have taken place in any one of twenty years in the life
+      of Columbus, but there is no sign of them on the surface of the stream,
+      nor will any fishing bring them to light. Yet here, bobbing up like a
+      cork, comes the name of Juan Rodriguez Cabezudo of Moguer, doubtless a
+      good worthy soul, but, since he has been dead these four centuries and
+      more, of no interest or importance to any human being; yet of whose life
+      one trivial act, surviving the flood of time which has engulfed all else
+      that he thought important, falls here to be recorded: that he did, towards
+      midnight of a day late in December 1491 lend a mule to Friar Juan Perez.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of that heroic mule journey we have no record; but it brought results
+      enough to compensate the good Prior for all his aching bones and rheumatic
+      joints. He was welcomed by the Queen, who had never quite lost her belief
+      in Columbus, but who had hitherto deferred to the apathy of Ferdinand and
+      the disapproval&mdash;of her learned advisers. Now, however, the matter
+      was reopened. She, who sometimes listened to priests with results other
+      than good, heard this worthy priest to good purpose. The feminine friends
+      of Columbus who remembered him at Court also spoke up for him, among them
+      the Marquesa de Moya, with whom he had always been a favourite; and it was
+      decided that his request should be granted and three vessels equipped for
+      the expedition, &ldquo;that he might go and make discoveries and prove
+      true the words he had spoken.&rdquo;&mdash;Moreover, the machinery that
+      had been so hard to move before, turned swiftly now. Diego Prieto, one of
+      the magistrates of Palos, was sent to Columbus at La Rabida, bearing
+      20,000 maravedis with which he was to buy a mule and decent clothing for
+      himself, and repair immediately to the Court at Santa Fe. Old Perez was in
+      high feather, and busy with his pen. He wrote to Doctor Garcia Hernandez,
+      and also to Columbus, in whose letter the following pleasant passage
+      occurs:
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;Our Lord has listened to the prayers of His servant. The wise and
+        virtuous Isabella, touched by the grace of Heaven, gave a favourable
+        hearing to the words of this poor monk. All has turned out well. Far
+        from despising your project, she has adopted it from this time, and she
+        has summoned you to Court to propose the means which seem best to you
+        for the execution of the designs of Providence. My heart swims in a sea
+        of comfort, and my spirit leaps with joy in the Lord. Start at once, for
+        the Queen waits for you, and I much more than she. Commend me to the
+        prayers of my brethren, and of your little Diego. The grace of God be
+        with you, and may Our Lady of La Rabida accompany you.&rdquo;
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      The news of that day must have come upon Columbus like a burst of sunshine
+      after rain. I like to think how bright must have seemed to him the broad
+      view of land and sea, how deeply the solemn words of the last office which
+      he attended must have sunk into his soul, how great and glad a thing life
+      must have been to him, and how lightly the miles must have passed beneath
+      the feet of his mule as he jogged out on the long road to Santa Fe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="ch11" id="ch11"></a>CHAPTER XI.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE CONSENT OF SPAIN
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once more; in the last days of the year 1491, Columbus rode into the
+      brilliant camp which he had quitted a few weeks before with so heavy a
+      heart. Things were changed now. Instead of being a suitor, making a
+      nuisance of himself, and forcing his affairs on the attention of unwilling
+      officials, he was now an invited and honoured guest; much more than that,
+      he was in the position of one who believed that he had a great service to
+      render to the Crown, and who was at last to be permitted to render it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even now, at the eleventh hour, there was one more brief interruption. On
+      the 1st of January 1492 the last of the Moorish kings sent in his
+      surrender to King Ferdinand, whom he invited to come and take possession
+      of the city of Granada; and on the next day the Spanish army marched into
+      that city, where, in front of the Alhambra, King Ferdinand received the
+      keys of the castle and the homage of the Moorish king. The wars of eight
+      centuries were at an end, and the Christian banner of Spain floated at
+      last over the whole land. Victory and success were in the air, and the
+      humble Genoese adventurer was to have his share in them. Negotiations of a
+      practical nature were now begun; old friends&mdash;Talavera, Luis de
+      Santangel, and the Grand Cardinal himself&mdash;were all brought into
+      consultation with the result that matters soon got to the documentary
+      stage. Here, however, there was a slight hitch. It was not simply a matter
+      of granting two, or three ships. The Genoese was making a bargain, and
+      asking an impossible price. Even the great grandees and Court officials,
+      accustomed to the glitter and dignity of titles, rubbed their eyes with
+      astonishment, when they saw what Columbus was demanding. He who had been
+      suing for privileges was now making conditions. And what conditions! He
+      must be created Admiral of all the Ocean Seas and of the new lands, with
+      equal privileges and prerogatives as those appertaining to the High
+      Admiral of Castile, the supreme naval officer of Spain. Not content with
+      sea dignities, he was also to be Viceroy and Governor-General in all
+      islands or mainlands that he might acquire; he wanted a tenth part of the
+      profits resulting from his discoveries, in perpetuity; and he must have
+      the permanent right of contributing an eighth part of the cost of the
+      equipment and have an additional eighth part of the profits; and all his
+      heirs and descendants for ever were to have the same privileges. These
+      conditions were on such a scale as no sovereign could readily approve.
+      Columbus&rsquo;s lack of pedigree, and the fact also that he was a
+      foreigner, made them seem the more preposterous; for although he might
+      receive kindness and even friendship from some of the grand Spaniards with
+      whom he associated, that friendship and kindness were given
+      condescendingly and with a smile. He was delightful when he was merely
+      proposing as a mariner to confer additional grandeur and glory on the
+      Crown; but when it came to demanding titles and privileges which would
+      make him rank with the highest grandees in, the land, the matter took on
+      quite a different colour. It was nonsense; it could not be allowed; and
+      many were the friendly hints that Columbus doubtless received at this time
+      to relinquish his wild demands and not to overreach himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But to the surprise and dismay of his friends, who really wished him to
+      have a chance of distinguishing himself, and were shocked at the
+      impediments he was now putting in his own way, the man from Genoa stood
+      firm. What he proposed to do, he said, was worthy of the rewards that he
+      asked; they were due to the importance and grandeur of his scheme, and so
+      on. Nor did he fail to point out that the bestowal of them was a matter
+      altogether contingent on results; if there were no results, there would be
+      no rewards; if there were results, they would be worthy of the rewards.
+      This action of Columbus&rsquo;s deserves close study. He had come to a
+      turning-point in his life. He had been asking, asking, asking, for six
+      years; he had been put off and refused over and over again; people were
+      beginning to laugh at him for a madman; and now, when a combination of
+      lucky chances had brought him to the very door of success, he stood
+      outside the threshold bargaining for a preposterous price before he would
+      come in. It seemed like the densest stupidity. What is the explanation of
+      it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The only explanation of it is to be found in the character of Columbus. We
+      must try to see him as he is in this forty-second year of his life,
+      bargaining with notaries, bishops, and treasurers; we must try to see
+      where these forty years have brought him, and what they have made of him.
+      Remember the little boy that played in the Vico Dritto di Ponticello,
+      acquainted with poverty, but with a soul in him that could rise beyond it
+      and acquire something of the dignity of that Genoa, arrogant, splendid and
+      devout, which surrounded him during his early years. Remember his long
+      life of obscurity at sea, and the slow kindling of the light of faith in
+      something beyond the familiar horizons; remember the social inequality of
+      his marriage, his long struggle with poverty, his long familiarity with
+      the position of one who asked and did not receive; the many rebuffs and
+      indignities which his Ligurian pride must have received at the hands of
+      all those Spanish dignitaries and grandees&mdash;remember all this, and
+      then you will perhaps not wonder so much that Columbus, who was beginning
+      to believe himself appointed by Heaven to this task of discovery, felt
+      that he had much to pay himself back for. One must recognise him frankly
+      for what he was, and for no conventional hero of romance; a man who would
+      reconcile his conscience with anything, and would stop at nothing in the
+      furtherance of what he deemed a good object; and a man at the same time
+      who had a conscience to reconcile, and would, whenever it was necessary,
+      laboriously and elaborately perform the act of reconciliation. When he
+      made these huge demands in Granada he was gambling with his chances; but
+      he was a calculating gambler, just about as cunning and crafty in the
+      weighing of one chance against another as a gambler with a conscience can
+      be; and he evidently realised that his own valuation of the services he
+      proposed to render would not be without its influence on his sovereign&rsquo;s
+      estimate of them. At any rate he was justified by the results, for on the
+      17th of April 1492, after a deal of talk and bargaining, but apparently
+      without any yielding on Columbus&rsquo;s part, articles of capitulation
+      were drawn up in which the following provisions were made:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      First, that Columbus and his heirs for ever should have the title and
+      office of Admiral in all the islands and continents of the ocean that he
+      or they might discover, with similar honours and prerogatives to those
+      enjoyed by the High Admiral of Castile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Second, that he and his heirs should be Viceroys and Governors-General
+      over all the said lands and continents, with the right of nominating three
+      candidates for the governing of each island or province, one of whom
+      should be appointed by the Crown.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Third, that he end his heirs should be entitled to one-tenth of all
+      precious stones, metals, spices, and other merchandises, however acquired,
+      within his Admiralty, the cost of acquisition being first deducted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fourth, that he or his lieutenants in their districts, and the High
+      Admiral of Castile in his district, should be the sole judge in all
+      disputes arising out of traffic between Spain and the new countries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fifth, that he now, and he and his heirs at all times, should have the
+      right to contribute the eighth part of the expense of fitting out
+      expeditions, and receive the eighth part of the profits.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In addition to these articles there was another document drawn up on the
+      30th of April, which after an infinite preamble about the nature of the
+      Holy Trinity, of the Apostle Saint James, and of the Saints of God
+      generally in their relations to Princes, and with a splendid trailing of
+      gorgeous Spanish names and titles across the page, confers upon our
+      hitherto humble Christopher the right to call himself &ldquo;Don,&rdquo;
+      and finally raises him, in his own estimation at any rate, to a social
+      level with his proud Spanish friends. It is probably from this time that
+      he adopted the Spanish form of his name, Christoval Colon; but in this
+      narrative I shall retain the more universal form in which it has become
+      familiar to the English-speaking world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was now upon a Pisgah height, from which in imagination he could look
+      forth and see his Land of Promise. We also may climb up with him, and
+      stand beside him as he looks westward. We shall not see so clearly as he
+      sees, for we have not his inner light; and it is probable that even he
+      does not see the road at all, but only the goal, a single point of light
+      shining across a gulf of darkness. But from Pisgah there is a view
+      backward as well as forward, and, we may look back for a moment on this
+      last period of Christopher&rsquo;s life in Spain, inwardly to him so full
+      of trouble and difficulty and disappointment, outwardly so brave and
+      glittering, musical with high-sounding names and the clash of arms; gay
+      with sun and shine and colour. The brilliant Court moving from camp to
+      camp with its gorgeous retinues and silken pavilions and uniforms and
+      dresses and armours; the excitement of war, the intrigues of the
+      antechamber&mdash;these are the bright fabric of the latter years; and
+      against it, as against a background, stand out the beautiful names of the
+      Spanish associates of Columbus at this time&mdash;Medina Celi, Alonso de
+      Quintanilla, Cabrero, Arana, DEA, Hernando de Talavera, Gonzales de
+      Mendoza, Alonso de Cardenas, Perez, Hernandez, Luis de Santangel, and
+      Rodriguez de Maldonado&mdash;names that now, in his hour of triumph, are
+      like banners streaming in the wind against a summer sky.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="ch12" id="ch12"></a>CHAPTER XII.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE PREPARATIONS AT PALOS
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <a name="p127" id="p127"></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+      <img alt="p127.jpg (55K)" src="images/p127.jpg" style="width:100%;" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      The Palos that witnessed the fitting out of the ships of Columbus exists
+      no longer. The soul is gone from it; the trade that in those days made it
+      great and busy has floated away from it into other channels; and it has
+      dwindled and shrunk, until to-day it consists of nothing but a double
+      street of poor white houses, such almost as you may see in any sea-coast
+      village in Ireland. The slow salt tides of the Atlantic come flooding in
+      over the Manto bank, across the bar of Saltes, and, dividing at the tongue
+      of land that separates the two rivers, creep up the mud banks of the Tinto
+      and the Odiel until they lie deep beside the wharves of Huelva and Palos;
+      but although Huelva still has a trade the tides bring nothing to Palos,
+      and take nothing away with them again. From La Rabida now you can no
+      longer see, as Columbus saw, fleets of caravels lying-to and standing off
+      and on outside the bar waiting for the flood tide; only a few poor boats
+      fishing for tunny in the empty sunny waters, or the smoke of a steamer
+      standing on her course for the Guadalquiver or Cadiz.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But in those spring days of 1492 there was a great stir and bustle of
+      preparation in Palos. As soon as the legal documents had been signed
+      Columbus returned there and, taking up his quarters at La Rabida, set
+      about fitting out his expedition. The reason Palos was chosen was an
+      economical one. The port, for some misdemeanour, had lately been condemned
+      to provide two caravels for the service of the Crown for a period of
+      twelve months; and in the impoverished state of the royal exchequer this
+      free service came in very usefully in fitting out the expedition of
+      discovery. Columbus was quite satisfied, since he had such good friends at
+      Palos; and he immediately set about choosing the ships.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This, however, did not prove to be quite such a straightforward business
+      as might have been expected. The truth is that, whatever a few monks and
+      physicians may have thought of it, the proposed expedition terrified the
+      ordinary seafaring population of Palos. It was thought to be the wildest
+      and maddest scheme that any one had ever heard of. All that was known
+      about the Atlantic west of the Azores was that it was a sea of darkness,
+      inhabited by monsters and furrowed by enormous waves, and that it fell
+      down the slope of the world so steeply that no ship having once gone down
+      could ever climb up it again. And not only was there reluctance on the
+      part of mariners to engage themselves for the expedition, but also a great
+      shyness on the part of ship-owners to provide ships. This reluctance
+      proved so formidable an impediment that Columbus had to communicate with
+      the King and Queen; with the result that on the 23rd of May the population
+      was summoned to the church of Saint George, where the Notary Public read
+      aloud to them the letter from the sovereigns commanding the port to
+      furnish ships and men, and an additional order summoning the town to obey
+      it immediately. An inducement was provided in the offer of a free pardon
+      to all criminals and persons under sentence who chose to enlist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Still the thing hung fire; and on June 20 a new and peremptory order was
+      issued by the Crown authorising Columbus to impress the vessels and crew
+      if necessary. Time was slipping away; and in his difficulty Columbus
+      turned to Martin Alonso Pinzon, upon whose influence and power in the town
+      he could count. There were three brothers then in this family&mdash;Martin
+      Alonso, Vincenti Yanez, and Francisco Martin, all pilots themselves and
+      owners of ships. These three brothers saw some hope of profit out of the
+      enterprise, and they exerted themselves on Christopher&rsquo;s behalf so
+      thoroughly that, not only did they afford him help in the obtaining of
+      ships, men, and supplies, but they all three decided to go with him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was one more financial question to be settled&mdash;a question that
+      remains for us in considerable obscurity, but was in all probability
+      partly settled by the aid of these brothers. The total cost of the
+      expedition, consisting of three ships, wages of the crew, stores and
+      provisions, was 1,167,542 maravedis, about L950(in 1900). After all these
+      years of pleading at Court, all the disappointments and deferred hopes and
+      sacrifices made by Columbus, the smallness of this sum cannot but strike
+      us with amazement. Many a nobleman that Columbus must have rubbed
+      shoulders with in his years at Court could have furnished the whole sum
+      out of his pocket and never missed it; yet Columbus had to wait years and
+      years before he could get it from the Crown. Still more amazing, this sum
+      was not all provided by the Crown; 167,000 maravedis were found by
+      Columbus, and the Crown only contributed one million maravedis. One can
+      only assume that Columbus&rsquo;s pertinacity in petitioning the King and
+      Queen to undertake the expedition, when he could with comparative ease
+      have got the money from some of his noble acquaintance, was due to three
+      things&mdash;his faith and belief in his Idea, his personal ambition, and
+      his personal greed. He believed in his Idea so thoroughly that he knew he
+      was going to find something across the Atlantic. Continents and islands
+      cannot for long remain in the possession of private persons; they are the
+      currency of crowns; and he did not want to be left in the lurch if the
+      land he hoped to discover should be seized or captured by Spain or
+      Portugal. The result of his discoveries, he was convinced, was going to be
+      far too large a thing to be retained and controlled by any machinery less
+      powerful than that of a kingdom; therefore he was unwilling to accept
+      either preliminary assistance or subsequent rewards from any but the same
+      powerful hand. Admiralties, moreover, and Governor-Generalships and
+      Viceroyships cannot be conferred by counts and dukes, however powerful;
+      the very title Don could only be conferred by one power in Spain; and all
+      the other titles and dignities that Columbus craved with all his Genoese
+      soul were to be had from the hands of kings, and not from plutocrats. It
+      was characteristic of him all his life never to deal with subordinates,
+      but always to go direct to the head man; and when the whole purpose and
+      ambition of his life was to be put to the test it was only consistent in
+      him, since he could not be independent, to go forth under the protection
+      of the united Crown of Aragon and Castile. Where or how he raised his
+      share of the cost is not known; it is possible that his old friend the
+      Duke of Medina Celi came to his help, or that the Pinzon family, who
+      believed enough in the expedition to risk their lives in it, lent some of
+      the necessary money.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ever since ships were in danger of going to sea short-handed methods of
+      recruiting and manning them have been very much the same; and there must
+      have been some hot work about the harbour of Palos in the summer of 1492.
+      The place was in a panic. It is highly probable that many of the
+      volunteers were a ruffianly riff-raff from the prisons, to whom personal
+      freedom meant nothing but a chance of plunder; and the recruiting office
+      in Palos must have seen many a picturesque scoundrel coming and taking the
+      oath and making his mark. The presence of these adventurers, many of them
+      entirely ignorant of the sea, would not be exactly an encouragement to the
+      ordinary seaman. It is here very likely that the influence of the Pinzon
+      family was usefully applied. I call it influence, since that is a polite
+      term which covers the application of force in varying degrees; and it was
+      an awkward thing for a Palos sailor to offend the Pinzons, who owned and
+      controlled so much of the shipping in the port. Little by little the
+      preparations went on. In the purchasing of provisions and stores the
+      Pinzons were most helpful to Columbus and, it is not improbable, to
+      themselves also. They also procured the ships; altogether, in the whole
+      history of the fitting out of expeditions, I know nothing since the voyage
+      of the Ark which was so well kept within one family. Moreover it is
+      interesting to notice, since we know the names and places of residence of
+      all the members of the expedition, that the Pinzons, who personally
+      commanded two of the caravels, had them almost exclusively manned by
+      sailors from Palos, while the Admiral&rsquo;s ship was manned by a
+      miscellaneous crew from other places. To be sure they gave the Admiral the
+      biggest ship, but (in his own words) it proved &ldquo;a dull sailer and
+      unfit for discovery&rdquo;; while they commanded the two caravels, small
+      and open, but much faster and handier. Clearly these Pinzons will take no
+      harm from a little watching. They may be honest souls enough, but their
+      conduct is just a little suspicious, and we cannot be too careful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Three vessels were at last secured. The first, named the Santa Maria, was
+      the largest, and was chosen to be the flagship of Columbus. She was of
+      about one hundred tons burden, and would be about ninety feet in length by
+      twenty feet beam. She was decked over, and had a high poop astern and a
+      high forecastle in the bows. She had three masts, two of them
+      square-rigged, with a latine sail on the mizzen mast; and she carried a
+      crew of fifty-two persons. Where and how they all stowed themselves away
+      is a matter upon which we can only make wondering guesses; for this ship
+      was about the size of an ordinary small coasting schooner, such as is
+      worked about the coasts of these islands with a crew of six or eight men.
+      The next largest ship was the Pinta, which was commanded by Martin Alonso
+      Pinzon, who took his brother Francisco with him as sailing-master. The
+      Pinta was of fifty tons burden, decked only at the bow and stern, and the
+      fastest of the three ships; she also had three masts. The third ship was a
+      caravel of forty tons and called the Nina; she belonged to Juan Nino of
+      Palos. She was commanded by Vincenti Pinzon, and had a complement of
+      eighteen men. Among the crew of the flagship, whose names and places of
+      residence are to be found in the Appendix, were an Englishman and an
+      Irishman. The Englishman is entered as Tallarte de Lajes (Ingles), who has
+      been ingeniously identified with a possible Allard or AEthelwald of
+      Winchelsea, there having been several generations of Allards who were
+      sailors of Winchelsea in the fifteenth century. Sir Clements Markham
+      thinks that this Allard may have been trading to Coruna and have married
+      and settled down at Lajes. There is also Guillermo Ires, an Irishman from
+      Galway.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Allard and William, shuffling into the recruiting office in Palos,
+      doubtless think that this is a strange place for them to meet, and rather
+      a wild business that they are embarked upon, among all these bloody
+      Spaniards. Some how I feel more confidence in Allard than in William,
+      knowing, as I do so well, this William of Galway, whether on his native
+      heath or in the strange and distant parts of the world to which his
+      sanguine temperament leads him. Alas, William, you are but the first of a
+      mighty stream that will leave the Old Country for the New World; the world
+      destined to be good for the fortunes of many from the Old Country, but for
+      the Old Country itself not good. Little does he know, drunken William,
+      willing to be on hand where there is adventure brewing, and to be after
+      going with the boys and getting his health on the salt water, what a path
+      of hope for those who go, and of heaviness for those who stay behind, he
+      is opening up . . . . Farewell, William; I hope you were not one of those
+      whom they let out of gaol.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      June slid into July, and still the preparations were not complete. Down on
+      the mud banks of the Tinto, where at low water the vessels were left high
+      and dry, and where the caulking and refitting were in hand, there was
+      trouble with the workmen. Gomaz Rascon and Christoval Quintero, the owners
+      of the Pinta, who had resented her being pressed into the service, were at
+      the bottom of a good deal of it. Things could not be found; gear
+      mysteriously gave way after it had been set up; the caulking was found to
+      have been carelessly and imperfectly done; and when the caulkers were
+      commanded to do it over again they decamped. Even the few volunteers, the
+      picked hands upon whom Columbus was relying, gave trouble. In those days
+      of waiting there was too much opportunity for talk in the shore-side
+      wine-shops; some of the volunteers repented and tried to cry off their
+      bargains; others were dissuaded by their relatives, and deserted and hid
+      themselves. No mild measures were of any use; a reign of terror had to be
+      established; and nothing short of the influence of the Pinzons was severe
+      enough to hold the company together. To these vigorous measures, however,
+      all opposition gradually yielded. By the end of July the provisions and
+      stores were on board, the whole complement of eighty-seven persons
+      collected and enlisted, and only the finishing touches left for Columbus.
+      It is a sign of the distrust and fear evinced with regard to this
+      expedition, that no priest accompanied it&mdash;something of a sorrow to
+      pious Christopher, who would have liked his chaplain. There were two
+      surgeons, or barbers, and a physician; there were an overseer, a
+      secretary, a master-at-arms; there was an interpreter to speak to the
+      natives of the new lands in Hebrew, Greek, German, Chaldean or Arabic; and
+      there was an assayer and silversmith to test the quality of the precious
+      metals that they were sure to find. Up at La Rabida, with the busy and
+      affectionate assistance of the old Prior, Columbus made his final
+      preparations. Ferdinand was to stay at Cordova with Beatriz, and to go to
+      school there; while Diego was already embarked upon his life&rsquo;s
+      voyage, having been appointed a page to the Queen&rsquo;s son, Prince
+      Juan, and handed over to the care of some of the Court ladies. The course
+      to be sailed was talked over and over again; the bearings and notes of the
+      pilot at Porto Santo consulted and discussed; and a chart was made by
+      Columbus himself, and copied with his own hands for use on the three
+      ships.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the 2nd of August everything was ready; the ships moored out in the
+      stream, the last stragglers of the crew on board, the last sack of flour
+      and barrel of beef stowed away. Columbus confessed himself to the Prior of
+      La Rabida&mdash;a solemn moment for him in the little chapel up on the
+      pine-clad hill. His last evening ashore would certainly be spent at the
+      monastery, and his last counsels taken with Perez and Doctor Hernandez. We
+      can hardly realise the feelings of Christopher on the eve of his departure
+      from the land where all his roots were, to a land of mere faith and
+      conjecture. Even today, when the ocean is furrowed by crowded highways,
+      and the earth is girdled with speaking wires, and distances are so divided
+      and reduced that the traveller need never be very long out of touch with
+      his home, few people can set out on a long voyage without some emotional
+      disturbance, however slight it may be; and to Columbus on this night the
+      little town upon which he looked down from the monastery, which had been
+      the scene of so many delays and difficulties and vexations, must have
+      seemed suddenly dear and familiar to him as he realised that after
+      to-morrow its busy and well-known scenes might be for ever a thing of the
+      past to him. Behind him, living or dead, lay all he humanly loved and
+      cared for; before him lay a voyage full of certain difficulties and
+      dangers; dangers from the ships, dangers from the crews, dangers from the
+      weather, dangers from the unknown path itself; and beyond them, a
+      twinkling star on the horizon of his hopes, lay the land of his belief.
+      That he meant to arrive there and to get back again was beyond all doubt
+      his firm intention; and in the simple grandeur of that determination the
+      weaknesses of character that were grouped about it seem unimportant. In
+      this starlit hour among the pine woods his life came to its meridian;
+      everything that was him was at its best and greatest there. Beneath him,
+      on the talking tide of the river, lay the ships and equipment that
+      represented years of steady effort and persistence; before him lay the
+      pathless ocean which he meant to cross by the inner light of his faith.
+      What he had suffered, he had suffered by himself; what he had won, he had
+      won by himself; what he was to finish, he would finish by himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the time for meditations grows short. Lights are moving about in the
+      town beneath; there is an unwonted midnight stir and bustle; the whole
+      population is up and about, running hither and thither with lamps and
+      torches through the starlit night. The tide is flowing; it will be high
+      water before dawn; and with the first of the ebb the little fleet is to
+      set sail. The stream of hurrying sailors and townspeople sets towards the
+      church of Saint George, where mass is to be said and the Sacrament
+      administered to the voyagers. The calls and shouts die away; the bell
+      stops ringing; and the low muttering voice of the priest is heard
+      beginning the Office. The light of the candles shines upon the gaudy roof,
+      and over the altar upon the wooden image of Saint George vanquishing the
+      dragon, upon which the eyes of Christopher rested during some part of the
+      service, and where to-day your eyes may rest also if you make that
+      pilgrimage. The moment approaches; the bread and the wine are consecrated;
+      there is a shuffling of knees and feet; and then a pause. The clear notes
+      of the bell ring out upon the warm dusky silence&mdash;once, twice,
+      thrice; the living God and the cold presence of dawn enter the church
+      together. Every head is bowed; and for once at least every heart of that
+      company beats in unison with the rest. And then the Office goes on, and
+      the dark-skinned congregation streams up to the sanctuary and receives the
+      Communion, while the blue light of dawn increases and the candles pale
+      before the coming day. And then out again to the boats with shoutings and
+      farewells, for the tide has now turned; hoisting of sails and tripping of
+      anchors and breaking out of gorgeous ensigns; and the ships are moving!
+      The Maria leads, with the sign of the Redemption painted on her mainsail
+      and the standard of Castile flying at her mizzen; and there is cheering
+      from ships and from shore, and a faint sound of bells from the town of
+      Huelva.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus, the sea being&mdash;calm, and a fresh breeze blowing off the land,
+      did Christopher Columbus set sail from Palos at sunrise on Friday the 3rd
+      of August 1492.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="ch13" id="ch13"></a>CHAPTER XIII.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      EVENTS OF THE FIRST VOYAGE
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;In nomine D.N. Jesu Christi&mdash;Friday, August 3, 1492, at
+        eight o&rsquo;clock we started from the bar of Saltes. We went with a
+        strong sea breeze sixty miles,&mdash;[Columbus reckoned in Italian
+        miles, of which four = one league.]&mdash;which are fifteen leagues,
+        towards the south, until sunset: afterwards to the south-west and to the
+        south, quarter south-west, which was the way to the Canaries.&rdquo;
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        <br /> [The account of Columbus&rsquo;s first voyage is taken from a
+        Journal written by himself, but which in its original form does not
+        exist. Las Casas had it in his possession, but as he regarded it (no
+        doubt with justice) as too voluminous and discursive to be interesting,
+        he made an abridged edition, in which the exact words of Columbus were
+        sometimes quoted, but which for the most part is condensed into a
+        narrative in the third person. This abridged Journal, consisting of
+        seventy-six closely written folios, was first published by Navarrette in
+        1825. When Las Casas wrote his &lsquo;Historie,&rsquo; however, he
+        appears here and there to have restored sections of the original Journal
+        into the abridged one; and many of these restorations are of importance.
+        If the whole account of his voyage written by Columbus himself were
+        available in its exact form I would print it here; but as it is not, I
+        think it better to continue my narrative, simply using the Journal of
+        Las Casas as a document.]
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      With these rousing words the Journal of Columbus&rsquo;s voyage begins;
+      and they sound a salt and mighty chord which contains the true diapason of
+      the symphony of his voyages. There could not have been a more fortunate
+      beginning, with clear weather and a calm sea, and the wind in exactly the
+      right quarter. On Saturday and Sunday the same conditions held, so there
+      was time and opportunity for the three very miscellaneous ships&rsquo;
+      companies to shake down into something like order, and for all the
+      elaborate discipline of sea life to be arranged and established; and we
+      may employ the interval by noting what aids to navigation Columbus had at
+      his disposal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The chief instrument was the astrolabe, which was an improvement on the
+      primitive quadrant then in use for taking the altitude of the sun. The
+      astrolabe, it will be remembered, had been greatly improved, by Martin
+      Behaim and the Portuguese Commission in 1840&mdash;[1440 D.W.]; and it was
+      this instrument, a simplification of the astrolabe used in astronomy
+      ashore, that Columbus chiefly used in getting his solar altitudes. As will
+      be seen from the illustration, its broad principle was that of a metal
+      circle with a graduated circumference and two arms pivoted in the centre.
+      It was made as heavy as possible; and in using it the observer sat on deck
+      with his back against the mainmast and with his left hand held up the
+      instrument by the ring at the top. The long arm was moved round until the
+      two sights fixed upon it were on with the sun. The point where the other
+      arm then cut the circle gave the altitude. In conjunction with this
+      instrument were used the tables of solar declination compiled by
+      Regiomontanus, and covering the sun&rsquo;s declination between the years
+      1475 and 1566.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /> <a name="p141" id="p141"></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+      <img alt="p141.jpg (34K)" src="images/p141.jpg" style="width:100%;" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The compass in Columbus&rsquo;s day existed, so far as all essentials are
+      concerned, as it exists to-day. Although it lacked the refinements
+      introduced by Lord Kelvin it was swung in double-cradles, and had the
+      thirty-two points painted upon a card. The discovery of the compass, and
+      even of the lodestone, are things wrapt in obscurity; but the lodestone
+      had been known since at least the eleventh century, and the compass
+      certainly since the thirteenth. With the compass were used the sea charts,
+      which were simply maps on a rather larger and more exact scale than the
+      land maps of the period. There were no soundings or currents marked on the
+      old charts, which were drawn on a plane projection; and they can have been
+      of little&mdash;practical use to navigators except in the case of coasts
+      which were elaborately charted on a large scale. The chart of Columbus, in
+      so far as it was concerned with the ocean westward of the Azores, can of
+      course have contained nothing except the conjectured islands or lands
+      which he hoped to find; possibly the land seen by the shipwrecked pilot
+      may have been marked on it, and his failure to find that land may have
+      been the reason why, as we shall see, he changed his course to the
+      southward on the 7th of October. It must be remembered that Columbus&rsquo;s
+      conception of the world was that of the Portuguese Mappemonde of 1490, a
+      sketch of which is here reproduced.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /> <a name="p143" id="p143"></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+      <img alt="p143.jpg (45K)" src="images/p143.jpg" style="width:100%;" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/p143.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
+    </h5>
+<p>
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</p>
+    <p>
+      This conception of the world excluded the Pacific Ocean and the continent
+      of North and South America, and made it reasonable to suppose that any one
+      who sailed westward long enough from Spain would ultimately reach Cathay
+      and the Indies. Behaim&rsquo;s globe, which was completed in the year
+      1492, represented the farthest point that geographical knowledge had
+      reached previous to the discoveries of Columbus, and on it is shown the
+      island of Cipango or Japan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /> <a name="behaimglobe" id="behaimglobe"></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+      <img alt="behaimglobe.jpg (104K)" src="images/behaimglobe.jpg"
+      style="width:100%;" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/behaimglobe.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
+    </h5>
+<p>
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</p>
+    <p>
+      By far the most important element in the navigation of Columbus, in so far
+      as estimating his position was concerned, was what is known as &ldquo;dead-reckoning&rdquo;
+      that is to say, the computation of the distance travelled by the ship
+      through the water. At present this distance is measured by a patent log,
+      which in its commonest form is a propeller-shaped instrument trailed
+      through the water at the end of a long wire or cord the inboard end of
+      which is attached to a registering clock. On being dragged through the
+      water the propeller spins round and the twisting action is communicated by
+      the cord to the clock-work machinery which counts the miles. In the case
+      of powerful steamers and in ordinary weather dead-reckoning is very
+      accurately calculated by the number of revolutions of the propellers
+      recorded in the engine-room; and a device not unlike this was known to the
+      Romans in the time of the Republic. They attached small wheels about four
+      feet in diameter to the sides of their ships; the passage of the water
+      turned the wheels, and a very simple gearing was arranged which threw a
+      pebble into a tallypot at each revolution. This device, however, seems to
+      have been abandoned or forgotten in Columbus&rsquo;s day, when there was
+      no more exact method of estimating dead-reckoning than the primitive one
+      of spitting over the side in calm weather, or at other times throwing some
+      object into the water and estimating the rate of progress by its speed in
+      passing the ship&rsquo;s side. The hour-glass, which was used to get the
+      multiple for long distances, was of course the only portable time measurer
+      available for Columbus. These, with a rough knowledge of astronomy, and
+      the taking of the altitude of the polar star, were the only known means
+      for ascertaining the position of his ship at sea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first mishap occurred on Monday, August 6th, when the Pinta carried
+      away her rudder. The Pinta, it will be remembered, was commanded by Martin
+      Alonso Pinzon, and was owned by Gomaz Rascon and Christoval Quintero, who
+      had been at the bottom of some of the troubles ashore; and it was thought
+      highly probable that these two rascals had something to do with the
+      mishap, which they had engineered in the hope that their vessel would be
+      left behind at the Canaries. Martin Alonso, however, proved a man of
+      resource, and rigged up a sort of steering gear with ropes. There was a
+      choppy sea, and Columbus could not bring his own vessel near enough to
+      render any assistance, though he doubtless bawled his directions to
+      Pinzon, and looked with a troubled eye on the commotion going on on board
+      the Pinta. On the next day the jury-rigged rudder carried away again, and
+      was again repaired, but it was decided to try and make the island of
+      Lanzarote in the Canaries, and to get another caravel to replace the
+      Pinta. All through the next day the Santa Maria and the Nina had to
+      shorten sail in order not to leave the damaged Pinta behind; the three
+      captains had a discussion and difference of opinion as to where they were;
+      but Columbus, who was a genius at dead-reckoning, proved to be right in
+      his surmise, and they came in sight of the Canaries on Thursday morning,
+      August 9th.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Columbus left Pinzon on the Grand Canary with orders to try to obtain a
+      caravel there, while he sailed on to Gomera, which he reached on Sunday
+      night, with a similar purpose. As he was unsuccessful he sent a message by
+      a boat that was going back to tell Pinzon to beach the Pinta and repair
+      her rudder; and having spent more days in fruitless search for a vessel,
+      he started back to join Pinzon on August 23rd. During the night he passed
+      the Peak of Teneriffe, which was then in eruption. The repairs to the
+      Pinta, doubtless in no way expedited by Messrs. Rascon and Quintera, took
+      longer than had been expected; it was found necessary to make an entirely
+      new rudder for her; and advantage was taken of the delay to make some
+      alterations in the rig of the Nina, which was changed from a latine rig to
+      a square rig, so that she might be better able to keep up with the others.
+      September had come before these two jobs were completed; and on the 2nd of
+      September the three ships sailed for Gomera, the most westerly of the
+      islands, where they anchored in the north-east bay. The Admiral was in a
+      great hurry to get away from the islands and from the track of merchant
+      ships, for he had none too much confidence in the integrity of his crews,
+      which were already murmuring and finding every mishap a warning sign from
+      God. He therefore only stayed long enough at Gomera to take in wood and
+      water and provisions, and set sail from that island on the 6th of
+      September.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The wind fell lighter and lighter, and on Friday the little fleet lay
+      becalmed within sight of Ferro. But on Saturday evening north-east airs
+      sprang up again, and they were able to make nine leagues of westing. On
+      Sunday they had lost sight of land; and at thus finding their ships three
+      lonely specks in the waste of ocean the crew lost heart and began to
+      lament. There was something like a panic, many of the sailors bursting
+      into tears and imploring Columbus to take them home again. To us it may
+      seem a rather childish exhibition; but it must be remembered that these
+      sailors were unwillingly embarked upon a voyage which they believed would
+      only lead to death and disaster. The bravest of us to-day, if he found
+      himself press-ganged on board a balloon and embarked upon a journey, the
+      object of which was to land upon Mars or the moon, might find it difficult
+      to preserve his composure on losing sight of the earth; and the parallel
+      is not too extreme to indicate the light in which their present enterprise
+      must have appeared to many of the Admiral&rsquo;s crew.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Columbus gave orders to the captains of the other two ships that, in case
+      of separation, they were to sail westward for 700 leagues-that being the
+      distance at which he evidently expected to find land&mdash;and there to
+      lie-to from midnight until morning. On this day also, seeing the temper of
+      the sailors, he began one of the crafty stratagems upon which he prided
+      himself, and which were often undoubtedly of great use to him; he kept two
+      reckonings, one a true one, which he entered in his log, and one a false
+      one, by means of which the distance run was made out to be less than what
+      it actually was, so that in case he could not make land as soon as he
+      hoped the crew would not be unduly discouraged. In other words, he wished
+      to have a margin at the other end, for he did not want a mutiny when he
+      was perhaps within a few leagues of his destination. On this day he notes
+      that the raw and inexperienced seamen were giving trouble in other ways,
+      and steering very badly, continually letting the ship&rsquo;s head-fall
+      off to the north; and many must have been the angry remonstrances from the
+      captain to the man at the wheel. Altogether rather a trying day for
+      Christopher, who surely has about as much on his hands as ever mortal had;
+      but he knows how to handle ships and how to handle sailors, and so long as
+      this ten-knot breeze lasts, he can walk the high poop of the Santa Maria
+      with serenity, and snap his fingers at the dirty rabble below.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On Monday they made sixty leagues, the Admiral duly announcing
+      forty-eight; on Tuesday twenty leagues, published as sixteen; and on this
+      day they saw a large piece of a mast which had evidently belonged to a
+      ship of at least 120 tons burden. This was not an altogether cheerful
+      sight for the eighteen souls on board the little Nina, who wondered
+      ruefully what was going to happen to them of forty tons when ships three
+      times their size had evidently been unable to live in this abominable sea!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On Thursday, September 13th, when Columbus took his observations, he made
+      a great scientific discovery, although he did not know it at the time. He
+      noticed that the needle of the compass was declining to the west of north
+      instead of having a slight declination to the east of north, as all
+      mariners knew it to have. In other words, he had passed the line of true
+      north and of no variation, and must therefore have been in latitude 28
+      deg. N. and longitude 29 deg. 37&rsquo; W. of Greenwich. With his usual
+      secrecy he said nothing about it; perhaps he was waiting to see if the
+      pilots on the other ships had noticed it, but apparently they were not so
+      exact in their observations as he was. On the next day, Friday, the wind
+      falling a little lighter, they, made only twenty leagues. &ldquo;Here the
+      persons on the caravel Nina said they had seen a jay and a ringtail, and
+      these birds never come more than twenty-five leagues from land at most.&rdquo;
+      &mdash;Unhappy &ldquo;persons on the Nina&rdquo;! Nineteen souls,
+      including the captain, afloat in a very small boat, and arguing God knows
+      what from the fact that a jay and a ringtail never went more than
+      twenty-five leagues from land!&mdash;The next day also was not without its
+      incident; for on Saturday evening they saw a meteor, or &ldquo;marvellous
+      branch of fire&rdquo; falling from the serene violet of the sky into the
+      sea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were now well within the influence of the trade-wind, which in these
+      months blows steadily from the east, and maintains an exquisite and balmy
+      climate. Even the Admiral, never very communicative about his sensations,
+      deigns to mention them here, and is reported to have said that &ldquo;it
+      was a great pleasure to enjoy the morning; that nothing was lacking except
+      to hear the nightingales, and that the weather was like April in
+      Andalusia.&rdquo; On this day they saw some green grasses, which the
+      Admiral considered must have floated off from some island; &ldquo;not the
+      continent,&rdquo; says the Admiral, whose theories are not to be disturbed
+      by a piece of grass, &ldquo;because I make the continental land farther
+      onward.&rdquo; The crew, ready to take the most depressing and pessimistic
+      view of everything, considered that the lumps of grass belonged to rocks
+      or submerged lands, and murmured disparaging things about the Admiral. As
+      a matter of fact these grasses were masses of seaweed detached from the
+      Sargasso Sea, which they were soon to enter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On Monday, September 17th, four days after Columbus had noted it, the
+      other pilots noted the declination of the needle, which they had found on
+      taking the position of the North star. They did not like it; and Columbus,
+      whose knowledge of astronomy came to his aid, ordered them to take the
+      position of the North star at dawn again, which they did, and found that
+      the needles were true. He evidently thought it useless to communicate to
+      them his scientific speculations, so he explained to them that it was the
+      North star which was moving in its circle, and not the compass. One is
+      compelled to admit that in these little matters of deceit the Admiral
+      always shone. To-day, among the seaweed on the ship&rsquo;s side, he
+      picked up a little crayfish, which he kept for several days, presumably in
+      a bottle in his cabin; and perhaps afterwards ate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So for several days this calm and serene progress westward was maintained.
+      The trade-wind blew steady and true, balmy and warm also; the sky was
+      cloudless, except at morning and evening dusk; and there were for scenery
+      those dazzling expanses of sea and sky, and those gorgeous hues of dawn
+      and sunset, which are only to be found in the happy latitudes. The things
+      that happened to them, the bits of seaweed and fishes that they saw in the
+      water, the birds that flew around them, were observed with a wondering
+      attention and wistful yearning after their meaning such as is known only
+      to children and to sailors adventuring on uncharted seas. The breezes were
+      milder even than those of the Canaries, and the waters always less salt;
+      and the men, forgetting their fears of the monsters of the Sea of
+      Darkness, would bathe alongside in the limpid blue. The little crayfish
+      was a &ldquo;sure indication of land&rdquo;; a tunny fish, killed by the
+      company on the Nina, was taken to be an indication from the west, &ldquo;where
+      I hope in that exalted God, in whose hands are all victories, that land
+      will very soon appear&rdquo;; they saw another ringtail, &ldquo;which is
+      not accustomed to sleep on the sea&rdquo;; two pelicans came to the ship,
+      &ldquo;which was an indication that land was near&rdquo;; a large dark
+      cloud appeared to the north, &ldquo;which is a sign that land is near&rdquo;;
+      they saw one day a great deal of grass, &ldquo;although the previous day
+      they had not seen any&rdquo;; they took a bird with their hands which was
+      like a jay; &ldquo;it was a river bird and not a sea bird&rdquo;; they saw
+      a whale, &ldquo;which is an indication that they are near land, because
+      they always remain near it&rdquo;; afterwards a pelican came from the
+      west-north-west and went to the south-east, &ldquo;which was an indication
+      that it left land to the west-north-west, because these birds sleep on
+      land and in the morning they come to the sea in search of food, and do not
+      go twenty leagues from land.&rdquo; And &ldquo;at dawn two or three small
+      land birds came singing to the ships; and afterwards disappeared before
+      sunrise.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such beautiful signs, interpreted by the light of their wishes, were the
+      events of this part of the voyage. In the meantime, they have their little
+      differences. Martin Alonso Pinzon, on Tuesday, September 18th, speaks from
+      the Pinta to the Santa Maria, and says that he will not wait for the
+      others, but will go and make the land, since it is so near; but apparently
+      he does not get very far out of the way, the wind which wafts him wafting
+      also the Santa Maria and the Nina.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On September the 19th there was a comparison of dead-reckonings. The Nina&rsquo;s
+      pilot made it 440 leagues from the Canaries, the Pinta&rsquo;s 420
+      leagues, and the Admiral&rsquo;s pilot, doubtless instructed by the
+      Admiral, made it 400. On Sunday the 23rd they were getting into the
+      seaweed and finding crayfish again; and there being no reasonable cause
+      for complaint a scare was got up among the crew on an exceedingly
+      ingenious point. The wind having blown steadily from the east for a matter
+      of three weeks, they said that it would never blow in any other direction,
+      and that they would never be able to get back to Spain; but later in the
+      afternoon the sea got up from the westward, as though in answer to their
+      fears, and as if to prove that somewhere or other ahead of them there was
+      a west wind blowing; and the Admiral remarks that &ldquo;the high sea was
+      very necessary to me, as it came to pass once before in the time when the
+      Jews went out of Egypt with Moses, who took them from captivity.&rdquo;
+      And indeed there was something of Moses in this man, who thus led his
+      little rabble from a Spanish seaport out across the salt wilderness of the
+      ocean, and interpreted the signs for them, and stood between them and the
+      powers of vengeance and terror that were set about their uncharted path.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But it appears that the good Admiral had gone just a little too far in
+      interpreting everything they saw as a sign that they were approaching
+      land; for his miserable crew, instead of being comforted by this fact, now
+      took the opportunity to be angry because the signs were not fulfilled. The
+      more the signs pointed to their nearness to land, the more they began to
+      murmur and complain because they did not see it. They began to form
+      together in little groups&mdash;always an ominous sign at sea&mdash;and
+      even at night those who were not on deck got together in murmuring
+      companies. Some, of the things that they said, indeed, were not very far
+      from the truth; among others, that it was &ldquo;a great madness on their
+      part to venture their lives in following out the madness of a foreigner
+      who to make himself a great lord had risked his life, and now saw himself
+      and all of them in great exigency and was deceiving so many people.&rdquo;
+      They remembered that his proposition, or &ldquo;dream&rdquo; as they not
+      inaptly call it, had been contradicted by many great and lettered men; and
+      then followed some very ominous words indeed. They held
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        <br /> [The substance of these murmurings is not in the abridged Journal,
+        but is given by Las Casas under the date of September 24.]
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      that &ldquo;it was enough to excuse them from whatever might be done in
+      the matter that they had arrived where man had never dared to navigate,
+      and that they were not obliged to go to the end of the world, especially
+      as, if they delayed more, they would not be able to have provisions to
+      return.&rdquo; In short, the best thing would be to throw him into the sea
+      some night, and make a story that he had fallen, into the water while
+      taking the position of a star with his astrolabe; and no one would ask any
+      questions, as he was a foreigner. They carried this talk to the Pinzons,
+      who listened to them; after all, we have not had to wait long for trouble
+      with the Pinzons! &ldquo;Of these Pinzons Christopher Columbus complains
+      greatly, and of the trouble they had given him.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is only one method of keeping down mutiny at sea, and of preserving
+      discipline. It is hard enough where the mutineers are all on one ship and
+      the commander&rsquo;s officers are loyal to him; but when they are
+      distributed over three ships, the captains of two of which are willing to
+      listen to them, the problem becomes grave indeed. We have no details of
+      how Columbus quieted them; but it is probable that his strong personality
+      awed them, while his clever and plausible words persuaded them. He was the
+      best sailor of them all and they knew it; and in a matter of this kind the
+      best and strongest man always wins, and can only in a pass of this kind
+      maintain his authority by proving his absolute right to it. So he talked
+      and persuaded and bullied and encouraged and cheered them; &ldquo;laughing
+      with them,&rdquo; as Las Casas says, &ldquo;while he was weeping at heart.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Probably as a result of this unpleasantness there was on the following
+      day, Tuesday, September 25th, a consultation between: Martin Alonso Pinzon
+      and the Admiral. The Santa Maria closed up with the Pinta, and a chart was
+      passed over on a cord. There were islands marked on the chart in this
+      region, possibly the islands reported by the shipwrecked pilot, possibly
+      the island of Antilla; and Pinzon said he thought that they were somewhere
+      in the region of them, and the Admiral said that he thought so too. There
+      was a deal of talk and pricking of positions on charts; and then, just as
+      the sun was setting, Martin Alonso, standing on the stern of the Pinta,
+      raised a shout and said that he saw land; asking (business-like Martin) at
+      the same time for the reward which had been promised to the first one who
+      should see land: They all saw it, a low cloud to the southwest, apparently
+      about twenty-five leagues distant; and honest Christopher, in the emotion
+      of the moment, fell on his knees in gratitude to God. The crimson sunset
+      of that evening saw the rigging of the three ships black with eager
+      figures, and on the quiet air were borne the sounds of the Gloria in
+      Excelsis, which was repeated by each ship&rsquo;s company.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The course was altered to the south-west, and they sailed in that
+      direction seventeen leagues during the night; but in the morning there was
+      no land to be seen. The sunset clouds that had so often deceived the
+      dwellers in the Canaries and the Azores, and that in some form or other
+      hover at times upon all eagerly scanned horizons, had also deceived
+      Columbus and every one of his people; but they created a diversion which
+      was of help to the Admiral in getting things quiet again, for which in his
+      devout soul he thanked the merciful providence of God.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so they sailed on again on a westward course. They were still in the
+      Sargasso Sea, and could watch the beautiful golden floating mass of the
+      gulf-weed, covered with berries and showing, a little way under the clear
+      water, bright green leaves. The sea was as smooth as the river in Seville;
+      there were frigate pelicans flying about, and John Dorys in the water;
+      several gulls were seen; and a youth on board the Nina killed a pelican
+      with a stone. On Monday, October 1st, there was a heavy shower of rain;
+      and Juan de la Cosa, Columbus&rsquo;s pilot, came up to him with the
+      doleful information that they had run 578 leagues from the island of
+      Ferro. According to Christopher&rsquo;s doctored reckoning the distance
+      published was 584 leagues; but his true reckoning, about which he said
+      nothing to a soul, showed that they had gone 707 leagues. The breeze still
+      kept steady and the sea calm; and day after day, with the temper of the
+      crews getting uglier and uglier, the three little vessels forged westward
+      through the blue, weed-strewn waters, their tracks lying undisturbed far
+      behind them. On Saturday, October 6th, the Admiral was signalled by Alonso
+      Pinzon, who wanted to change the course to the south-west. It appears
+      that, having failed to find the, islands of the shipwrecked pilot, they
+      were now making for the island of Cipango, and that this request of Pinzon
+      had something to do with some theory of his that they had better turn to
+      the south to reach that island; while Columbus&rsquo;s idea now evidently
+      was&mdash;to push straight on to the mainland of Cathay. Columbus had his
+      way; but the grumbling and murmuring in creased among the crew.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the next day, Sunday, and perhaps just in time to avert another
+      outbreak, there was heard the sound of a gun, and the watchers on the
+      Santa Maria and the Pinta saw a puff of smoke coming from the Nina, which
+      was sailing ahead, and hoisting a flag on her masthead. This was the
+      signal agreed upon for the discovery of land, and it seemed as though
+      their search was at last at an end. But it was a mistake. In the afternoon
+      the land that the people of the Nina thought they had seen had
+      disappeared, and the horizon was empty except for a great flight of birds
+      that was seen passing from the north to the south-west. The Admiral,
+      remembering how often birds had guided the Portuguese in the islands in
+      their possessions, argued that the birds were either going to sleep on
+      land or were perhaps flying from winter, which he assumed to be
+      approaching in the land from whence they came. He therefore altered. his
+      course from west to west-south-west. This course was entered upon an hour
+      before sunset and continued throughout the night and the next day. &ldquo;The
+      sea was like the river of Seville,&rdquo; says the Admiral; &ldquo;the
+      breezes as soft as at Seville in April, and very fragrant.&rdquo; More
+      birds were to be seen, and there were many signs of land; but the crew, so
+      often disappointed in their hopeful interpretations of the phenomena
+      surrounding them, kept on murmuring and complaining. On Tuesday, October
+      9th, the wind chopped round a little and the course was altered, first to
+      south-west and then at evening to a point north of west; and the journal
+      records that &ldquo;all night they heard birds passing.&rdquo; The next
+      day Columbus resumed the west-southwesterly course and made a run of
+      fifty-nine leagues; but the mariners broke out afresh in their discontent,
+      and declined to go any farther. They complained of the long voyage, and
+      expressed their views strongly to the commander. But they had to deal with
+      a man who was determined to begin with, and who saw in the many signs of
+      land that they had met with only an additional inducement to go on. He
+      told them firmly that with or without their consent he intended to go on
+      until he had found the land he had come to seek.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next day, Thursday, October 11th, was destined to be for ever
+      memorable in the history of the world. It began ordinarily enough, with a
+      west-south-west wind blowing fresh, and on a sea rather rougher than they
+      had had lately. The people on the Santa Maria saw some petrels and a green
+      branch in the water; the Pinta saw a reed and two small sticks carved with
+      iron, and one or two other pieces of reeds and grasses that had been grown
+      on shore, as well as a small board. Most wonderful of all, the people of
+      the Nina saw &ldquo;a little branch full of dog roses&rdquo;; and it would
+      be hard to estimate the sweet significance of this fragment of a wild
+      plant from land to the senses of men who had been so long upon a sea from
+      which they had thought never to land alive. The day drew to its close; and
+      after nightfall, according to their custom, the crew of the ships repeated
+      the Salve Regina. Afterwards the Admiral addressed the people and sailors
+      of his ship, &ldquo;very merry and pleasant,&rdquo; reminding them of the
+      favours God had shown them with regard to the weather, and begging them,
+      as they hoped to see land very soon, within an hour or so, to keep an
+      extra good look-out that night from the forward forecastle; and adding to
+      the reward of an annuity of 10,000 maravedis, offered by the Queen to
+      whoever should sight land first, a gift on his own account of a silk
+      doublet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The moon was in its third quarter, and did not rise until eleven o&rsquo;clock.
+      The first part of the night was dark, and there was only a faint starlight
+      into which the anxious eyes of the look-out men peered from the
+      forecastles of the three ships. At ten o&rsquo;clock Columbus was walking
+      on the poop of his vessel, when he suddenly saw a light right ahead. The
+      light seemed to rise and fall as though it were a candle or a lantern held
+      in some one&rsquo;s hand and waved up and down. The Admiral called Pedro
+      Gutierrez to him and asked him whether he saw anything; and he also saw
+      the light. Then he sent for Rodrigo Sanchez and asked him if he saw the
+      light; but he did not, perhaps because from where he was standing it was
+      occulted. But the others were left in no doubt, for the light was seen
+      once or twice more, and to the eyes of the anxious little group standing
+      on the high stern deck of the Santa Maria it appeared unmistakably. The
+      Nina was not close at hand, and the Pinta had gone on in front hoping to
+      make good her mistake; but there was no doubt on board the Santa Maria
+      that the light which they had seen was a light like a candle or a torch
+      waved slowly up and down. They lost the light again; and as the hours in
+      that night stole away and the moon rose slowly in the sky the seamen on
+      the Santa Maria must have almost held their breath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At about two o&rsquo;clock in the morning the sound of a gun was heard
+      from the Pinta, who could be seen hoisting her flags; Rodrigo de Triana,
+      the look-out on board of her, having reported land in sight; and there
+      sure enough in the dim light lay the low shores of an island a few miles
+      ahead of them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Immediately all sails were lowered, except a small trysail which enabled
+      the ships to lie-to and stand slowly off and on, waiting for the daylight.
+      I suppose there was never a longer night than that; but dawn came at last,
+      flooding the sky with lemon and saffron and scarlet and orange, until at
+      last the pure gold of the sun glittered on the water. And when it rose it
+      showed the sea-weary mariners an island lying in the blue sea ahead of
+      them: the island of Guanahani; San Salvador, as it was christened by
+      Columbus; or, to give it its modern name, Watling&rsquo;s Island.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="ch14" id="ch14"></a>CHAPTER XIV.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      LANDFALL
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During the night the ships had drifted a little with the current, and
+      before the north-east wind. When the look-out man on the Pinta first
+      reported land in sight it was probably the north-east corner of the
+      island, where the land rises to a height of 120 feet, that he saw. The
+      actual anchorage of Columbus was most likely to the westward of the
+      island; for there was a strong north-easterly breeze, and as the whole of
+      the eastern coast is fringed by a barrier reef, he would not risk his
+      ships on a lee shore. Finding himself off the north end of the island at
+      sunrise, the most natural thing for him to do, on making sail again, would
+      be to stand southward along the west side of the island looking for an
+      anchorage. The first few miles of the shore have rocky exposed points, and
+      the bank where there is shoal water only extends half a mile from the
+      shore. Immediately beyond that the bottom shelves rapidly down to a depth
+      of 2000 fathoms, so that if Columbus was sounding as he came south he
+      would find no bottom there. Below what are called the Ridings Rocks,
+      however, the land sweeps to the south and east in a long sheltered bay,
+      and to the south of these rocks there is good anchorage and firm
+      holding-ground in about eight fathoms of water.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /> <a name="p163" id="p163"></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+      <img alt="p163.jpg (57K)" src="images/p163.jpg" style="width:100%;" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/p163.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
+    </h5>
+<p>
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</p>
+    <p>
+      We may picture them, therefore, approaching this land in the bright
+      sunshine of the early morning, their ears, that had so long heard nothing
+      but the slat of canvas and the rush and bubble of water under the prows,
+      filled at last with the great resounding roar of the breakers on the coral
+      reef; their eyes, that had so long looked upon blue emptiness and the
+      star-spangled violet arch of night, feasting upon the living green of the
+      foliage ashore; and the easterly breeze carrying to their eager nostrils
+      the perfumes of land. Amid an excitement and joyful anticipation that it
+      is exhilarating even to think about the cables were got up and served and
+      coiled on deck, and the anchors, which some of them had thought would
+      never grip the bottom again, unstopped and cleared. The leadsman of the
+      Santa Maria, who has been finding no bottom with his forty-fathom line,
+      suddenly gets a sounding; the water shoals rapidly until the nine-fathom
+      mark is unwetted, and the lead comes up with its bottom covered with brown
+      ooze. Sail is shortened; one after another the great ungainly sheets of
+      canvas are clewed up or lowered down on deck; one after another the three
+      helms are starboarded, and the three ships brought up to the wind. Then
+      with three mighty splashes that send the sea birds whirling and screaming
+      above the rocks the anchors go down; and the Admiral stands on his high
+      poop-deck, and looks long and searchingly at the fragment of earth,
+      rock-rimmed, surf-fringed, and tree-crowned, of which he is Viceroy and
+      Governor-General.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Watling&rsquo;s Island, as it is now called, or San Salvador, as Columbus
+      named it, or Guanahani, as it was known to the aborigines, is situated in
+      latitude 24 deg. 6&rsquo; N., and longitude 74 deg 26&rsquo; W., and is an
+      irregularly shaped white sandstone islet in about the middle of the great
+      Bahama Bank. The space occupied by the whole group is shaped like an
+      irregular triangle extending from the Navidad Bank in the Caribbean Sea at
+      the south-east corner, to Bahama Island in Florida Strait on the north,
+      about 200 miles. The south side trends west by north for 600 miles, and
+      the north side north-west by north 720 miles. Most of the islands and
+      small rocks in this group, called Keys or Cays, are very low, and rise
+      only a few feet above the sea; the highest is about 400 feet high. They
+      are generally situated on the edge of coral and sand banks, some of which
+      are of a very dangerous character. They are thinly wooded, except in the
+      case of one or two of the larger islands which contain timber of moderate
+      dimensions. The climate of the Bahamas is mild and temperate, with
+      refreshing sea breezes in the hottest months; and there is a mean
+      temperature of 75 deg. from November to April. Watling&rsquo;s Island is
+      about twelve miles in length by six in breadth, with rocky shores slightly
+      indented. The greater part of its area is occupied by salt-water lagoons,
+      separated from one another by small wooded hills from too to 140 feet
+      high. There is plenty of grass; indeed the island is now considered to be
+      the most fertile in the Bahamas, and raises an excellent breed of cattle
+      and sheep. In common with the other islands of the group it was originally
+      settled by the Spaniards, and afterwards by the British, who were driven
+      from the Bahamas again by the Spanish in the year 1641. After a great deal
+      of changing hands they were ceded to Great Britain in 1783, and have
+      remained in her possession ever since. In 1897 the population of the whole
+      group was estimated at 52,000 the whites being in the proportion of one to
+      six of the coloured population. Watling&rsquo;s Island contains about 600
+      inhabitants scattered over the surface, with a small settlement called
+      Cockburn Town on the west side, nearly opposite the landfall of Columbus.
+      The seat of the local government is in the island of New Providence, and
+      the inhabitants of Watling&rsquo;s Island and of Rum Cay unite in sending
+      one representative to the House of Assembly. It is high water, full and
+      change, at Watling&rsquo;s Island at 7 h. 40 m., as it was in the days of
+      Columbus; and these facts form about the sum of the world&rsquo;s
+      knowledge of and interest in Watling&rsquo;s Island to-day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But it was a different matter on Friday morning, October 12, 1492, when,
+      all having been made snug on board the Santa Maria, the Admiral of the
+      Ocean Seas put on his armour and his scarlet cloak over it and prepared to
+      go ashore.
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        <br /> [This date is reckoned in the old style. The true astronomical
+        date would be October 21st, which is the modern anniversary of the
+        discovery]
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      The boat was lowered and manned by a crew well armed, and Columbus took
+      with him Rodrigo de Escovedo, the secretary to the expedition, and Rodrigo
+      Sanchez his overseer; they also took on board Martin Alonso Pinzon and
+      Vincenti Yanez Pinzon, the captains of the other two ships. As they rowed
+      towards the shore they saw a few naked inhabitants, who hid themselves at
+      their approach. Columbus carried with him the royal standard, and the two
+      captains each had a banner of the expedition, which was a square flag with
+      an &ldquo;F&rdquo; and a &ldquo;Y&rdquo; upon either side, each letter
+      being surmounted by the crown of the sovereigns and a green cross covering
+      the whole. Columbus assembled his little band around him and called upon
+      them to bear witness that in the presence of them all he was taking
+      possession of the island for the King and Queen of Spain; duly making
+      depositions in writing on the spot, and having them signed and witnessed.
+      Then he gave the name of San Salvador to the island and said a prayer; and
+      while this solemn little ceremony was in progress, the astonished natives
+      crept out of their hiding and surrounded the strange white men. They
+      gesticulated and grovelled and pointed upwards, as though this gang of
+      armed and bearded Spaniards, with the tall white-bearded Italian in the
+      midst of them, had fallen from the skies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first interest of the voyagers was in the inhabitants of this
+      delightful land. They found them well built, athletic-looking men, most of
+      them young, with handsome bodies and intelligent faces. Columbus, eager to
+      begin his missionary work, gave them some red caps and some glass beads,
+      with which he found them so delighted that he had good hopes of making
+      converts, and from which he argued that &ldquo;they were a people who
+      would better be freed and converted to our Holy Faith by love than by
+      force,&rdquo; which sentence of his contains within itself the whole
+      missionary spirit of the time. These natives, who were the freest people
+      in the world, were to be &ldquo;freed&rdquo;; freed or saved from the
+      darkness of their happy innocence and brought to the light of a religion
+      that had just evolved the Inquisition; freed by love if possible, and by
+      red caps and glass beads; if not possible, then freed by force and with
+      guns; but freed they were to be at all costs. It is a tragic thought that,
+      at the very first impact of the Old World upon this Eden of the West, this
+      dismal error was set on foot and the first links in the chain of slavery
+      forged. But for the moment nothing of it was perceptible; nothing but red
+      caps and glass beads, and trinkets and toys, and freeing by love. The
+      sword that Columbus held out to them, in order to find out if they knew
+      the use of weapons, they innocently grasped by the blade and so cut their
+      fingers; and that sword, extended with knowledge and grasped with fearless
+      ignorance, is surely an emblem of the spread of civilisation and of its
+      doubtful blessings in the early stages. Let us hear Columbus himself, as
+      he recorded his first impression of Guanahani:
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;Further, it appeared to me that they were a very poor people, in
+        everything. They all go naked as their mothers gave them birth, and the
+        women also, although I only saw one of the latter who was very young,
+        and all those whom I saw were young men, none more than thirty years of
+        age. They were very well built with very handsome bodies, and very good
+        faces. Their hair was almost as coarse as horses&rsquo; tails, and
+        short, and they wear it over the eyebrows, except a small quantity
+        behind, which they wear long and never cut. Some paint themselves
+        blackish, and they are of the colour of the inhabitants of the Canaries,
+        neither black nor white, and some paint themselves white, some red, some
+        whatever colour they find: and some paint their faces, some all the
+        body, some only the eyes, and some only the nose. They do not carry arms
+        nor know what they are, because I showed them swords and they took them
+        by the edge and ignorantly cut themselves. They have no iron: their
+        spears are sticks without iron, and some of them have a fish&rsquo;s
+        tooth at the end and others have other things. They are all generally of
+        good height, of pleasing appearance and well built: I saw some who had
+        indications of wounds on their bodies, and I asked them by signs if it
+        was that, and they showed me that other people came there from other
+        islands near by and wished to capture them and they defended themselves:
+        and I believed and believe, that they come here from the continental
+        land to take them captive. They must be good servants and intelligent,
+        as I see that they very quickly say all that is said to them, and I
+        believe that they would easily become Christians, as it appeared to me
+        that they had no sect. If it please our Lord, at the time of my
+        departure, I will take six of them from here to your Highnesses that
+        they may learn to speak. I saw no beast of any kind except parrots on
+        this island.&rdquo;
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      They very quickly say all that is said to them, and they will very easily
+      become good slaves; good Christians also it appears, since the Admiral&rsquo;s
+      research does not reveal the trace of any religious sect. And finally
+      &ldquo;I will take six of them&rdquo;; ostensibly that they may learn to
+      speak the language, but really that they may form the vanguard of cargo
+      after cargo of slaves ravished from their happy islands of dreams and
+      sunshine and plenty to learn the blessings of Christianity under the whip
+      and the sword. It is all, alas, inevitable; was inevitable from the moment
+      that the keel of Columbus&rsquo;s boat grated upon the shingle of
+      Guanahani. The greater must prey upon the less, the stronger must absorb
+      and dominate the weaker; and the happy gardens of the Golden Cyclades must
+      be spoiled and wasted for the pleasure and enrichment of a corrupting
+      civilisation. But while we recognise the inevitable, and enter into the
+      joy and pride of Columbus and his followers on this first happy morning of
+      their landing, we may give a moment&rsquo;s remembrance to the other side
+      of the picture, and admit that for this generation of innocents the
+      discovery that was to be all gain for the Old World was to be all loss to
+      them. In the meantime, decrees the Admiral, they are to be freed and
+      converted; and &ldquo;I will take six of them that they may learn to
+      speak.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There are no paths or footprints left in the sea, and the water furrowed
+      on that morning more than four hundred years ago by the keels of Columbus&rsquo;s
+      little fleet is as smooth and trackless as it was before they clove it.
+      Yet if you approach Guanahani from the east during the hours of darkness
+      you also will see a light that waxes and wanes on the horizon. What the
+      light was that Columbus saw is not certain; it was probably the light from
+      a torch held by some native woman from the door of her hut; but the light
+      that you will see is from the lighthouse on Dixon Hill, where a tower of
+      coral holds a lamp one hundred and sixty feet above the sea at the
+      north-east point of the island. It was erected in no sentimental spirit,
+      but for very practical purposes, and at a date when Watling&rsquo;s Island
+      had not been identified with the Guanahani of Columbus&rsquo;s landfall;
+      and yet of all the monuments that have been raised to him I can think of
+      nothing more appropriate than this lonely tower that stands by day amid
+      the bright sunshine in the track of the trade wind, and by night throws
+      its powerful double flash every half-minute across the dark lonely sea.
+      For it was by a light, although not of man&rsquo;s kindling, that Columbus
+      was guided upon his lonely voyage and through his many difficulties; amid
+      all his trials and disappointments, dimly as it must have burned
+      sometimes, it never quite went out. Darkness was the name of the sea
+      across which he took his way; darkness, from his religious point of view,
+      was the state of the lands to which he journeyed; and, whatever its
+      subsequent worth may have been, it was a burning fragment from the living
+      torch of the Christian religion that he carried across the world with him,
+      and by which he sought to kindle the fire of faith in the lands of his
+      discovery. So that there is a profound symbolism in those raying beams
+      that now, night after night, month by month, and year after year, shine
+      out across the sea from Watling&rsquo;s Island in the direction of the Old
+      World.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the preparations for this voyage, and in the conduct and accomplishment
+      of it, the personality of the man Columbus stands clearly revealed. He was
+      seen at his best, as all men are who have a chance of doing the thing for
+      which they are best fitted. The singleness of aim that can accomplish so
+      much is made manifest in his dogged search for means with which to make
+      his voyage; and his Italian quality of unscrupulousness in the means
+      employed to attain a good end was exercised to the full. The, practical
+      seaman in him carried him through the easiest part of his task, which was
+      the actual sailing of his ships from Palos to Guanahani; Martin Alonso
+      Pinzon could have done as much as that. But no Martin Alonso Pinzon or any
+      other man of that time known to history had the necessary combination of
+      defective and effective qualities that made Columbus, once he had
+      conceived his glorious hazy idea, spend the best years of his life, first
+      in acquiring the position that would make him listened to by people
+      powerful enough to help him, and then in besieging them in the face of
+      every rebuff and discouragement. Another man, proposing to venture across
+      the unknown ocean to unknown lands, would have required a fleet for his
+      conveyance, and an army for his protection; but Columbus asked for what he
+      thought he had some chance of getting, and for the barest equipment that
+      would carry him across the water. Another man would at least have had a
+      bodyguard; but Columbus relied upon himself, and alone held his motley
+      crew in the bonds of discipline. A Pinzon could have navigated the fleet
+      from Palos to Guanahani; but only a Columbus, only a man burning with
+      belief is himself and in his quest, could have kept that superstitious
+      crowd of loafers and malefactors and gaol-birds to their duties, and bent
+      them to his will. He was destined in after years for situations which were
+      beyond his power to deal with, and for problems that were beyond his
+      grasp; but here at least he was supreme, master of himself and of his
+      material, and a ruler over circumstances. The supreme thing that he had
+      professed to be able to do and which he had guaranteed to do was, in the
+      sublime simplicity of his own phrase, &ldquo;to discover new lands,&rdquo;
+      and luck or no luck, help or hindrance, he did it at the very first
+      attempt and in the space of thirty-five days. And although it was from the
+      Pinta that the gun was fired, and the first loom of the actual land seen
+      in the early morning, I am glad to think that, of all the number of eager
+      watching men, it was Columbus who first saw the dim tossing light that
+      told him his journey was at an end.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="bk2" id="bk2"></a>BOOK II.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE NEW WORLD
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br /> <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="ch1b" id="ch1b"></a>CHAPTER I.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE ENCHANTED ISLANDS
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Columbus did not intend to remain long at San Salvador. His landfall
+      there, although it signified the realisation of one part of his dream, was
+      only the starting-point of his explorations in the New World. Now that he
+      had made good his undertaking to &ldquo;discover new lands,&rdquo; he had
+      to make good his assurance that they were full of wealth and would swell
+      the revenues of the King and Queen of Spain. A brief survey of this first
+      island was all he could afford time for; and after the first exquisite
+      impression of the white beach, and the blue curve of the bay sparkling in
+      the sunshine, and the soft prismatic colours of the acanthus beneath the
+      green wall of the woods had been savoured and enjoyed, he was anxious to
+      push on to the rich lands of the Orient of which he believed this island
+      to be only an outpost.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the morning after his arrival the natives came crowding down to the
+      beach and got down their canoes, which were dug out of the trunk of a
+      single tree, and some of which were large enough to contain forty or
+      forty-five men: They came paddling out to the ship, sometimes, in the case
+      of the smaller canoes which only held one man, being upset by the surf,
+      and swimming gaily round and righting their canoes again and bailing them
+      out with gourds. They brought balls of spun cotton, and parrots and
+      spears. All their possessions, indeed, were represented in the offerings
+      they made to the strangers. Columbus, whose eye was now very steadily
+      fixed on the main chance, tried to find out if they had any gold, for he
+      noticed that some of them wore in their noses a ring that looked as though
+      it were made of that metal; and by making signs he asked them if there was
+      any more of it to be had. He understood them to say that to the south of
+      the island there dwelt a king who had large vessels of gold, and a great
+      many of them; he tried to suggest that some of the natives should come and
+      show him the way, but he &ldquo;saw that they were not interested in
+      going.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The story of the Rheingold was to be enacted over again, and the whole of
+      the evils that followed in its glittering train to be exemplified in this
+      voyage of discovery. To the natives of these islands, who guarded the
+      yellow metal and loved it merely for its shining beauty, it was harmless
+      and powerless; they could not buy anything with it, nor did they seek by
+      its aid to secure any other enjoyments but the happiness of looking at it
+      and admiring it. As soon as the gold was ravished from their keeping,
+      however, began the reign of lust and cruelty that always has attended and
+      always will attend the knowledge that things can be bought with it. In all
+      its history, since first it was brought up from the dark bowels of the
+      earth to glitter in the light of day, there is no more significant scene
+      than this that took place on the bright sands of San Salvador so long ago&mdash;Columbus
+      attentively examining the ring in the nose of a happy savage, and trying
+      to persuade him to show him the place that it was brought from; and the
+      savage &ldquo;not interested in going.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From his sign-conversation with the natives Columbus understood that there
+      was land to the south or the south-west, and also to the north-west, and
+      that the people from the north-west went to the south-west in search of
+      gold and precious stones. In the meantime he determined to spend the
+      Sunday in making a survey of the island, while the rest of Saturday was
+      passed in barterings with the natives, who were very happy and curious to
+      see all the strange things belonging to the voyagers; and so innocent were
+      their ideas of value that &ldquo;they give all they have for whatever
+      thing may be given them.&rdquo; Columbus, however, who was busy making
+      calculations, would not allow the members of the crew to take anything
+      more on their own account, ordering that where any article of commerce
+      existed in quantity it was to be acquired for the sovereigns and taken
+      home to Spain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Early on Sunday morning a boat was prepared from each ship, and a little
+      expedition began to row north about the island. As they coasted the white
+      rocky shores people came running to the beach and calling to them; &ldquo;giving
+      thanks to God,&rdquo; says Columbus, although this is probably a flight of
+      fancy. When they saw that the boats were not coming to land they threw
+      themselves into the water and came swimming out to them, bringing food and
+      drink. Columbus noticed a tongue of land lying between the north-west arm
+      of the internal lagoon and the sea, and saw that by cutting a canal
+      through it entrance could be secured to a harbour that would float &ldquo;as
+      many ships as there are in Christendom.&rdquo; He did not, apparently,
+      make a complete circuit of the island, but returned in the afternoon to
+      the ships, having first collected seven natives to take with him, and got
+      under way again; and before night had fallen San Salvador had disappeared
+      below the north-west horizon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      About midday he reached another island to the southeast. He sailed along
+      the coast until evening, when he saw yet another island in the distance to
+      the south-west; and he therefore lay-to for the night. At dawn the next
+      morning he landed on the island and took formal possession of it, naming
+      it Santa Maria de la Concepcion, which is the Rum Cay of the modern
+      charts. As the wind chopped round and he found himself on a lee-shore he
+      did not stay there, but sailed again before night. Two of the unhappy
+      prisoners from Guanahani at this point made good their escape by swimming
+      to a large canoe which one of the natives of the new island had rowed out&mdash;a
+      circumstance which worried Columbus not a little; since he feared it would
+      give him a bad name with the natives. He tried to counteract it by loading
+      with presents another native who came to barter balls of cotton, and
+      sending him away again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The effect of all that he was seeing, of the bridge of islands that seemed
+      to be stretching towards the south-west and leading him to the region of
+      untold wealth, was evidently very stimulating and exciting to Columbus.
+      His Journal is almost incoherent where he attempts to set down all he has
+      got to say. Let us listen to him for a moment:
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;These islands are very green and fertile, and the breezes are
+        very soft, and there may be many things which I do not know, because I
+        did not wish to stop, in order to discover and search many islands to
+        find gold. And since these people make signs thus, that they wear gold
+        on their arms and legs,&mdash;and it is gold, because I showed them some
+        pieces which I have,&mdash;I cannot fail, with the aid of our Lord, in
+        finding it where it is native. And being in the middle of the gulf
+        between these two islands, that is to say, the island of Santa Maria and
+        this large one, which I named Fernandina, I found a man alone in a canoe
+        who was going from the island of Santa Maria to Fernandina, and was
+        carrying a little of his bread which might have been about as large as
+        the fist, and a gourd of water, and a piece of reddish earth reduced to
+        dust and afterwards kneaded, and some dry leaves&mdash;[Tobacco]&mdash;which
+        must be a thing very much appreciated among them, because they had
+        already brought me some of them as a present at San Salvador: and he was
+        carrying a small basket of their kind, in which he had a string of small
+        glass beads and two blancas, by which I knew that he came from the
+        island of San Salvador, and had gone from there to Santa Maria and was
+        going to Fernandina. He came to the ship: I caused him to enter it, as
+        he asked to do so, and I had his canoe placed on the ship and had
+        everything which he was carrying guarded and I ordered that bread and
+        honey be given him to eat and something to drink. And I will go to
+        Fernandina thus and will give him everything, which belongs to him, that
+        he may give good reports of us. So that, when your Highnesses send here,
+        our Lord pleasing, those who come may receive honour and the Indians
+        will give them of everything which they have.&rdquo;
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      This hurried gabbling about gold and the aid of our Lord, interlarded with
+      fragments of natural and geographical observation, sounds strangely across
+      the gulf of time and impresses one with a disagreeable sense of bewildered
+      greed&mdash;like that of a dog gulping at the delicacies in his platter
+      and unwilling to do justice to one for fear the others should escape him;
+      and yet it is a natural bewilderment, and one with which we must do our
+      best to sympathise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fernandina was the name which Columbus had already given to Long Island
+      when he sighted it from Santa Maria; and he reached it in the evening of
+      Tuesday, October 16th. The man in the canoe had arrived before him; and
+      the astute Admiral had the satisfaction of finding that once more his
+      cleverness had been rewarded, and that the man in the canoe had given such
+      glowing accounts of his generosity that there was no difficulty about his
+      getting water and supplies. While the barrels of water were being filled
+      he landed and strolled about in the pleasant groves, observing the
+      islanders and their customs, and finding them on the whole a little more
+      sophisticated than those of San Salvador. The women wore mantillas on
+      their heads and &ldquo;little pieces of cotton&rdquo; round their loins&mdash;a
+      sufficiently odd costume; and they appeared to Columbus to be a little
+      more astute than the other islanders, for though they brought cotton in
+      quantities to the ships they exacted payment of beads for it. In the charm
+      and wonder of his walk in this enchanted land he was able for a moment to
+      forget his hunger for gold and to admire the great branching palm-trees,
+      and the fish that
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;are here so different from ours that it is wonderful. There are
+        some formed like cocks of the finest colours in the world, blue, yellow,
+        red and of all colours, and others tinted in a thousand manners: and the
+        colours are so fine, that there is not a man who does not wonder at
+        them, and who does not take great pleasure in seeing them. Also, there
+        are whales. I saw no beasts on land of any kind except parrots and
+        lizards. A boy told me that he saw a large snake. I did not see sheep
+        nor goats, nor any other beast; although I have been here a very short
+        time, as it is midday, still if there had been any, I could not have
+        missed seeing some.&rdquo;
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      Columbus was not a very good descriptive writer, and he has but two
+      methods of comparison; either a thing is like Spain, or it is not like
+      Spain. The verdure was &ldquo;in such condition as it is in the month of
+      May in Andalusia; and the trees were all as different from ours as day
+      from night, and also the fruits and grasses and the stones and all the
+      things.&rdquo; The essay written by a cockney child after a day at the
+      seaside or in the country, is not greatly different from some of the
+      verbatim passages of this journal; and there is a charm in that fact too,
+      for it gives us a picture of Columbus, in spite of his hunt for gold and
+      precious stones, wandering, still a child at heart, in the wonders of the
+      enchanted world to which he had come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was trouble on this day, because some of the crew had found an
+      Indian with a piece of gold in his nose, and they got a scolding from
+      Columbus for not detaining him and bartering with him for it. There was
+      bad weather also, with heavy rain and a threatening of tempest; there was
+      a difference of opinion with Martin Alonso Pinzon about which way they
+      should go round the island: but the next day the weather cleared, and the
+      wind settled the direction of their course for them. Columbus, whose eye
+      never missed anything of interest to the sailor and navigator, notes thus
+      early a fact which appears in every book of sailing directions for the
+      Bahama Islands&mdash;that the water is so clear and limpid that the bottom
+      can be seen at a great depth; and that navigation is thus possible and
+      even safe among the rockstrewn coasts of the islands, when thus performed
+      by sight and with the sun behind the ship. He was also keenly alive to
+      natural charm and beauty in the new lands that he was visiting, and there
+      are unmistakable fragments of himself in the journal that speak eloquently
+      of his first impressions. &ldquo;The singing of the little birds is such
+      that it appears a man would wish never to leave here, and the flocks of
+      parrots obscure the sun.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But life, even to the discoverer of a New World, does not consist of
+      wandering in the groves, and listening to the singing birds, and smelling
+      the flowers, and remembering the May nights of Andalusia. There was gold
+      to be found and the mainland of Cathay to be discovered, and a letter,
+      written by the sovereigns at his earnest request, to be delivered to the
+      Great Khan. The natives had told him of an island called Samoete to the
+      southward, which was said to contain a quantity of gold. He sailed thither
+      on the 19th, and called it Isabella; its modern name is Crooked Island. He
+      anchored here and found it to be but another step in the ascending scale
+      of his delight; it was greener and more beautiful than any of the islands
+      he had yet seen. He spent some time looking for the gold, but could not
+      find any; although he heard of the island of Cuba, which he took to be the
+      veritable Cipango. He weighed anchor on October 24th and sailed
+      south-west, encountering some bad weather on the way; but on Sunday the
+      28th he came up with the north coast of Cuba and entered the mouth of a
+      river which is the modern Nuevitas. To the island of Cuba he gave the name
+      of Juana in honour of the young prince to whom his son Diego had been
+      appointed a page.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If the other islands had seemed beautiful to him, Cuba seemed like heaven
+      itself. The mountains grandly rising in the interior, the noble rivers and
+      long sweeping plains, the headlands melting into the clear water, and the
+      gorgeous colours and flowers and birds and insects on land acted like a
+      charm on Columbus and his sailors. As they entered the river they lowered
+      a boat in order to go ahead and sound for an anchorage; and two native
+      canoes put off from the shore, but, when they saw the boat approaching,
+      fled again. The Admiral landed and found two empty houses containing nets
+      and hooks and fishing-lines, and one of the strange silent dogs, such as
+      they had encountered on the other island&mdash;dogs that pricked their
+      ears and wagged their tails, but that never barked. The Admiral, in spite
+      of his greed for gold and his anxiety to &ldquo;free&rdquo; the people of
+      the island, was now acting much more discreetly, and with the genuine good
+      sense which he always possessed and which was only sometimes obscured. He
+      would not allow anything in the empty houses to be disturbed or taken
+      away, and whenever he saw the natives he tried to show them that he
+      intended to do them no harm, and to win their good will by making them
+      presents of beads and toys for which he would take no return. As he went
+      on up the river the scenery became more and more enchanting, so that he
+      felt quite unhappy at not being able to express all the wonders and
+      beauties that he saw. In the pure air and under the serene blue of the sky
+      those matchless hues of blossom and foliage threw a rainbow-coloured
+      garment on either bank of the river; the flamingoes, the parrots and
+      woodpeckers and humming-birds calling to one another and flying among the
+      tree-tops, made the upper air also seem alive and shot with all the
+      colours of the rainbow. Humble Christopher, walking amid these gorgeous
+      scenes, awed and solemnised by the strangeness and magnificence of nature
+      around him, tries to identify something that he knows; and thinks, that
+      amid all these strange chorusings of unknown birds, he hears the familiar
+      note of a nightingale. Amid all his raptures, however, the main chance is
+      not forgotten; everything that he sees he translates into some terms of
+      practical utility. Just as on the voyage out every seaweed or fish or
+      flying bird that he saw was hailed by him as a sign that land was near, so
+      amid the beauty of this virgin world everything that he sees is taken to
+      indicate either that he is close upon the track of the gold, or that he
+      must be in Cipango, or that the natives will be easy to convert to
+      Christianity. In the fragrance of the woods of Cuba, Columbus thought that
+      he smelled Oriental spices, which Marco Polo had described as abounding in
+      Cipango; when he walked by the shore and saw the shells of pearl oysters,
+      he believed the island to be loaded with pearls and precious stones; when
+      he saw a scrap of tinsel or bright metal adorning a native, he argued that
+      there was a gold mine close at hand. And so he went on in an increasing
+      whirl of bewildering enchantment from anchorage to anchorage and from
+      island to island, always being led on by that yellow will o&rsquo;-the-wisp,
+      gold, and always believing that the wealth of the Orient would be his on
+      the morrow. As he coasted along towards the west he entered the river
+      which he called Rio de Mares. He found a large village here full of
+      palm-branch houses furnished with chairs and hammocks and adorned with
+      wooden masks and statues; but in spite of his gentleness and offer of
+      gifts the inhabitants all fled to the mountains, while he and his men
+      walked curiously through the deserted houses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On Tuesday, October 30th, Martin Alonso Pinzon, whose communications the
+      Admiral was by this time beginning to dread, came with some exciting news.
+      It seemed that the Indians from San Salvador who were on board the Pinta
+      had told him that beyond the promontory, named by Columbus the Cape of
+      Palms, there was a river, four days&rsquo; journey upon which would bring
+      one to the city of Cuba, which was very rich and large and abounded with
+      gold; and that the king of that country was at war with a monarch whom
+      they called Cami, and whom Pinzon identified with the Great Khan. More
+      than this, these natives assured him that the land they were on at present
+      was the mainland itself, and that they could not be very far from Cathay.
+      Columbus for once found himself in agreement with Martin Alonso. The
+      well-thumbed copy of Marco Polo was doubtless brought out, and abundant
+      evidence found in it; and it was decided to despatch a little embassy to
+      this city in order to gain information about its position and wealth. When
+      they continued their course, however, and rounded the cape, no river
+      appeared; they sailed on, and yet promontory after promontory was opened
+      ahead of them; and as the wind turned against them and the weather was
+      very threatening they decided to turn back and anchor again in the Rio de
+      Mares.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Columbus was now, as he thought, hot upon the track of the Great Khan
+      himself; and on the first of November he sent boats ashore and told the
+      sailors to get information from the houses; but the inhabitants fled shyly
+      into the woods. Having once postulated the existence of the Great Khan in
+      this immediate territory Columbus, as his habit was, found that everything
+      fitted with the theory; and he actually took the flight of the natives,
+      although it had occurred on a dozen other occasions, as a proof that they
+      mistook his bands of men for marauding expeditions despatched by the great
+      monarch himself. He therefore recalled them, and sent a boat ashore with
+      an Indian interpreter who, standing in the boat at the edge of the water,
+      called upon the natives to draw near, and harangued them. He assured them
+      of the peaceable intentions of the great Admiral, and that he had nothing
+      whatever to do with the Great Khan; which cannot very greatly have
+      thrilled the Cubans, who knew no more about the Great Khan than they did
+      about Columbus. The interpreter then swam ashore and was well received; so
+      well, that in the evening some sixteen canoes came off to the ships
+      bringing cotton yarn and spears for traffic. Columbus, with great
+      astuteness, forbade any trading in cotton or indeed in anything at all
+      except gold, hoping by this means to make the natives produce their
+      treasures; and he would no doubt have been successful if the natives had
+      possessed any gold, but as the poor wretches had nothing but the naked
+      skins they stood up in, and the few spears and pots and rolls of cotton
+      that they were offering, the Admiral&rsquo;s astuteness was for once
+      thrown away. There was one man, however, with a silver ring in his nose,
+      who was understood to say that the king lived four days&rsquo; journey in
+      the interior, and that messengers had been sent to him to tell him of the
+      arrival of the strange ships; which messengers would doubtless soon return
+      bringing merchants with them to trade with the ships. If this native was
+      lying he showed great ingenuity in inventing the kind of story that his
+      questioners wanted; but it is more likely that his utterances were
+      interpreted by Columbus in the light of his own ardent beliefs. At any
+      rate it was decided to send at once a couple of envoys to this great city,
+      and not to wait for the arrival of the merchants. Two Spaniards, Rodrigo
+      de Jerez and Luis de Torres, the interpreter to the expedition&mdash;who
+      had so far found little use for his Hebrew and Chaldean&mdash;were chosen;
+      and with them were sent two Indians, one from San Salvador and the other a
+      local native who went as guide. Red caps and beads and hawks&rsquo; bells
+      were duly provided, and a message for the king was given to them telling
+      him that Columbus was waiting with letters and presents from Spanish
+      sovereigns, which he was to deliver personally. After the envoys had
+      departed, Columbus, whose ships were anchored in a large basin of deep
+      water with a clean and steep beach, decided to take the opportunity of
+      having the vessels careened. Their hulls were covered with shell and weed;
+      the caulking, which had been dishonestly done at Palos, had also to be
+      attended to; so the ships were beached and hove down one at a time&mdash;an
+      unnecessary precaution, as it turned out, for there was no sign of
+      treachery on the part of the natives. While the men were making fires to
+      heat their tar they noticed that the burning wood sent forth a heavy odour
+      which was like mastic; and the Admiral, now always busy with optimistic
+      calculations, reckoned that there was enough in that vicinity to furnish a
+      thousand quintals every year. While the work on the ships was going
+      forward he employed himself in his usual way, going ashore, examining the
+      trees and vegetables and fruits, and holding such communication as he was
+      able with the natives. He was up every morning at dawn, at one time
+      directing the work of his men, at another going ashore after some birds
+      that he had seen; and as dawn comes early in those islands his day was
+      probably a long one, and it is likely that he was in bed soon after dark.
+      On the day that he went shooting, Martin Alonso Pinzon was waiting for him
+      on his return; this time not to make any difficulties or independent
+      proposals, but to show him two pieces of cinnamon that one of his men had
+      got from an Indian who was carrying a quantity of it. &ldquo;Why did the
+      man not get it all from him?&rdquo; says greedy Columbus. &ldquo;Because
+      of the prohibition of the Admiral&rsquo;s that no one should do any
+      trading,&rdquo; says Martin Alonso, and conceives himself to have scored;
+      for truly these two men do not love one another. The boatswain of the
+      Pinta, adds Martin Alonso, has found whole trees of it. &ldquo;The Admiral
+      then went there and found that it was not cinnamon.&rdquo; The Admiral was
+      omnipotent; if he had said that it was manna they would have had to make
+      it so, and as he chose to say that it was not cinnamon, we must take his
+      word for it, as Martin Alonso certainly had to do; so that it was the
+      Admiral who scored this time. Columbus, however, now on the track of
+      spices, showed some cinnamon and pepper to the natives; and the obliging
+      creatures &ldquo;said by signs that there was a great deal of it towards
+      the south-east.&rdquo; Columbus then showed them some gold and pearls; and
+      &ldquo;certain old men&rdquo; replied that in a place they called Bo-No
+      there was any amount of gold; the people wore it in their ears and on
+      their arms and legs, and there were pearls also, and large ships and
+      merchandise&mdash;all to the south-east. Finding this information, which
+      was probably entirely untrue and merely a polite effort to do what was
+      expected of them, well received, the natives added that &ldquo;a long
+      distance from there, there were men with one eye, and other men with dogs&rsquo;
+      snouts who ate men, and that when they caught a man they beheaded him and
+      drank his blood.&rdquo; . . . Soon after this the Admiral went on board
+      again and began to write up his Journal, solemnly entering all these facts
+      in it. It is the most childish nonsense; but after all, how interesting
+      and credible it must have been! To live thus smelling the most heavenly
+      perfumes, breathing the most balmy air, viewing the most lovely scenes,
+      and to be always hot upon the track of gold and pearls and spices and
+      wealth and dog-nosed, blood-drinking monstrosities&mdash;what an
+      adventure, what a vivid piece of living!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After a few days&mdash;on Tuesday, November 6th&mdash;the two men who had
+      been sent inland to the great and rich city came back again with their
+      report. Alas for visions of the Great Khan! The city turned out to be a
+      village of fifty houses with twenty people in each house. The envoys had
+      been received with great solemnity; and all the men &ldquo;as well as the
+      women&rdquo; came to see them, and lodged them in a fine house. The chief
+      people in the village came and kissed their hands and feet, hailing them
+      as visitors from the skies, and seating them in two chairs, while they sat
+      round on the floor. The native interpreter, doubtless according to
+      instructions, then told them &ldquo;how the Christians lived and how they
+      were good people&rdquo;; and I would give a great deal to have heard that
+      brief address. Afterwards the men went out and the women came in, also
+      kissing the hands and feet of the visitors, and &ldquo;trying them to see
+      if they were of flesh and of bone like themselves.&rdquo; The results were
+      evidently so satisfactory that the strangers were implored to remain at
+      least five days. The real business of the expedition was then broached.
+      Had they any gold or pearls? Had they any cinnamon or spices? Answer, as
+      usual: &ldquo;No, but they thought there was a great deal of it to the
+      south-east.&rdquo; The interest of the visitors then evaporated, and they
+      set out for the coast again; but they found that at least five hundred men
+      and women wanted to come with them, since they believed that they were
+      returning to heaven. On their journey back the two Spaniards noticed many
+      people smoking, as the Admiral himself had done a few days before; and
+      this is the first known discovery of tobacco by Europeans.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They saw a great many geese, and the strange dogs that did not bark, and
+      they saw potatoes also, although they did not know what they were.
+      Columbus, having heard this report, and contemplating these gentle amiable
+      creatures, so willing to give all they had in return for a scrap of
+      rubbish, feels his heart lifted in a pious aspiration that they might know
+      the benefits of the Christian religion. &ldquo;I have to say, Most Serene
+      Princes,&rdquo; he writes,
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;that by means of devout religious persons knowing their language
+        well, all would soon become Christians: and thus I hope in our Lord that
+        Your Highnesses will appoint such persons with great diligence in order
+        to turn to the Church such great peoples, and that they will convert
+        them, even as they have destroyed those who would not confess the Father
+        and the Son and the Holy Spirit: and after their days, as we are all
+        mortal, they will leave their realms&mdash;in a very tranquil condition
+        and freed from heresy and wickedness, and will be well received before
+        the Eternal Creator, Whom may it please to give them a long life and a
+        great increase of larger realms and dominions, and the will and
+        disposition to spread the holy Christian religion, as they have done up
+        to the present time, Amen. To-day I will launch the ship and make haste
+        to start on Thursday, in the name of God, to go to the southeast and
+        seek gold and spices, and discover land.&rdquo; Thus Christopher
+        Columbus, in the Name of God,
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        November 11, 1492.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="ch2b" id="ch2b"></a>CHAPTER II.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE EARTHLY PARADISE
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Columbus weighed anchor on the 12th of November he took with him six
+      captive Indians. It was his intention to go in search of the island of
+      Babeque, which the Indians alleged lay about thirty leagues to the
+      east-south-east, and where, they said, the people gathered gold out of the
+      sand with candles at night, and afterwards made bars of it with a hammer.
+      They told him this by signs; and we have only one more instance of the
+      Admiral&rsquo;s facility in interpreting signs in favour of his own
+      beliefs. It is only a few days later that in the same Journal he says,
+      &ldquo;The people of these lands do not understand me, nor do I nor any
+      other person I have with me understand them; and these Indians I am taking
+      with me, many times understand things contrary to what they are.&rdquo; It
+      was a fault at any rate not exclusively possessed by the Indians, who were
+      doubtless made the subject of many philological experiments on the part of
+      the interpreter; all that they seemed to have learned at this time were
+      certain religious gestures, such as making the Sign of the Cross, which
+      they did continually, greatly to the edification of the crew.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In order to keep these six natives in a good temper Columbus kidnapped
+      &ldquo;seven women, large and small, and three children,&rdquo; in order,
+      he alleged, that the men might conduct themselves better in Spain because
+      of having their &ldquo;wives&rdquo; with them; although whether these
+      assorted women were indeed the wives of the kidnapped natives must at the
+      best be a doubtful matter. The three children, fortunately, had their
+      father and mother with them; but that was only because the father, having
+      seen his wife and children kidnapped, came and offered to go with them of
+      his own accord. This taking of the women raises a question which must be
+      in the mind of any one who studies this extraordinary voyage&mdash;the
+      question of the treatment of native women by the Spaniards. Columbus is
+      entirely silent on the subject; but taking into account the nature of the
+      Spanish rabble that formed his company, and his own views as to the right
+      which he had to possess the persons and goods of the native inhabitants, I
+      am afraid that there can be very little doubt that in this matter there is
+      a good reason, for his silence. So far as Columbus himself was concerned,
+      it is probable that he was innocent enough; he was not a sensualist by
+      nature, and he was far too much interested and absorbed in the principal
+      objects of his expedition, and had too great a sense of his own personal
+      dignity, to have indulged in excesses that would, thus sanctioned by him,
+      have produced a very disastrous effect on the somewhat rickety discipline
+      of his crew. He was too wise a master, however, to forbid anything that it
+      was not in his power to prevent; and it is probable that he shut his eyes
+      to much that, if he did not tolerate it, he at any rate regarded as a
+      matter of no very great importance. His crew had by this time learned to
+      know their commander well enough not to commit under his eyes offences for
+      which he would have been sure to punish them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For two days they ran along the coast with a fair wind; but on the 14th a
+      head wind and heavy sea drove them into the shelter of a deep harbour
+      called by Columbus Puerto del Principe, which is the modern Tanamo. The
+      number of islands off this part of the coast of Cuba confirmed Columbus in
+      his profound geographical error; he took them to be &ldquo;those
+      innumerable islands which in the maps of the world are placed at the end
+      of the east.&rdquo; He erected a great wooden cross on an eminence here,
+      as he always did when he took possession of a new place, and made some
+      boat excursions among the islands in the harbour. On the 17th of November
+      two of the six youths whom he had taken on board the week before swam
+      ashore and escaped. When he started again on his voyage he was greatly
+      inconvenienced by the wind, which veered about between the north and south
+      of east, and was generally a foul wind for him. There is some difference
+      of opinion as to what point of the wind the ships of Columbus&rsquo;s time
+      would sail on; but there is no doubt that they were extremely unhandy in
+      anything approaching a head wind, and that they were practically no good
+      at all at beating to windward. The shape of their hulls, the ungainly
+      erections ahead and astern, and their comparatively light hold on the
+      water, would cause them to drift to leeward faster than they could work to
+      windward. In this head wind, therefore, Columbus found that he was making
+      very little headway, although he stood out for long distances to the
+      northward. On Wednesday, November 21st, occurred a most disagreeable
+      incident, which might easily have resulted in the Admiral&rsquo;s never
+      reaching Spain alive. Some time in the afternoon he noticed the Pinta
+      standing away ahead of him in a direction which was not the course which
+      he was steering; and he signalled her to close up with him. No answer,
+      however, was made to his signal, which he repeated, but to which he failed
+      to attract any response. He was standing south at the time, the wind being
+      well in the north-east; and Martin Alonso Pinzon, whose caravel pointed
+      into the wind much better than the unhandy Santa Maria, was standing to
+      the east. When evening fell he was still in sight, at a distance of
+      sixteen miles. Columbus was really concerned, and fired lombards and flew
+      more signals of invitation; but there was no reply. In the evening he
+      shortened sail and burned a torch all night, &ldquo;because it appeared
+      that Martin Alonso was returning to me; and the night was very clear, and
+      there was a nice little breeze by which to come to me if he wished.&rdquo;
+      But he did not wish, and he did not come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Martin Alonso has in fact shown himself at last in his true colours. He
+      has got the fastest ship, he has got a picked company of his own men from
+      Palos; he has got an Indian on board, moreover, who has guaranteed to take
+      him straight to where the gold is; and he has a very agreeable plan of
+      going and getting it, and returning to Spain with the first news and the
+      first wealth. It is open mutiny, and as such cannot but be a matter of
+      serious regret and trouble to the Admiral, who sits writing up his Journal
+      by the swinging lamp in his little cabin. To that friend and confidant he
+      pours out his troubles and his long list of grievances against Martin
+      Alonso; adding, &ldquo;He has done and said many other things to me.&rdquo;
+      Up on deck the torch is burning to light the wanderer back again, if only
+      he will come; and there is &ldquo;a nice little breeze&rdquo; by which to
+      come if he wishes; but Martin Alonso has wishes quite other than that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Pinta was out of sight the next morning, and the little Nina was all
+      that the Admiral had to rely upon for convoy. They were now near the east
+      end of the north coast of Cuba, and they stood in to a harbour which the
+      Admiral called Santa Catalina, and which is now called Cayo de Moa. As the
+      importance of the Nina to the expedition had been greatly increased by the
+      defection of the Pinta, Columbus went on board and examined her. He found
+      that some of her spars were in danger of giving way; and as there was a
+      forest of pine trees rising from the shore he was able to procure a new
+      mizzen mast and latine yard in case it should be necessary to replace
+      those of the Nina. The next morning he weighed anchor at sunrise and
+      continued east along the coast. He had now arrived at the extreme end of
+      Cuba, and was puzzled as to what course he should take. Believing Cuba, as
+      he did, to be the mainland of Cathay, he would have liked to follow the
+      coast in its trend to the south-west, in the hope of coming upon the rich
+      city of Quinsay; but on the other hand there was looming to the south-west
+      some land which the natives with him assured him was Bohio, the place
+      where all the gold was. He therefore held on his course; but when the
+      Indians found that he was really going to these islands they became very
+      much alarmed, and made signs that the people would eat them if they went
+      there; and, in order further to dissuade the Admiral, they added that the
+      people there had only one eye, and the faces, of dogs. As it did not suit
+      Columbus to believe them he said that they were lying, and that he &ldquo;felt&rdquo;
+      that the island must belong to the domain of the Great Khan. He therefore
+      continued his course, seeing many beautiful and enchanting bays opening
+      before him, and longing to go into them, but heroically stifling his
+      curiosity, &ldquo;because he was detained more than he desired by the
+      pleasure and delight he felt in seeing and gazing on the beauty and
+      freshness of those countries wherever he entered, and because he did not
+      wish to be delayed in prosecuting what he was engaged upon; and for these
+      reasons he remained that night beating about and standing off and on until
+      day.&rdquo; He could not trust himself, that is to say, to anchor in these
+      beautiful harbours, for he knew he would be tempted to go ashore and waste
+      valuable time exploring the woods; and so he remained instead, beating
+      about in the open sea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As it was, what with contrary winds and his own indecision as to which
+      course he should pursue, it was December the 6th before he came up with
+      the beautiful island of Hayti, and having sent the Nina in front to
+      explore for a harbour, entered the Mole Saint Nicholas, which he called
+      Puerto Maria. Towards the east he saw an island shaped like a turtle, and
+      this island he named Tortuga; and the harbour, which he entered that
+      evening on the hour of Vespers, he called Saint Nicholas, as it was the
+      feast of that saint. Once more his description flounders among
+      superlatives: he thought Cuba was perfect; but he finds the new island
+      more perfect still. The climate is like May in Cordova; the tracts of
+      arable land and fertile valleys and high mountains are like those in
+      Castile; he finds mullet like those of Castile; soles and other fish like
+      those in Castile; nightingales and other small birds like those in
+      Castile; myrtle and other trees and grasses like those in Castile! In
+      short, this new land is so like Spain, only more wonderful and beautiful,
+      that he christens it Espanola.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They stayed two days in the harbour of Saint Nicholas, and then began to
+      coast eastwards along the shores of Espaniola. Their best progress was
+      made at dawn and sunset, when the land breeze blew off the island; and
+      during the day they encountered a good deal of colder weather and easterly
+      winds, which made their progress slow. Every day they put in at one or
+      other of the natural harbours in which that beautiful coast abounds; every
+      day they saw natives on the shores who generally fled at their approach,
+      but were often prevailed upon to return and to converse with the natives
+      on board the Admiral&rsquo;s ship, and to receive presents and bring
+      parrots and bits of gold in exchange. On one day a party of men foraging
+      ashore saw a beautiful young girl, who fled at their approach; and they
+      chased her a long way through the woods, finally capturing her and
+      bringing her on board. Columbus &ldquo;caused her to be clothed&rdquo;&mdash;doubtless
+      a diverting occupation for Rodrigo, Juan, Garcia, Pedro, William, and the
+      rest of them, although for the poor, shy, trembling captive not diverting
+      at all&mdash;and sent her ashore again loaded with beads and brass rings&mdash;to
+      act as a decoy. Having sown this good seed the Admiral waited for a night,
+      and then sent a party of men ashore, &ldquo;well prepared with arms and
+      adapted for such an affair,&rdquo; to have some conversation with the
+      people. The innocent harvest was duly reaped; the natives met the
+      Spaniards with gifts of food and drink, and understanding that the Admiral
+      would like to have a parrot, they sent as many parrots as were wanted. The
+      husband of the girl who had been captured and clothed came back with her
+      to the shore with a large body of natives, in order to thank the Admiral
+      for his kindness and clemency; and their confidence was not misplaced, as
+      the Admiral did not at that moment wish to do any more kidnapping. The
+      Spaniards were more and more amazed and impressed with the beauty and
+      fertility of these islands. The lands were more lovely than the finest
+      land in Castile; the rivers were large and wide, the trees green and full
+      of fruit, the grasses knee-deep and starred with flowers; the birds sang
+      sweetly all night; there were mastic trees and aloes and plantations of
+      cotton. There was fishing in plenty; and if there were not any gold mines
+      immediately at hand, they here sure to be round the next headland or, at
+      the farthest, in the next island. The people, too, charmed and delighted
+      the Admiral, who saw in them a future glorious army of souls converted to
+      the Christian religion. They were taller and handsomer than the
+      inhabitants of the other islands, and the women much fairer; indeed, if
+      they had not been so much exposed to the sun, and if they could only be
+      clothed in the decent garments of civilisation, the Admiral thought that
+      their skins would be as white as those of the women of Spain&mdash;which
+      was only another argument for bringing them within the fold of the Holy
+      Catholic Church. The men were powerful and apparently harmless; they
+      showed no truculent or suspicious spirit; they had no knowledge of arms; a
+      thousand of them would not face three Christians; and
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;so they are suitable to be governed and made to work and sow and
+        do everything else that shall be necessary, and to build villages and be
+        taught to wear clothing and observe our customs.&rdquo;
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      At present, you see, they are but poor happy heathens, living in a
+      paradise of their own, where the little birds sing all through the warm
+      nights, and the rivers murmur through flowery meadows, and no one has any
+      knowledge of arms or desire of such knowledge, and every one goes naked
+      and unashamed. High time, indeed, that they should be taught to wear
+      clothing and observe our customs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The local chief came on a visit of state to the ship; and the Admiral paid
+      him due honour, telling him that he came as an envoy from the greatest
+      sovereigns in the world. But this charming king, or cacique as they called
+      him, would not believe this; he thought that Columbus was, for reasons of
+      modesty, speaking less than the truth&mdash;a new charge to bring against
+      our Christopher! He believed that the Spaniards came from heaven, and that
+      the realms of the sovereigns of Castile were in the heavens and not in
+      this world. He took some refreshment, as his councillors did also, little
+      dreaming, poor wretches, what in after years was to come to them through
+      all this palavering and exchanging of presents. The immediate result of
+      the interview, however, was to make intercourse with the natives much
+      freer and pleasanter even than it had been before; and some of the sailors
+      went fishing with the natives. It was then that they were shown some cane
+      arrows with hardened points, which the natives said belonged to the people
+      of &lsquo;Caniba&rsquo;, who, they alleged, came to the island to capture
+      and eat the natives. The Admiral did not believe it; his sublime habit of
+      rejecting everything that did not fit in with his theory of the moment,
+      and accepting everything that did, made him shake his head when this piece
+      of news was brought to him. He could not get the Great Khan out of his
+      head, and his present theory was that this island, being close to the
+      mainland of Cathay, was visited by the armies of the Great Khan, and that
+      it was his men who had used the arrows and made war upon the natives. It
+      was no good for the natives to show him some of their mutilated bodies,
+      and to tell him that the cannibals ate them piecemeal; he had no use for
+      such information. His mind was like a sieve of which the size of the
+      meshes could be adjusted at will; everything that was not germane to the
+      idea of the moment fell through it, and only confirmative evidence
+      remained; and at the moment he was not believing any stories which did not
+      prove that the Great Khan was, so to speak, just round the corner. If they
+      talked about gold he would listen to them; and so the cacique brought him
+      a piece of gold the size of his hand and, breaking it into pieces, gave it
+      to him a bit at a time. This the Admiral took to be sign of great
+      intelligence. They told him there was gold at Tortuga, but he preferred to
+      believe that it came from Babeque, which may have been Jamaica and may
+      have been nothing at all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But his theory was that it existed on Espanola only in small pieces
+      because that country was so rich that the natives had no need for it; an
+      economic theory which one grows dizzy in pondering. At any rate &ldquo;the
+      Admiral believed that he was very near the fountainhead, and that Our Lord
+      was about to show him where the gold originates.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On Tuesday, December 18th, the ships were all dressed in honour of a
+      religious anniversary, and the cacique, hearing the firing of the lombards
+      with which the festival was greeted, came down to the shore to see what
+      was the matter. As Columbus was sitting at dinner on deck beneath the poop
+      the cacique arrived with all his people; and the account of his visit is
+      preserved in Columbus&rsquo;s own words.
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;As he entered the ship he found that I was eating at the table
+        below the stern forecastle, and he came quickly to seat himself beside
+        me, and would not allow me to go to meet him or get up from the table,
+        but only that I should eat. I thought that he would like to eat some of
+        our viands and I then ordered that things should be brought him to eat.
+        And when he entered under the forecastle, he signed with his hand that
+        all his people should remain without, and they did so with the greatest
+        haste and respect in the world, and all seated themselves on the deck,
+        except two men of mature age whom I took to be his counsellors and
+        governors, and who came and seated themselves at his feet: and of the
+        viands which I placed before him he took of each one as much as may be
+        taken for a salutation, and then he sent the rest to his people and they
+        all ate some of it, and he did the same with the drink, which he only
+        touched to his mouth, and then gave it to the others in the same way,
+        and it was all done in wonderful state and with very few words, and
+        whatever he said, according to what I was able to understand, was very
+        formal and prudent, and those two looked in his face and spoke for him
+        and with him, and with great respect.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;After eating, a page brought a belt which is like those of
+        Castile in shape, but of a different make, which he took and gave me,
+        and also two wrought pieces of gold, which were very thin, as I believe
+        they obtain very little of it here, although I consider they are very
+        near the place where it has its home, and that there is a great deal of
+        it. I saw that a drapery that I had upon my bed pleased him. I gave it
+        to him, and some very good amber beads which I wore around my neck and
+        some red shoes and a flask of orange-flower water, with which he was so
+        pleased it was wonderful; and he and his governor and counsellors were
+        very sorry that they did not understand me, nor I them. Nevertheless I
+        understood that he told me that if anything from here would satisfy me
+        that all the island was at my command. I sent for some beads of mine,
+        where as a sign I have a &lsquo;excelente&rsquo; of gold upon which the
+        images of your Highnesses are engraved, and showed it to him, and again
+        told him the same as yesterday, that your Highnesses command and rule
+        over all the best part of the world, and that there are no other such
+        great Princes: and I showed him the royal banners and the others with
+        the cross, which he held in great estimation: and he said to his
+        counsellors that your Highnesses must be great Lords, since you had sent
+        me here from so far without fear: and many other things happened which I
+        did not understand, except that I very well saw he considered everything
+        as very wonderful.&rdquo;
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      Later in the day Columbus got into talk with an old man who told him that
+      there was a great quantity of gold to be found on some island about a
+      hundred leagues away; that there was one island that was all gold; and
+      that in the others there was such a quantity that they natives gathered it
+      and sifted it with sieves and made it into bars. The old man pointed out
+      vaguely the direction in which this wonderful country lay; and if he had
+      not been one of the principal persons belonging to the King Columbus would
+      have detained him and taken him with him; but he decided that he had paid
+      the cacique too much respect to make it right that he should kidnap one of
+      his retinue. He determined, however, to go and look for the gold. Before
+      he left he had a great cross erected in the middle of the Indian village;
+      and as he made sail out of the harbour that evening he could see the
+      Indians kneeling round the cross and adoring it. He sailed eastward,
+      anchoring for a day in the Bay of Acul, which he called Cabo de Caribata,
+      receiving something like an ovation from the natives, and making them
+      presents and behaving very graciously and kindly to them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was at this time that Columbus made the acquaintance of a man whose
+      character shines like a jewel amid the dismal scenes that afterwards
+      accompanied the first bursting of the wave of civilisation on these happy
+      shores. This was the king of that part of the island, a young man named
+      Guacanagari. This king sent out a large canoe full of people to the
+      Admiral&rsquo;s ship, with a request that Columbus would land in his
+      country, and a promise that the chief would give him whatever he had.
+      There must have been an Intelligence Department in the island, for the
+      chief seemed to know what would be most likely to attract the Admiral; and
+      with his messengers he sent out a belt with a large golden mask attached
+      to it. Unfortunately the natives on board the Admiral&rsquo;s ship could
+      not understand Guacanagari&rsquo;s messengers, and nearly the whole of the
+      day was passed in talking before the sense of their message was finally
+      made out by means of signs. In the evening some Spaniards were sent ashore
+      to see if they could not get some gold; but Columbus, who had evidently
+      had some recent experience of their avariciousness, and who was anxious to
+      keep on good terms with the chiefs of the island, sent his secretary with
+      them to see that they did nothing unjust or unreasonable. He was
+      scrupulous to see that the natives got their bits of glass and beads in
+      exchange for the gold; and it is due to him to remember that now, as
+      always, he was rigid in regulating his conduct with other men in
+      accordance with his ideas of justice and honour, however elastic those
+      ideas may seem to have been. The ruffianly crew had in their minds only
+      the immediate possession of what they could get from the Indians; the
+      Admiral had in his mind the whole possession of the islands and the bodies
+      and souls of its inhabitants. If you take a piece of gold without giving a
+      glass bead in exchange for it, it is called stealing; if you take a
+      country and its inhabitants, and steal their peace from them, and give
+      them blood and servitude in exchange for it, it is called colonisation and
+      Empire-building. Every one understands the distinction; but so few people
+      see the difference that Columbus of all men may be excused for his
+      unconsciousness of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Indeed Columbus was seeing yellow at this point in his career. The word
+      &ldquo;gold&rdquo; is scattered throughout every page of his journal; he
+      can understand nothing that the natives say to him except that there is a
+      great quantity of gold somewhere about. He is surrounded by natives
+      pressing presents upon him, protesting their homage, and assuring him (so
+      he thinks) that there are any amount of gold mines; and no wonder that the
+      yellow light blinds his eyes and confounds his senses, and that sometimes,
+      even when the sun has gone down and the natives have retired to their
+      villages and he sits alone in the seclusion of his cabin, the glittering
+      motes still dance before his eyes and he becomes mad, maudlin, ecstatic .
+      . . . The light flickers in the lamp as the ship swings a little on the
+      quiet tide and a night breeze steals through the cabin door; the sound of
+      voices ashore sounds dimly across the water; the brain of the Admiral,
+      overfilled with wonders and promises and hopes, sends its message to the
+      trembling hand that holds the pen, and the incoherent words stream out on
+      the ink. &ldquo;May our Lord in His mercy direct me until I find this
+      gold, I say this Mine, because I have many people here who say that they
+      know it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On Christmas Eve a serious misfortune befell Columbus. What with looking
+      for gold, and trying to understand the people who talked about it, and
+      looking after his ships, and writing up his journal, he had had
+      practically no sleep for two days and a night; and at eleven o&rsquo;clock
+      on the 24th of December, the night being fine and his ship sailing along
+      the coast with a light land breeze, he decided to lie down to get some
+      sleep. There were no difficulties in navigation to be feared, because the
+      ship&rsquo;s boats had been rowed the day before a distance of about ten
+      miles ahead on the course which they were then steering and had seen that
+      there was open water all the way. The wind fell calm; and the man at the
+      helm, having nothing to do, and feeling sleepy, called a ship&rsquo;s boy
+      to him, gave him the helm, and went off himself to lie down. This of
+      course was against all rules; but as the Admiral was in his cabin and
+      there was no one to tell them otherwise the watch on deck thought it a
+      very good opportunity to rest. Suddenly the boy felt the rudder catch upon
+      something, saw the ship swinging, and immediately afterwards heard the
+      sound of tide ripples. He cried out; and in a moment Columbus, who was
+      sleeping the light sleep of an anxious shipmaster, came tumbling up to see
+      what was the matter. The current, which flows in that place at a speed of
+      about two knots, had carried the ship on to a sand bank, but she touched
+      so quietly that it was hardly felt. Close on the heels of, Columbus came
+      the master of the ship and the delinquent watch; and the Admiral
+      immediately ordered them to launch the ship&rsquo;s boat&mdash;and lay out
+      an anchor astern so that they could warp her off. The wretches lowered the
+      boat, but instead of getting the anchor on board rowed off in the
+      direction of the Nina, which was lying a mile and a half to windward. As
+      soon as Columbus saw what they were doing he ran to the side and, seeing
+      that the tide was failing and that the ship had swung round across the
+      bank, ordered the remainder of the crew to cut away the mainmast and throw
+      the deck hamper overboard, in order to lighten the ship. This took some
+      time; the tide was falling, and the ship beginning to heel over on her
+      beam; and by the time it was done the Admiral saw that it would be of no
+      use, for the ship&rsquo;s seams had opened and she was filling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this point the miserable crew in the ship&rsquo;s boat came back, the
+      loyal people on the Nina having refused to receive them and sent them back
+      to the assistance of the Admiral. But it was now too late to do anything
+      to save the ship; and as he did not know but that she might break up,
+      Columbus decided to tranship the people to the Nina, who had by this time
+      sent her own boat. The whole company boarded the Nina, on which the
+      Admiral beat about miserably till morning in the vicinity of his doomed
+      ship. Then he sent Diego de Arana, the brother of Beatriz and a trusty
+      friend, ashore in a boat to beg the help of the King; and Guacanagari
+      immediately sent his people with large canoes to unload the wrecked ship,
+      which was done with great efficiency and despatch, and the whole of her
+      cargo and fittings stored on shore under a guard. And so farewell to the
+      Santa Maria, whose bones were thenceforward to bleach upon the shores of
+      Hayti, or incongruously adorn the dwellings of the natives. She may have
+      been &ldquo;a bad sailer and unfit for discovery&rdquo;; but no seaman
+      looks without emotion upon the wreck of a ship whose stem has cut the
+      waters of home, which has carried him safely over thousands of uncharted
+      miles, and which has for so long been his shelter and sanctuary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At sunrise the kind-hearted cacique came down to the Nina, where Columbus
+      had taken up his quarters, and with tears in his eyes begged the Admiral
+      not to grieve at his losses, for that he, the cacique, would give him
+      everything that he possessed; that he had already given two large houses
+      to the Spaniards from the Santa Maria who had been obliged to encamp on
+      shore, and that he would provide more accommodation and help if necessary.
+      In fact, the day which had been ushered in so disastrously turned into a
+      very happy one; and before it was over Columbus had decided that, as he
+      could not take the whole of his company home on the Nina, he would
+      establish a settlement on shore so that the men who were left behind could
+      collect gold and store it until more ships could be sent from Spain. The
+      natives came buzzing round anxious to barter whatever they had for hawks&rsquo;
+      bells, which apparently were the most popular of the toys that had been
+      brought for bartering; &ldquo;they shouted and showed the pieces of gold,
+      saying chuq, chuq, for hawks&rsquo; bells, as they are in a likely state
+      to become crazy for them.&rdquo; The cacique was delighted to see that the
+      Admiral was pleased with the gold that was brought to him, and he cheered
+      him up by telling him that there was any amount in Cibao, which Columbus
+      of course took for Cipango. The cacique entertained Columbus to a repast
+      on shore, at which the monarch wore a shirt and a pair of gloves that
+      Columbus had given him; &ldquo;and he rejoiced more over the gloves than
+      anything that had been given him.&rdquo; Columbus was pleased with his
+      clean and leisurely method of eating, and with his dainty rubbing of his
+      hands with herbs after he had eaten. After the repast Columbus gave a
+      little demonstration of bow-and-arrow shooting and the firing of lombards
+      and muskets, all of which astonished and impressed the natives.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The afternoon was spent in deciding on a site for the fortress which was
+      to be constructed; and Columbus had no difficulty in finding volunteers
+      among the crews to remain in the settlement. He promised to leave with
+      them provisions of bread and wine for a year, a ship&rsquo;s boat, seeds
+      for sowing crops, and a carpenter, a caulker, a gunner, and a cooper.
+      Before the day was out he was already figuring up the profit that would
+      arise out of his misfortune of the day before; and he decided that it was
+      the act of God which had cast his ship away in order that this settlement
+      should be founded. He hoped that the settlers would have a ton of gold
+      ready for him when he came back from Castile, so that, as he had said in
+      the glittering camp of Santa Fe, where perhaps no one paid very much heed
+      to him, there might be such a profit as would provide for the conquest of
+      Jerusalem and the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre. After all, if he was
+      greedy for gold, he had a pious purpose for its employment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The last days of the year were very busy ones for the members of the
+      expedition. Assisted by the natives they were building the fort which, in
+      memory of the day on which it was founded, Columbus called La Villa-de la
+      Navidad. The Admiral spent much time with King Guacanagari, who &ldquo;loved
+      him so much that it was wonderful,&rdquo; and wished to cover him all over
+      with gold before he went away, and begged him not to go before it was
+      done. On December 27th there was some good news; a caravel had been seen
+      entering a harbour a little further along the coast; and as this could
+      only mean that the Pinta had returned, Columbus borrowed a canoe from the
+      king, and despatched a sailor in it to carry news of his whereabouts to
+      the Pinta. While it was away Guacanagari collected all the other kings and
+      chiefs who were subject to him, and held a kind of durbar. They all wore
+      their crowns; and Guacanagari took off his crown and placed it on Columbus&rsquo;s
+      head; and the Admiral, not to be outdone, took from his own neck &ldquo;a
+      collar of good bloodstones and very beautiful beads of fine colours; which
+      appeared very good in all parts, and placed it upon the King; and he took
+      off a cloak of fine scarlet cloth which he had put on that day, and
+      clothed the King with it; and he sent for some coloured buskins which he
+      made him put on, and placed upon his finger a large silver ring&rdquo;&mdash;all
+      of which gives us a picturesque glimpse into the contents of the Admiral&rsquo;s
+      wardrobe, and a very agreeable picture of King Guacanagari, whom we must
+      now figure as clothed, in addition to his shirt and gloves, in a pair of
+      coloured buskins, a collar of bloodstones, a scarlet cloak and a silver
+      ring.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the time was running short; the Admiral, hampered as he was by the
+      possession of only one small ship, had now but one idea, which was to get
+      back to Castile as quickly as possible, report the result of his
+      discoveries, and come back again with a larger and more efficient
+      equipment. Before he departed he had an affectionate leave-taking with
+      King Guacanagari; he gave him another shirt, and also provided a
+      demonstration of the effect of lombards by having one loaded, and firing
+      at the old Santa Maria where she lay hove down on the sandbank. The shot
+      went clean through her hull and fell into the sea beyond, and produced
+      what might be called a very strong moral effect, although an unnecessary
+      one, on the natives. He then set about the very delicate business of
+      organising the settlement. In all, forty-two men were to remain behind,
+      with Diego de Arana in the responsible position of chief lieutenant,
+      assisted by Pedro Gutierrez and Rodrigo de Escovedo, the nephew of Friar
+      Juan Perez of La Rabida. To these three he delegated all his powers and
+      authority as Admiral and Viceroy; and then, having collected the
+      colonists, gave them a solemn address. First, he reminded them of the
+      goodness of God to them, and advised them to remain worthy of it by
+      obeying the Divine command in all their actions. Second, he ordered them,
+      as a representative of the Sovereigns of Spain, to obey the captain whom
+      he had appointed for them as they would have obeyed himself. Third, he
+      urged them to show respect and reverence towards King Guacanagari and his
+      chiefs, and to the inferior chiefs, and to avoid annoying them or
+      tormenting them, since they were to remain in a land that was as yet under
+      native dominion; to &ldquo;strive and watch by their soft and honest
+      speech to gain their good-will and keep their friendship and love, so that
+      he should find them as friendly and favourable and more so when he
+      returned.&rdquo; Fourth, he commanded them &ldquo;and begged them
+      earnestly&rdquo; to do no injury and use no force against any natives; to
+      take nothing from them against their will; and especially to be on their
+      guard to avoid injury or violence to the women, &ldquo;by which they would
+      cause scandal and set a bad example to the Indians and show the infamy of
+      the Christians.&rdquo; Fifth, he charged them not to scatter themselves or
+      leave the place where they then were, but to remain together until he
+      returned. Sixth, he &ldquo;animated&rdquo; them to suffer their solitude
+      and exile cheerfully and bravely, since they had willingly chosen it. The
+      seventh order was, that they should get help from the King to send boat
+      expeditions in search of the gold mines; and lastly, he promised that he
+      would petition the Sovereigns to honour them with special favours and
+      rewards. To this very manly, wise and humane address the people listened
+      with some emotion, assuring Columbus that they placed their hopes in him,
+      &ldquo;begging him earnestly to remember them always, and that as quickly
+      as he could he should give them the great joy which they anticipated from
+      his coming again.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All of which things being done, the ships [ship&mdash;there was only the
+      Nina] loaded and provisioned, and the Admiral&rsquo;s final directions
+      given, he makes his farewells and weighs anchor at sunrise on Friday,
+      January 4., 1493. Among the little crowd on the shore who watch the Nina
+      growing smaller in the distance are our old friends Allard and William,
+      tired of the crazy confinement of a ship and anxious for shore adventures.
+      They are to have their fill of them, as it happens; adventures that are to
+      bring to the settlers a sudden cloud of blood and darkness, and for the
+      islanders a brief return to their ancient peace. But death waits for
+      Allard and William in the sunshine and silence of Espanola.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="ch3b" id="ch3b"></a>CHAPTER III.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE VOYAGE HOME
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Columbus did not stand out to sea on his homeward course immediately, but
+      still coasted along the shores of the island as though he were loth to
+      leave it, and as though he might still at some bend of a bay or beyond
+      some verdant headland come upon the mines and jewels that he longed for.
+      The mountain that he passed soon after starting he called Monte Christi,
+      which name it bears to this day; and he saw many other mountains and capes
+      and bays, to all of which he gave names. And it was a fortunate chance
+      which led him thus to stand along the coast of the island; for on January
+      6th the sailor who was at the masthead, looking into the clear water for
+      shoals and rocks, reported that he saw the caravel Pinta right ahead. When
+      she came up with him, as they were in very shallow water not suitable for
+      anchorage, Columbus returned to the bay of Monte Christi to anchor there.
+      Presently Martin Alonso Pinzon came on board to report himself&mdash;a
+      somewhat crestfallen Martin, we may be sure, for he had failed to find the
+      gold the hope of which had led him to break his honour as a seaman. But
+      the Martin Alonsos of this world, however sorry their position may be,
+      will always find some kind of justification for it. It must have been a
+      trying moment for Martin Alonso as his boat from the Pinta drew near the
+      Nina, and he saw the stalwart commanding figure of the white-haired
+      Admiral walking the poop. He knew very well that according to the law and
+      custom of the sea Columbus would have been well within his right in
+      shooting him or hanging him on the spot; but Martin puts on a bold face
+      as, with a cold dread at his heart and (as likely as not) an ingratiating
+      smile upon his face he comes up over the side. Perhaps, being in some ways
+      a cleverer man than Christopher, he knew the Admiral&rsquo;s weak points;
+      knew that he was kind-hearted, and would remember those days of
+      preparation at Palos when Martin Alonso had been his principal stay and
+      help. Martin&rsquo;s story was that he had been separated from the Admiral
+      against his will; that the crew insisted upon it, and that in any case
+      they had only meant to go and find some gold and bring it back to the
+      Admiral. Columbus did not believe him for a moment, but either his wisdom
+      or his weakness prevented him from saying so. He reproached Martin Alonso
+      for acting with pride and covetousness &ldquo;that night when he went away
+      and left him&rdquo;; and Columbus could not think &ldquo;from whence had
+      come the haughty actions and dishonesty Martin had shown towards him on
+      that voyage.&rdquo; Martin had done a good trade and had got a certain
+      amount of gold; and no doubt he knew well in what direction to turn the
+      conversation when it was becoming unpleasant to himself. He told Columbus
+      of an island to the south of Juana&mdash;[Cuba]&mdash;called Yamaye,&mdash;[Jamaica]&mdash;where
+      pieces of gold were taken from the mines as large as kernels of wheat, and
+      of another island towards the east which was inhabited only by women.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The unpleasantness was passed over as soon as possible, although the
+      Admiral felt that the sooner he got home the better, since he was
+      practically at the mercy of the Pinzon brothers and their following from
+      Palos. He therefore had the Pinta beached and recaulked and took in wood
+      and water, and continued his voyage on Tuesday, January 8th. He says that
+      &ldquo;this night in the name of our Lord he will start on his journey
+      without delaying himself further for any matter, since he had found what
+      he had sought, and he did not wish to have more trouble with that Martin
+      Alonso until their Highnesses learned the news of the voyage and what he
+      has done.&rdquo; After that it will be another matter, and his turn will
+      come; for then, he says, &ldquo;I will not suffer the bad deeds of persons
+      without virtue, who, with little respect, presume to carry out their own
+      wills in opposition to those who did them honour.&rdquo; Indeed, for
+      several days, the name of &ldquo;that Martin Alonso&rdquo; takes the place
+      of gold in Columbus&rsquo;s Journal. There were all kinds of gossip about
+      the ill deeds of Martin Alonso, who had taken four Indian men and two
+      young girls by force; the Admiral releasing them immediately and sending
+      them back to their homes. Martin Alonso, moreover, had made a rule that
+      half the gold that was found was to be kept by himself; and he tried to
+      get all the people of his ship to swear that he had been trading for only
+      six days, but &ldquo;his wickedness was so public that he could not hide
+      it.&rdquo; It was a good thing that Columbus had his journal to talk to,
+      for he worked off a deal of bitterness in it. On Sunday, January 13th,
+      when he had sent a boat ashore to collect some &ldquo;ajes&rdquo; or
+      potatoes, a party of natives with their faces painted and with the plumes
+      of parrots in their hair came and attacked the party from the boat; but on
+      getting a slash or two with a cutlass they took to flight and escaped from
+      the anger of the Spaniards. Columbus thought that they were cannibals or
+      caribs, and would like to have taken some of them, but they did not come
+      back, although afterwards he collected four youths who came out to the
+      caravel with cotton and arrows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Columbus was very curious about the island of Matinino,&mdash;[Martinique]&mdash;which
+      was the one said to be inhabited only by women, and he wished very much to
+      go there; but the caravels were leaking badly, the crews were complaining,
+      and he was reluctantly compelled to shape his course for Spain. He sailed
+      to the north-east, being anxious apparently to get into the region of
+      westerly winds which he correctly guessed would be found to the north of
+      the course he had sailed on his outward voyage. By the 17th of January he
+      was in the vicinity of the Sargasso Sea again, which this time had no
+      terrors for him. From his journal the word &ldquo;gold&rdquo; suddenly
+      disappears; the Viceroy and Governor-General steps off the stage; and in
+      his place appears the sea captain, watching the frigate birds and
+      pelicans, noting the golden gulf-weed in the sea, and smelling the breezes
+      that are once more as sweet as the breezes of Seville in May. He had a
+      good deal of trouble with his dead-reckoning at this time, owing to the
+      changing winds and currents; but he made always from fifty to seventy
+      miles a day in a direction between north-by-east and north-north-east. The
+      Pinta was not sailing well, and he often had to wait for her to come up
+      with him; and he reflected in his journal that if Martin Alonso Pinzon had
+      taken as much pains to provide himself with a good mast in the Indies as
+      he had to separate himself from the Admiral, the Pinta would have sailed
+      better.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so he went on for several days, with the wind veering always south and
+      south-west, and pointing pretty steadily to the north-east. On February
+      4th he changed his course, and went as near due east as he could. They now
+      began to find themselves in considerable doubt as to their position. The
+      Admiral said he was seventy-five leagues to the south of Flores; Vincenti
+      Pinzon and the pilots thought that they had passed the Azores and were in
+      the neighbourhood of Madeira. In other words, there was a difference of
+      600 miles between their estimates, and the Admiral remarks that &ldquo;the
+      grace of God permitting, as soon as land is seen, it will be known who has
+      calculated the surest.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A great quantity of birds that began to fly about the ship made him think
+      that they were near land, but they turned out to be the harbingers of a
+      storm. On Tuesday, February 12th, the sea and wind began to rise, and it
+      continued to blow harder throughout that night and the next day. The wind
+      being aft he went under bare poles most of the night, and when day came
+      hoisted a little sail; but the sea was terrible, and if he had not been so
+      sure of the staunch little Nina he would have felt himself in danger of
+      being lost. The next day the sea, instead of going down, increased in
+      roughness; there was a heavy cross sea which kept breaking right over the
+      ship, and it became necessary to make a little sail in order to run before
+      the wind, and to prevent the vessel falling back into the trough of the
+      seas. All through Thursday he ran thus under the half hoisted staysail,
+      and he could see the Pinta running also before the wind, although since
+      she presented more surface, and was able to carry a little more sail than
+      the Nina, she was soon lost to sight. The Admiral showed lights through
+      the night, and this time there was no lack of response from Martin Alonso;
+      and for some part of that dark and stormy night these two humanly
+      freighted scraps of wood and cordage staggered through the gale showing
+      lights to each other; until at last the light from the Pinta disappeared.
+      When morning came she was no longer to be seen; and the wind and the sea
+      had if anything increased. The Nina was now in the greatest danger. Any
+      one wave of the heavy cross sea, if it had broken fairly across her, would
+      have sunk her; and she went swinging and staggering down into the great
+      valleys and up into the hills, the steersman&rsquo;s heart in his mouth,
+      and the whole crew in an extremity of fear. Columbus, who generally relied
+      upon his seamanship, here invoked external aid, and began to offer
+      bargains to the Almighty. He ordered that lots should be cast, and that he
+      upon whom the lot fell should make a vow to go on pilgrimage to Santa
+      Maria de Guadaloupe carrying a white candle of five pounds weight. Same
+      dried peas were brought, one for every member of the crew, and on one of
+      them a cross was marked with a knife; the peas were well shaken and were
+      put into a cap. The first to draw was the Admiral; he drew the marked pea,
+      and he made the vow. Lots were again drawn, this time for a greater
+      pilgrimage to Santa Maria de Loretto in Ancona; and the lot fell on a
+      seaman named Pedro de Villa,&mdash;the expenses of whose pilgrimage
+      Columbus promised to pay. Again lots were drawn for a pilgrimage to the
+      shrine of Santa Clara of Moguer, the pilgrim to watch and pray for one
+      night there; and again the lot fell on Columbus. In addition to these,
+      every one, since they took themselves for lost, made some special and
+      private vow or bargain with God; and finally they all made a vow together
+      that at the first land they reached they would go in procession in their
+      shirts to pray at an altar of Our Lady.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The scene thus conjured up is one peculiar to the time and condition of
+      these people, and is eloquent and pathetic enough: the little ship
+      staggering and bounding along before the wind, and the frightened crew,
+      who had gone through so many other dangers, huddled together under the
+      forecastle, drawing peas out of a cap, crossing themselves, making vows
+      upon their knees, and seeking to hire the protection of the Virgin by
+      their offers of candles and pilgrimages. Poor Christopher, standing in his
+      drenched oilskins and clinging to a piece of rigging, had his own
+      searching of heart and examining of conscience. He was aware of the
+      feverish anxiety and impatience that he felt, now that he had been
+      successful in discovering a New World, to bring home the news and fruits
+      of it; his desire to prove true what he had promised was so great that, in
+      his own graphic phrase, &ldquo;it seemed to him that every gnat could
+      disturb and impede it&rdquo;; and he attributed this anxiety to his lack
+      of faith in God. He comforted himself, like Robinson Crusoe in a similar
+      extremity, by considering on the other hand what favours God had shown
+      him, and by remembering that it was to the glory of God that the fruits of
+      his discovery were to be dedicated. But in the meantime here he was in a
+      ship insufficiently ballasted (for she was now practically empty of
+      provisions, and they had found it necessary to fill the wine and water
+      casks with salt water in order to trim her) and flying before a tempest
+      such as he had never experienced in his life. As a last resource, and in
+      order to give his wonderful news a chance of reaching Spain in case the
+      ship were lost, he went into his cabin and somehow or other managed to
+      write on a piece of parchment a brief account of his discoveries, begging
+      any one who might find it to carry it to the Spanish Sovereigns. He tied
+      up the parchment in a waxed cloth, and put it into a large barrel without
+      any one seeing him, and then ordered the barrel to be thrown into the sea,
+      which the crew took to be some pious act of sacrifice or devotion. Then he
+      went back on deck and watched the last of the daylight going and the green
+      seas swelling and thundering about his little ship, and thought anxiously
+      of his two little boys at school in Cordova, and wondered what would
+      become of them if he were lost. The next morning the wind had changed a
+      little, though it was still very high; but he was able to hoist up the
+      bonnet or topsail, and presently the sea began to go down a little. When
+      the sun rose they saw land to the east-north-east. Some of them thought it
+      was Madeira, others the rock of Cintra in Portugal; the pilots said it was
+      the coast of Spain, the Admiral thought it was the Azores; but at any rate
+      it was land of some kind. The sun was shining upon it and upon the
+      tumbling sea; and although the waves were still raging mast-high and the
+      wind still blowing a hard gale, the miserable crew were able to hope that,
+      having lived through the night, they could live through the day also. They
+      had to beat about to make the land, which was now ahead of them, now on
+      the beam, and now astern; and although they had first sighted it at
+      sunrise on Friday morning it was early on Monday morning, February 18th,
+      before Columbus was able to cast anchor off the northern coast of an
+      island which he discovered to be the island of Santa Maria in the Azores.
+      On this day Columbus found time to write a letter to Luis de Santangel,
+      the royal Treasurer, giving a full account of his voyage and discoveries;
+      which letter he kept and despatched on the 4th of March, after he had
+      arrived in Lisbon. Since it contained a postscript written at the last
+      moment we shall read it at that stage of our narrative. The inhabitants of
+      Santa Maria received the voyagers with astonishment, for they believed
+      that nothing could have lived through the tempest that had been raging for
+      the last fortnight. They were greatly excited by the story of the
+      discoveries; and the Admiral, who had now quite recovered command of
+      himself, was able to pride himself on the truth of his dead-reckoning,
+      which had proved to be so much more accurate than that of the pilots.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /> <a name="p227" id="p227"></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+      <img alt="p227.jpg (38K)" src="images/p227.jpg" style="width:100%;" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/p227.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
+    </h5>
+<p>
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</p>
+    <p>
+      On the Tuesday evening three men hailed them from the shore, and when they
+      were brought off to the ship delivered a message from the Portuguese
+      Governor of the island, Juan de Castaneda, to the effect that he knew the
+      Admiral very well, and that he was delighted to hear of his wonderful
+      voyage. The next morning Columbus, remembering the vow that had been made
+      in the storm, sent half the crew ashore in their shirts to a little
+      hermitage, which was on the other side of a point a short distance away,
+      and asked the Portuguese messenger to send a priest to say Mass for them.
+      While the members of the crew were at their prayers, however, they
+      received a rude surprise. They were suddenly attacked by the islanders,
+      who had come up on horses under the command of the treacherous Governor,
+      and taken prisoners. Columbus waited unsuspectingly for the boat to come
+      back with them, in order that he and the other half of the crew could go
+      and perform their vow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the boat did not come back he began to fear that some accident must
+      have happened to it, and getting his anchor up he set sail for the point
+      beyond which the hermitage was situated. No sooner had he rounded the
+      point than he saw a band of horsemen, who dismounted, launched the boat
+      which was drawn up on the beach, and began to row out, evidently with the
+      intention of attacking the Admiral. When they came up to the Nina the man
+      in command of them rose and asked Columbus to assure him of personal
+      safety; which assurance was wonderingly given; and the Admiral inquired
+      how it was that none of his own people were in the boat? Columbus
+      suspected treachery and tried to meet it with treachery also, endeavouring
+      with smooth words to get the captain to come on board so that he could
+      seize him as a hostage. But as the Portuguese would not come on board
+      Columbus told them that they were acting very unwisely in affronting his
+      people; that in the land of the Sovereigns of Castile the Portuguese were
+      treated with great honour and security; that he held letters of
+      recommendation from the Sovereigns addressed to every ruler in the world,
+      and added that he was their Admiral of the Ocean Seas and Viceroy of the
+      Indies, and could show the Portuguese his commission to that effect; and
+      finally, that if his people were not returned to him, he would immediately
+      make sail for Spain with the crew that was left to him and report this
+      insult to the Spanish Sovereigns. To all of which the Portuguese captain
+      replied that he did not know any Sovereigns of Castile; that neither they
+      nor their letters were of any account in that island; that they were not
+      afraid of Columbus; and that they would have him know that he had Portugal
+      to deal with&mdash;edging away in the boat at the same time to a
+      convenient distance from the caravel. When he thought he was out of
+      gunshot he shouted to Columbus, ordering him to take his caravel back to
+      the harbour by command of the Governor of the island. Columbus answered by
+      calling his crew to witness that he pledged his word not to descend from
+      or leave his caravel until he had taken a hundred Portuguese to Castile,
+      and had depopulated all their islands. After which explosion of words he
+      returned to the harbour and anchored there, &ldquo;as the weather and wind
+      were very unfavourable for anything else.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was, however, in a very bad anchorage, with a rocky bottom which
+      presently fouled his anchors; and on the Wednesday he had to make sail
+      towards the island of San Miguel if order to try and find a better
+      anchorage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the wind and sea getting up again very badly he was obliged to beat
+      about all night in a very unpleasant situation, with only three sailors
+      who could be relied upon, and a rabble of gaol-birds and longshoremen who
+      were of little use in a tempest but to draw lots and vow pilgrimages.
+      Finding himself unable to make the island of San Miguel he decided to go
+      back to Santa Maria and make an attempt to recover his boat and his crew
+      and the anchor and cables he had lost there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In his Journal for this day, and amid all his anxieties, he found time to
+      note down one of his curious visionary cosmographical reflections. This
+      return to a region of storms and heavy seas reminded him of the long
+      months he had spent in the balmy weather and calm waters of his discovery;
+      in which facts he found a confirmation of the theological idea that the
+      Eden, or Paradise, of earth was &ldquo;at the end of the Orient, because
+      it is a most temperate place. So that these lands which he had now
+      discovered are at the end of the Orient.&rdquo; Reflections such as these,
+      which abound in his writings, ought in themselves to be a sufficient
+      condemnation of those who have endeavoured to prove that Columbus was a
+      man of profound cosmographical learning and of a scientific mind. A man
+      who would believe that he had discovered the Orient because in the place
+      where he had been he had found calm weather, and because the theologians
+      said that the Garden of Eden must be in the Orient since it is a temperate
+      place, would believe anything.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Late on Thursday night, when he anchored again in the harbour of San
+      Lorenzo at Santa Maria, a man hailed them from the rocks, and asked them
+      not to go away. Presently a boat containing five sailors, two priests, and
+      a notary put off from the beach; and they asked for a guarantee of
+      security in order that they might treat with the Admiral. They slept on
+      board that night, and in the morning asked him to show them his authority
+      from the Spanish Sovereigns, which the Admiral did, understanding that
+      they had asked for this formality in order to save their dignity. He
+      showed them his general letter from the King and Queen of Spain, addressed
+      to &ldquo;Princes and Lords of High Degree&rdquo;; and being satisfied
+      with this they went ashore and released the Admiral&rsquo;s people, from
+      whom he learned that what had been done had been done by command of the
+      King of Portugal, and that he had issued an order to the Governors of all
+      the Portuguese islands that if Columbus landed there on his way home he
+      was to be taken prisoner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He sailed again on Sunday, February 24th, encountering heavy winds and
+      seas, which troubled him greatly with fears lest some disaster should
+      happen at the eleventh hour to interfere with his, triumph. On Sunday,
+      March 3rd, the wind rose to the force of a hurricane, and, on a sudden
+      gust of violent wind splitting all the sails, the unhappy crew gathered
+      together again and drew more lots and made more vows. This time the
+      pilgrimage was to be to the shrine of Santa Maria at Huelva, the pilgrim
+      to go as before in his shirt; and the lot fell to the Admiral. The rest of
+      them made a vow to fast on the next Saturday on bread and water; but as
+      they all thought it extremely unlikely that by that time they would be in
+      need of any bodily sustenance the sacrifice could hardly have been a great
+      one. They scudded along under bare poles and in a heavy cross sea all that
+      night; but at dawn on Monday they saw land ahead of them, which Columbus
+      recognised as the rock of Cintra at Lisbon; and at Lisbon sure enough they
+      landed some time during the morning. As soon as they were inside the river
+      the people came flocking down with stories of the gale and of all the
+      wrecks that there had been on the coast. Columbus hurried away from the
+      excited crowds to write a letter to the King of Portugal, asking him for a
+      safe conduct to Spain, and assuring him that he had come from the Indies,
+      and not from any of the forbidden regions of Guinea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next day brought a visit from no less a person than Bartholomew Diaz.
+      Columbus had probably met him before in 1486, when Diaz had been a
+      distinguished man and Columbus a man not distinguished; but now things
+      were changed. Diaz ordered Columbus to come on board his small vessel in
+      order to go and report himself to the King&rsquo;s officers; but Columbus
+      replied that he was the Admiral of the Sovereigns of Castile, &ldquo;that
+      he did not render such account to such persons,&rdquo; and that he
+      declined to leave his ship. Diaz then ordered him to send the captain of
+      the Nina; but Columbus refused to send either the captain or any other
+      person, and otherwise gave himself airs as the Admiral of the Ocean Seas.
+      Diaz then moderated his requests, and merely asked Columbus to show him
+      his letter of authority, which Columbus did; and then Diaz went away and
+      brought back with him the captain of the Portuguese royal yacht, who came
+      in great state on board the shabby little Nina, with kettle-drums and
+      trumpets and pipes, and placed himself at the disposal of Columbus. It is
+      a curious moment, this, in which the two great discoverers of their time,
+      Diaz and Columbus, meet for an hour on the deck of a forty-ton caravel; a
+      curious thing to consider that they who had performed such great feats of
+      skill and bravery, one to discover the southernmost point of the old world
+      and the other to voyage across an uncharted ocean to the discovery of an
+      entirely new world, could find nothing better to talk about than their
+      respective ranks and glories; and found no more interesting subject of
+      discussion than the exact amount of state and privilege which should be
+      accorded to each.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During the day or two in which Columbus waited in the port crowds of
+      people came down from Lisbon to see the little Nina, which was an object
+      of much admiration and astonishment; to see the Indians also, at whom they
+      greatly marvelled. It was probably at this time that the letter addressed
+      to Luis de Santangel, containing the first official account of the voyage,
+      was despatched.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">                              *
+                                 *****
+                                   *
+                                   *</pre>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;Sir: As I am sure you will be pleased at the great victory which
+        the Lord has given me in my voyage, I write this to inform you that in
+        twenty&rsquo; days I arrived in the Indies with the squadron which their
+        Majesties had placed under my command. There I discovered many islands,
+        inhabited by a numerous population, and took possession of them for
+        their Highnesses, with public ceremony and the royal flag displayed,
+        without molestation.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;The first that I discovered I named San Salvador, in remembrance
+        of that Almighty Power which had so miraculously bestowed them. The
+        Indians call it Guanahani. To the second I assigned the name of Santa
+        Marie de Conception; to the third that of Fernandina; to the fourth that
+        of Isabella; to the fifth Juana; and so on, to every one a new name.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;When I arrived at Juana, I followed the coast to the westward,
+        and found it so extensive that I considered it must be a continent and a
+        province of Cathay. And as I found no towns or villages by the seaside,
+        excepting some small settlements, with the people of which I could not
+        communicate because they all ran away, I continued my course to the
+        westward, thinking I should not fail to find some large town and cities.
+        After having coasted many leagues without finding any signs of them, and
+        seeing that the coast took me to the northward, where I did not wish to
+        go, as the winter was already set in, I considered it best to follow the
+        coast to the south and the wind being also scant, I determined to lose
+        no more time, and therefore returned to a certain port, from whence I
+        sent two messengers into the country to ascertain whether there was any
+        king there or any large city.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;They travelled for three days, finding an infinite number of
+        small settlements and an innumerable population, but nothing like a
+        city: on which account&mdash;they returned. I had tolerably well
+        ascertained from some Indians whom I had taken that this land was only
+        an island, so I followed the coast of it to the east 107 leagues, to its
+        termination. And about eighteen leagues from this cape, to the east,
+        there was another island, to which I shortly gave the name of Espanola.
+        I went to it, and followed the north coast of it, as I had done that of
+        Juana, for 178&mdash;[should be 188]&mdash;long leagues due east.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;This island is very fertile, as well, indeed, as all the rest. It
+        possesses numerous harbours, far superior to any I know in Europe, and
+        what is remarkable, plenty of large inlets. The land is high, and
+        contains many lofty ridges and some very high mountains, without
+        comparison of the island of Centrefrey;&mdash;[Tenerife]&mdash;all of
+        them very handsome and of different forms; all of them accessible and
+        abounding in trees of a thousand kinds, high, and appearing as if they
+        would reach the skies. And I am assured that the latter never lose their
+        fresh foliage, as far as I can understand, for I saw them as fresh and
+        flourishing as those of Spain in the month of May. Some were in blossom,
+        some bearing fruit, and others in other states, according to their
+        nature.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;The nightingale and a thousand kinds of birds enliven the woods
+        with their song, in the month of November, wherever I went. There are
+        seven or eight kinds of palms, of various elegant forms, besides various
+        other trees, fruits, and herbs. The pines of this island are
+        magnificent. It has also extensive plains, honey, and a great variety of
+        birds and fruits. It has many metal mines, and a population innumerable.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;Espanola is a wonderful island, with mountains, groves, plains,
+        and the country generally beautiful and rich for planting and sowing,
+        for rearing sheep and cattle of all kinds, and ready for towns and
+        cities. The harbours must be seen to be appreciated; rivers are
+        plentiful and large and of excellent water; the greater part of them
+        contain gold. There is a great difference between the trees, fruits, and
+        herbs of this island and those of Juana. In this island there are many
+        spices, and large mines of gold and other metals.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;The people of this island and of all the others which I have
+        discovered or heard of, both men and women, go naked as they were born,
+        although some of the women wear leaves of herbs or a cotton covering
+        made on purpose. They have no iron or steel, nor any weapons; not that
+        they are not a well-disposed people and of fine stature, but they are
+        timid to a degree. They have no other arms excepting spears made of
+        cane, to which they fix at the end a sharp piece of wood, and then dare
+        not use even these. Frequently I had occasion to send two or three of my
+        men onshore to some settlement for information, where there would be
+        multitudes of them; and as soon as they saw our people they would run
+        away every soul, the father leaving his child; and this was not because
+        any one had done them harm, for rather at every cape where I had landed
+        and been able to communicate with them I have made them presents of
+        cloth and many other things without receiving anything in return; but
+        because they are so timid. Certainly, where they have confidence and
+        forget their fears, they are so open-hearted and liberal with all they
+        possess that it is scarcely to be believed without seeing it. If
+        anything that they have is asked of them they never deny it; on the
+        contrary, they will offer it. Their generosity is so great that they
+        would give anything, whether it is costly or not, for anything of every
+        kind that is offered them and be contented with it. I was obliged to
+        prevent such worth less things being given them as pieces of broken
+        basins, broken glass, and bits of shoe-latchets, although when they
+        obtained them they esteemed them as if they had been the greatest of
+        treasures. One of the seamen for a latchet received a piece of gold
+        weighing two dollars and a half, and others, for other things of much
+        less value, obtained more. Again, for new silver coin they would give
+        everything they possessed, whether it was worth two or three doubloons
+        or one or two balls of cotton. Even for pieces of broken pipe-tubes they
+        would take them and give anything for them, until, when I thought it
+        wrong, I prevented it. And I made them presents of thousands of things
+        which I had, that I might win their esteem, and also that they might be
+        made good Christians and be disposed to the service of Your Majesties
+        and the whole Spanish nation, and help us to obtain the things which we
+        require and of which there is abundance in their country.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;And these people appear to have neither religion nor idolatry,
+        except that they believe that good and evil come from the skies; and
+        they firmly believed that our ships and their crews, with myself, came
+        from the skies, and with this persuasion,&mdash;after having lost their
+        fears, they always received us. And yet this does not proceed from
+        ignorance, for they are very ingenious, and some of them navigate their
+        seas in a wonderful manner and give good account of things, but because
+        they never saw people dressed or ships like ours.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;And as soon as I arrived in the Indies, at the first island at
+        which I touched, I captured some of them, that we might learn from them
+        and obtain intelligence of what there was in those parts. And as soon as
+        we understood each other they were of great service to us; but yet, from
+        frequent conversation which I had with them, they still believe we came
+        from the skies. These were the first to express that idea, and others
+        ran from house to house, and to the neighbouring villages, crying out,
+        &ldquo;Come and see the people from the skies.&rdquo; And thus all of
+        them, men and women, after satisfying themselves of their safety, came
+        to us without reserve, great and small, bringing us something to eat and
+        drink, and which they gave to us most affectionately.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;They have many canoes in those islands propelled by oars, some of
+        them large and others small, and many of them with eight or ten paddles
+        of a side, not very wide, but all of one trunk, and a boat cannot keep
+        way with them by oars, for they are incredibly fast; and with these they
+        navigate all the islands, which are innumerable, and obtain their
+        articles of traffic. I have seen some of these canoes with sixty or
+        eighty men in them, and each with a paddle.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;Among the islands I did not find much diversity of formation in
+        the people, nor in their customs, nor their language. They all
+        understand each other, which is remarkable; and I trust Your Highnesses
+        will determine on their being converted to our faith, for which they are
+        very well disposed.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;I have already said that I went 107 leagues along the coast of
+        Juana, from east to west. Thus, according to my track, it is larger than
+        England and Scotland together, for, besides these 107 leagues, there
+        were further west two provinces to which I did not go, one of which is
+        called Cibau, the people of which are born with tails; which provinces
+        must be about fifty or sixty leagues long, according to what I can make
+        out from the Indians I have with me, who know all the islands. The other
+        island (Espanola) is larger in circuit than the whole of Spain, from the
+        Straits of Gibralter (the Columns) to Fuentarabia in Biscay, as I sailed
+        138 long leagues in a direct line from west to east. Once known it must
+        be desired, and once seen one desires never to leave it; and which,
+        being taken possession of for their Highnesses, and the people being at
+        present in a condition lower than I can possibly describe, the
+        Sovereigns of Castile may dispose of it in any manner they please in the
+        most convenient places. In this Espanola, and in the best district,
+        where are gold mines, and, on the other side, from thence to terra
+        firma, as well as from thence to the Great Khan, where everything is on
+        a splendid scale&mdash;I have taken possession of a large town, to which
+        I gave the name of La Navidad, and have built a fort in it, in every
+        respect complete. And I have left sufficient people in it to take care
+        of it, with artillery and provisions for more than a year; also a boat
+        and coxswain with the equipments, in complete friendship with the King
+        of the islands, to that degree that he delighted to call me and look on
+        me as his brother. And should they fall out with these people, neither
+        he nor his subjects know anything of weapons, and go naked, as I have
+        said, and they are the most timorous people in the world. The few people
+        left there are sufficient to conquer the country, and the island would
+        thus remain without danger to them, they keeping order among themselves.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;In all these islands it appeared to me the men are contented with
+        one wife, but to their governor or king they allow twenty. The women
+        seem to work more than the men. I have not been able to discover whether
+        they respect personal property, for it appeared to me things were common
+        to all, especially in the particular of provisions. Hitherto I have not
+        seen in any of these islands any monsters, as there were supposed to be;
+        the people, on the contrary, are generally well formed, nor are they
+        black like those of the Guinea, saving their hair, and they do not
+        reside in places exposed to the sun&rsquo;s rays. It is true that the
+        sun is most powerful there, and it is only twenty-six degrees from the
+        equator. In this last winter those islands which were mountainous were
+        cold, but they were accustomed to it, with good food and plenty of
+        spices and hot nutriment. Thus I have found no monsters nor heard of
+        any, except at an island which is the second in going to the Indies, and
+        which is inhabited by a people who are considered in all the islands as
+        ferocious, and who devour human flesh. These people have many canoes,
+        which scour all the islands of India, and plunder all they can. They are
+        not worse formed than the others, but they wear the hair long like
+        women, and use bows and arrows of the same kind of cane, pointed with a
+        piece of hard wood instead of iron, of which they have none. They are
+        fierce compared with the other people, who are in general but sad
+        cowards; but I do not consider them in any other way superior to them.
+        These are they who trade in women, who inhabit the first island met with
+        in going from Spain to the Indies, in which there are no men whatever.
+        They have no effeminate exercise, but bows and arrows, as before said,
+        of cane, with which they arm themselves, and use shields of copper, of
+        which they have plenty.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;There is another island, I am told, larger than Espanola, the
+        natives of which have no hair. In this there is gold without limit, and
+        of this and the others I have Indians with me to witness.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;In conclusion, referring only to what has been effected by this
+        voyage, which was made with so much haste, Your Highnesses may see that
+        I shall find as much gold as desired with the very little assistance
+        afforded to me; there is as much spice and cotton as can be wished for,
+        and also gum, which hitherto has only been found in Greece, in the
+        island of Chios, and they may sell it as they please, and the mastich,
+        as much as may be desired, and slaves, also, who will be idolators. And
+        I believe that I have rhubarb, and cinnamon, and a thousand other things
+        I shall find, which will be discovered by those whom I have left behind,
+        for I did not stop at any cape when the wind enabled me to navigate,
+        except at the town of Navidad, where I was very safe and well taken care
+        of. And in truth much more I should have done if the ships had served me
+        as might have been expected. This is certain, that the Eternal God our
+        Lord gives all things to those who obey Him, and the victory when it
+        seems impossible, and this, evidently, is an instance of it, for
+        although people have talked of these lands, all was conjecture unless
+        proved by seeing them, for the greater part listened and judged more by
+        hearsay than by anything else.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;Since, then, our Redeemer has given this victory to our
+        illustrious King and Queen and celebrated their reigns by such a great
+        thing, all Christendom should rejoice and make great festivals, and give
+        solemn thanks to the Blessed Trinity, with solemn praises for the
+        exaltation of so much people to our holy faith; and next for the
+        temporal blessings which not only Spain but they will enjoy in becoming
+        Christians, and which last may shortly be accomplished.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;Written in the caravel off Santa Maria; on the eighteenth of
+        February, ninety-three.&rdquo;
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      The following postscript was added to the letter before it was despatched:
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;After writing the above, being in the Castilian Sea (off the
+        coast of Castile), I experienced so severe a wind from south and
+        south-east that I have been obliged to run to-day into this port of
+        Lisbon, and only by a miracle got safely in, from whence I intended to
+        write to Your Highnesses. In all parts of the Indies I have found the
+        weather like that of May, where I went in ninety-three days, and
+        returned in seventy-eight, saving these thirteen days of bad weather
+        that I have been detained beating about in this sea. Every seaman here
+        says that never was so severe a winter, nor such loss of ships.&rdquo;
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      On the Friday a messenger came from the King in the person of Don Martin
+      de Noronha, a relative of Columbus by marriage, and one who had perhaps
+      looked down upon him in the days when he attended the convent chapel at
+      Lisbon, but who was now the bearer of a royal invitation and in the
+      position of a mere envoy. Columbus repaired to Paraiso where the King was,
+      and where he was received with great honour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      King John might well have been excused if he had felt some mortification
+      at this glorious and successful termination of a project which had been
+      offered to him and which he had rejected; but he evidently behaved with
+      dignity and a good grace, and did everything that he could to help
+      Columbus. It was extremely unlikely that he had anything to do with the
+      insult offered to Columbus at the Azores, for though he was bitterly
+      disappointed that the glory of this discovery belonged to Spain and not to
+      Portugal, he was too much of a man to show it in this petty and revengeful
+      manner. He offered to convey Columbus by land into Spain; but the Admiral,
+      with a fine dramatic sense, preferred to arrive by sea on board of all
+      that was left of the fleet with which he had sailed. He sailed for Seville
+      on Wednesday, March 13th, but during the next day, when he was off Cape
+      Saint Vincent, he evidently changed his mind and decided to make for
+      Palos. Sunrise on Friday saw him off the bar of Saltes, with the white
+      walls of La Rabida shining on the promontory among the dark fir-trees.
+      During the hours in which he stood off and on waiting for the tide he was
+      able to recognise again all the old landmarks and the scenes which had
+      been so familiar to him in those busy days of preparation nine months
+      before; and at midday he sailed in with the flood tide and dropped his
+      anchor again in the mud of the river by Palos.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The caravel had been sighted some time before, probably when she was
+      standing off, the bar waiting for the tide; she was flying the Admiral&rsquo;s
+      flag and there was no mistaking her identity; and we can imagine the news
+      spreading throughout the town of Palos, and reaching Huelva, and one by
+      one the bells beginning to ring, and the places of business to be closed,
+      and the people to come pouring out into the streets to be ready to greet
+      their friends. Some more impatient than the others would sail out in
+      fishing-boats to get the first news; and I should be surprised to know
+      that a boat did not put off from the little pier beneath La Rabida, to row
+      round the point and out to where the Nina was lying&mdash;to beyond the
+      Manto Bank. When the flood began to make over the bar and to cover the
+      long sandbank that stretches from the island of Saltes, the Nina came
+      gliding in, greeted by every joyful sound and signal that the inhabitants
+      of the two seaports could make. Every one hurried down to Palos as the
+      caravel rounded the Convent Point. Hernando, Marchena, and good old Juan
+      Perez were all there, we may be sure. Such excitements, such triumphs as
+      the bronzed, white-bearded Admiral steps ashore at last, and is seized by
+      dozens of eager hands! Such excitements as all the wives and inamoratas of
+      the Rodrigos and Juans and Franciscos rush to meet the swarthy voyagers
+      and cover them with embraces; such disappointments also, when it is
+      realised that some two score of the company are still on a sunbaked island
+      infinitely far over the western horizon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tears of joy and grief, shouts and feastings, firing of guns and flying of
+      flags, processions and receptions with these the deathless day is filled;
+      and the little Nina, her purpose staunchly fulfilled, swings deserted on
+      the turning tide, the ripples of her native Tinto making a familiar music
+      under her bowsprit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And in the evening, with the last of the flood, another ship comes gliding
+      round the point and up the estuary. The inhabitants of Palos have all left
+      the shore and are absorbed in the business of welcoming the great man; and
+      there is no one left to notice or welcome the Pinta. For it is she that,
+      by a strange coincidence, and after many dangers and distresses endured
+      since she had parted company from the Nina in the storm, now has made her
+      native port on the very same day as the Nina. Our old friend Martin Alonso
+      Pinzon is on board, all the fight and treachery gone out of him, and
+      anxious only to get home unobserved. For (according to the story) he had
+      made the port of Bayona on the north-west coast of Spain, and had written
+      a letter from there to the Sovereigns announcing his arrival and the
+      discoveries that he had made; and it is said that he had received an
+      unpleasant letter in return, reproaching him for not waiting for his
+      commander and forbidding him to come to Court. This story is possible if
+      his letter reached the Sovereigns after the letter from the Admiral; for
+      it is probable that Columbus may have reported some of Martin&rsquo;s
+      doings to them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Be that as it may, there are no flags and guns for him as he comes
+      creeping in up the river; his one anxiety is to avoid the Admiral and to
+      get home as quickly and quietly as he can. For he is ill, poor Martin
+      Alonso; whether from a broken heart, as the early historians say, or from
+      pure chagrin and disappointment, or, as is more likely, from some illness
+      contracted on the voyage, it is impossible to say. He has endured his
+      troubles and hardships like all the rest of them; no less skilfully than
+      Columbus has he won through that terrible tempest of February; and his
+      foolish and dishonest conduct has deprived him not only of the rewards
+      that he tried to steal, but of those which would otherwise have been his
+      by right. He creeps quietly ashore and to his home, where at any rate we
+      may hope that there is some welcome for him; takes to his bed, turns his
+      face to the wall; and dies in a few days. So farewell to Martin Alonso,
+      who has borne us company thus far. He did not fail in the great matters of
+      pluck and endurance and nautical judgment, but only in the small matters
+      of honesty and decent manly conduct. We will not weep for Martin Alonso;
+      we will make our farewells in silence, and leave his deathbed undisturbed
+      by any more accusations or reproaches.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="ch4b" id="ch4b"></a>CHAPTER IV.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE HOUR OF TRIUMPH
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From the moment when Columbus set foot on Spanish soil in the spring of
+      1493 he was surrounded by a fame and glory which, although they were
+      transient, were of a splendour such as few other men can have ever
+      experienced. He had not merely discovered a country, he had discovered a
+      world. He had not merely made a profitable expedition; he had brought the
+      promise of untold wealth to the kingdom of Spain. He had not merely made
+      himself the master of savage tribes; he had conquered the supernatural,
+      and overcome for ever those powers of darkness that had been thought to
+      brood over the vast Atlantic. He had sailed away in obscurity, he had
+      returned in fame; he had departed under a cloud of scepticism and
+      ridicule, he had come again in power and glory. He had sailed from Palos
+      as a seeker after hidden wealth, hidden knowledge; he returned as teacher,
+      discoverer, benefactor. The whole of Spain rang with his fame, and the
+      echoes of it spread to Portugal, France, England, Germany, and Italy; and
+      it reached the ears of his own family, who had now left the Vico Dritto di
+      Ponticello in Genoa and were living at Savona.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His life ashore in the first weeks following his return was a succession
+      of triumphs and ceremonials. His first care on landing had been to go with
+      the whole of his crew to the church of Saint George, where a Te Deum was
+      sung in honour of his return; and afterwards to perform those vows that he
+      had made at sea in the hour of danger. There was a certain amount of
+      business to transact at Palos in connection with the paying of the ships&rsquo;
+      crews, writing of reports to the Sovereigns, and so forth; and it is
+      likely that he stayed with his friends at the monastery of La Rabida while
+      this was being done. The Court was at Barcelona; and it was probably only
+      a sense of his own great dignity and importance that prevented Christopher
+      from setting off on the long journey immediately. But he who had made so
+      many pilgrimages to Court as a suitor could revel in a position that made
+      it possible for him to hang back, and to be pressed and invited; and so
+      when his business at Palos was finished he sent a messenger with his
+      letters and reports to Barcelona, and himself, with his crew and his
+      Indians and all his trophies, departed for Seville, where he arrived on
+      Palm Sunday.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His entrance into that city was only a foretaste of the glory in which he
+      was to move across the whole of Spain. He was met at the gates of the city
+      by a squadron of cavalry commanded by an envoy sent by Queen Isabella; and
+      a procession was formed of members of the crew carrying parrots, alive and
+      stuffed, fruits, vegetables, and various other products of the New World.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a prominent place came the Indians, or rather four of them, for one had
+      died on the day they entered Palos and three were too ill to leave that
+      town; but the ones that took part in the procession got all the more
+      attention and admiration. The streets of Seville were crowded; crowded
+      also were the windows, balconies, and roofs. The Admiral was entertained
+      at the house of the Count of Cifuentes, where his little museum of dead
+      and live curiosities was also accommodated, and where certain favoured
+      visitors were admitted to view it. His two sons, Diego and Ferdinand, were
+      sent from Cordova to join him; and perhaps he found time to visit Beatriz,
+      although there is no record of his having been to Cordova or of her having
+      come to Seville.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meanwhile his letters and messengers to the King and Queen had produced
+      their due effect. The almost incredible had come to pass, and they saw
+      themselves the monarchs not merely of Spain, but of a new Empire that
+      might be as vast as Europe and Africa together. On the 30th of March they
+      despatched a special messenger with a letter to Columbus, whose eyes must
+      have sparkled and heart expanded when he read the superscription: &ldquo;From
+      the King and Queen to Don Christoval Colon, their Admiral of the Ocean
+      Seas and Viceroy and Governor of the Islands discovered in the Indies.&rdquo;
+      No lack of titles and dignities now! Their Majesties express a profound
+      sense of his ability and distinction, of the greatness of his services to
+      them, to the Church, and to God Himself. They hope that he will lose no
+      time, but repair to Barcelona immediately, so that they can have the
+      pleasure of hearing from his own lips an account of his wonderful
+      expedition, and of discussing with him the preparations that must
+      immediately be set on foot to fit out a new one. On receiving this letter
+      Christopher immediately drew up a list of what he thought necessary for
+      the new expedition and, collecting all his retinue and his museum of
+      specimens, started by road for Barcelona.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Every one in Spain had by this time heard more or less exaggerated
+      accounts of the discoveries, and the excitement in the towns and villages
+      through which he passed was extreme. Wherever he went he was greeted and
+      feasted like a king returning from victorious wars; the people lined the
+      streets of the towns and villages, and hung out banners, and gazed their
+      fill at the Indians and at the strange sun-burned faces of the crew. At
+      Barcelona, where they arrived towards the end of April, the climax of
+      these glittering dignities was reached. When the King and Queen heard that
+      Columbus was approaching the town they had their throne prepared under a
+      magnificent pavilion, and in the hot sunshine of that April day they sat
+      and waited the&mdash;coming of the great man. A glittering troop of
+      cavalry had been sent out to meet him, and at the gates of the town a
+      procession was formed similar to that at Seville. He had now six natives
+      with him, who occupied an important place in the procession; sailors also,
+      who carried baskets of fruit and vegetables from Espanola, with stuffed
+      birds and animals, and a monstrous lizard held aloft on a stick. The
+      Indians were duly decked out in all their paint and feathers; but if they
+      were a wonder and marvel to the people of Spain, what must Spain have been
+      to them with its great buildings and cities, its carriages and horses, its
+      glittering dresses and armours, its splendour and luxury! We have no
+      record of what the Indians thought, only of what the crowd thought who
+      gaped upon them and upon the gaudy parrots that screeched and fluttered
+      also in the procession. Columbus came riding on horseback, as befitted a
+      great Admiral and Viceroy, surrounded by his pilots and principal
+      officers; and followed by men bearing golden belts, golden masks, nuggets
+      of gold and dust of gold, and preceded by heralds, pursuivants, and
+      mace-bearers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What a return for the man who three years before had been pointed at and
+      laughed to scorn in this same brilliant society! The crowds pressed so
+      closely that the procession could hardly get through the streets; the
+      whole population was there to witness it; and the windows and balconies
+      and roofs of the houses, as well as the streets themselves, were thronged
+      with a gaily dressed and wildly excited crowd. At length the procession
+      reaches the presence of the King and Queen and, crowning and unprecedented
+      honour! as the Admiral comes before them Ferdinand and Isabella rise to
+      greet him. Under their own royal canopy a seat is waiting for him; and
+      when he has made his ceremonial greeting he is invited to sit in their
+      presence and give an account of his voyage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He is fully equal to the situation; settles down to do himself and his
+      subject justice; begins, we may be sure, with a preamble about the
+      providence of God and its wisdom and consistency in preserving the
+      narrator and preparing his life for this great deed; putting in a deal of
+      scientific talk which had in truth nothing to do with the event, but was
+      always applied to it in Columbus&rsquo;s writings from this date onwards;
+      and going on to describe the voyage, the sea of weeds, the landfall, his
+      intercourse with the natives, their aptitude for labour and Christianity,
+      and the hopes he has of their early conversion to the Catholic Church. And
+      then follows a long description of the wonderful climate, &ldquo;like May
+      in Andalusia,&rdquo; the noble rivers, and gorgeous scenery, the trees and
+      fruits and flowers and singing birds; the spices and the cotton; and chief
+      of all, the vast stores of gold and pearls of which the Admiral had
+      brought home specimens. At various stages in his narrative he produces
+      illustrations; now a root of rhubarb or allspice; now a raw nugget of
+      gold; now a piece of gold laboured into a mask or belt; now a native
+      decorated with the barbaric ornaments that were the fashion in Espanola.
+      These things, says Columbus, are mere first-fruits of the harvest that is
+      to come; the things which he, like the dove that had flown across the sea
+      from the Ark and brought back an olive leaf in its mouth, has brought back
+      across the stormy seas to that Ark of civilisation from which he had flown
+      forth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was to Columbus an opportunity of stretching his visionary wings and
+      creating with pompous words and images a great halo round himself of
+      dignity and wonder and divine distinction,&mdash;an opportunity such as he
+      loved, and such as he never failed to make use of.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Sovereigns were delighted and profoundly impressed. Columbus wound up
+      his address with an eloquent peroration concerning the glory to
+      Christendom of these new discoveries; and there followed an impressive
+      silence, during which the Sovereigns sank on their knees and raised hands
+      and tearful eyes to heaven, an example in which they were followed by the
+      whole of the assembly; and an appropriate gesture enough, seeing what was
+      to come of it all. The choir of the Chapel Royal sang a solemn Te Deum on
+      the spot; and the Sovereigns and nobles, bishops, archbishops, grandees,
+      hidalgos, chamberlains, treasurers, chancellors and other courtiers, being
+      exhausted by these emotions, retired to dinner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During his stay at Barcelona Columbus was the guest of the
+      Cardinal-Archbishop of Toledo, and moved thus in an atmosphere of combined
+      temporal and spiritual dignity such as his soul loved. Very agreeable
+      indeed to him was the honour shown to him at this time. Deep down in his
+      heart there was a secret nerve of pride and vanity which throughout his
+      life hitherto had been continually mortified and wounded; but he was able
+      now to indulge his appetite for outward pomp and honour as much as he
+      pleased. When King Ferdinand went out to ride Columbus would be seen
+      riding on one side of him, the young Prince John riding on the other side;
+      and everywhere, when he moved among the respectful and admiring throng,
+      his grave face was seen to be wreathed in complacent smiles. His hair,
+      which had turned white soon after he was thirty, gave him a dignified and
+      almost venerable appearance, although he was only in his forty-third year;
+      and combined with his handsome and commanding presence to excite immense
+      enthusiasm among the Spaniards. They forgot for the moment what they had
+      formerly remembered and were to remember again&mdash;that he was a
+      foreigner, an Italian, a man of no family and of poor origin. They saw in
+      him the figure-head of a new empire and a new glory, an emblem of power
+      and riches, of the dominion which their proud souls loved; and so there
+      beamed upon him the brief fickle sunshine of their smiles and favour,
+      which he in his delusion regarded as an earnest of their permanent honour
+      and esteem.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is almost always thus with a man not born to such dignities, and who
+      comes by them through his own efforts and labours. No one would grudge him
+      the short-lived happiness of these summer weeks; but although he believed
+      himself to be as happy as a man can be, he appears to quietly
+      contemplating eyes less happy and fortunate than when he stood alone on
+      the deck of his ship, surrounded by an untrustworthy crew, prevailing by
+      his own unaided efforts over the difficulties and dangers with which he
+      was surrounded. Court functions and processions, and the companionship of
+      kings and cardinals, are indeed no suitable reward for the kind of work
+      that he did. Courtly dignities are suited to courtly services; but they
+      are no suitable crown for rough labour and hardship at sea, or for the
+      fulfilment of a man&rsquo;s self by lights within him; no suitable crown
+      for any solitary labour whatsoever, which must always be its own and only
+      reward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is to this period of splendour that the story of the egg, which is to
+      some people the only familiar incident in Columbian biography, is
+      attributed. The story is that at a banquet given by the Cardinal-Arch
+      bishop the conversation ran, as it always did in those days when he was
+      present, on the subject of the Admiral&rsquo;s discoveries; and that one
+      of the guests remarked that it was all very well for Columbus to have done
+      what he did, but that in a country like Spain, where there were so many
+      men learned in science and cosmography, and many able mariners besides,
+      some one else would certainly have been found who would have done the same
+      thing. Whereupon Columbus, calling for an egg, laid a wager that none of
+      the company but him self could make it stand on its end without support.
+      The egg was brought and passed round, and every one tried to make it stand
+      on end, but without success. When it came to Columbus he cracked the shell
+      at one end, making a flat surface on which the egg stood upright; thus
+      demonstrating that a thing might be wonderful, not because it was
+      difficult or impossible, but merely because no one had ever thought of
+      doing it before. A sufficiently inane story, and by no means certainly
+      true; but there is enough character in this little feat, ponderous,
+      deliberate, pompous, ostentatious, and at bottom a trick and deceitful
+      quibble, to make it accord with the grandiloquent public manner of
+      Columbus, and to make it easily believable of one who chose to show
+      himself in his speech and writings so much more meanly and pretentiously
+      than he showed himself in the true acts and business of his life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But pomp and parade were not the only occupation of these Barcelona days.
+      There were long consultations with Ferdinand and Isabella about the
+      colonisation of the new lands; there were intrigues, and parrying of
+      intrigues, between the Spanish and Portuguese Courts on the subject of the
+      discoveries and of the representative rights of the two nations to be the
+      religious saviours of the New World. The Pope, to whose hands the heathen
+      were entrusted by God to be handed for an inheritance to the highest and
+      most religious bidder, had at that time innocently divided them into two
+      portions, to wit: heathen to the south of Spain and Portugal, and heathen
+      to the west of those places. By the Bull of 1438, granted by Pope Martin
+      V., the heathen to the west had been given to the Spanish, and the heathen
+      to the south to the Portuguese, and the two crowns had in 1479 come to a
+      working agreement. Now, however, the existence of more heathen to the west
+      of the Azores introduced a new complication, and Ferdinand sent a message
+      to Pope Alexander VI. praying for a confirmation of the Spanish title to
+      the new discoveries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This Pope, who was a native of Aragon and had been a subject of Ferdinand,
+      was a stolid, perverse, and stubborn being; so much is advertised in his
+      low forehead, impudent prominent nose, thick sensual lips, and stout bull
+      neck. This Pope considers the matter; considers, by such lights as he has,
+      to whom he shall entrust the souls of these new heathen; considers which
+      country, Spain or Portugal, is most likely to hold and use the same for
+      the increase of the Christian faith in general, the furtherance of the
+      Holy Catholic Church in special, and the aggrandisement of Popes in
+      particular; and shrewdly decides that the country in which the.
+      Inquisition can flourish is the country to whom the heathen souls should
+      be entrusted. He therefore issues a Bull, dated May 3, 1493, granting to
+      the Spanish the possession of all lands, not occupied by Christian powers,
+      that lie west of a meridian drawn one hundred leagues to the westward of
+      the Azores, and to the Portuguese possession of all similar lands lying to
+      the eastward of that line. He sleeps upon this Bull, and has inspiration;
+      and on the morrow, May 4th, issues another Bull, drawing a line from the
+      arctic to the antarctic pole, and granting to Spain all heathen
+      inheritance to the westward of the same. The Pope, having signed this
+      Bull, considers it further-assisted, no doubt, by the Portuguese
+      Ambassador at the Vatican, to whom it has been shown; realises that in the
+      wording of the Bull an injustice has been done to Portugal, since Spain is
+      allowed to fix very much at her own convenience the point at which the
+      line drawn from pole to pole shall cut the equator; and also because,
+      although Spain is given all the lands in existence within her territory,
+      Portugal is only given the lands which she may actually have occupied.
+      Even the legal mind of the Pope, although much drowsed and blunted by
+      brutish excesses, discerns faultiness in this document; and consequently
+      on the same day issues a third Bull, in which the injustice to Portugal is
+      redressed. Nothing so easy, thinks the Pope, as to issue Bulls; if you
+      make a mistake in one Bull, issue another; and, having issued three Bulls
+      in twenty-four hours, he desists for the present, having divided the
+      earthly globe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus easy it is for a Pope to draw lines from pole to pole, and across the
+      deep of the sea. Yet the poles sleep still in their icy virginal sanctity,
+      and the blue waves through which that papal line passes shift and shimmer
+      and roll in their free salt loneliness, unaffected by his demarcation; the
+      heathen also, it appears, since that distant day, have had something to
+      say to their disposition. If he had slept upon it another night, poor
+      Pope, it might have occurred to him that west and east might meet on a
+      meridian situated elsewhere on the globe than one hundred miles west of
+      the Azores; and that the Portuguese, who for the moment had nothing
+      heathen except Africa left to them, might according to his demarcation
+      strike a still richer vein of heathendom than that granted to Spain. But
+      the holy Pontiff, bull neck, low forehead, impudent prominent nose, and
+      sensual lips notwithstanding, is exhausted by his cosmographical efforts,
+      and he lets it rest at that. Later, when Spain discovers that her
+      privileges have been abated, he will have to issue another Bull; but not
+      to-day. Sufficient unto the day are the Bulls thereof. For the moment King
+      proposes and Pope disposes; but the matter lies ultimately in the hands of
+      the two eternal protagonists, man and God.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the meantime here are six heathen alive and well, or at any rate well
+      enough to support, willy-nilly, the rite of holy baptism. They must have
+      been sufficiently dazed and bewildered by all that had happened to them
+      since they were taken on board the Admiral&rsquo;s ship, and God alone
+      knows what they thought of it all, or whether they thought anything more
+      than the parrots that screamed and fluttered and winked circular eyes in
+      the procession with them. Doubtless they were willing enough; and indeed,
+      after all they had come through, a little cold water could not do them any
+      harm. So baptized they were in Barcelona; pompously baptized with infinite
+      state and ceremony, the King and Queen and Prince Juan officiating as
+      sponsors. Queen Isabella, after the manner of queens, took a kindly
+      feminine interest in these heathen, and in their brethren across the sea.
+      She had seen a good deal of conquest, and knew her Spaniard pretty
+      intimately; and doubtless her maternal heart had some misgivings about the
+      ultimate happiness of the gentle, handsome creatures who lived in the
+      sunshine in that distant place. She made their souls her especial care,
+      and honestly believed that by providing for their spiritual conversion she
+      was doing them the greatest service in her power. She provided from her
+      own private chapel vestments and altar furniture for the mission church in
+      Espanola; she had the six exiles in Barcelona instructed under her eye;
+      and she gave Columbus special orders to inflict severe punishments on any
+      one who should offer the natives violence or injustice of any kind. It
+      must be remembered to her credit that in after days, when slavery and an
+      intolerable bloody and brutish oppression had turned the paradise of
+      Espanola into a shambles, she fought almost singlehanded, and with an
+      ethical sense far in advance of her day, against the system of slavery
+      practised by Spain upon the inhabitants of the New World.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The dignities that had been provisionally granted to Columbus before his
+      departure on the first voyage were now elaborately confirmed; and in
+      addition he was given another title&mdash;that of Captain-General of the
+      large fleet which was to be fitted out to sail to the new colonies. He was
+      entrusted with the royal seal, which gave him the right to grant letters
+      patent, to issue commissions, and to Appoint deputies in the royal name. A
+      coat-of-arms was also granted to him in which, in its original form, the
+      lion and castle of Leon and Castile were quartered with islands of the sea
+      or on a field azure, and five anchors or on a field azure. This was
+      changed from time to time, chiefly by Columbus himself, who afterwards
+      added a continent to the islands, and modified the blazonry of the lion
+      and castle to agree with those on the royal arms&mdash;a piece of
+      ignorance and childish arrogance which was quite characteristic of him.
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        [A motto has since been associated with the coat-of-arms, although it is
+        not certain that Columbus adopted it in his lifetime. In one form it
+        reads:
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;Por Castilla e por Leon Nueva Mundo hallo Colon.&rdquo;]
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      (For Castile and Leon Columbus found a New World.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And in the other:
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;A Castilla y a Leon Nuevo Mundo dio Colon.&rdquo;
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      (To Castile and Leon Columbus gave a New World.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Equally characteristic and less excusable was his acceptance of the
+      pension of ten thousand maravedis which had been offered to the member of
+      the expedition who should first sight land. Columbus was granted a very
+      large gratuity on his arrival in Barcelona, and even taking the product of
+      the islands at a tenth part of their value as estimated by him, he still
+      had every right to suppose himself one of the richest men in Spain. Yet he
+      accepted this paltry pension of L8. 6s. 8d. in our modern money (of 1900),
+      which, taking the increase in the purchasing power of money at an extreme
+      estimate, would not be more than the equivalent of $4000 now. Now Columbus
+      had not been the first person to see land; he saw the light, but it was
+      Rodrigo de Triana, the look-out man on the Pinta, who first saw the actual
+      land. Columbus in his narrative to the King and Queen would be sure to
+      make much of the seeing of the light, and not so much of the actual
+      sighting of land; and he was on the spot, and the reward was granted to
+      him. Even if we assume that in strict equity Columbus was entitled to it,
+      it was at least a matter capable of argument, if only Rodrigo de Triana
+      had been there to argue it; and what are we to think of the Admiral of the
+      Ocean Seas and Viceroy of the Indies who thus takes what can only be
+      called a mean advantage of a poor seaman in his employ? It would have been
+      a competence and a snug little fortune to Rodrigo de Triana; it was a mere
+      flea-bite to a man who was thinking in eighth parts of continents. It may
+      be true, as Oviedo alleges, that Columbus transferred it to Beatriz
+      Enriquez; but he had no right to provide for her out of money that in all
+      equity and decency ought to have gone to another and a poorer man. His
+      biographers, some of whom have vied with his canonisers in insisting upon
+      seeing virtue in his every action, have gone to all kinds of ridiculous
+      extremes in accounting for this piece of meanness. Irving says that it was
+      &ldquo;a subject in which his whole ambition was involved&rdquo;; but a
+      plain person will regard it as an instance of greed and love of money. We
+      must not shirk facts like this if we wish to know the man as he really
+      was. That he was capable of kindness and generosity, and that he was in
+      the main kind-hearted, we have fortunately no reason to doubt; and if I
+      dwell on some of his less amiable characteristics it is with no desire to
+      magnify them out of their due proportion. They are part of that side of
+      him that lay in shadow, as some side of each one of us lies; for not all
+      by light nor all by shade, but by light and shade combined, is the image
+      of a man made visible to us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is quite of a piece with the character of Columbus that while he was
+      writing a receipt for the look-out man&rsquo;s money and thinking what a
+      pretty gift it would make for Beatriz Enriquez he was planning a splendid
+      and spectacular thank-offering for all the dignities to which he had been
+      raised; and, brooding upon the vast wealth that was now to be his, that he
+      should register a vow to furnish within seven years an expedition of four
+      thousand horse and fifty thousand foot for the rescue of the Holy
+      Sepulchre, and a similar force within five years after the first if it
+      should be necessary. It was probable that the vow was a provisional one,
+      and that its performance was to be contingent on his actual receipt and
+      possession of the expected money; for as we know, there was no money and
+      no expedition. The vow was in effect a kind of religious flourish much
+      beloved by Columbus, undertaken seriously and piously enough, but
+      belonging rather to his public than to his private side. A much more
+      simple and truly pious act of his was, not the promising of visionary but
+      the sending of actual money to his old father in Savona, which he did
+      immediately after his arrival in Spain. The letter which he wrote with
+      that kindly remittance, not being couched in the pompous terms which he
+      thought suitable for princes, and doubtless giving a brief homely account
+      of what he had done, would, if we could come by it, be a document beyond
+      all price; but like every other record of his family life it has utterly
+      perished.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He wrote also from Barcelona to his two brothers, Bartholomew and Giacomo,
+      or James, since we may as well give him the English equivalent of his
+      name. Bartholomew was in France, whither he had gone some time after his
+      return from his memorable voyage with Bartholomew Diaz; he was employed as
+      a map-maker at the court of Anne de Beaujeu, who was reigning in the
+      temporary absence of her brother Charles VIII. Columbus&rsquo;s letter
+      reached him, but much too late for him to be able to join in the second
+      expedition; in fact he did not reach Seville until five months after it
+      had sailed. James, however, who was now twenty-five years old, was still
+      at Savona; he, like Columbus, had been apprenticed to his father, but had
+      apparently remained at home earning his living either as a wool-weaver or
+      merchant. He was a quiet, discreet young fellow, who never pushed himself
+      forward very much, wore very plain clothes, and was apparently much
+      overawed by the grandeur and dignity of his elder brother. He was,
+      however, given a responsible post in the new expedition, and soon had his
+      fill of adventure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The business of preparing for the new expedition was now put in hand, and
+      Columbus, having taken leave of Ferdinand and Isabella, went to Seville to
+      superintend the preparations. All the ports in Andalusia were ordered to
+      supply such vessels as might be required at a reasonable cost, and the old
+      order empowering the Admiral to press mariners into the service was
+      renewed. But this time it was unnecessary; the difficulty now was rather
+      to keep down the number of applicants for berths in the expedition, and to
+      select from among the crowd of adventurers who offered themselves those
+      most suitable for the purposes of the new colony. In this work Columbus
+      was assisted by a commissioner whom the Sovereigns had appointed to
+      superintend the fitting out of the expedition. This man was a cleric, Juan
+      Rodriguez de Fonseca, Archdeacon of Seville, a person of excellent family
+      and doubtless of high piety, and of a surpassing shrewdness for this work.
+      He was of a type very commonly produced in Spain at this period; a very
+      able organiser, crafty and competent, but not altogether trustworthy on a
+      point of honour. Like so many ecclesiastics of this stamp, he lived for as
+      much power and influence as he could achieve; and though he was afterwards
+      bishop of three sees successively, and became Patriarch of the Indies, he
+      never let go his hold on temporal affairs. He began by being jealous of
+      Columbus, and by objecting to the personal retinue demanded by the
+      Admiral; and in this, if I know anything of the Admiral, he was probably
+      justified. The matter was referred to the Sovereigns, who ordered Fonseca
+      to carry out the Admiral&rsquo;s wishes; and the two were immediately at
+      loggerheads. When the Council for the Indies was afterwards formed Fonseca
+      became head, of it, and had much power to make things pleasant or
+      otherwise for Columbus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It became necessary now to raise a considerable sum of money for the new
+      expedition. Two-thirds of the ecclesiastical tithes were appropriated, and
+      a large proportion of the confiscated property of the Jews who had been
+      banished from Spain the year before; but this was not enough; and five
+      million maravedis were borrowed from the Duke of Medina Sidonia in order
+      to complete the financial supplies necessary for this very costly
+      expedition. There was a treasurer, Francisco Pinelo, and an accountant,
+      Juan de Soria, who had charge of all the financial arrangements; but the
+      whole of the preparations were conducted on a ruinously expensive scale,
+      owing to the haste which the diplomatic relations with Portugal made
+      necessary. The provisioning was done by a Florentine merchant named
+      Juonato Beradi, who had an assistant named Amerigo Vespucci&mdash;who, by
+      a strange accident, was afterwards to give his name to the continent of
+      the New World.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While these preparations were going on the game of diplomacy was being
+      played between the Courts of Spain and Portugal. King John of Portugal had
+      the misfortune to be badly advised; and he was persuaded that, although he
+      had lost the right to the New World through his rejection of Columbus&rsquo;s
+      services when they were first offered to him, he might still discover it
+      for himself, relying for protection on the vague wording of the papal
+      Bulls. He immediately began to prepare a fleet, nominally to go to the
+      coast of Africa, but really to visit the newly discovered lands in the
+      west. Hearing of these preparations, King Ferdinand sent an Ambassador to
+      the Portuguese Court; and King John agreed also to appoint an Ambassador
+      to discuss the whole matter of the line of demarcation, and in the
+      meantime not to allow any of his ships to sail to the west for a period of
+      sixty days after his Ambassador had reached Barcelona. There followed a
+      good deal of diplomatic sharp practice; the Portuguese bribing the Spanish
+      officials to give them information as to what was going on, and the
+      Spaniards furnishing their envoys with double sets of letters and
+      documents so that they could be prepared to counter any movement on the
+      part of King John. The idea of the Portuguese was that the line of
+      demarcation should be a parallel rather than a meridian; and that
+      everything north of the Canaries should belong to Spain and everything
+      south to Portugal; but this would never do from the Spanish point of view.
+      The fact that a proposal had come from Portugal, however, gave Ferdinand
+      an opportunity of delaying the diplomatic proceedings until his own
+      expedition was actually ready to set sail; and he wrote to Columbus
+      repeatedly, urging him to make all possible haste with his preparations.
+      In the meantime he despatched a solemn embassy to Portugal, the purport of
+      which, much beclouded and delayed by preliminary and impossible proposals,
+      was to submit the whole question to the Pope for arbitration. And all the
+      time he was busy petitioning the Pope to restore to Spain those
+      concessions granted in the second Bull, but taken away again in the third.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This, being much egged on to it, the Pope ultimately did; waking up on
+      September 26th, the day after Columbus&rsquo;s departure, and issuing
+      another Bull in which the Spanish Sovereigns were given all lands and
+      islands, discovered or not discovered, which might be found by sailing
+      west and south. Four Bulls; and after puzzling over them for a year, the
+      Kings of Spain and Portugal decided to make their own Bull, and abide by
+      it, which, having appointed commissioners, they did on June 7, 1494., when
+      by the Treaty of Tordecillas the line of demarcation was finally fixed to
+      pass from north to south through a point 370 leagues west of the Cape
+      Verde Islands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="ch5b" id="ch5b"></a>CHAPTER V.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      GREAT EXPECTATIONS
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      July, August, and September in the year 1493 were busy months for
+      Columbus, who had to superintend the buying or building and fitting of
+      ships, the choice and collection of stores, and the selection of his
+      company. There were fourteen caravels, some of them of low tonnage and
+      light draught, and suitable for the navigation of rivers; and three large
+      carracks, or ships of three to four hundred tons. The number of volunteers
+      asked for was a thousand, but at least two thousand applied for permission
+      to go with the expedition, and ultimately some fourteen or fifteen hundred
+      did actually go, one hundred stowaways being included in the number.
+      Unfortunately these adventurers were of a class compared with whom even
+      the cut-throats and gaol-birds of the humble little expedition that had
+      sailed the year before from Palos were useful and efficient. The universal
+      impression about the new lands in the West was that they were places where
+      fortunes could be picked up like dirt, and where the very shores were
+      strewn with gold and precious stones; and every idle scamp in Spain who
+      had a taste for adventure and a desire to get a great deal of money
+      without working for it was anxious to visit the new territory. The result
+      was that instead of artisans, farmers, craftsmen, and colonists, Columbus
+      took with him a company at least half of which consisted of exceedingly
+      well-bred young gentlemen who had no intention of doing any work, but who
+      looked forward to a free and lawless holiday and an early return crowned
+      with wealth and fortune. Although the expedition was primarily for the
+      establishment of a colony, no Spanish women accompanied it; and this was
+      but one of a succession of mistakes and stupidities.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Admiral, however, was not to be so lonely a person as he had been on
+      his first voyage; friends of his own choice and of a rank that made
+      intimacy possible even with the Captain-General were to accompany him.
+      There was James his brother; there was Friar Bernardo Buil, a Benedictine
+      monk chosen by the Pope to be his apostolic vicar in the New World; there
+      was Alonso de Ojeda, a handsome young aristocrat, cousin to the Inquisitor
+      of Spain, who was distinguished for his dash and strength and pluck; an
+      ideal adventurer, the idol of his fellows, and one of whose daring any
+      number of credible and incredible tales were told. There was Pedro
+      Margarite, a well-born Aragonese, who was destined afterwards to cause
+      much trouble; there was Juan Ponce de Leon, the discoverer of Florida;
+      there was Juan de La Cosa, Columbus&rsquo;s faithful pilot on the Santa
+      Maria on his first voyage; there was Pedro de Las Casas, whose son, at
+      this time a student in Seville, was afterwards to become the historian of
+      the New World and the champion of decency and humanity there. There was
+      also Doctor Chanca, a Court physician who accompanied the expedition not
+      only in his professional capacity but also because his knowledge of botany
+      would enable him to make, a valuable report on the vegetables and fruits
+      of the New World; there was Antonio de Marchena, one of Columbus&rsquo;s
+      oldest friends, who went as astronomer to the expedition. And there was
+      one Coma, who would have remained unknown to this day but that he wrote an
+      exceedingly elegant letter to his friend Nicolo Syllacio in Italy,
+      describing in flowery language the events of the second voyage; which
+      letter, and one written by Doctor Chanca, are the only records of the
+      outward voyage that exist. The journal kept by Columbus on this voyage has
+      been lost, and no copy of it remains.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Columbus settled at Cadiz during the time in which he was engaged upon the
+      fitting out of the expedition. It was no light matter to superintend the
+      appointment of the crews and passengers, every one of whom was probably
+      interviewed by Columbus himself, and at the same time to keep level with
+      Archdeacon Fonseca. This official, it will be remembered, had a
+      disagreement with Columbus as to the number of personal attendants he was
+      to be allowed; and on the matter being referred to the King and Queen they
+      granted Columbus the ridiculous establishment of ten footmen and twenty
+      other servants.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Naturally Fonseca held up his hands and wondered where it would all end.
+      It was no easy matter, moreover, on receipt of letters from the Queen
+      about small matters which occurred to her from time to time, to answer
+      them fully and satisfactorily, and at the same time to make out all the
+      lists of things that would likely be required both for provisioning the
+      voyage and establishing a colony. The provisions carried in those days
+      were not very different from the provisions carried on deep-sea vessels at
+      the present time&mdash;except that canned meat, for which, with its
+      horrors and conveniences, the world may hold Columbus responsible, had not
+      then been invented. Unmilled wheat, salted flour, and hard biscuit formed
+      the bulk of the provisions; salted pork was the staple&mdash;of the meat
+      supply, with an alternative of salted fish; while cheese, peas, lentils
+      and beans, oil and vinegar, were also carried, and honey and almonds and
+      raisins for the cabin table. Besides water a large provision of rough wine
+      in casks was taken, and the dietary scale would probably compare
+      favourably with that of the British and American mercantile service sixty
+      years ago. In addition a great quantity of seeds of all kinds were taken
+      for planting in Espanola; sugar cane, rice, and vines also, and an
+      equipment of agricultural implements, as well as a selection of horses and
+      other domestic animals for breeding purposes. Twenty mounted soldiers were
+      also carried, and the thousand and one impedimenta of naval, military, and
+      domestic existence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the middle of all these preparations news came that a Portuguese
+      caravel had set sail from Madeira in the direction of the new lands.
+      Columbus immediately reported this to the King and Queen, and suggested
+      detaching part of his fleet to pursue her; but instead King John was
+      communicated with, and he declared that if the vessel had sailed as
+      alleged it was without his knowledge and permission, and that he would
+      send three ships after her to recall her&mdash;an answer which had to be
+      accepted, although it opened up rather alarming possibilities of four
+      Portuguese vessels reaching the new islands instead of one. Whether these
+      ships ever really sailed or not, or whether the rumour was merely a rumour
+      and an alarm, is not certain; but Columbus was ordered to push on his
+      preparations with the greatest possible speed, to avoid Portuguese waters,
+      but to capture any vessels which he might find in the part of the ocean
+      allotted to Spain, and to inflict summary punishment on the crews. As it
+      turned out he never saw any Portuguese vessels, and before he had returned
+      to Spain again the two nations had come to an amicable agreement quite
+      independently of the Pope and his Bulls. Spain undertook to make no
+      discoveries to the east of the line of demarcation, and Portugal none to
+      the west of it; and so the matter remained until the inhabitants of the
+      discovered lands began to have a voice in their own affairs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With all his occupations Columbus found time for some amenities, and he
+      had his two sons, Diego and Ferdinand, staying with him at Cadiz. Great
+      days they must have been for these two boys; days filled with excitement
+      and commotion, with the smell of tar and the loading of the innumerable
+      and fascinating materials of life; and many a journey they must have made
+      on the calm waters of Cadiz harbour from ship to ship, dreaming of the
+      distant seas that these high, quaintly carven prows would soon be
+      treading, and the wonderful bays and harbours far away across the world
+      into the waters of which their anchors were to plunge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      September 24th, the day before the fleet sailed, was observed as a
+      festival; and in full ceremonial the blessing of God upon the enterprise
+      was invoked. The ships were hung with flags and with dyed silks and
+      tapestries; every vessel flew the royal standard; and the waters of the
+      harbour resounded with the music of trumpets and harps and pipes and the
+      thunder of artillery. Some Venetian galleys happened to enter the harbour
+      as the fleet was preparing to weigh, and they joined in the salutes and
+      demonstrations which signalled the departure. The Admiral hoisted his flag
+      on the &lsquo;Marigalante&rsquo;, one of the largest of the ships; and
+      somewhere among the smaller caravels the little Nina, re-caulked and
+      re-fitted, was also preparing to brave again the dangers over which she
+      had so staunchly prevailed. At sunrise on the 25th the fleet weighed
+      anchor, with all the circumstance and bustle and apparent confusion that
+      accompanies the business of sailing-ships getting under weigh. Up to the
+      last minute Columbus had his two sons on board with him, and it was not
+      until the ripples were beginning to talk under the bow of the Marigalante
+      that he said good-bye to them and saw them rowed ashore. In bright
+      weather, with a favourable breeze, in glory and dignity, and with high
+      hopes in his heart, the Admiral set out once more on the long sea-road.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="ch6b" id="ch6b"></a>CHAPTER VI.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE SECOND VOYAGE
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The second voyage of Columbus, profoundly interesting as it must have been
+      to him and to the numerous company to whom these waters were a strange and
+      new region, has not the romantic interest for us that his first voyage
+      had. To the faith that guided him on his first venture knowledge and
+      certainty had now been added; he was going by a familiar road; for to the
+      mariner a road that he has once followed is a road that he knows. As a
+      matter of fact, however, this second voyage was a far greater test of
+      Columbus&rsquo;s skill as a navigator than the first voyage had been. If
+      his navigation had been more haphazard he might never have found again the
+      islands of his first discovery; and the fact that he made a landfall
+      exactly where he wished to make it shows a high degree of exactness in his
+      method of ascertaining latitude, and is another instance of his skill in
+      estimating his dead-reckoning. If he had been equipped with a modern
+      quadrant and Greenwich chronometers he could not have made a quicker
+      voyage nor a more exact landfall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It will be remembered that he had been obliged to hurry away from Espanola
+      without visiting the islands of the Caribs as he had wished to do. He knew
+      that these islands lay to the south-east of Espanola, and on his second
+      voyage he therefore took a course rather more southerly in order, to make
+      them instead of Guanahani or Espanola. From the day they left Spain his
+      ships had pleasant light airs from the east and north-east which wafted
+      them steadily but slowly on their course. In a week they had reached the
+      Grand Canary, where they paused to make some repairs to one of the ships
+      which, was leaking. Two days later they anchored at Gomera, and loaded up
+      with such supplies as could be procured there better than in Spain. Pigs,
+      goats, sheep and cows were taken on board; domestic fowls also, and a
+      variety of orchard plants and fruit seeds, as well as a provision of
+      oranges, lemons, and melons. They sailed from Gomera on the 7th of
+      October, but the winds were so light that it was a week later before they
+      had passed Ferro and were once more in the open Atlantic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On setting his course from Ferro Columbus issued sealed instructions to
+      the captain of each ship which, in the event of the fleet becoming
+      scattered, would guide them to the harbour of La Navidad in Espanola; but
+      the captains had strict orders not to open these instructions unless their
+      ships became separated from the fleet, as Columbus still wished to hold
+      for himself the secret of this mysterious road to the west. There were no
+      disasters, however, and no separations. The trade wind blew soft and
+      steady, wafting them south and west; and because of the more southerly
+      course steered on this voyage they did not even encounter the weed of the
+      Sargasso Sea, which they left many leagues on their starboard hand. The
+      only incident of the voyage was a sudden severe hurricane, a brief summer
+      tempest which raged throughout one night and terrified a good many of the
+      voyagers, whose superstitious fears were only allayed when they saw the
+      lambent flames of the light of Saint Elmo playing about the rigging of the
+      Admiral&rsquo;s ship. It was just the Admiral&rsquo;s luck that this
+      phenomenon should be observed over his ship and over none of the others;
+      it added to his prestige as a person peculiarly favoured by the divine
+      protection, and confirmed his own belief that he held a heavenly as well
+      as a royal commission.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The water supply had been calculated a little too closely, and began to
+      run low. The hurried preparation of the ships had resulted as usual in bad
+      work; most of them were leaking, and the crew were constantly at work at
+      the pumps; and there was the usual discontent. Columbus, however, knew by
+      the signs as well as by his dead-reckoning that he was somewhere close to
+      land; and with a fine demonstration of confidence he increased the ration
+      of water, instead of lowering it, assuring the crews that they would be
+      ashore in a day or two. On Saturday evening, November 2nd, although no
+      land was in sight, Columbus was so sure of his position that he ordered
+      the fleet to take in sail and go on slowly until morning. As the Sunday
+      dawned and the sky to the west was cleared of the morning bank of clouds
+      the look-out on the Marigalante reported land ahead; and sure enough the
+      first sunlight of that day showed them a green and verdant island a few
+      leagues away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As they approached it Columbus christened it Dominica in honour of the day
+      on which it was discovered. He sailed round it; but as there was no
+      harbour, and as another island was in sight to the north, he sailed on in
+      that direction. This little island he christened Marigalante; and going
+      ashore with his retinue he hoisted the royal banner, and formally took
+      possession of the whole group of six islands which were visible from the
+      high ground. There were no inhabitants on the island, but the voyagers
+      spent some hours wandering about its tangled woods and smelling the rich
+      odours of spice, and tasting new and unfamiliar fruits. They next sailed
+      on to an island to the north which Columbus christened Guadaloupe as a
+      memorial of the shrine in Estremadura to which he had made a pious
+      pilgrimage. They landed on this island and remained a week there, in the
+      course of which they made some very remarkable discoveries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The villagers were not altogether unfriendly, although they were shy at
+      first; but red caps and hawks&rsquo; bells had their usual effect. There
+      were signs of warfare, in the shape of bone-tipped arrows; there were tame
+      parrots much larger than those of the northern islands; they found pottery
+      and rough wood carving, and the unmistakable stern timber of a European
+      vessel. But they discovered stranger things than that. They found human
+      skulls used as household utensils, and gruesome fragments of human bodies,
+      unmistakable remains of a feast; and they realised that at last they were
+      in the presence of a man-eating tribe. Later they came to know, something
+      of the habits of the islanders; how they made raiding expeditions to the
+      neighbouring islands, and carried off large numbers of prisoners,
+      retaining the women as concubines and eating the men. The boys were
+      mutilated and fattened like capons, being employed as labourers until they
+      had arrived at years of discretion, at which point they were killed and
+      eaten, as these cannibal epicures did not care for the flesh of women and
+      boys. There were a great number of women on the island, and many of them
+      were taken off to the ships&mdash;with their own consent, according to
+      Doctor Chanca. The men, however, eluded the Spaniards and would not come
+      on board, having doubtless very clear views about the ultimate destination
+      of men who were taken prisoners. Some women from a neighbouring island,
+      who had been captured by the cannibals, came to Columbus and begged to be
+      taken on board his ship for protection; but instead of receiving them he
+      decked them with ornaments and sent them ashore again. The cannibals
+      artfully stripped off their ornaments and sent them back to get some more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The peculiar habits of the islanders added an unusual excitement to shore
+      leave, and there was as a rule no trouble in collecting the crews and
+      bringing them off to the ships at nightfall. But on one evening it was
+      discovered that one of the captains and eight men had not returned. An
+      exploring party was sent of to search for them, but they came back without
+      having found anything, except a village in the middle of the forest from
+      which the inhabitants had fled at their approach, leaving behind them in
+      the cooking pots a half-cooked meal of human remains&mdash;an incident
+      which gave the explorers a distaste for further search. Young Alonso de
+      Ojeda, however, had no fear of the cannibals; this was just the kind of
+      occasion in which he revelled; and he offered to take a party of forty men
+      into the interior to search for the missing men. He went right across the
+      island, but was able to discover nothing except birds and fruits and
+      unknown trees; and Columbus, in great distress of mind, had to give up his
+      men for lost. He took in wood and water, and was on the point of weighing
+      anchor when the missing men appeared on the shore and signalled for a
+      boat. It appeared that they had got lost in a tangled forest in the
+      interior, that they had tried to climb the trees in order to get their
+      bearings by the stars, but without success; and that they had finally
+      struck the sea-shore and followed it until they had arrived opposite the
+      anchorage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They brought some women and boys with them, and the fleet must now have
+      had a large number of these willing or unwilling captives. This was the
+      first organised transaction of slavery on the part of Columbus, whose
+      design was to send slaves regularly back to Spain in exchange for the
+      cattle and supplies necessary for the colonies. There was not very much
+      said now about religious conversion, but only about exchanging the natives
+      for cattle. The fine point of Christopher&rsquo;s philosophy on this
+      subject had been rubbed off; he had taken the first step a year ago on the
+      beach at Guanahani, and after that the road opened out broad before him.
+      Slaves for cattle, and cattle for the islands; and wealth from cattle and
+      islands for Spain, and payment from Spain for Columbus, and money from
+      Columbus for the redemption of the Holy Sepulchre&mdash;these were the
+      links in the chain of hope that bound him to his pious idea. He had seen
+      the same thing done by the Portuguese on the Guinea coast, and it never
+      occurred to him that there was anything the matter with it. On the
+      contrary, at this time his idea was only to take slaves from among the
+      Caribs and man-eating islanders as a punishment for their misdeeds; but
+      this, like his other fine ideas, soon had to give way before the tide of
+      greed and conquest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Admiral was now anxious to get back to La Navidad, and discover the
+      condition of the colony which he had left behind him there. He therefore
+      sailed from Guadaloupe on November 20th and steered to the north-west. His
+      captive islanders told him that the mainland lay to the south; and if he
+      had listened to them and sailed south he would have probably landed on the
+      coast of South America in a fortnight. He shaped his course instead to the
+      north-west, passing many islands, but not pausing until the 14th, when he
+      reached the island named by him Santa Cruz. He found more Caribs here, and
+      his men had a brush with them, one of the crew being wounded by a poisoned
+      arrow of which he died in a few days. The Carib Chiefs were captured and
+      put in irons. They sailed again and passed a group of islets which
+      Columbus named after Saint Ursula and the Eleven Thousand Virgins;
+      discovered Porto Rico also, in one of the beautiful harbours of which they
+      anchored and stayed for two days. Sailing now to the west they made land
+      again on the 22nd of November; and coasting along it they soon sighted the
+      mountain of Monte Christi, and Columbus recognised that he was on the
+      north coast of Espanola.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lt; <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="ch7b" id="ch7b"></a>CHAPTER VII.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE EARTHLY PARADISE REVISITED
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the 25th November 1493, Columbus once more dropped his anchor in the
+      harbour of Monte Christi, and a party was sent ashore to prospect for a
+      site suitable for the new town which he intended to build, for he was not
+      satisfied with the situation of La Navidad. There was a large river close
+      by; and while the party was surveying the land they came suddenly upon two
+      dead bodies lying by the river-side, one with a rope round its neck and
+      the other with a rope round its feet. The bodies were too much decomposed
+      to be recognisable; nevertheless to the party rambling about in the
+      sunshine and stillness of that green place the discovery was a very
+      gruesome one. They may have thought much, but they said little. They
+      returned to the ship, and resumed their search on the next day, when they
+      found two more corpses, one of which was seen to have a large quantity of
+      beard. As all the natives were beardless this was a very significant and
+      unpleasant discovery, and the explorers returned at once and reported what
+      they had seen to Columbus. He thereupon set sail for La Navidad, but the
+      navigation off that part of the coast was necessarily slow because of the
+      number of the shoals and banks, on one of which the Admiral&rsquo;s ship
+      had been lost the year before; and the short voyage occupied three days.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They arrived at La Navidad late on the evening of the 27th&mdash;too late
+      to make it advisable to land. Some natives came out in a canoe, rowed
+      round the Admiral&rsquo;s ship, stopped and looked at it, and then rowed
+      away again. When the fleet had anchored Columbus ordered two guns to be
+      fired; but there was no response except from the echoes that went rattling
+      among the islands, and from the frightened birds that rose screaming and
+      circling from the shore. No guns and no signal fires; no sign of human
+      habitation whatever; and no sound out of the weird darkness except the lap
+      of the water and the call of the birds . . . . The night passed in anxiety
+      and depression, and in a certain degree of nervous tension, which was
+      relieved at two or three o&rsquo;clock in the morning by the sound of
+      paddles and the looming of a canoe through the dusky starlight. Native
+      voices were heard from the canoe asking in a loud voice for the Admiral;
+      and when the visitors had been directed to the Marigalante they refused to
+      go on board until Columbus himself had spoken to them, and they had seen
+      by the light of a lantern that it was the Admiral himself. The chief of
+      them was a cousin of Guacanagari, who said that the King was ill of a
+      wound in his leg, or that he would certainly have come himself to welcome
+      the Admiral. The Spaniards? Yes, they were well, said the young chief; or
+      rather, he added ominously, those that remained were well, but some had
+      died of illness, and some had been killed in quarrels that had arisen
+      among them. He added that the province had been invaded by two
+      neighbouring kings who had burned many of the native houses. This news,
+      although grave, was a relief from the dreadful uncertainty that had
+      prevailed in the early part of the night, and the Admiral&rsquo;s company,
+      somewhat consoled, took a little sleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the morning a party was sent ashore to La Navidad. Not a boat was in
+      sight, nor any native canoes; the harbour was silent and deserted. When
+      the party had landed and gone up to the place where the fort had been
+      built they found no fort there; only the blackened and charred remains of
+      a fort. The whole thing had been burned level with the ground, and amid
+      the blackened ruins they found pieces of rag and clothing. The natives,
+      instead of coming to greet them, lurked guiltily behind trees, and when
+      they were seen fled away into the woods. All this was very disquieting
+      indeed, and in significant contrast to their behaviour of the year before.
+      The party from the ship threw buttons and beads and bells to the retiring
+      natives in order to try and induce them to come forward, but only four
+      approached, one of whom was a relation of Guacanagari. These four
+      consented to go into the boat and to be rowed out to the ship. Columbus
+      then spoke to them through his interpreter; and they admitted what had
+      been only too obvious to the party that went ashore&mdash;that the
+      Spaniards were all dead, and that not one of the garrison remained. It
+      seemed that two neighbouring kings, Caonabo and Mayreni, had made an
+      attack upon the fort, burned the buildings, and killed and wounded most of
+      the defenders; and that Guacanagari, who had been fighting on their
+      behalf, had also been wounded and been obliged to retire. The natives
+      offered to go and fetch Guacanagari himself, and departed with that
+      object.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the greatest anxiety the Admiral and his company passed that day and
+      night waiting for the King to come. Early the next morning Columbus
+      himself went ashore and visited the spot where the settlement had been.
+      There he found destruction whole and complete, with nothing but a few rags
+      of clothing as an evidence that the place had ever been inhabited by human
+      beings. As Guacanagari did not appear some of the Spaniards began to
+      suspect that he had had a hand in the matter, and proposed immediate
+      reprisal; but Columbus, believing still in the man who had &ldquo;loved
+      him so much that it was wonderful&rdquo; did not take this view, and his
+      belief in Guacanagari&rsquo;s loyalty was confirmed by the discovery that
+      his own dwelling had also been burned down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Columbus set some of his party searching in the ditch of the fort in case
+      any treasure should have been buried there, as he had ordered it should be
+      in event of danger, and while this was going on he walked along the coast
+      for a few miles to visit a spot which he thought might be suitable for the
+      new settlement. At a distance of a mile or two he found a village of seven
+      or eight huts from which the inhabitants fled at his approach, carrying
+      such of their goods as were portable, and leaving the rest hidden in the
+      grass. Here were found several things that had belonged to the Spaniards
+      and which were not likely to have been bartered; new Moorish mantles,
+      stockings, bolts of cloth, and one of the Admiral&rsquo;s lost anchors;
+      other articles also, among them a dead man&rsquo;s head wrapped up with
+      great care in a small basket. Shaking their own living heads, Columbus and
+      his party returned. Suddenly they came on some suspicious-looking mounds
+      of earth over which new grass was growing. An examination of these showed
+      them to be the graves of eleven of the Spaniards, the remains of the
+      clothing being quite sufficient to identify them. Doctor Chanca, who
+      examined them, thought that they had not been dead two months. Speculation
+      came to an end in the face of this eloquent certainty; there were the dead
+      bodies of some of the colonists; and the voyagers knelt round with bare
+      heads while the bodies were replaced in the grave and the ceremony of
+      Christian burial performed over them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Little by little the dismal story was elicited from the natives, who
+      became less timid when they saw that the Spaniards meant them no harm. It
+      seemed that Columbus had no sooner gone away than the colonists began to
+      abandon themselves to every kind of excess. While the echo of the Admiral&rsquo;s
+      wise counsels was yet in their ears they began to disobey his orders.
+      Honest work they had no intention of doing, and although Diego Arana,
+      their commander, did his best to keep order, and although one or two of
+      the others were faithful to him and to Columbus, their authority was
+      utterly insufficient to check the lawless folly of the rest. Instead of
+      searching for gold mines, they possessed themselves by force of every
+      ounce of gold they could steal or seize from the natives, treating them
+      with both cruelty and contempt. More brutal excesses followed as a matter
+      of course. Guacanagari, in his kindly indulgence and generosity, had
+      allowed them to take three native wives apiece, although he himself and
+      his people were content with one. But of course the Spaniards had thrown
+      off all restraint, however mild, and ran amok among the native
+      inhabitants, seizing their wives and seducing their daughters. Upon this
+      naturally followed dissensions among themselves, jealousy coming hot upon
+      the heels of unlawful possession; and, in the words of Irving, &ldquo;the
+      natives beheld with astonishment the beings whom they had worshipped as
+      descended from the skies abandoned to the grossest of earthly passions and
+      raging against each other with worse than brutal ferocity.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Upon their strifes and dissensions followed another breach of the Admiral&rsquo;s
+      wise regulations; they no longer cared to remain together in the fort, but
+      split up into groups and went off with their women into the woods,
+      reverting to a savagery beside which the gentle existence of the natives
+      was high civilisation. There were squabbles and fights in which one or two
+      of the Spaniards were killed; and Pedro Gutierrez and Rodrigo de Escovedo,
+      whom Columbus had appointed as lieutenants to Arana, headed a faction of
+      revolt against his authority, and took themselves off with nine other
+      Spaniards and a great number of women. They had heard a great deal about
+      the mines of Cibao, and they decided to go in search of them and secure
+      their treasures for themselves. They went inland into a territory which
+      was under the rule of King Caonabo, a very fierce Carib who was not a
+      native of Espanola, but had come there as an adventurer and remained as a
+      conqueror. Although he resented the intrusion of the Spaniards into the
+      island he would not have dared to come and attack them there if they had
+      obeyed the Admiral&rsquo;s orders and remained in the territory of
+      Guacanagari; but when they came into his own country he had them in a
+      trap, and it was easy for him to fall upon those foolish swaggering
+      Spaniards and put them to death. He then decided to go and take the fort.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He formed an alliance with the neighbouring king, Mayreni, whose province
+      was in the west of the island. Getting together a force of warriors these
+      two kings marched rapidly and stealthily through the, forest for several
+      days until they arrived at its northern border. They came in the dead of
+      night to the neighbourhood of La Navidad, where the inhabitants of the
+      fortress, some ten in number, were fast asleep. Fast asleep were the
+      remaining dozen or so of the Spaniards who were living in houses or huts
+      in the neighbourhood; fast asleep also the gentle natives, not dreaming of
+      troubles from any quarter but that close at hand. The sweet silence of the
+      tropical night was suddenly broken by frightful yells as Caonabo and his
+      warriors rushed the fortress and butchered the inhabitants, setting fire
+      to it and to the houses round about. As their flimsy huts burst into
+      flames the surprised Spaniards rushed out, only to be fallen upon by the
+      infuriated blacks. Eight of the Spaniards rushed naked into the sea and
+      were drowned; the rest were butchered. Guacanagari manfully came to their
+      assistance and with his own followers fought throughout the night; but his
+      were a gentle and unwarlike people, and they were easily routed. The King
+      himself was badly wounded in the thigh, but Caonabo&rsquo;s principal
+      object seems to have been the destruction of the Spaniards, and when that
+      was completed he and his warriors, laden with the spoils, retired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus Columbus, walking on the shore with his native interpreter, or
+      sitting in his cabin listening with knitted brow to the accounts of the
+      islanders, learns of the complete and utter failure of his first hopes. It
+      has come to this. These are the real first-fruits of his glorious conquest
+      and discovery. The New World has served but as a virgin field for the Old
+      Adam. He who had sought to bring light and life to these happy islanders
+      had brought darkness and death; they had innocently clasped the sword he
+      had extended to them and cut themselves. The Christian occupation of the
+      New World had opened with vice, cruelty, and destruction; the veil of
+      innocence had been rent in twain, and could never be mended or joined
+      again. And the Earthly Paradise in which life had gone so happily, of
+      which sun and shower had been the true rulers, and the green sprouting
+      harvests the only riches, had been turned into a shambles by the
+      introduction of human rule and civilised standards of wealth. Gold first
+      and then women, things beautiful and innocent in the happy native
+      condition of the islands, had been the means of the disintegration and
+      death of this first colony. These are serious considerations for any
+      coloniser; solemn considerations for a discoverer who is only on the verge
+      and beginning of his empire-making; mournful considerations for
+      Christopher as he surveys the blackened ruins of the fort, or stands
+      bare-headed by the grass-covered graves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There seemed to be a certain hesitancy on the part of Guacanagari to
+      present himself; for though he kept announcing his intention of coming to
+      visit the Admiral he did not come. A couple of days after the discovery of
+      the remains, however, he sent a message to Columbus begging him to come
+      and see him, which the Admiral accordingly did, accompanied by a formal
+      retinue and carrying with him the usual presents. Guacanagari was in bed
+      sure enough complaining of a wounded leg, and he told the story of the
+      settlement very much as Columbus had already heard it from the other
+      natives. He pointed to his own wounded leg as a sign that he had been
+      loyal and faithful to his friendly promises; but when the leg was examined
+      by the surgeon in order that it might be dressed no wound could be
+      discovered, and it was obvious to Doctor Chanca that the skin had not been
+      broken. This seemed odd; Friar Buil was so convinced that the whole story
+      was a deception that he wished the Admiral to execute Guacanagari on the
+      spot. Columbus, although he was puzzled, was by no means convinced that
+      Guacanagari had been unfaithful to him, and decided to do nothing for the
+      present. He invited the cacique to come on board the flagship; which he
+      did, being greatly interested by some of the Carib prisoners, notably a
+      handsome woman, named by the Spaniards Dofia Catalina, with whom he held a
+      long conversation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Relations between the Admiral and the cacique, although outwardly cordial,
+      were altogether different from what they had been in, the happy days after
+      their first meeting; the man seemed to shrink from all the evidence of
+      Spanish power, and when they proposed to hang a cross round his neck the
+      native king, much as he loved trinkets and toys, expressed a horror and
+      fear of this jewel when he learned that it was an emblem of the Christian
+      faith. He had seen a little too much of the Christian religion; and Heaven
+      only knows with what terror and depression the emblem of the cross
+      inspired him. He went ashore; and when a messenger was sent to search for
+      him a few days afterwards, it was found that he had moved his whole
+      establishment into the interior of the island. The beautiful native woman
+      Catalina escaped to shore and disappeared at the same time; and the two
+      events were connected in the minds of some of the Spaniards, and held,
+      wrongly as it turned out, to be significant of a deep plot of native
+      treachery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The most urgent need was to build the new settlement and lay out a town.
+      Several small parties were sent out to reconnoitre the coast in both
+      directions, but none of them found a suitable place; and on December 7th
+      the whole fleet sailed to the east in the hope of finding a better
+      position. They were driven by adverse winds into a harbour some thirty
+      miles to the east of Monte Christi, and when they went ashore they decided
+      that this was as good a site as any for the new town. There was about a
+      quarter of a mile of level sandy beach enclosed by headlands on either
+      side; there was any amount of rock and stones for building, and there was
+      a natural barrier of hills and mountains a mile or so inland that would
+      protect a camp from that side.&mdash;The soil was very fertile, the
+      vegetation luxuriant; and the mango swamps a little way inland drained
+      into a basin or lake which provided an unlimited water supply. Columbus
+      therefore set about establishing a little town, to which he gave the name
+      of Isabella. Streets and squares were laid out, and rows of temporary
+      buildings made of wood and thatched with grass were hastily run up for the
+      accommodation of the members of the expedition, while the foundations of
+      three stone buildings were also marked out and the excavations put in
+      hand. These buildings were the church, the storehouse, and a residence for
+      Columbus as Governor-General. The stores were landed, the horses and
+      cattle accommodated ashore, the provisions, ammunition, and agricultural
+      implements also. Labourers were set to digging out the foundations of the
+      stone buildings, carpenters to cutting down trees and running up the light
+      wooden houses that were to serve as barracks for the present; masons were
+      employed in hewing stones and building landing-piers; and all the crowd of
+      well-born adventurers were set to work with their hands, much to their
+      disgust. This was by no means the life they had imagined, and at the first
+      sign of hard work they turned sulky and discontented. There was, to be
+      sure, some reason for their discontent. Things had not quite turned out as
+      Columbus had promised they should; there was no store of gold, nor any
+      sign of great desire on the part of the natives to bring any; and to add
+      to their other troubles, illness began to break out in the camp. The
+      freshly-turned rank soil had a bad effect on the health of the garrison;
+      the lake, which had promised to be so pleasant a feature in the new town,
+      gave off dangerous malarial vapours at night; and among the sufferers from
+      this trouble was Columbus himself, who endured for some weeks all the
+      pains and lassitude of the disagreeable fever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /> <a name="espanola" id="espanola"></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+      <img alt="espanola.jpg (108K)" src="images/espanola.jpg"
+      style="width:100%;" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/espanola.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
+    </h5>
+<p>
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</p>
+    <p>
+      The ships were now empty and ready for the return voyage, and as soon as
+      Columbus was better he set to work to face the situation. After all his
+      promises it would never do to send them home empty or in ballast; a cargo
+      of stones from the new-found Indies would not be well received in Spain.
+      The natives had told him that somewhere in the island existed the gold
+      mines of Cibao, and he determined to make an attempt to find these, so
+      that he could send his ships home laden with a cargo that would be some
+      indemnity for the heavy cost of the expedition and some compensation for
+      the bad news he must write with regard to his first settlement. Young
+      Ojeda was chosen to lead an expedition of fifteen picked men into the
+      interior; and as the gold mines were said to be in a part of the island
+      not under the command of Guacanagari, but in the territory of the dreaded
+      Caonabo, there was no little anxiety felt about the expedition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ojeda started in the beginning of January 1494, and marched southwards
+      through dense forests until, having crossed a mountain range, he came down
+      into a beautiful and fertile valley, where they were hospitably received
+      by the natives. They saw plenty of gold in the sand of the river that
+      watered the valley, which sand the natives had a way of washing so that
+      the gold was separated from it; and there seemed to be so much wealth
+      there that Ojeda hurried back to the new city of Isabella to make his
+      report to Columbus. The effect upon the discontented colonists was
+      remarkable. Once more everything was right; wealth beyond the dreams of
+      avarice was at their hand; and all they had to do was to stretch out their
+      arms and take it. Columbus felt that he need no longer delay the despatch
+      of twelve of his ships on the homeward voyage. If he had not got golden
+      cargoes for them, at any rate he had got the next best thing, which was
+      the certainty of gold; and it did not matter whether it was in the ships
+      or in his storehouse. He had news to send home at any rate, and a great
+      variety of things to ask for in return, and he therefore set about writing
+      his report to the Sovereigns. Other people, as we know, were writing
+      letters too; the reiterated promise of gold, and the marvellous anecdotes
+      which these credulous settlers readily believed from the natives, such as
+      that there was a rock close by out of which gold would burst if you struck
+      it with a club, raised greed and expectation in Spain to a fever pitch,
+      and prepared the reaction which followed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We may now read the account of the New World as Columbus sent it home to
+      the King and Queen of Spain in the end of January 1494, and as they read
+      it some weeks later. Their comments, written in the margin of the
+      original, are printed in smaller print at the end of each paragraph. It
+      was drawn up in the form of a memorandum, and entrusted to Antonio de
+      Torres, who was commanding the return expedition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What you, Antonio de Torres, captain of the ship Marigalante and
+      Alcalde of the City of Isabella, are to say and supplicate on my part to
+      the King and Queen, our Lords, is as follows:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;First. Having delivered the letters of credence which you carry
+        from me for their Highnesses, you will kiss for me their Royal feet and
+        hands and will recommend me to their Highnesses as to a King and Queen,
+        my natural Lords, in whose service I desire to end my days: as you will
+        be able to say this more fully to their Highnesses, according to what
+        you have seen and known of me.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br /> [&ldquo;Their Highnesses hold him in their favour.]
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;Item. Although by the letters I write to their Highnesses, and
+        also the father Friar Buil and the Treasurer, they will be able to
+        understand all that has been done here since our arrival, and this very
+        minutely and extensively: nevertheless, you will say to their Highnesses
+        on my part, that it has pleased God to give me such favour in their
+        service, that up to the present time. I do not find less, nor has less
+        been found in anything than what I wrote and said and affirmed to their
+        Highnesses in the past: but rather, by the Grace of God, I hope that it
+        will appear, by works much more clearly and very soon, because such
+        signs and indications of spices have been found on the shores of the sea
+        alone, without having gone inland, that there is reason that very much
+        better results may be hoped for: and this also may be hoped for in the
+        mines of gold, because by two persons only who went to investigate, each
+        one on his own part, without remaining there because there was not many
+        people, so many rivers have been discovered so filled with gold, that
+        all who saw it and gathered specimens of it with the hands alone, came
+        away so pleased and say such things in regard to its abundance, that I
+        am timid about telling it and writing it to their Highnesses: but
+        because Gorbalan, who was one of the discoverers, is going yonder, he
+        will tell what he saw, although another named Hojeda remains here, a
+        servant of the Duke of Medinaceli, a very discreet youth and very
+        prudent, who without doubt and without comparison even, discovered much
+        more according to the memorandum which he brought of the rivers, saying
+        that there is an incredible quantity in each one of them for this their
+        Highnesses may give thanks to God, since He has been so favourable to
+        them in all their affairs.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br /> [&ldquo;Their Highnesses give many thanks to God for this, and
+        consider as a very signal service all that the Admiral has done in this
+        matter and is doing: because they know that after God they are indebted
+        to him for all they have had, and will have in this affair: and as they
+        are writing him more fully about this, they refer him to their letter.]
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;Item. You will say to their Highnesses, although I already have
+        written it to them, that I desired greatly to be able to send them a
+        larger quantity of gold in this fleet, from that which it is hoped may
+        be gathered here, but the greater part of our people who are here, have
+        fallen suddenly ill: besides, this fleet cannot remain here longer, both
+        on account of the great expense it occasions and because this time is
+        suitable for those persons who are to bring the things which are greatly
+        needed here, to go and be able to return: as, if they delay going away
+        from here, those who are to return will not be able to do so by May: and
+        besides this, if I wished to undertake to go to the mines or rivers now,
+        with the well people who are here, both on the sea and in the settlement
+        on land, I would have many difficulties and even dangers, because in
+        order to go twenty-three or twenty-four leagues from here where there
+        are harbours and rivers to cross, and in order to cover such a long
+        route and reach there at the time which would be necessary to gather the
+        gold, a large quantity of provisions would have to be carried, which
+        cannot be carried on the shoulders, nor are there beasts of burden here
+        which could be used for this purpose: nor are the roads and passes
+        sufficiently prepared, although I have commenced to get them in
+        readiness so as to be passable: and also it was very inconvenient to
+        leave the sick here in an open place, in huts, with the provisions and
+        supplies which are on land: for although these Indians may have shown
+        themselves to the discoverers and show themselves every day, to be very
+        simple and not malicious nevertheless, as they come here among us each
+        day, it did not appear that it would be a good idea to risk losing these
+        people and the supplies. This loss an Indian with a piece of burning
+        wood would be able to cause by setting fire to the huts, because they
+        are always going and coming by night and by day: on their account, we
+        have guards in the camp, while the settlement is open and defenceless.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br /> [&ldquo;That he did well.]
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;Moreover, as we have seen among those who went by land to make
+        discoveries that the greater part fell sick after returning, and some of
+        them even were obliged to turn back on the road, it was also reasonable
+        to fear that the same thing would happen to those who are well, who
+        would now go, and as a consequence they would run the risk of two
+        dangers: the one, that of falling sick yonder, in the same work, where
+        there is no house nor any defence against that cacique who is called
+        Caonabb, who is a very bad man according to all accounts, and much more
+        audacious and who, seeing us there, sick and in such disorder, would be
+        able to undertake what he would not dare if we were well: and with this
+        difficulty there is another&mdash;that of bringing here what gold we
+        might obtain, because we must either bring a small quantity and go and
+        come each day and undergo the risk of sickness, or it must be sent with
+        some part of the people, incurring the same danger of losing it.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br /> [&ldquo;He did well.]
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;So that, you will say to their Highnesses, that these are the
+        causes why the fleet has not been at present detained, and why more gold
+        than the specimens has not been sent them: but confiding in the mercy of
+        God, who in everything and for everything has guided us as far as here,
+        these people will quickly become convalescent, as they are already
+        doing, because only certain places in the country suit them and they
+        then recover; and it is certain that if they had some fresh meat in
+        order to convalesce, all with the aid of God would very quickly be on
+        foot, and even the greater part would already be convalescent at this
+        time: nevertheless they will be re-established. With the few healthy
+        ones who remain here, each day work is done toward enclosing the
+        settlement and placing it in a state of some defence and the supplies in
+        safety, which will be accomplished in a short time, because it is to be
+        only a small dry wall. For the Indians are not a people to undertake
+        anything unless they should find us sleeping, even though they might
+        have thought of it in the manner in which they served the others who
+        remained here. Only on account of their (the Spaniards&rsquo;) lack of
+        caution&mdash;they being so few&mdash;and the great opportunities they
+        gave the Indians to have and do what they did, they would never have
+        dared to undertake to injure them if they had seen that they were
+        cautious. And this work being finished, I will then undertake to go to
+        the said rivers, either starting upon the road from here and seeking the
+        best possible expedients, or going around the island by sea as far as
+        that place from which it is said it cannot be more than six or seven
+        leagues to the said rivers. In such a manner that the gold can be
+        gathered and placed in security in some fortress or tower which can then
+        be constructed there, in order to keep it securely until the time when
+        the two caravels return here, and in order that then, with the first
+        suitable weather for sailing this course, it may be sent to a place of
+        safety.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br /> [&ldquo;That this is well and must be done in this manner.]
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;Item. You will say to their Highnesses, as has been said, that
+        the cause of the general sicknesses common to all is the change of water
+        and air, because we see that it extends to all conditions and few are in
+        danger: consequently, for the preservation of health, after God, it is
+        necessary that these people be provided with the provisions to which
+        they are accustomed in Spain, because neither they, nor others who may
+        come anew, will be able to serve their Highnesses if they are not well:
+        and this provision must continue until a supply is accumulated here from
+        what shall be sowed and planted here. I say wheat and barley, and vines,
+        of which little has been done this year because a site for the town
+        could not be selected before, and then when it was selected the few
+        labourers who were here became sick, and they, even though they had been
+        well, had so few and such lean and meagre beasts of burden, that they
+        were able to do but little: nevertheless, they have sown something, more
+        in order to try the soil which appears very wonderful, so that from it
+        some relief may be hoped in our necessities. We are very sure, as the
+        result makes it apparent to us, that in this country wheat as well as
+        the vine will grow very well: but the fruit must be waited for, which,
+        if it corresponds to the quickness with which the wheat grows and of
+        some few vine-shoots which were planted, certainly will not cause regret
+        here for the productions of Andalusia or Sicily: neither is it different
+        with the sugar-canes according to the manner in which some few that were
+        planted have grown. For it is certain that the sight of the land of
+        these islands, as well of the mountains and sierras and waters as of the
+        plains where there are rich rivers, is so beautiful, that no other land
+        on which the sun shines can appear better or as beautiful.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br /> [&ldquo;Since the land is such, it must be managed that the
+        greatest possible quantity of all things shall be sown, and Don Juan de
+        Fonseca is to be written to send continually all that is necessary for
+        this purpose.]
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;Item. You will say that, inasmuch as much of the wine which the
+        fleet brought was wasted on this journey, and this, according to what
+        the greater number say, was because of the bad workmanship which the
+        coopers did in Seville, the greatest necessity we feel here at the
+        present time is for wines, and it is what we desire most to have and
+        although we may have biscuit as well as wheat sufficient for a longer
+        time, nevertheless it is necessary that a reasonable quantity should
+        also be sent, because the journey is long and provision cannot be made
+        each day and in the same manner some salted meat, I say bacon, and other
+        salt meat better than that we brought on this journey. It is necessary
+        that each time a caravel comes here, fresh meat shall be sent, and even
+        more than that, lambs and little ewe lambs, more females than males, and
+        some little yearling calves, male and female, and some he-asses and
+        she-asses and some mares for labour and breeding, as there are none of
+        these animals here of any value or which can be made use of by man. And
+        because I apprehend that their Highnesses may not be, in Seville, and
+        that the officials or ministers will not provide these things without
+        their express order, and as it is necessary they should come at the
+        first opportunity, and as in consultation and reply the time for the
+        departure of the vessels-which must be here during all of Maywill be
+        past: you will say to their Highnesses that I charged and commanded you
+        to pledge the gold you are carrying yonder and place it in possession of
+        some merchant in Seville, who will furnish therefor the necessary
+        maravedis to load two caravels with wine and wheat and the other things
+        of which you are taking a memorandum; which merchant will carry or send
+        the said gold to their Highnesses that they may see it and receive it,
+        and cause what shall have been expended for fitting out and loading of
+        the said two caravels to be paid: and in order to comfort and strengthen
+        these people remaining here, the utmost efforts must be made for the
+        return of these caravels for all the month of May, that the people
+        before commencing the summer may see and have some refreshment from
+        these things, especially the invalids: the things of which we are
+        already in great need here are such as raisins, sugar, almonds, honey
+        and rice, which should have been sent in large quantities and very
+        little was sent, and that which came is already used and consumed, and
+        even the greater part of the medicines which were brought from there, on
+        account of the multitude of sick people. You are carrying memoranda
+        signed by my hand, as has been said, of things for the people in good
+        health as well as for the sick. You will provide these things fully if
+        the money is sufficient, or at least the things which it is most
+        necessary to send at once, in order that the said two vessels can bring
+        them, and you can arrange with their Highnesses, to have the remaining
+        things sent by other vessels as quickly as possible.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br /> [&ldquo;Their Highnesses sent an order to Don Juan de Fonseca to
+        obtain at once information about the persons who committed the fraud of
+        the casks, and to cause all the damage to the wine to be recovered from
+        them, with the costs: and he must see that the canes which are sent are
+        of good quality, and that the other things mentioned here are provided
+        at once.]
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;Item. You will say to their Highnesses that as there is no
+        language here by means of which these people can be made to understand
+        our Holy Faith, as your Highnesses and also we who are here desire,
+        although we will do all we can towards it&mdash;I am sending some of the
+        cannibals in the vessels, men and women and male and female children,
+        whom their Highnesses can order placed with persons from whom they can
+        better learn the language, making use of them in service, and ordering
+        that little by little more pains be taken with them than with other
+        slaves, that they may learn one from the other: if they do not see or
+        speak with each other until some time has passed, they will learn more
+        quickly there than here, and will be better interpreters&mdash;although
+        we will not cease to do as much as possible here. It is true that as
+        there is little intercourse between these people from one island to
+        another, there is some difference in their language, according to how
+        far distant they are from each other. And as, of the other islands,
+        those of the cannibals are very large and very well populated, it would
+        appear best to take some of their men and women and send them yonder to
+        Castile, because by taking them away, it may cause them to abandon at
+        once that inhuman custom which they have of eating men: and by learning
+        the language there in Castile, they will receive baptism much more
+        quickly, and provide for the safety of their souls. Even among the
+        peoples who are not cannibals we shall gain great credit, by their
+        seeing that we can seize and take captive those from whom they are
+        accustomed to receive injuries, and of whom they are in such terror that
+        they are frightened by one man alone. You will certify to their
+        Highnesses that the arrival here and sight of such a fine fleet all
+        together has inspired very great authority here and assured very great
+        security for future things: because all the people on this great island
+        and in the other islands, seeing the good treatment which those who well
+        behave receive, and the bad treatment given to those who behave ill,
+        will very quickly render obedience, so that they can be considered as
+        vassals of their Highnesses. And as now they not only do willingly
+        whatever is required of them by our people, but further, they
+        voluntarily undertake everything which they understand may please us,
+        their Highnesses may also be certain that in many respects, as much for
+        the present as for the future, the coming of this fleet has given them a
+        great reputation, and not less yonder among the Christian princes: which
+        their Highnesses will be better able to consider and understand than I
+        can tell them.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br /> [&ldquo;That he is to be told what has befallen the cannibals who
+        came here. That it is very well and must be done in this manner, but
+        that he must try there as much as possible to bring them to our Holy
+        Catholic faith and do the same with the inhabitants of the islands where
+        he is.]
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;Item. You will say to their Highnesses that the safety of the
+        souls of the said cannibals, and further of those here, has inspired the
+        thought that the more there are taken yonder, the better it will be, and
+        their Highnesses can be served by it in this manner: having seen how
+        necessary the flocks and beasts of burden are here, for the sustenance
+        of the people who must be here, and even of all these islands, their
+        Highnesses can give licence and permission to a sufficient number of
+        caravels to come here each year, and bring the said flocks and other
+        supplies and things to settle the country and make use of the land: and
+        this at reasonable prices at the expense of those who bring them: and
+        these things can be paid for in slaves from among these cannibals, a
+        very proud and comely people, well proportioned and of good
+        intelligence, who having been freed from that inhumanity, we believe
+        will be better than any other slaves. They will be freed from this
+        cruelty as soon as they are outside their country, and many of them can
+        be taken with the row-boats which it is known how to build here: it
+        being understood, however, that a trustworthy person shall be placed on
+        each one of the caravels coming here, who shall forbid the said caravels
+        to stop at any other place or island than this place, where the loading
+        and unloading of all the merchandise must be done. And further, their
+        Highnesses will be able to establish their rights over these slaves
+        which are taken from here yonder to Spain. And you will bring or send a
+        reply to this, in order that the necessary preparations may be made here
+        with more confidence if it appears well to their Highnesses.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br /> [&ldquo;This project must be held in abeyance for the present
+        until another method is suggested from there, and the Admiral may write
+        what he thinks in regard to it.]
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;Item. Also you will say to their Highnesses that it is more
+        profitable and costs less to hire the vessels as the merchants hire them
+        for Flanders, by tons, rather than in any other manner: therefore I
+        charged you to hire the two caravels which you are to send here, in this
+        manner: and all the others which their Highnesses send here can be hired
+        thus, if they consider it for their service but I do not intend to say
+        this of those vessels which are to come here with their licence, for the
+        slave trade.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br /> [&ldquo;Their Highnesses order Don Juan de Fonseca to hire the
+        caravels in this manner if it can be done.]
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;Item. You will say to their Highnesses, that to avoid any further
+        cost, I bought these caravels of which you are taking a memorandum in
+        order to retain them here with these two ships: that is to say the
+        Gallega and that other, the Capitana, of which I likewise purchased the
+        three-eighths from the master of it, for the price given in the said
+        memorandum which you are taking, signed by my hand. These ships not only
+        will give authority and great security to the people who are obliged to
+        remain inland and make arrangements with the Indians to gather the gold,
+        but they will also be of service in any other dangerous matter which may
+        arise with a strange people; besides the caravels are necessary for the
+        discovery of the mainland and the other islands which lie between here
+        and there: and you will entreat their Highnesses to order the maravedis
+        which these ships cost, paid at the times which they have been promised,
+        because without doubt they will soon receive what they cost, according
+        to what I believe and hope in the mercy of God.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br /> [&ldquo;The Admiral has done well, and to tell him that the sum
+        has been paid here to the one who sold the ship, and Don Juan de Fonseca
+        has been ordered to pay for the two caravels which the Admiral bought.]
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;Item. You will say to their Highnesses, and will supplicate on my
+        part as humbly as possible, that it may please them to reflect on what
+        they will learn most fully from the letters and other writings in regard
+        to the peace and tranquillity and concord of those who are here: and
+        that for the service of their Highnesses such persons may be selected as
+        shall not be suspected, and who will give more attention to the matters
+        for which they are sent than to their own interests: and since you saw
+        and knew everything in regard to this matter, you will speak and will
+        tell their Highnesses the truth about all the things as you understood
+        them, and you will endeavour that the provision which their Highnesses
+        make in regard to it shall come with the first ships if possible, in
+        order that there may be no scandals here in a matter of so much
+        importance in the service of their Highnesses.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br /> [&ldquo;Their Highnesses are well informed in regard to this
+        matter, and suitable provision will be made for everything.]
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;Item. You will tell their Highnesses of the situation of this
+        city, and the beauty of the surrounding province as you saw and
+        understood it, and how I made you its Alcade, by the powers which I have
+        for same from their Highnesses: whom I humbly entreat to hold the said
+        provision in part satisfaction of your services, as I hope from their
+        Highnesses.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br /> [&ldquo;It pleases their Highnesses that you shall be Alcade.]
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;Item. Because Mosen Pedro Margarite, servant of their Highnesses,
+        has done good service, and I hope he will do the same henceforward in
+        matters which are entrusted to him, I have been pleased to have him
+        remain here, and also Gaspar and Beltran, because they are recognised
+        servants of their Highnesses, in order to intrust them with matters of
+        confidence. You will specialty entreat their Highnesses in regard to the
+        said Mosen Pedro, who is married and has children, to provide him with
+        some charge in the order of Santiago, whose habit he wears, that his
+        wife and children may have the wherewith to live. In the same manner you
+        will relate how well and diligently Juan Aguado, servant of their
+        Highnesses, has rendered service in everything which he has been ordered
+        to do, and that I supplicate their Highnesses to have him and the
+        aforesaid persons in their charge and to reward them.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br /> [&ldquo;Their Highnesses order 30,000 maravedis to be assigned to
+        Mosen Pedro each year, and to Gaspar and Beltran, to each one, 15,000
+        maravedis each year, from the present, August 15, 1494, henceforward:
+        and thus the Admiral shall cause to be paid to them whatever must be
+        paid yonder in the Indies, and Don Juan de Fonseca whatever must be paid
+        here: and in regard to Juan Iguado, their Highnesses will hold him in
+        remembrance.]
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;Item. You will tell their Highnesses of the labour performed by
+        Dr. Chanca, confronted with so many invalids, and still more because of
+        the lack of provisions and nevertheless, he acts with great diligence
+        and charity in everything pertaining to his office. And as their
+        Highnesses referred to me the salary which he was to receive here,
+        because, being here, it is certain that he cannot take or receive
+        anything from any one, nor earn money by his office as he earned it in
+        Castile, or would be able to earn it being at his ease and living in a
+        different manner from the way he lives here; therefore, notwithstanding
+        he swears that he earned more there, besides the salary which their
+        Highnesses gave him, I did not wish to allow more than 50,000 maravedis
+        each year for the work he performs here while he remains here. This I
+        entreat their Highnesses to order allowed to him with the salary from
+        here, and that, because he says and affirms that all the physicians of
+        their Highnesses who are employed in Royal affairs or things similar to
+        this, are accustomed to have by right one day&rsquo;s wages in all the
+        year from all the people. Nevertheless, I have been informed and they
+        tell me, that however this may be, the custom is to give them a certain
+        sum, fixed according to the will and command of their Highnesses in
+        compensation for that day&rsquo;s wages. You will entreat their
+        Highnesses to order provision made as well in the matter of the salary
+        as of this custom, in such manner that the said Dr. Chanca may have
+        reason to be satisfied.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br /> [&ldquo;Their Highnesses are pleased in regard to this matter of
+        Dr. Chanca, and that he shall be paid what the Admiral has assigned him,
+        together with his salary. &ldquo;In regard to the day&rsquo;s wages of
+        the physicians, they are not accustomed to receive it, save where the
+        King, our Lord, may be in persona.]
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;Item. You will say to their Highnesses that Coronel is a man for
+        the service of their Highnesses in many things, and how much service he
+        has rendered up to the present in all the most necessary matters, and
+        the need we feel of him now that he is sick; and that rendering service
+        in such a manner, it is reasonable that he should receive the fruit of
+        his service, not only in future favours, but in his present salary, so
+        that he and those who are here may feel that their service profits them;
+        because, so great is the labour which must be performed here in
+        gathering the gold that the persons who are so diligent are not to be
+        held in small consideration; and as, for his skill, he was provided here
+        by me with the office of Alguacil Mayor of these Indies; and since in
+        the provision the salary is left blank, you will say that I supplicate
+        their Highnesses to order it filled in with as large an amount as they
+        may think right, considering his services, confirming to him the
+        provision I have given him here, and assuring it to him annually.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br /> [&ldquo;Their Highnesses order that 15,000 maravedis more than his
+        salary shall be assigned him each year, and that it shall be paid to him
+        with his salary.]
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;In the same manner you will tell their Highnesses how the lawyer
+        Gil Garcia came here for Alcalde Mayor and no salary has been named or
+        assigned to him; and he is a capable person, well educated and diligent,
+        and is very necessary here; that I entreat their Highnesses to order his
+        salary named and assigned, so that he can sustain himself, and that it
+        may be paid from the money allowed for salaries here.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br /> &ldquo;[Their Highnesses order 20,000 maravedis besides his salary
+        assigned to him each year, as long as he remains yonder, and that it
+        shall be paid him when his salary is paid.]
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;Item. You will say to their Highnesses, although it is already
+        written in the letters, that I do not think it will be possible to go to
+        make discoveries this year, until these rivers in which gold is found
+        are placed in the most suitable condition for the service of their
+        Highnesses, as afterwards it can be done much better. Because it is a
+        thing which no one can do without my presence, according to my will or
+        for the service of their Highnesses, however well it may be done, as it
+        is doubtful what will be satisfactory to a man unless he is present.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br /> [&ldquo;Let him endeavour that the amount of this gold may be
+        known as precisely as possible.]
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;Item. You will say to their Highnesses that the Squires who came
+        from Granada showed good horses in the review which took place at
+        Seville, and afterward at the embarkation I did not see them because I
+        was slightly unwell, and they replaced them with such horses that the
+        best of them do not appear to be worth 2000 maravedis, as they sold the
+        others and bought these; and this was done in the same way to many
+        people as I very well saw yonder, in the reviews at Seville. It appears
+        that Juan de Soria, after he had been given the money for the wages, for
+        some interest of his own substituted others in place of those I expected
+        to find here, and I found people whom I had never seen. In this matter
+        he was guilty of great wickedness, so that I do not know if I should
+        complain of him alone. On this account, having seen that the expenses of
+        these Squires have been defrayed until now, besides their wages and also
+        wages for their horses, and it is now being done: and they are persons
+        who, when they are sick or when they do not desire to do so, will not
+        allow any use to be made of their horses save by themselves: and their,
+        Highnesses do not desire that these horses should be purchased of them,
+        but that they should be used in the service of their Highnesses: and it
+        does not appear to them that they should do anything or render any
+        service except on horseback, which at the present time is not much to
+        the purpose: on this account, it seems that it would be better to buy
+        the horses from them, since they are of so little value, and not have
+        these disagreements with them every day. Therefore their Highnesses may
+        determine this as will best serve them.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br /> [&ldquo;Their Highnesses order Don Juan de Fonseca to inform
+        himself in regard to this matter of the horses, and if it shall be found
+        true that this fraud was committed, those persons shall be sent to their
+        Highnesses to be punished: and also he is to inform himself in regard to
+        what is said of the other people, and send the result in the examination
+        to their Highnesses; and in regard to these Squires, their Highnesses
+        command that they remain there and render service, since they belong to
+        the guards and servants of their Highnesses: and their Highnesses order
+        the Squires to give up the horses each time it is necessary and the
+        Admiral orders it, and if the horses receive any injury through others
+        using them, their Highnesses order that the damage shall be paid to them
+        by means of the Admiral.]
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;Item. You will say to their Highnesses that more than 200 persons
+        have come here without wages, and there are some of them who render good
+        service. And as it is ordered that the others rendering similar service
+        should be paid: and as for these first three years it would be of great
+        benefit to have 1000 men here to settle, and place this island and the
+        rivers of gold in very great security, and even though there were 100
+        horsemen nothing would be lost, but rather it seems necessary, although
+        their Highnesses will be able to do without these horsemen until gold is
+        sent: nevertheless, their Highnesses must send to say whether wages
+        shall be paid to these 200 persons, the same as to the others rendering
+        good service, because they are certainly necessary, as I have said in
+        the beginning of this memorandum.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br /> [&ldquo;In regard to these 200 persons, who are here said to have
+        gone without wages, their Highnesses order that they shall take the
+        places of those who went for wages, who have failed or shall fail to
+        fulfil their engagements, if they are skilful and satisfactory to the
+        Admiral. And their Highnesses order the Purser (Contador) to enrol them
+        in place of those who fail to fulfil their engagements, as the Admiral
+        shall instruct him.]
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;Item. As the cost of these people can be in some degree lightened
+        and the better part of the expense could be avoided by the same means
+        employed by other Princes in other places: it appears, that it would be
+        well to order brought in the ships, besides the other things which are
+        for the common maintenance and the medicines, shoes and the skins from
+        which to order the shoes made, common shirts and others, jackets, linen,
+        sack-coats, trowsers and cloths suitable for wearing apparel, at
+        reasonable prices: and other things like conserves which are not
+        included in rations and are for the preservation of health, which things
+        all the people here would willingly receive to apply on their wages and
+        if these were purchased yonder in Spain by faithful Ministers who would
+        act for the advantage of their Highnesses, something would be saved.
+        Therefore you will learn the will of their Highnesses about this matter,
+        and if it appears to them to be of benefit to them, then it must be
+        placed in operation.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br /> [&ldquo;This arrangement is to be in abeyance until the Admiral
+        writes more fully, and at another time they will send to order Don Juan
+        de Fonseca with Jimeno de Bribiesca to make provision for the same.]
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;Item. You will say to their Highnesses that inasmuch as yesterday
+        in the review people were found who were without arms, which I think
+        happened in part by that exchange which took place yonder in Seville, or
+        in the harbour when those who presented themselves armed were left, and
+        others were taken who gave something to those who made the exchange, it
+        seems that it would be well to order 200 cuirasses sent, and 100 muskets
+        and 100 crossbows, and a large quantity of arsenal supplies, which is
+        what we need most, and all these arms can be given to those who are
+        unarmed.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br /> [&ldquo;Already Don Juan de Fonseca has been written to make
+        provision for this.]
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;Item. Inasmuch as some artisans who came here, such as masons and
+        other workmen, are married and have wives yonder in Spain, and would
+        like to have what is owing them from their wages given to their wives or
+        to the persons to whom they will send their requirements in order that
+        they may buy for them the things which they need here I supplicate their
+        Highnesses to order it paid to them, because it is for their benefit to
+        have these persons provided for here.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br /> [&ldquo;Their Highnesses have already sent orders to Don Juan de
+        Fonseca to make provision for this matter.]
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;Item. Because, besides the other things which are asked for there
+        according to the memoranda which you are carrying signed by my hand, for
+        the maintenance of the persons in good health as well as for the sick
+        ones, it would be very well to have fifty casks of molasses (miel de
+        azucar) from the island of Madeira, as it is the best sustenance in the
+        world and the most healthful, and it does not usually cost more than two
+        ducats per cask, without the cask: and if their Highnesses order some
+        caravel to stop there in returning, it can be purchased and also ten
+        cases of sugar, which is very necessary; as this is the best season of
+        the year to obtain it, I say between the present time and the month of
+        April, and to obtain it at a reasonable price. If their Highnesses
+        command it, the order could be given, and it would not be known there
+        for what place it is wanted.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br /> [&ldquo;Let Don Juan de Fonseca make provision for this matter.]
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;Item. You will say to their Highnesses that although the rivers
+        contain gold in the quantity related by those who have seen it, yet it
+        is certain that the gold is not engendered in the rivers but rather on
+        the land, the waters of the rivers which flow by the mines bringing it
+        enveloped in the sands: and as among these rivers which have been
+        discovered there are some very large ones, there are others so small
+        that they are fountains rather than rivers, which are not more than two
+        fingers of water in depth, and then the source from which they spring
+        may be found: for this reason not only labourers to gather it in the
+        sand will be profitable, but others to dig for it in the earth, which
+        will be the most particular operation and produce a great quantity. And
+        for this, it will be well for their Highnesses to send labourers, and
+        from among those who work yonder in Spain in the mines of Almaden, that
+        the work may be done in both ways. Although we will not await them here,
+        as with the labourers we have here we hope, with the aid of God, once
+        the people are in good health, to amass a good quantity of gold to be
+        sent on the first caravels which return.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br /> [&ldquo;This will be fully provided for in another manner. In the
+        meantime their Highnesses order Don Yuan de Fonseca to send the best
+        miners he can obtain; and to write to Almaden to have the greatest
+        possible number taken from there and sent.]
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;Item. You will entreat their Highnesses very humbly on my part,
+        to consider Villacorta as speedily recommended to them, who, as their
+        Highnesses know, has rendered great service in this business, and with a
+        very good will, and as I know him, he is a diligent person and very
+        devoted to their service: it will be a favour to me if he is given some
+        confidential charge for which he is fitted, and where he can show his
+        desire to serve them and his diligence: and this you will obtain in such
+        a way that Villacorta may know by the result, that what he has done for
+        me when I needed him profits him in this manner.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br /> [&ldquo;It will be done thus.]
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;Item. That the said Mosen Pedro and Gaspar and Beltran and others
+        who have remained here gave up the captainship of caravels, which have
+        now returned, and are not receiving wages: but because they are persons
+        who must be employed in important matters and of confidence, their
+        compensation, which must be different from the others, has not been
+        determined. You will entreat their Highnesses on my part to determine
+        what is to be given them each year, or by the month, according to their
+        service.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;Done in the city of Isabella, January 30, 1494.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br /> [&ldquo;This has already been replied to above, but as it is
+        stated in the said item that they enjoy their salary, from the present
+        time their Highnesses order that their wages shall be paid to all of
+        them from the time they left their captainships.&rdquo;]
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      This document is worth studying, written as it was in circumstances that
+      at one moment looked desperate and at another were all hope. Columbus was
+      struggling manfully with difficulties that were already beginning to be
+      too much for him. The Man from Genoa, with his guiding star of faith in
+      some shore beyond the mist and radiance of the West&mdash;see into what
+      strange places and to what strange occupations this star has led him! The
+      blue visionary eyes, given to seeing things immediately beyond the present
+      horizon, must fix themselves on accounts and requisitions, on the needs of
+      idle, aristocratic, grumbling Spaniards; must fix themselves also on that
+      blank void in the bellies of his returning ships, where the gold ought to
+      have been. The letter has its practical side; the requisitions are made
+      with good sense and a grasp of the economic situation; but they have a
+      deeper significance than that. All this talk about little ewe lambs, wine
+      and bacon (better than the last lot, if it please your Highnesses), little
+      yearling calves, and fifty casks of molasses that can be bought a ducat or
+      two cheaper in Madeira in the months of April and May than at any other
+      time or place, is only half real. Columbus fills his Sovereigns&rsquo;
+      ears with this clamour so that he shall not hear those embarrassing
+      questions that will inevitably be asked about the gold and the spices. He
+      boldly begins his letter with the old story about &ldquo;indications of
+      spices&rdquo; and gold &ldquo;in incredible quantities,&rdquo; with a
+      great deal of &ldquo;moreover&rdquo; and &ldquo;besides,&rdquo; and a
+      bold, pompous, pathetic &ldquo;I will undertake&rdquo;; and then he gets
+      away from that subject by wordy deviations, so that to one reading his
+      letter it really might seem as though the true business of the expedition
+      was to provide Coronel, Mosen Pedro, Gaspar, Beltran, Gil Garcia, and the
+      rest of them with work and wages. Everything that occurs to him, great or
+      little, that makes it seem as though things were humming in the new
+      settlement, he stuffs into this document, shovelling words into the empty
+      hulls of the ships, and trying to fill those bottomless pits with a stream
+      of talk. A system of slavery is boldly and bluntly sketched; the writer,
+      in the hurry and stress of the moment, giving to its economic advantages
+      rather greater prominence than to its religious glories. The memorandum,
+      for all its courageous attempt to be very cool and orderly and practical,
+      gives us, if ever a human document did, a picture of a man struggling with
+      an impossible situation which he will not squarely face, like one who
+      should try to dig up the sea-shore and keep his eyes shut the while.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the royal comments written against the document one seems to trace the
+      hand of Isabella rather than of Ferdinand. Their tone is matter-of-fact,
+      cool, and comforting, like the coolness of a woman&rsquo;s hand placed on
+      a feverish brow. Isabella believed in him; perhaps she read between the
+      lines of this document, and saw, as we can see, how much anxiety and
+      distress were written there; and her comments are steadying and
+      encouraging. He has done well; what he asks is being attended to; their
+      Highnesses are well informed in regard to this and that matter; suitable
+      provision will be made for everything; but let him endeavour that the
+      amount of this gold may be known as precisely as possible. There is no
+      escaping from that. The Admiral (no one knows it better than himself) must
+      make good his dazzling promises, and coin every boastful word into a
+      golden excelente of Spain. Alas! he must no longer write about the lush
+      grasses, the shining rivers, the brightly coloured parrots, the gaudy
+      flies and insects, the little singing birds, and the nights that are like
+      May in Cordova. He must find out about the gold; for it has come to grim
+      business in the Earthly Paradise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /> <a name="fourvoyages" id="fourvoyages"></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+      <img alt="fourvoyages.jpg (176K)" src="images/fourvoyages.jpg"
+      style="width:100%;" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/fourvoyages.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
+    </h5>
+<p>
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</p>
+    <h1>
+      CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS
+    </h1>
+    <h1>
+      AND THE NEW WORLD OF HIS DISCOVERY
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      A NARRATIVE BY FILSON YOUNG
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      VOLUME II.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /> <a name="portrait" id="portrait"></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+      <img alt="portrait.jpg (27K)" src="images/portrait.jpg" style="width:100%;" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="bk3" id="bk3"></a>BOOK III.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      DESPERATE REMEDIES
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br /><br /> <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="ch1c" id="ch1c"></a>CHAPTER I.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE VOYAGE TO CUBA
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sight of the greater part of their fleet disappearing in the direction
+      of home threw back the unstable Spanish colony into doubt and despondency.
+      The brief encouragement afforded by Ojeda&rsquo;s report soon died away,
+      and the actual discomforts of life in Isabella were more important than
+      visionary luxuries that seemed to recede into the distance with the
+      vanishing ships. The food supply was the cause of much discomfort; the
+      jobbery and dishonesty which seem inseparable from the fitting out of a
+      large expedition had stored the ships with bad wine and imperfectly cured
+      provisions; and these combined with the unhealthy climate to produce a
+      good deal of sickness. The feeling against Columbus, never far below the
+      Spanish surface, began to express itself definitely in treacherous
+      consultations and plots; and these were fomented by Bernal Diaz, the
+      comptroller of the colony, who had access to Columbus&rsquo;s papers and
+      had seen the letter sent by him to Spain. Columbus was at this time
+      prostrated by an attack of fever, and Diaz took the opportunity to work
+      the growing discontent up to the point of action. He told the colonists
+      that Columbus had painted their condition in far too favourable terms;
+      that he was deceiving them as well as the Sovereigns; and a plot was
+      hatched to seize the ships that remained and sail for home, leaving
+      Columbus behind to enjoy the riches that he had falsely boasted about.
+      They were ready to take alarm at anything, and to believe anything one way
+      or the other; and as they had believed Ojeda when he came back with his
+      report of riches, now they believed Cado, the assayer, who said that even
+      such gold as had been found was of a very poor and worthless quality. The
+      mutiny developed fast; and a table of charges against Columbus, which was
+      to be produced in Spain as a justification for it, had actually been drawn
+      up when the Admiral, recovering from his illness, discovered what was on
+      foot. He dealt promptly and firmly with it in his quarterdeck manner,
+      which was always far more effective than his viceregal manner. Diaz was
+      imprisoned and lodged in chains on board one of the ships, to be sent to
+      Spain for trial; and the other ringleaders were punished also according to
+      their deserts. The guns and ammunition were all stored together on one
+      ship under a safe guard, and the mutiny was stamped out. But the Spaniards
+      did not love Columbus any the better for it; did not any the more easily
+      forgive him for being in command of them and for being a foreigner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But it would never do for the colony to stagnate in Isabella, and Columbus
+      decided to make a serious attempt, not merely to discover the gold of
+      Cibao, but to get it. He therefore organised a military expedition of
+      about 400 men, including artificers, miners, and carriers, with the little
+      cavalry force that had been brought out from Spain. Every one who had
+      armour wore it, flags and banners were carried, drums and trumpets were
+      sounded; the horses were decked out in rich caparisons, and as glittering
+      and formidable a show was made as possible. Leaving his brother James in
+      command of the settlement, Columbus set out on the 12th of March to the
+      interior of the island. Through the forest and up the mountainside a road
+      was cut by pioneers from among the aristocratic adventurers who had come
+      with the party; which road, the first made in the New World, was called El
+      Puerto de los Hidalgos. The formidable, glittering cavalcade inspired the
+      natives with terror and amazement; they had never seen horses before, and
+      when one of the soldiers dismounted it seemed to them as though some
+      terrifying two-headed, six-limbed beast had come asunder. What with their
+      fright of the horses and their desire to possess the trinkets that were
+      carried they were very friendly and hospitable, and supplied the
+      expedition with plenty of food. At last, after passing mountain ranges
+      that made their hearts faint, and rich valleys that made them hopeful
+      again, the explorers came to the mountains of Cibao, and passing over the
+      first range found themselves in a little valley at the foot of the hills
+      where a river wound round a fertile plain and there was ample
+      accommodation for an encampment. There were the usual signs of gold, and
+      Columbus saw in the brightly coloured stones of the river-bed evidence of
+      unbounded wealth in precious stones. At last he had come to the place! He
+      who had doubted so much, and whose faith had wavered, had now been led to
+      a place where he could touch and handle the gold and jewels of his desire;
+      and he therefore called the place Saint Thomas. He built a fort here,
+      leaving a garrison of fifty-six men under the command of Pedro Margarite
+      to collect gold from the natives, and himself returned to Isabella, which
+      he reached at the end of March.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Enforced absence from the thing he has organised is a great test of
+      efficiency in any man. The world is full of men who can do things
+      themselves; but those who can organise from the industry of their men a
+      machine which will steadily perform the work whether the organiser is
+      absent or present are rare indeed. Columbus was one of the first class.
+      His own power and personality generally gave him some kind of mastery over
+      any circumstances in which he was immediately concerned; but let him be
+      absent for a little time, and his organisation went to pieces. No one was
+      better than he at conducting a one-man concern; and his conduct of the
+      first voyage, so long as he had his company under his immediate command,
+      was a model of efficiency. But when the material under his command began
+      to grow and to be divided into groups his life became a succession of ups
+      and downs. While he was settling and disciplining one group mutiny and
+      disorder would attack the other; and when he went to attend to them, the
+      first one immediately fell into confusion again. He dealt with the
+      discontent in Isabella, organising the better disposed part of it in
+      productive labour, and himself marching the malcontents into something
+      like discipline and order, leaving them at Saint Thomas, as we have seen,
+      usefully collecting gold. But while he was away the people at Isabella had
+      got themselves into trouble again, and when he arrived there on the
+      morning of March 29th he found the town in a deplorable condition. The
+      lake beside which the city had been built, and which seemed so attractive
+      and healthy a spot, turned out to be nothing better than a fever trap.
+      Drained from the malarial marshes, its sickly exhalations soon produced an
+      epidemic that incapacitated more than half the colony and interrupted the
+      building operations. The time of those who were well was entirely occupied
+      with the care of those who were sick, and all productive work was at a
+      standstill. The reeking virgin soil had produced crops in an incredibly
+      short time, and the sowings of January were ready for reaping in the
+      beginning of April. But there was no one to reap them, and the further
+      cultivation of the ground had necessarily been neglected.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The faint-hearted Spaniards, who never could meet any trouble without
+      grumbling, were now in the depths of despair and angry discontent; and it
+      had not pleased them to be put on a short allowance of even the
+      unwholesome provisions that remained from the original store. A couple of
+      rude hand-mills had been erected for the making of flour, and as food was
+      the first necessity Columbus immediately put all the able-bodied men in
+      the colony, whatever their rank, to the elementary manual work of
+      grinding. Friar Buil and the twelve Benedictine brothers who were with him
+      thought this a wise order, assuming of course that as clerics they would
+      not be asked to work. But great was their astonishment, and loud and angry
+      their criticism of the Admiral, when they found that they also were
+      obliged to labour with their hands. But Columbus was firm; there were
+      absolutely no exceptions made; hidalgo and priest had to work alongside of
+      sailor and labourer; and the curses of the living mingled with those of
+      the dying on the man whose boastful words had brought them to such a place
+      and such a condition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was only in the nature of things that news should now arrive of trouble
+      at Saint Thomas. Gold and women again; instead of bartering or digging,
+      the Spaniards had been stealing; and discipline had been relaxed, with the
+      usual disastrous results with regard to the women of the adjacent native
+      tribes. Pedro Margarite sent a nervous message to Columbus expressing his
+      fear that Caonabo, the native king, should be exasperated to the point of
+      attacking them again. Columbus therefore despatched Ojeda in command of a
+      force of 350 armed men to Saint Thomas with instructions that he was to
+      take over the command of that post, while Margarite was to take out an
+      expedition in search of Caonabo whom, with his brothers, Margarite was
+      instructed to capture at all costs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Having thus set things going in the interior, and once more restored
+      Isabella to something like order, he decided to take three ships and
+      attempt to discover the coast of Cathay. The old Nina, the San Juan, and
+      the Cordera, three small caravels, were provisioned for six months and
+      manned by a company of fifty-two men. Francisco Nino went once more with
+      the Admiral as pilot, and the faithful Juan de la Cosa was taken to draw
+      charts; one of the monks also, to act as chaplain. The Admiral had a
+      steward, a secretary, ten seamen and six boys to complete the company on
+      the Nina. The San Juan was commanded by Alonso Perez Roldan and the
+      Cordera by Christoval Nino. Diego was again left in command of the colony,
+      with four counsellors, Friar Buil, Fernandez Coronel, Alonso Sanchez
+      Carvajal, and Juan de Luxan, to assist his authority.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Admiral sailed on April 24th, steering to the westward and touching at
+      La Navidad before he bore away to the island of Cuba, the southern shore
+      of which it was now his intention to explore. At one of his first
+      anchorages he discovered a native feast going on, and when the boats from
+      his ships pulled ashore the feasters fled in terror&mdash;the hungry
+      Spaniards finishing their meal for them. Presently, however, the feasters
+      were induced to come back, and Columbus with soft speeches made them a
+      compensation for the food that had been taken, and produced a favourable
+      impression, as his habit was; with the result that all along the coast he
+      was kindly received by the natives, who supplied him with food and fresh
+      fruit in return for trinkets. At the harbour now known as Santiago de
+      Cuba, where he anchored on May 2nd, he had what seemed like authentic
+      information of a great island to the southward which was alleged to be the
+      source of all the gold. The very compasses of Columbus&rsquo;s ships seem
+      by this time to have become demagnetised, and to have pointed only to
+      gold; for no sooner had he heard this report than he bore away to the
+      south in pursuit of that faint yellow glitter that had now quite taken the
+      place of the original inner light of faith.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The low coast of Jamaica, hazy and blue at first, but afterwards warming
+      into a golden belt crowned by the paler and deeper greens of the foliage,
+      was sighted first by Columbus on Sunday, May 4th; and he anchored the next
+      day in the beautiful harbour of Saint Anne, to which he gave the name of
+      Santa Gloria. To the island itself he gave the name of Santiago, which
+      however has never displaced its native name of Jamaica. The dim blue
+      mountains and clumps of lofty trees about the bay were wonderful even to
+      Columbus, whose eyes must by this time have been growing accustomed to the
+      beauty of the West Indies, and he lost his heart to Jamaica from the first
+      moment that his eyes rested on its green and golden shores. Perhaps he was
+      by this time a little out of conceit with Hayti; but be that as it may he
+      retracted all the superlatives he had ever used for the other lands of his
+      discovery, and bestowed them in his heart upon Jamaica.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was not humanly so well received as he had been on the other islands,
+      for when he cast anchor the natives came out in canoes threatening
+      hostilities and had to be appeased with red caps and hawks&rsquo; bells.
+      Next day, however, Columbus wished to careen his ships, and sailed a
+      little to the west until he found a suitable beach at Puerto Bueno; and as
+      he approached the shore some large canoes filled with painted and
+      feathered warriors came out and attacked his ships, showering arrows and
+      javelins, and whooping and screaming at the Spaniards. The guns were
+      discharged, and an armed party sent ashore in a boat, and the natives were
+      soon put to flight. There was no renewal of hostilities; the next day the
+      local cacique came down offering provisions and help; presents were
+      exchanged, and cordial relations established. Columbus noticed that the
+      Jamaicans seemed to be a much more virile community than either the Cubans
+      or the people of Espanola. They had enormous canoes hollowed out of single
+      mahogany trees, some of them 96 feet long and 8 feet broad, which they
+      handled with the greatest ease and dexterity; they had a merry way with
+      them too, were quick of apprehension and clever at expressing their
+      meaning, and in their domestic utensils and implements they showed an
+      advance in civilisation on the other islanders of the group. Columbus did
+      some trade with the islanders as he sailed along the coast, but he does
+      not seem to have believed much in the gold story, for after sailing to the
+      western point of the island he bore away to the north again and sighted
+      the coast of Cuba on the 18th of May.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The reason why Columbus kept returning to the coast of Cuba was that he
+      believed it to be the mainland of Asia. The unlettered natives, who had
+      never read Marco Polo, told him that it was an island, although no man had
+      ever seen the end of it; but Columbus did not believe them, and sailed
+      westward in the belief that he would presently come upon the country and
+      city of Cathay. Soon he found himself in the wonderful labyrinth of islets
+      and sandbanks off the south coast; and because of the wonderful colours of
+      their flowers and climbing plants he called them Jardin de la Reina or
+      Queen&rsquo;s Garden. Dangerous as the navigation through these islands
+      was, he preferred to risk the shoals and sandbanks rather than round them
+      out at sea to the southward, for he believed them to be the islands which,
+      according to Marco Polo, lay in masses along the coast of Cathay. In this
+      adventure he had a very hard time of it; the lead had to be used all the
+      time, the ships often had to be towed, the wind veered round from every
+      quarter of the compass, and there were squalls and tempests, and currents
+      that threatened to set them ashore. By great good fortune, however, they
+      managed to get through the Archipelago without mishap. By June 3rd they
+      were sailing along the coast again, and Columbus had some conversation
+      with an old cacique who told him of a province called Mangon (or so
+      Columbus understood him) that lay to the west. Sir John Mandeville had
+      described the province of Mangi as being the richest in Cathay; and of
+      course, thought the Admiral, this must be the place. He went westward past
+      the Gulf of Xagua and got into the shallow sandy waters, now known as the
+      Jardinillos Bank, where the sea was whitened with particles of sand. When
+      he had got clear of this shoal water he stood across a broad bay towards a
+      native settlement where he was able to take in yams, fruit, fish, and
+      fresh water.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But this excitement and hard work were telling on the Admiral, and when a
+      native told him that there was a tribe close by with long tails, he
+      believed him; and later, when one of his men, coming back from a shore
+      expedition, reported that he had seen some figures in a forest wearing
+      white robes, Columbus believed that they were the people with the tails,
+      who wore a long garment to conceal them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was moving in a world of enchantment; the weather was like no weather
+      in any known part of the world; there were fogs, black and thick, which
+      blew down suddenly from the low marshy land, and blew away again as
+      suddenly; the sea was sometimes white as milk, sometimes black as pitch,
+      sometimes purple, sometimes green; scarlet cranes stood looking at them as
+      they slid past the low sandbanks; the warm foggy air smelt of roses;
+      shoals of turtles covered the waters, black butterflies circled in the
+      mist; and the fever that was beginning to work in the Admiral&rsquo;s
+      blood mounted to his brain, so that in this land of bad dreams his fixed
+      ideas began to dominate all his other faculties, and he decided that he
+      must certainly be on the coast of Cathay, in the magic land described by
+      Marco Polo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is nothing which illustrates the arbitrary and despotic government
+      of sea life so well as the nautical phrase &ldquo;make it so.&rdquo; The
+      very hours of the day, slipping westward under the keel of an east-going
+      ship, are &ldquo;made&rdquo; by rigid decree; the captain takes his
+      observation of sun or stars, and announces the position of the ship to be
+      at a certain spot on the surface of the globe; any errors of judgment or
+      deficiencies of method are covered by the words &ldquo;make it so.&rdquo;
+      And in all the elusive phenomena surrounding him the fevered brain of the
+      Admiral discerned evidence that he was really upon the coast of Asia,
+      although there was no method by which he could place the matter beyond a
+      doubt. The word Asia was not printed upon the sands of Cuba, as it might
+      be upon a map; the lines of longitude did not lie visibly across the
+      surface of the sea; there was nothing but sea and land, the Admiral&rsquo;s
+      charts, and his own conviction. Therefore Columbus decided to &ldquo;make
+      it so.&rdquo; If there was no other way of being sure that this was the
+      coast of Cathay, he would decree it to be the coast of Cathay by a legal
+      document and by oaths and affidavits. He would force upon the members of
+      his expedition a conviction at least equal to his own; and instead of
+      pursuing any further the coast that stretched interminably west and
+      south-west, he decided to say, in effect, and once and for all, &ldquo;Let
+      this be the mainland of Asia.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He called his secretary to him and made him draw up a form of oath or
+      testament, to which every member of the expedition was required to
+      subscribe, affirming that the land off which they were then lying (12th
+      June 1494), was the mainland of the Indies and that it was possible to
+      return to Spain by land from that place; and every officer who should ever
+      deny it in the future was laid under a penalty of ten thousand maravedis,
+      and every ship&rsquo;s boy or seaman under a penalty of one hundred
+      lashes; and in addition, any member of the expedition denying it in the
+      future was to have his tongue cut out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No one will pretend that this was the action of a sane man; neither will
+      any one wonder that Columbus was something less than sane after all he had
+      gone through, and with the beginnings of a serious illness already in his
+      blood. His achievement was slipping from his grasp; the gold had not been
+      found, the wonders of the East had not been discovered; and it was his
+      instinct to secure something from the general wreck that seemed to be
+      falling about him, and to force his own dreams to come true, that caused
+      him to cut this grim and fantastic legal caper off the coast of Cuba. He
+      thought it at the time unlikely, seeing the difficulties of navigation
+      that he had gone through, which he might be pardoned for regarding as
+      insuperable to a less skilful mariner, that any one should ever come that
+      way again; even he himself said that he would never risk his life again in
+      such a place. He wished his journey, therefore, not to have been made in
+      vain; and as he himself believed that he had stood on the mainland of Asia
+      he took care to take back with him the only kind of evidence that was
+      possible namely, the sworn affidavits of the ships&rsquo; crews.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Perhaps in his madness he would really have gone on and tried to reach the
+      Golden Chersonesus of Ptolemy, which according to Marco Polo lay just
+      beyond, and so to steer homeward round Ceylon and the Cape of Good Hope;
+      in which case he would either have been lost or would have discovered
+      Mexico. The crews, however, would not hear of the voyage being continued
+      westward. The ships were leaking and the salt water was spoiling the
+      already doubtful provisions and he was forced to turn back. He stood to
+      the south-east, and reached the Isle of Pines, to which he gave the name
+      of Evangelista, where the water-casks were filled, and from there he tried
+      to sail back to the east. But he found himself surrounded by islands and
+      banks in every direction, which made any straight course impossible. He
+      sailed south and east and west and north, and found himself always back
+      again in the middle of this charmed group of islands. He spent almost a
+      month trying to escape from them, and once his ship went ashore on a
+      sandbank and was only warped off with the greatest difficulty. On July 7th
+      he was back again in the region of the &ldquo;Queen&rsquo;s Gardens,&rdquo;
+      from which he stood across to the coast of Cuba.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He anchored and landed there, and being in great distress and difficulty
+      he had a large cross erected on the mainland, and had mass said. When the
+      Spaniards rose from their knees they saw an old native man observing them;
+      and the old man came and sat down beside Columbus and talked to him
+      through the interpreter. He told him that he had been in Jamaica and
+      Espanola as well as in Cuba, and that the coming of the Spaniards had
+      caused great distress to the people of the islands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He then spoke to Columbus about religion, and the gist of what he said was
+      something like this: &ldquo;The performance of your worship seems good to
+      me. You believe that this life is not everything; so do we; and I know
+      that when this life is over there are two places reserved for me, to one
+      of which I shall certainly go; one happy and beautiful, one dreadful and
+      miserable. Joy and kindness reign in the one place, which is good enough
+      for the best of men; and they will go there who while they have lived on
+      the earth have loved peace and goodness, and who have never robbed or
+      killed or been unkind. The other place is evil and full of shadows, and is
+      reserved for those who disturb and hurt the sons of men; how important it
+      is, therefore, that one should do no evil or injury in this world!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Columbus replied with a brief statement of his own theological views, and
+      added that he had been sent to find out if there were any persons in those
+      islands who did evil to others, such as the Caribs or cannibals, and that
+      if so he had come to punish them. The effect of this ingenuous speech was
+      heightened by a gift of hawks&rsquo; bells and pieces of broken glass;
+      upon receiving which the good old man fell down on his knees, and said
+      that the Spaniards must surely have come from heaven.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A few days later the voyage to the, south-east was resumed, and some
+      progress was made along the coast. But contrary winds arose which made it
+      impossible for the ships to round Cape Cruz, and Columbus decided to
+      employ the time of waiting in completing his explorations in Jamaica. He
+      therefore sailed due south until he once more sighted the beautiful
+      northern coast of that island, following it to the west and landing, as
+      his custom was, whenever he saw a good harbour or anchorage. The wind was
+      still from the east, and he spent a month beating to the eastward along
+      the south coast of the island, fascinated by its beauty, and willing to
+      stay and explore it, but prevented by the discontent of his crews, who
+      were only anxious to get back to Espanola. He had friendly interviews with
+      many of the natives of Jamaica, and at almost the last harbour at which he
+      touched a cacique with his wife and family and complete retinue came off
+      in canoes to the ship, begging Columbus to take him and his household back
+      to Spain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Columbus considers this family, and thinks wistfully how well they would
+      look in Barcelona. Father dressed in a cap of gold and green jewels,
+      necklace and earrings of the same; mother decked out in similar regalia,
+      with the addition of a small cotton apron; two sons and five brothers
+      dressed principally in a feather or two; two daughters mother-naked,
+      except that the elder, a handsome girl of eighteen, wears a jewelled
+      girdle from which depends a tablet as big as an ivy leaf, made of various
+      coloured stones embroidered on cotton. What an exhibit for one of the
+      triumphal processions: &ldquo;Native royal family, complete&rdquo;! But
+      Columbus thinks also of the scarcity of provisions on board his ships, and
+      wonders how all these royalties would like to live on a pint of sour wine
+      and a rotten biscuit each per day. Alas! there is not sour wine and rotten
+      biscuit enough for his own people; it is still a long way to Espanola; and
+      he is obliged to make polite excuses, and to say that he will come back
+      for his majesty another time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was on the 20th of August that Columbus, having the day before seen the
+      last of the dim blue hills of Jamaica, sighted again the long peninsula of
+      Hayti, called by him Cape San Miguel, but known to us as Cape Tiburon;
+      although it was not until he was hailed by a cacique who called out to him
+      &ldquo;Almirante, Almirante,&rdquo; that the seaworn mariners realised
+      with joy that the island must be Espanola. But they were a long way from
+      Isabella yet. They sailed along the south coast, meeting contrary winds,
+      and at one point landing nine men who were to cross the island, and try to
+      reach Isabella by land. Week followed week, and they made very poor
+      progress. In the beginning of September they were caught in a severe
+      tempest, which separated the ships for a time, and held the Admiral
+      weather-bound for eight days. There was an eclipse of the moon during this
+      period, and he took advantage of it to make an observation for longitude,
+      by which he found himself to be 5 hrs. 23 min., or 80 deg. 40&rsquo;, west
+      of Cadiz. In this observation there is an error of eighteen degrees, the
+      true longitude of the island of Saona, where the observation was taken,
+      being 62 deg. 20&rsquo; west of Cadiz; and the error is accounted for
+      partly by the inaccuracy of the tables of Regiomontanus and partly by the
+      crudity and inexactness of the Admiral&rsquo;s methods. On the 24th of
+      September they at last reached the easternmost point of Espanola, named by
+      Columbus San Rafael. They stood to the east a little longer, and
+      discovered the little island of Mona, which lies between Espanola and
+      Puerto Rico; and from thence shaped their course west-by-north for
+      Isabella. And no sooner had the course been set for home than the Admiral
+      suddenly and completely collapsed; was carried unconscious to his cabin;
+      and lay there in such extremity that his companions gave him up for lost.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is no ordinary strain to which poor Christopher has succumbed. He has
+      been five months at sea, sharing with the common sailors their bad food
+      and weary vigils, but bearing alone on his own shoulders a weight of
+      anxiety of which they knew nothing. Watch has relieved watch on his ships,
+      but there has been no one to relieve him, or to lift the burden from his
+      mind. The eyes of a nation are upon him, watchful and jealous eyes that
+      will not forgive him any failure; and to earn their approval he has taken
+      this voyage of five months, during which he has only been able to forget
+      his troubles in the brief hours of slumber. Strange uncharted seas,
+      treacherous winds and currents, drenching surges have all done their part
+      in bringing him to this pass; and his body, now starved on rotten
+      biscuits, now glutted with unfamiliar fruits, has been preyed upon by the
+      tortured mind as the mind itself has been shaken and loosened by the
+      weakness of the body. He lies there in his cabin in a deep stupor; memory,
+      sight, and all sensation completely gone from him; dead but for the heart
+      that beats on faintly, and the breath that comes and goes through the
+      parted lips. Nino, de la Cosa, and the others come and look at him, shake
+      their heads, and go away again. There is nothing to be done; perhaps they
+      will get him back to Isabella in time to bury him there; perhaps not.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And meanwhile they are back again in calm and safe waters, and coasting a
+      familiar shore; and the faithful little Nina, shaking out her wings in the
+      sunny breezes, trips under the guidance of unfamiliar hands towards her
+      moorings in the Bay of Isabella. It is a sad company that she carries; for
+      in the cabin, deaf and blind and unconscious, there lies the heart and
+      guiding spirit of the New World. He does not hear the talking of the
+      waters past the Nina&rsquo;s timbers, does not hear the stamping on the
+      deck and shortening of sail and unstopping of cables and getting out of
+      gear; does not hear the splash of the anchor, nor the screams of birds
+      that rise circling from the shore. Does not hear the greetings and the
+      news; does not see bending over him a kind, helpful, and well-beloved
+      face. He sees and hears and knows nothing; and in that state of rest and
+      absence from the body they carry him, still living and breathing, ashore.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="ch2c" id="ch2c"></a>CHAPTER II.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE CONQUEST OF ESPANOLA
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We must now go back to the time when Columbus, having made what
+      arrangements he could for the safety of Espanola, left it under the charge
+      of his brother James. Ojeda had duly marched into the interior and taken
+      over the command of Fort St. Thomas, thus setting free Margarite,
+      according to his instructions, to lead an expedition for purposes of
+      reconnoitre and demonstration through the island. These, at any rate, were
+      Margarite&rsquo;s orders, duly communicated to him by Ojeda; but Margarite
+      will have none of them. Well born, well educated, well bred, he ought at
+      least to have the spirit to carry out orders so agreeable to a gentleman
+      of adventure; but unfortunately, although Margarite is a gentleman by
+      birth, he is a low and dishonest dog by nature. He cannot take the decent
+      course, cannot even play the man, and take his share in the military work
+      of the colony. Instead of cutting paths through the forest, and exhibiting
+      his military strength in an orderly and proper way as the Admiral intended
+      he should, he marches forth from St. Thomas, on hearing that Columbus has
+      sailed away, and encamps no further off than the Vega Real, that pleasant
+      place of green valleys and groves and murmuring rivers. He encamps there,
+      takes up his quarters there, will not budge from there for any Admiral;
+      and as for James Columbus and his counsellors, they may go to the devil
+      for all Margarite cares. One of them at least, he knows&mdash;Friar Buil&mdash;is
+      not such a fool as to sit down under the command of that solemn-faced,
+      uncouth young snip from Genoa; and doubtless when he is tired of the Vega
+      Real he and Buil can arrange something between them. In the meantime, here
+      is a very beautiful sunshiny place, abounding in all kinds of provisions;
+      food for more than one kind of appetite, as he has noticed when he has
+      thrust his rude way into the native houses and seen the shapely daughters
+      of the islanders. He has a little army of soldiers to forage for him; they
+      can get him food and gold, and they are useful also in those other
+      marauding expeditions designed to replenish the seraglio that he has
+      established in his camp; and if they like to do a little marauding and
+      woman-stealing on their own account, it is no affair of his, and may keep
+      the devils in a good temper. Thus Don Pedro Margarite to himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The peaceable and gentle natives soon began to resent these gross doings.
+      To robbery succeeded outrage, and to outrage murder&mdash;all three
+      committed in the very houses of the natives; and they began to murmur, to
+      withhold that goodwill which the Spaniards had so sorely tried, and to
+      develop a threatening attitude that was soon communicated to the natives
+      in the vicinity of Isabella, and came under the notice of James Columbus
+      and his council. Grave, bookish, wool-weaving young James, not used to
+      military affairs, and not at all comfortable in his command, can think of
+      no other expedient than&mdash;to write a letter to Margarite remonstrating
+      with him for his licentious excesses and reminding him of the Admiral&rsquo;s
+      instructions, which were being neglected.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Margarite receives the letter and reads it with a contemptuous laugh. He
+      is not going to be ordered about by a family of Italian wool-weavers, and
+      the only change in his conduct is that he becomes more and more careless
+      and impudent, extending the area of his lawless operations, and making
+      frequent visits to Isabella itself, swaggering under the very nose of
+      solemn James, and soon deep in consultation with Friar Buil.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this moment, that is to say very soon after the departure of
+      Christopher on his voyage to Cuba and Jamaica, three ships dropped anchor
+      in the Bay of Isabella. They were laden with the much-needed supplies from
+      Spain, and had been sent out under the command of Bartholomew Columbus. It
+      will be remembered that when Christopher reached Spain after his first
+      voyage one of his first cares had been to write to Bartholomew, asking him
+      to join him. The letter, doubtless after many wanderings, had found
+      Bartholomew in France at the court of Charles VIII., by whom he was held
+      in some esteem; in fact it was Charles who provided him with the necessary
+      money for his journey to Spain, for Bartholomew had not greatly prospered,
+      in spite of his voyage with Diaz to the Cape of Good Hope and of his
+      having been in England making exploration proposals at the court of Henry
+      VII. He had arrived in Spain after Columbus had sailed again, and had
+      presented himself at court with his two nephews, Ferdinand and Diego, both
+      of whom were now in the service of Prince Juan as pages. Ferdinand and
+      Isabella seem to have received Bartholomew kindly. They liked this capable
+      navigator, who had much of Christopher&rsquo;s charm of manner, and was
+      more a man of the world than he. Much more practical also; Ferdinand would
+      be sure to like him better than he liked Christopher, whose pompous manner
+      and long-winded speeches bored him. Bartholomew was quick, alert, decisive
+      and practical; he was an accomplished navigator&mdash;almost as
+      accomplished as Columbus, as it appeared. He was offered the command of
+      the three ships which were being prepared to go to Espanola with supplies;
+      and he duly arrived there after a prosperous voyage. It will be remembered
+      that Christopher had, so far as we know, kept the secret of the road to
+      the new islands; and Bartholomew can have had nothing more to guide him
+      than a rough chart showing the islands in a certain latitude, and the
+      distance to be run towards them by dead-reckoning. That he should have
+      made an exact landfall and sailed into the Bay of Isabella, never having
+      been there before, was a certificate of the highest skill in navigation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Unfortunately it was James who was in charge of the colony; Bartholomew
+      had no authority, for once his ships had arrived in port his mission was
+      accomplished until Christopher should return and find him employment. He
+      was therefore forced to sit still and watch his young brother struggling
+      with the unruly Spaniards. His presence, however, was no doubt a further
+      exasperation to the malcontents. There existed in Isabella a little
+      faction of some of the aristocrats who had never, forgiven Columbus for
+      employing them in degrading manual labour; who had never forgiven him in
+      fact for being there at all, and in command over them. And now here was
+      another woolweaver, or son of a wool-weaver, come to put his finger in the
+      pie that Christopher has apparently provided so carefully for himself and
+      his family.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Margarite and Buil and some others, treacherous scoundrels all of them,
+      but clannish to their own race and class, decide that they will put up
+      with it no longer; they are tired of Espanola in any case, and Margarite,
+      from too free indulgence among the native women, has contracted an
+      unpleasant disease, and thinks that a sea voyage and the attentions of a
+      Spanish doctor will be good for him. It is easy for them to put their plot
+      into execution. There are the ships; there is nothing, for them to do but
+      take a couple of them, provision them, and set sail for Spain, where they
+      trust to their own influence, and the story they will be able to tell of
+      the falseness of the Admiral&rsquo;s promises, to excuse their breach of
+      discipline. And sail they do, snapping their fingers at the wool-weavers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      James and Bartholomew were perhaps glad to be rid of them, but their
+      relief was tempered with anxiety as to the result on Christopher&rsquo;s
+      reputation and favour when the malcontents should have made their false
+      representations at Court. The brothers were powerless to do anything in
+      that matter, however, and the state of affairs in Espanola demanded their
+      close attention. Margarite&rsquo;s little army, finding itself without
+      even the uncertain restraint of its commander, now openly mutinied and
+      abandoned itself to the wildest excesses. It became scattered and
+      disbanded, and little groups of soldiers went wandering about the country,
+      robbing and outraging and carrying cruelty and oppression among the
+      natives. Long-suffering as these were, and patiently as they bore with the
+      unspeakable barbarities of the Spanish soldiers, there came a point beyond
+      which their forbearance would not go. An aching spirit of unforgiveness
+      and revenge took the place of their former gentleness and compliance; and
+      here and there, when the Spaniards were more brutal and less cautious than
+      was their brutal and incautious habit, the natives fell upon them and took
+      swift and bloody revenge. Small parties found themselves besieged and put
+      to death whole villages, whose hospitality had been abused, cut off
+      wandering groups of the marauders and burned the houses where they lodged.
+      The disaffection spread; and Caonabo, who had never abated his resentment
+      at the Spanish intrusion into the island, thought the time had come to
+      make another demonstration of native power.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fortunately for the Spaniards his object was the fort of St. Thomas,
+      commanded by the alert Ojeda; and this young man, who was not easily to be
+      caught napping, had timely intelligence of his intention. When Caonabo,
+      mustering ten thousand men, suddenly surrounded the fort and prepared to
+      attack it, he found the fifty Spaniards of the garrison more than ready
+      for him, and his naked savages dared not advance within the range of the
+      crossbows and arquebuses. Caonabo tried to besiege the station, watching
+      every gorge and road through which supplies could reach it, but Ojeda made
+      sallies and raids upon the native force, under which it became thinned and
+      discouraged; and Caonabo had finally to withdraw to his own territory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But he was not yet beaten. He decided upon another and much larger
+      enterprise, which was to induce the other caciques of the island to
+      co-operate with him in an attack upon Isabella, the population of which he
+      knew would have been much thinned and weakened by disease. The island was
+      divided into five native provinces. The northeastern part, named Marien,
+      was under the rule of Guacanagari, whose headquarters were near the
+      abandoned La Navidad. The remaining eastern part of the island, called
+      Higuay, was under a chief named Cotabanama. The western province was
+      Xaragua, governed by one Behechio, whose sister, Anacaona, was the wife of
+      Caonabo. The middle of the island was divided into two provinces-that
+      which extended from the northern coast to the Cibao mountains and included
+      the Vega Real being governed by Guarionex, and that which extended from
+      the Cibao mountains to the south being governed by Caonabo. All these
+      rulers were more or less embittered by the outrages and cruelties of the
+      Spaniards, and all agreed to join with Caonabo except Guacanagari. That
+      loyal soul, so faithful to what he knew of good, shocked and distressed as
+      he was by outrages from which his own people had suffered no less than the
+      others, could not bring himself to commit what he regarded as a breach of
+      the laws of hospitality. It was upon his shores that Columbus had first
+      landed; and although it was his own country and his own people whose
+      wrongs were to be avenged, he could not bring himself to turn traitor to
+      the grave Admiral with whom, in those happy days of the past, he had
+      enjoyed so much pleasant intercourse. His refusal to co-operate delayed
+      the plan of Caonabo, who directed the island coalition against Guacanagari
+      himself in order to bring him to reason. He was attacked by the
+      neighbouring chiefs; one of his wives was killed and another captured; but
+      still he would not swerve from his ideal of conduct.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first thing that Columbus recognised when he opened his eyes after his
+      long period of lethargy and insensibility was the face of his brother
+      Bartholomew bend-over him where he lay in bed in his own house at
+      Espanola. Nothing could have been more welcome to him, sick, lonely and
+      discouraged as he was, than the presence of that strong, helpful brother;
+      and from the time when Bartholomew&rsquo;s friendly face first greeted him
+      he began to get better. His first act, as soon as he was strong enough to
+      sign a paper, was to appoint Bartholomew to the office of Adelantado, or
+      Lieutenant-Governor&mdash;an indiscreet and rather tactless proceeding
+      which, although it was not outside his power as a bearer of the royal
+      seal, was afterwards resented by King Ferdinand as a piece of impudent
+      encroachment upon the royal prerogative. But Columbus was unable to
+      transact business himself, and James was manifestly of little use; the
+      action was natural enough.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the early days of his convalescence he had another pleasant experience,
+      in the shape of a visit from Guacanagari, who came to express his concern
+      at the Admiral&rsquo;s illness, and to tell him the story of what had been
+      going on in his absence. The gentle creature referred again with tears to
+      the massacre at La Navidad, and again asserted that innocence of any hand
+      in it which Columbus had happily never doubted; and he told him also of
+      the secret league against Isabella, of his own refusal to join it, and of
+      the attacks to which he had consequently been subjected. It must have been
+      an affecting meeting for these two, who represented the first friendship
+      formed between the Old World and the New, who were both of them destined
+      to suffer in the impact of civilisation and savagery, and whose names and
+      characters were happily destined to survive that impact, and to triumph
+      over the oblivion of centuries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So long as the native population remained hostile and unconquered by
+      kindness or force, it was impossible to work securely at the development
+      of the colony; and Columbus, however regretfully, had come to feel that
+      circumstances more or less obliged him to use force. At first he did not
+      quite realise the gravity of the position, and attempted to conquer or
+      reconcile the natives in little groups. Guarionex, the cacique of the Vega
+      Real, was by gifts and smooth words soothed back into a friendship which
+      was consolidated by the marriage of his daughter with Columbus&rsquo;s
+      native interpreter. It was useless, how ever, to try and make friends with
+      Caonabo, that fierce irreconcilable; and it was felt that only by
+      stratagem could he be secured. No sooner was this suggested than Ojeda
+      volunteered for the service. Amid the somewhat slow-moving figures of our
+      story this man appears as lively as a flea; and he dances across our pages
+      in a sensation of intrepid feats of arms that make his great popularity
+      among the Spaniards easily credible to us. He did not know what fear was;
+      he was always ready for a fight of any kind; a quarrel in the streets of
+      Madrid, a duel, a fight with a man or a wild beast, a brawl in a tavern or
+      a military expedition, were all the same to him, if only they gave him an
+      opportunity for fighting. He had a little picture of the Virgin hung round
+      his neck, by which he swore, and to which he prayed; he had never been so
+      much as scratched in all his affrays, and he believed that he led a
+      charmed life. Who would go out against Caonabo, the Goliath of the island?
+      He, little David Ojeda, he would go out and undertake to fetch the giant
+      back with him; and all he wanted was ten men, a pair of handcuffs, a
+      handful of trinkets, horses for the whole of his company, and his little
+      image or picture of the Virgin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Columbus may have smiled at this proposal, but he knew his man; and Ojeda
+      duly departed with his horses and his ten men. Plunging into the forest,
+      he made his way through sixty leagues of dense undergrowth until he
+      arrived in the very heart of Caonabo&rsquo;s territory and presented
+      himself at the chiefs house. The chief was at home, and, not unimpressed
+      by the valour of Ojeda, who represented himself as coming on a friendly
+      mission, received him under conditions of truce. He had an eye for
+      military prowess, this Caonabo, and something of the lion&rsquo;s heart in
+      him; he recognised in Ojeda the little man who kept him so long at bay
+      outside Fort St. Thomas; and, after the manner of lion-hearted people,
+      liked him none the worse for that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ojeda proposes that the King should accompany him to Isabella to make
+      peace. No, says Caonabo. Then Ojeda tries another way. There is a poetical
+      side to this big fighting savage, and often in more friendly days, when
+      the bell in the little chapel of Isabella has been ringing for Vespers,
+      the cacique has been observed sitting alone on some hill listening,
+      enchanted by the strange silver voice that floated to him across the
+      sunset. The bell has indeed become something of a personality in the
+      island: all the neighbouring savages listen to its voice with awe and
+      fascination, pausing with inclined heads whenever it begins to speak from
+      its turret.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ojeda talks to Caonabo about the bell, and tells him what a wonderful
+      thing it is; tells him also that if he will come with him to Isabella he
+      shall have the bell for a present. Poetry and public policy struggle
+      together in Caonabo&rsquo;s heart, but poetry wins; the great powerful
+      savage, urged thereto by his childish lion-heart, will come to Isabella if
+      they will give him the bell. He sets forth, accompanied by a native
+      retinue, and by Ojeda and his ten horsemen. Presently they come to a river
+      and Ojeda produces his bright manacles; tells the King that they are royal
+      ornaments and that he has been instructed to bestow them upon Caonabo as a
+      sign of honour. But first he must come alone to the river and bathe, which
+      he does. Then he must sit with Ojeda upon his horse; which he does. Then
+      he must have fitted on to him the shining silver trinkets; which he does,
+      the great grinning giant, pleased with his toys. Then, to show him what it
+      is like to be on a horse, Ojeda canters gently round in widening and ever
+      widening circles; a turn of his spurred heels, and the canter becomes a
+      gallop, the circle becomes a straight line, and Caonabo is on the road to
+      Isabella. When they are well beyond reach of the natives they pause and
+      tie Caonabo securely into his place; and by this treachery bring him into
+      Isabella, where he is imprisoned in the Admiral&rsquo;s house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sulky giant, brought thus into captivity, refuses to bend his proud,
+      stubborn heart into even a form of submission. He takes no notice of
+      Columbus, and pays him no honour, although honour is paid to himself as a
+      captive king. He sits there behind his bars gnawing his fingers, listening
+      to the voice of the bell that has lured him into captivity, and thinking
+      of the free open life which he is to know no more. Though he will pay no
+      deference to the Admiral, will not even rise when he enters his presence,
+      there is one person he holds in honour, and that is Ojeda. He will not
+      rise when the Admiral comes; but when Ojeda comes, small as he is, and
+      without external state, the chief makes his obeisance to him. The Admiral
+      he sets at defiance, and boasts of his destruction of La Navidad, and of
+      his plan to destroy Isabella; Ojeda he respects and holds in honour, as
+      being the only man in the island brave enough to come into his house and
+      carry him off a captive. There is a good deal of the sportsman in Caonabo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The immediate result of the capture of Caonabo was to rouse the islanders
+      to further hostilities, and one of the brothers of the captive king led a
+      force of seven thousand men to the vicinity of St. Thomas, to which Ojeda,
+      however, had in the meantime returned. His small force was augmented by
+      some men despatched by Bartholomew Columbus on receipt of an urgent
+      message; and in command of this force Ojeda sallied forth against the
+      natives and attacked them furiously on horse and on foot, killing a great
+      part of them, taking others prisoner, and putting the rest to flight. This
+      was the beginning of the end of the island resistance. A month or two
+      later, when Columbus was better, he and Bartholomew together mustered the
+      whole of their available army and marched out in search of the native
+      force, which he knew had been rallied and greatly augmented.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two forces met near the present town of Santiago, in the plain known
+      as the Savanna of Matanza. The Spanish force was divided into three main
+      divisions, under the command of Christopher and Bartholomew Columbus and
+      Ojeda respectively. These three divisions attacked the Indians
+      simultaneously from different points, Ojeda throwing his cavalry upon
+      them, riding them down, and cutting them to pieces. Drums were beaten and
+      trumpets blown; the guns were fired from the cover of the trees; and a
+      pack of bloodhounds, which had been sent out from Spain with Bartholomew,
+      were let loose upon the natives and tore their bodies to pieces. It was an
+      easy and horrible victory. The native force was estimated by Columbus at
+      one hundred thousand men, although we shall probably be nearer the mark if
+      we reduce that estimate by one half.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The powers of hell were let loose that day into the Earthly Paradise. The
+      guns mowed red lines of blood through the solid ranks of the natives; the
+      great Spanish horses trod upon and crushed their writhing bodies, in which
+      arrows and lances continually stuck and quivered; and the ferocious dogs,
+      barking and growling, seized the naked Indians by the throat, dragged them
+      to the ground, and tore out their very entrails . . . . Well for us that
+      the horrible noises of that day are silent now; well for the world that
+      that place of bloodshed and horror has grown green again; better for us
+      and for the world if those cries had never been heard, and that quiet
+      place had never received a stain that centuries of green succeeding
+      springtides can never wash away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was some time before this final battle that the convalescence of the
+      Admiral was further assisted by the arrival of four ships commanded by
+      Antonio Torres, who must have passed, out of sight and somewhere on the
+      high seas, the ships bearing Buil and Margarite back to Spain. He brought
+      with him a large supply of fresh provisions for the colony, and a number
+      of genuine colonists, such as fishermen, carpenters, farmers, mechanics,
+      and millers. And better still he brought a letter from the Sovereigns,
+      dated the 16th of August 1494, which did much to cheer the shaken spirits
+      of Columbus. The words with which he had freighted his empty ships had not
+      been in vain; and in this reply to them he was warmly commended for his
+      diligence, and reminded that he enjoyed the unshaken confidence of the
+      Sovereigns. They proposed that a caravel should sail every month from
+      Spain and from Isabella, bearing intelligence of the colony and also, it
+      was hoped, some of its products. In a general letter addressed to the
+      colony the settlers were reminded of the obedience they owed to the
+      Admiral, and were instructed to obey him in all things under the penalty
+      of heavy fines. They invited Columbus to come back if he could in order to
+      be present at the convention which was to establish the line of
+      demarcation between Spanish and Portuguese possessions; or if he could not
+      come himself to send his brother Bartholomew. There were reasons, however,
+      which made this difficult. Columbus wished to despatch the ships back
+      again as speedily as possible, in order that news of him might help to
+      counteract the evil rumours that he knew Buil and Margarite would be
+      spreading. He himself was as yet (February 1494) too ill to travel; and
+      during his illness Bartholomew could not easily be spared. It was
+      therefore decided to send home James, who could most easily be spared, and
+      whose testimony as a member of the governing body during the absence of
+      the Admiral on his voyage to Cuba might be relied upon to counteract the
+      jealous accusations of Margarite and Buil.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Unfortunately there was no golden cargo to send back with him. As much
+      gold as possible was scraped together, but it was very little. The usual
+      assortment of samples of various island products was also sent; but still
+      the vessels were practically empty. Columbus must have been painfully
+      conscious that the time for sending samples had more than expired, and
+      that the people in Spain might reasonably expect some of the actual riches
+      of which there had been so many specimens and promises. In something
+      approaching desperation, he decided to fill the empty holds of the ships
+      with something which, if it was not actual money, could at least be made
+      to realise money. From their sunny dreaming life on the island five
+      hundred natives were taken and lodged in the dark holds of the caravels,
+      to be sent to Spain and sold there for what they would fetch. Of course
+      they were to be &ldquo;freed&rdquo; and converted to Christianity in the
+      process; that was always part of the programme, but it did not interfere
+      with business. They were not man-eating Caribs or fierce marauding savages
+      from neighbouring islands, but were of the mild and peaceable race that
+      peopled Espanola. The wheels of civilisation were beginning to turn in the
+      New World.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /> <a name="crudemap" id="crudemap"></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+      <img alt="crudemap.jpg (40K)" src="images/crudemap.jpg" style="width:100%;" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/crudemap.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
+    </h5>
+<p>
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</p>
+    <p>
+      After the capture of Caonabo and the massacre of April 25th Columbus
+      marched through the island, receiving the surrender and submission of the
+      terrified natives. At the approach of his force the caciques came out and
+      sued for peace; and if here and there there was a momentary resistance, a
+      charge of cavalry soon put an end to it. One by one the kings surrendered
+      and laid down their arms, until all the island rulers had capitulated with
+      the exception of Behechio, into whose territory Columbus did not march,
+      and who sullenly retired to the south-western corner of the island. The
+      terms of peace were harsh enough, and were suggested by the dilemma of
+      Columbus in his frantic desire to get together some gold at any cost. A
+      tribute of gold-dust was laid upon every adult native in the island. Every
+      three months a hawk&rsquo;s bell full of gold was to be brought to the
+      treasury at Isabella, and in the case 39 of caciques the measure was a
+      calabash. A receipt in the form of a brass medal was fastened to the neck
+      of every Indian when he paid his tribute, and those who could not show the
+      medal with the necessary number of marks were to be further fined and
+      punished. In the districts where there was no gold, 25 lbs. of cotton was
+      accepted instead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This levy was made in ignorance of the real conditions under which the
+      natives possessed themselves of the gold. What they had in many cases
+      represented the store of years, and in all but one or two favoured
+      districts it was quite impossible for them to keep up the amount of the
+      tribute. Yet the hawks&rsquo; bells, which once had been so eagerly
+      coveted and were now becoming hated symbols of oppression, had to be
+      filled somehow; and as the day of payment drew near the wretched natives,
+      who had formerly only sought for gold when a little of it was wanted for a
+      pretty ornament, had now to work with frantic energy in the river sands;
+      or in other cases, to toil through the heat of the day in the cotton
+      fields which they had formerly only cultivated enough to furnish their
+      very scant requirements of use and adornment. One or two caciques, knowing
+      that their people could not possibly furnish the required amount of gold,
+      begged that its value in grain might be accepted instead; but that was not
+      the kind of wealth that Columbus was seeking. It must be gold or nothing;
+      and rather than receive any other article from the gold-bearing districts,
+      he consented to take half the amount.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus step by step, and under the banner of the Holy Catholic religion, did
+      dark and cruel misery march through the groves and glades of the island
+      and banish for ever its ancient peace. This long-vanished race that was
+      native to the island of Espanola seems to have had some of the happiest
+      and most lovable qualities known to dwellers on this planet. They had none
+      of the brutalities of the African, the paralysing wisdom of the Asian, nor
+      the tragic potentialities of the European peoples. Their life was from day
+      to day, and from season to season, like the life of flowers and birds.
+      They lived in such order and peaceable community as the common sense of
+      their own simple needs suggested; they craved no pleasures except those
+      that came free from nature, and sought no wealth but what the sun gave
+      them. In their verdant island, near to the heart and source of light,
+      surrounded by the murmur of the sea, and so enriched by nature that the
+      idea, of any other kind of riches never occurred to them, their existence
+      went to a happy dancing measure like that of the fauns and nymphs in whose
+      charmed existence they believed. The sun and moon were to them creatures
+      of their island who had escaped from a cavern by the shore and now
+      wandered free in the upper air, peopling it with happy stars; and man
+      himself they believed to have sprung from crevices in the rocks, like the
+      plants that grew tall and beautiful wherever there was a handful of soil
+      for their roots. Poor happy children! You are all dead a long while ago
+      now, and have long been hushed in the great humming sleep and silence of
+      Time; the modern world has no time nor room for people like you, with so
+      much kindness and so little ambition . . . . Yet their free pagan souls
+      were given a chance to be penned within the Christian fold; the priest
+      accompanied the gunner and the bloodhound, the missionary walked beside
+      the slave-driver; and upon the bewildered sun-bright surface of their
+      minds the shadow of the cross was for a moment thrown. Verily to them the
+      professors of Christ brought not peace, but a sword.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="ch3c" id="ch3c"></a>CHAPTER III.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      UPS AND DOWNS
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While Columbus was toiling under the tropical sun to make good his
+      promises to the Crown, Margarite and Buil, having safely come home to
+      Spain from across the seas, were busy setting forth their view of the
+      value of his discoveries. It was a view entirely different from any that
+      Ferdinand and Isabella had heard before, and coming as it did from two men
+      of position and importance who had actually been in Espanola, and were
+      loyal and religious subjects of the Crown, it could not fail to receive,
+      if not immediate and complete credence, at any rate grave attention.
+      Hitherto the Sovereigns had only heard one side of the matter; an
+      occasional jealous voice may have been raised from the neighbourhood of
+      the Pinzons or some one else not entirely satisfied with his own position
+      in the affair; but such small cries of dissent had naturally had little
+      chance against the dignified eloquence of the Admiral.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, however, the matter was different. People who were at least the
+      equals of Columbus in intelligence, and his superiors by birth and
+      education, had seen with their own eyes the things of which he had spoken,
+      and their account differed widely from his. They represented things in
+      Espanola as being in a very bad way indeed, which was true enough; drew a
+      dismal picture of an overcrowded colony ravaged with disease and suffering
+      from lack of provisions; and held forth at length upon the very doubtful
+      quality of the gold with which the New World was supposed to abound. More
+      than this, they brought grave charges against Columbus himself,
+      representing him as unfit to govern a colony, given to favouritism, and,
+      worst of all, guilty of having deliberately misrepresented for his own
+      ends the resources of the colony. This as we know was not true. It was not
+      for his own ends, or for any ends at all within the comprehension of men
+      like Margarite and Buil, that poor Christopher had spoken so glowingly out
+      of a heart full of faith in what he had seen and done. Purposes, dim
+      perhaps, but far greater and loftier than any of which these two mean
+      souls had understanding, animated him alike in his discoveries and in his
+      account of them; although that does not alter the unpleasant fact that at
+      the stage matters had now reached it seemed as though there might have
+      been serious misrepresentation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ferdinand and Isabella, thus confronted with a rather difficult situation,
+      acted with great wisdom and good sense. How much or how little they
+      believed we do not know, but it was obviously their duty, having heard
+      such an account from responsible officers, to investigate matters for
+      themselves without assuming either that the report was true or untrue.
+      They immediately had four caravels furnished with supplies, and decided to
+      appoint an agent to accompany the expedition, investigate the affairs of
+      the colony, and make a report to them. If the Admiral was still absent
+      when their agent reached the colony he was to be entrusted with the
+      distribution of the supplies which were being sent out; for Columbus&rsquo;s
+      long absence from Espanola had given rise to some fears for his safety.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Sovereigns had just come to this decision (April 1495) when a letter
+      arrived from the Admiral himself, announcing his return to Espanola after
+      discovering the veritable mainland of Asia, as the notarial document
+      enclosed with the letter attested. Torres and James Columbus had arrived
+      in Spain, bearing the memorandum which some time ago we saw the Admiral
+      writing; and they were able to do something towards allaying the fears of
+      the Sovereigns as to the condition of the colony. The King and Queen,
+      nevertheless, wisely decided to carry out their original intention, and in
+      appointing an agent they very handsomely chose one of the men whom
+      Columbus had recommended to them in his letter&mdash;Juan Aguado. This
+      action shows a friendliness to Columbus and confidence in him that lead
+      one to suspect that the tales of Margarite and Buil had been taken with a
+      grain of salt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the same time the Sovereigns made one or two orders which could not but
+      be unwelcome to Columbus. A decree was issued making it lawful for all
+      native-born Spaniards to make voyages of discovery, and to settle in
+      Espanola itself if they liked. This was an infringement of the original
+      privileges granted to the Admiral&mdash;privileges which were really
+      absurd, and which can only have been granted in complete disbelief that
+      anything much would come of his discovery. It took Columbus two years to
+      get this order modified, and in the meantime a great many Spanish
+      adventurers, our old friends the Pinzons among them, did actually make
+      voyages and added to the area explored by the Spaniards in Columbus&rsquo;s
+      lifetime. Columbus was bitterly jealous that any one should be admitted to
+      the western ocean, which he regarded as his special preserve, except under
+      his supreme authority; and he is reported to have said that once the way
+      to the West had been pointed out &ldquo;even the very tailors turned
+      explorers.&rdquo; There, surely, spoke the long dormant woolweaver in him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The commission given to Aguado was very brief, and so vaguely worded that
+      it might mean much or little, according to the discretion of the
+      commissioner and the necessities of the case as viewed by him. &ldquo;We
+      send to you Juan Aguada, our Groom of the Chambers, who will speak to you
+      on our part. We command you to give him faith and credit.&rdquo; A letter
+      was also sent to Columbus in which he was instructed to reduce the number
+      of people dependent on the colony to five hundred instead of a thousand;
+      and the control of the mines was entrusted to one Pablo Belvis, who was
+      sent out as chief metallurgist. As for the slaves that Columbus had sent
+      home, Isabella forbade their sale until inquiry could be made into the
+      condition of their capture, and the fine moral point involved was
+      entrusted to the ecclesiastical authorities for examination and solution.
+      Poor Christopher, knowing as he did that five hundred heretics were being
+      burned every year by the Grand Inquisitor, had not expected this
+      hair-splitting over the fate of heathens who had rebelled against Spanish
+      authority; and it caused him some distress when he heard of it. The
+      theologians, however, proved equal to the occasion, and the slaves were
+      duly sold in Seville market.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Aguado sailed from Cadiz at the end of August 1495, and reached Espanola
+      in October. James Columbus (who does not as yet seem to be in very great
+      demand anywhere, and who doubtless conceals behind his grave visage much
+      honest amazement at the amount of life that he is seeing) returned with
+      him. Aguado, on arriving at Isabella, found that Columbus was absent
+      establishing forts in the interior of the island, Bartholomew being left
+      in charge at Isabella.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Aguado, who had apparently been found faithful in small matters, was found
+      wanting in his use of the authority that had been entrusted to him. It
+      seems to have turned his head; for instead of beginning quietly to
+      investigate the affairs of the colony as he had been commanded to do he
+      took over from Bartholomew the actual government, and interpreted his
+      commission as giving him the right to supersede the Admiral himself. The
+      unhappy colony, which had no doubt been enjoying some brief period of
+      peace under the wise direction of Bartholomew, was again thrown into
+      confusion by the doings of Aguado. He arrested this person, imprisoned
+      that; ordered that things should be done this way, which had formerly been
+      done that way; and if they had formerly been done that way, then he
+      ordered that they should be done this way&mdash;in short he committed
+      every mistake possible for a man in his situation armed with a little
+      brief authority. He did not hesitate to let it be known that he was there
+      to examine the conduct of the Admiral himself; and we may be quite sure
+      that every one in the colony who had a grievance or an ill tale to carry,
+      carried it to Aguado. His whole attitude was one of enmity and disloyalty
+      to the Admiral who had so handsomely recommended him to the notice of the
+      Sovereigns; and so undisguised was his attitude that even the Indians
+      began to lodge their complaints and to see a chance by which they might
+      escape from the intolerable burden of the gold tribute.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was at this point that Columbus returned and found Aguado ruling in the
+      place of Bartholomew, who had wisely made no protest against his own
+      deposition, but was quietly waiting for the Admiral to return. Columbus
+      might surely have been forgiven if he had betrayed extreme anger and
+      annoyance at the doings of Aguado; and it is entirely to his credit that
+      he concealed such natural wrath as he may have felt, and greeted Aguado
+      with extreme courtesy and ceremony as a representative of the Sovereigns.
+      He made no protest, but decided to return himself to Spain and confront
+      the jealousy and ill-fame that were accumulating against him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Just as the ships were all ready to sail, one of the hurricanes which
+      occur periodically in the West Indies burst upon the island, lashing the
+      sea into a wall of advancing foam that destroyed everything before it.
+      Among other things it destroyed three out of the four ships, dashing them
+      on the beach and reducing them to complete wreckage. The only one that
+      held to her anchor and, although much battered and damaged, rode out the
+      gale, was the Nina, that staunch little friend that had remained faithful
+      to the Admiral through so many dangers and trials. There was nothing for
+      it but to build a new ship out of the fragments of the wrecks, and to make
+      the journey home with two ships instead of with four.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this moment, while he was waiting for the ship to be completed,
+      Columbus heard a piece of news of a kind that never failed to rouse his
+      interest. There was a young Spaniard named Miguel Diaz who had got into
+      disgrace in Isabella some time before on account of a duel, and had
+      wandered into the island until he had come out on the south coast at the
+      mouth of the river Ozama, near the site of the present town of Santo
+      Domingo. There he had fallen in love with a female cacique and had made
+      his home with her. She, knowing the Spanish taste, and anxious to please
+      her lover and to retain him in her territory, told him of some rich
+      gold-mines that there were in the neighbourhood, and suggested that he
+      should inform the Admiral, who would perhaps remove the settlement from
+      Isabella to the south coast. She provided him with guides and sent him off
+      to Isabella, where, hearing that his antagonist had recovered, and that he
+      himself was therefore in no danger of punishment, he presented himself
+      with his story.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Columbus immediately despatched Bartholomew with a party to examine the
+      mines; and sure enough they found in the river Hayna undoubted evidence of
+      a wealth far in excess of that contained in the Cibao gold-mines.
+      Moreover, they had noticed two ancient excavations about which the natives
+      could tell them nothing, but which made them think that the mines had once
+      been worked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Columbus was never backward in fitting a story and a theory to whatever
+      phenomena surrounded him; and in this case he was certain that the
+      excavations were the work of Solomon, and that he had discovered the gold
+      of Ophir. &ldquo;Sure enough,&rdquo; thinks the Admiral, &ldquo;I have hit
+      it this time; and the ships came eastward from the Persian Gulf round the
+      Golden Chersonesus, which I discovered this very last winter.&rdquo;
+      Immediately, as his habit was, Columbus began to build castles in Spain.
+      Here was a fine answer to Buil and Margarite! Without waiting a week or
+      two to get any of the gold this extraordinary man decided to hurry off at
+      once to Spain with the news, not dreaming that Spain might, by this time,
+      have had a surfeit of news, and might be in serious need of some simple,
+      honest facts. But he thought his two caravels sufficiently freighted with
+      this new belief&mdash;the belief that he had discovered the Ophir of
+      Solomon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Admiral sailed on March 10th, 1496, carrying with him in chains the
+      vanquished Caonabo and other natives. He touched at Marigalante and at
+      Guadaloupe, where his people had an engagement with the natives, taking
+      several prisoners, but releasing them all again with the exception of one
+      woman, a handsome creature who had fallen in love with Caonabo and refused
+      to go. But for Caonabo the joys of life and love were at an end; his heart
+      and spirit were broken. He was not destined to be paraded as a captive
+      through the streets of Spain, and it was somewhere in the deep Atlantic
+      that he paid the last tribute to the power that had captured and broken
+      him. He died on the voyage, which was longer and much more full of
+      hardships than usual. For some reason or other Columbus did not take the
+      northerly route going home, but sailed east from Gaudaloupe, encountering
+      the easterly trade winds, which delayed him so much that the voyage
+      occupied three months instead of six weeks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once more he exhibited his easy mastery of the art of navigation and his
+      extraordinary gift for estimating dead-reckoning. After having been out of
+      sight of land for eight weeks, and while some of the sailors thought they
+      might be in the Bay of Biscay, and others that they were in the English
+      Channel, the Admiral suddenly announced that they were close to Cape Saint
+      Vincent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No land was in sight, but he ordered that sail should be shortened that
+      evening; and sure enough the next morning they sighted the land close by
+      Cape Saint Vincent. Columbus managed his landfalls with a fine dramatic
+      sense as though they were conjuring tricks; and indeed they must have
+      seemed like conjuring tricks, except that they were almost always
+      successful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="ch4c" id="ch4c"></a>CHAPTER VI.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      IN SPAIN AGAIN
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The loiterers about the harbour of Cadiz saw a curious sight on June 11th,
+      1496, when the two battered ships, bearing back the voyagers from the
+      Eldorado of the West, disembarked their passengers. There were some 220
+      souls on board, including thirty Indians: and instead of leaping ashore,
+      flushed with health, and bringing the fortunes which they had gone out to
+      seek, they crawled miserably from the boats or were carried ashore,
+      emaciated by starvation, yellow with disease, ragged and unkempt from
+      poverty, and with practically no possessions other than the clothes they
+      stood up in. Even the Admiral, now in his forty-sixth year, hardly had the
+      appearance that one would expect in a Viceroy of the Indies. His white
+      hair and beard were rough and matted, his handsome face furrowed by care
+      and sunken by illness and exhaustion, and instead of the glittering armour
+      and uniform of his office he wore the plain robe and girdle of the
+      Franciscan order&mdash;this last probably in consequence of some vow or
+      other he had made in an hour of peril on the voyage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One lucky coincidence marked his arrival. In the harbour, preparing to
+      weigh anchor, was a fleet of three little caravels, commanded by Pedro
+      Nino, about to set out for Espanola with supplies and despatches. Columbus
+      hurried on board Nino&rsquo;s ship, and there read the letters from the
+      Sovereigns which it had been designed he should receive in Espanola. The
+      letters are not preserved, but one can make a fair guess at their
+      contents. Some searching questions would certainly be asked, kind
+      assurances of continued confidence would doubtless be given, with many
+      suggestions for the betterment of affairs in the distant colony. Only
+      their result upon the Admiral is known to us. He sat down there and then
+      and wrote to Bartholomew, urging him to secure peace in the island by
+      every means in his power, to send home any caciques or natives who were
+      likely to give trouble, and most of all to push on with the building of a
+      settlement on the south coast where the new mines were, and to have a
+      cargo of gold ready to send back with the next expedition. Having written
+      this letter, the Admiral saw the little fleet sail away on June 17th, and
+      himself prepared with mingled feelings to present himself before his
+      Sovereigns.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While he was waiting for their summons at Los Palacios, a small town near
+      Seville, he was the guest of the curate of that place, Andrez Bernaldez,
+      who had been chaplain to Christopher&rsquo;s old friend DEA, the
+      Archbishop of Seville. This good priest evidently proved a staunch friend
+      to Columbus at this anxious period of his life, for the Admiral left many
+      important papers in his charge when he again left Spain, and no small part
+      of the scant contemporary information about Columbus that has come down to
+      us is contained in the &lsquo;Historia de los Reyes Catolicos&rsquo;,
+      which Bernaldez wrote after the death of Columbus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fickle Spain had already forgotten its first sentimental enthusiasm over
+      the Admiral&rsquo;s discoveries, and now was only interested in their
+      financial results. People cannot be continually excited about a thing
+      which they have not seen, and there were events much nearer home that
+      absorbed the public interest. There was the trouble with France, the
+      contemplated alliance of the Crown Prince with Margaret of Austria, and of
+      the Spanish Princess Juana with Philip of Austria; and there were the
+      designs of Ferdinand upon the kingdom of Naples, which was in his eyes a
+      much more desirable and valuable prize than any group of unknown islands
+      beyond the ocean.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Columbus did his very best to work up enthusiasm again. He repeated the
+      performance that had been such a success after his first voyage&mdash;the
+      kind of circus procession in which the natives were marched in column
+      surrounded by specimens of the wealth of the Indies. But somehow it did
+      not work so well this time. Where there had formerly been acclamations and
+      crowds pressing forward to view the savages and their ornaments, there
+      were now apathy and a dearth of spectators. And although Columbus did his
+      very best, and was careful to exhibit every scrap of gold that he had
+      brought, and to hang golden collars and ornaments about the necks of the
+      marching Indians, his exhibition was received either in ominous silence
+      or, in some quarters, with something like derision. As I have said before,
+      there comes a time when the best-disposed debtors do not regard themselves
+      as being repaid by promises, and when the most enthusiastic optimist
+      desires to see something more than samples. It was only old Colon going
+      round with his show again&mdash;flamingoes, macaws, seashells, dye-woods,
+      gums and spices; some people laughed, and some were angry; but all were
+      united in thinking that the New World was not a very profitable
+      speculation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Things were a little better, however, at Court. Isabella certainly
+      believed still in Columbus; Ferdinand, although he had never been
+      enthusiastic, knew the Admiral too well to make the vulgar mistake of
+      believing him an impostor; and both were too polite and considerate to add
+      to his obvious mortification and distress by any discouraging comments.
+      Moreover, the man himself had lost neither his belief in the value of his
+      discoveries nor his eloquence in talking of them; and when he told his
+      story to the Sovereigns they could not help being impressed, not only with
+      his sincerity but with his ability and single-heartedness also. It was
+      almost the same old story, of illimitable wealth that was just about to be
+      acquired, and perhaps no one but Columbus could have made it go down once
+      more with success; but talking about his exploits was never any trouble to
+      him, and his astonishing conviction, the lofty and dignified manner in
+      which he described both good and bad fortune, and the impressive way in
+      which he spoke of the wealth of the gold of Ophir and of the far-reaching
+      importance of his supposed discovery of the Golden Chersonesus and the
+      mainland of Asia, had their due effect on his hearers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was always his way, plausible Christopher, to pass lightly over the
+      premises and to dwell with elaborate detail on the deductions. It was by
+      no means proved that he had discovered the mines of King Solomon; he had
+      never even seen the place which he identified with them; it was in fact
+      nothing more than an idea in his own head; but we may be sure that he took
+      it as an established fact that he had actually discovered the mines of
+      Ophir, and confined his discussion to estimates of the wealth which they
+      were likely to yield, and of what was to be done with the wealth when the
+      mere details of conveying it from the mines to the ships had been disposed
+      of. So also with the Golden Chersonesus. The very name was enough to stop
+      the mouths of doubters; and here was the man himself who had actually been
+      there, and here was a sworn affidavit from every member of his crew to say
+      that they had been there too. This kind of logic is irresistible if you
+      only grant the first little step; and Columbus had the art of making it
+      seem an act of imbecility in any of his hearers to doubt the strength of
+      the little link by which his great golden chains of argument were fastened
+      to fact and truth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For Columbus everything depended upon his reception by the Sovereigns at
+      this time. Unless he could re-establish his hold upon them and move to a
+      still more secure position in their confidence he was a ruined man and his
+      career was finished; and one cannot but sympathise with him as he sits
+      there searching his mind for tempting and convincing arguments, and
+      speaking so calmly and gravely and confidently in spite of all the doubts
+      and flutterings in his heart. Like a tradesman setting out his wares, he
+      brought forth every inducement he could think of to convince the
+      Sovereigns that the only way to make a success of what they had already
+      done was to do more; that the only way to make profitable the money that
+      had already been spent was to spend more; that the only way to prove the
+      wisdom of their trust in him was to trust him more. One of his
+      transcendent merits in a situation of this kind was that he always had
+      something new and interesting to propose. He did not spread out his hands
+      and say, &ldquo;This is what I have done: it is the best I can do; how are
+      you going to treat me?&rdquo; He said in effect, &ldquo;This is what I
+      have done; you will see that it will all come right in time; do not worry
+      about it; but meanwhile I have something else to propose which I think
+      your Majesties will consider a good plan.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His new demand was for a fleet of six ships, two of which were to convey
+      supplies to Espanola, and the other four to be entrusted to him for the
+      purpose of a voyage of discovery towards the mainland to the south of
+      Espanola, of which he had heard consistent rumours; which was said to be
+      rich in gold, and (a clever touch) to which the King of Portugal was
+      thinking of sending a fleet, as he thought that it might lie within the
+      limits of his domain of heathendom. And so well did he manage, and so
+      deeply did he impress the Sovereigns with his assurance that this time the
+      thing amounted to what is vulgarly called &ldquo;a dead certainty,&rdquo;
+      that they promised him he should have his ships.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But promise and performance, as no one knew better than Columbus, are
+      different things; and it was a long while before he got his ships. There
+      was the usual scarcity of money, and the extensive military and diplomatic
+      operations in which the Crown was then engaged absorbed every maravedi
+      that Ferdinand could lay his hands on. There was an army to be maintained
+      under the Pyrenees to keep watch over France; fleets had to be kept
+      patrolling both the Mediterranean and Atlantic seaboards; and there was a
+      whole armada required to convey the princesses of Spain and Austria to
+      their respective husbands in connection with the double matrimonial
+      alliance arranged between the two countries. And when at last, in October
+      1496, six million maravedis were provided wherewith Columbus might equip
+      his fleet, they were withdrawn again under very mortifying circumstances.
+      The appropriation had just been made when a letter arrived from Pedro
+      Nino, who had been to Espanola and come back again, and now wrote from
+      Cadiz to the Sovereigns, saying that his ships were full of gold. He did
+      not present himself at Court, but went to visit his family at Huelva; but
+      the good news of his letter was accepted as an excuse for this oversight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No one was better pleased than the Admiral. &ldquo;What did I tell you?&rdquo;
+      he says; &ldquo;you see the mines of Hayna are paying already.&rdquo; King
+      Ferdinand, equally pleased, and having an urgent need of money in
+      connection with his operations against France, took the opportunity to
+      cancel the appropriation of the six million maravedis, giving Columbus
+      instead an order for the amount to be paid out of the treasure brought
+      home by Nino. Alas, the mariner&rsquo;s boast of gold had been a figure of
+      speech. There was no gold; there was only a cargo of slaves, which Nino
+      deemed the equivalent of gold; and when Bartholomew&rsquo;s despatches
+      came to be read he described the affairs of Espanola as being in very much
+      the same condition as before. This incident produced a most unfortunate
+      impression. Even Columbus was obliged to keep quiet for a little while;
+      and it is likely that the mention of six million maravedis was not
+      welcomed by him for some time afterwards.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After the wedding of Prince Juan in March 1497, when Queen Isabella had
+      more time to give to external affairs, the promise to Columbus was again
+      remembered, and his position was considered in detail. An order was made
+      (April 23rd, 1497), restoring to the Admiral the original privileges
+      bestowed upon him at Santa Fe. He was offered a large tract of land in
+      Espanola, with the title of Duke; but much as he hankered after titular
+      honours, he was for once prudent enough to refuse this gift. His reason
+      was that it would only further damage his influence, and give apparent
+      justification to those enemies who said that the whole enterprise had been
+      undertaken merely in his own interests; and it is possible also that his
+      many painful associations with Espanola, and the bloodshed and horrors
+      that he had witnessed there, had aroused in his superstitious mind a
+      distaste for possessions and titles in that devastated Paradise. Instead,
+      he accepted a measure of relief from the obligations incurred by his
+      eighth share in the many unprofitable expeditions that had been sent out
+      during the last three years, agreeing for the next three years to receive
+      an eighth share of the gross income, and a tenth of the net profits,
+      without contributing anything to the cost. His appointment of Bartholomew
+      to the office of Adelantado, which had annoyed Ferdinand, was now
+      confirmed; the universal license which had been granted to Spanish
+      subjects to settle in the new lands was revoked in so far as it infringed
+      the Admiral&rsquo;s privileges; and he was granted a force of 330
+      officers, soldiers, and artificers to be at his personal disposal in the
+      prosecution of his next voyage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The death of Prince Juan in October 1497 once more distracted the
+      attention of the Court from all but personal matters; and Columbus
+      employed the time of waiting in drafting a testamentary document in which
+      he was permitted to create an entail on his title and estates in favour of
+      his two sons and their heirs for ever. This did not represent his complete
+      or final testament, for he added codicils at various times, the latest
+      being executed the day before his death. The document is worth studying;
+      it reveals something of the laborious, painstaking mind reaching out down
+      the rivers and streams of the future that were to flow from the fountain
+      of his own greatness; it reveals also his triple conception of the
+      obligations of human life in this world&mdash;the cultivation and
+      retention of temporal dignity, the performance of pious and charitable
+      acts, and the recognition of duty to one&rsquo;s family. It was in this
+      document that Columbus formulated the curious cipher which he always now
+      used in signing his name, and of which various readings are given in the
+      Appendix. He also enjoined upon his heir the duty of using the simple
+      title which he himself loved and used most&mdash;&ldquo;The Admiral.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After the death of Prince Juan, Queen Isabella honoured Columbus by
+      attaching his two sons to her own person as pages; and her friendship must
+      at this time have gone far to compensate him for the coolness shown
+      towards him by the public at large. He might talk as much as he pleased,
+      but he had nothing to show for all his talk except a few trinkets, a
+      collection of interesting but valueless botanical specimens, and a handful
+      of miserable slaves. Lives and fortunes had been wrecked on the
+      enterprise, which had so far brought nothing to Spain but the promise of
+      luxurious adventure that was not fulfilled and of a wealth and glory that
+      had not been realised. It must have been a very humiliating circumstance
+      to Columbus that in the preparations which he was now (February 1498)
+      making for the equipment of his new expedition a great difficulty was
+      found in procuring ships and men. Not even before the first voyage had so
+      much reluctance been shown to risk life and property in the enterprise.
+      Merchants and sailors had then been frightened of dangers which they did
+      not know; now, it seemed, the evils of which they did know proved a still
+      greater deterrent. The Admiral was at this time the guest of his friend
+      Bernaldez, who has told us something of his difficulties; and the
+      humiliating expedient of seizing ships under a royal order had finally to
+      be adopted. But it would never have done to impress the colonists also;
+      that would have been too open a confession of failure for the proud
+      Admiral to tolerate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Instead he had recourse to the miserable plan of which he had made use in
+      Palos; the prisons were opened, and criminals under sentence invited to
+      come forth and enjoy the blessings of colonial life. Even then there was
+      not that rush from the prison doors that might have been expected, and
+      some desperate characters apparently preferred the mercies of a Spanish
+      prison to what they had heard of the joys of the Earthly Paradise. Still a
+      number of criminals did doubtfully crawl forth and furnish a retinue for
+      the great Admiral and Viceroy. Trembling, suspicious, and with more than
+      half a mind to go back to their bonds, some part of the human vermin of
+      Spain was eventually cajoled and chivied on board the ships.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The needs of the colony being urgent, and recruiting being slow, two
+      caravels laden with provisions were sent off in advance; but even for this
+      purpose there was a difficulty about money, and good Isabella furnished
+      the expense, at much inconvenience, from her private purse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Columbus had to supervise everything himself; and no wonder that by the
+      end of May, when he was ready to sail, his patience and temper were
+      exhausted and his much-tried endurance broke down under the petty gnatlike
+      irritations of Fonseca and his myrmidons. It was on the deck of his own
+      ship, in the harbour of San Lucar, that he knocked down and soundly kicked
+      Ximeno de Breviesca, Fonseca&rsquo;s accountant, whose nagging
+      requisitions had driven the Admiral to fury.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After all these years of gravity and restraint and endurance, this
+      momentary outbreak of the old Adam in our hero is like a breath of wind
+      through an open window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To the portraits of Columbus hanging in the gallery of one&rsquo;s
+      imagination this must surely be added; in which Christopher, on the deck
+      of his ship, with the royal standard and the Admiral&rsquo;s flag flying
+      from his masthead, is observed to be soundly kicking a prostrate
+      accountant. The incident is worthy of a date, which is accordingly here
+      given, as near as may be&mdash;May 29, 1498.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="ch5c" id="ch5c"></a>CHAPTER V.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE THIRD VOYAGE
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Columbus was at sea again; firm ground to him, although so treacherous and
+      unstable to most of us; and as he saw the Spanish coast sinking down on
+      the horizon he could shake himself free from his troubles, and feel that
+      once more he was in a situation of which he was master. He first touched
+      at Porto Santo, where, if the story of his residence there be true, there
+      must have been potent memories for him in the sight of the long white
+      beach and the plantations, with the Governor&rsquo;s house beyond. He
+      stayed there only a few hours and then crossed over to Madeira, anchoring
+      in the Bay of Funchal, where he took in wood and water. As it was really
+      unnecessary for him to make a port so soon after leaving, there was
+      probably some other reason for his visit to these islands; perhaps a
+      family reason; perhaps nothing more historically important than the desire
+      to look once more on scenes of bygone happiness, for even on the page of
+      history every event is not necessarily big with significance. From Madeira
+      he took a southerly course to the Canary Islands, and on June 16th
+      anchored at Gomera, where he found a French warship with two Spanish
+      prizes, all of which put to sea as the Admiral&rsquo;s fleet approached.
+      On June 21st, when he sailed from Gomera, he divided his fleet of six
+      vessels into two squadrons. Three ships were despatched direct to
+      Espanola, for the supplies which they carried were urgently needed there.
+      These three ships were commanded by trustworthy men: Pedro de Arana, a
+      brother of Beatriz, Alonso Sanchez de Carvajal, and Juan Antonio Colombo&mdash;this
+      last no other than a cousin of Christopher&rsquo;s from Genoa. The sons of
+      Domenico&rsquo;s provident younger brother had not prospered, while the
+      sons of improvident Domenico were now all in high places; and these three
+      poor cousins, hearing of Christopher&rsquo;s greatness, and deciding that
+      use should be made of him, scraped together enough money to send one of
+      their number to Spain. The Admiral always had a sound family feeling, and
+      finding that cousin Antonio had sea experience and knew how to handle a
+      ship he gave him command of one of the caravels on this voyage&mdash;a
+      command of which he proved capable and worthy. From these three captains,
+      after giving them full sailing directions for reaching Espanola, Columbus
+      parted company off the island of Ferro. He himself stood on a southerly
+      course towards the Cape Verde Islands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His plan on this voyage was to find the mainland to the southward, of
+      which he had heard rumours in Espanola. Before leaving Spain he had
+      received a letter from an eminent lapidary named Ferrer who had travelled
+      much in the east, and who assured him that if he sought gold and precious
+      stones he must go to hot lands, and that the hotter the lands were, and
+      the blacker the inhabitants, the more likely he was to find riches there.
+      This was just the kind of theory to suit Columbus, and as he sailed
+      towards the Cape Verde Islands he was already in imagination gathering
+      gold and pearls on the shores of the equatorial continent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stayed for about a week at the Cape Verde Islands, getting in
+      provisions and cattle, and curiously observing the life of the Portuguese
+      lepers who came in numbers to the island of Buenavista to be cured there
+      by eating the flesh and bathing in the blood of turtles. It was not an
+      inspiriting week which he spent in that dreary place and enervating
+      climate, with nothing to see but the goats feeding among the scrub, the
+      turtles crawling about the sand, and the lepers following the turtles. It
+      began to tell on the health of the crew, so he weighed anchor on July 5th
+      and stood on a southwesterly course.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This third voyage, which was destined to be the most important of all, and
+      the material for which had cost him so much time and labour, was
+      undertaken in a very solemn and determined spirit. His health, which he
+      had hoped to recover in Spain, had been if anything damaged by his
+      worryings with officialdom there; and although he was only forty-seven
+      years of age he was in some respects already an old man. He had entered,
+      although happily he did not know it, on the last decade of his life; and
+      was already beginning to suffer from the two diseases, gout and
+      ophthalmia, which were soon to undermine his strength and endurance.
+      Religion of a mystical fifteenth-century sort was deepening in him; he had
+      undertaken this voyage in the name of the Holy Trinity; and to that
+      theological entity he had resolved to dedicate the first new land that he
+      should sight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For ten days light baffling winds impeded his progress; but at the end of
+      that time the winds fell away altogether, and the voyagers found
+      themselves in that flat equatorial calm known to mariners as the Doldrums.
+      The vertical rays of the sun shone blisteringly down upon them, making the
+      seams of the ships gape and causing the unhappy crews mental as well as
+      bodily distress, for they began to fear that they had reached that zone of
+      fire which had always been said to exist in the southern ocean.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Day after day the three ships lay motionless on the glassy water, with
+      wood-work so hot as to burn the hands that touched it, with the meat
+      putrefying in the casks below, and the water running from the loosened
+      casks, and no one with courage and endurance enough to venture into the
+      stifling hold even to save the provisions. And through all this the
+      Admiral, racked with gout, had to keep a cheerful face and assure his
+      prostrate crew that they would soon be out of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were showers of rain sometimes, but the moisture in that baking
+      atmosphere only added to its stifling and enervating effects. All the
+      while, however, the great slow current of the Atlantic was moving
+      westward, and there came a day when a heavenly breeze, stirred in the
+      torrid air and the musical talk of ripples began to rise again from the
+      weedy stems of the ships. They sailed due west, always into a cooler and
+      fresher atmosphere; but still no land was sighted, although pelicans and
+      smaller birds were continually seen passing from south-west to north-east.
+      As provisions were beginning to run low, Columbus decided on the 31st July
+      to alter his course to north-by-east, in the hope of reaching the island
+      of Dominica. But at mid-day his servant Alonso Perez, happening to go to
+      the masthead, cried out that there was land in sight; and sure enough to
+      the westward there rose three peaks of land united at the base. Here was
+      the kind of coincidence which staggers even the unbeliever. Columbus had
+      promised to dedicate the first land he saw to the Trinity; and here was
+      the land, miraculously provided when he needed it most, three peaks in one
+      peak, in due conformity with the requirements of the blessed Saint
+      Athanasius. The Admiral was deeply affected; the God of his belief was
+      indeed a good friend to him; and he wrote down his pious conviction that
+      the event was a miracle, and summoned all hands to sing the Salve Regina,
+      with other hymns in praise of God and the Virgin Mary. The island was duly
+      christened La Trinidad. By the hour of Compline (9 o&rsquo;clock in the
+      evening) they had come up with the south coast of the island, but it was
+      the next day before the Admiral found a harbour where he could take in
+      water. No natives were to be seen, although there were footprints on the
+      shore and other signs of human habitation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He continued all day to sail slowly along the shore of the island, the
+      green luxuriance of which astonished him; and sometimes he stood out from
+      the coast to the southward as he made a long board to round this or that
+      point. It must have been while reaching out in this way to the southward
+      that he saw a low shore on his port hand some sixty miles to the south of
+      Trinidad, and that his sight, although he did not know it, rested for the
+      first time on the mainland of South America. The land seen was the low
+      coast to the west of the Orinoco, and thinking that it was an island he
+      gave it the name of Isla Sancta.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the 2nd of August they were off the south-west of Trinidad, and saw the
+      first inhabitants in the shape of a canoe full of armed natives, who
+      approached the ships with threatening gestures. Columbus had brought out
+      some musicians with him, possibly for the purpose of impressing the
+      natives, and perhaps with the idea of making things a little more cheerful
+      in Espanola; and the musicians were now duly called upon to give a
+      performance, a tambourine-player standing on the forecastle and beating
+      the rhythm for the ships&rsquo; boys to dance to. The effect was other
+      than was anticipated, for the natives immediately discharged a thick
+      flight of arrows at the musicians, and the music and dancing abruptly
+      ceased. Eventually the Indians were prevailed upon to come on board the
+      two smaller ships and to receive gifts, after which they departed and were
+      seen no more. Columbus landed and made some observations of the vegetation
+      and climate of Trinidad, noticing that the fruits and-trees were similar
+      to those of Espanola, and that oysters abounded, as well as &ldquo;very
+      large, infinite fish, and parrots as large as hens.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He saw another peak of the mainland to the northwest, which was the
+      peninsula of Paria, and to which Columbus, taking it to be another island,
+      gave the name of Isla de Gracia. Between him and this land lay a narrow
+      channel through which a mighty current was flowing&mdash;that press of
+      waters which, sweeping across the Atlantic from Africa, enters the
+      Caribbean Sea, sprays round the Gulf of Mexico, and turns north again in
+      the current known as the Gulf Stream. While his ships were anchored at the
+      entrance to this channel and Columbus was wondering how he should cross
+      it, a mighty flood of water suddenly came down with a roar, sending a
+      great surging wave in front of it. The vessels were lifted up as though by
+      magic; two of them dragged their anchors from the bottom, and the other
+      one broke her cable. This flood was probably caused by a sudden flush of
+      fresh water from one of the many mouths of the Orinoco; but to Columbus,
+      who had no thought of rivers in his mind, it was very alarming.
+      Apparently, however, there was nothing for it but to get through the
+      channel, and having sent boats on in front to take soundings and see that
+      there was clear water he eventually piloted his little squadron through,
+      with his heart in his mouth and his eyes fixed on the swinging eddies and
+      surging circles of the channel. Once beyond it he was in the smooth water
+      of the Gulf of Paria. He followed the westerly coast of Trinidad to the
+      north until he came to a second channel narrower than the first, through
+      which the current boiled with still greater violence, and to which he gave
+      the name of Dragon&rsquo;s Mouth. This is the channel between the
+      northwesterly point of Trinidad and the eastern promontory of Paria.
+      Columbus now began to be bewildered, for he discovered that the water over
+      the ship&rsquo;s side was fresh water, and he could not make out where it
+      came from. Thinking that the peninsula of Paria was an island, and not
+      wishing to attempt the dangerous passage of the Dragon&rsquo;s Mouth, he
+      decided to coast along the southern shore of the land opposite, hoping to
+      be able to turn north round its western extremity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sweeter blew the breezes, fresher grew the water, milder and more balmy
+      the air, greener and deeper the vegetation of this beautiful region. The
+      Admiral was ill with the gout, and suffering such pain from his eyes that
+      he was sometimes blinded by it; but the excitement of the strange
+      phenomena surrounding him kept him up, and his powers of observation,
+      always acute, suffered no diminution. There were no inhabitants to be seen
+      as they sailed along the coast, but monkeys climbed and chattered in the
+      trees by the shore, and oysters were found clinging to the branches that
+      dipped into the water. At last, in a bay where they anchored to take in
+      water, a native canoe containing three, men was seen cautiously
+      approaching; and the men, who were shy, were captured by the device of a
+      sailor jumping on to the gunwale of the canoe and overturning it, the
+      natives being easily caught in the water, and afterwards soothed and
+      captivated by the unfailing attraction of hawks&rsquo; bells. They were
+      tall men with long hair, and they told Columbus that the name of their
+      country was Paria; and when they were asked about other inhabitants they
+      pointed to the west and signified that there was a great population in
+      that direction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the 10th of August 1498 a party landed on this coast and formally took
+      possession of it in the name of the Sovereigns of Spain. By an unlucky
+      chance Columbus himself did not land. His eyes were troubling him so much
+      that he was obliged to lie down in his cabin, and the formal act of
+      possession was performed by a deputy. If he had only known! If he could
+      but have guessed that this was indeed the mainland of a New World that did
+      not exist even in his dreams, what agonies he would have suffered rather
+      than permit any one else to pronounce the words of annexation! But he lay
+      there in pain and suffering, his curious mystical mind occupied with a
+      conception very remote indeed from the truth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For in that fertile hotbed of imagination, the Admiral&rsquo;s brain, a
+      new and staggering theory had gradually been taking shape. As his ships
+      had been wafted into this delicious region, as the airs had become
+      sweeter, the vegetation more luxuriant, and the water of the sea fresher,&mdash;he
+      had solemnly arrived at the conclusion that he was approaching the region
+      of the true terrestrial Paradise: the Garden of Eden that some of the
+      Fathers had declared to be situated in the extreme east of the Old World,
+      and in a region so high that the flood had not overwhelmed it. Columbus,
+      thinking hard in his cabin, blood and brain a little fevered, comes to the
+      conclusion that the world is not round but pear-shaped. He knows that all
+      this fresh water in the sea must come from a great distance and from no
+      ordinary river; and he decides that its volume and direction have been
+      acquired in its fall from the apex of the pear, from the very top of the
+      world, from the Garden of Eden itself. It was a most beautiful conception;
+      a theory worthy to be fitted to all the sweet sights and sounds in the
+      world about him; but it led him farther and farther away from the truth,
+      and blinded him to knowledge and understanding of what he had actually
+      accomplished.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had thought the coast of Cuba the mainland, and he now began to
+      consider it at least possible that the peninsula of Paria was mainland
+      also&mdash;another part of the same continent. That was the truth&mdash;Paria
+      was the mainland&mdash;and if he had not been so bemused by his dreams and
+      theories he might have had some inkling of the real wonder and
+      significance of his discovery. But no; in his profoundly unscientific mind
+      there was little of that patience which holds men back from theorising and
+      keeps them ready to receive the truth. He was patient enough in doing, but
+      in thinking he was not patient at all. No sooner had he observed a fact
+      than he must find a theory which would bring it into relation with the
+      whole of his knowledge; and if the facts would not harmonise of themselves
+      he invented a scheme of things by which they were forced into harmony. He
+      was indeed a Darwinian before his time, an adept in the art of inventing
+      causes to fit facts, and then proving that the facts sprang from the
+      causes; but his origins were tangible, immovable things of rock and soil
+      that could be seen and visited by other men, and their true relation to
+      the terrestrial phenomena accurately established; so that his very proofs
+      were monumental, and became themselves the advertisements of his profound
+      misjudgment. But meanwhile he is the Admiral of the Ocean Seas, and can
+      &ldquo;make it so&rdquo;; and accordingly, in a state of mental
+      instability, he makes the Gulf of Paria to be a slope of earth immediately
+      below the Garden of Eden, although fortunately he does not this time
+      provide a sworn affidavit of trembling ships&rsquo; boys to confirm his
+      discovery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meanwhile also here were pearls; the native women wore ropes of them all
+      over their bodies, and a fair store of them were bartered for pieces of
+      broken crockery. Asked as usual about the pearls the natives, also as
+      usual, pointed vaguely to the west and south-west, and explained that
+      there were more pearls in that direction. But the Admiral would not tarry.
+      Although he believed that he was within reach of Eden and pearls, he was
+      more anxious to get back to Espanola and send the thrilling news to Spain
+      than he was to push on a little farther and really assure himself of the
+      truth. How like Christopher that was! Ideas to him were of more value than
+      facts, as indeed they are to the world at large; but one is sometimes led
+      to wonder whether he did not sometimes hesitate to turn his ideas into
+      facts for very fear that they should turn out to be only ideas. Was he, in
+      his relations with Spain and the world, a trader in the names rather than
+      the substance of things? We have seen him going home to Spain and
+      announcing the discovery of the Golden Chersonesus, although he had only
+      discovered what he erroneously supposed to be an indication of it;
+      proclaiming the discovery of the Ophir of Solomon without taking the
+      trouble to test for himself so tremendous an assumption; and we now see
+      him hurrying away to dazzle Spain with the story that he has discovered
+      the Garden of Eden, without even trying to push on for a few days more to
+      secure so much as a cutting from the Tree of Life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These are grave considerations; for although happily the Tree of Life is
+      now of no importance to any human being, the doings of Admiral Christopher
+      were of great importance to himself and to his fellow-men at that time,
+      and are still to-day, through the infinite channels in which human thought
+      and action run and continue thoughout the world, of grave importance to
+      us. Perhaps this is not quite the moment, now that the poor Admiral is
+      lying in pain and weakness and not quite master of his own mind, to
+      consider fully how he stands in this matter of honesty; we will leave it
+      for the present until he is well again, or better still, until his tale of
+      life and action is complete, and comes as a whole before the bar of human
+      judgment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On August 11th Columbus turned east again after having given up the
+      attempt to find a passage to the north round Paria. There were practical
+      considerations that brought him to this action. As the water was growing
+      shoaler and shoaler he had sent a caravel of light draft some way further
+      to the westward, and she reported that there lay ahead of her a great
+      inner bay or gulf consisting of almost entirely fresh water. Provisions,
+      moreover, were running short, and were, as usual, turning bad; the Admiral&rsquo;s
+      health made vigorous action of any kind impossible for him; he was anxious
+      about the condition of Espanola&mdash;anxious also, as we have seen, to
+      send this great news home; and he therefore turned back and decided to
+      risk the passage of the Dragon&rsquo;s Mouth. He anchored in the
+      neighbouring harbour until the wind was in the right quarter, and with
+      some trepidation put his ships into the boiling tideway. When they were in
+      the middle of the passage the wind fell to a dead calm, and the ships,
+      with their sails hanging loose, were borne on the dizzy surface of eddies,
+      overfalls, and whirls of the tide. Fortunately there was deep water in the
+      passage, and the strength of the current carried them safely through. Once
+      outside they bore away to the northward, sighting the islands of Tobago
+      and Grenada and, turning westward again, came to the islands of Cubagua
+      and Margarita, where three pounds of pearls were bartered from the
+      natives. A week after the passage of the Dragon&rsquo;s Mouth Columbus
+      sighted the south coast of Espanola, which coast he made at a point a long
+      way to the east of the new settlement that he had instructed Bartholomew
+      to found; and as the winds were contrary, and he feared it might take him
+      a long time to beat up against them, he sent a boat ashore with a letter
+      which was to be delivered by a native messenger to the Adelantado. The
+      letter was delivered; a few days later a caravel was sighted which
+      contained Bartholomew himself; and once more, after a long separation,
+      these two friends and brothers were united.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The see-saw motion of all affairs with which Columbus had to do was in
+      full swing. We have seen him patching up matters in Espanola; hurrying to
+      Spain just in time to rescue his damaged reputation and do something to
+      restore it; and now when he had come back it was but a sorry tale that
+      Bartholomew had to tell him. A fortress had been built at the Hayna
+      gold-mines, but provisions had been so scarce that there had been
+      something like a famine among the workmen there; no digging had been done,
+      no planting, no making of the place fit for human occupation and industry.
+      Bartholomew had been kept busy in collecting the native tribute, and in
+      planning out the beginnings of the settlement at the mouth of the river
+      Ozema, which was at first called the New Isabella, but was afterwards
+      named San Domingo in honour of old Domenico at Savona. The cacique
+      Behechio had been giving trouble; had indeed marched out with an army
+      against Bartholomew, but had been more or less reconciled by the
+      intervention of his sister Anacaona, widow of the late Caonabo, who had
+      apparently transferred her affections to Governor Bartholomew. The battle
+      was turned into a friendly pagan festival&mdash;one of the last ever held
+      on that once happy island&mdash;in which native girls danced in a green
+      grove, with the beautiful Anacaona, dressed only in garlands, carried on a
+      litter in their midst.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But in the Vega Real, where a chapel had been built by the priests of the
+      neighbouring settlement who were beginning to make converts, trouble had
+      arisen in consequence of an outrage on the wife of the cacique Guarionex.
+      The chapel was raided, the shrine destroyed, and the sacred vessels
+      carried off. The Spaniards seized a number of Indians whom they suspected
+      of having had a hand in the desecration, and burned them at the stake in
+      the most approved manner of the Inquisition&mdash;a hideous punishment
+      that fanned the remaining embers of the native spirit into flame, and
+      produced a hostile combination of Guarionex and several other caciques,
+      whose rebellion it took the Adelantado some trouble and display of arms to
+      quench.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the worst news of all was the treacherous revolt of Francisco Roldan,
+      a Spaniard who had once been a servant of the Admiral&rsquo;s, and who had
+      been raised by him to the office of judge in the island&mdash;an able
+      creature, but, like too many recipients of Christopher&rsquo;s favour, a
+      treacherous rascal at bottom. As soon as the Admiral&rsquo;s back was
+      turned Roldan had begun to make mischief, stirring up the discontent that
+      was never far below the surface of life in the colony, and getting
+      together a large band of rebellious ruffians. He had a plan to murder
+      Bartholomew Columbus and place himself at the head of the colony, but this
+      fell through. Then, in Bartholomew&rsquo;s absence, he had a passage with
+      James Columbus, who had now returned to the island and had resumed his.
+      official duties at Isabella. Bartholomew, who was at another part of the
+      coast collecting tribute, had sent a caravel laden with cotton to
+      Isabella, and well-meaning James had her drawn up on the beach. Roldan
+      took the opportunity to represent this innocent action as a sign of the
+      intolerable autocracy of the Columbus family, who did not even wish a
+      vessel to be in a condition to sail for Spain with news of their misdeeds.
+      Insolent Roldan formally asks James to send the caravel to Spain with
+      supplies; poor James refuses and, perhaps being at bottom afraid of Roldan
+      and his insolences, despatches him to the Vega Real with a force to bring
+      to order some caciques who had been giving trouble. Possibly to his
+      surprise, although not to ours, Roldan departs with alacrity at the head
+      of seventy armed men. Honest, zealous James, no doubt; but also, we begin
+      to fear, stupid James.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Vega Real was the most attractive part of the colony, and the scene of
+      infinite idleness and debauchery in the early days of the Spanish
+      settlement. As Margarite and other mutineers had acted, so did Roldan and
+      his soldiers now act, making sallies against several of the chain of forts
+      that stretched across the island, and even upon Isabella itself; and
+      returning to the Vega to the enjoyment of primitive wild pleasures. Roldan
+      and Bartholomew Columbus stalked each other about the island with armed
+      forces for several months, Roldan besieging Bartholomew in the fortress at
+      the Vega, which he had occupied in Roldan&rsquo;s absence, and trying to
+      starve him out there. The arrival in February 1498 of the two ships which
+      had been sent out from Spain in advance, and which brought also the news
+      of the Admiral&rsquo;s undamaged favour at Court, and of the royal
+      confirmation of Bartholomew&rsquo;s title, produced for the moment a good
+      moral effect; Roldan went and sulked in the mountains, refusing to have
+      any parley or communication with the Adelantado, declining indeed to treat
+      with any one until the Admiral himself should return. In the meantime his
+      influence with the natives was strong enough to produce a native revolt,
+      which Bartholomew had only just succeeded in suppressing when Christopher
+      arrived on August 30th.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Admiral was not a little distressed to find that the three ships from
+      which he had parted company at Ferro had not yet arrived. His own voyage
+      ought to have taken far longer than theirs; they had now been nine weeks
+      at sea, and there was nothing to account for their long delay. When at
+      last they did appear, however they brought with them only a new
+      complication. They had lost their way among the islands and had been
+      searching about for Espanola, finally making a landfall there on the coast
+      of Xaragua, the south-western province of the island, where Roldan and his
+      followers were established. Roldan had received them and, concealing the
+      fact of his treachery, procured a large store of provisions from them, his
+      followers being meanwhile busy among the crews of the ships inciting them
+      to mutiny and telling them of the oppression of the Admiral&rsquo;s rule
+      and the joys of a lawless life. The gaol-birds were nothing loth; after
+      eight weeks at sea a spell ashore in this pleasant land, with all kinds of
+      indulgences which did not come within the ordinary regimen of convicts and
+      sailors, greatly appealing to them. The result was that more than half of
+      the crews mutinied and joined Roldan, and the captains were obliged to put
+      to sea with their small loyal remnant. Carvajal remained behind in order
+      to try to persuade Roldan to give himself up; but Roldan had no such idea,
+      and Carvajal had to make his way by land to San Domingo, where he made his
+      report to the Admiral. Roldan has in fact delivered a kind of ultimatum.
+      He will surrender to no one but the Admiral, and that only on condition
+      that he gets a free pardon. If negotiations are opened, Roldan will treat
+      with no one but Carvajal. The Admiral, whose grip of the situation is
+      getting weaker and weaker, finds himself in a difficulty. His loyal army
+      is only some seventy strong, while Roldan has, of disloyal settlers,
+      gaol-birds, and sailors, much more than that. The Admiral, since he cannot
+      reduce his enemy&rsquo;s force by capturing them, seeks to do it by
+      bribing them; and the greatest bribe that he can think of to offer to
+      these malcontents is that any who like may have a free passage home in the
+      five caravels which are now waiting to return to Spain. To such a pass
+      have things come in the paradise of Espanola! But the rabble finds life
+      pleasant enough in Xaragua, where they are busy with indescribable
+      pleasures; and for the moment there is no great response to this
+      invitation to be gone. Columbus therefore despatches his ships, with such
+      rabble of colonists, gaol-birds, and mariners as have already had their
+      fill both of pain and pleasure, and writes his usual letter to the
+      Sovereigns&mdash;half full of the glories of the new discoveries he has
+      made, the other half setting forth the evil doings of Roldan, and begging
+      that he may be summoned to Spain for trial there. Incidentally, also, he
+      requests a further licence for two years for the capture and despatch of
+      slaves to Spain. So the vessels sail back on October 18, 1498, and the
+      Admiral turns wearily to the task of disentangling the web of difficulty
+      that has woven itself about him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carvajal and Ballester&mdash;another loyal captain&mdash;were sent with a
+      letter to Roldan urging him to come to terms, and Carvajal and Ballester
+      added their own honest persuasions. But Roldan was firm; he wished to be
+      quit of the Admiral and his rule, and to live independently in the island;
+      and of his followers, although some here and there showed signs of
+      submission, the greater number were so much in love with anarchy that they
+      could not be counted upon. For two months negotiations of a sort were
+      continued, Roldan even presenting himself under a guarantee of safety at
+      San Domingo, where he had a fruitless conference with the Admiral; where
+      also he had an opportunity of observing what a sorry state affairs in the
+      capital were in, and what a mess Columbus was making of it all. Roldan,
+      being a simple man, though a rascal, had only to remain firm in order to
+      get his way against a mind like the Admiral&rsquo;s, and get his way he
+      ultimately did. The Admiral made terms of a kind most humiliating to him,
+      and utterly subversive of his influence and authority. The mutineers were
+      not only to receive a pardon but a certificate (good Heavens!) of good
+      conduct. Caravels were to be sent to convey them to Spain; and they were
+      to be permitted to carry with them all the slaves that they had collected
+      and all the native young women whom they had ravished from their homes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Columbus signs this document on the 21st of November, and promises that
+      the ships shall be ready in fifty days; and then, at his wits&rsquo; end,
+      and hearing of irregularities in the interior of the island, sets off with
+      Bartholomew to inspect the posts and restore them to order. In his absence
+      the see-saw, in due obedience to the laws that govern all see-saws, gives
+      a lurch to the other side, and things go all wrong again in San Domingo.
+      The preparations for the despatch of the caravels are neglected as soon as
+      his back is turned; not fifty days, but nearly one hundred days elapse
+      before they are ready to sail from San Domingo to Xaragua. Even then they
+      are delayed by storms and head-winds; and when they do arrive Roldan and
+      his company will not embark in them. The agreement has been broken; a new
+      one must be made. Columbus, returning to San Domingo after long and
+      harassing struggles on the other end of the see-saw, gets news of this
+      deadlock, and at the same time has news from Fonseca in Spain of a far
+      from agreeable character. His complaints against the people under him have
+      been received by the Sovereigns and will be duly considered, but their
+      Majesties have not time at the moment to go into them. That is the gist of
+      it, and very cold cheer it is for the Admiral, balancing himself on this
+      turbulent see-saw with anxious eyes turned to Spain for encouragement and
+      approval.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the depression that followed the receipt of this letter he was no match
+      for Roldan. He even himself took a caravel and sailed towards Xaragua,
+      where he was met by Roldan, who boarded his ship and made his new
+      proposals. Their impudence is astounding; and when we consider that the
+      Admiral had in theory absolute powers in the island, the fact that such
+      proposals could be made, not to say accepted, shows how far out of
+      relation were his actual with his nominal powers. Roldan proposed that he
+      should be allowed to give a number of his friends a free passage to Spain;
+      that to all who should remain free grants of land should be given; and (a
+      free pardon and certificate of good conduct contenting him no longer) that
+      a proclamation should be made throughout the island admitting that all the
+      charges of disloyalty and mutiny which had been brought against him and
+      his followers were without foundation; and, finally, that he should be
+      restored to his office of Alcalde Mayor or chief magistrate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here was a bolus for Christopher to swallow; a bolus compounded of his own
+      words, his own acts, his hope, dignity, supremacy. In dismal humiliation
+      he accepted the terms, with the addition of a clause more scandalous still&mdash;to
+      the effect that the mutineers reserved the right, in case the Admiral
+      should fail in the exact performance of any of his promises, to enforce
+      them by compulsion of arms or any other method they might think fit. This
+      precious document was signed on September 28, 1499 just twelve months
+      after the agreement which it was intended to replace; and the Admiral,
+      sailing dismally back to San Domingo, ruefully pondered on the fruits of a
+      year&rsquo;s delay. Even then he was trying to make excuses for himself,
+      such as he made afterwards to the Sovereigns when he tried to explain that
+      this shameful capitulation was invalid. That he signed under compulsion;
+      that he was on board a ship, and so was not on his viceregal territory;
+      that the rebels had already been tried, and that he had not the power to
+      revoke a sentence which bore the authority of the Crown; that he had not
+      the power to dispose of the Crown property&mdash;desperate, agonised
+      shuffling of pride and self-esteem in the coils of trial and difficulty.
+      Enough of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="ch6c" id="ch6c"></a>CHAPTER VI.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      AN INTERLUDE
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A breath of salt air again will do us no harm as a relief from these
+      perilous balancings of Columbus on the see-saw at Espanola. His true work
+      in this world had indeed already been accomplished. When he smote the rock
+      of western discovery many springs flowed from it, and some were destined
+      to run in mightier channels than that which he himself followed. Among
+      other men stirred by the news of Columbus&rsquo;s first voyage there was
+      one walking the streets of Bristol in 1496 who was fired to a similar
+      enterprise&mdash;a man of Venice, in boyhood named Zuan Caboto, but now
+      known in England, where he has some time been settled, as Captain John
+      Cabot. A sailor and trader who has travelled much through the known
+      sea-roads of this world, and has a desire to travel upon others not so
+      well known. He has been in the East, has seen the caravans of Mecca and
+      the goods they carried, and, like Columbus, has conceived in his mind the
+      roundness of the world as a practical fact rather than a mere mathematical
+      theory. Hearing of Columbus&rsquo;s success Cabot sets what machinery in
+      England he has access to in motion to secure for him patents from King
+      Henry VII.; which patents he receives on March 5, 1496. After spending a
+      long time in preparation, and being perhaps a little delayed by diplomatic
+      protests from the Spanish Ambassador in London, he sails from Bristol in
+      May 1497.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After sailing west two thousand leagues Cabot found land in the
+      neighbourhood of Cape Breton, and was thus in all probability the first
+      discoverer, since the Icelanders, of the mainland of the New World. He
+      turned northward, sailed through the strait of Belle Isle, and came home
+      again, having accomplished his task in three months. Cabot, like Columbus,
+      believed he had seen the territory of the Great Khan, of whom he told the
+      interested population of Bristol some strange things. He further told them
+      of the probable riches of this new land if it were followed in a southerly
+      direction; told them some lies also, it appears, since he said that the
+      waters there were so dense with fish that his vessels could hardly move in
+      them. He received a gratuity of L10 and a pension, and made a great
+      sensation in Bristol by walking about the city dressed in fine silk
+      garments. He took other voyages also with his son Sebastian, who followed
+      with him the rapid widening stream of discovery and became Pilot Major of
+      Spain, and President of the Congress appointed in 1524 to settle the
+      conflicting pretensions of various discoverers; but so far as our
+      narrative is concerned, having sailed across from Bristol and discovered
+      the mainland of the New World some years before Columbus discovered it,
+      John Cabot sails into oblivion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Another great conquest of the salt unknown taken place a few days before
+      Columbus sailed on his third voyage. The accidental discovery of the Cape
+      by Bartholomew Diaz in 1486 had not been neglected by Portugal; and the
+      achievements of Columbus, while they cut off Portuguese enterprise from
+      the western ocean, had only stimulated it to greater activity within its
+      own spheres. Vasco da Gama sailed from Lisbon in July 1497; by the end of
+      November he had rounded the Cape of Good Hope; and in May 1498, after a
+      long voyage full of interest, peril, and hardship he had landed at Calicut
+      on the shores of the true India. He came back in 1499 with a battered
+      remnant, his crew disabled by sickness and exhaustion, and half his ships
+      lost; but he had in fact discovered a road for trade and adventure to the
+      East that was not paved with promises, dreams, or mad affidavits, but was
+      a real and tangible achievement, bringing its reward in commerce and
+      wealth for Portugal. At that very moment Columbus was groping round the
+      mainland of South America, thinking it to be the coast of Cathay, and the
+      Garden of Eden, and God knows what other cosmographical&mdash;theological
+      abstractions; and Portugal, busy with her arrangements for making money,
+      could afford for the moment to look on undismayed at the development of
+      the mine of promises discovered by the Spanish Admiral.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The anxiety of Columbus to communicate the names of things before he had
+      made sure of their substance received another rude chastisement in the
+      events that followed the receipt in Spain of his letter announcing the
+      discovery of the Garden of Eden and the land of pearls. People in Spain
+      were not greatly interested in his theories of the terrestrial Paradise;
+      but more than one adventurer pricked up his ears at the name of pearls,
+      and among the first was our old friend Alonso de Ojeda, who had returned
+      some time before from Espanola and was living in Spain. His position as a
+      member of Columbus&rsquo;s force on the second voyage and the distinction
+      he had gained there gave him special opportunities of access to the
+      letters and papers sent home by Columbus; and he found no difficulty in
+      getting Fonseca to show him the maps and charts of the coast of Paria sent
+      back by the Admiral, the veritable pearls which had been gathered, and the
+      enthusiastic descriptions of the wealth of this new coast. Knowing
+      something of Espanola, and of the Admiral also, and reading in the
+      despatches of the turbulent condition of the colony, he had a shrewd idea
+      that Columbus&rsquo;s hands would be kept pretty full in Espanola itself,
+      and that he would have no opportunity for some time to make any more
+      voyages of discovery. He therefore represented to Fonseca what a pity it
+      would be if all this revenue should remain untapped just because one man
+      had not time to attend to it, and he proposed that he should take out an
+      expedition at his own cost and share the profits with the Crown.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This proposal was too tempting to be refused; unlike the expeditions of
+      Columbus, which were all expenditure and no revenue, it promised a chance
+      of revenue without any expenditure at all. The Paria coast, having been
+      discovered subsequent to the agreement made with Columbus, was considered
+      by Fonseca to be open to private enterprise; and he therefore granted
+      Ojeda a licence to go and explore it. Among those who went with him were
+      Amerigo Vespucci and Columbus&rsquo;s old pilot, Juan de la Cosa, as well
+      as some of the sailors who had been with the Admiral on the coast of Paria
+      and had returned in the caravels which had brought his account of it back
+      to Spain. Ojeda sailed on May 20, 1499; made a landfall some hundreds of
+      miles to the eastward of the Orinoco, coasted thence as far as the island
+      of Trinidad, and sailed along the northern coast of the peninsula of Paria
+      until he came to a country where the natives built their hots on piles in
+      the water, and to which he gave the name of Venezuela. It was by his
+      accidental presence on this voyage that Vespucci, the meat-contractor,
+      came to give his name to America&mdash;a curious story of international
+      jealousies, intrigues, lawsuits, and lies which we have not the space to
+      deal with here. After collecting a considerable quantity of pearls Ojeda,
+      who was beginning to run short of provisions, turned eastward again and
+      sought the coast of Espanola, where we shall presently meet with him
+      again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Ojeda was not the only person in Spain who was enticed by Columbus&rsquo;s
+      glowing descriptions to go and look for the pearls of Paria. There was in
+      fact quite a reunion of old friends of his and ours in the western ocean,
+      though they went thither in a spirit far different from that of ancient
+      friendship. Pedro Alonso Nino, who had also been on the Paria coast with
+      Columbus, who had come home with the returning ships, and whose patience
+      (for he was an exceedingly practical man) had perhaps been tried by the
+      strange doings of the Admiral in the Gulf of Paria, decided that he as
+      well as any one else might go and find some pearls. Nino is a poor man,
+      having worked hard in all his voyagings backwards and forwards across the
+      Atlantic; but he has a friend with money, one Luis Guerra, who provides
+      him with the funds necessary for fitting out a small caravel about the
+      size of his old ship the Nifta. Guerra, who has the money, also has a
+      brother Christoval; and his conditions are that Christoval shall be given
+      the command of the caravel. Practical Niflo does not care so long as he
+      reaches the place where the pearls are. He also applies to Fonseca for
+      licence to make discoveries; and, duly receiving it, sails from Palos in
+      the beginning of June 1499, hot upon the track of Ojeda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They did a little quiet discovery, principally in the domain of human
+      nature, caroused with the friendly natives, but attended to business all
+      the time; with the result that in the following April they were back in
+      Spain with a treasure of pearls out of which, after Nifio had been made
+      independent for life and Guerra, Christoval, and the rest of them had
+      their shares, there remained a handsome sum for the Crown. An extremely
+      practical, businesslike voyage this; full of lessons for our poor
+      Christopher, could he but have known and learned them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet another of our old friends profited by the Admiral&rsquo;s discovery.
+      What Vincenti Yafiez Pinzon has been doing all these years we have no
+      record; living at Palos, perhaps, doing a little of his ordinary coasting
+      business, administering the estates of his brother Martin Alonso, and,
+      almost for a certainty, talking pretty big about who it was that really
+      did all the work in the discovery of the New World. Out of the obscurity
+      of conjecture he emerges into fact in December 1499, when he is found at
+      Palos fitting out four caravels for the purpose of exploring farther along
+      the coast of the southern mainland. That he also was after pearls is
+      pretty certain; but on the other hand he was more of a sailor than an
+      adventurer, was a discoverer at heart, and had no small share of the
+      family taste for sea travel. He took a more southerly course than any of
+      the others and struck the coast of America south of the equator on January
+      20, 1500. He sailed north past the mouths of the Amazon and Orinoco
+      through the Gulf of Paria, and reached Espanola in June 1500. He only
+      paused there to take in provisions, and sailed to the west in search of
+      further discoveries; but he lost two of his caravels in a gale and had to
+      put back to Espanola.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He sailed thence for Palos, and reached home in September 1500, having
+      added no inconsiderable share to the mass of new geographical knowledge
+      that was being accumulated. In later years he took a high place in the
+      maritime world of Spain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And finally, to complete the account of the chief minor discoveries of
+      these two busy years, we must mention Pedro Alvarez Cabral of Portugal,
+      who was despatched in March 1, 1500 from Lisbon to verify the discoveries
+      of Da Gama. He reached Calicut six months later, losing on the voyage four
+      of his caravels and most of his company. Among the lost was Bartholomew
+      Diaz, the first discoverer of the Cape of Good Hope, who was on this
+      voyage in a subordinate capacity, and whose bones were left to dissolve in
+      the stormy waters that beat round the Cape whose barrier he was the first
+      to pass. The chief event of this voyage, however, was not the reaching of
+      Calicut nor the drowning of Diaz (which was chiefly of importance to
+      himself, poor soul!) but the discovery of Brazil, which Cabral made in
+      following the southerly course too far to the west. He landed there, in
+      the Bay of Porto Seguro, on May 1, 1500, and took formal possession of the
+      land for the Crown of Portugal, naming it Vera Cruz, or the Land of the
+      True Cross.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the assumption of Columbus and his contemporaries all these doings were
+      held to detract from the glory of his own achievements, and were the
+      subject of endless affidavits, depositions, quarrels, arguments, proofs
+      and claims in the great lawsuit that was in after years carried on between
+      the Crown of Spain and the heirs of Columbus concerning his titles and
+      revenues. We, however, may take a different view. With the exception of
+      the discoveries of the Cape of Good Hope and the coast of Brazil all these
+      enterprises were directly traceable to Columbus&rsquo;s own achievements
+      and were inspired by his example. The things that a man can do in his own
+      person are limited by the laws of time and space; it is only example and
+      influence that are infinite and illimitable, and in which the spirit of
+      any achievement can find true immortality.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="ch7c" id="ch7c"></a>CHAPTER VII.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE THIRD VOYAGE-(continued)
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It may perhaps be wearisome to the reader to return to the tangled and
+      depressing situation in Espanola, but it cannot be half so wearisome as it
+      was for Columbus, whom we left enveloped in that dark cloud of error and
+      surrender in which he sacrificed his dignity and good faith to the
+      impudent demands of a mutinous servant. To his other troubles in San
+      Domingo the presence of this Roldan was now added; and the reinstated
+      Alcalde was not long in making use of the victory he had gained. He bore
+      himself with intolerable arrogance and insolence, discharging one of
+      Columbus&rsquo;s personal bodyguard on the ground that no one should hold
+      any office on the island except with his consent. He demanded grants of
+      land for himself and his followers, which Columbus held himself obliged to
+      concede; and the Admiral, further to pacify him, invented a very
+      disastrous system of repartimientos, under which certain chiefs were
+      relieved from paying tribute on condition of furnishing feudal service to
+      the settlers&mdash;a system which rapidly developed into the most cruel
+      and oppressive kind of slavery. The Admiral at this time also, in despair
+      of keeping things quiet by his old methods of peace and conciliation,
+      created a kind of police force which roamed about the island, exacting
+      tribute and meting out summary punishment to all defaulters. Among other
+      concessions weakly made to Roldan at this time was the gift of the Crown
+      estate of Esperanza, situated in the Vega Real, whither he betook himself
+      and embarked on what was nothing more nor less than a despotic reign,
+      entirely ignoring the regulations and prerogatives of the Admiral, and
+      taking prisoners and administering punishment just as he pleased. The
+      Admiral was helpless, and thought of going back to Spain, but the
+      condition of the island was such that he did not dare to leave it.
+      Instead, he wrote a long letter to the Sovereigns, full of complaints
+      against other people and justifications of himself, in the course of which
+      he set forth those quibbling excuses for his capitulation to Roldan which
+      we have already heard. And there was a pathetic request at the end of the
+      letter that his son Diego might be sent out to him. As I have said,
+      Columbus was by this time a prematurely old man, and feeling the clouds
+      gathering about him, and the loneliness and friendlessness of his position
+      at Espanola, he instinctively looked to the next generation for help, and
+      to the presence of his own son for sympathy and comfort.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was at this moment (September 5, 1499) that a diversion arose in the
+      rumour that four caravels had been seen off the western end of Espanola
+      and duly reported to the Admiral; and this announcement was soon followed
+      by the news that they were commanded by Ojeda, who was collecting dye-wood
+      in the island forests. Columbus, although he had so far as we know had no
+      previous difficulties with Ojeda, had little cause now to credit any
+      adventurer with kindness towards himself; and Ojeda&rsquo;s secrecy in not
+      reporting himself at San Domingo, and, in fact, his presence on the island
+      at all without the knowledge of the Admiral, were sufficient evidence that
+      he was there to serve his own ends. Some gleam of Christopher&rsquo;s old
+      cleverness in handling men was&mdash;now shown by his instructing Roldan
+      to sally forth and bring Ojeda to order. It was a case of setting a thief
+      to catch a thief and, as it turned out, was not a bad stroke. Roldan,
+      nothing loth, sailed round to that part of the coast where Ojeda&rsquo;s
+      ships were anchored, and asked to see his licence; which was duly shown to
+      him and rather took the wind out of his sails. He heard a little gossip
+      from Ojeda, moreover, which had its own significance for him. The Queen
+      was ill; Columbus was in disgrace; there was talk of superseding him.
+      Ojeda promised to sail round to San Domingo and report himself; but
+      instead, he sailed to the east along the coast of Xaragua, where he got
+      into communication with some discontented Spanish settlers and concocted a
+      scheme for leading them to San Domingo to demand redress for their
+      imagined grievances. Roldan, however, who had come to look for Ojeda,
+      discovered him at this point; and there ensued some very pretty play
+      between the two rascals, chiefly in trickery and treachery, such as
+      capturing each other&rsquo;s boats and emissaries, laying traps for one
+      another, and taking prisoner one another&rsquo;s crews. The end of it was
+      that Ojeda left the island without having reported himself to Columbus,
+      but not before he had completed his business&mdash;which was that of
+      provisioning his ships and collecting dye-wood and slaves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so exit Ojeda from the Columbian drama. Of his own drama only one more
+      act remained to be played; which, for the sake of our past interest in
+      him, we will mention here. Chiefly on account of his intimacy with Fonseca
+      he was some years later given a governorship in the neighbourhood of the
+      Gulf of Darien; Juan de la Cosa accompanying him as unofficial partner.
+      Ojeda has no sooner landed there than he is fighting the natives; natives
+      too many for him this time; Ojeda forced to hide in the forest, where he
+      finds the body of de la Cosa, who has come by a shocking death. Ojeda
+      afterwards tries to govern his colony, but is no good at that; cannot
+      govern his own temper, poor fellow. Quarrels with his crew, is put in
+      irons, carried to Espanola, and dies there (1515) in great poverty and
+      eclipse. One of the many, evidently, who need a strong guiding hand, and
+      perish without it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It really began to seem as though Roldan, having had his fling and secured
+      the excessive privileges that he coveted, had decided that loyalty to
+      Christopher was for the present the most profitable policy; but the
+      mutinous spirit that he had cultivated in his followers for his own ends
+      could not be so readily converted into this cheap loyalty. More trouble
+      was yet to come of this rebellion. There was in the island a young Spanish
+      aristocrat, Fernando de Guevara by name, one of the many who had come out
+      in the hope of enjoying himself and making a fortune quickly, whose more
+      than outrageously dissolute life in San Domingo had caused Columbus to
+      banish him thence; and he was now living near Xaragua with a cousin of
+      his, Adrian de Moxeca, who had been one of the ringleaders in Roldan&rsquo;s
+      conspiracy. Within this pleasant province of Xaragua lived, as we have
+      seen, Anacaona, the sister of Caonabo, the Lord of the House of Gold. She
+      herself was a beautiful woman, called by her subjects Bloom of the Gold;
+      and she had a still more beautiful daughter, Higuamota, who appears in
+      history, like so many other women, on account of her charms and what came
+      of them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of pretty Higuamota, who once lived like a dryad among the groves of
+      Espanola and has been dead now for so long, we know nothing except that
+      she was beautiful, which, although she doubtless did not think so while
+      she lived, turns out to have been the most important thing about her.
+      Young Guevara, coming to stay with his cousin Adrian, becomes a visitor at
+      the house of Anacaona; sees the pretty daughter and falls in love with
+      her. Other people also, it appears, have been in a similar state, but
+      Higuamota is not very accessible; a fact which of course adds to the
+      interest of the chase, and turns dissolute Fernando&rsquo;s idle
+      preference into something like a passion. Roldan, who has also had an eye
+      upon her, and apparently no more than an eye, discovers that Fernando, in
+      order to gratify his passion, is proposing to go the absurd length of
+      marrying the young woman, and has sent for a priest for that purpose.
+      Roldan, instigated thereto by primitive forces, thinks it would be
+      impolitic for a Spanish grandee to marry with a heathen; very well, then,
+      Fernando will have her baptized&mdash;nothing simpler when water and a
+      priest are handy. Roldan, seeing that the young man is serious, becomes
+      peremptory, and orders him to leave Xaragua. Fernando ostentatiously
+      departs, but is discovered a little later actually living in the house of
+      Anacaona, who apparently is sympathetic to Love&rsquo;s young dream. Once
+      more ordered away, this time with anger and threats, Guevara changes his
+      tune and implores Roldan to let him stay, promising that he will give up
+      the marriage project and also, no doubt, the no-marriage project. But
+      Guevara has sympathisers. The mutineers have not forgiven Roldan for
+      deserting them and becoming a lawful instead of an unlawful ruler. They
+      are all on the side of Guevara, who accordingly moves to the next stage of
+      island procedure, and sets on foot some kind of plot to kill Roldan and
+      the Admiral. Fortunately where there is treachery it generally works both
+      ways; this plot came to the ears of the authorities; the conspirators were
+      arrested and sent to San Domingo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This action came near to bringing the whole island about Columbus&rsquo;s
+      ears. Adrian de Moxeca was furious at what he conceived to be the
+      treachery of Roldan, for Roldan was in such a pass that the barest act of
+      duty was necessarily one of treachery to his friends. Moxeca took the
+      place of chief rebel that Roldan had vacated; rallied the mutineers round
+      him, and was on the point of starting for Concepcion, one of the chain of
+      forts across the island where Columbus was at present staying, when the
+      Admiral discovered his plan. All that was strongest and bravest in him
+      rose up at this menace. His weakness and cowardice were forgotten; and
+      with the spirit of an old sea-lion he sallied forth against the mutineers.
+      He had only a dozen men on whom he could rely, but he armed them well and
+      marched secretly and swiftly under cloud of night to the place where
+      Moxeca and his followers were encamped in fond security, and there
+      suddenly fell upon them, capturing Moxeca and the chief ringleaders. The
+      rest scattered in terror and escaped. Moxeca was hurried off to the
+      battlements of San Domingo and there, in the very midst of a longdrawn
+      trembling confession to the priest in attendance, was swung off the
+      ramparts and hanged. The others, although also condemned to death, were
+      kept in irons in the fortress, while Christopher and Bartholomew, roused
+      at last to vigorous action, scoured the island hunting down the remainder,
+      killing some who resisted, hanging others on the spot, and imprisoning the
+      remainder at San Domingo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After these prompt measures peace reigned for a time in the island, and
+      Columbus was perhaps surprised to see what wholesome effects could be
+      produced by a little exemplary severity. The natives, who under the
+      weakness of his former rule had been discontented and troublesome, now
+      settled down submissively to their yoke; the Spaniards began to work in
+      earnest on their farms; and there descended upon island affairs a brief
+      St. Martin&rsquo;s Summer of peace before the final winter of blight and
+      death set in. The Admiral, however, was obviously in precarious health;
+      his ophthalmia became worse, and the stability of his mind suffered. He
+      had dreams and visions of divine help and comfort, much needed by him,
+      poor soul, in all his tribulations and adversities. Even yet the cup was
+      not full.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We must now turn back to Spain and try to form some idea of the way in
+      which the doings of Columbus were being regarded there if we are to
+      understand the extraordinary calamity that was soon to befall him. It must
+      be remembered first of all that his enterprise had never really been
+      popular from the first. It was carried out entirely by the energy and
+      confidence of Queen Isabella, who almost alone of those in power believed
+      in it as a thing which was certain to bring ultimate glory, as well as
+      riches and dominion, to Spain and the Catholic faith. As we have seen,
+      there had been a brief ebullition of popular favour when Columbus returned
+      from his first voyage, but it was a popularity excited solely by the
+      promises of great wealth that Columbus was continually holding forth. When
+      those promises were not immediately fulfilled popular favour subsided; and
+      when the adventurers who had gone out to the new islands on the strength
+      of those promises had returned with shattered health and empty pockets
+      there was less chance than ever of the matter being regarded in its proper
+      light by the people of Spain. Columbus had either found a gold mine or he
+      had found nothing&mdash;that was the way in which the matter was popularly
+      regarded. Those who really understood the significance of his discoveries
+      and appreciated their scientific importance did not merely stay at home in
+      Spain and raise a clamour; they went out in the Admiral&rsquo;s footsteps
+      and continued the work that he had begun. Even King Ferdinand, for all his
+      cleverness, had never understood the real lines on which the colony should
+      have been developed. His eyes were fixed upon Europe; he saw in the
+      discoveries of Columbus a means rather than an end; and looked to them
+      simply as a source of revenue with the help of which he could carry on his
+      ambitious schemes. And when, as other captains made voyages confirming and
+      extending the work of Columbus, he did begin to understand the
+      significance of what had been done, he realised too late that the Admiral
+      had been given powers far in excess of what was prudent or sensible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During all the time that Columbus and his brothers were struggling with
+      the impossible situation at Espanola there was but one influence at work
+      in Spain, and that was entirely destructive to the Admiral. Every caravel
+      that came from the New World brought two things. It brought a crowd of
+      discontented colonists, many of whom had grave reasons for their
+      discontent; and it brought letters from the Admiral in which more and more
+      promises were held out, but in which also querulous complaints against
+      this and that person, and against the Spanish settlers generally, were set
+      forth at wearisome length. It is not remarkable that the people of Spain,
+      even those who were well disposed towards Columbus, began to wonder if
+      these two things were not cause and effect. The settlers may have been a
+      poor lot, but they were the material with which Columbus had to deal; he
+      had powers enough, Heaven knew, powers of life and death; and the problem
+      began to resolve itself in the minds of those at the head of affairs in
+      Spain in the following terms. Given an island, rich and luxuriant beyond
+      the dreams of man; given a native population easily subdued; given
+      settlers of one kind or another; and given a Viceroy with unlimited powers&mdash;could
+      he or could he not govern the island? It was a by no means unfair way of
+      putting the case, and there is little justice in the wild abuse that has
+      been hurled at Ferdinand and Isabella on this ground. Columbus may have
+      been the greatest genius in the world; very possibly they admitted it; but
+      in the meanwhile Spain was resounding with the cries of the impoverished
+      colonists who had returned from his ocean Paradise. No doubt the
+      Sovereigns ignored them as much as they possibly could; but when it came
+      to ragged emaciated beggars coming in batches of fifty at a time and
+      sitting in the very courts of the Alhambra, exhibiting bunches of grapes
+      and saying that that was all they could afford to live upon since they had
+      come back from the New World, some notice had to be taken of it. Even
+      young Diego and Ferdinand, the Admiral&rsquo;s sons, came in for the
+      obloquy with which his name was associated; the colonial vagabonds hung
+      round the portals of the palace and cried out upon them as they passed so
+      that they began to dislike going out. Columbus, as we know, had plenty of
+      enemies who had access to the King and Queen; and never had enemies an
+      easier case to urge. Money was continually being spent on ships and
+      supplies; where was the return for it? What about the Ophir of Solomon?
+      What about the Land of Spices? What about the pearls? And if you want to
+      add a touch of absurdity, what about the Garden of Eden and the Great
+      Khan?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To the most impartial eyes it began to appear as though Columbus were
+      either an impostor or a fool. There is no evidence that Ferdinand and
+      Isabella thought that he was an impostor or that he had wilfully deceived
+      them; but there is some evidence that they began to have an inkling as to
+      what kind of a man he really was, and as to his unfitness for governing a
+      colony. Once more something had to be done. The sending out of a
+      commissioner had not been a great success before, but in the difficulties
+      of the situation it seemed the only thing. Still there was a good deal of
+      hesitation, and it is probable that Isabella was not yet fully convinced
+      of the necessity for this grave step. This hesitation was brought to an
+      end by the arrival from Espanola of the ships bearing the followers of
+      Roldan, who had been sent back under the terms of Columbus&rsquo;s feeble
+      capitulation. The same ships brought a great quantity of slaves, which the
+      colonists were able to show had been brought by the permission of the
+      Admiral; they carried native girls also, many of them pregnant, many with
+      new-born babies; and these also came with the permission of the Admiral.
+      The ships further carried the Admiral&rsquo;s letter complaining of the
+      conspiracy of Roldan and containing the unfortunate request for a further
+      licence to extend the slave trade. These circumstances were probably
+      enough to turn the scale of Isabella&rsquo;s opinion against the Admiral&rsquo;s
+      administration. The presence of the slaves particularly angered her kind
+      womanly heart. &ldquo;What right has he to give away my vassals?&rdquo;
+      she exclaimed, and ordered that they should all be sent back, and that in
+      addition all the other slaves who had come home should be traced and sent
+      back; although of course it was impossible to carry out this last order.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At any rate there was no longer any hesitation about sending out a
+      commissioner, and the Sovereigns chose one Francisco de Bobadilla, an
+      official of the royal household, for the performance of this difficult
+      mission. As far as we can decipher him he was a very ordinary official
+      personage; prejudiced, it is possible, against an administration that had
+      produced such disastrous results and which offended his orderly official
+      susceptibilities; otherwise to be regarded as a man exactly honest in the
+      performance of what he conceived to be his duties, and entirely indisposed
+      to allow sentiment or any other extraneous matter to interfere with such
+      due performance. We shall have need to remember, when we see him at work
+      in Espanola, that he was not sent out to judge between Columbus and his
+      Sovereigns or between Columbus and the world, but to investigate the
+      condition of the colony and to take what action he thought necessary. The
+      commission which he bore to the Admiral was in the following terms:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The King and the Queen: Don Christopher Columbus, our Admiral of
+      the Ocean-sea. We have directed Francisco de Bobadilla, the bearer of
+      this, to speak to you for us of certain things which he will mention: we
+      request you to give him faith and credence and to obey him. From Madrid,
+      May 26, &lsquo;99. I THE KING. I THE QUEEN. By their command. Miguel Perez
+      de Almazan.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In addition Bobadilla bore with him papers and authorities giving him
+      complete control and possession of all the forts, arms, and royal property
+      in the island, in case it should be necessary for him to use them; and he
+      also had a number of blank warrants which were signed, but the substance
+      of which was not filled in. This may seem very dreadful to us, with our
+      friendship for the poor Admiral; but considering the grave state of
+      affairs as represented to the King and Queen, who had their duties to
+      their colonial subjects as well as to Columbus, there was nothing
+      excessive in it. If they were to send out a commissioner at all, and if
+      they were satisfied, as presumably they were, that the man they had chosen
+      was trustworthy, it was only right to make his authority absolute. Thus
+      equipped Francisco de Bobadilla sailed from Spain in July 1500.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="bk4" id="bk4"></a>BOOK IV.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      TOWARDS THE SUNSET
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="ch1d" id="ch1d"></a>CHAPTER I.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      DEGRADATION
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first things seen by Francisco de Bobadilla when he entered the
+      harbour of San Domingo on the morning of the 23rd of August 1500 were the
+      bodies of several Spaniards, hanging from a gibbet near the water-side&mdash;a
+      grim confirmation of what he had heard about the troubled state of the
+      island. While he was waiting for the tide so that he might enter the
+      harbour a boat put off from shore to ascertain who was on board the
+      caravels; and it was thus informally that Bobadilla first announced that
+      he had come to examine into the state of the island. Columbus was not at
+      San Domingo, but was occupied in settling the affairs of the Vega Real;
+      Bartholomew also was absent, stamping out the last smouldering embers of
+      rebellion in Xaragua; and only James was in command to deal with this
+      awkward situation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bobadilla did not go ashore the first day, but remained on board his ship
+      receiving the visits of various discontented colonists who, getting early
+      wind of the purpose of his visit, lost no time in currying favour with
+      him, Probably he heard enough that first day to have damned the
+      administration of a dozen islands; but also we must allow him some
+      interest in the wonderful and strange sights that he was seeing; for
+      Espanola, which has perhaps grown wearisome to us, was new to him. He had
+      brought with him an armed body-guard of twenty-five men, and in the other
+      caravel were the returned slaves, babies and all, under the charge of six
+      friars. On the day following his arrival Bobadilla landed and heard mass
+      in state, afterwards reading out his commission to the assembled people.
+      Evidently he had received a shocking impression of the state of affairs in
+      the island; that is the only explanation of the action suddenly taken by
+      him, for his first public act was to demand from James the release of all
+      the prisoners in the fortress, in order that they and their accusers
+      should appear before him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      James is in a difficulty; and, mule-like, since he does not know which way
+      to turn, stands stock still. He can do nothing, he says, without the
+      Admiral&rsquo;s consent. The next day Bobadilla, again hearing mass in
+      state, causes further documents to be read showing that a still greater
+      degree of power had been entrusted to his hands. Mule-like, James still
+      stands stock still; the greatest power on earth known to him is his eldest
+      brother, and he will not, positively dare not, be moved by anything less
+      than that. He refuses to give up the prisoners on any grounds whatsoever,
+      and Bobadilla has to take the fortress by assault&mdash;an easy enough
+      matter since the resistance is but formal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next act of Bobadilla&rsquo;s is not quite so easy to understand. He
+      quartered himself in Columbus&rsquo;s house; that perhaps was reasonable
+      enough since there may not have been another house in the settlement fit
+      to receive him; but he also, we are told, took possession of all his
+      papers, public and private, and also seized the Admiral&rsquo;s store of
+      money and began to pay his debts with it for him, greatly to the
+      satisfaction of San Domingo. There is an element of the comic in this
+      interpretation of a commissioner&rsquo;s powers; and it seemed as though
+      he meant to wind up the whole Columbus business, lock, stock, and barrel.
+      It would not be in accordance with our modern ideas of honour that a man&rsquo;s
+      private papers should be seized unless he were suspected of treachery or
+      some criminal act; but apparently Bobadilla regarded it as necessary. We
+      must remember that although he had only heard one side of the case it was
+      evidently so positive, and the fruits of misgovernment were there so
+      visibly before his eyes, that no amount of evidence in favour of Columbus
+      would make him change his mind as to his fitness to govern. Poor James,
+      witnessing these things and unable to do anything to prevent them, finds
+      himself suddenly relieved from the tension of the situation. Since
+      inaction is his note, he shall be indulged in it; and he is clapped in
+      irons and cast into prison. James can hardly believe the evidence of his
+      senses. He has been studying theology lately, it appears, with a view to
+      entering the Church and perhaps being some day made Bishop of Espanola,
+      but this new turn of affairs looks as though there were to be an end of
+      all careers for him, military and ecclesiastical alike.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Christopher at Fort Concepcion had early news of the arrival of Bobadilla,
+      but in the hazy state of his mind he did not regard it as an event of
+      sufficient importance to make his immediate presence at San Domingo
+      advisable. The name of Bobadilla conveyed nothing to him; and when he
+      heard that he had come to investigate, he thought that he came to set
+      right some disputed questions between the Admiral and other navigators as
+      to the right of visiting Espanola and the Paria coast. As the days went
+      on, however, he heard more disquieting rumours; grew at last uneasy, and
+      moved to a fort nearer San Domingo in case it should be necessary for him
+      to go there. An officer met him on the road bearing the proclamations
+      issued by Bobadilla, but not the message from the Sovereigns requiring the
+      Admiral&rsquo;s obedience to the commissioner. Columbus wrote to the
+      commissioner a curious letter, which is not preserved, in which he sought
+      to gain time; excusing himself from responsibility for the condition of
+      the island, and assuring Bobadilla that, as he intended to return to Spain
+      almost immediately, he (Bobadilla) would have ample opportunity for
+      exercising his command in his absence. He also wrote to the Franciscan
+      friars who had accompanied Bobadilla asking them to use their influence&mdash;the
+      Admiral having some vague connection with the Franciscan order since his
+      days at La Rabida.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No reply came to any of these letters, and Columbus sent word that he
+      still regarded his authority as paramount in the island. For reply to this
+      he received the Sovereigns&rsquo; message to him which we have seen,
+      commanding him to put himself under the direction of Bobadilla. There was
+      no mistaking this; there was the order in plain words; and with I know not
+      what sinkings of heart Columbus at last set out for San Domingo. Bobadilla
+      had expected resistance, but the Admiral, whatever his faults, knew how to
+      behave with, dignity in a humiliating position; and he came into the city
+      unattended on August 23, 1500. On the outskirts of the town he was met by
+      Bobadilla&rsquo;s guards, arrested, put in chains, and lodged in the
+      fortress, the tower of which exists to this day. He seemed to himself to
+      be the victim of a particularly petty and galling kind of treachery, for
+      it was his own cook, a man called Espinoza, who riveted his gyves upon
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There remained Bartholomew to be dealt with, and he, being at large and in
+      command of the army, might not have proved such an easy conquest, but that
+      Christopher, at Bobadilla&rsquo;s request, wrote and advised him to submit
+      to arrest without any resistance. Whether Bartholomew acquiesced or not is
+      uncertain; what is certain is that he also was captured and placed in
+      irons, and imprisoned on one of the caravels. James in one caravel,
+      Bartholomew in another, and Christopher in the fortress, and all in chains&mdash;this
+      is what it has come to with the three sons of old Domenico.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The trial was now begun, if trial that can be called which takes place in
+      the absence of the culprit or his representative. It was rather the
+      hearing of charges against Christopher and his brothers; and we may be
+      sure that every discontented feeling in the island found voice and was
+      formulated into some incriminating charge. Columbus was accused of
+      oppressing the Spanish settlers by making them work at harsh and
+      unnecessary labour; of cutting down their allowance of food, and
+      restricting their liberty; of punishing them cruelly and unduly; of waging
+      wars unjustly with the natives; of interfering with the conversion of the
+      natives by hastily collecting them and sending them home as slaves; of
+      having secreted treasures which should have been delivered to the
+      Sovereigns&mdash;this last charge, like some of the others, true. He had
+      an accumulation of pearls of which he had given no account to Fonseca, and
+      the possession of which he excused by the queer statement that he was
+      waiting to announce it until he could match it with an equal amount of
+      gold! He was accused of hating the Spaniards, who were represented as
+      having risen in the late rebellion in order to protect the natives and
+      avenge their own wrongs&mdash;, and generally of having abused his office
+      in order to enrich his own family and gratify his own feelings. Bobadilla
+      appeared to believe all these charges; or perhaps he recognised their
+      nature, and yet saw that there was a sufficient degree of truth in them to
+      disqualify the Admiral in his position as Viceroy. In all these affairs
+      his right-hand man was Roldan, whose loyalty to Columbus, as we foresaw,
+      had been short-lived. Roldan collects evidence; Roldan knows where he can
+      lay his hands on this witness; Roldan produces this and that proof; Roldan
+      is here, there, and everywhere&mdash;never had Bobadilla found such a
+      useful, obliging man as Roldan. With his help Bobadilla soon collected a
+      sufficient weight of evidence to justify in his own mind his sending
+      Columbus home to Spain, and remaining himself in command of the island.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The caravels having been made ready, and all the evidence drawn up and
+      documented, it only remained to embark the prisoners and despatch them to
+      Spain. Columbus, sitting in his dungeon, suffering from gout and
+      ophthalmic as well as from misery and humiliation, had heard no news; but
+      he had heard the shouting of the people in the streets, the beating of
+      drums and blowing of horns, and his own name and that of his brothers
+      uttered in derision; and he made sure that he was going to be executed.
+      Alonso de Villegio, a nephew of Bishop Fonseca&rsquo;s, had been appointed
+      to take charge of the ships returning to Spain; and when he came into the
+      prison the Admiral thought his last hour had come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Villegio,&rdquo; he asked sadly, &ldquo;where are you taking me?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am taking you to the ship, your Excellency, to embark,&rdquo;
+      replied the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To embark?&rdquo; repeated the Admiral incredulously. &ldquo;Villegio!
+      are you speaking the truth?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By the life of your Excellency what I say is true,&rdquo; was the
+      reply, and the news came with a wave of relief to the panic-stricken heart
+      of the Admiral.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the middle of October the caravels sailed from San Domingo, and the
+      last sounds heard by Columbus from the land of his discovery were the
+      hoots and jeers and curses hurled after him by the treacherous, triumphant
+      rabble on the shore. Villegio treated him and his brothers with as much
+      kindness as possible, and offered, when they had got well clear of
+      Espanola, to take off the Admiral&rsquo;s chains. But Columbus, with a
+      fine counterstroke of picturesque dignity, refused to have them removed.
+      Already, perhaps, he had realised that his subjection to this cruel and
+      quite unnecessary indignity would be one of the strongest things in his
+      favour when he got to Spain, and he decided to suffer as much of it as he
+      could. &ldquo;My Sovereigns commanded me to submit to what Bobadilla
+      should order. By his authority I wear these chains, and I shall continue
+      to wear them until they are removed by order of the Sovereigns; and I will
+      keep them afterwards as reminders of the reward I have received for my
+      services.&rdquo; Thus the Admiral, beginning to pick up his spirits again,
+      and to feel the better for the sea air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The voyage home was a favourable one and in the course of it Columbus
+      wrote the following letter to a friend of his at Court, Dona Juana de la
+      Torre, who had been nurse to Prince Juan and was known by him to be a
+      favourite of the Queen:
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;MOST VIRTUOUS LADY,&mdash;Though my complaint of the world is
+        new, its habit of ill-using is very ancient. I have had a thousand
+        struggles with it, and have thus far withstood them all, but now neither
+        arms nor counsels avail me, and it cruelly keeps me under water. Hope in
+        the Creator of all men sustains me: His help was always very ready; on
+        another occasion, and not long ago, when I was still more overwhelmed,
+        He raised me with His right arm, saying, &lsquo;O man of little faith,
+        arise: it is I; be not afraid.&rsquo;
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;I came with so much cordial affection to serve these Princes, and
+        have served them with such service, as has never been heard of or seen.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;Of the new heaven and earth which our Lord made, when Saint John
+        was writing the Apocalypse, after what was spoken by the mouth of
+        Isaiah, He made me the messenger, and showed me where it lay. In all men
+        there was disbelief, but to the Queen, my Lady, He gave the spirit of
+        understanding, and great courage, and made her heiress of all, as a dear
+        and much loved daughter. I went to take possession of all this in her
+        royal name. They sought to make amends to her for the ignorance they had
+        all shown by passing over their little knowledge and talking of
+        obstacles and expenses. Her Highness, on the other hand, approved of it,
+        and supported it as far as she was able.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;Seven years passed in discussion and nine in execution. During
+        this time very remarkable and noteworthy things occurred whereof no idea
+        at all had been formed. I have arrived at, and am in, such a condition
+        that there is no person so vile but thinks he may insult me: he shall be
+        reckoned in the world as valour itself who is courageous enough not to
+        consent to it.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;If I were to steal the Indies or the land which lies towards
+        them, of which I am now speaking, from the altar of Saint Peter, and
+        give them to the Moors, they could not show greater enmity towards me in
+        Spain. Who would believe such a thing where there was always so much
+        magnanimity?
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;I should have much desired to free myself from this affair had it
+        been honourable towards my Queen to do so. The support of our Lord and
+        of her Highness made me persevere: and to alleviate in some measure the
+        sorrows which death had caused her, I undertook a fresh voyage to the
+        new heaven and earth which up to that time had remained hidden; and if
+        it is not held there in esteem like the other voyages to the Indies,
+        that is no wonder, because it came to be looked upon as my work.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;The Holy Spirit inflamed Saint Peter and twelve others with him,
+        and they all contended here below, and their toils and hardships were
+        many, but last of all they gained the victory.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;This voyage to Paria I thought would somewhat appease them on
+        account of the pearls, and of the discovery of gold in Espanola. I
+        ordered the pearls to be collected and fished for by people with whom an
+        arrangement was made that I should return for them, and, as I
+        understood, they were to be measured by the bushel. If I did not write
+        about this to their Highnesses, it was because I wished to have first of
+        all done the same thing with the gold.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;The result to me in this has been the same as in many other
+        things; I should not have lost them nor my honour, if I had sought my
+        own advantage, and had allowed Espanola to be ruined, or if my
+        privileges and contracts had been observed. And I say just the same
+        about the gold which I had then collected, and [for] which with such
+        great afflictions and toils I have, by divine power, almost perfected
+        [the arrangements].
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;When I went from Paria I found almost half the people from
+        Espanola in revolt, and they have waged war against me until now, as
+        against a Moor; and the Indians on the other side grievously [harassed
+        me]. At this time Hojeda arrived and tried to put the finishing stroke:
+        he said that their Highnesses had sent him with promises of gifts,
+        franchises and pay: he gathered together a great band, for in the whole
+        of Espanola there are very few save vagabonds, and not one with wife and
+        children. This Hojeda gave me great trouble; he was obliged to depart,
+        and left word that he would soon return with more ships and people, and
+        that he had left the Royal person of the Queen, our Lady, at the point
+        of death. Then Vincente Yanez arrived with four caravels; there was
+        disturbance and mistrust but no mischief: the Indians talked of many
+        others at the Cannibals [Caribbee Islands] and in Paria; and afterwards
+        spread the news of six other caravels, which were brought by a brother
+        of the Alcalde, but it was with malicious intent. This occurred at the
+        very last, when the hope that their Highnesses would ever send any ships
+        to the Indies was almost abandoned, nor did we expect them; and it was
+        commonly reported that her Highness was dead.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;A certain Adrian about this time endeavoured to rise in rebellion
+        again, as he had done previously, but our Lord did not permit his evil
+        purpose to succeed. I had purposed in myself never to touch a hair of
+        anybody&rsquo;s head, but I lament to say that with this man, owing to
+        his ingratitude, it was not possible to keep that resolve as I had
+        intended: I should not have done less to my brother, if he had sought to
+        kill me, and steal the dominion which my King and Queen had given me in
+        trust.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;This Adrian, as it appears, had sent Don Ferdinand to Xaragua to
+        collect some of his followers, and there a dispute arose with the
+        Alcalde from which a deadly contest ensued, and he [Adrian] did not
+        effect his purpose. The Alcalde seized him and a part of his band, and
+        the fact was that he would have executed them if I had not prevented it;
+        they were kept prisoners awaiting a caravel in which they might depart.
+        The news of Hojeda which I told them made them lose the hope that he
+        would now come again.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;For six months I had been prepared to return to their Highnesses
+        with the good news of the gold, and to escape from governing a dissolute
+        people Who fear neither God nor their King and Queen, being full of
+        vices and wickedness.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;I could have paid the people in full with six hundred thousand,
+        and for this purpose I had four millions of tenths and somewhat more,
+        besides the third of the gold.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;Before my departure I many times begged their Highnesses to send
+        there, at my expense, some one to take charge of the administration of
+        justice; and after finding the Alcalde in arms I renewed my
+        supplications to have either some troops or at least some servant of
+        theirs with letters patent; for my reputation is such that even if I
+        build churches and hospitals, they will always be called dens of
+        thieves.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;They did indeed make provision at last, but it was the very
+        contrary of what the matter demanded: it may be successful, since it was
+        according to their good pleasure.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;I was there for two years without being able to gain a decree of
+        favour for myself or for those who went there, yet this man brought a
+        coffer full: whether they will all redound to their [Highnesses]
+        service, God knows. Indeed, to begin with, there are exemptions for
+        twenty years, which is a man&rsquo;s lifetime; and gold is collected to
+        such an extent that there was one person who became worth five marks in
+        four hours; whereof I will speak more fully later on.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;If it would please their Highnesses to remove the grounds of a
+        common saying of those who know my labours, that the calumny of the
+        people has done me more harm than much service and the maintenance of
+        their [Highnesses] property and dominion has done me good, it would be a
+        charity, and I should be re-established in my honour, and it would be
+        talked about all over the world: for the undertaking is of such a nature
+        that it must daily become more famous and in higher esteem.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;When the Commander Bobadilla came to Santo Domingo, I was at La
+        Vega, and the Adelantado at Xaragua, where that Adrian had made a stand,
+        but then all was quiet, and the land rich and all men at peace. On the
+        second day after his arrival, he created himself Governor, and appointed
+        officers and made executions, and proclaimed immunities of gold and
+        tenths and in general of everything else for twenty years, which is a
+        man&rsquo;s lifetime, and that he came to pay everybody in full up to
+        that day, even though they had not rendered service; and he publicly
+        gave notice that, as for me, he had charge to send me in irons, and my
+        brothers likewise, as he has done, and that I should nevermore return
+        thither, nor any other of my family: alleging a thousand disgraceful and
+        discourteous things about me. All this took place on the second day
+        after his arrival, as I have said, and while I was absent at a distance,
+        without my knowing either of him or of his arrival.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;Some letters of their Highnesses signed in blank, of which he
+        brought a number, he filled up and sent to the Alcalde and to his
+        company with favours and commendations: to me he never sent either
+        letter or messenger, nor has he done so to this day. Imagine what any
+        one holding my office would think when one who endeavoured to rob their
+        Highnesses, and who has done so much evil and mischief, is honoured and
+        favoured, while he who maintained it at such risks is degraded.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;When I heard this I thought that this affair would be like that
+        of Hojeda or one of the others, but I restrained myself when I learnt
+        for certain from the friars that their Highnesses had sent him. I wrote
+        to him that his arrival was welcome, and that I was prepared to go to
+        the Court and had sold all I possessed by auction; and that with respect
+        to the immunities he should not be hasty, for both that matter and the
+        government I would hand over to him immediately as smooth as my palm.
+        And I wrote to the same effect to the friars, but neither he nor they
+        gave me any answer. On the contrary, he put himself in a warlike
+        attitude, and compelled all who went there to take an oath to him as
+        Governor; and they told me that it was for twenty years.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;Directly I knew of those immunities, I thought that I would
+        repair such a great error and that he would be pleased, for he gave them
+        without the need or occasion necessary in so vast a matter: and he gave
+        to vagabond people what would have been excessive for a man who had
+        brought wife and children. So I announced by word and letters that he
+        could not use his patents because mine were those in force; and I showed
+        them the immunities which John Aguado brought.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;All this was done by me in order to gain time, so that their
+        Highnesses might be informed of the condition of the country, and that
+        they might have an opportunity of issuing fresh commands as to what
+        would best promote their service in that respect.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;It is useless to publish such immunities in the Indies: to the
+        settlers who have taken up residence it is a pure gain, for the best
+        lands are given to them, and at a low valuation they will be worth
+        two-hundred thousand at the end of the four years when the period of
+        residence is ended, without their digging a spadeful in them. I would
+        not speak thus if the settlers were married, but there are not six among
+        them all who are not on the look-out to gather what they can and depart
+        speedily. It would be a good thing if they should go from Castile, and
+        also if it were known who and what they are, and if the country could be
+        settled with honest people.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;I had agreed with those settlers that they should pay the third
+        of the gold, and the tenths, and this at their own request; and they
+        received it as a great favour from their Highnesses. I reproved them
+        when I heard that they ceased to do this, and hoped that the Commander
+        would do likewise, and he did the contrary.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;He incensed them against me by saying that I wanted to deprive
+        them of what their Highnesses had given them; and he endeavoured to set
+        them at variance with me, and did so; and he induced them to write to
+        their Highnesses that they should never again send me back to the
+        government, and I likewise make the same supplication to them for myself
+        and for my whole family, as long as there are not different inhabitants.
+        And he together with them ordered inquisitions concerning me for
+        wickednesses the like whereof were never known in hell. Our Lord, who
+        rescued Daniel and the three children, is present with the same wisdom
+        and power as He had then, and with the same means, if it should please
+        Him and be in accordance with His will.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;I should know how to remedy all this, and the rest of what has
+        been said and has taken place since I have been in the Indies, if my
+        disposition would allow me to seek my own advantage, and if it seemed
+        honourable to me to do so, but the maintenance of justice and the
+        extension of the dominion of her Highness has hitherto kept me down. Now
+        that so much gold is found, a dispute arises as to which brings more
+        profit, whether to go about robbing or to go to the mines. A hundred
+        castellanos are as easily obtained for a woman as for a farm, and it is
+        very general, and there are plenty of dealers who go about looking for
+        girls: those from nine to ten are now in demand, and for all ages a good
+        price must be paid.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;I assert that the violence of the calumny of turbulent persons
+        has injured me more than my services have profited me; which is a bad
+        example for the present and for the future. I take my oath that a number
+        of men have gone to the Indies who did not deserve water in the sight of
+        God and of the world; and now they are returning thither, and leave is
+        granted them.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;I assert that when I declared that the Commander could not grant
+        immunities, I did what he desired, although I told him that it was to
+        cause delay until their Highnesses should, receive information from the
+        country, and should command anew what might be for their service.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;He excited their enmity against me, and he seems, from what took
+        place and from his behaviour, to have come as my enemy and as a very
+        vehement one; or else the report is true that he has spent much to
+        obtain this employment. I do not know more about it than what I hear. I
+        never heard of an inquisitor gathering rebels together and accepting
+        them, and others devoid of credit and unworthy of it, as witnesses
+        against their Governor.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;If their Highnesses were to make a general inquisition there, I
+        assure you that they would look upon it as a great wonder that the
+        island does not founder.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;I think your Ladyship will remember that when, after losing my
+        sails, I was driven into Lisbon by a tempest, I was falsely accused of
+        having gone there to the King in order to give him the Indies. Their
+        Highnesses afterwards learned the contrary, and that it was entirely
+        malicious.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;Although I may know but little, I do not think any one considers
+        me so stupid as not to know that even if the Indies were mine I could
+        not uphold myself without the help of some Prince.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;If this be so, where could I find better support and security
+        than in the King and Queen, our Lords, who have raised me from nothing
+        to such great honour, and are the most exalted Princes of the world on
+        sea and on land, and who consider that I have rendered them service, and
+        who preserve to me my privileges and rewards: and if any one infringes
+        them, their Highnesses increase them still more, as was seen in the case
+        of John Aguado; and they order great honour to be conferred upon me,
+        and, as I have already said, their Highnesses have received service from
+        me, and keep my sons in their household; all which could by no means
+        happen with another prince, for where there is no affection, everything
+        else fails.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;I have now spoken thus in reply to a malicious slander, but
+        against my will, as it is a thing which should not recur to memory even
+        in dreams; for the Commander Bobadilla maliciously seeks in this way to
+        set his own conduct and actions in a brighter light; but I shall easily
+        show him that his small knowledge and great cowardice, together with his
+        inordinate cupidity, have caused him to fail therein.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;I have already said that I wrote to him and to the friars, and
+        immediately set out, as I told him, almost alone, because all the people
+        were with the Adelantado, and likewise in order to prevent suspicion on
+        his part. When he heard this, he seized Don Diego and sent him on board
+        a caravel loaded with irons, and did the same to me upon my arrival, and
+        afterwards to the Adelantado when he came; nor did I speak to him any
+        more, nor to this day has he allowed any one to speak to me; and I take
+        my oath that I cannot understand why I am made a prisoner.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;He made it his first business to seize the gold, which he did
+        without measuring or weighing it and in my absence; he said that he
+        wanted it to pay the people, and according to what I hear he assigned
+        the chief part to himself and sent fresh exchangers for the exchanges.
+        Of this gold I had put aside certain specimens, very big lumps, like the
+        eggs of geese, hens, and pullets, and of many other shapes, which some
+        persons had collected in a short space of time, in order that their
+        Highnesses might be gladdened, and might comprehend the business upon
+        seeing a quantity of large stones full of gold. This collection was the
+        first to be given away, with malicious intent, so that their Highnesses
+        should not hold the matter in any account until he has feathered his
+        nest, which he is in great haste to do. Gold which is for melting
+        diminishes at the fire: some chains which would weigh about twenty marks
+        have never been seen again.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;I have been more distressed about this matter of the gold than
+        even about the pearls, because I have not brought it to her Highness.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;The Commander at once set to work upon anything which he thought
+        would injure me. I have already said that with six hundred thousand I
+        could pay every one without defrauding anybody, and that I had more than
+        four millions of tenths and constabulary [dues] without touching the
+        gold. He made some free gifts which are ridiculous, though I believe
+        that he began by assigning the chief part to himself. Their Highnesses
+        will find it out when they order an account to be obtained from him,
+        especially if I should be present thereat. He does nothing but reiterate
+        that a large sum is owing, and it is what I have said, and even less. I
+        have been much distressed that there should be sent concerning me an
+        inquisitor who is aware that if the inquisition which he returns is very
+        grave he will remain in possession of the government.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;Would that it had pleased our Lord that their Highnesses had sent
+        him or some one else two years ago, for I know that I should now be free
+        from scandal and infamy, and that my honour would not be taken from me,
+        nor should I lose it. God is just, and will make known the why and the
+        wherefore.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;They judge me over there as they would a governor who had gone to
+        Sicily, or to a city or town placed under regular government, and where
+        the laws can be observed in their entirety without fear of ruining
+        everything; and I am greatly injured thereby.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;I ought to be judged as a captain who went from Spain to the
+        Indies to conquer a numerous and warlike people, whose customs and
+        religion are very contrary to ours; who live in rocks and mountains,
+        without fixed settlements, and not like ourselves: and where, by the
+        Divine Will, I have placed under the dominion of the King and Queen, our
+        Sovereigns, a second world, through which Spain, which was reckoned a
+        poor country, has become the richest.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;I ought to be judged as a captain who for such a long time up to
+        this day has borne arms without laying them aside for an hour, and by
+        gentlemen adventurers and by custom, and not by letters, unless they
+        were from Greeks or Romans or others of modern times of whom there are
+        so many and such noble examples in Spain; or otherwise I receive great
+        injury, because in the Indies there is neither town nor settlement.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;The gate to the gold and pearls is now open, and plenty of
+        everything&mdash;precious stones, spices and a thousand other things&mdash;may
+        be surely expected, and never could a worse misfortune befall me: for by
+        the name of our Lord the first voyage would yield them just as much as
+        would the traffic of Arabia Felix as far as Mecca, as I wrote to their
+        Highnesses by Antonio de Tomes in my reply respecting the repartition of
+        the sea and land with the Portuguese; and afterwards it would equal that
+        of Calicut, as I told them and put in writing at the monastery of the
+        Mejorada.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;The news of the gold that I said I would give is, that on the day
+        of the Nativity, while I was much tormented, being harassed by wicked
+        Christians and by Indians, and when I was on the point of giving up
+        everything, and if possible escaping from life, our Lord miraculously
+        comforted me and said, &lsquo;Fear not violence, I will provide for all
+        things: the seven years of the term of the gold have not elapsed, and in
+        that and in everything else I will afford thee a remedy.&rsquo;
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;On that day I learned that there were eighty leagues of land with
+        mines at every point thereof. The opinion now is that it is all one.
+        Some have collected a hundred and twenty castellanos in one day, and
+        others ninety, and even the number of two hundred and fifty has been
+        reached. From fifty to seventy, and in many more cases from fifteen to
+        fifty, is considered a good day&rsquo;s work, and many carry it on. The
+        usual quantity is from six to twelve, and any one obtaining less than
+        this is not satisfied. It seems to me that these mines are like others,
+        and do not yield equally every day. The mines are new, and so are the
+        workers: it is the opinion of everybody that even if all Castile were to
+        go there, every individual, however inexpert he might be, would not
+        obtain less than one or two castellanos daily, and now it is only
+        commencing. It is true that they keep Indians, but the business is in
+        the hands of the Christians. Behold what discernment Bobadilla had, when
+        he gave up everything for nothing, and four millions of tenths, without
+        any reason or even being requested, and without first notifying it to
+        their Highnesses. And this is not the only loss.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;I know that my errors have not been committed with the intention
+        of doing evil, and I believe that their Highnesses regard the matter
+        just as I state it: and I know and see that they deal mercifully even
+        with those who maliciously act to their disservice. I believe and
+        consider it very certain that their clemency will be both greater and
+        more abundant towards me, for I fell therein through ignorance and the
+        force of circumstances, as they will know fully hereafter; and I indeed
+        am their creature, and they will look upon my services, and will
+        acknowledge day by day that they are much profited. They will place
+        everything in the balance, even as Holy Scripture tells us good and evil
+        will be at the day of judgment.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;If, however, they command that another person do judge me, which
+        I cannot believe, and that it be by inquisition in the Indies, I very
+        humbly beseech them to send thither two conscientious and honourable
+        persons at my expense, who I believe will easily, now that gold is
+        discovered, find five marks in four hours. In either case it is needful
+        for them to provide for this matter.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;The Commander on his arrival at San Domingo took up his abode in
+        my house, and just as he found it so he appropriated everything to
+        himself. Well and good; perhaps he was in want of it. A pirate never
+        acted thus towards a merchant. About my papers I have a greater
+        grievance, for he has so completely deprived me of them that I have
+        never been able to obtain a single one from him; and those that would
+        have been most useful in my exculpation are precisely those which he has
+        kept most concealed. Behold the just and honest inquisitor! Whatever he
+        may have done, they tell me that there has been an end to justice,
+        except in an arbitrary form. God, our Lord, is present with His strength
+        and wisdom, as of old, and always punishes in the end, especially
+        ingratitude and injuries.&rdquo;
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      We must keep in mind the circumstances in which this letter was written if
+      we are to judge it and the writer wisely. It is a sad example of querulous
+      complaint, in which everything but the writer&rsquo;s personal point of
+      view is ignored. No one indeed is more terrible in this world than the Man
+      with a Grievance. How rarely will human nature in such circumstances
+      retire into the stronghold of silence! Columbus is asking for pity; but as
+      we read his letter we incline to pity him on grounds quite different from
+      those which he represented. He complains that the people he was sent to
+      govern have waged war against him as against a Moor; he complains of Ojeda
+      and of Vincenti Yanez Pinzon; of Adrian de Moxeca, and of every other
+      person whom it was his business to govern and hold in restraint. He
+      complains of the colonists&mdash;the very people, some of them, whom he
+      himself took and impressed from the gaols and purlieus of Cadiz; and then
+      he mingles pious talk about Saint Peter and Daniel in the den of lions
+      with notes on the current price of little girls and big lumps of gold like
+      the eggs of geese, hens, and pullets. He complains that he is judged as a
+      man would be judged who had been sent out to govern a ready-made colony,
+      and represents instead that he went out to conquer a numerous and warlike
+      people &ldquo;whose custom and religion are very contrary to ours, and who
+      lived in rocks and mountains&rdquo;; forgetting that when it suited him
+      for different purposes he described the natives as so peaceable and
+      unwarlike that a thousand of them would not stand against one Christian,
+      and that in any case he was sent out to create a constitution and not
+      merely to administer one. Very sore indeed is Christopher as he reveals
+      himself in this letter, appealing now to his correspondent, now to the
+      King and Queen, now to that God who is always on the side of the
+      complainant. &ldquo;God our Lord is present with His strength and wisdom,
+      as of old, and always punishes in the end, especially ingratitude and
+      injuries.&rdquo; Not boastfulness and weakness, let us hope, or our poor
+      Admiral will come off badly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="ch2d" id="ch2d"></a>CHAPTER II.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      CRISIS IN THE ADMIRAL&rsquo;S LIFE
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Columbus was not far wrong in his estimate of the effect likely to be
+      produced by his manacles, and when the ships of Villegio arrived at Cadiz
+      in October, the spectacle of an Admiral in chains produced a degree of
+      commiseration which must have exceeded his highest hopes. He was now in
+      his fiftieth year and of an extremely venerable appearance, his kindling
+      eye looking forth from under brows of white, his hair and beard
+      snow-white, his face lined and spiritualised with suffering and sorrow. It
+      must be remembered that before the Spanish people he had always appeared
+      in more or less state. They had not that intimacy with him, an intimacy
+      which perhaps brought contempt, which the people in Espanola enjoyed; and
+      in Spain, therefore, the contrast between his former grandeur and this
+      condition of shame and degradation was the more striking. It was a fact
+      that the people of Spain could not neglect. It touched their sense of the
+      dramatic and picturesque, touched their hearts also perhaps&mdash;hearts
+      quick to burn, quick to forget. They had forgotten him before, now they
+      burned with indignation at the picture of this venerable and
+      much-suffering man arriving in disgrace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His letter to Dofia Juana, hastily despatched by him, probably through the
+      office of some friendly soul on board, immediately on his arrival at
+      Cadiz, was the first news from the ship received by the King and Queen,
+      and naturally it caused them a shock of surprise. It was followed by the
+      despatches from Bobadilla and by a letter from the Alcalde of Cadiz
+      announcing that Columbus and his brothers were in his custody awaiting the
+      royal orders. Perhaps Ferdinand and Isabella had already repented their
+      drastic action and had entertained some misgivings as to its results; but
+      it is more probable that they had put it out of their heads altogether,
+      and that their hasty action now was prompted as much by the shock of being
+      recalled to a consciousness of the troubled state of affairs in the New
+      World as by any real regret for what they had done. Moreover they had sent
+      out Bobadilla to quiet things down; and the first result of it was that
+      Spain was ringing with the scandal of the Admiral&rsquo;s treatment. In
+      that Spanish world, unsteadfast and unstable, when one end of the see-saw
+      was up the other must be down; and it was Columbus who now found himself
+      high up in the heavens of favour, and Bobadilla who was seated in the
+      dust. Equipoise any kind was apparently a thing impossible; if one man was
+      right the other man must be wrong; no excuses for Bobadilla; every excuse
+      for the Admiral.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first official act, therefore, was an order for the immediate release
+      of the Admiral and his brothers, followed by an invitation for him to
+      proceed without delay to the Court at Granada, and an order for the
+      immediate payment to him of the sum of 2000 ducats [perhaps $250,000 in
+      the year 2000 D.W.] this last no ungenerous gift to a Viceroy whose pearl
+      accounts were in something less than order. Perhaps Columbus had cherished
+      the idea of appearing dramatically before the very Court in his rags and
+      chains; but the cordiality of their letter as well as the gift of money
+      made this impossible. Instead, not being a man to do things by halves, he
+      equipped himself in his richest and most splendid garments, got together
+      the requisite number of squires and pages, and duly presented himself at
+      Granada in his full dignity. The meeting was an affecting one, touched
+      with a humanity which has survived the intervening centuries, as a touch
+      of true humanity will when details of mere parade and etiquette have long
+      perished. Perhaps the Admiral, inspired with a deep sense of his wrongs,
+      meant to preserve a very stiff and cold demeanour at the beginning of this
+      interview; but when he looked into the kind eyes of Isabella and saw them
+      suffused with tears at the thought of his sorrows all his dignity broke
+      down; the tears came to his own eyes, and he wept there naturally like a
+      child. Ferdinand looking on kind but uncomfortable; Isabella unaffectedly
+      touched and weeping; the Admiral, in spite of his scarlet cloak and golden
+      collar and jewelled sword, in spite of equerries, squires, pages and
+      attendants, sobbing on his knees like a child or an old man-these were the
+      scenes and kindly emotions of this historic moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The tears were staunched by kindly royal words and handkerchiefs supplied
+      by attendant pages; sobbings breaking out again, but on the whole soon
+      quieted; King and Queen raising the gouty Christopher from his knees,
+      filling the air with kind words of sympathy, praise, and encouragement;
+      the lonely worn heart, somewhat arid of late, and parched from want of
+      human sympathy, much refreshed by this dew of kindness. The Admiral was
+      soon himself again, and he would not have been himself if upon recovering
+      he had not launched out into what some historians call a &ldquo;lofty and
+      dignified vindication of his loyalty and zeal.&rdquo; No one, indeed, is
+      better than the Admiral at such lofty and dignified vindications. He goes
+      into the whole matter and sets forth an account of affairs at Espanola
+      from his own point of view; and can even (so high is the thermometer of
+      favour) safely indulge in a little judicious self-depreciation, saying
+      that if he has erred it has not been from want of zeal but from want of
+      experience in dealing with the kind of material he has been set to govern.
+      All this is very human, natural, and understandable; product of that warm
+      emotional atmosphere, bedewed with tears, in which the Admiral finds
+      himself; and it is not long before the King and Queen, also moved to it by
+      the emotional temperature, are expressing their unbroken and unbounded
+      confidence in him and repudiating the acts of Bobadilla, which they
+      declare to have been contrary to their instructions; undertaking also that
+      he shall be immediately dismissed from his post. Poor Bobadilla is not
+      here in the warm emotional atmosphere; he had his turn of it six months
+      ago, when no powers were too high or too delicate to be entrusted to him;
+      he is out in the cold at the other end of the see-saw, which has let him
+      down to the ground with a somewhat sudden thump.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Columbus, relying on the influence of these emotions, made bold to ask
+      that his property in the island should be restored to him, which was
+      immediately granted; and also to request that he should be reinstated in
+      his office of Viceroy and allowed to return at once in triumph to
+      Espanola. But emotions are unstable things; they present a yielding
+      surface which will give to any extent, but which, when it has hardened
+      again after the tears have evaporated, is often found to be in much the
+      same condition as before. At first promises were made that the whole
+      matter should be fully gone into; but when it came to cold fact, Ferdinand
+      was obliged to recognise that this whole business of discovery and
+      colonisation had become a very different thing to what it had been when
+      Columbus was the only discoverer; and he was obviously of opinion that, as
+      Columbus&rsquo;s office had once been conveniently withdrawn from him, it
+      would only be disastrous to reinstate him in it. Of course he did not say
+      so at once; but reasons were given for judicious delay in the Admiral&rsquo;s
+      reappointment. It was represented to him that the colony, being in an
+      extremely unsettled state, should be given a short period of rest, and
+      also that it would be as well for him to wait until the people who had
+      given him so much trouble in the island could be quietly and gradually
+      removed. Two years was the time mentioned as suitable for an interregnum,
+      and it is probable that it was the intention of Isabella, although not of
+      Ferdinand, to restore Columbus to his office at the end of that time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the meantime it became necessary to appoint some one to supersede
+      Bobadilla; for the news that arrived periodically from Espanola during the
+      year showed that he had entirely failed in his task of reducing the island
+      to order. For the wholesome if unequal rigours of Columbus Bobadilla had
+      substituted laxness and indulgence, with the result that the whole colony
+      was rapidly reduced to a state of the wildest disorder. Vice and cruelty
+      were rampant; in fact the barbarities practised upon the natives were so
+      scandalous that even Spanish opinion, which was never very sympathetic to
+      heathen suffering, was thoroughly shocked and alarmed. The Sovereigns
+      therefore appointed Nicholas de Ovando to go out and take over the
+      command, with instructions to use very drastic means for bringing the
+      colony to order. How he did it we shall presently see; in the meantime all
+      that was known of him (the man not having been tried yet) was that he was
+      a poor knight of Calatrava, a man respected in royal circles for the
+      performance of minor official duties, but no very popular favourite;
+      honest according to his lights&mdash;lights turned rather low and dim, as
+      was often the case in those days. A narrow-minded man also, without
+      sympathy or imagination, capable of cruelty; a tough, stiff-necked stock
+      of a man, fit to deal with Bobadilla perhaps, but hardly fit to deal with
+      the colony. Spain in those days was not a nursery of administration. Of
+      all the people who were sent out successively to govern Espanola and
+      supersede one another, the only one who really seems to have had the
+      necessary natural ability, had he but been given the power, was
+      Bartholomew Columbus; but unfortunately things were in such a state that
+      the very name of Columbus was enough to bar a man from acceptance as a
+      governor of Espanola.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was not for any lack of powers and equipment that this procession of
+      governors failed in their duties. We have seen with what authority
+      Bobadilia had been entrusted; and Ovando had even greater advantages. The
+      instructions he received showed that the needs of the new colonies were
+      understood by Ferdinand and Isabella, if by no one else. Ovando was not
+      merely appointed Governor of Espanola but of the whole of the new
+      territory discovered in the west, his seat of government being San
+      Domingo. He was given the necessary free hand in the matters of
+      punishment, confiscation, and allotment of lands. He was to revoke the
+      orders which had been made by Bobadilla reducing the proportion of gold
+      payable to the Crown, and was empowered to take over one-third of the.
+      gold that was stored on the island, and one-half of what might be found in
+      the future. The Crown was to have a monopoly of all trade, and ordinary
+      supplies were only to be procured through the Crown agent. On the other
+      hand, the natives were to be released from slavery, and although forced to
+      work in the mines, were to be paid for their labour&mdash;a distinction
+      which in the working out did not produce much difference. A body of
+      Franciscan monks accompanied Ovando for the purpose of tackling the
+      religious question with the necessary energy; and every regulation that
+      the kind heart of Isabella could think of was made for the happiness and
+      contentment of the Indians.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Unhappily the real mischief had already been done. The natives, who had
+      never been accustomed to hard and regular work under the conditions of
+      commerce and greed, but had only toiled for the satisfaction of their own
+      simple wants, were suffering cruelly under the hard labour in the mines,
+      and the severe driving of their Spanish masters. Under these unnatural
+      conditions the native population was rapidly dying off, and there was some
+      likelihood that there would soon be a scarcity of native labour. These
+      were the circumstances in which the idea of importing black African labour
+      to the New World was first conceived&mdash;a plan which was destined to
+      have results so tremendous that we have probably not yet seen their full
+      and ghastly development. There were a great number of African negro slaves
+      at that time in Spain; a whole generation of them had been born in slavery
+      in Spain itself; and this generation was bodily imported to Espanola to
+      relieve and assist the native labour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These preparations were not made all at once; and it was more than a year
+      after the return of Columbus before Ovando was ready to sail. In the
+      meantime Columbus was living in Granada, and looking on with no very
+      satisfied eye at the plans which were being made to supersede him, and
+      about which he was probably not very much consulted; feeling very sore
+      indeed, and dividing his attention between the nursing of his grievances
+      and other even less wholesome occupations. There was any amount of smiling
+      kindness for him at Court, but very little of the satisfaction that his
+      vanity and ambition craved; and in the absence of practical employment he
+      fell back on visionary speculations. He made great friends at this time
+      with a monk named Gaspar Gorricio, with whose assistance he began to make
+      some kind of a study of such utterances of the Prophets and the Fathers as
+      he conceived to have a bearing on his own career.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Columbus was in fact in a very queer way at this time; and what with his
+      readings and his meditatings and his grievances, and his visits to his
+      monkish friend in the convent of Las Cuevas, he fell into a kind of
+      intellectual stupor, of which the work called &lsquo;Libro de las
+      Profecias,&rsquo; or Book of the Prophecies, in which he wrote down such
+      considerations as occurred to him in his stupor, was the result. The
+      manuscript of this work is in existence, although no human being has ever
+      ventured to reprint the whole of it; and we would willingly abstain from
+      mentioning it here if it were not an undeniable act of Columbus&rsquo;s
+      life. The Admiral, fallen into theological stupor, puts down certain
+      figures upon paper; discovers that St. Augustine said that the world would
+      only last for 7000 years; finds that some other genius had calculated that
+      before the birth of Christ it had existed for 5343 years and 318 days;
+      adds 1501 years from the birth of Christ to his own time; adds up, and
+      finds that the total is 6844 years; subtracts, and discovers that this
+      earthly globe can only last 155 years longer. He remembers also that,
+      still according to the Prophets, certain things must happen before the end
+      of the world; Holy Sepulchre restored to Christianity, heathen converted,
+      second coming of Christ; and decides that he himself is the man appointed
+      by God and promised by the Prophets to perform these works. Good Heavens!
+      in what an entirely dark and sordid stupor is our Christopher now sunk&mdash;a
+      veritable slough and quag of stupor out of which, if he does not manage to
+      flounder himself, no human hand can pull him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But amid his wallowings in this slough of stupor, when all else, in him
+      had been well-nigh submerged by it, two dim lights were preserved towards
+      which, although foundered up to the chin, he began to struggle; and by
+      superhuman efforts did at last extricate himself from the theological
+      stupor and get himself blown clean again by the salt winds before he died.
+      One light was his religion; not to be confounded with theological stupor,
+      but quite separate from it in my belief; a certain steadfast and consuming
+      faith in a Power that could see and understand and guide him to the
+      accomplishment of his purpose. This faith had been too often a good friend
+      and help to Christopher for him to forget it very long, even while he was
+      staggering in the quag with Isaiah, Jeremiah, and the Fathers; and
+      gradually, as I say, he worked himself out into the region of activity
+      again. First, thinking it a pity that his flounderings in the slough
+      should be entirely wasted, he had a copy of his precious theological work
+      made and presented it to the Sovereigns, with a letter urging them (since
+      he himself was unable to do it) to undertake a crusade for the recovery of
+      the Holy Sepulchre&mdash;not an altogether wild proposal in those days.
+      But Ferdinand had other uses for his men and his money, and contented
+      himself with despatching Peter Martyr on a pacific mission to the Grand
+      Soldan of Egypt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The other light left unquenched in Columbus led him back to the firm
+      ground of maritime enterprise; he began to long for the sea again, and for
+      a chance of doing something to restore his reputation. An infinitely
+      better and more wholesome frame of mind this; by all means let him mend
+      his reputation by achievement, instead of by writing books in a
+      theological trance or stupor, and attempting to prove that he was chosen
+      by the Almighty. He now addressed himself to the better task of getting
+      himself chosen by men to do something which should raise him again in
+      their esteem.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His maritime ambition was no doubt stimulated at this time by witnessing
+      the departure of Ovando, in February 1502, with a fleet of thirty-five
+      ships and a company of 2500 people. It was not in the Admiral&rsquo;s
+      nature to look on without envy at an equipment the like of which he
+      himself had never been provided with, and he did not restrain his sarcasms
+      at its pomp and grandeur, nor at the ease with which men could follow a
+      road which had once been pointed out to them. Ovando had a great
+      body-guard such as Columbus had never had; and he also carried with him a
+      great number of picked married men with their families, all with knowledge
+      of some trade or craft, whose presence in the colony would be a guarantee
+      of permanence and steadiness. He perhaps remembered his own crowd of
+      ruffians and gaol-birds, and realised the bitterness of his own mistakes.
+      It was a very painful moment for him, and he was only partially reconciled
+      to it by the issue of a royal order to Ovando under which he was required
+      to see to the restoration of the Admiral&rsquo;s property. If it had been
+      devoted to public purposes it was to be repaid him from the royal funds;
+      but if it had been merely distributed among the colonists Bobadilla was to
+      be made responsible for it. The Admiral was also allowed to send out an
+      agent to represent him and look after his interests; and he appointed
+      Alonso de Carvajal to this office.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ovando once gone, the Admiral could turn again to his own affairs. It is
+      true there were rumours that the whole fleet had perished, for it
+      encountered a gale very soon after leaving Cadiz, and a great quantity of
+      the deck hamper was thrown overboard and was washed on the shores of
+      Spain; and the Sovereigns were so bitterly distressed that, as it is said,
+      they shut them selves up for eight days. News eventually came, however,
+      that only one ship had been lost and that the rest had proceeded safely to
+      San Domingo. Columbus, much recovered in body and mind, now began to apply
+      for a fleet for himself. He had heard of the discovery by the Portuguese
+      of the southern route to India; no doubt he had heard also much gossip of
+      the results of the many private voyages of discovery that were sailing
+      from Spain at this time; and he began to think seriously about his own
+      discoveries and the way in which they might best be extended. He thought
+      much of his voyage to the west of Trinidad and of the strange pent-up seas
+      and currents that he had discovered there. He remembered the continual
+      westward trend of the current, and how all the islands in that sea had
+      their greatest length east and west, as though their shores had been worn
+      into that shape by the constant flowing of the current; and it was not an
+      unnatural conclusion for him to suppose that there was a channel far to
+      the west through which these seas poured and which would lead him to the
+      Golden Chersonesus. He put away from him that nightmare madness that he
+      transacted on the coast of Cuba. He knew very well that he had not yet
+      found the Golden Chersonesus and the road to India; but he became
+      convinced that the western current would lead him there if only he
+      followed it long enough. There was nothing insane about this theory; it
+      was in fact a very well-observed and well-reasoned argument; and the fact
+      that it happened to be entirely wrong is no reflection on the Admiral&rsquo;s
+      judgment. The great Atlantic currents at that time had not been studied;
+      and how could he know that the western stream of water was the northern
+      half of a great ocean current which sweeps through the Caribbean Sea, into
+      and round the Gulf of Mexico, and flows out northward past Florida in the
+      Gulf Stream?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His applications for a fleet were favourably received by the King and
+      Queen, but much frowned upon by certain high officials of the Court. They
+      were beginning to regard Columbus as a dangerous adventurer who, although
+      he happened to have discovered the western islands, had brought the
+      Spanish colony there to a dreadful state of disorder; and had also, they
+      alleged, proved himself rather less than trustworthy in matters of
+      treasure. Still in the summer days of 1501 he was making himself very
+      troublesome at Court with constant petitions and letters about his rights
+      and privileges; and Ferdinand was far from unwilling to adopt a plan by
+      which they would at least get rid of him and keep him safely occupied at
+      the other side of the world at the cost of a few caravels. There was,
+      besides, always an element of uncertainty. His voyage might come to
+      nothing, but on the other hand the Admiral was no novice at this game of
+      discovery, and one could not tell but that something big might come of it.
+      After some consideration permission was given to him to fit out a fleet of
+      four ships, and he proceeded to Seville in the autumn of 1501 to get his
+      little fleet ready. Bartholomew was to come with him, and his son
+      Ferdinand also, who seems to have much endeared himself to the Admiral in
+      these dark days, and who would surely be a great comfort to him on the
+      voyage. Beatriz Enriquez seems to have passed out of his life; certainly
+      he was not living with her either now or on his last visit to Spain; one
+      way or another, that business is at an end for him. Perhaps poor Beatriz,
+      seeing her son in such a high place at Court, has effaced herself for his
+      sake; perhaps the appointment was given on condition of such effacement;
+      we do not know.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Columbus was in no hurry over his preparations. In the midst of them he
+      found time to collect a whole series of documents relating to his titles
+      and dignities, which he had copied and made into a great book which he
+      called his &ldquo;Book of Privileges,&rdquo; and the copies of which were
+      duly attested before a notary at Seville on January 5, 1502. He wrote many
+      letters to various friends of his, chiefly in relation to these
+      privileges; not interesting or illuminating letters to us, although very
+      important to busy Christopher when he wrote them. Here is one written to
+      Nicolo Oderigo, a Genoese Ambassador who came to Spain on a brief mission
+      in the spring of 1502, and who, with certain other residents in Spain, is
+      said to have helped Columbus in his preparations for his fourth voyage:
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;Sir,&mdash;The loneliness in which you have left us cannot be
+        described. I gave the book containing my writings to Francisco de
+        Rivarol that he may send it to you with another copy of letters
+        containing instructions. I beg you to be so kind as to write Don Diego
+        in regard to the place of security in which you put them. Duplicates of
+        everything will be completed and sent to you in the same manner and by
+        the same Francisco. Among them you will find a new document. Their
+        Highnesses promised to give all that belongs to me and to place Don
+        Diego in possession of everything, as you will see. I wrote to Senor
+        Juan Luis and to Sefora Catalina. The letter accompanies this one. I am
+        ready to start in the name of the Holy Trinity as soon as the weather is
+        good. I am well provided with everything. If Jeronimo de Santi Esteban
+        is coming, he must await me and not embarrass himself with anything, for
+        they will take away from him all they can and silently leave him. Let
+        him come here and the King and the Queen will receive him until I come.
+        May our Lord have you in His holy keeping.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;Done at Seville, March 21, 1502.<br /> &ldquo;At your command.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        .S.<br /> .S.A.S.<br /> Xpo FERENS.&rdquo;
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      His delays were not pleasing to Ferdinand, who wanted to get rid of him,
+      and he was invited to hurry his departure; but he still continued to go
+      deliberately about his affairs, which he tried to put in order as far as
+      he was able, since he thought it not unlikely that he might never see
+      Spain again. Thinking thus of his worldly duties, and his thoughts turning
+      to his native Genoa, it occurred to him to make some benefaction out of
+      the riches that were coming to him by which his name might be remembered
+      and held in honour there. This was a piece of practical kindness the
+      record of which is most precious to us; for it shows the Admiral in a
+      truer and more human light than he often allowed to shine upon him. The
+      tone of the letter is nothing; he could not forbear letting the people of
+      Genoa see how great he was. The devotion of his legacy to the reduction of
+      the tax on simple provisions was a genuine charity, much to be appreciated
+      by the dwellers in the Vico Dritto di Ponticello, where wine and provision
+      shops were so very necessary to life. The letter was written to the
+      Directors of the famous Bank of Saint George at Genoa.
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;VERY NOBLE LORDS,&mdash;Although my body is here, my heart is
+        continually yonder. Our Lord has granted me the greatest favour he has
+        granted any one since the time of David. The results of my undertaking
+        already shine, and they would make a great light if the obscurity of the
+        Government did not conceal them. I shall go again to the Indies in the
+        name of the Holy Trinity, to return immediately. And as I am mortal, I
+        desire my son Don Diego to give to you each year, for ever, the tenth
+        part of all the income received, in payment of the tax on wheat, wine,
+        and other provisions. If this tenth amounts to anything, receive it, and
+        if not, receive my will for the deed. I beg you as a favour to have this
+        son of mine in your charge. Nicolo de Oderigo knows more about my
+        affairs than I myself. I have sent him the copy of my privileges and
+        letters, that he may place them in safe keeping. I would be glad if you
+        could see them. The King and the Queen, my Lords, now wish to honour me
+        more than ever. May the Holy Trinity guard your noble persons, and
+        increase the importance of your very magnificent office. &ldquo;Done in
+        Seville, April a, 1502.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;The High-Admiral of the Ocean-Sea and Viceroy and
+        Governor-General of the islands and mainland of Asia and the Indies,
+        belonging to the King and Queen, my Lords, and the Captain-General of
+        the Sea, and a Member of their Council.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        .S.<br /> .S.A.S.<br /> X M Y<br /> Xpo FERENS.&rdquo;
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      Columbus was anxious to touch at Espanola on his voyage to the West; but
+      he was expressly forbidden to do so, as it was known that his presence
+      there could not make for anything but confusion; he was to be permitted,
+      however, to touch there on his return journey. The Great Khan was not out
+      of his mind yet; much in it apparently, for he took an Arabian interpreter
+      with him so that he could converse with that monarch. In fact he did not
+      hesitate to announce that very big results indeed were to come of this
+      voyage of his; among other things he expected to circumnavigate the globe,
+      and made no secret of his expectation. In the meantime he was expected to
+      find some pearls in order to pay for the equipment of his fleet; and in
+      consideration of what had happened to the last lot of pearls collected by
+      him, an agent named Diego de Porras was sent along with him to keep an
+      account of the gold and precious stones which might be discovered. Special
+      instructions were issued to Columbus about the disposal of these
+      commodities. He does not seem to have minded these somewhat humiliating
+      precautions; he had a way of rising above petty indignities and refusing
+      to recognise them which must have been of great assistance to his
+      self-respect in certain troubled moments in his life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His delays, however, were so many that in March 1502 the Sovereigns were
+      obliged to order him to depart without any more waiting. Poor Christopher,
+      who once had to sue for the means with which to go, whose departures were
+      once the occasion of so much state and ceremony, has now to be hustled
+      forth and asked to go away. Still he does not seem to mind; once more, as
+      of old, his gaze is fixed beyond the horizon and his mind is filled with
+      one idea. They may not think much of him in Spain now, but they will when
+      he comes back; and he can afford to wait. Completing his preparations
+      without undignified haste he despatched Bartholomew with his four little
+      vessels from Seville to Cadiz, where the Admiral was to join them. He took
+      farewell of his son Diego and of his brother James; good friendly James,
+      who had done his best in a difficult position, but had seen quite enough
+      of the wild life of the seas and was now settled in Seville studying hard
+      for the Church. It had always been his ambition, poor James; and, studying
+      hard in Seville, he did in time duly enter the sacred pale and become a
+      priest&mdash;by which we may see that if our ambitions are only modest
+      enough we may in time encompass them. Sometimes I think that James,
+      enveloped in priestly vestments, nodding in the sanctuary, lulled by the
+      muttering murmur of the psalms or dozing through a long credo, may have
+      thought himself back amid the brilliant sunshine and strange perfumes of
+      Espanola; and from a dream of some nymph hiding in the sweet groves of the
+      Vega may have awakened with a sigh to the strident Alleluias of his
+      brother priests. At any rate, farewell to James, safely seated beneath the
+      Gospel light, and continuing to sit there until, in the year 1515, death
+      interrupts him. We are not any more concerned with James in his priestly
+      shelter, but with those elder brothers of his who are making ready again
+      to face the sun and the surges.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Columbus&rsquo;s ships were on the point of sailing when word came that
+      the Moors were besieging a Portuguese post on the coast of Morocco, and,
+      as civility was now the order of the day between Spain and Portugal, the
+      Admiral was instructed to call on his way there and afford some relief.
+      This he did, sailing from Cadiz on the 9th or 10th of May to Ercilla on
+      the Morocco coast, where he anchored on the 13th. But the Moors had all
+      departed and the siege was over; so Columbus, having sent Bartholomew and
+      some of his officers ashore on a civil visit, which was duly returned, set
+      out the same day on his last voyage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="ch3d" id="ch3d"></a>CHAPTER III.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE LAST VOYAGE
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The four ships that made up the Admiral&rsquo;s fleet on his fourth and
+      last voyage were all small caravels, the largest only of seventy tons and
+      the smallest only of fifty. Columbus chose for his flagship the Capitana,
+      seventy tons, appointing Diego Tristan to be his captain. The next best
+      ship was the Santiago de Palos under the command of Francisco Porras;
+      Porras and his brother Diego having been more or less foisted on to
+      Columbus by Morales, the Royal Treasurer, who wished to find berths for
+      these two brothers-in-law of his. We shall hear more of the Porras
+      brothers. The third ship was the Gallega, sixty tons, a very bad sailer
+      indeed, and on that account entrusted to Bartholomew Columbus, whose skill
+      in navigation, it was hoped, might make up for her bad sailing qualities.
+      Bartholomew had, to tell the truth, had quite enough of the New World, but
+      he was too loyal to Christopher to let him go alone, knowing as he did his
+      precarious state of health and his tendency to despondency. The captain of
+      the Gallega was Pedro de Terreros, who had sailed with the Admiral as
+      steward on all his other voyages and was now promoted to a command. The
+      fourth ship was called the Vizcaina, fifty tons, and was commanded by
+      Bartolome Fieschi, a friend of Columbus&rsquo;s from Genoa, and a very
+      sound, honourable man. There were altogether 143 souls on board the four
+      caravels.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The fleet as usual made the Canary Islands, where they arrived on the 20th
+      of May, and stopped for five days taking in wood and water and fresh
+      provisions. Columbus was himself again&mdash;always more himself at sea
+      than anywhere else; he was following a now familiar road that had no
+      difficulties or dangers for him; and there is no record of the voyage out
+      except that it was quick and prosperous, with the trade wind blowing so
+      steadily that from the time they left the Canaries until they made land
+      twenty days later they had hardly to touch a sheet or a halliard. The
+      first land they made was the island of Martinique, where wood and water
+      were taken in and the men sent ashore to wash their linen. To young
+      Ferdinand, but fourteen years old, this voyage was like a fairy tale come
+      true, and his delight in everything that he saw must have added greatly to
+      Christopher&rsquo;s pleasure and interest in the voyage. They only stayed
+      a few days at Martinique and then sailed westward along the chain of
+      islands until they came to Porto Rico, where they put in to the sunny
+      harbour which they had discovered on a former voyage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was at this point that Columbus determined, contrary to his precise
+      orders, to stand across to Espanola. The place attracted him like a
+      magnet; he could not keep away from it; and although he had a good enough
+      excuse for touching there, it is probable that his real reason was a very
+      natural curiosity to see how things were faring with his old enemy
+      Bobadilla. The excuse was that the Gallega, Bartholomew&rsquo;s ship, was
+      so unseaworthy as to be a drag on the progress of the rest of the fleet
+      and a danger to her own crew. In the slightest sea-way she rolled almost
+      gunwale under, and would not carry her sail; and Columbus&rsquo;s plan was
+      to exchange her for a vessel out of the great fleet which he knew had by
+      this time reached Espanola and discharged its passengers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He arrived off the harbour of San Domingo on the 29th of June in very
+      threatening weather, and immediately sent Pedro de Terreros ashore with a
+      message to Ovando, asking to be allowed to purchase or exchange one of the
+      vessels that were riding in the harbour, and also leave to shelter his own
+      vessels there during the hurricane which he believed to be approaching. A
+      message came back that he was neither permitted to buy a ship nor to enter
+      the harbour; warning him off from San Domingo, in fact.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With this unfavourable message Terreros also brought back the news of the
+      island. Ovando had been in San Domingo since the 15th of April, and had
+      found the island in a shocking state, the Spanish population having to a
+      man devoted itself to idleness, profligacy, and slave-driving. The only
+      thing that had prospered was the gold-mining; for owing to the licence
+      that Bobadilla had given to the Spaniards to employ native labour to an
+      unlimited extent there had been an immense amount of gold taken from the
+      mines. But in no other respect had island affairs prospered, and Ovando
+      immediately began the usual investigation. The fickle Spaniards, always
+      unfaithful to whoever was in authority over them, were by this time tired
+      of Bobadilla, in spite of his leniency, and they hailed the coming of
+      Ovando and his numerous equipment with enthusiasm. Bobadilla had also by
+      this time, we may suppose, had enough of the joys of office; at any rate
+      he showed no resentment at the coming of the new Governor, and handed over
+      the island with due ceremony. The result of the investigation of Ovando,
+      however, was to discover a state of things requiring exemplary treatment;
+      friend Roldan was arrested, with several of his allies, and put on board
+      one of the ships to be sent back to Spain for trial. The cacique
+      Guarionex, who had been languishing in San Domingo in chains for a long
+      time, was also embarked on one of the returning ships; and about eighteen
+      hundred-weights of gold which had been collected were also stowed into
+      cases and embarked. Among this gold there was a nugget weighing 35 lbs.
+      which had been found by a native woman in a river, and which Ovando was
+      sending home as a personal offering to his Sovereigns; and some further 40
+      lbs. of gold belonging to Columbus, which Carvajal had recovered and
+      placed in a caravel to be taken to Spain for the Admiral. The ships were
+      all ready to sail, and were anchored off the mouth of the river when
+      Columbus arrived in San Domingo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he found that he was not to be allowed to enter the harbour himself
+      Columbus sent a message to Ovando warning him that a hurricane was coming
+      on, and begging him to take measures for the safety of his large fleet.
+      This, however, was not done, and the fleet put to sea that evening. It had
+      only got so far as the eastern end of Espanola when the hurricane, as
+      predicted by Columbus, duly came down in the manner of West Indian
+      hurricanes, a solid wall of wind and an advancing wave of the sea which
+      submerged everything in its path. Columbus&rsquo;s little fleet, finding
+      shelter denied them, had moved a little way along the coast, the Admiral
+      standing close in shore, the others working to the south for sea-room; and
+      although they survived the hurricane they were scattered, and only met
+      several days later, in an extremely battered condition, at the westerly
+      end of the island. But the large home-going fleet had not survived. The
+      hurricane, which was probably from the north-east, struck them just as
+      they lost the lee of the island, and many of them, including the ships
+      with the treasure of gold and the caravels bearing Roldan, Bobadilla, and
+      Guarionex, all went down at once and were never seen or heard of again.
+      Other ships survived for a little while only to founder in the end; a few,
+      much shattered, crept back to the shelter of San Domingo; but only one, it
+      is said, survived the hurricane so well as to be able to proceed to Spain;
+      and that was the one which carried Carvajal and Columbus&rsquo;s little
+      property of gold. The Admiral&rsquo;s luck again; or the intervention of
+      the Holy Trinity&mdash;whichever you like.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After the shattering experience of the storm, Columbus, although he did
+      not return to San Domingo, remained for some time on the coast of Espanola
+      repairing his ships and resting his exhausted crews. There were
+      threatenings of another storm which delayed them still further, and it was
+      not until the middle of July that the Admiral was able to depart on the
+      real purpose of his voyage. His object was to strike the mainland far to
+      the westward of the Gulf of Paria, and so by following it back eastward to
+      find the passage which he believed to exist. But the winds and currents
+      were very baffling; he was four days out of sight of land after touching
+      at an island north of Jamaica; and finally, in some bewilderment, he
+      altered his course more and more northerly until he found his whereabouts
+      by coming in sight of the archipelago off the south-western end of Cuba
+      which he had called the Gardens. From here he took a departure south-west,
+      and on the 30th of July came in sight of a small island off the northern
+      coast of Honduras which he called Isla de Pinos, and from which he could
+      see the hills of the mainland. At this island he found a canoe of immense
+      size with a sort of house or caboose built amidships, in which was
+      established a cacique with his family and dependents; and the people in
+      the canoe showed signs of more advanced civilisation than any seen by
+      Columbus before in these waters. They wore clothing, they had copper
+      hatchets, and bells, and palm-wood swords in the edges of which were set
+      sharp blades of flint. They had a fermented liquor, a kind of maize beer
+      which looked like English ale; they had some kind of money or medium of
+      exchange also, and they told the Admiral that there was land to the west
+      where all these things existed and many more. It is strange and almost
+      inexplicable that he did not follow this trail to the westward; if he had
+      done so he would have discovered Mexico. But one thing at a time always
+      occupied him to the exclusion of everything else; his thoughts were now
+      turned to the eastward, where he supposed the Straits were; and the
+      significance of this canoe full of natives was lost upon him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They crossed over to the mainland of Honduras on August 15th, Bartholomew
+      landing and attending mass on the beach as the Admiral himself was too ill
+      to go ashore. Three days later the cross and banner of Castile were duly
+      erected on the shores of the Rio Tinto and the country was formally
+      annexed. The natives were friendly, and supplied the ships with
+      provisions; but they were very black and ugly, and Columbus readily
+      believed the assertion of his native guide that they were cannibals. They
+      continued their course to the eastward, but as the gulf narrowed the force
+      of the west-going current was felt more severely. Columbus, believing that
+      the strait which he sought lay to the eastward, laboured against the
+      current, and his difficulties were increased by the bad weather which he
+      now encountered. There were squalls and hurricanes, tempests and
+      cross-currents that knocked his frail ships about and almost swamped them.
+      Anchors and gear were lost, the sails were torn out of the bolt-ropes,
+      timbers were strained; and for six weeks this state of affairs went on to
+      an accompaniment of thunder and lightning which added to the terror and
+      discomfort of the mariners.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was in August and the first half of September&mdash;six weeks of the
+      worst weather that Columbus had ever experienced. It was the more
+      unfortunate that his illness made it impossible for him to get actively
+      about the ship; and he had to have a small cabin or tent rigged up on
+      deck, in which he could lie and direct the navigation. It is bad enough to
+      be as ill as he was in a comfortable bed ashore; it is a thousand times
+      worse amid the discomforts of a small boat at sea; but what must it have
+      been thus to have one&rsquo;s sick-bed on the deck of a cockle-shell which
+      was being buffeted and smashed in unknown seas, and to have to think and
+      act not for oneself alone but for the whole of a suffering little fleet!
+      No wonder the Admiral&rsquo;s distress of mind was great; but oddly enough
+      his anxieties, as he recorded them in a letter, were not so much on his
+      own account as on behalf of others. The terrified seamen making vows to
+      the Virgin and promises of pilgrimages between their mad rushes to the
+      sheets and furious clinging and hauling; his son Ferdinand, who was only
+      fourteen, but who had to endure the same pain and fatigue as the rest of
+      them, and who was enduring it with such pluck that &ldquo;it was as if he
+      had been at sea eighty years&rdquo;; the dangers of Bartholomew, who had
+      not wanted to come on this voyage at all, but was now in the thick of it
+      in the worst ship of the squadron, and fighting for his life amid tempests
+      and treacherous seas; Diego at home, likely to be left an orphan and at
+      the mercy of fickle and doubtful friends&mdash;these were the chief causes
+      of the Admiral&rsquo;s anxiety. All he said about himself was that &ldquo;by
+      my misfortune the twenty years of service which I gave with so much
+      fatigue and danger have profited me so little that to-day I have in
+      Castile no roof, and if I wished to dine or sup or sleep I have only the
+      tavern for my last refuge, and for that, most of the time, I would be
+      unable to pay the score.&rdquo; Not cheerful reflections, these, to add to
+      the pangs of acute gout and the consuming anxieties of seamanship under
+      such circumstances. Dreadful to him, these things, but not dreadful to us;
+      for they show us an Admiral restored to his true temper and vocation,
+      something of the old sea hero breaking out in him at last through all
+      these misfortunes, like the sun through the hurrying clouds of a stormy
+      afternoon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Forty days of passage through this wilderness of water were endured before
+      the sea-worn mariners, rounding a cape on September 12th, saw stretching
+      before them to the southward a long coast of plain and mountain which they
+      were able to follow with a fair wind. Gradually the sea went down; the
+      current which had opposed them here aided them, and they were able to
+      recover a little from the terrible strain of the last six weeks. The cape
+      was called by Columbus &lsquo;Gracios de Dios&rsquo;; and on the 16th of
+      September they landed at the entrance to a river to take in water. The
+      boat which was sent ashore, however, capsized on the sandy bar of the
+      entrance, two men being drowned, and the river was given the name of Rio
+      de Desastre. They found a better anchorage, where they rested for ten
+      days, overhauled their stores, and had some intercourse with the natives
+      and exploration on shore. Some incidents occurred which can best be
+      described in the Admiral&rsquo;s own language as he recorded them in his
+      letter to the Sovereigns.
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo; . . . When I reached there, they immediately sent me two young
+        girls dressed in rich garments. The older one might not have been more
+        than eleven years of age and the other seven; both with so much
+        experience, so much manner, and so much appearance as would have been
+        sufficient if they had been public women for twenty years. They bore
+        with them magic powder and other things belonging to their art. When
+        they arrived I gave orders that they should be adorned with our things
+        and sent them immediately ashore. There I saw a tomb within the mountain
+        as large as a house and finely worked with great artifice, and a corpse
+        stood thereon uncovered, and, looking within it, it seemed as if he
+        stood upright. Of the other arts they told me that there was excellence.
+        Great and little animals are there in quantities, and very different
+        from ours; among which I saw boars of frightful form so that a dog of
+        the Irish breed dared not face them. With a cross-bow I had wounded an
+        animal which exactly resembles a baboon only that it was much larger and
+        has a face like a human being. I had pierced it with an arrow from one
+        side to the other, entering in the breast and going out near the tail,
+        and because it was very ferocious I cut off one of the fore feet which
+        rather seemed to be a hand, and one of the hind feet. The boars seeing
+        this commenced to set up their bristles and fled with great fear, seeing
+        the blood of the other animal. When I saw this I caused to be thrown
+        them the &lsquo;uegare,&rsquo;&mdash;[Peccary]&mdash;certain animals
+        they call so, where it stood, and approaching him, near as he was to
+        death, and the arrow still sticking in his body, he wound his tail
+        around his snout and held it fast, and with the other hand which
+        remained free, seized him by the neck as an enemy. This act, so
+        magnificent and novel, together with the fine country and hunting of
+        wild beasts, made me write this to your Majesties.&rdquo;
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      The natives at this anchorage of Cariari were rather suspicious, but
+      Columbus seized two of them to act as guides in his journey further down
+      the coast. Weighing anchor on October 5th he worked along the Costa Rica
+      shore, which here turns to the eastward again, and soon found a tribe of
+      natives who wore large ornaments of gold. They were reluctant to part with
+      the gold, but as usual pointed down the coast and said that there was much
+      more gold there; they even gave a name to the place where the gold could
+      be found&mdash;Veragua; and for once this country was found to have a real
+      existence. The fleet anchored there on October 17th, being greeted by
+      defiant blasts of conch shells and splashing of water from the indignant
+      natives. Business was done, however: seventeen gold discs in exchange for
+      three hawks&rsquo; bells.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Still Columbus went on in pursuit of his geographical chimera; even gold
+      had no power to detain him from the earnest search for this imaginary
+      strait. Here and there along the coast he saw increasing signs of
+      civilisation&mdash;once a wall built of mud and stone, which made him
+      think of Cathay again. He now got it into his head that the region he was
+      in was ten days&rsquo; journey from the Ganges, and that it was surrounded
+      by water; which if it means anything means that he thought he was on a
+      large island ten days&rsquo; sail to the eastward of the coast of India.
+      Altogether at sea as to the facts, poor Admiral, but with heart and
+      purpose steadfast and right enough.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They sailed a little farther along the coast, now between narrow islands
+      that were like the streets of Genoa, where the boughs of trees on either
+      hand brushed the shrouds of the ships; now past harbours where there were
+      native fairs and markets, and where natives were to be seen mounted on
+      horses and armed with swords; now by long, lonely stretches of the coast
+      where there was nothing to be seen but the low green shore with the
+      mountains behind and the alligators basking at the river mouths. At last
+      (November 2nd) they arrived at the cape known as Nombre de Dios, which
+      Ojeda had reached some time before in his voyage to the West.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The coast of the mainland had thus been explored from the Bay of Honduras
+      to Brazil, and Columbus was obliged to admit that there was no strait.
+      Having satisfied himself of that he decided to turn back to Veragua, where
+      he had seen the natives smelting gold, in order to make some arrangement
+      for establishing a colony there. The wind, however, which had headed him
+      almost all the way on his easterly voyage, headed him again now and began
+      to blow steadily from the west. He started on his return journey on the
+      5th of December, and immediately fell into almost worse troubles than he
+      had been in before. The wood of the ships had been bored through and
+      through by seaworms, so that they leaked very badly; the crews were sick,
+      provisions were spoilt, biscuits rotten. Young Ferdinand Columbus, if he
+      did not actually make notes of this voyage at the time, preserved a very
+      lively recollection of it, and it is to his Historie, which in its earlier
+      passages is of doubtful authenticity, that we owe some of the most human
+      touches of description relating to this voyage. Any passage in his work
+      relating to food or animals at this time has the true ring of boyish
+      interest and observation, and is in sharp contrast to the second-hand and
+      artificial tone of the earlier chapters of his book. About the incident of
+      the howling monkey, which the Admiral&rsquo;s Irish hound would not face,
+      Ferdinand remarks that it &ldquo;frighted a good dog that we had, but
+      frighted one of our wild boars a great deal more&rdquo;; and as to the
+      condition of the biscuits when they turned westward again, he says that
+      they were &ldquo;so full of weevils that, as God shall help me, I saw many
+      that stayed till night to eat their sop for fear of seeing them.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After experiencing some terrible weather, in the course of which they had
+      been obliged to catch sharks for food and had once been nearly overwhelmed
+      by a waterspout, they entered a harbour where, in the words of young
+      Ferdinand, &ldquo;we saw the people living like birds in the tops of the
+      trees, laying sticks across from bough to bough and building their huts
+      upon them; and though we knew not the reason of the custom we guessed that
+      it was done for fear of their enemies, or of the griffins that are in this
+      island.&rdquo; After further experiences of bad weather they made what
+      looked like a suitable harbour on the coast of Veragua, which harbour, as
+      they entered it on the day of the Epiphany (January 9, 1503), they named
+      Belem or Bethlehem. The river in the mouth of which they were anchored,
+      however, was subject to sudden spouts and gushes of water from the hills,
+      one of which occurred on January 24th and nearly swamped the caravels.
+      This spout of water was caused by the rainy season, which had begun in the
+      mountains and presently came down to the coast, where it rained
+      continuously until the 14th of February. They had made friends with the
+      Quibian or chief of the country, and he had offered to conduct them to the
+      place where the gold mines were; so Bartholomew was sent off in the rain
+      with a boat party to find this territory. It turned out afterwards that
+      the cunning Quibian had taken them out of his own country and showed them
+      the gold mined of a neighbouring chief, which were not so rich as his own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /> <a name="veragua" id="veragua"></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+      <img alt="veragua.jpg (121K)" src="images/veragua.jpg" style="width:100%;" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/veragua.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
+    </h5>
+<p>
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</p>
+    <p>
+      Columbus, left idle in the absence of Bartholomew, listening to the
+      continuous drip and patter of the rain on the leaves and the water, begins
+      to dream again&mdash;to dream of gold and geography. Remembers that David
+      left three thousand quintals of gold from the Indies to Solomon for the
+      decoration of the Temple; remembers that Josephus said it came from the
+      Golden Chersonesus; decides that enough gold could never have been got
+      from the mines of Hayna in Espanola; and concludes that the Ophir of
+      Solomon must be here in Veragua and not there in Espanola. It was always
+      here and now with Columbus; and as he moved on his weary sea pilgrimages
+      these mythical lands with their glittering promise moved about with him,
+      like a pillar of fire leading him through the dark night of his quest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The rain came to an end, however, the sun shone out again, and activity
+      took the place of dreams with Columbus and with his crew. He decided to
+      found a settlement in this place, and to make preparations for seizing and
+      working the gold mines. It was decided to leave a garrison of eighty men,
+      and the business of unloading the necessary arms and provisions and
+      building houses ashore was immediately begun. Hawks&rsquo; bells and other
+      trifles were widely distributed among the natives, with special toys and
+      delicacies for the Quibian, in order that friendly relations might be
+      established from the beginning; and special regulations were framed to
+      prevent the possibility of any recurrence of the disasters that overtook
+      the settlers of Isabella.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such are the orderly plans of Columbus; but the Quibian has his plans too,
+      which are found to be of quite a different nature. The Quibian does not
+      like intruders, though he likes their hawks&rsquo; bells well enough; he
+      is not quite so innocent as poor Guacanagari and the rest of them were; he
+      knows that gold is a thing coveted by people to whom it does not belong,
+      and that trouble follows in its train. Quibian therefore decides that
+      Columbus and his followers shall be exterminated&mdash;news of which
+      intention fortunately came to the ears of Columbus in time, Diego Mendez
+      and Rodrigo de Escobar having boldly advanced into the Quibian&rsquo;s
+      village and seen the warlike preparations. Bartholomew, returning from his
+      visit to the gold mines, was informed of this state of affairs. Always
+      quick to strike, Bartholomew immediately started with an armed force, and
+      advanced upon the village so rapidly that the savages were taken by
+      surprise, their headquarters surrounded, and the Quibian and fifty of his
+      warriors captured. Bartholomew triumphantly marched the prisoners back,
+      the Quibian being entrusted to the charge of Juan Sanchez, who was rowing
+      him in a little boat. The Quibian complained that his bonds were hurting
+      him, and foolish Sanchez eased them a little; Quibian, with a quick
+      movement, wriggled overboard and dived to the bottom; came up again
+      somewhere and reached home alive. No one saw him come up, however, and
+      they thought had had been drowned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Columbus now made ready to depart, and the caravels having been got over
+      the shallow bar, their loading was completed and they were ready to sail.
+      On April 6th Diego Tristan was sent in charge of a boat with a message to
+      Bartholomew, who was to be left in command of the settlement; but when
+      Tristan had rounded the point at the entrance to the river and come in
+      sight of the shore he had an unpleasant surprise; the settlement was being
+      savagely attacked by the resurrected Quibian and his followers. The fight
+      had lasted for three hours, and had been going badly against the
+      Spaniards, when Bartholomew and Diego Mendes rallied a little force round
+      them and, calling to Columbus&rsquo;s Irish dog which had been left with
+      them, made a rush upon the savages and so terrified them that they
+      scattered. Bartholomew with eight of the other Spaniards was wounded, and
+      one was killed; and it was at this point that Tristan&rsquo;s boat arrived
+      at the settlement. Having seen the fight safely over, he went on up the
+      river to get water, although he was warned that it was not safe; and sure
+      enough, at a point a little farther up the river, beyond some low green
+      arm of the shore, he met with a sudden and bloody death. A cloud of
+      yelling savages surrounded his boat hurling javelins and arrows, and only
+      one seaman, who managed to dive into the water and crawl ashore, escaped
+      to bring the evil tidings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Spaniards under Bartholomew&rsquo;s command broke into a panic, and
+      taking advantage of his wounded condition they tried to make sail on their
+      caravel and join the ships of Columbus outside; but since the time of the
+      rains the river had so much gone down that she was stuck fast in the sand.
+      They could not even get a boat over the bar, for there was a heavy cross
+      sea breaking on it; and in the meantime here they were, trapped inside
+      this river, the air resounding with dismal blasts of the natives&rsquo;
+      conch-shells, and the natives themselves dancing round and threatening to
+      rush their position; while the bodies of Tristan and his little crew were
+      to be seen floating down the stream, feasted upon by a screaming cloud of
+      birds. The position of the shore party was desperate, and it was only by
+      the greatest efforts that the wounded Adelantado managed to rally his crew
+      and get them to remove their little camp to an open place on the shore,
+      where a kind of stockade was made of chests, casks, spars, and the caravel&rsquo;s
+      boat. With this for cover, the Spanish fire-arms, so long as there was
+      ammunition for them, were enough to keep the natives at bay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Outside the bar, in his anchorage beyond the green wooded point, the
+      Admiral meanwhile was having an anxious time. One supposes the entrance to
+      the river to have been complicated by shoals and patches of broken water
+      extending some considerable distance, so that the Admiral&rsquo;s
+      anchorage would be ten or twelve miles away from the camp ashore, and of
+      course entirely hidden from it. As day after day passed and Diego Tristan
+      did not return, the Admiral&rsquo;s anxiety increased. Among the three
+      caravels that now formed his little squadron there was only one boat
+      remaining, the others, not counting one taken by Tristan and one left with
+      Bartholomew, having all been smashed in the late hurricanes. In the heavy
+      sea that was running on the bar the Admiral dared not risk his last
+      remaining boat; but in the mean time he was cut off from all news of the
+      shore party and deprived of any means of finding out what had happened to
+      Tristan. And presently to these anxieties was added a further disaster. It
+      will be remembered that when the Quibian had been captured fifty natives
+      had been taken with him; and these were confined in the forecastle of the
+      Capitana and covered by a large hatch, on which most of the crew slept at
+      night. But one night the natives collected a heap of big stones from the
+      ballast of the ship, and piled them up to a kind of platform beneath the
+      hatch; some of the strongest of them got upon the platform and set their
+      backs horizontally against the hatch, gave a great heave and, lifted it
+      off. In the confusion that followed, a great many of the prisoners escaped
+      into the sea, and swam ashore; the rest were captured and thrust back
+      under the hatch, which was chained down; but when on the following morning
+      the Spaniards went to attend to this remnant it was found that they had
+      all hanged themselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was a great disaster, since it increased the danger of the garrison
+      ashore, and destroyed all hope of friendship with the natives. There was
+      something terrible and powerful, too, in the spirit of people who could
+      thus to a man make up their minds either to escape or die; and the Admiral
+      must have felt that he was in the presence of strange, powerful elements
+      that were far beyond his control. At any moment, moreover, the wind might
+      change and put him on a lee shore, or force him to seek safety in
+      sea-room; in which case the position of Bartholomew would be a very
+      critical one. It was while things were at this apparent deadlock that a
+      brave fellow, Pedro Ledesma, offered to attempt to swim through the surf
+      if the boat would take him to the edge of it. Brave Pedro, his offer
+      accepted, makes the attempt; plunges into the boiling surf, and with
+      mighty efforts succeeds in reaching the shore; and after an interval is
+      seen by his comrades, who are waiting with their boat swinging on the edge
+      of the surf, to be returning to them; plunges into the sea, comes safely
+      through the surf again, and is safely hauled on board, having accomplished
+      a very real and satisfactory bit of service.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The story he had to tell the Admiral was as we know not a pleasant one&mdash;Tristan
+      and his men dead, several of Bartholomew&rsquo;s force, including the
+      Adelantado himself, wounded, and all in a state of panic and fear at the
+      hostile natives. The Spaniards would do nothing to make the little
+      fortress safer, and were bent only on escaping from the place of horror.
+      Some of them were preparing canoes in which to come out to the ships when
+      the sea should go down, as their one small boat was insufficient; and they
+      swore that if the Admiral would not take them they would seize their own
+      caravel and sail out themselves into the unknown sea as soon as they could
+      get her floated over the bar, rather than remain in such a dreadful
+      situation. Columbus was in a very bad way. He could not desert
+      Bartholomew, as that would expose him to the treachery of his own men and
+      the hostility of the savages. He could not reinforce him, except by
+      remaining himself with the whole of his company; and in that case there
+      would be no means of sending the news of his rich discovery to Spain.
+      There was nothing for it, therefore, but to break up the settlement and
+      return some other time with a stronger force sufficient to occupy the
+      country. And even this course had its difficulties; for the weather
+      continued bad, the wind was blowing on to the shore, the sea was&mdash;so
+      rough as to make the passage of the bar impossible, and any change for the
+      worse in the weather would probably drive his own crazy ships ashore and
+      cut off all hope of escape.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Admiral, whose health was now permanently broken, and who only had
+      respite from his sufferings in fine weather and when he was relieved from
+      a burden of anxieties such as had been continually pressing on him now for
+      three months, fell into his old state of sleeplessness, feverishness, and
+      consequent depression; and it, these circumstances it is not wonderful
+      that the firm ground of fact began to give a little beneath him and that
+      his feet began to sink again into the mire or quag of stupor. Of these
+      further flounderings in the quag he himself wrote an account to the King
+      and Queen, so we may as well have it in his own words.
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;I mounted to the top of the ship crying out with a weak voice,
+        weeping bitterly, to the commanders of your Majesties&rsquo; army, and
+        calling again to the four winds to help; but they did not answer me.
+        Tired out, I fell asleep and sighing I heard a voice very full of pity
+        which spoke these words: O fool! and slow to believe and to serve Him,
+        thy God and the God of all. What did He more for Moses? and for David
+        His servant? Since thou wast born He had always so great care for thee.
+        When He saw thee in an age with which He was content He made thy name
+        sound marvellously through the world. The Indies, which are so rich
+        apart of the world, He has given to thee as thine. Thou hast distributed
+        them wherever it has pleased thee; He gave thee power so to do. Of the
+        bonds of the ocean which were locked with so strong chains He gave thee
+        the keys, and thou wast obeyed in all the land, and among the Christians
+        thou hast acquired a good and honourable reputation. What did He more
+        for the people of Israel when He brought them out of Egypt? or yet for
+        David, whom from being a shepherd He made King of Judea? Turn to Him and
+        recognise thine error, for His mercy is infinite. Thine old age will be
+        no hindrance to all great things. Many very great inheritances are in
+        His power. Abraham was more than one hundred years old when he begat
+        Isaac and also Sarah was not young. Thou art calling for uncertain aid.
+        Answer me, who has afflicted thee so much and so many times&mdash;God or
+        the world? The privileges and promises which God makes He never breaks
+        to any one; nor does He say after having received the service that His
+        intention was not so and it is to be understood in another manner: nor
+        imposes martyrdom to give proof of His power. He abides by the letter of
+        His word. All that He promises He abundantly accomplishes. This is His
+        way. I have told thee what the Creator hath done for thee and does for
+        all. Now He shows me the reward and payment of thy suffering and which
+        thou hast passed in the service of others. And thus half dead, I heard
+        everything; but I could never find an answer to make to words so
+        certain, and only I wept for my errors. He, who ever he might be,
+        finished speaking, saying: Trust and fear not, for thy tribulations are
+        written in marble and not without reason.&rdquo;
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      Mere darkness of stupor; not much to be deciphered from it, nor any
+      profitable comment to be made on it, except that it was our poor
+      Christopher&rsquo;s way of crying out his great suffering and misery. We
+      must not notice it, much as we should like to hold out a hand of sympathy
+      and comfort to him; must not pay much attention to this dark eloquent
+      nonsense&mdash;merely words, in which the Admiral never does himself
+      justice. Acts are his true conversation; and when he speaks in that
+      language all men must listen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="ch4d" id="ch4d"></a>CHAPTER IV.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      HEROIC ADVENTURES BY LAND AND SEA
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No man ever had a better excuse for his superstitions than the Admiral; no
+      sooner had he got done with his Vision than the wind dropped, the sun came
+      out, the sea fell, and communication with the land was restored. While he
+      had been sick and dreaming one of his crew, Diego Mendez, had been busy
+      with practical efforts in preparation for this day of fine weather; he had
+      made a great raft out of Indian canoes lashed together, with mighty sacks
+      of sail cloth into which the provisions might be bundled; and as soon as
+      the sea had become calm enough he took this raft in over the bar to the
+      settlement ashore, and began the business of embarking the whole of the
+      stores and ammunition of Bartholomew&rsquo;s garrison. By this practical
+      method the whole establishment was transferred from the shore to the ships
+      in the space of two days, and nothing was left but the caravel, which it
+      was found impossible to float again. It was heavy work towing the raft
+      constantly backwards and forwards from the ships to the shore, but Diego
+      Mendez had the satisfaction of being the last man to embark from the
+      deserted settlement, and to see that not an ounce of stores or ammunition
+      had been lost.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Columbus, always quick to reward the services of a good man, kissed Diego
+      Mendez publicly&mdash;on both cheeks, and (what doubtless pleased him much
+      better) gave him command of the caravel of which poor Tristan had been the
+      captain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With a favourable wind they sailed from this accursed shore at the end of
+      April 1503. It is strange, as Winsor points out, that in the name of this
+      coast should be preserved the only territorial remembrance of Columbus,
+      and that his descendant the Duke of Veragua should in his title
+      commemorate one of the most unfortunate of the Admiral&rsquo;s adventures.
+      And if any one should desire a proof of the utterly misleading nature of
+      most of Columbus&rsquo;s writings about himself, let him know that a few
+      months later he solemnly wrote to the Sovereigns concerning this very
+      place that &ldquo;there is not in the world a country whose inhabitants
+      are more timid; and the whole place is capable of being easily put into a
+      state of defence. Your people that may come here, if they should wish to
+      become masters of the products of other lands, will have to take them by
+      force or retire empty-handed. In this country they will simply have to
+      trust their persons in the hands of the savages.&rdquo; The facts being
+      that the inhabitants were extremely fierce and warlike and irreconcilably
+      hostile; that the river was a trap out of which in the dry season there
+      was no escape, and the harbour outside a mere shelterless lee shore; that
+      it would require an army and an armada to hold the place against the
+      natives, and that any one who trusted himself in their hands would share
+      the fate of the unhappy Diego Tristan. One may choose between believing
+      that the Admiral&rsquo;s memory had entirely failed him (although he had
+      not been backward in making a minute record, of all his sufferings) or
+      that he was craftily attempting to deceive the Sovereigns. My own belief
+      is that he was neither trying to deceive anybody nor that he had forgotten
+      anything, but that he was simply incapable of uttering the bare truth when
+      he had a pen in his hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From their position on the coast of Veragua Espanola bore almost due
+      north; but Columbus was too good a seaman to attempt to make the island by
+      sailing straight for it. He knew that the steady west-going current would
+      set him far down on his course, and he therefore decided to work up the
+      coast a long way to the eastward before standing across for Espanola. The
+      crew grumbled very much at this proceeding, which they did not understand;
+      in fact they argued from it that the Admiral was making straight for
+      Spain, and this, in the crazy condition of the vessels, naturally alarmed
+      them. But in his old high-handed, secret way the Admiral told them
+      nothing; he even took away from the other captains all the charts that
+      they had made of this coast, so that no one but himself would be able to
+      find the way back to it; and he took a kind of pleasure in the complete
+      mystification thus produced on his fellow-voyagers. &ldquo;None of them
+      could explain whither I went nor whence I came; they did not know the way
+      to return thither,&rdquo; he writes, somewhat childishly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But he was not back in Espanola yet, and his means for getting there were
+      crumbling away beneath his feet. One of the three remaining caravels was
+      entirely riddled by seaworms and had to be abandoned at the harbour called
+      Puerto Bello; and the company was crowded on to two ships. The men now
+      became more than ever discontented at the easterly course, and on May 1st,
+      when he had come as far east as the Gulf of Darien, Columbus felt obliged
+      to bear away to the north, although as it turned out he had not nearly
+      made enough easting. He stood on this course, for nine days, the
+      west-going current setting him down all the time; and the first land that
+      he made, on May 10th, was the group of islands off the western end of Cuba
+      which he had called the Queen&rsquo;s Gardens.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He anchored for six days here, as the crews were completely exhausted; the
+      ships&rsquo; stores were reduced to biscuits, oil, and vinegar; the
+      vessels leaked like sieves, and the pumps had to be kept going
+      continually. And no sooner had they anchored than a hurricane came on, and
+      brought up a sea so heavy that the Admiral was convinced that his ships
+      could not live within it. We have got so accustomed to reading of storms
+      and tempests that it seems useless to try and drive home the horror and
+      terror of them; but here were these two rotten ships alone at the end of
+      the world, far beyond the help of man, the great seas roaring up under
+      them in the black night, parting their worn cables, snatching away their
+      anchors from them, and finally driving them one upon the other to grind
+      and strain and prey upon each other, as though the external conspiracy of
+      the elements against them both were not sufficient! One writes or reads
+      the words, but what does it mean to us? and can we by any conceivable
+      effort of imagination realise what it meant to this group of human beings
+      who lived through that night so many hundred years ago&mdash;men like
+      ourselves with hearts to sink and faint, capable of fear and hunger,
+      capable of misery, pain, and endurance? Bruised and battered, wet by the
+      terrifying surges, and entirely uncomforted by food or drink, they did
+      somehow endure these miseries; and were to endure worse too before they
+      were done with it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Their six days&rsquo; sojourn amid the Queen&rsquo;s Gardens, then, was
+      not a great success; and as soon as they were able they set sail again,
+      standing eastward when the wind permitted them. But wind and current were
+      against them and all through the month of May and the early part of June
+      they struggled along the south coast of Cuba, their ships as full of holes
+      as a honeycomb, pumps going incessantly, and in addition the worn-out
+      seamen doing heroic labour at baling with buckets and kettles. Lee helm!
+      Down go the buckets and kettles and out run the wretched scarecrows of
+      seamen to the weary business of tacking ship, letting go, brailing up,
+      hauling in, and making fast for the thousandth time; and then back to the
+      pumps and kettles again. No human being could endure this for an
+      indefinite time; and though their diet of worms represented by the rotten
+      biscuit was varied with cassava bread supplied by friendly natives, the
+      Admiral could not make his way eastward further than Cape Cruz. Round that
+      cape his leaking, strained vessels could not be made to look against the
+      wind and the tide. Could hardly indeed be made to float or swim upon the
+      water at all; and the Admiral had now to consider, not whether he could
+      sail on a particular point of the compass, but whether he could by any
+      means avoid another course which the fates now proposed to him&mdash;namely,
+      a perpendicular course to the bottom of the sea. It was a race between the
+      water and the ships, and the only thing the Admiral could think of was to
+      turn southward across to Jamaica, which he did on June 23rd, putting into
+      Puerto Bueno, now called Dry Harbour. But there was no food there, and as
+      his ships were settling deeper and deeper in the water he had to make sail
+      again and drive eastwards as far as Puerto Santa Gloria, now called Don
+      Christopher&rsquo;s Cove. He was just in time. The ships were run ashore
+      side by side on a sandy beach, the pumps were abandoned, and in one tide
+      the ships were full of water. The remaining anchor cables were used to
+      lash the two ships together so that they would not move; although there
+      was little fear of that, seeing the weight of water that was in them.
+      Everything that could be saved was brought up on deck, and a kind of cabin
+      or platform which could be fortified was rigged on the highest part of the
+      ships. And so no doubt for some days, although their food was almost
+      finished, the wretched and exhausted voyagers could stretch their cramped
+      limbs, and rest in the warm sun, and listen, from their safe haven on the
+      firm sands, to the hated voice of the sea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thanks to careful regulations made by the Admiral, governing the
+      intercourse between the Spaniards and the natives ashore, friendly
+      relations were soon established, and the crews were supplied with cassava
+      bread and fruit in abundance. Two officials superintended every purchase
+      of provisions to avoid the possibility of any dispute, for in the event of
+      even a momentary hostility the thatched-roof structures on the ships could
+      easily have been set on fire, and the position of the Spaniards, without
+      shelter amid a hostile population, would have been a desperate one. This
+      disaster, however, was avoided; but the Admiral soon began to be anxious
+      about the supply of provisions from the immediate neighbourhood, which
+      after the first few days began to be irregular. There were a large number
+      of Spaniards to be fed, the natives never kept any great store of
+      provisions for themselves, and the Spaniards were entirely at their mercy
+      for, provisions from day to day. Diego Mendez, always ready for active and
+      practical service, now offered to take three men and make a journey
+      through the island to arrange for the purchase of provisions from
+      different villages, so that the men on the ships would not be dependent
+      upon any one source. This offer was gratefully accepted; and Mendez, with
+      his lieutenants well supplied with toys and trinkets, started eastward
+      along the north coast of Jamaica. He made no mistakes; he was quick and
+      clever at ingratiating himself with the caciques, and he succeeded in
+      arranging with three separate potentates to send regular supplies of
+      provisions to the men on the ships. At each place where he made this
+      arrangement he detached one of his assistants and sent him back with the
+      first load of provisions, so that the regular line of carriage might be
+      the more quickly established; and when they had all gone he borrowed a
+      couple of natives and pushed on by himself until he reached the eastern
+      end of the island. He made friends here with a powerful cacique named
+      Amerro, from whom he bought a large canoe, and paid for it with some of
+      the clothing off his back. With the canoe were furnished six Indians to
+      row it, and Mendez made a triumphant journey back by sea, touching at the
+      places where his depots had been established and seeing that his
+      commissariat arrangements were working properly. He was warmly received on
+      his return to the ships, and the result of his efforts was soon visible in
+      the daily supplies of food that now regularly arrived.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus was one difficulty overcome; but it was not likely that either
+      Columbus himself or any of his people would be content to remain for ever
+      on the beach of Jamaica. It was necessary to establish communication with
+      Espanola, and thence with Spain; but how to do it in the absence of ships
+      or even boats? Columbus, pondering much upon this matter, one day calls
+      Diego Mendez aside; walks him off, most likely, under the great rustling
+      trees beyond the beach, and there tells him his difficulty. &ldquo;My son,&rdquo;
+      says he, &ldquo;you and I understand the difficulties and dangers of our
+      position here better than any one else. We are few; the Indians are many;
+      we know how fickle and easily irritated they are, and how a fire-brand
+      thrown into our thatched cabins would set the whole thing ablaze. It is
+      quite true that you have very cleverly established a provision supply, but
+      it is dependent entirely upon the good nature of the natives and it might
+      cease to-morrow. Here is my plan: you have a good canoe; why should some
+      one not go over to Espanola in it and send back a ship for us?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Diego Mendez, knowing very well what is meant, looks down upon the ground.
+      His spoken opinion is that such a journey is not merely difficult but
+      impossible journey in a frail native canoe across one hundred and fifty
+      miles of open and rough sea; although his private opinion is other than
+      that. No, he cannot imagine such a thing being done; cannot think who
+      would be able to do it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Long silence from the Admiral; eloquent silence, accompanied by looks no
+      less eloquent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Admiral,&rdquo; says Mendez again, &ldquo;you know very well that I
+      have risked my life for you and the people before and would do it again.
+      But there are others who have at least as good a right to this great
+      honour and peril as I have; let me beg of you, therefore, to summon all
+      the company together, make this proposal to them, and see if any one will
+      undertake it. If not, I will once more risk my life.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The proposal being duly made to the assembled crews, every one, as cunning
+      Mendez had thought, declares it impossible; every one hangs back. Upon
+      which Diego Mendez with a fine gesture comes forward and volunteers; makes
+      his little dramatic effect and has his little ovation. Thoroughly Spanish
+      this, significant of that mixture of vanity and bravery, of swagger and
+      fearlessness, which is characteristic of the best in Spain. It was a
+      desperately brave thing to venture upon, this voyage from Jamaica to
+      Espanola in a native canoe and across a sea visited by dreadful
+      hurricanes; and the volunteer was entitled to his little piece of heroic
+      drama.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While Mendez was making his preparations, putting a false keel on the
+      canoe and fixing weather boards along its gunwales to prevent its shipping
+      seas, fitting a mast and sail and giving it a coat of tar, the Admiral
+      retired into his cabin and busied himself with his pen. He wrote one
+      letter to Ovando briefly describing his circumstances and requesting that
+      a ship should be sent for his relief; and another to the Sovereigns, in
+      which a long rambling account was given of the events of the voyage, and
+      much other matter besides, dismally eloquent of his floundering in the
+      quag. Much in it&mdash;about Solomon and Josephus, of the Abbot Joachim,
+      of Saint Jerome and the Great Khan; more about the Holy Sepulchre and the
+      intentions of the Almighty in that matter; with some serious practical
+      concern for the rich land of Veragua which he had discovered, lest it
+      should share the fate of his other discoveries and be eaten up by idle
+      adventurers. &ldquo;Veragua,&rdquo; he says, &ldquo;is not a little son
+      which may be given to a stepmother to nurse. Of Espanola and Paria and all
+      the other lands I never think without the tears falling from my eyes; I
+      believe that the example of these ought to serve for the others.&rdquo;
+      And then this passage:
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;The good and sound purpose which I always had to serve your
+        Majesties, and the dishonour and unmerited ingratitude, will not suffer
+        the soul to be silent although I wished it, therefore I ask pardon of
+        your Majesties. I have been so lost and undone; until now I have wept
+        for others that your Majesties might have compassion on them; and now
+        may the heavens weep for me and the earth weep for me in temporal
+        affairs; I have not a farthing to make as an offering in spiritual
+        affairs. I have remained here on the Indian islands in the manner I have
+        before said in great pain and infirmity, expecting every day death,
+        surrounded by innumerable savages full of cruelty and by our enemies,
+        and so far from the sacraments of the Holy Mother Church that I believe
+        the soul will be forgotten when it leaves the body. Let them weep for me
+        who have charity, truth and justice. I did not undertake this voyage of
+        navigation to gain honour or material things, that is certain, because
+        the hope already was entirely lost; but I did come to serve your
+        Majesties with honest intention and with good charitable zeal, and I do
+        not lie.&rdquo;
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      Poor old heart, older than its years, thus wailing out its sorrows to ears
+      none too sympathetic; sad old voice, uplifted from the bright shores of
+      that lonely island in the midst of strange seas! It will not come clear to
+      the head alone; the echoes of this cry must reverberate in the heart if
+      they are to reach and animate the understanding.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this time also the Admiral wrote to his friend Gaspar Gorricio and the
+      reader may look upon a facsimile of the faded leaf upon which the trivial
+      document still exists. For the benefit of those who may be interested I
+      give the letter in Spanish and English.
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        REVEREND AND VERY DEVOUT FATHER:
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;If my voyage should be as conducive to my personal health and the
+        repose of my house as it seems likely to be conducive to the
+        aggrandisement of the royal Crown of the King and Queen, my Lords, I
+        might hope to live more than a hundred years. I have not time to write
+        more at length. I hope that the bearer of this letter may be a person of
+        my house who will tell you verbally more than can be told in a thousand
+        papers, and also Don Diego will supply information. I beg as a favour of
+        the Father Prior and all the members of your religious house, that they
+        remember me in all their prayers.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;Done on the island of Jamaica, July 7, 1503. &ldquo;I am at the
+        command of your Reverence.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        .S.<br /> .S.A.S. XMY<br /> Xpo FERENS.&rdquo;
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /> <a name="facsimile" id="facsimile"></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+      <img alt="facsimile.jpg (55K)" src="images/facsimile.jpg"
+      style="width:100%;" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/facsimile.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
+    </h5>
+<p>
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</p>
+    <p>
+      Diego Mendez found some one among the Spaniards to accompany him, but his
+      name is not recorded. The six Indians were taken to row the canoe. They
+      had to make their way at first against the strong currents along the
+      northern coast of Jamaica, so as to reach its eastern extremity before
+      striking across to Espanola. At one point they met a flotilla of Indian
+      canoes, which chased them and captured them, but they escaped. When they
+      arrived at the end of the easterly point of Jamaica, now known as Morant
+      Point, they had to wait two or three days for calm weather and a
+      favourable wind to waft them across to Espanola, and while thus waiting
+      they were suddenly surrounded and captured by a tribe of hostile natives,
+      who carried them off some nine or ten miles into the island, and signified
+      their intention of killing them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But they began to quarrel among themselves as to how they should divide
+      the spoils which they had captured with the canoe, and decided that the
+      only way of settling the dispute was by some elaborate trial of hazard
+      which they used. While they were busy with their trial Diego Mendez
+      managed to escape, got back to the canoe, and worked his way back in it
+      alone to the harbour where the Spaniards were encamped. The other Spaniard
+      who was with him probably perished, for there is no record of what became
+      of him&mdash;an obscure life lost in a brave enterprise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One would have thought that Mendez now had enough of canoe voyages, but he
+      had no sooner got back than he offered to set out again, only stipulating
+      that an armed force should march along the coast by land to secure his
+      safety until he could stand across to Espanola. Bartholomew Columbus
+      immediately put himself at the head of a large and well-armed party for
+      this purpose, and Bartolomeo Fieschi, the Genoese captain of one of the
+      lost caravels, volunteered to accompany Mendez in a second canoe. Each
+      canoe was now manned by six Spanish volunteers and ten Indians to row;
+      Fieschi, as soon as they had reached the coast of Espanola, was to bring
+      the good news to the Admiral; while Mendez must go on to San Domingo,
+      procure a ship, and himself proceed to Spain with the Admiral&rsquo;s
+      letters. The canoes were provisioned with water, cassava bread, and fish;
+      and they departed on this enterprise some time in August 1503.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Their passage along the coast was protected by Bartholomew Columbus, who
+      marched along with them on the shore. They waited a few days at the end of
+      the island for favourable weather, and finally said farewell to the good
+      Adelantado, who we may be sure stood watching them until they were well
+      out of sight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was not a cloud in the sky when the canoes stood out to sea; the
+      water was calm, and reflected the blistering heat of the sun. It was not a
+      pleasant situation for people in an open boat; and Mendez and Fieschi were
+      kept busy, as Irving says, &ldquo;animating the Indians who navigated
+      their canoes, and who frequently paused at their labour.&rdquo; The poor
+      Indians, evidently much in need of such animation, would often jump into
+      the water to escape the intolerable heat, and after a short immersion
+      there would return to their task. Things were better when the sun went
+      down, and the cool night came on; half the Indians then slept and half
+      rowed, while half of the Spaniards also slept and the other half, I
+      suppose, &ldquo;animated.&rdquo; Irving also says that the animating half
+      &ldquo;kept guard with their weapons in hand, ready to defend themselves
+      in the case of any perfidy on the part of their savage companions&rdquo;;
+      such perfidy being far enough from the thoughts of the savage companions,
+      we may imagine, whose energies were entirely occupied with the oars.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next day was the same: savage companions rowing, Spaniards animating;
+      Spaniards and savage companions alike drinking water copiously without
+      regard for the smallness of their store. The second night was very hot,
+      and the savage companions finished the water, with the result that on the
+      third day the thirst became a torment, and at mid-day the poor companions
+      struck work. Artful Mendez, however, had concealed two small kegs of water
+      in his canoe, the contents of which he now administered in small doses, so
+      that the poor Indians were enabled to take to their oars again, though
+      with vigour much abated. Presumably the Spaniards had put up their weapons
+      by this time, for the only perfidy shown on the part of the savage
+      companions was that one of them died in the following night and had to be
+      thrown overboard, while others lay panting on the bottom of the canoes;
+      and the Spaniards had to take their turn at the oars, although they were
+      if anything in a worse case than the Indians.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Late in the night, however, the moon rose, and Mendez had the joy of
+      seeing its lower disc cut by a jagged line which proved to be the little
+      islet or rock of Navassa, which lies off the westerly end of Espanola. New
+      hope now animated the sufferers, and they pushed on until they were able
+      to land on this rock, which proved to be without any vegetation
+      whatsoever, but on the surface of which there were found some precious
+      pools of rain-water. Mendez was able to restrain the frantic appetites of
+      his fellow-countrymen, but the savage companions were less wise, and drank
+      their fill; so that some of them died in torment on the spot, and others
+      became seriously ill. The Spaniards were able to make a fire of driftwood,
+      and boil some shell-fish, which they found on shore, and they wisely spent
+      the heat of the day crouching in the shade of the rocks, and put off their
+      departure until the evening. It was then a comparatively easy journey for
+      them to cross the dozen miles that separated them from Espanola, and they
+      landed the next day in a pleasant harbour near Cape Tiburon. Fieschi, true
+      to his promise, was then ready to start back for Jamaica with news of the
+      safe accomplishment of the voyage; but the remnant of the crews, Spaniards
+      and savage companions alike, had had enough of it, and no threats or
+      persuasions would induce them to embark again. Mendez, therefore, left his
+      friends to enjoy some little repose before continuing their journey to San
+      Domingo, and, taking six natives of Espanola to row his canoe; set off
+      along the coast towards the capital. He had not gone half-way when he
+      learned that Ovando was not there, but was in Xaragua, so he left his
+      canoe and struck northward through the forest until he arrived at the
+      Governor&rsquo;s camp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ovando welcomed Mendez cordially, praised him for his plucky voyage, and
+      expressed the greatest concern at the plight of the Admiral; but he was
+      very busy at the moment, and was on the point of transacting a piece of
+      business that furnished a dismal proof of the deterioration which had
+      taken place in him. Anacaona&mdash;the lady with the daughter whom we
+      remember&mdash;was now ruling over the province of Xaragua, her brother
+      having died; and as perhaps her native subjects had been giving a little
+      trouble to the Governor, he had come to exert his authority. The narrow
+      official mind, brought into contact with native life, never develops in
+      the direction of humanity; and Ovando had now for some time made the great
+      discovery that it was less trouble to kill people than to try to rule over
+      them wisely. There had evidently always been a streak of Spanish cruelty
+      in him, which had been much developed by his residence in Espanola; and to
+      cruelty and narrow officialdom he now added treachery of a very monstrous
+      and horrible kind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He announced his intention of paying a state visit to Anacaona, who
+      thereupon summoned all her tributary chiefs to a kind of levee held in his
+      honour. In the midst of the levee, at a given signal, Ovando&rsquo;s
+      soldiers rushed in, seized the caciques, fastened them to the wooden
+      pillars of the house, and set the whole thing on fire; the caciques being
+      thus miserably roasted alive. While this was going on the atrocious work
+      was completed by the soldiers massacring every native they could see&mdash;children,
+      women, and old men included&mdash;and Anacaona herself was taken and
+      hanged.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All these things Diego Mendez had to witness; and when they were over,
+      Ovando still had excuses for not hurrying to the relief of the Admiral. He
+      had embarked on a campaign of extermination against the natives, and he
+      followed up his atrocities at Xaragua by an expedition to the eastern end
+      of Espanola, where very much the same kind of business was transacted.
+      Weeks and months passed in this bloody cruelty, and there was always an
+      excuse for putting off Mendez. Now it was because of the operations which
+      he dignified by the name of wars, and now because he had no ship suitable
+      for sending to Jamaica; but the truth was that Ovando, the springs of
+      whose humanity had been entirely dried up during his disastrous reign in
+      Espanola, did not want Columbus to see with his own eyes the terrible
+      state of the island, and was callous enough to leave him either to perish
+      or to find his own way back to the world. It was only when news came that
+      a fleet of caravels was expected from Spain that Ovando could no longer
+      prevent Mendez from going to San Domingo and, purchasing one of them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ovando had indeed lost all but the outer semblance of a man; the soul or
+      animating part of him had entirely gone to corruption. He had no interest
+      in rescuing the Admiral; he had, on the contrary, great interest in
+      leaving him unrescued; but curiosity as to his fate, and fear as to his
+      actions in case he should return to Espanola, induced the Governor to make
+      some effort towards spying cut his condition. He had a number of trained
+      rascals under his command&mdash;among them Diego de Escobar, one of Roldan&rsquo;s
+      bright brigade; and Ovando had no sooner seen Mendez depart on his journey
+      to San Domingo than he sent this Escobar to embark in a small caravel on a
+      visit to Jamaica in order to see if the Admiral was still alive. The
+      caravel had to be small, so that there could be no chance of bringing off
+      the 130 men who had been left to perish there; and various astute
+      instructions were given to Escobar in order to prevent his arrival being
+      of any comfort or assistance to the shipwrecked ones. And so Escobar
+      sailed; and so, in the month of March 1504, eight months after the
+      vanishing of Mendez below the eastern horizon, the miserable company
+      encamped on the two decaying ships on the sands at Puerto Santa Gloria
+      descried with joyful excitement the sails of a Spanish caravel standing in
+      to the shore.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="ch5d" id="ch5d"></a>CHAPTER V.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE ECLIPSE OF THE MOON
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We must now return to the little settlement on the coast of Jamaica&mdash;those
+      two wornout caravels, lashed together with ropes and bridged by an
+      erection of wood and thatch, in which the forlorn little company was
+      established. In all communities of men so situated there are alternate
+      periods of action and reaction, and after the excitement incidental to the
+      departure of Mendez, and the return of Bartholomew with the news that he
+      had got safely away, there followed a time of reaction, in which the
+      Spaniards looked dismally out across the empty sea and wondered when, if
+      ever, their salvation would come. Columbus himself was now a confirmed
+      invalid, and could hardly ever leave his bed under the thatch; and in his
+      own condition of pain and depression his influence on the rest of the crew
+      must inevitably have been less inspiriting than it had formerly been. The
+      men themselves, moreover, began to grow sickly, chiefly on account of the
+      soft vegetable food, to which they were not accustomed, and partly because
+      of their cramped quarters and the moist, unhealthy climate, which was the
+      very opposite of what they needed after their long period of suffering and
+      hardship at sea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the days and weeks passed, with no occupation save the daily business
+      of collecting food that gradually became more and more nauseous to them,
+      and of straining their eyes across the empty blue of the sea in an anxious
+      search for the returning canoes of Fieschi, the spirits of the castaways
+      sank lower and lower. Inevitably their discontent became articulate and
+      broke out into murmurings. The usual remedy for this state of affairs is
+      to keep the men employed at some hard work; but there was no work for them
+      to do, and the spirit of dissatisfaction had ample opportunity to spread.
+      As usual it soon took the form of hostility to the Admiral. They seem to
+      have borne him no love or gratitude for his masterly guiding of them
+      through so many dangers; and now when he lay ill and in suffering his
+      treacherous followers must needs fasten upon him the responsibility for
+      their condition. After a month or two had passed, and it became certain
+      that Fieschi was not coming back, the castaways could only suppose that he
+      and Mendez had either been captured by natives or had perished at sea, and
+      that their fellow-countrymen must still be without news of the Admiral&rsquo;s
+      predicament. They began to say also that the Admiral was banished from
+      Spain; that there was no desire or intention on the part of the Sovereigns
+      to send an expedition to his relief; even if they had known of his
+      condition; and that in any case they must long ago have given him up for
+      lost.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the pot boils the scum rises to the surface, and the first result of
+      these disloyal murmurings and agitations was to bring into prominence the
+      two brothers, Francisco and Diego de Porras, who, it will be remembered,
+      owed their presence with the expedition entirely to the Admiral&rsquo;s
+      good nature in complying with the request of their brother-in-law Morales,
+      who had apparently wished to find some distant occupation for them. They
+      had been given honourable posts as officers, in which they had not proved
+      competent; but the Admiral had always treated them with kindness and
+      courtesy, regarding them more as guests than as servants. Who or what
+      these Porras brothers were, where they came from, who were their father
+      and mother, or what was their training, I do not know; it is enough for us
+      to know that the result of it all had been the production of a couple of
+      very mean scoundrels, who now found an opportunity to exercise their
+      scoundrelism.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When they discovered the nature of the murmuring and discontent among the
+      crew they immediately set them to work it up into open mutiny. They
+      represented that, as Mendez had undoubtedly perished, there was no hope of
+      relief from Espanola; that the Admiral did not even expect such relief,
+      knowing that the island was forbidden ground to him. They insinuated that
+      he was as well content to remain in Jamaica as anywhere else, since he had
+      to undergo a period of banishment until his friends at Court could procure
+      his forgiveness. They were all, said the Porras brothers, being made tools
+      for the Admiral&rsquo;s convenience; as he did not wish to leave Jamaica
+      himself, he was keeping them all there, to perish as likely as not, and in
+      the meantime to form a bodyguard, and establish a service for himself. The
+      Porras brothers suggested that, under these circumstances, it would be as
+      well to take a fleet of native canoes from the Indians and make their own
+      way to Espanola; the Admiral would never undertake the voyage himself,
+      being too helpless from the gout; but it would be absurd if the whole
+      company were to be allowed to perish because of the infirmities of one
+      man. They reminded the murmurers that they would not be the first people
+      who had rebelled with success against the despotic rule of Columbus, and
+      that the conduct of the Sovereigns on a former occasion afforded them some
+      promise that those who rebelled again would receive something quite
+      different from punishment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Christmas passed, the old year went out in this strange, unhomelike place,
+      and the new year came in. The Admiral, as we have seen, was now almost
+      entirely crippled and confined to his bed; and he was lying alone in his
+      cabin on the second day of the year when Francisco de Porras abruptly
+      entered. Something very odd and flurried about Porras; he jerks and
+      stammers, and suddenly breaks out into a flood of agitated speech, in
+      which the Admiral distinguishes a stream of bitter reproach and
+      impertinence. The thing forms itself into nothing more or less than a
+      hurried, gabbling complaint; the people are dissatisfied at being kept
+      here week after week with no hope of relief; they accuse the Admiral of
+      neglecting their interests; and so on. Columbus, raising himself in his
+      bed, tries to pacify Porras; gives him reasons why it is impossible for
+      them to depart in canoes; makes every endeavour, in short, to bring this
+      miserable fellow back to his duties. He is watching Porras&rsquo;s eye all
+      the time; sees that he is too excited to be pacified by reason, and
+      suspects that he has considerable support behind him; and suggests that
+      the crew had better all be assembled and a consultation held as to the
+      best course to pursue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is no good to reason with mutineers; and the Admiral has no sooner made
+      this suggestion than he sees that it was a mistake. Porras scoffs at it;
+      action, not consultation, is what he demands; in short he presents an
+      ultimatum to the Admiral&mdash;either to embark with the whole company at
+      once, or stay behind in Jamaica at his own pleasure. And then, turning his
+      back on Columbus and raising his voice, he calls out, &ldquo;I am for
+      Castile; those who choose may follow me!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The shout was a signal, and immediately from every part of the vessel
+      resounded the voices of the Spaniards, crying out that they would follow
+      Porras. In the midst of the confusion Columbus hobbled out of his bed and
+      staggered on to the deck; Bartholomew seized his weapons and prepared for
+      action; but the whole of the crew was not mutinous, and there was a large
+      enough loyal remnant to make it unwise for the chicken-hearted mutineers
+      to do more for the moment than shout: Some of them, it is true, were heard
+      threatening the life of the Admiral, but he was hurried back to his bed by
+      a few of the faithful ones, and others of them rushed up to the fierce
+      Bartholomew, and with great difficulty persuaded him to drop his lance and
+      retire to Christopher&rsquo;s cabin with him while they dealt with the
+      offenders. They begged Columbus to let the scoundrels go if they wished
+      to, as the condition of those who remained would be improved rather than
+      hurt by their absence, and they would be a good riddance. They then went
+      back to the deck and told Porras and his followers that the sooner they
+      went the better, and that nobody would interfere with their going as long
+      as they offered no one any violence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Admiral had some time before purchased some good canoes from the
+      natives, and the mutineers seized ten of these and loaded them with native
+      provisions. Every effort was made to add to the number of the disloyal
+      ones; and when they saw their friends making ready to depart several of
+      these did actually join. There were forty-eight who finally embarked with
+      the brothers Porras; and there would have been more, but that so many of
+      them were sick and unable to face the exposure of the voyage. As it was,
+      those who remained witnessed with no very cheerful emotions the departure
+      of their companions, and even in some cases fell to tears and
+      lamentations. The poor old Admiral struggled out of his bed again, went
+      round among the sick and the loyal, cheering them and comforting them, and
+      promising to use every effort of the power left to him to secure an
+      adequate reward for their loyalty when he should return to Spain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We need only follow the career of Porras and his deserters for the present
+      far enough to see them safely off the premises and out of the way of the
+      Admiral and our narrative. They coasted along the shore of Jamaica to the
+      eastward as Mendez had done, landing whenever they had a mind to, and
+      robbing and outraging the natives; and they took a particularly mean and
+      dirty revenge on the Admiral by committing all their robbings and
+      outragings as though under his authority, assuring the offended Indians
+      that what they did they did by his command and that what they took he
+      would pay for; so that as they went along they sowed seeds of grievance
+      and hostility against the Admiral. They told the natives, moreover, that
+      Columbus was an enemy of all Indians, and that they would be very well
+      advised to kill him and get him out of the way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They had not managed very well with the navigation of the canoes; and
+      while they were waiting for fine weather at the eastern end of the island
+      they collected a number of natives to act as oarsmen. When they thought
+      the weather suitable they put to sea in the direction of Espanola. They
+      were only about fifteen miles from the shore, however, when the wind began
+      to head them and to send up something of a sea; not rough, but enough to
+      make the crank and overloaded canoes roll heavily, for they had not been
+      prepared, as those of Mendez were, with false keels and weather-boards.
+      The Spaniards got frightened and turned back to Jamaica; but the sea
+      became rougher, the canoes rolled more and more, they often shipped a
+      quantity of water, and the situation began to look serious. All their
+      belongings except arms and provisions were thrown overboard; but still, as
+      the wind rose and the sea with it, it became obvious that unless the
+      canoes were further lightened they would not reach the shore in safety.
+      Under these circumstances the Spaniards forced the natives to leap into
+      the water, where they swam about like rats as well as they could, and then
+      came back to the canoes in order to hold on and rest themselves. When they
+      did this the Spaniards slashed at them with their swords or cut off their
+      hands, so that one by one they fell back and, still swimming about feebly
+      as well as they could with their bleeding hands or stumps of arms, the
+      miserable wretches perished and sank at last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By this dreadful expedient the Spaniards managed to reach Jamaica again,
+      and when they landed they immediately fell to quarrelling as to what they
+      should do next. Some were for trying to make the island of Cuba, the wind
+      being favourable for that direction; others were for returning and making
+      their submission to the Admiral; others for going back and seizing the
+      remainder of his arms and stores; others for staying where they were for
+      the present, and making another attempt to reach Espanola when the weather
+      should be more favourable. This last plan, being the counsel of present
+      inaction, was adopted by the majority of the rabble; so they settled
+      themselves at a neighbouring Indian village, behaving in: the manner with
+      which we are familiar. A little later, when the weather was calm, they
+      made another attempt at the voyage, but were driven back in the same way;
+      and being by this time sick of canoe voyages, they abandoned the attempt,
+      and began to wander back westward through the island, maltreating the
+      natives as before, and sowing seeds of bitter rancour and hostility
+      against the Admiral; in whose neighbourhood we shall unfortunately hear of
+      them again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the meantime their departure had somewhat relieved the condition of
+      affairs on board the hulks. There were more provisions and there was more
+      peace; the Admiral, rising above his own infirmities to the necessities of
+      the occasion, moved unweariedly among the sick, cheering them and nursing
+      them back into health and good humour, so that gradually the condition of
+      the little colony was brought into better order and health than it had
+      enjoyed since its establishment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But now unfortunately the evil harvest sown by the Porras gang in their
+      journey to the east of the island began to ripen. The supplies of
+      provisions, which had hitherto been regularly brought by the natives,
+      began to appear with less punctuality, and to fall off both in quantity
+      and quality. The trinkets with which they were purchased had now been
+      distributed in such quantities that they began to lose their novelty and
+      value; sometimes the natives demanded a much higher price for the
+      provisions they brought, and (having by this time acquired the art of
+      bargaining) would take their stores away again if they did not get the
+      price they asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But even of this device they soon grew weary; from being irregular, the
+      supplies of provisions from some quarters ceased altogether, and the
+      possibilities of famine began to stare the unhappy castaways in the face.
+      It must be remembered that they were in a very weak physical condition,
+      and that among the so-called loyal remnant there were very few who were
+      not invalids; and they were unable to get out into the island and forage
+      for themselves. If the able-bodied handful were to sally forth in search
+      of provisions, the hulks would be left defenceless and at the mercy of the
+      natives, of whose growing hostility the Admiral had by this time
+      discovered abundant evidence. Thus little by little the food supply
+      diminished until there was practically nothing left, and the miserable
+      company of invalids were confronted with the alternative of either dying
+      of starvation or desperately attempting a canoe voyage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was from this critical situation that the spirit and resource of
+      Columbus once more furnished a way of escape, and in these circumstances
+      that he invented and worked a device that has since become famous&mdash;the
+      great Eclipse Trick. Among his small library in the cabin of the ship was
+      the book containing the astronomical tables of Regiomontanus; and from his
+      study of this work he was aware that an eclipse of the moon was due on a
+      certain date near at hand. He sent his Indian interpreter to visit the
+      neighbouring caciques, summoning them to a great conference to be held on
+      the evening of the eclipse, as the Admiral had matters of great importance
+      to reveal to them. They duly arrived on the evening appointed; not the
+      caciques alone, but large numbers of the native population, well prepared
+      for whatever might take place. Columbus then addressed them through his
+      interpreter, informing him that he was under the protection of a God who
+      dwelt in the skies and who rewarded all who assisted him and punished all
+      his enemies. He made an effective use of the adventures of Mendez and
+      Porras, pointing out that Mendez, who took his voyage by the Admiral&rsquo;s
+      orders, had got away in safety, but that Porras and his followers, who had
+      departed in disobedience and mutiny, had been prevented by the heavenly
+      power from achieving their object. He told them that his God was angry
+      with them for their hostility and for their neglect to supply him with
+      provisions; and that in token of his anger he was going to send them a
+      dreadful punishment, as a sign of which they would presently see the moon
+      change colour and lose its light, and the earth become dark.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This address was spun out as long as possible; but even so it was followed
+      by an interval in which, we may be sure, Columbus anxiously eyed the
+      serene orb of night, and doubtless prayed that Regiomontanus might not
+      have made a mistake in his calculations. Some of the Indians were alarmed,
+      some of them contemptuous; but it was pretty clearly realised on both
+      sides that matters between them had come to a head; and probably if
+      Regiomontanus, who had worked out these tables of figures and calculations
+      so many years ago in his German home, had done his work carelessly or made
+      a mistake, Columbus and his followers would have been massacred on the
+      spot. But Regiomontanus, God bless him! had made no mistake. Sure enough,
+      and punctually to the appointed time, the dark shadow began to steal over
+      the moon&rsquo;s disc; its light gradually faded, and a ghostly darkness
+      crept over the face of the world. Columbus, having seen that all was right
+      with the celestial machinery, had retired to his cabin; and presently he
+      found himself besieged there in the dark night by crowds of natives
+      frantically bringing what provisions they had and protesting their
+      intention of continuing to bring them for the rest of their lives. If only
+      the Admiral would ask his God to forgive them, there was no limit to the
+      amount of provisions that he might have! The Admiral, piously thankful,
+      and perhaps beginning to enjoy the situation a little, kept himself shut
+      up in his cabin as though communing with the implacable deity, while the
+      darkness deepened over the land and the shore resounded with the howling
+      and sobbing of the terrified natives. He kept a look-out on the sky; and
+      when he saw that the eclipse was about to pass away, he came out and
+      informed the natives that God had decided to pardon them on condition of
+      their remaining faithful in the matter of provisions, and that as a sign
+      of His mercy He would restore the light. The beautiful miracle went on
+      through its changing phases; and, watching in the darkness, the terrified
+      natives saw the silver edge of the moon appearing again, the curtain that
+      had obscured it gradually rolling away, and land and sea lying visible to
+      them and once more steeped in the serene light which they worshipped. It
+      is likely that Christopher slept more soundly that night than he had slept
+      for many nights before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="ch6d" id="ch6d"></a>CHAPTER VI.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      RELIEF OF THE ADMIRAL
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no further difficulty about provisions, which were punctually
+      brought by the natives on the old terms; but the familiar, spirit of
+      sedition began to work again among the unhappy Spaniards, and once more a
+      mutiny, led this time by the apothecary Bernardo, took form&mdash;the
+      intention being to seize the remaining canoes and attempt to reach
+      Espanola. This was the point at which matters had arrived, in March 1504,
+      when as the twilight was falling one evening a cry was raised that there
+      was a ship in sight; and presently a small caravel was seen standing in
+      towards the shore. All ideas of mutiny were forgotten, and the crew
+      assembled in joyful anticipation to await, as they thought, the coming of
+      their deliverers. The caravel came on with the evening breeze; but while
+      it was yet a long way off the shore it was seen to be lying to; a boat was
+      lowered and rowed towards the harbour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the boat drew near Columbus could recognise in it Diego de Escobar,
+      whom he remembered having condemned to death for his share in the
+      rebellion of Roldan. He was not the man whom Columbus would have most
+      wished to see at that moment. The boat came alongside the hulks, and a
+      barrel of wine and a side of bacon, the sea-compliment customary on such
+      occasions, was handed up. Greatly to the Admiral&rsquo;s surprise,
+      however, Escobar did not come on board, but pushed his boat off and began
+      to speak to Columbus from a little distance. He told him that Ovando was
+      greatly distressed at the Admiral&rsquo;s misfortunes; that he had been
+      much occupied by wars in Espanola, and had not been able to send a message
+      to him before; that he greatly regretted he had no ship at present large
+      enough to bring off the Admiral and his people, but that he would send one
+      as soon as he had it. In the meantime the Admiral was to be assured that
+      all his affairs in Espanola were being attended to faithfully, and that
+      Escobar was instructed to bring back at once any letters which the Admiral
+      might wish to write.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The coolness and unexpectedness of this message completely took away the
+      breath of the unhappy Spaniards, who doubtless stood looking in
+      bewilderment from Escobar to Columbus, unable to believe that the caravel
+      had not been sent for their relief. Columbus, however, with a
+      self-restraint which cannot be too highly praised, realised that Escobar
+      meant what he said, and that by protesting against his action or trying to
+      interfere with it he would only be putting himself in the wrong. He
+      therefore retired immediately to his cabin and wrote a letter to Ovando,
+      in which he drew a vivid picture of the distress of his people, reported
+      the rebellion of the Porras brothers, and reminded Ovando that he relied
+      upon the fulfilment of his promise to send relief. The letter was handed
+      over to Escobar, who rowed back with it to his caravel and immediately
+      sailed away with it into the night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before he could retire to commune with his own thoughts or to talk with
+      his faithful brother, Columbus had the painful duty of speaking to his
+      people, whose puzzled and disappointed faces must have cost him some extra
+      pangs. He told them that he was quite satisfied with the message from
+      Ovando, that it was a sign of kindness on his part thus to send them news
+      in advance that relief was coming, that their situation was now known in
+      San Domingo, and that vessels would soon be here to take them away. He
+      added that he himself was so sure of these things that he had refused to
+      go back with Escobar, but had preferred to remain with them and share
+      their lot until relief should come. This had the desired effect of
+      cheering the Spaniards; but it was far from representing the real
+      sentiments of Columbus on the subject. The fact that Escobar had been
+      chosen to convey this strange empty message of sympathy seemed to him
+      suspicious, and with his profound distrust of Ovando Columbus began to
+      wonder whether some further scheme might not be on foot to damage him in
+      the eyes of the Sovereigns. He was convinced that Ovando had meant to let
+      him starve on the island, and that the real purpose of Escobar&rsquo;s
+      visit had been to find out what condition the Admiral was in, so that
+      Ovando might know how to act. It is very hard to get at the truth of what
+      these two men thought of each other. They were both suspicious, each was
+      playing for his own hand, and Ovando was only a little more unscrupulous
+      than Columbus; but there can be no doubt that whatever his motives may
+      have been Ovando acted with abominable treachery and cruelty in leaving
+      the Admiral unrelieved for nearly nine months.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Columbus now tried to make use of the visit of Escobar to restore to
+      allegiance the band of rebels that were wandering about in the
+      neighbourhood under the leadership of the Porras brothers. Why he should
+      have wished to bring them back to the ships is not clear, for by all
+      accounts he was very well rid of them; but probably his pride as a
+      commander was hurt by the thought that half of his company had defied his
+      authority and were in a state of mutiny. At any rate he sent out an
+      ambassador to Porras, offering to receive the mutineers back without any
+      punishment, and to give them a free passage to Espanola in the vessels
+      which were shortly expected, if they would return to their allegiance with
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The folly of this overture was made manifest by the treatment which it
+      received. It was bad enough to make advances to the Porras brothers, but
+      it was still worse to have those advances repulsed, and that is what
+      happened. The Porras brothers, being themselves incapable of any
+      single-mindedness, affected not to believe in the sincerity of the Admiral&rsquo;s
+      offer; they feared that he was laying some kind of trap for them;
+      moreover, they were doing very well in their lawless way, and living very
+      comfortably on the natives; so they told Columbus&rsquo;s ambassadors that
+      his offer was declined. At the same time they undertook to conduct
+      themselves in an amicable and orderly manner on condition that, when the
+      vessels arrived, one of them should be apportioned to the exclusive use of
+      the mutineers; and that in the meantime the Admiral should share with them
+      his store of provisions and trinkets, as theirs were exhausted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was the impertinent decision of the Porras brothers; but it did not
+      quite commend itself to their followers, who were fearful of the possible
+      results if they should persist in their mutinous conduct. They were very
+      much afraid of being left behind in the island, and in any case, having
+      attempted and failed in the main object of their mutiny, they saw no
+      reason why they should refuse a free pardon. But the Porras brothers lied
+      busily. They said that the Admiral was merely laying a trap in order to
+      get them into his power, and that he would send them home to Spain in
+      chains; and they even went so far as to assure their fellow-rebels that
+      the story of a caravel having arrived was not really true; but that
+      Columbus, who was an adept in the arts of necromancy, had really made his
+      people believe that they had seen a caravel in the dusk; and that if one
+      had really arrived it would not have gone away so suddenly, nor would the
+      Admiral and his brother and son have failed to take their passage in it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To consolidate the effect of these remarkable statements on the still
+      wavering mutineers, the Porras brothers decided to commit them to an open
+      act of violence which would successfully alienate them from the Admiral.
+      They formed them, therefore, into an armed expedition, with the idea of
+      seizing the stores remaining on the wreck and taking the Admiral
+      personally. Columbus fortunately got news of this, as he nearly always did
+      when there was treachery in the wind; and he sent Bartholomew to try to
+      persuade them once more to return to their duty&mdash;a vain and foolish
+      mission, the vanity and folly of which were fully apparent to Bartholomew.
+      He duly set out upon it; but instead of mild words he took with him fifty
+      armed men&mdash;the whole available able-bodied force, in fact-and drew
+      near to the position occupied by the rebels.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The exhortation of the Porras brothers had meanwhile produced its effect,
+      and it was decided that six of the strongest men among the mutineers
+      should make for Bartholomew himself and try to capture or kill him. The
+      fierce Adelantado, finding himself surrounded by six assailants, who
+      seemed to be directing their whole effort against his life, swung his
+      sword in a berserk rage and slashed about him, to such good purpose that
+      four or five of his assailants soon lay round him killed or wounded. At
+      this point Francisco de Porras rushed in and cleft the shield held by
+      Bartholomew, severely wounding the hand that held it; but the sword. stuck
+      in the shield, and while Porras was endeavouring to draw it out
+      Bartholomew and some others closed upon him, and after a sharp struggle
+      took him prisoner. The battle, which was a short one, had been meanwhile
+      raging fiercely among the rest of the forces; but when the mutineers saw
+      their leader taken prisoner, and many of their number lying dead or
+      wounded, they scattered and fled, but not before Bartholomew&rsquo;s force
+      had taken several prisoners. It was then found that, although the rebels
+      had suffered heavily, none of Bartholomew&rsquo;s men were killed, and
+      only one other besides himself was wounded. The next day the mutineers all
+      came in to surrender, submitting an abject oath of allegiance; and
+      Columbus, always strangely magnanimous to rebels and insurgents, pardoned
+      them all with the exception of Francisco de Porras, who, one is glad to
+      know, was confined in irons to be sent to Spain for trial.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /> <a name="westindies" id="westindies"></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+      <img alt="westindies.jpg (214K)" src="images/westindies.jpg"
+      style="width:100%;" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/westindies.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
+    </h5>
+<p>
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</p>
+    <p>
+      This submission, which was due to the prompt action of Bartholomew rather
+      than to the somewhat feeble diplomacy of the Admiral, took place on March
+      20th, and proved somewhat embarrassing to Columbus. He could put no faith
+      in the oaths and protestations of the mutineers; and he was very doubtful
+      about the wisdom of establishing them once more on the wrecks with the
+      hitherto orderly remnant. He therefore divided them up into several bands,
+      and placing each under the command of an officer whom he could trust, he
+      supplied them with trinkets and despatched them to different parts of the
+      island, for the purpose of collecting provisions and carrying on barter
+      with the natives. By this means the last month or two of this most trying
+      and exciting sojourn on the island of Jamaica were passed in some measure
+      of peace; and towards the end of June it was brought to an end by the
+      arrival of two caravels. One of them was the ship purchased by Diego
+      Mendez out of the three which had arrived from Spain; and the other had
+      been despatched by Ovando in deference, it is said, to public feeling in
+      San Domingo, which had been so influenced by Mendez&rsquo;s account of the
+      Admiral&rsquo;s heroic adventures that Ovando dared not neglect him any
+      longer. Moreover, if it had ever been his hope that the Admiral would
+      perish on the island of Jamaica, that hope was now doomed to frustration,
+      and, as he was to be rescued in spite of all, Ovando no doubt thought that
+      he might as well, for the sake of appearances, have a hand in the rescue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two caravels, laden with what was worth saving from the two abandoned
+      hulks, and carrying what was left of the Admiral&rsquo;s company, sailed
+      from Jamaica on June 28, 1504. Columbus&rsquo;s joy, as we may imagine,
+      was deep and heartfelt. He said afterwards to Mendez that it was the
+      happiest day of his life, for that he had never hoped to leave the place
+      alive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The mission of Mendez, then, had been successful, although he had had to
+      wait for eight months to fulfil it. He himself, in accordance with
+      Columbus&rsquo;s instructions, had gone to Spain in another caravel of the
+      fleet out of which he had purchased the relieving ship; and as he passes
+      out of our narrative we may now take our farewell of him. Among the many
+      men employed in the Admiral&rsquo;s service no figure stands out so
+      brightly as that of Diego Mendez; and his record, almost alone of those
+      whose service of the Admiral earned them office and distinction, is
+      unblotted by any stain of crime or treachery. He was as brave as a lion
+      and as faithful as a dog, and throughout his life remained true to his
+      ideal of service to the Admiral and his descendants. He was rewarded by
+      King Ferdinand for his distinguished services, and allowed to bear a canoe
+      on his coat-of-arms; he was with the Admiral at his death-bed at
+      Valladolid, and when he himself came to die thirty years afterwards in the
+      same place he made a will in which he incorporated a brief record of the
+      events of the adventurous voyage in which he had borne the principal part,
+      and also enshrined his devotion to the name and family of Columbus. His
+      demands for himself were very modest, although there is reason to fear
+      that they were never properly fulfilled. He was curiously anxious to be
+      remembered chiefly by his plucky canoe voyage; and in giving directions
+      for his tomb, and ordering that a stone should be placed over his remains,
+      he wrote: &ldquo;In the centre of the said stone 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 three hundred leagues, and let some
+      letters be placed above it saying: Canoa.&rdquo; The epitaph that he chose
+      for himself was in the following sense:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here lies the Honourable Gentleman
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      DIEGO MENDEZ
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He greatly served the royal crown of Spain in<br /> the discovery and
+      conquest of the Indies with<br /> the Admiral Don Christopher Columbus of<br />
+      glorious memory who discovered them, and<br /> afterwards by himself, with
+      his own ships,<br /> at his own expense.<br /> He died, etc.<br /> He begs
+      from charity a PATERNOSTER<br /> and an AVE MARIA.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Surely he deserves them, if ever an honourable gentleman did.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="ch7d" id="ch7d"></a>CHAPTER VII.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE HERITAGE OF HATRED
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Although the journey from Jamaica to Espanola had been accomplished in
+      four days by Mendez in his canoe, the caravels conveying the party rescued
+      from Puerto Santa Gloria were seven weary weeks on this short voyage; a
+      strong north-west wind combining with the west-going current to make their
+      progress to the north-west impossible for weeks at a time. It was not
+      until the 13th of August 1503 that they anchored in the harbour of San
+      Domingo, and Columbus once more set foot, after an absence of more than
+      two years, on the territory from the governorship of which he had been
+      deposed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was well enough received by Ovando, who came down in state to meet him,
+      lodged him in his own house, and saw that he was treated with the
+      distinction suitable to his high station. The Spanish colony, moreover,
+      seemed to have made something of a hero of Columbus during his long
+      absence, and they received him with enthusiasm. But his satisfaction in
+      being in San Domingo ended with that. He was constantly made to feel that
+      it was Ovando and not he who was the ruler there;&mdash;and Ovando
+      emphasised the difference between them by numerous acts of highhanded
+      authority, some of them of a kind calculated to be extremely mortifying to
+      the Admiral. Among these things he insisted upon releasing Porras, whom
+      Columbus had confined in chains; and he talked of punishing those faithful
+      followers of Columbus who had taken part in the battle between Bartholomew
+      and the rebels, because in this fight some of the followers of Porras had
+      been killed. Acts like these produced weary bickerings and arguments
+      between Ovando and Columbus, unprofitable to them, unprofitable to us. The
+      Admiral seems now to have relapsed into a condition in which he cared only
+      for two things, his honours and his emoluments. Over every authoritative
+      act of Ovando&rsquo;s there was a weary squabble between him and the
+      Admiral, Ovando claiming his right of jurisdiction over the whole
+      territory of the New World, including Jamaica, and Columbus insisting that
+      by his commission and letters of authority he had been placed in sole
+      charge of the members of his own expedition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then, as regards his emoluments, the Admiral considered himself (and
+      not without justice) to have been treated most unfairly. By the
+      extravagant terms of his original agreement he was, as we know, entitled
+      to a share of all rents and dues, as well as of the gold collected; but it
+      had been no one&rsquo;s business to collect these for him, and every one&rsquo;s
+      business to neglect them. No one had cared; no one had kept any accounts
+      of what was due to the Admiral; he could not find out what had been paid
+      and what had not been paid. He accused Ovando of having impeded his agent
+      Carvajal in his duty of collecting the Admiral&rsquo;s revenues, and of
+      disobeying the express orders of Queen Isabella in that matter; and so
+      on-a state of affairs the most wearisome, sordid, and unprofitable in
+      which any man could be involved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And if Columbus turned his eyes from the office in San Domingo inland to
+      that Paradise which he had entered twelve years before, what change and
+      ruin, dreary, horrible and complete, did he not discover! The birds still
+      sang, and the nights were still like May in Cordova; but upon that happy
+      harmony the sound of piteous cries and shrieks had long since broken, and
+      along and black December night of misery had spread its pall over the
+      island. Wherever he went, Columbus found the same evidence of ruin and
+      desolation. Where once innumerable handsome natives had thronged the
+      forests and the villages, there were now silence and smoking ruin, and the
+      few natives that he met were emaciated, terrified, dying. Did he reflect,
+      I wonder, that some part of the responsibility of all this horror rested
+      on him? That many a system of island government, the machinery of which
+      was now fed by a steady stream of human lives, had been set going by him
+      in ignorance, or greed of quick commercial returns? It is probable that he
+      did not; for he now permanently regarded himself as a much-injured man,
+      and was far too much occupied with his own wrongs to realise that they
+      were as nothing compared with the monstrous stream of wrong and suffering
+      that he had unwittingly sent flowing into the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the island under Ovando&rsquo;s rule Columbus saw the logical results
+      of his own original principles of government, which had recognised the
+      right of the Christians to possess the persons and labours of the heathen
+      natives. Las Casas, who was living in Espanola as a young priest at this
+      time, and was destined by long residence there and in the West Indies to
+      qualify himself as their first historian, saw what Columbus saw, and saw
+      also the even worse things that happened in after years in Cuba and
+      Jamaica; and it is to him that we owe our knowledge of the condition of
+      island affairs at this time. The colonists whom Ovando had brought out had
+      come very much in the spirit that in our own day characterised the rush to
+      the north-western goldfields of America. They brought only the slightest
+      equipment, and were no sooner landed at San Domingo than they set out into
+      the island like so many picnic parties, being more careful to carry
+      vessels in which to bring back the gold they were to find than proper
+      provisions and equipment to support them in the labour of finding it. The
+      roads, says Las Casas, swarmed like ant-hills with these adventurers
+      rushing forth to the mines, which were about twenty-five miles distant
+      from San Domingo; they were in the highest spirits, and they made it a
+      kind of race as to who should get there first. They thought they had
+      nothing to do but to pick up shining lumps of gold; and when they found
+      that they had to dig and delve in the hard earth, and to dig
+      systematically and continuously, with a great deal of digging for very
+      little gold, their spirits fell. They were not used to dig; and it
+      happened that most of them began in an unprofitable spot, where they
+      digged for eight days without finding any gold. Their provisions were soon
+      exhausted; and in a week they were back again in San Domingo, tired,
+      famished, and bitterly disappointed. They had no genius for steady labour;
+      most of them were virtually without means; and although they lived in San
+      Domingo, on what they had as long as possible, they were soon starving
+      there, and selling the clothes off their backs to procure food. Some of
+      them took situations with the other settlers, more fell victims to the
+      climate of the island and their own imprudences and distresses; and a
+      thousand of them had died within two years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ovando had revived the enthusiasm for mining by two enactments. He reduced
+      the share of discovered gold payable to the Crown, and he developed
+      Columbus&rsquo;s system of forced labour to such an extent that the mines
+      were entirely worked by it. To each Spaniard, whether mining or farming,
+      so many natives were allotted. It was not called slavery; the natives were
+      supposed to be paid a minute sum, and their employers were also expected
+      to teach them the Christian religion. That was the plan. The way in which
+      it worked was that, a body of native men being allotted to a Spanish
+      settler for a period, say, of six or eight months&mdash;for the enactment
+      was precise in putting a period to the term of slavery&mdash;the natives
+      would be marched off, probably many days&rsquo; journey from their homes
+      and families, and set to work under a Spanish foreman. The work, as we
+      have already seen, was infinitely harder than that to which they were
+      accustomed; and most serious of all, it was done under conditions that
+      took all the heart out of the labour. A man will toil in his own garden or
+      in tilling his own land with interest and happiness, not counting the
+      hours which he spends there; knowing in fact that his work is worth doing,
+      because he is doing it for a good reason. But put the same man to work in
+      a gang merely for the aggrandisement of some other over-man; and the heart
+      and cheerfulness will soon die out of him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was so with these children of the sun. They were put to work ten times
+      harder than any they had ever done before, and they were put to it under
+      the lash. The light diet of their habit had been sufficient to support
+      them in their former existence of happy idleness and dalliance, and they
+      had not wanted anything more than their cassava bread and a little fish
+      and fruit; now, however, they were put to work at a pressure which made a
+      very different kind of feeding necessary to them, and this they did not
+      get. Now and then a handful of pork would be divided among a dozen of
+      them, but they were literally starved, and were accustomed to scramble
+      like dogs for the bones that were thrown from the tables of the Spaniards,
+      which bones they ground up and mixed with their, bread so that no portion
+      of them might be lost. They died in numbers under these hard conditions,
+      and, compared with their lives, their deaths must often have been happy.
+      When the time came for them to go home they were generally utterly worn
+      out and crippled, and had to face a long journey of many days with no food
+      to support them but what they could get on the journey; and the roads were
+      strewn with the dead bodies of those who fell by the way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And far worse things happened to them than labour and exhaustion. It
+      became the custom among the Spaniards to regard the lives of the natives
+      as of far less value than those of the dogs that were sometimes set upon
+      them in sport. A Spaniard riding along would make a wager with his fellow
+      that he would cut the head off a native with one stroke of his sword; and
+      many attempts would be laughingly made, and many living bodies hideously
+      mutilated and destroyed, before the feat would be accomplished. Another
+      sport was one similar to pigsticking as it is practised in India, except
+      that instead of pigs native women and children were stuck with the lances.
+      There was no kind of mutilation and monstrous cruelty that was not
+      practised. If there be any powers of hell, they stalked at large through
+      the forests and valleys of Espanola. Lust and bloody cruelty, of a kind
+      not merely indescribable but unrealisable by sane men and women, drenched
+      the once happy island with anguish and terror. And in payment for it the
+      Spaniards undertook to teach the heathen the Christian religion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The five chiefs who had ruled with justice and wisdom over the island of
+      Espanola in the early days of Columbus were all dead, wiped out by the
+      wave of wild death and cruelty that had swept over the island. The gentle
+      Guacanagari, when he saw the desolation that was beginning to overwhelm
+      human existence, had fled into the mountains, hiding his face in shame
+      from the sons of men, and had miserably died there. Caonabo, Lord of the
+      House of Gold, fiercest and bravest of them all, who first realised that
+      the Spaniards were enemies to the native peace, after languishing in
+      prison in the house of Columbus at Isabella for some time, had died in
+      captivity during the voyage to Spain. Anacaona his wife, the Bloom of the
+      Gold, that brave and beautiful woman, whose admiration of the Spaniards
+      had by their bloody cruelties been turned into detestation, had been
+      shamefully betrayed and ignominiously hanged. Behechio, her brother, the
+      only cacique who did not sue for peace after the first conquest of the
+      island by Christopher and Bartholomew Columbus, was dead long ago of
+      wounds and sorrow. Guarionex, the Lord of the Vega Real, who had once been
+      friendly enough, who had danced to the Spanish pipe and learned the
+      Paternoster and Ave Maria, and whose progress in conversion to
+      Christianity the seduction of his wives by those who were converting him
+      had interrupted, after wandering in the mountains of Ciguay had been
+      imprisoned in chains, and drowned in the hurricane of June 30, 1502.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The fifth chief, Cotabanama, Lord of the province of Higua, made the last
+      stand against Ovando in defence of the native right to existence, and was
+      only defeated after severe battles and dreadful slaughters. His territory
+      was among the mountains, and his last insurrection was caused, as so many
+      others had been, by the intolerable conduct of the Spaniards towards the
+      wives and daughters of the Indians. Collecting all his warriors,
+      Cotabanama attacked the Spanish posts in his neighbourhood. At every
+      engagement his troops were defeated and dispersed, but only to collect
+      again, fight again with even greater fury, be defeated and dispersed
+      again, and rally again against the Spaniards. They literally fought to the
+      death. After every battle the Spaniards made a massacre of all the natives
+      they could find, old men, children, and pregnant women being alike put to
+      the sword or burned in their houses. When their companions fell beside
+      them, instead of being frightened they became more furious; and when they
+      were wounded they would pluck the arrows out of their bodies and hurl them
+      back at the Spaniards, falling dead in the very act. After one such severe
+      defeat and massacre the natives scattered for many months, hiding among
+      the mountains and trying to collect and succour their decimated families;
+      but the Spaniards, who with their dogs grew skilful at tracking the
+      Indians and found it pleasant sport, came upon them in the places of
+      refuge where little groups of them were sheltering their women and
+      children, and there slowly and cruelly slaughtered them, often with the
+      addition of tortures and torments in order to induce them to reveal the
+      whereabouts of other bands. When it was possible the Spaniards sometimes
+      hanged thirteen of them in a row in commemoration of their Blessed Saviour
+      and the Twelve Apostles; and while they were hanging, and before they had
+      quite died, they would hack at them with their swords in order to test the
+      edge of the steel. At the last stand, when the fierceness and bitterness
+      of the contest rose to a height on both sides, Cotabanama was captured and
+      a plan made to broil him slowly to death; but for some reason this plan
+      was not carried out, and the brave chief was taken to San Domingo and
+      publicly hanged like a thief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After that there was never any more resistance; it was simply a case of
+      extermination, which the Spaniards easily accomplished by cutting of the
+      heads of women as they passed by, and impaling infants and little children
+      on their lances as they rode through the villages. Thus, in the twelve
+      years since the discovery of Columbus, between half a million and a
+      million natives, perished; and as the Spanish colonisation spread
+      afterwards from island to island, and the banner of civilisation and
+      Christianity was borne farther abroad throughout the Indies, the same
+      hideous process was continued. In Cuba, in Jamaica, throughout the
+      Antilles, the cross and the sword, the whip-lash and the Gospel advanced
+      together; wherever the Host was consecrated, hideous cries of agony and
+      suffering broke forth; until happily, in the fulness of time, the dire
+      business was complete, and the whole of the people who had inhabited this
+      garden of the world were exterminated and their blood and race wiped from
+      the face of the earth . . . . Unless, indeed, blood and race and hatred be
+      imperishable things; unless the faithful Earth that bred and reared the
+      race still keeps in her soil, and in the waving branches of the trees and
+      the green grasses, the sacred essences of its blood and hatred; unless in
+      the full cycle of Time, when that suffering flesh and blood shall have
+      gone through all the changes of substance and condition, from corruption
+      and dust through flowers and grasses and trees and animals back into the
+      living body of mankind again, it shall one day rise up terribly to avenge
+      that horror of the past. Unless Earth and Time remember, O Children of the
+      Sun! for men have forgotten, and on the soil of your Paradise the African
+      negro, learned in the vices of Europe, erects his monstrous effigy of
+      civilisation and his grotesque mockery of freedom; unless it be through
+      his brutish body, into which the blood and hatred with which the soil of
+      Espanola was soaked have now passed, that they shall dreadfully strike at
+      the world again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="ch8d" id="ch8d"></a>CHAPTER VIII.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE ADMIRAL COMES HOME
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On September 12, 1504., Christopher Columbus did many things for the last
+      time. He who had so often occupied himself in ports and harbours with the
+      fitting out of ships and preparations for a voyage now completed at San
+      Domingo the simple preparations for the last voyage he was to take. The
+      ship he had come in from Jamaica had been refitted and placed under the
+      command of Bartholomew, and he had bought another small caravel in which
+      he and his son were to sail. For the last time he superintended those
+      details of fitting out and provisioning which were now so familiar to him;
+      for the last time he walked in the streets of San Domingo and mingled with
+      the direful activities of his colony; he looked his last upon the place
+      where the vital scenes of his life had been set, for the last time weighed
+      anchor, and took his last farewell of the seas and islands of his
+      discovery. A little steadfast looking, a little straining of the eyes, a
+      little heart-aching no doubt, and Espanola has sunk down into the sea
+      behind the white wake of the ships; and with its fading away the span of
+      active life allotted to this man shuts down, and his powerful
+      opportunities for good or evil are withdrawn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was something great and heroic about the Admiral&rsquo;s last
+      voyage. Wind and sea rose up as though to make a last bitter attack upon
+      the man who had disclosed their mysteries and betrayed their secrets. He
+      had hardly cleared the island before the first gale came down upon him and
+      dismasted his ship, so that he was obliged to transfer himself and his son
+      to Bartholomew&rsquo;s caravel and send the disabled vessel back to
+      Espanola. The shouting sea, as though encouraged by this triumph, hurled
+      tempest after tempest upon the one lonely small ship that was staggering
+      on its way to Spain; and the duel between this great seaman and the vast
+      elemental power that he had so often outwitted began in earnest. One
+      little ship, one enfeebled man to be destroyed by the power of the sea:
+      that was the problem, and there were thousands of miles of sea-room, and
+      two months of time to solve it in! Tempest after tempest rose and drove
+      unceasingly against the ship. A mast was sprung and had to be cut away;
+      another, and the woodwork from the forecastles and high stern works had to
+      be stripped and lashed round the crazy mainmast to preserve it from
+      wholesale destruction. Another gale, and the mast had to be shortened, for
+      even reinforced as it was it would not bear the strain; and so crippled,
+      so buffeted, this very small ship leapt and staggered on her way across
+      the Atlantic, keeping her bowsprit pointed to that region of the foamy
+      emptiness where Spain was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Admiral lay crippled in his cabin listening to the rush and bubble of
+      the water, feeling the blows and recoils of the unending battle,
+      hearkening anxiously to the straining of the timbers and the vessel&rsquo;s
+      agonised complainings under the pounding of the seas. We do not know what
+      his thoughts were; but we may guess that they looked backward rather than
+      forward, and that often they must have been prayers that the present
+      misery would come somehow or other to an end. Up on deck brother
+      Bartholomew, who has developed some grievous complaint of the jaws and
+      teeth&mdash;complaint not known to us more particularly, but dreadful
+      enough from that description&mdash;does his duty also, with that heroic
+      manfulness that has marked his whole career; and somewhere in the ship
+      young Ferdinand is sheltering from the sprays and breaking seas, finding
+      his world of adventure grown somewhat gloomy and sordid of late, and
+      feeling that he has now had his fill of the sea . . . . Shut your eyes and
+      let the illusions of time and place fade from you; be with them for a
+      moment on this last voyage; hear that eternal foaming and crashing of
+      great waves, the shrieking of wind in cordage, the cracking and slatting
+      of the sails, the mad lashing of loose ropes; the painful swinging, and
+      climbing up and diving down, and sinking and staggering and helpless
+      strivings of the small ship in the waste of water. The sea is as empty as
+      chaos, nothing for days and weeks but that infinite tumbling surface and
+      heaven of grey storm-clouds; a world of salt surges encircled by horizons
+      of dim foam. Time and place are nothing; the agony and pain of such
+      moments are eternal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the two brothers, grim and gigantic in their sea power, subtle as the
+      wind itself in their sea wit, win the battle. Over the thousands of miles
+      of angry surges they urge that small ship towards calm and safety; until
+      one day the sea begins to abate a little, and through the spray and tumult
+      of waters the dim loom of land is seen. The sea falls back disappointed
+      and finally conquered by Christopher Columbus, whose ship, battered,
+      crippled, and strained, comes back out of the wilderness of waters and
+      glides quietly into the smooth harbour of San Lucar, November 7, 1504.
+      There were no guns or bells to greet the Admiral; his only salute was in
+      the thunder of the conquered seas; and he was carried ashore to San Lucar,
+      and thence to Seville, a sick and broken man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="ch9d" id="ch9d"></a>CHAPTER IX.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE LAST DAYS
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Columbus, for whom rest and quiet were the first essentials, remained in
+      Seville from November 1504 to May 1505, when he joined the Court at
+      Segovia and afterwards at Salamanca and Valladolid, where he remained till
+      his death in May 1506. During this last period, when all other activities
+      were practically impossible to him, he fell into a state of letter-writing&mdash;for
+      the most part long, wearisome complainings and explainings in which he
+      poured out a copious flood of tears and self-pity for the loss of his
+      gold.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It has generally been claimed that Columbus was in bitter penury and want
+      of money, but a close examination of the letters and other documents
+      relating to this time show that in his last days he was not poor in any
+      true sense of the word. He was probably a hundred times richer than any of
+      his ancestors had ever been; he had, money to give and money to spend; the
+      banks honoured his drafts; his credit was apparently indisputable. But
+      compared with the fabulous wealth to which he would by this time have been
+      entitled if his original agreement with the Crown of Spain had been
+      faithfully carried out he was no doubt poor. There is no evidence that he
+      lacked any comfort or alleviation that money could buy; indeed he never
+      had any great craving for the things that money can buy&mdash;only for
+      money itself. There must have been many rich people in Spain who would
+      gladly have entertained him in luxury and dignity; but he was not the kind
+      of man to set much store by such things except in so far as they were a
+      decoration and advertisement of his position as a great man. He had set
+      himself to the single task of securing what he called his rights; and in
+      these days of sunset he seems to have been illumined by some glimmer of
+      the early glory of his first inspiration. He wanted the payment of his
+      dues now, not so much for his own enrichment, but as a sign to the world
+      that his great position as Admiral and Viceroy was recognised, so that his
+      dignities and estates might be established and consolidated in a form
+      which he would be able to transmit to his remote posterity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Since he wrote so copiously and so constantly in these last days, the best
+      picture of his mood and condition is afforded in his letters to his son
+      Diego; letters which, in spite of their infinitely wearisome
+      recapitulation and querulous complaint, should be carefully read by those
+      who wish to keep in touch with the Admiral to the end.
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        Letter written by CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS to DON DIEGO, his Son, November
+        21, 1504.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;VERY DEAR SON,&mdash;I received your letter by the courier. You
+        did well in remaining yonder to remedy our affairs somewhat and to
+        employ yourself now in our business. Ever since I came to Castile, the
+        Lord Bishop of Palencia has shown me favour and has desired that I
+        should be honoured. Now he must be entreated that it may please him to
+        occupy himself in remedying my many grievances and in ordering that the
+        agreement and letters of concession which their Highnesses gave me be
+        fulfilled, and that I be indemnified for so many damages. And he may be
+        certain that if their Highnesses do this, their estate and greatness
+        will be multiplied to them in an incredible degree. And it must not
+        appear to him that forty thousand pesos in gold is more than a
+        representation of it; because they might have had a much greater
+        quantity if Satan had not hindered it by impeding my design; for, when I
+        was taken away from the Indies, I was prepared to give them a sum of
+        gold incomparable to forty thousand pesos. I make oath, and this may be
+        for thee alone, that the damage to me in the matter of the concessions
+        their Highnesses have made to me, amounts to ten millions each year, and
+        never can be made good. You see what will be, or is, the injury to their
+        Highnesses in what belongs to them, and they do not perceive it. I write
+        at their disposal and will strive to start yonder. My arrival and the
+        rest is in the hands of our Lord. His mercy is infinite. What is done
+        and is to be done, St. Augustine says is already done before the
+        creation of the world. I write also to these other Lords named in the
+        letter of Diego Mendez. Commend me to their mercy and tell them of my
+        going as I have said above. For certainly I feel great fear, as the cold
+        is so inimical to this, my infirmity, that I may have to remain on the
+        road.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;I was very much pleased to hear the contents of your letter and
+        what the King our Lord said, for which you kissed his royal hands. It is
+        certain that I have served their Highnesses with as much diligence and
+        love as though it had been to gain Paradise, and more, and if I have
+        been at fault in anything it has been because it was impossible or
+        because my knowledge and strength were not sufficient. God, our Lord, in
+        such a case, does not require more from persons than the will.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;At the request of the Treasurer Morales, I left two brothers in
+        the Indies, who are called Porras. The one was captain and the other
+        auditor. Both were without capacity for these positions: and I was
+        confident that they could fill them, because of love for the person who
+        sent them to me. They both became more vain than they had been. I
+        forgave them many incivilities, more than I would do with a relation,
+        and their offences were such that they merited another punishment than a
+        verbal reprimand. Finally they reached such a point that even had I
+        desired, I could not have avoided doing what I did. The records of the
+        case will prove whether I lie or not. They rebelled on the island of
+        Jamaica, at which I was as much astonished as I would be if the sun&rsquo;s
+        rays should cast darkness. I was at the point of death, and they
+        martyrised me with extreme cruelty during five months and without cause.
+        Finally I took them all prisoners, and immediately set them free, except
+        the captain, whom I was bringing as a prisoner to their Highnesses. A
+        petition which they made to me under oath, and which I send you with
+        this letter, will inform you at length in regard to this matter,
+        although the records of the case explain it fully. These records and the
+        Notary are coming on another vessel, which I am expecting from day to
+        day. The Governor in Santo Domingo took this prisoner.&mdash;His
+        courtesy constrained him to do this. I had a chapter in my instructions
+        in which their Highnesses ordered all to obey me, and that I should
+        exercise civil and criminal justice over all those who were with me: but
+        this was of no avail with the Governor, who said that it was not
+        understood as applying in his territory. He sent the prisoner to these
+        Lords who have charge of the Indies without inquiry or record or
+        writing. They did not receive him, and both brothers go free. It is not
+        wonderful to me that our Lord punishes. They went there with shameless
+        faces. Such wickedness or such cruel treason were never heard of. I
+        wrote to their Highnesses about this matter in the other letter, and
+        said that it was not right for them to consent to this offence. I also
+        wrote to the Lord Treasurer that I begged him as a favour not to pass
+        sentence on the testimony given by these men until he heard me. Now it
+        will be well for you to remind him of it anew. I do, not know how they
+        dare to go before him with such an undertaking. I have written to him
+        about it again and have sent him the copy of the oath, the same as I
+        send to you and likewise to Doctor Angulo and the Licentiate Zapata. I
+        commend myself to the mercy of all, with the information that my
+        departure yonder will take place in a short time.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;I would be glad to receive a letter from their Highnesses and to
+        know what they order. You must procure such a letter if you see the
+        means of so doing. I also commend myself to the Lord Bishop and to Juan
+        Lopez, with the reminder of illness and of the reward for my services.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;You must read the letters which go with this one in order to act
+        in conformity with what they say. Acknowledge the receipt of his letter
+        to Diego Mendez. I do not write him as he will learn everything from
+        you, and also because my illness prevents it.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;It would be well for Carbajal and Jeronimo&mdash;[Jeronimo de
+        Aguero, a landowner in Espanola and a friend of Columbus]&mdash;to be at
+        the Court at this time, and talk of our affairs with these Lords and
+        with the Secretary.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;Done in Seville, November 21.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;Your father who loves you more than himself.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        .S.<br /> .S.A.S.<br /> XMY<br /> Xpo FERENS.&rdquo;
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;I wrote again to their Highnesses entreating them to order that
+        these people who went with me should be paid, because they are poor and
+        it is three years since they left their homes. The news which they bring
+        is more than extraordinary. They have endured infinite dangers and
+        hardships. I did not wish to rob the country, so as not to cause
+        scandal, because reason advises its being populated, and then gold will
+        be obtained freely without scandal. Speak of this to the Secretary and
+        to the Lord Bishop and to Juan Lopez and to whomever you think it
+        advisable to do so.&rdquo;
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      The Bishop of Palencia referred to in this letter is probably Bishop
+      Fonseca&mdash;probably, because it is known that he did become Bishop of
+      Palencia, although there is a difference of opinion among historians as to
+      whether the date of his translation to that see was before or after this
+      letter. No matter, except that one is glad to think that an old enemy&mdash;for
+      Fonseca and Columbus had bitter disagreements over the fitting out of
+      various expeditions&mdash;had shown himself friendly at last.
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        Letter written by CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS to DON DIEGO, November 28, 1504.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;VERY DEAR SON,&mdash;I received your letters of the 15th of this
+        month. It is eight days since I wrote you and sent the letter by a
+        courier. I enclosed unsealed letters to many other persons, in order
+        that you might see them, and having read them, seal and deliver them.
+        Although this illness of mine troubles me greatly, I am preparing for my
+        departure in every way. I would very much like to receive the reply from
+        their Highnesses and wish you might procure it: and also I wish that
+        their Highnesses would provide for the payment of these poor people, who
+        have passed through incredible hardships and have brought them such
+        great news that infinite thanks should be given to God, our Lord, and
+        they should rejoice greatly over it. If I [lie ?] the &lsquo;Paralipomenon&rsquo;&mdash;[
+        The Book of Chronicles]&mdash;and the Book of Kings and the Antiquities
+        of Josephus, with very many others, will tell what they know of this. I
+        hope in our Lord to depart this coming week, but you must not write less
+        often on that account. I have not heard from Carbajal and Jeronimo. If
+        they are there, commend me to them. The time is such that both Carbajals
+        ought to be at Court, if illness does not prevent them. My regards to
+        Diego Mendez.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;I believe that his truth and efforts will be worth as much as the
+        lies of the Porras brothers. The bearer of this letter is Martin de
+        Gamboa. I am sending by him a letter to Juan Lopez and a letter of credit.
+        Read the letter to Lopez and then give it to him. If you write me, send
+        the letters to Luis de Soria that he may send them wherever I am,
+        because if I go in a litter, I believe it will be by La Plata.&mdash;[The
+        old Roman road from Merida to Salamanca.]&mdash;May our Lord have you in
+        His holy keeping. Your uncle has been very sick and is now, from trouble
+        with his jaws and his teeth.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;Done in Seville, November 28.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;Your father who loves you more than himself.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        .S.<br /> .S.A.S.<br /> XMY<br /> Xpo FERENS.&rdquo;
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      Bartholomew Columbus and Ferdinand were remaining with Christopher at
+      Seville; Bartholomew probably very nearly as ill as the Admiral, although
+      we do not hear so many complaints about it. At any rate Diego, being ay
+      Court, was the great mainstay of his father; and you can see the sick man
+      sitting there alone with his grievances, and looking to the next
+      generation for help in getting them redressed. Diego, it is to be feared,
+      did not receive these letters with so much patience and attention as he
+      might have shown, nor did he write back to his invalid father with the
+      fulness and regularity which the old man craved. It is a fault common to
+      sons. Those who are sons will know that it does not necessarily imply lack
+      of affection on Diego&rsquo;s part; those who are fathers will realise how
+      much Christopher longed for verbal assurance of interest and affection,
+      even though he did not doubt their reality. News of the serious illness of
+      Queen Isabella had evidently reached Columbus, and was the chief topic of
+      public interest.
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        Letter written by CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS to DON DIEGO, his Son, December
+        1, 1504.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;VERY DEAR SON,&mdash;Since I received your letter of November 15
+        I have heard nothing from you. I wish that you would write me more
+        frequently. I would like to receive a letter from you each hour. Reason
+        must tell you that now I have no other repose. Many couriers come each
+        day, and the news is of such a nature and so abundant that on hearing it
+        all my hair stands on end; it is so contrary to what my soul desires.
+        May it please the Holy Trinity to give health to the Queen, our Lady,
+        that she may settle what has already been placed under discussion. I
+        wrote you by another courier Thursday, eight days ago. The courier must
+        already be on his way back here. I told you in that letter that my
+        departure was certain, but that the hope of my arrival there, according
+        to experience, was very uncertain, because my sickness is so bad, and
+        the cold is so well suited to aggravate it, that I could not well avoid
+        remaining in some inn on the road. The litter and everything were ready.
+        The weather became so violent that it appeared impossible to every one
+        to start when it was getting so bad, and that it was better for so
+        well-known a person as myself to take care of myself and try to regain
+        my health rather than place myself in danger. I told you in those
+        letters what I now say, that you decided well in remaining there (at
+        such a time), and that it was right to commence occupying yourself with
+        our affairs; and reason strongly urges this. It appears to me that a
+        good copy should be made of the chapter of that letter which their
+        Highnesses wrote me where they say they will fulfil their promises to me
+        and will place you in possession of everything: and that this copy
+        should be given to them with another writing telling of my sickness, and
+        that it is now impossible for me to go and kiss their Royal feet and
+        hands, and that the Indies are being lost, and are on fire in a thousand
+        places, and that I have received nothing, and am receiving nothing, from
+        the revenues derived from them, and that no one dares to accept or
+        demand anything there for me, and I am living upon borrowed funds. I
+        spent the money which I got there in bringing those people who went with
+        me back to their homes, for it would be a great burden upon my
+        conscience to have left them there and to have abandoned them. This must
+        be made known to the Lord Bishop of Palencia, in whose favour I have so
+        much confidence, and also to the Lord Chamberlain. I believed that
+        Carbajal and Jeronimo would be there at such a time. Our Lord is there,
+        and He will order everything as He knows it to be best for us.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;Carbajal reached here yesterday. I wished to send him immediately
+        with this same order, but he excused himself profusely, saying that his
+        wife was at the point of death. I shall see that he goes, because he
+        knows a great deal about these affairs. I will also endeavour to have
+        your brother and your uncle go to kiss the hands of Their Highnesses,
+        and give them an account of the voyage if my letters are not sufficient.
+        Take good care of your brother. He has a good disposition, and is no
+        longer a boy. Ten brothers would not be too many for you. I never found
+        better friends to right or to left than my brothers. We must strive to
+        obtain the government of the Indies and then the adjustment of the
+        revenues. I gave you a memorandum which told you what part of them
+        belongs to me. What they gave to Carbajal was nothing and has turned to
+        nothing. Whoever desires to do so takes merchandise there, and so the
+        eighth is nothing, because, without contributing the eighth, I could
+        send to trade there without rendering account or going in company with
+        any one. I said a great many times in the past that the contribution of
+        the eighth would come to nothing. The eighth and the rest belongs to me
+        by reason of the concession which their Highnesses made to me, as set
+        forth in the book of my Privileges, and also the third and the tenth. Of
+        the tenth I received nothing, except the tenth of what their Highnesses
+        receive; and it must be the tenth of all the gold and other things which
+        are found and obtained, in whatever manner it may be, within this
+        Admiralship, and the tenth of all the merchandise which goes and comes
+        from there, after the expenses are deducted. I have already said that in
+        the Book of Privileges the reason for this and for the rest which is
+        before the Tribunal of the Indies here in Seville, is clearly set forth.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;We must strive to obtain a reply to my letter from their
+        Highnesses, and to have them order that these people be paid. I wrote in
+        regard to this subject four days ago, and sent the letter by Martin de
+        Gamboa, and you must have seen the letter of Juan Lopez with your own.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;It is said here that it has been ordered that three or four
+        Bishops of the Indies shall be sent or created, and that this matter is
+        referred to the Lord Bishop of Palencia. After having commended me to
+        his Worship, tell him that I believe it will best serve their Highnesses
+        for me to talk with him before this matter is settled.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;Commend me to Diego Mendez, and show him this letter. My illness
+        permits me to write only at night, because in the daytime my hands are
+        deprived of strength. I believe that a son of Francisco Pinelo will
+        carry this letter. Entertain him well, because he does everything for me
+        that he can, with much love and a cheerful goodwill. The caravel which
+        broke her mast in starting from Santo Domingo has arrived in the
+        Algarves. She brings the records of the case of the Porras brothers.
+        Such ugly things and such grievous cruelty as appear in this matter
+        never were seen. If their Highnesses do not punish it, I do not know who
+        will dare to go out in their service with people.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;To-day is Monday. I will endeavour to have your uncle and brother
+        start to-morrow. Remember to write me very often, and tell Diego Mendez
+        to write at length. Each day messengers go from here yonder. May our
+        Lord have you in His Holy keeping.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;Done in Seville, December 1.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;Your father who loves you as himself.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        .S.<br /> .S.A.S.<br /> XMY<br /> Xpo FERENS.&rdquo;
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      The gout from which the Admiral suffered made riding impossible to him,
+      and he had arranged to have himself carried to Court on a litter when he
+      was able to move. There is a grim and dismal significance in the
+      particular litter that had been chosen: it was no other than the funeral
+      bier which belonged to the Cathedral of Seville and had been built for
+      Cardinal Mendoza. A minute of the Cathedral Chapter records the granting
+      to Columbus of the use of this strange conveyance; but one is glad to
+      think that he ultimately made his journey in a less grim though more
+      humble method. But what are we to think of the taste of a man who would
+      rather travel in a bier, so long as it had been associated with the
+      splendid obsequies of a cardinal, than in the ordinary litter of every-day
+      use? It is but the old passion for state and splendour thus dismally
+      breaking out again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He speaks of living on borrowed funds and of having devoted all his
+      resources to the payment of his crew; but that may be taken as an
+      exaggeration. He may have borrowed, but the man who can borrow easily from
+      banks cannot be regarded as a poor man. One is nevertheless grateful for
+      these references, since they commemorate the Admiral&rsquo;s unfailing
+      loyalty to those who shared his hardships, and his unwearied efforts to
+      see that they received what was due to them. Pleasant also are the
+      evidences of warm family affection in those simple words of brotherly
+      love, and the affecting advice to Diego that he should love his brother
+      Ferdinand as Christopher loved Bartholomew. It is a pleasant oasis in this
+      dreary, sordid wailing after thirds and tenths and eighths. Good Diego
+      Mendez, that honourable gentleman, was evidently also at Court at this
+      time, honestly striving, we may be sure, to say a good word for the
+      Admiral.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some time after this letter was written, and before the writing of the
+      next, news reached Seville of the death of Queen Isabella. For ten years
+      her kind heart had been wrung by many sorrows. Her mother had died in
+      1496; the next year her only son and heir to the crown had followed; and
+      within yet another year had died her favourite daughter, the Queen of
+      Portugal. Her other children were all scattered with the exception of
+      Juana, whose semi-imbecile condition caused her parents an anxiety greater
+      even than that caused by death. As Isabella&rsquo;s life thus closed
+      sombrely in, she applied herself more closely and more narrowly to such
+      pious consolations as were available. News from Flanders of the scandalous
+      scenes between Philip and Juana in the summer of 1504 brought on an
+      illness from which she really never recovered, a kind of feverish distress
+      of mind and body in which her only alleviation was the transaction of such
+      business as was possible for her in the direction of humanity and
+      enlightenment. She still received men of intellect and renown, especially
+      travellers. But she knew that her end was near, and as early as October
+      she had made her will, in which her wishes as to the succession and
+      government of Castile were clearly laid down. There was no mention of
+      Columbus in this will, which afterwards greatly mortified him; but it is
+      possible that the poor Queen had by this time, even against her wish, come
+      to share the opinions of her advisers that the rule of Columbus in the
+      West Indies had not brought the most humane and happy results possible to
+      the people there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During October and November her life thus beat itself away in a succession
+      of duties faithfully performed, tasks duly finished, preparations for the
+      great change duly made. She died, as she would have wished to die,
+      surrounded by friends who loved and admired her, and fortified by the last
+      rites of the Church for her journey into the unknown. Date, November 26,
+      1504, in the fifty-fourth year of her age.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /> <a name="isabella" id="isabella"></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+      <img alt="isabella.jpg (43K)" src="images/isabella.jpg" style="width:100%;" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Columbus had evidently received the news from a public source, and felt
+      mortified that Diego should not have written him a special letter.
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        Letter written by CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS to DON DIEGO, his Son, December
+        3, 1504.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;VERY DEAR SON,&mdash;I wrote you at length day before yesterday
+        and sent it by Francisco Pinelo, and with this letter I send you a very
+        full memorandum. I am very much astonished not to receive a letter from
+        you or from any one else, and this astonishment is shared by all who
+        know me. Every one here has letters, and I, who have more reason to
+        expect them, have none. Great care should be taken about this matter.
+        The memorandum of which I have spoken above says enough, and on this
+        account I do not speak more at length here. Your brother and your uncle
+        and Carbajal are going yonder. You will learn from them what is not said
+        here. May our Lord have you in His Holy keeping.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;Done in Seville, December 3.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;Your father who loves you more than himself.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        .S.<br /> .S.A.S.<br /> XMY<br /> Xpo FERENS.&rdquo;
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      Document of COLUMBUS addressed to his Son, DIEGO, and intended to
+      accompany the preceding letter.
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;A memorandum for you, my very dear son, Don Diego, of what occurs
+        to me at the present time which must be done:&mdash;The principal thing
+        is, affectionately and with great devotion to commend the soul of the
+        Queen, our Lady, to God. Her life was always Catholic and Holy and ready
+        for all the things of His holy service, and for this reason it must be
+        believed that she is in His holy glory and beyond the desires of this
+        rough and wearisome world. Then the next thing is to be watchful and
+        exert one&rsquo;s self in the service of the King, our Lord, and to
+        strive to keep him from being troubled. His Highness is the head of
+        Christendom. See the proverb which says that when the head aches, all
+        the members ache. So that all good Christians should entreat that he may
+        have long life and health: and those of us who are obliged to serve him
+        more than others must join in this supplication with great earnestness
+        and diligence. This reason prompts me now with my severe illness to
+        write you what I am writing here, that his Highness may dispose matters
+        for his service: and for the better fulfilment I am sending your brother
+        there, who, although he is a child in days, is not a child in
+        understanding; and I am sending your uncle and Carbajal, so that if
+        this, my writing, is not sufficient, they, together with yourself, can
+        furnish verbal evidence. In my opinion there is nothing so necessary for
+        the service of his Highness as the disposition and remedying of the
+        affair of the Indies.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;His Highness must now have there more than 40,000 or 50,000 gold
+        pieces. I learned when I was there that the Governor had no desire to
+        send it to him. It is believed among the other people as well that there
+        will be 150,000 pesos more, and the mines are very rich and productive.
+        Most of the people there are common and ignorant, and care very little
+        for the circumstances. The Governor is very much hated by all of them,
+        and it is to be feared that they may at some time rebel. If this should
+        occur, which God forbid, the remedy for the matter would then be
+        difficult: and so it would be if injustice were used toward them, either
+        here or in other places, with the great fame of the gold. My opinion is
+        that his Highness should investigate this affair quickly and by means of
+        a person who is interested and who can go there with 150 or 200 people
+        well equipped, and remain there until it is well settled and without
+        suspicion, which cannot be done in less than three months: and that an
+        endeavour be made to raise two or three forces there. The gold there is
+        exposed to great risk, as there are very few people to protect it. I say
+        that there is a proverb here which says that the presence of the owner
+        makes the horse fat. Here and wherever I may be, I shall serve their
+        Highnesses with joy, until my soul leaves this body.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;Above I said that his Highness is the head of the Christians, and
+        that it is necessary for him to occupy himself in preserving them and
+        their lands. For this reason people say that he cannot thus provide a
+        good government for all these Indies, and that they are being lost and
+        do not yield a profit, neither are they being handled in a reasonable
+        manner. In my opinion it would serve him to intrust this matter to some
+        one who is distressed over the bad treatment of his subjects.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;I wrote a very long letter to his Highness as soon as I arrived
+        here, fully stating the evils which require a prompt and efficient
+        remedy at once. I have received no reply, nor have I seen any provision
+        made in the matter. Some vessels are detained in San Lucar by the
+        weather. I have told these gentlemen of the Board of Trade that they
+        must order them held until the King, our Lord, makes provision in the
+        matter, either by some person with other people, or by writing. This is
+        very necessary and I know what I say. It is necessary that the
+        authorities should order all the ports searched diligently, to see that
+        no one goes yonder to the Indies without licence. I have already said
+        that there is a great deal of gold collected in straw houses without any
+        means of defence, and there are many disorderly people in the country,
+        and that the Governor is hated, and that little punishment is inflicted
+        and has been inflicted upon those who have committed crimes and have
+        come out with their treasonable conduct approved.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;If his Highness decides to make some provision, it must be done
+        at once, so that these vessels may not be injured.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;I have heard that three Bishops are to be elected and sent to
+        Espanola. If it pleases his Highness to hear me before concluding this
+        matter, I will tell in what manner God our Lord may be well served and
+        his Highness served and satisfied.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;I have given lengthy consideration to the provision for Espanola:&rdquo;
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      Yes, the Queen is in His Holy Glory, and beyond the desires of this rough
+      and wearisome world; but we are not; we are still in a world where fifty
+      thousand gold pieces can be of use to us, and where a word spoken in
+      season, even in such a season of darkness, may have its effect with the
+      King. A strange time to talk to the King about gold; and perhaps Diego was
+      wiser and kinder than his father thought in not immediately taking this
+      strange document to King Ferdinand.
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        Letter written by CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS to DON DIEGO, his Son, December
+        13, 1504
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;VERY DEAR SON,&mdash;It is now eight days since your uncle and
+        your brother and Carbajal left here together, to kiss the royal hands of
+        his Highness, and to give an account of the voyage, and also to aid you
+        in the negotiation of whatever may prove to be necessary there.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;Don Ferdinand took from here 150 ducats to be expended at his
+        discretion. He will have to spend some of it, but he will give you what
+        he has remaining. He also carries a letter of credit for these
+        merchants. You will see that it is very necessary to be careful in
+        dealing with them, because I had trouble there with the Governor, as
+        every one told me that I had there 11,000 or 12,000 castellanos, and I
+        had only 4000. He wished to charge me with things for which I am not
+        indebted, and I, confiding in the promise of their Highnesses, who
+        ordered everything restored to me, decided to leave these charges in the
+        hope of calling him to account for them. If any one has money there,
+        they do not dare ask for it, on account of his haughtiness. I very well
+        know that after my departure he must have received more than 5000
+        castellanos. If it were possible for you to obtain from his Highness an
+        authoritative letter to the Governor, ordering him to send the money
+        without delay and a full account of what belongs to me, by the person I
+        might send there with my power of attorney, it would be well; because he
+        will not give it in any other manner, neither to my friend Diaz or
+        Velasquez, and they dare not even speak of it to him. Carbajal will very
+        well know how this must be done. Let him see this letter. The 150 ducats
+        which Luis de Soria sent you when I came are paid according to his
+        desire.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;I wrote you at length and sent the letter by Don Ferdinand, also
+        a memorandum. Now that I have thought over the matter further, I say
+        that, since at the time of my departure their Highnesses said over their
+        signature and verbally, that they would give me all that belongs to me,
+        according to my privileges&mdash;that the claim for the third or the
+        tenth and eighth mentioned in the memorandum must be relinquished, and
+        instead the chapter of their letter must be shown where they write what
+        I have said, and all that belongs to me must be required, as you have it
+        in writing in the Book of Privileges, in which is also set forth the
+        reason for my receiving the third, eighth, and tenth; as there is always
+        an opportunity to reduce the sum desired by a person, although his
+        Highness says in his letter that he wishes to give me all that belongs
+        to me. Carbajal will understand me very well if he sees this letter, and
+        every one else as well, as it is very clear. I also wrote to his
+        Highness and finally reminded him that he must provide at once for this
+        affair of the Indies, that the people there may not be disturbed, and
+        also reminding him of the promise stated above. You ought to see the
+        letter.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;With this letter I send you another letter of credit for the said
+        merchants. I have already explained to you the reasons why expenses
+        should be moderated. Show your uncle due respect, and treat your brother
+        as an elder brother should treat a younger. You have no other brother,
+        and praised be our Lord, he is such a one as you need very much. He has
+        proved and proves to be very intelligent. Honour Carbajal and Jeronimo
+        and Diego Mendez. Commend me to them all. I do not write them as there
+        is nothing to write and this messenger is in haste. It is frequently
+        rumoured here that the Queen, whom God has, has left an order that I be
+        restored to the possession of the Indies. On arrival, the notary of the
+        fleet will send you the records and the original of the case of the
+        Porras brothers. I have received no news from your uncle and brother
+        since they left. The water has been so high here that the river entered
+        the city.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;If Agostin Italian and Francisco de Grimaldo do not wish to give
+        you the money you need, look for others there who are willing to give it
+        to you. On the arrival here of your signature I will at once pay them
+        all that you have received: for at present there is not a person here by
+        whom I can send you money.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;Done to-day, Friday, December 13, 1504
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;Your father who loves you more than himself.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        .S.<br /> .S.A.S.<br /> XMY<br /> Xpo FERENS.&rdquo;
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br /><br />
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        Letter written by CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS to his Son, DON DIEGO, December
+        21, 1504.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;VERY DEAR SON, The Lord Adelantado and your brother and Carbajal
+        left here sixteen days ago to go to the Court. They have not written me
+        since. Don Ferdinand carried 150 ducats. He must spend what is
+        necessary, and he carries a letter, that the merchants may furnish you
+        with money. I have sent you another letter since, with the endorsement
+        of Francisco de Ribarol, by Zamora, the courier, and told you that if
+        you had made provision for yourself by means of my letter, not to use
+        that of Francisco de Ribarol. I say the same now in regard to another
+        letter which I send you with this one, for Francisco Doria, which letter
+        I send you for greater security that you may not fail to be provided
+        with money. I have already told you how necessary it is to be careful in
+        the expenditure of the money, until their Highnesses give us law and
+        justice. I also told you that I had spent 1200 castellanos in bringing
+        these people to Castile, of which his Highness owes me the greater part,
+        and I wrote him in regard to it asking him to order the account settled.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;If possible I should like to receive letters here each day. I
+        complain of Diego Mendez and of Jeronimo, as they do not write me: and
+        then of the others who do not write when they arrive there. We must
+        strive to learn whether the Queen, whom God has in His keeping, said
+        anything about me in her will, and we must hurry the Lord Bishop of
+        Palencia, who caused the possession of the Indies by their Highnesses
+        and my remaining in Castile, for I was already on my way to leave it.
+        And the Lord Chamberlain of his Highness must also be hurried. If by
+        chance the affair comes to discussion, you must strive to have them see
+        the writing which is in the Book of Privileges, which shows the reason
+        why the third, eighth, and tenth are owing me, as I told you in another
+        letter.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;I have written to the Holy Father in regard to my voyage, as he
+        complained of me because I did not write him. I send you a copy of the
+        letter. I would like to have the King, our Lord, or the Lord Bishop of
+        Palencia see it before I send the letter, in order to avoid false
+        representations.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;Camacho has told a thousand falsehoods about me. To my regret I
+        ordered him arrested. He is in the church. He says that after the
+        Holidays are past, he will go there if he is able. If I owe him, he must
+        show by what reason; for I make oath that I do not know it, nor is it
+        true.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;If without importunity a licence can be procured for me to go on
+        mule-back, I will try to leave for the Court after January, and I will
+        even go without this licence. But haste must be made that the loss of
+        the Indies, which is now imminent, may not take place. May our Lord have
+        you in His keeping.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;Done to-day, December 21.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;Your father who loves you more than himself.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        .S.<br /> .S.A.S.<br /> XMY<br /> Xpo FERENS.&rdquo;
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;This tenth which they give me is not the tenth which was promised
+        me. The Privileges tell what it is, and there is also due me the tenth
+        of the profit derived from merchandise and from all other things, of
+        which I have received nothing. Carbajal understands me well. Also remind
+        Carbajal to obtain a letter from his Highness for the Governor,
+        directing him to send his accounts and the money I have there, at once.
+        And it would be well that a Repostero of his Highness should go there to
+        receive this money, as there must be a large amount due me. I will
+        strive to have these gentlemen of the Board of Trade send also to say to
+        the Governor that he must send my share together with the gold belonging
+        to their Highnesses. But the remedy for the other matter must not be
+        neglected there on this account. I say that 7000 or 8000 pesos must have
+        passed to my credit there, which sum has been received since I left,
+        besides the other money which was not given to me.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;To my very dear son Don Diego at the Court.&rdquo;
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      All this struggling for the due payment of eighths and tenths makes
+      wearisome reading, and we need not follow the Admiral into his
+      distinctions between one kind of tenth and another. There is something to
+      be said on his side, it must be remembered; the man had not received what
+      was due to him; and although he was not in actual poverty, his only
+      property in this world consisted of these very thirds and eighths and
+      tenths. But if we are inclined to think poorly of the Admiral for his
+      dismal pertinacity, what are we to think of the people who took advantage
+      of their high position to ignore consistently the just claims made upon
+      them?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is no end to the Admiral&rsquo;s letter-writing at this time.
+      Fortunately for us his letter to the Pope has been lost, or else we should
+      have to insert it here; and we have had quite enough of his theological
+      stupors. As for the Queen&rsquo;s will, there was no mention of the
+      Admiral in it; and her only reference to the Indies showed that she had
+      begun to realise some of the disasters following his rule there, for the
+      provisions that are concerned with the New World refer exclusively to the
+      treatment of the natives, to whose succour, long after they were past
+      succour, the hand of Isabella was stretched out from the grave. The
+      licence to travel on mule-back which the Admiral asked for was made
+      necessary by a law which had been passed forbidding the use of mules for
+      this purpose throughout Spain. There had been a scarcity of horses for
+      mounting the royal cavalry, and it was thought that the breeding of horses
+      had been neglected on account of the greater cheapness and utility of
+      mules. It was to encourage the use and breeding of horses that an
+      interdict was laid on the use of mules, and only the very highest persons
+      in the land were allowed to employ them.
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        Letter written by CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS to his Son, DON DIEGO, December
+        29, 1504.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;VERY DEAR SON,&mdash;I wrote you at length and sent it by Don
+        Ferdinand, who left to go yonder twenty-three days ago to-day, with the
+        Lord Adelantado and Carbajal, from whom I have since heard nothing.
+        Sixteen days ago to-day I wrote you and sent it by Zamora, the courier,
+        and I sent you a letter of credit for these merchants endorsed by
+        Francisco de Ribarol, telling them to give you the money you might ask
+        for. And then, about eight days ago, I sent you by another courier a
+        letter endorsed by Francisco Soria, and these letters are directed to
+        Pantaleon and Agostin Italian, that they may give it to you. And with
+        these letters goes a copy of a letter which I wrote to the Holy Father
+        in regard to the affairs of the Indies, that he might not complain of me
+        any more. I sent this copy for his Highness to see, or the Lord Bishop
+        of Palencia, so as to avoid false representations. The payment of the
+        people who went with me has been delayed. I have provided for them here
+        what I have been able. They are poor and obliged to go in order to earn
+        a living. They decided to go yonder. They have been told here that they
+        will be dealt with as favourably as possible, and this is right,
+        although among them there are some who merit punishment more than
+        favours. This is said of the rebels. I gave these people a letter for
+        the Lord Bishop of Palencia. Read it, and if it is necessary for them to
+        go and petition his Highness, urge your uncle and brother and Carbajal
+        to read it also, so that you can all help them as much as possible. It
+        is right and a work of mercy, for no one ever earned money with so many
+        dangers and hardships and no one has ever rendered such great service as
+        these people. It is said that Camacho and Master Bernal wish to go there&mdash;two
+        creatures for whom God works few miracles: but if they go, it will be to
+        do harm rather than good. They can do little because the truth always
+        prevails, as it did in Espanola, from which wicked people by means of
+        falsehoods have prevented any profit being received up to the present
+        time. It is said that this Master Bernal was the beginning of the
+        treason. He was taken and accused of many misdemeanours, for each one of
+        which he deserved to be quartered. At the request of your uncle and of
+        others he was pardoned, on condition that if he ever said the least word
+        against me and my state the pardon should be revoked and he should be
+        under condemnation. I send you a copy of the case in this letter. I send
+        you a legal document about Camacho. For more than eight days he has not
+        left the church on account of his rash statements and falsehoods. He has
+        a will made by Terreros, and other relatives of the latter have another
+        will of more recent date, which renders the first will null, as far as
+        the inheritance is concerned: and I am entreated to enforce the latter
+        will, so that Camacho will be obliged to restore what he has received. I
+        shall order a legal document drawn up and served upon him, because I
+        believe it is a work of mercy to punish him, as he is so unbridled in
+        his speech that some one must punish him without the rod: and it will
+        not be so much against the conscience of the chastiser, and will injure
+        him more. Diego Mendez knows Master Bernal and his works very well. The
+        Governor wished to imprison him at Espanola and left him to my
+        consideration. It is said that he killed two men there with medicines in
+        revenge for something of less account than three beans. I would be glad
+        of the licence to travel on muleback and of a good mule, if they can be
+        obtained without difficulty. Consult all about our affairs, and tell
+        them that I do not write them in particular on account of the great pain
+        I feel when writing. I do not say that they must do the same, but that
+        each one must write me and very often, for I feel great sorrow that all
+        the world should have letters from there each day, and I have nothing,
+        when I have so many people there. Commend me to the Lord Adelantado in
+        his favour, and give my regards to your brother and to all the others.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;Done at Seville, December 29.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;Your father who loves you more than himself.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        .S.<br /> .S.A.S.<br /> XMY<br /> Xpo FERENS.&rdquo;
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I say further that if our affairs are to be settled according to
+      conscience, that the chapter of the letter which their Highnesses wrote me
+      when I departed, in which they say they will order you placed in
+      possession, must be shown; and the writing must also be shown which is in
+      the Book of Privileges, which shows how in reason and in justice the third
+      and eighth and the tenth are mine. There will always be opportunity to
+      make reductions from this amount.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Columbus&rsquo;s requests were not all for himself; nothing could be more
+      sincere or generous than the spirit in which he always strove to secure
+      the just payment of his mariners.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Otherwise he is still concerned with the favour shown to those who were
+      treasonable to him. Camacho was still hiding in a church, probably from
+      the wrath of Bartholomew Columbus; but Christopher has more subtle ways of
+      punishment. A legal document, he considers, will be better than a rod;
+      &ldquo;it will not be so much against the conscience of the chastiser, and
+      will injure him (the chastised) more.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        Letter written by CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS to DON DIEGO, his Son, January
+        18, 1505.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;VERY DEAR SON,&mdash;I wrote you at length by the courier who
+        will arrive there to-day, and sent you a letter for the Lord
+        Chamberlain. I intended to inclose in it a copy of that chapter of the
+        letter from their Highnesses in which they say they will order you
+        placed in possession; but I forgot to do it here. Zamora, the courier,
+        came. I read your letter and also those of your uncle and brother and
+        Carbajal, and felt great pleasure in learning that they had arrived
+        well, as I had been very anxious about them. Diego Mendez will leave
+        here in three or four days with the order of payment prepared. He will
+        take a long statement of everything and I will write to Juan Velasquez.
+        I desire his friendship and service. I believe that he is a very
+        honourable gentleman. If the Lord Bishop of Palencia has come, or comes,
+        tell him how much pleased I have been with his prosperity, and that if I
+        go there I must stop with his Worship even if he does not wish it, and
+        that we must return to our first fraternal love. And that he could not
+        refuse it because my service will force him to have it thus. I said that
+        the letter for the Holy Father was sent that his Worship might see it if
+        he was there, and also the Lord Archbishop of Seville, as the King might
+        not have opportunity to read it. I have already told you that the
+        petition to their Highnesses must be for the fulfilment of what they
+        wrote me about the possession and of the rest which was promised me. I
+        said that this chapter of the letter must be shown them and said that it
+        must not be delayed, and that this is advisable for an infinite number
+        of reasons. His Highness may believe that, however much he gives me, the
+        increase of his exalted dominions and revenue will be in the proportion
+        of 100 to 1, and that there is no comparison between what has been done
+        and what is to be done. The sending of a Bishop to Espanola must be
+        delayed until I speak to his Highness. It must not be as in the other
+        cases when it was thought to mend matters and they were spoiled. There
+        have been some cold days here and they have caused me great fatigue and
+        fatigue me now. Commend me to the favour of the Lord Adelantado. May our
+        Lord guard and bless you and your brother. Give my regards to Carbajal
+        and Jeronimo. Diego Mendez will carry a full pouch there. I believe that
+        the affair of which you wrote can be very easily managed. The vessels
+        from the Indies have not arrived from Lisbon. They brought a great deal
+        of gold, and none for me. So great a mockery was never seen, for I left
+        there 60,000 pesos smelted. His Highness should not allow so great an
+        affair to be ruined, as is now taking place. He now sends to the
+        Governor a new provision. I do not know what it is about. I expect
+        letters each day. Be very careful about expenditures, for it is
+        necessary.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;Done January 18. &ldquo;Your father who loves you more than
+        himself.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      There is playful reference here to Fonseca, with whom Columbus was
+      evidently now reconciled; and he was to be buttonholed and made to read
+      the Admiral&rsquo;s letter to the Pope. Diego Mendez is about to start,
+      and is to make a &ldquo;long statement&rdquo;; and in the meantime the
+      Admiral will write as many long letters as he has time for. Was there no
+      friend at hand, I wonder, with wit enough to tell the Admiral that every
+      word he wrote about his grievances was sealing his doom, so far as the
+      King was concerned? No human being could have endured with patience this
+      continuous heavy firing at long range to which the Admiral subjected his
+      friends at Court; every post that arrived was loaded with a shrapnel of
+      grievances, the dull echo of which must have made the ears of those who
+      heard it echo with weariness. Things were evidently humming in Espanola;
+      large cargoes of negroes had been sent out to take the place of the dead
+      natives, and under the harsh driving of Ovando the mines were producing
+      heavily. The vessels that arrived from the Indies brought a great deal of
+      gold; &ldquo;but none for me.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        Letter written by CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS to his Son, DON DIEGO, February
+        5, 1505.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;VERY DEAR SON,&mdash;Diego Mendez left here Monday, the 3rd of
+        this month. After his departure I talked with Amerigo Vespucci, the
+        bearer of this letter, who is going yonder, where he is called in regard
+        to matters of navigation. He was always desirous of pleasing me. He is a
+        very honourable man. Fortune has been adverse to him as it has been to
+        many others. His labours have not profited him as much as reason
+        demands. He goes for me, and is very desirous of doing something to
+        benefit me if it is in his power. I do not know of anything in which I
+        can instruct him to my benefit, because I do not know what is wanted of
+        him there. He is going with the determination to do everything for me in
+        his power. See what he can do to profit me there, and strive to have him
+        do it; for he will do everything, and will speak and will place it in
+        operation: and it must all be done secretly so that there may be no
+        suspicion.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;I have told him all that could be told regarding this matter, and
+        have informed him of the payment which has been made to me and is being
+        made. This letter is for the Lord Adelantado also, that he may see how
+        Amerigo Vespucci can be useful, and advise him about it. His Highness
+        may believe that his ships went to the best and richest of the Indies,
+        and if anything remains to be learned more than has been told, I will
+        give the information yonder verbally, because it is impossible to give
+        it in writing. May our Lord have you in his Holy keeping.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;Done in Seville, February 5.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;Your father who loves you more than himself.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      This letter has a significance which raises it out of the ruck of this
+      complaining correspondence. Amerigo Vespucci had just returned from his
+      long voyage in the West, when he had navigated along an immense stretch of
+      the coast of America, both north and south, and had laid the foundations
+      of a fame which was, for a time at least, to eclipse that of Columbus.
+      Probably neither of the two men realised it at this interview, or Columbus
+      would hardly have felt so cordially towards the man who was destined to
+      rob him of so much glory. As a matter of fact the practical Spaniards were
+      now judging entirely by results; and a year or two later, when the fame of
+      Columbus had sunk to insignificance, he was merely referred to as the
+      discoverer of certain islands, while Vespucci, who after all had only
+      followed in his lead, was hailed as the discoverer of a great continent.
+      Vespucci has been unjustly blamed for this state of affairs, although he
+      could no more control the public estimate of his services than Columbus
+      could. He was a more practical man than Columbus, and he made a much
+      better impression on really wise and intelligent men; and his discoveries
+      were immediately associated with trade and colonial development, while
+      Columbus had little to show for his discoveries during his lifetime but a
+      handful of gold dust and a few cargoes of slaves. At any rate it was a
+      graceful act on the part of Vespucci, whose star was in the ascendant, to
+      go and seek out the Admiral, whose day was fast verging to night; it was
+      one of those disinterested actions that live and have a value of their
+      own, and that shine out happily amid the surrounding murk and confusion.
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        Letter signed by CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS to DON DIEGO, his Son, February
+        25, 1505.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;VERY DEAR SON,&mdash;The Licientiate de Zea is a person whom I
+        desire to honour. He has in his charge two men who are under prosecution
+        at the hands of justice, as shown by the information which is inclosed
+        in this letter. See that Diego Mendez places the said petition with the
+        others, that they may be given to his Highness during Holy Week for
+        pardon. If the pardon is granted, it is well, and if not, look for some
+        other manner of obtaining it. May our Lord have you in His Holy keeping.
+        Done in Seville, February 25, 1505. I wrote you and sent it by Amerigo
+        Vespucci. See that he sends you the letter unless you have already
+        received it.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        &ldquo;Your father.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        .S.<br /> .S.A.S.<br /> XMY<br /> Xpo FERENS.&rdquo;
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      This is the last letter of Columbus known to us otherwise an entirely
+      unimportant document, dealing with the most transient affairs. With it we
+      gladly bring to an end this exposure of a greedy and querulous period,
+      which speaks so eloquently for itself that the less we say and comment on
+      it the better.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /> <a name="ferdinand" id="ferdinand"></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+      <img alt="ferdinand.jpg (58K)" src="images/ferdinand.jpg"
+      style="width:100%;" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the month of May the Admiral was well enough at last to undertake the
+      journey to Segovia. He travelled on a mule, and was accompanied by his
+      brother Bartholomew and his son Ferdinand. When he reached the Court he
+      found the King civil and outwardly attentive to his recitals, but
+      apparently content with a show of civility and outward attention. Columbus
+      was becoming really a nuisance; that is the melancholy truth. The King had
+      his own affairs to attend to; he was already meditating a second marriage,
+      and thinking of the young bride he was to bring home to the vacant place
+      of Isabella; and the very iteration of Columbus&rsquo;s complaints and
+      demands had made them lose all significance for the King. He waved them
+      aside with polite and empty promises, as people do the demands of
+      importunate children; and finally, to appease the Admiral and to get rid
+      of the intolerable nuisance of his applications, he referred the whole
+      question, first to Archbishop DEA, and then to the body of councillors
+      which had been appointed to interpret Queen Isabella&rsquo;s will. The
+      whole question at issue was whether or not the original agreement with
+      Columbus, which had been made before his discoveries, should be carried
+      out. The King, who had foolishly subscribed to it simply as a matter of
+      form, never believing that anything much could come of it, was determined
+      that it should not be carried out, as it would give Columbus a wealth and
+      power to which no mere subject of a crown was entitled. The Admiral held
+      fast to his privileges; the only thing that he would consent to submit to
+      arbitration was the question of his revenues; but his titles and
+      territorial authorities he absolutely stuck to. Of course the council did
+      exactly what the King had done. They talked about the thing a great deal,
+      but they did nothing. Columbus was an invalid and broken man, who might
+      die any day, and it was obviously to their interest to gain time by
+      discussion and delay&mdash;a cruel game for our Christopher, who knew his
+      days on earth to be numbered, and who struggled in that web of time in
+      which mortals try to hurry the events of the present and delay the events
+      of the future. Meanwhile Philip of Austria and his wife Juana, Isabella&rsquo;s
+      daughter, had arrived from Flanders to assume the crown of Castile, which
+      Isabella had bequeathed to them. Columbus saw a chance for himself in this
+      coming change, and he sent Bartholomew as an envoy to greet the new
+      Sovereigns, and to enlist their services on the Admiral&rsquo;s behalf.
+      Bartholomew was very well received, but he was too late to be of use to
+      the Admiral, whom he never saw again; and this is our farewell to
+      Bartholomew, who passes out of our narrative here. He went to Rome after
+      Christopher&rsquo;s death on a mission to the Pope concerning some fresh
+      voyages of discovery; and in 1508 he made, so far as we know, his one
+      excursion into romance, when he assisted at the production of an
+      illegitimate little girl&mdash;his only descendant. He returned to
+      Espanola under the governorship of his nephew Diego, and died there in
+      1514&mdash;stern, valiant, brotherly soul, whose devotion to Christopher
+      must be for ever remembered and honoured with the name of the Admiral.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From Segovia Columbus followed the Court to Salamanca and thence to
+      Valladolid, where his increasing illness kept him a prisoner after the
+      Court had left to greet Philip and Juana. He had been in attendance upon
+      it for nearly a year, and without any results: and now, as his infirmity
+      increased, he turned to the settling of his own affairs, and drawing up of
+      wills and codicils&mdash;all very elaborate and precise. In these
+      occupations his worldly affairs were duly rounded off; and on May 19,
+      1506, having finally ratified a will which he had made in Segovia a year
+      before, in which the descent of his honours was entailed upon Diego and
+      his heirs, or failing him Ferdinand and his heirs, or failing him
+      Bartholomew and his heirs, he turned to the settlement of his soul.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His illness had increased gradually but surely, and he must have known
+      that he was dying. He was not without friends, among them the faithful
+      Diego Mendez, his son Ferdinand, and a few others. His lodging was in a
+      small house in an unimportant street of Valladolid, now called the &ldquo;Calle
+      de Colon&rdquo;; the house, .No. 7, still standing, and to be seen by
+      curious eyes. As the end approached, the Admiral, who was being attended
+      by Franciscan monks, had himself clothed in a Franciscan habit; and so, on
+      the 20th May 1506, he lay upon his bed, breathing out his life.
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        . . . And as strange thoughts<br /> Grow with a certain humming in my
+        ears,<br /> About the life before I lived this life,<br /> And this life
+        too, Popes, Cardinals, and priests,<br /> Your tall pale mother with her
+        talking eyes<br /> And new-found agate urns fresh as day . . .
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      . . . we do not know what his thoughts were, as the shadows grew deeper
+      about him, as the sounds of the world, the noises from the sunny street,
+      grew fainter, and the images and sounds of memory clearer and louder.
+      Perhaps as he lay there with closed eyes he remembered things long
+      forgotten, as dying people do; sounds and smells of the Vico Dritto di
+      Ponticelli, and the feel of the hot paving-stones down which his childish
+      feet used to run to the sea; noises of the sea also, the drowning swish of
+      waters and sudden roar of breakers sounding to anxiously strained ears in
+      the still night; bright sunlit pictures of faraway tropical shores, with
+      handsome olive figures glistening in the sun; the sight of strange faces,
+      the sound of strange speech, the smell of a strange land; the glitter of
+      gold; the sudden death-shriek breaking the stillness of some sylvan glade;
+      the sight of blood on the grass . . . . The Admiral&rsquo;s face undergoes
+      a change; there is a stir in the room; some one signs to the priest
+      Gaspar, who brings forth his sacred wafer and holy oils and administers
+      the last sacraments. The wrinkled eyelids flutter open, the sea-worn voice
+      feebly frames the responses; the dying eyes are fixed on the crucifix; and&mdash;&ldquo;In
+      manus tuas Domine commendo spiritum meum.&rdquo; The Admiral is dead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /> <a name="deathplace" id="deathplace"></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+      <img alt="deathplace.jpg (47K)" src="images/deathplace.jpg"
+      style="width:100%;" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/deathplace.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
+    </h5>
+<p>
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</p>
+    <p>
+      He was in his fifty-sixth year, already an old man in body and mind; and
+      his death went entirely unmarked except by his immediate circle of
+      friends. Even Peter Martyr, who was in Valladolid just before and just
+      after it, and who was writing a series of letters to various
+      correspondents giving all the news of his day, never thought it worth
+      while to mention that Christopher Columbus was dead. His life flickered
+      out in the completest obscurity. It is not even known where he was first
+      buried; but probably it was in the Franciscan convent at Valladolid. This,
+      however, was only a temporary resting-place; and a few years later his
+      body was formally interred in the choir of the monastery of Las Cuevas at
+      Seville, there to lie for thirty years surrounded by continual chauntings.
+      After that it was translated to the cathedral in San Domingo; rested there
+      for 250 years, and then, on the cession of that part of the island to
+      France, the body was removed to Cuba. But the Admiral was by this time
+      nothing but a box of bones and dust, as also were brother Bartholomew and
+      son Diego, and Diego&rsquo;s son, all collected together in that place.
+      There were various examinations of the bone-boxes; one, supposed to be the
+      Admiral&rsquo;s, was taken to Cuba and solemnly buried there; and lately,
+      after the conquest of the island in the Spanish-American War, this box of
+      bones was elaborately conveyed to Seville, where it now rests.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But in the meanwhile the Chapter of the cathedral in San Domingo had made
+      new discoveries and examinations; had found another box of bones, which
+      bore to them authentic signs that the dust it contained was the Admiral&rsquo;s
+      and not his grandson&rsquo;s; and in spite of the Academy of History at
+      Madrid, it is indeed far from unlikely that the Admiral&rsquo;s dust does
+      not lie in Spain or Cuba, but in San Domingo still. Whole books have been
+      written about these boxes of bones; learned societies have argued about
+      them, experts have examined the bones and the boxes with microscopes; and
+      meantime the dust of Columbus, if we take the view that an error was
+      committed in the transference to Cuba, is not even collected all in one
+      box. A sacrilegious official acquired some of it when the boxes were
+      opened, and distributed it among various curiosity-hunters, who have
+      preserved it in caskets of crystal and silver. Thus a bit of him is worn
+      by an American lady in a crystal locket; a pinch of him lies in a glass
+      vial in a New York mansion; other pinches in the Lennox Library, New York,
+      in the Vatican, and in the University of Pavia. In such places, if the
+      Admiral should fail to appear at the first note of their trumpets, must
+      the Angels of the Resurrection make search.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="ch10d" id="ch10d"></a>CHAPTER X.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE MAN COLUMBUS
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is not in any leaden box or crystal vase that we must search for the
+      true remains of Christopher Columbus. Through these pages we have traced,
+      so far as has been possible, the course of his life, and followed him in
+      what he did; all of which is but preparation for our search for the true
+      man, and just estimate of what he was. We have seen, dimly, what his youth
+      was; that he came of poor people who were of no importance to the world at
+      large; that he earned his living as a working man; that he became
+      possessed of an Idea; that he fought manfully and diligently until he had
+      realised it; and that then he found himself in a position beyond his
+      powers to deal with, not being a strong enough swimmer to hold his own in
+      the rapid tide of events which he himself had set flowing; and we have
+      seen him sinking at last in that tide, weighed down by the very things for
+      which he had bargained and stipulated. If these pages had been devoted to
+      a critical examination of the historical documents on which his life-story
+      is based we should also have found that he continually told lies about
+      himself, and misrepresented facts when the truth proved inconvenient to
+      him; that he was vain and boastful to a degree that can only excite our
+      compassion. He was naturally and sincerely pious, and drew from his
+      religion much strength and spiritual nourishment; but he was also capable
+      of hypocrisy, and of using the self-same religion as a cloak for his greed
+      and cruelty. What is the final image that remains in our minds of such a
+      man? To answer this question we must examine his life in three dimensions.
+      There was its great outline of rise, zenith, and decline; there was its
+      outward history in minute detail, and its conduct in varying
+      circumstances; and there was the inner life of the man&rsquo;s soul, which
+      was perhaps simpler than some of us think. And first, as to his life as a
+      single thing. It rose in poverty, it reached a brief and dazzling zenith
+      of glory, it set in clouds and darkness; the fame of it suffered a long
+      night of eclipse, from which it was rescued and raised again to a height
+      of glory which unfortunately was in sufficiently founded on fact; and as a
+      reaction from this, it has been in danger of becoming entirely
+      discredited, and the man himself denounced as a fraud. The reason for
+      these surprising changes is that in those fifty-five years granted to
+      Columbus for the making of his life he did not consistently listen to that
+      inner voice which alone can hold a man on any constructive path. He
+      listened to it at intervals, and he drew his inspiration from it; but he
+      shut his ears when it had served him, when it had brought him what he
+      wanted. In his moments of success he guided himself by outward things; and
+      thus he was at one moment a seer and ready to be a martyr, and at the next
+      moment he was an opportunist, watching to see which way the wind would
+      blow, and ready to trim his sails in the necessary direction. Such conduct
+      of a man&rsquo;s life does not make for single light or for true
+      greatness; rather for dim, confused lights, and lofty heights obscured in
+      cloud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If we examine his life in detail we find this alternating principle of
+      conduct revealed throughout it. He was by nature clever, kind-hearted,
+      rather large-souled, affectionate, and not very honest; all the acts
+      prompted by his nature bear the stamp of these qualities. To them his
+      early years had probably added little except piety, sharp practice, and
+      that uncomfortable sense, often bred amid narrow and poor surroundings,
+      that one must keep a sharp look-out for oneself if one is to get a share
+      of the world&rsquo;s good things. Something in his blood, moreover, craved
+      for dignity and the splendour of high-sounding titles; craved for power
+      also, and the fulfilment of an arrogant pride. All these things were in
+      his Ligurian blood, and he breathed them in with the very air of Genoa.
+      His mind was of the receptive rather than of the constructive kind, and it
+      was probably through those long years spent between sea voyages and brief
+      sojourns with his family in Genoa or Savona that he conceived that vague
+      Idea which, as I have tried to show, formed the impulse of his life during
+      its brief initiative period. Having once received this Idea of discovery
+      and like all other great ideas, it was in the air at the time and was
+      bound to take shape in some human brain&mdash;he had all his native and
+      personal qualities to bring to its support. The patience to await its
+      course he had learned from his humble and subordinate life. The ambition
+      to work for great rewards was in his blood and race; and to belief in
+      himself, his curious vein of mystical piety was able to add the support of
+      a ready belief in divine selection. This very time of waiting and
+      endurance of disappointments also helped to cultivate in his character two
+      separate qualities&mdash;an endurance or ability to withstand infinite
+      hardship and disappointment; and also a greedy pride that promised itself
+      great rewards for whatever should be endured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In all active matters Columbus was what we call a lucky man. It was luck
+      that brought him to Guanahani; and throughout his life this element of
+      good luck continually helped him. He was lucky, that is to say, in his
+      relation with inanimate things; but in his relations with men he was
+      almost as consistently unlucky. First of all he was probably a bad judge
+      of men. His humble origin and his lack of education naturally made him
+      distrustful. He trusted people whom he should have regarded with
+      suspicion, and he was suspicious of those whom he ought to have known he
+      could trust. If people pleased him, he elevated them with absurd rapidity
+      to stations far beyond their power to fill, and then wondered that they
+      sometimes turned upon him; if they committed crimes against him, he either
+      sought to regain their favour by forgiving them, or else dogged them with
+      a nagging, sulky resentment, and expected every one else to punish them
+      also. He could manage men if he were in the midst of them; there was
+      something winning as well as commanding about his actual presence, and
+      those who were devoted to him would have served him to the death. But when
+      he was not on the spot all his machineries and affairs went to pieces; he
+      had no true organising ability; no sooner did he take his hand off any
+      affair for which he was responsible than it immediately came to confusion.
+      All these defects are to be attributed to his lack of education and
+      knowledge of the world. Mental discipline is absolutely necessary for a
+      man who would discipline others; and knowledge of the world is essential
+      for one who would successfully deal with men, and distinguish those whom
+      he can from those whom he cannot trust. Defects of this nature, which
+      sometimes seem like flaws in the man&rsquo;s character, may be set down to
+      this one disability&mdash;that he was not educated and was not by habit a
+      man of the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All his sins of misgovernment, then, may be condoned on the ground that
+      governing is a science, and that Columbus had never learned it. What we do
+      find, however, is that the inner light that had led him across the seas
+      never burned clearly for him again, and was never his guide in the later
+      part of his life. Its radiance was quenched by the gleam of gold; for
+      there is no doubt that Columbus was a victim of that baleful influence
+      which has caused so much misery in this world. He was greedy of gold for
+      himself undoubtedly; but he was still more greedy of it for Spain. It was
+      his ambition to be the means of filling the coffers of the Spanish
+      Sovereigns and so acquiring immense dignity and glory for himself. He
+      believed that gold was in itself a very precious and estimable thing; he
+      knew that masses and candles could be bought for it, and very real
+      spiritual privileges; and as he made blunder after blunder, and saw evil
+      after evil heaping itself on his record in the New World, he became the
+      more eager and frantic to acquire such a treasure of gold that it would
+      wipe out the other evils of his administration. And once involved in that
+      circle, there was no help for him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man himself was a simple man; capable, when the whole of his various
+      qualities were directed upon one single thing, of that greatness which is
+      the crown of simplicity. Ambition was the keynote of his life; not an
+      unworthy keynote, by any means, if only the ambition be sound; but one
+      serious defect of Columbus&rsquo;s ambition was that it was retrospective
+      rather than perspective. He may have had, before he sailed from Palos, an
+      ambition to be the discoverer of a New World; but I do not think he had.
+      He believed there were islands or land to be discovered in the West if
+      only he pushed on far enough; and he was ambitious to find them and
+      vindicate his belief. Afterwards, when he had read a little more, and when
+      he conceived the plan of pretending that he had all along meant to
+      discover the Indies and a new road to the East, he acted in accordance
+      with that pretence; he tried to make his acts appear retrospectively as
+      though they had been prompted by a design quite different from that by
+      which they had really been prompted. When he found that his discovery was
+      regarded as a great scientific feat, he made haste to pretend that it had
+      all along been meant as such, and was in fact the outcome of an elaborate
+      scientific theory. In all this there is nothing for praise or admiration.
+      It indicates the presence of moral disease; but fortunately it is
+      functional rather than organic disease. He was right and sound at heart;
+      but he spread his sails too readily to the great winds of popular favour,
+      and the result was instability to himself, and often danger of shipwreck
+      to his soul.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The ultimate test of a man&rsquo;s character is how he behaves in certain
+      circumstances when there is no great audience to watch him, and when there
+      is no sovereign close at hand with bounties and rewards to offer. In a
+      word, what matters most is a man&rsquo;s behaviour, not as an admiral, or
+      a discoverer, or a viceroy, or a courtier, but as a man. In this respect
+      Columbus&rsquo;s character rings true. If he was little on little
+      occasions, he was also great on great occasions. The inner history of his
+      fourth voyage, if we could but know it and could take all the
+      circumstances into account, would probably reveal a degree of heroic
+      endurance that has never been surpassed in the history of mankind. Put him
+      as a man face to face with a difficulty, with nothing but his wits to
+      devise with and his two hands to act with, and he is never found wanting.
+      And that is the kind of man of whom discoverers are made. The mere
+      mathematician may work out the facts with the greatest accuracy and prove
+      the existence of land at a certain point; but there is great danger that
+      he may be knocked down by a club on his first landing on the beach, and
+      never bring home any news of his discovery. The great courtier may do well
+      for himself and keep smooth and politic relations with kings; the great
+      administrator may found a wonderful colony; but it is the man with the
+      wits and the hands, and some bigness of heart to tide him over daunting
+      passages, that wins through the first elementary risks of any great
+      discovery. Properly considered, Columbus&rsquo;s fame should rest simply
+      on the answer to the single question, &ldquo;Did he discover new lands as
+      he said he would?&rdquo; That was the greatest thing he could do, and the
+      fact that he failed to do a great many other things afterwards, failed the
+      more conspicuously because his attempts were so conspicuous, should have
+      no effect on our estimate of his achievement. The fame of it could no more
+      be destroyed by himself than it can be destroyed by us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      True understanding of a man and estimate of his character can only be
+      arrived at by methods at once more comprehensive and more subtle than
+      those commonly employed among men. Everything that he sees, does, and
+      suffers has its influence on the moulding of his character; and he must be
+      considered in relation to his physical environment, no less than to his
+      race and ancestry. Christopher Columbus spent a great part of his active
+      life on the sea; it was sea-life which inspired him with his great Idea,
+      it was by the conquest of the sea that he realised it; it was on the sea
+      that all his real triumphs over circumstance and his own weaker self were
+      won. The influences at work upon a man whose life is spent on the sea are
+      as different from those at work upon one who lives on the fields as the
+      environment of a gannet is different from the environment of a skylark:
+      and yet how often do we really attempt to make due allowance for this
+      great factor and try to estimate the extent of its moulding influence?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To live within sound or sight of the sea is to be conscious of a voice or
+      countenance that holds you in unyielding bonds. The voice, being
+      continuous, creeps into the very pulses and becomes part of the pervading
+      sound or silence of a man&rsquo;s environment; and the face, although it
+      never regards him, holds him with its changes and occupies his mind with
+      its everlasting riddle. Its profound inattention to man is part of its
+      power over his imagination; for although it is so absorbed and busy, and
+      has regard for sun and stars and a melancholy frowning concentration upon
+      the foot of cliffs, it is never face to face with man: he can never come
+      within the focus of its great glancing vision. It is somewhere beyond time
+      and space that the mighty perspective of those focal rays comes to its
+      point; and they are so wide and eternal in their sweep that we should find
+      their end, could we but trace them, in a condition far different from that
+      in which our finite views and ethics have place. In the man who lives much
+      on the sea we always find, if he be articulate, something of the dreamer
+      and the mystic; that very condition of mind, indeed, which we have traced
+      in Columbus, which sometimes led him to such heights, and sometimes
+      brought him to such variance with the human code.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A face that will not look upon you can never give up its secret to you;
+      and the face of the sea is like the face of a picture or a statue round
+      which you may circle, looking at it from this point and from that, but
+      whose regard is fixed on something beyond and invisible to you; or it is
+      like the face of a person well known to you in life, a face which you
+      often see in various surroundings, from different angles, now unconscious,
+      now in animated and smiling intercourse with some one else, but which
+      never turns upon you the light of friendly knowledge and recognition; in a
+      word, it is unconscious of you, like all elemental things. In the legend
+      of the Creation it is written that when God saw the gathering together of
+      the waters which he called the Seas, he saw that it was good; and he
+      perhaps had the right to say so. But the man who uses the sea and whose
+      life&rsquo;s pathway is laid on its unstable surface can hardly sum up his
+      impressions of it so simply as to say that it is good. It is indeed to him
+      neither good nor bad; it is utterly beyond and outside all he knows or
+      invents of good and bad, and can never have any concern with his good or
+      his bad. It remains the pathway and territory of powers and mysteries,
+      thoughts and energies on a gigantic and elemental scale; and that is why
+      the mind of man can never grapple with the unconsciousness of the sea or
+      his eye meet its eye. Yet it is the mariner&rsquo;s chief associate,
+      whether as adversary or as ally; his attitude to things outside himself is
+      beyond all doubt influenced by his attitude towards it; and a true
+      comprehension of the man Columbus must include a recognition of this
+      constant influence on him, and of whatever effect lifelong association
+      with so profound and mysterious an element may have had on his conduct in
+      the world of men. Better than many documents as an aid to our
+      understanding of him would be intimate association with the sea, and
+      prolonged contemplation of that face with which he was so familiar. We can
+      never know the heart of it, but we can at least look upon the face, turned
+      from us though it is, upon which he looked. Cloud shadows following a
+      shimmer of sunlit ripples; lines and runes traced on the surface of a
+      blank calm; salt laughter of purple furrows with the foam whipping off
+      them; tides and eddies, whirls, overfalls, ripples, breakers, seas
+      mountains high-they are but movements and changing expressions on an
+      eternal countenance that once held his gaze and wonder, as it will always
+      hold the gaze and wonder of those who follow the sea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So much of the man Christopher Columbus, who once was and no longer is;
+      perished, to the last bone and fibre of him, off the face of the earth,
+      and living now only by virtue of such truth as there was in him; who once
+      manfully, according to the light that he had, bore Christ on his shoulders
+      across stormy seas, and found him often, in that dim light, a heavy and
+      troublesome burden; who dropped light and burden together on the shores of
+      his discovery, and set going in that place of peace such a conflagration
+      as mankind is not likely to see again for many a generation, if indeed
+      ever again, in this much-tortured world, such ancient peace find place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg&rsquo;s Christopher Columbus, Complete, by Filson Young
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+</pre>
+  </body>
+</html>
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@@ -0,0 +1,15079 @@
+Project Gutenberg's Christopher Columbus, Complete, by Filson Young
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Christopher Columbus, Complete
+
+Author: Filson Young
+
+Release Date: October 7, 2006 [EBook #4116]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS, COMPLETE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                         CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS
+
+                   AND THE NEW WORLD OF HIS DISCOVERY
+
+                      A NARRATIVE BY FILSON YOUNG
+
+
+
+                                  TO
+                  THE RIGHT HON. SIR HORACE PLUNKETT,
+                        K.C.V.O., D.C.L., F.R.S.
+
+MY DEAR HORACE,
+
+Often while I have been studying the records of colonisation in the New
+World I have thought of you and your difficult work in Ireland; and I
+have said to myself, "What a time he would have had if he had been
+Viceroy of the Indies in 1493!"  There, if ever, was the chance for a
+Department such as yours; and there, if anywhere, was the place for the
+Economic Man.  Alas! there war only one of him; William Ires or Eyre, by
+name, from the county Galway; and though he fertilised the soil he did it
+with his blood and bones.  A wonderful chance; and yet you see what came
+of it all.  It would perhaps be stretching truth too far to say that you
+are trying to undo some of Columbus's work, and to stop up the hole he
+made in Ireland when he found a channel into which so much of what was
+best in the Old Country war destined to flow; for you and he have each
+your places in the great circle of Time and Compensation, and though you
+may seem to oppose one another across the centuries you are really
+answering the same call and working in the same vineyard.  For we all set
+out to discover new worlds; and they are wise who realise early that
+human nature has roots that spread beneath the ocean bed, that neither
+latitude nor longitude nor time itself can change it to anything richer
+or stranger than what it is, and that furrows ploughed in it are furrows
+ploughed in the sea sand.  Columbus tried to pour the wine of
+civilisation into very old bottles; you, more wisely, are trying to pour
+the old wine of our country into new bottles.  Yet there is no great
+unlikeness between the two tasks: it is all a matter of bottling; the
+vintage is the same, infinite, inexhaustible, and as punctual as the sun
+and the seasons.  It was Columbus's weakness as an administrator that he
+thought the bottle was everything; it is your strength that you care for
+the vintage, and labour to preserve its flavour and soft fire.
+
+                                        Yours,
+                                             FILSON YOUNG.
+RUAN MINOR, September 1906.
+
+
+
+
+                                 PREFACE
+
+The writing of historical biography is properly a work of partnership, to
+which public credit is awarded too often in an inverse proportion to the
+labours expended.  One group of historians, labouring in the obscurest
+depths, dig and prepare the ground, searching and sifting the documentary
+soil with infinite labour and over an area immensely wide.  They are
+followed by those scholars and specialists in history who give their
+lives to the study of a single period, and who sow literature in the
+furrows of research prepared by those who have preceded them.  Last of
+all comes the essayist, or writer pure and simple, who reaps the harvest
+so laboriously prepared.  The material lies all before him; the documents
+have been arranged, the immense contemporary fields of record and
+knowledge examined and searched for stray seeds of significance that may
+have blown over into them; the perspective is cleared for him, the
+relation of his facts to time and space and the march of human
+civilisation duly established; he has nothing to do but reap the field of
+harvest where it suits him, grind it in the wheels of whatever machinery
+his art is equipped with, and come before the public with the finished
+product.  And invariably in this unequal partnership he reaps most richly
+who reaps latest.
+
+I am far from putting this narrative forward as the fine and ultimate
+product of all the immense labour and research of the historians of
+Columbus; but I am anxious to excuse myself for my apparent presumption
+in venturing into a field which might more properly be occupied by the
+expert historian.  It would appear that the double work of acquiring the
+facts of a piece of human history and of presenting them through the
+medium of literature can hardly ever be performed by one and the same
+man.  A lifetime must be devoted to the one, a year or two may suffice
+for the other; and an entirely different set of qualities must be
+employed in the two tasks.  I cannot make it too clear that I make no
+claim to have added one iota of information or one fragment of original
+research to the expert knowledge regarding the life of Christopher
+Columbus; and when I add that the chief collection of facts and documents
+relating to the subject, the 'Raccolta Columbiana,'--[Raccolta di
+Documenti e Studi Publicati dalla R. Commissione Colombiana, &c.  Auspice
+il Ministero della Publica Istruzione.  Rome, 1892-4.]--is a work
+consisting of more than thirty folio volumes, the general reader will be
+the more indulgent to me.  But when a purely human interest led me some
+time ago to look into the literature of Columbus, I was amazed to find
+what seemed to me a striking disproportion between the extent of the
+modern historians' work on that subject and the knowledge or interest in
+it displayed by what we call the general reading public.  I am surprised
+to find how many well-informed people there are whose knowledge of
+Columbus is comprised within two beliefs, one of them erroneous and the
+other doubtful: that he discovered America, and performed a trick with
+an egg.  Americans, I think, are a little better informed on the subject
+than the English; perhaps because the greater part of modern critical
+research on the subject of Columbus has been the work of Americans.
+It is to bridge the immense gap existing between the labours of the
+historians and the indifference of the modern reader, between the
+Raccolta Columbiana, in fact, and the story of the egg, that I have
+written my narrative.
+
+It is customary and proper to preface a work which is based entirely on
+the labours of other people with an acknowledgment of the sources whence
+it is drawn; and yet in the case of Columbus I do not know where to
+begin.  In one way I am indebted to every serious writer who has even
+remotely concerned himself with the subject, from Columbus himself and
+Las Casas down to the editors of the Raccolta.  The chain of historians
+has been so unbroken, the apostolic succession, so to speak, has passed
+with its heritage so intact from generation to generation, that the
+latest historian enshrines in his work the labours of all the rest.
+Yet there are necessarily some men whose work stands out as being more
+immediately seizable than that of others; in the period of whose care the
+lamp of inspiration has seemed to burn more brightly.  In a matter of
+this kind I cannot pretend to be a judge, but only to state my own
+experience and indebtedness; and in my work I have been chiefly helped by
+Las Casas, indirectly of course by Ferdinand Columbus, Herrera, Oviedo,
+Bernaldez, Navarrete, Asensio, Mr. Payne, Mr. Harrisse, Mr. Vignaud,
+Mr. Winsor, Mr. Thacher, Sir Clements Markham, Professor de Lollis,
+and S. Salvagnini.  It is thus not among the dusty archives of Seville,
+Genoa, or San Domingo that I have searched, but in the archive formed by
+the writings of modern workers.  To have myself gone back to original
+sources, even if I had been competent to do so, would have been in the
+case of Columbian research but a waste of time and a doing over again
+what has been done already with patience, diligence, and knowledge.  The
+historians have been committed to the austere task of finding out and
+examining every fact and document in connection with their subject; and
+many of these facts and documents are entirely without human interest
+except in so far as they help to establish a date, a name, or a sum of
+money.  It has been my agreeable and lighter task to test and assay the
+masses of bed-rock fact thus excavated by the historians for traces of
+the particular ore which I have been seeking.  In fact I have tried to
+discover, from a reverent examination of all these monographs, essays,
+histories, memoirs, and controversies concerning what Christopher
+Columbus did, what Christopher Columbus was; believing as I do that any
+labour by which he can be made to live again, and from the dust of more
+than four hundred years be brought visibly to the mind's eye, will not be
+entirely without use and interest.  Whether I have succeeded in doing so
+or not I cannot be the judge; I can only say that the labour of
+resuscitating a man so long buried beneath mountains of untruth and
+controversy has some times been so formidable as to have seemed hopeless.
+And yet one is always tempted back by the knowledge that Christopher
+Columbus is not only a name, but that the human being whom we so describe
+did actually once live and walk in the world; did actually sail and look
+upon seas where we may also sail and look; did stir with his feet the
+indestructible dust of this old Earth, and centre in himself, as we all
+do, the whole interest and meaning of the Universe.  Truly the most
+commonplace fact, yet none the less amazing; and often when in the dust
+of documents he has seemed most dead and unreal to me I have found
+courage from the entertainment of some deep or absurd reflection; such as
+that he did once undoubtedly, like other mortals, blink and cough and
+blow his nose.  And if my readers could realise that fact throughout
+every page of this book, I should say that I had succeeded in my task.
+
+To be more particular in my acknowledgments.  In common with every modern
+writer on Columbus--and modern research on the history of Columbus is
+only thirty years old--I owe to the labours of Mr. Henry Harrisse, the
+chief of modern Columbian historians, the indebtedness of the gold-miner
+to the gold-mine.  In the matters of the Toscanelli correspondence and
+the early years of Columbus I have followed more closely Mr. Henry
+Vignaud, whose work may be regarded as a continuation and reexamination
+--in some cases destructive--of that of Mr. Harrisse.  Mr. Vignaud's work
+is happily not yet completed; we all look forward eagerly to the
+completion of that part of his 'Etudes Critiques' dealing with the second
+half of the Admiral's life; and Mr. Vignaud seems to me to stand higher
+than all modern workers in this field in the patient and fearless
+discovery of the truth regarding certain very controversial matters,
+and also in ability to give a sound and reasonable interpretation to
+those obscurer facts or deductions in Columbus's life that seem doomed
+never to be settled by the aid of documents alone.  It may be unseemly in
+me not to acknowledge indebtedness to Washington Irving,  but I cannot
+conscientiously do so.  If I had been writing ten or fifteen years ago I
+might have taken his work seriously; but it is impossible that anything
+so one-sided, so inaccurate, so untrue to life, and so profoundly dull
+could continue to exist save in the absence of any critical knowledge or
+light on the subject.  All that can be said for him is that he kept the
+lamp of interest in Columbus alive for English readers during the period
+that preceded the advent of modern critical research.  Mr. Major's
+edition' of Columbus's letters has been freely consulted by me, as it
+must be by any one interested in the subject.  Professor Justin Winsor's
+work has provided an invaluable store of ripe scholarship in matters of
+cosmography and geographical detail; Sir Clements Markham's book, by far
+the most trustworthy of modern English works on the subject, and a
+valuable record of the established facts in Columbus's life, has proved a
+sound guide in nautical matters; while the monograph of Mr. Elton, which
+apparently did not promise much at first, since the author has followed
+some untrustworthy leaders as regards his facts, proved to be full of a
+fragrant charm produced by the writer's knowledge of and interest in
+sub-tropical vegetation; and it is delightfully filled with the names of
+gums and spices.  To Mr. Vignaud I owe special thanks, not only for the
+benefits of his research and of his admirable works on Columbus, but also
+for personal help and encouragement.  Equally cordial thanks are due to
+Mr. John Boyd Thacher,  whose work, giving as it does so large a
+selection of the Columbus documents both in facsimile, transliteration,
+and translation, is of the greatest service to every English writer on
+the subject of Columbus.  It is the more to be regretted, since the
+documentary part of Mr. Thacher's work is so excellent, that in his
+critical studies he should have seemed to ignore some of the more
+important results of modern research.  I am further particularly indebted
+to Mr. Thacher and to his publishers, Messrs.  Putnam's Sons, for
+permission to reproduce certain illustrations in his work, and to avail
+myself also of his copies and translations of original Spanish and
+Italian documents.  I have to thank Commendatore Guido Biagi, the keeper
+of the Laurentian Library in Florence, for his very kind help and letters
+of introduction to Italian librarians; Mr. Raymond Beazley, of Merton
+College, Oxford, for his most helpful correspondence; and Lord Dunraven
+for so kindly bringing, in the interests of my readers, his practical
+knowledge of navigation and seamanship to bear on the first voyage of
+Columbus.  Finally my work has been helped and made possible by many
+intimate and personal kindnesses which, although they are not specified,
+are not the less deeply acknowledged.
+
+September 1906.
+
+
+
+                                 CONTENTS
+
+
+THE INNER LIGHT
+
+I         THE STREAM OF THE WORLD
+
+II        THE HOME IN GENOA
+
+III       YOUNG CHRISTOPHER
+
+IV        DOMENICO
+
+V         SEA THOUGHTS
+
+VI        IN PORTUGAL
+
+VII       ADVENTURES BODILY AND SPIRITUAL
+
+VIII      THE FIRE KINDLES
+
+IX        WANDERINGS WITH AN IDEA
+
+X         OUR LADY OF LA RABIDA
+
+XI        THE CONSENT OF SPAIN
+
+XII       THE PREPARATIONS AT PALOS
+
+XIII      EVENTS OF THE FIRST VOYAGE
+
+XIV       LANDFALL
+
+
+
+
+THE NEW WORLD
+
+I         THE ENCHANTED ISLANDS
+
+II        THE EARTHLY PARADISE
+
+III       THE VOYAGE HOME
+
+IV        THE HOUR OF TRIUMPH
+
+V         GREAT EXPECTATIONS
+
+VI        THE SECOND VOYAGE
+
+VII       THE EARTHLY PARADISE REVISITED
+
+
+
+DESPERATE REMEDIES
+
+I         THE VOYAGE TO CUBA
+
+II        THE CONQUEST OF ESPANOLA
+
+III       UPS AND DOWNS
+
+IV        IN SPAIN AGAIN
+
+V         THE THIRD VOYAGE
+
+VI        AN INTERLUDE
+
+VII       THE THIRD VOYAGE (continued)
+
+
+
+TOWARDS THE SUNSET
+
+I         DEGRADATION
+
+II        CRISIS IN THE ADMIRAL'S LIFE
+
+III       THE LAST VOYAGE
+
+IV        HEROIC ADVENTURES BY LAND AND SEA
+
+V         THE ECLIPSE OF THE MOON
+
+VI        RELIEF OF THE ADMIRAL
+
+VII       THE HERITAGE OF HATRED
+
+VIII      THE ADMIRAL COMES HOME
+
+IX        THE LAST DAYS
+
+X         THE MAN COLUMBUS
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                          THY WAY IS THE SEA,
+                   AND THY PATH IN THE GREAT WATERS,
+                    AND THY FOOTSTEPS ARE NOT KNOWN.
+
+
+
+
+THE INNER LIGHT
+
+BOOK I.
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE STREAM OF THE WORLD
+
+A man standing on the sea-shore is perhaps as ancient and as primitive a
+symbol of wonder as the mind can conceive.  Beneath his feet are the
+stones and grasses of an element that is his own, natural to him, in some
+degree belonging to him, at any rate accepted by him.  He has place and
+condition there.  Above him arches a world of immense void, fleecy
+sailing clouds, infinite clear blueness, shapes that change and dissolve;
+his day comes out of it, his source of light and warmth marches across
+it, night falls from it; showers and dews also, and the quiet influence
+of stars.  Strange that impalpable element must be, and for ever
+unattainable by him; yet with its gifts of sun and shower, its furniture
+of winged life that inhabits also on the friendly soil, it has links and
+partnerships with life as he knows it and is a complement of earthly
+conditions.  But at his feet there lies the fringe of another element,
+another condition, of a vaster and more simple unity than earth or air,
+which the primitive man of our picture knows to be not his at all.  It is
+fluent and unstable, yet to be touched and felt; it rises and falls,
+moves and frets about his very feet, as though it had a life and entity
+of its own, and was engaged upon some mysterious business.  Unlike the
+silent earth and the dreaming clouds it has a voice that fills his world
+and, now low, now loud, echoes throughout his waking and sleeping life.
+Earth with her sprouting fruits behind and beneath him; sky, and larks
+singing, above him; before him, an eternal alien, the sea: he stands
+there upon the shore, arrested, wondering.  He lives,--this man of our
+figure; he proceeds, as all must proceed, with the task and burden of
+life.  One by one its miracles are unfolded to him; miracles of fire and
+cold, and pain and pleasure; the seizure of love, the terrible magic of
+reproduction, the sad miracle of death.  He fights and lusts and endures;
+and, no more troubled by any wonder, sleeps at last.  But throughout the
+days of his life, in the very act of his rude existence, this great
+tumultuous presence of the sea troubles and overbears him.  Sometimes in
+its bellowing rage it terrifies him, sometimes in its tranquillity it
+allures him; but whatever he is doing, grubbing for roots, chipping
+experimentally with bones and stones, he has an eye upon it; and in his
+passage by the shore he pauses, looks, and wonders.  His eye is led from
+the crumbling snow at his feet, past the clear green of the shallows,
+beyond the furrows of the nearer waves, to the calm blue of the distance;
+and in his glance there shines again that wonder, as in his breast stirs
+the vague longing and unrest that is the life-force of the world.
+
+What is there beyond?  It is the eternal question asked by the finite of
+the infinite, by the mortal of the immortal; answer to it there is none
+save in the unending preoccupation of life and labour.  And if this old
+question was in truth first asked upon the sea-shore, it was asked most
+often and with the most painful wonder upon western shores, whence the
+journeying sun was seen to go down and quench himself in the sea.  The
+generations that followed our primitive man grew fast in knowledge, and
+perhaps for a time wondered the less as they knew the more; but we may be
+sure they never ceased to wonder at what might lie beyond the sea.  How
+much more must they have wondered if they looked west upon the waters,
+and saw the sun of each succeeding day sink upon a couch of glory where
+they could not follow?  All pain aspires to oblivion, all toil to rest,
+all troubled discontent with what is present to what is unfamiliar and
+far away; and no power of knowledge and scientific fact will ever prevent
+human unhappiness from reaching out towards some land of dreams of which
+the burning brightness of a sea sunset is an image.  Is it very hard to
+believe, then, that in that yearning towards the miracle of a sun
+quenched in sea distance, felt and felt again in human hearts through
+countless generations, the westward stream of human activity on this
+planet had its rise?  Is it unreasonable to picture, on an earth spinning
+eastward, a treadmill rush of feet to follow the sinking light?  The
+history of man's life in this world does not, at any rate, contradict us.
+Wisdom, discovery, art, commerce, science, civilisation have all moved
+west across our world; have all in their cycles followed the sun; have
+all, in their day of power, risen in the East and set in the West.
+
+
+This stream of life has grown in force and volume with the passage of
+ages.  It has always set from shore to sea in countless currents of
+adventure and speculation; but it has set most strongly from East to
+West.  On its broad bosom the seeds of life and knowledge have been
+carried throughout the world.  It brought the people of Tyre and Carthage
+to the coasts and oceans of distant worlds; it carried the English from
+Jutland across cold and stormy waters to the islands of their conquest;
+it carried the Romans across half the world; it bore the civilisation of
+the far East to new life and virgin western soils; it carried the new
+West to the old East, and is in our day bringing back again the new East
+to the old West.  Religions, arts, tradings, philosophies, vices and laws
+have been borne, a strange flotsam, upon its unchanging flood.  It has
+had its springs and neaps, its trembling high-water marks, its hour of
+affluence, when the world has been flooded with golden humanity; its ebb
+and effluence also, when it has seemed to shrink and desert the kingdoms
+set upon its shores.  The fifteenth century in Western Europe found it at
+a pause in its movements: it had brought the trade and the learning of
+the East to the verge of the Old World, filling the harbours of the
+Mediterranean with ships and the monasteries of Italy and Spain with
+wisdom; and in the subsequent and punctual decadence that followed this
+flood, there gathered in the returning tide a greater energy and volume
+which was to carry the Old World bodily across the ocean.  And yet, for
+all their wisdom and power, the Spanish and Portuguese were still in the
+attitude of our primitive man, standing on the sea-shore and looking out
+in wonder across the sea.
+
+The flood of the life-stream began to set again, and little by little to
+rise and inundate Western Europe, floating off the galleys and caravels
+of King Alphonso of Portugal, and sending them to feel their way along
+the coasts of Africa; a little later drawing the mind of Prince Henry the
+Navigator to devote his life to the conquest and possession of the
+unknown.  In his great castle on the promontory of Sagres, with the voice
+of the Atlantic thundering in his ears, and its mists and sprays bounding
+his vision, he felt the full force of the stream, and stretched his arms
+to the mysterious West.  But the inner light was not yet so brightly
+kindled that he dared to follow his heart; his ships went south and south
+again, to brave on each voyage the dangers and terrors that lay along the
+unknown African coast, until at length his captains saw the Cape of Good
+Hope.  South and West and East were in those days confusing terms; for it
+was the East that men were thinking of when they set their faces to the
+setting sun, and it was a new road to the East that they sought when they
+felt their way southward along the edge of the world.  But the rising
+tide of discovery was working in that moment, engaging the brains of
+innumerable sages, stirring the wonder of innumerable mariners; reaching
+also, little by little, to quarters less immediately concerned with the
+business of discovery.  Ships carried the strange tidings of new coasts
+and new islands from port to port throughout the Mediterranean; Venetians
+on the lagoons, Ligurians on the busy trading wharves of Genoa, were
+discussing the great subject; and as the tide rose and spread, it floated
+one ship of life after another that was destined for the great business
+of adventure.  Some it inspired to dream and speculate, and to do no more
+than that; many a heart also to brave efforts and determinations that
+were doomed to come to nothing and to end only in failure.  And among
+others who felt the force and was swayed and lifted by the prevailing
+influence, there lived, some four and a half centuries ago, a little boy
+playing about the wharves of Genoa, well known to his companions as
+Christoforo, son of Domenico the wool-weaver, who lived in the Vico
+Dritto di Ponticello.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE HOME IN GENOA
+
+It is often hard to know how far back we should go in the ancestry of a
+man whose life and character we are trying to reconstruct.  The life that
+is in him is not his own, but is mysteriously transmitted through the
+life of his parents; to the common stock of his family, flesh of their
+flesh, bone of their bone, character of their character, he has but added
+his own personality.  However far back we go in his ancestry, there is
+something of him to be traced, could we but trace it; and although it
+soon becomes so widely scattered that no separate fraction of it seems to
+be recognisable, we know that, generations back, we may come upon some
+sympathetic fact, some reservoir of the essence that was him, in which we
+can find the source of many of his actions, and the clue, perhaps, to his
+character.
+
+In the case of Columbus we are spared this dilemma.  The past is reticent
+enough about the man himself; and about his ancestors it is almost
+silent.  We know that he had a father and grandfather, as all grandsons
+of Adam have had; but we can be certain of very little more than that.
+He came of a race of Italian yeomen inhabiting the Apennine valleys; and
+in the vale of Fontanabuona, that runs up into the hills behind Genoa,
+the two streams of family from which he sprang were united.  His father
+from one hamlet, his mother from another; the towering hills behind, the
+Mediterranean shining in front; love and marriage in the valley; and a
+little boy to come of it whose doings were to shake the world.
+
+His family tree begins for us with his grandfather, Giovanni Colombo of
+Terra-Rossa, one of the hamlets in the valley--concerning whom many human
+facts may be inferred, but only three are certainly known; that he lived,
+begot children, and died.  Lived, first at Terra Rossa, and afterwards
+upon the sea-shore at Quinto; begot children in number three--Antonio,
+Battestina, and Domenico, the father of our Christopher; and died,
+because one of the two facts in his history is that in the year 1444 he
+was not alive, being referred to in a legal document as quondam, or, as
+we should say, "the late."  Of his wife, Christopher's grandmother, since
+she never bought or sold or witnessed anything requiring the record of
+legal document, history speaks no word; although doubtless some pleasant
+and picturesque old lady, or lady other than pleasant and picturesque,
+had place in the experience or imagination of young Christopher.  Of the
+pair, old Quondam Giovanni alone survives the obliterating drift of
+generations, which the shores and brown slopes of Quinto al Mare, where
+he sat in the sun and looked about him, have also survived.  Doubtless
+old Quondam could have told us many things about Domenico, and his
+over-sanguine buyings and sellings; have perhaps told us something about
+Christopher's environment, and cleared up our doubts concerning his first
+home; but he does not.  He will sit in the sun there at Quinto, and sip
+his wine, and say his Hail Marys, and watch the sails of the feluccas
+leaning over the blue floor of the Mediterranean as long as you please;
+but of information about son or family, not a word.  He is content to
+have survived, and triumphantly twinkles his two dates at us across the
+night of time.  1440, alive; 1444, not alive any longer: and so hail and
+farewell, Grandfather John.
+
+
+Of Antonio and Battestina, the uncle and aunt of Columbus, we know next
+to nothing.  Uncle Antonio inherited the estate of Terra-Rossa, Aunt
+Battestina was married in the valley; and so no more of either of them;
+except that Antonio, who also married, had sons, cousins of Columbus, who
+in after years, when he became famous, made themselves unpleasant, as
+poor relations will, by recalling themselves to his remembrance and
+suggesting that something might be done for them.  I have a belief,
+supported by no historical fact or document, that between the families of
+Domenico and Antonio there was a mild cousinly feud.  I believe they did
+not like each other.  Domenico, as we shall see presently, was sanguine
+and venturesome, a great buyer and seller, a maker of bargains in which
+he generally came off second best.  Antonio, who settled in Terra-Rossa,
+the paternal property, doubtless looked askance at these enterprises from
+his vantage-ground of a settled income; doubtless also, on the occasion
+of visits exchanged between the two families, he would comment upon the
+unfortunate enterprises of his brother; and as the children of both
+brothers grew up, they would inherit and exaggerate, as children will,
+this settled difference between their respective parents.  This, of
+course, may be entirely untrue, but I think it possible, and even likely;
+for Columbus in after life displayed a very tender regard for members of
+his family, but never to our knowledge makes any reference to these
+cousins of his, till they send emissaries to him in his hour of triumph.
+At any rate, among the influences that surrounded him at Genoa we may
+reckon this uncle and aunt and their children--dim ghosts to us, but to
+him real people, who walked and spoke, and blinked their eyes and moved
+their limbs, like the men and women of our own time.  Less of a ghost to
+us, though still a very shadowy and doubtful figure, is Domenico himself,
+Christopher's father.  He at least is a man in whom we can feel a warm
+interest, as the one who actually begat and reared the man of our story.
+We shall see him later, and chiefly in difficulties; executing deeds and
+leases, and striking a great variety of legal attitudes, to the
+witnessing of which various members of his family were called in.  Little
+enough good did they to him at the time, poor Domenico; but he was a
+benefactor to posterity without knowing it, and in these grave notarial
+documents preserved almost the only evidence that we have as to the early
+days of his illustrious son.  A kind, sanguine man, this Domenico, who,
+if he failed to make a good deal of money in his various enterprises,
+at least had some enjoyment of them, as the man who buys and sells and
+strikes legal attitudes in every age desires and has.  He was a
+wool-carder by trade, but that was not enough for him; he must buy
+little bits of estates here and there; must even keep a tavern, where he
+and his wife could entertain the foreign sailors and hear the news of
+the world; where also, although perhaps they did not guess it, a sharp
+pair of ears were also listening, and a pair of round eyes gazing, and
+an inquisitive face set in astonishment at the strange tales that went
+about.
+
+There is one fragment of fact about this Domenico that greatly enlarges
+our knowledge of him.  He was a wool-weaver, as we know; he also kept a
+tavern, and no doubt justified the adventure on the plea that it would
+bring him customers for his woollen cloth; for your buyer and seller
+never lacks a reason either for his selling or buying.  Presently he is
+buying again; this time, still with striking of legal attitudes, calling
+together of relations, and accompaniments of crabbed Latin notarial
+documents, a piece of ground in the suburbs of Genoa, consisting of scrub
+and undergrowth, which cannot have been of any earthly use to him.  But
+also, according to the documents, there went some old wine-vats with the
+land.  Domenico, taking a walk after Mass on some feast-day, sees the
+land and the wine-vats; thinks dimly but hopefully how old wine-vats, if
+of no use to any other human creature, should at least be of use to a
+tavern-keeper; hurries back, overpowers the perfunctory objections of his
+complaisant wife, and on the morrow of the feast is off to the notary's
+office.  We may be sure the wine-vats lay and rotted there, and furnished
+no monetary profit to the wool-weaving tavern-keeper; but doubtless they
+furnished him a rich profit of another kind when he walked about his
+newly-acquired property, and explained what he was going to do with the
+wine-vats.
+
+And besides the weaving of wool and pouring of wine and buying and
+selling of land, there were more human occupations, which Domenico was
+not the man to neglect.  He had married, about the year 1450, one
+Susanna, a daughter of Giacomo of Fontana-Rossa, a silk weaver who lived
+in the hamlet near to Terra-Rossa.  Domenico's father was of the more
+consequence of the two, for he had, as well as his home in the valley, a
+house at Quinto, where he probably kept a felucca for purposes of trade
+with Alexandria and the Islands.  Perhaps the young people were married
+at Quinto, but if so they did not live there long, moving soon into
+Genoa, where Domenico could more conveniently work at his trade.  The
+wool-weavers at that time lived in a quarter outside the old city walls,
+between them and the outer borders of the city, which is now occupied by
+the park and public gardens.  Here they had their dwellings and
+workshops, their schools and institutions, receiving every protection and
+encouragement from the Signoria, who recognised the importance of the
+wool trade and its allied industries to Genoa.  Cloth-weavers,
+blanket-makers, silk-weavers, and velvet-makers all lived in this
+quarter, and held their houses under the neighbouring abbey of San
+Stefano.  There are two houses mentioned in documents which seem to have
+been in the possession of Domenico at different times.  One was in the
+suburbs outside the Olive Gate; the other was farther in, by St.
+Andrew's Gate, and quite near to the sea.  The house outside the Olive
+Gate has disappeared; and it was probably here that our Christopher
+first saw the light, and pleased Domenico's heart with his little cries
+and struggles. Neither the day nor even the year is certainly known, but
+there is most reason to believe that it was in the year 1451.  They must
+have moved soon afterwards to the house in the Vico Dritto di
+Ponticello, No. 37, in which most of Christopher's childhood was
+certainly passed.  This is a house close to St. Andrew's Gate, which
+gate still stands in a beautiful and ruinous condition.
+
+From the new part of Genoa, and from the Via XX Settembre, you turn into
+the little Piazza di Ponticello just opposite the church of San Stefano.
+In a moment you are in old Genoa, which is to-day in appearance virtually
+the same as the place in which Christopher and his little brothers and
+sisters made the first steps of their pilgrimage through this world.  If
+the Italian, sun has been shining fiercely upon you, in the great modern
+thoroughfare, you will turn into this quarter of narrow streets and high
+houses with grateful relief.  The past seems to meet you there; and from
+the Piazza, gay with its little provision-shops and fruit stalls, you
+walk up the slope of the Vico Dritto di Ponticello, leaving the sunlight
+behind you, and entering the narrow street like a traveller entering a
+mountain gorge.
+
+It is a very curious street this; I suppose there is no street in the
+world that has more character.  Genoa invented sky-scrapers long before
+Columbus had discovered America, or America had invented steel frames for
+high building; but although many of the houses in the Vico Dritto di
+Ponticello are seven and eight storeys high, the width of the street from
+house-wall to house-wall does not average more than nine feet.  The
+street is not straight, moreover; it winds a little in its ascent to the
+old city wall and St. Andrew's Gate, so that you do not even see the sky
+much as you look forward and upwards.  The jutting cornices of the roofs,
+often beautifully decorated, come together in a medley of angles and
+corners that practically roof the street over; and only here and there do
+you see a triangle or a parallelogram of the vivid brilliant blue that is
+the sky.  Besides being seven or eight storeys high, the houses are the
+narrowest in the world; I should think that their average width on the
+street front is ten feet.  So as you walk up this street where young
+Christopher lived you must think of it in these three dimensions towering
+slices of houses, ten or twelve feet in width: a street often not more
+than eight and seldom more than fifteen feet in width; and the walls of
+the houses themselves, painted in every colour, green and pink and grey
+and white, and trellised with the inevitable green window-shutters of the
+South, standing like cliffs on each side of you seven or eight rooms
+high.  There being so little horizontal space for the people to live
+there, what little there is is most economically used; and all across the
+tops of the houses, high above your head, the cliffs are joined by wires
+and clothes-lines from which thousands of brightly-dyed garments are
+always hanging and fluttering; higher still, where the top storeys of the
+houses become merged in roof, there are little patches of garden and
+greenery, where geraniums and delicious tangling creepers uphold thus
+high above the ground the fertile tradition of earth.  You walk slowly up
+the paved street.  One of its characteristics, which it shares with the
+old streets of most Italian towns, is that it is only used by
+foot-passengers, being of course too narrow for wheels; and it is paved
+across with flagstones from door to door, so that the feet and the
+voices echo pleasantly in it, and make a music of their own.  Without
+exception the ground floor of every house is a shop--the gayest, busiest
+most industrious little shops in the world.  There are shops for
+provisions, where the delightful macaroni lies in its various bins, and
+all kinds of frugal and nourishing foods are offered for sale.  There
+are shops for clothes and dyed finery; there are shops for boots, where
+boots hang in festoons like onions outside the window--I have never seen
+so many boot-shops at once in my life as I saw in the streets
+surrounding the house of Columbus.  And every shop that is not a
+provision-shop or a clothes-shop or a boot-shop, is a wine-shop--or at
+least you would think so, until you remember, after you have walked
+through the street, what a lot of other kinds of shops you have seen on
+your way.  There are shops for newspapers and tobacco, for cheap
+jewellery, for brushes, for chairs and tables and articles of wood;
+there are shops with great stacks and piles of crockery; there are shops
+for cheese and butter and milk--indeed from this one little street in
+Genoa you could supply every necessary and every luxury of a humble
+life.
+
+As you still go up, the street takes a slight bend; and immediately
+before you, you see it spanned by the lofty crumbled arch of St.
+Andrew's Gate, with its two mighty towers one on each side.  Just as you
+see it you are at Columbus's house.  The number is thirty-seven; it is
+like any of the other houses, tall and narrow; and there is a slab built
+into the wall above the first storey, on which is written this
+inscription:--
+
+                      NVLLA DOMVS TITVLO DIGNIOR
+                                 HEIC
+                          PATERNIS IN AEDIBV
+                        CHRISTOPHORVS COLVMBVS
+                               PVERITIAM
+                      PRIMAMQVE IVVENTAM TRANSEGIT
+
+You stop and look at it; and presently you become conscious of a
+difference between it and all the other houses.  They are all alert,
+busy, noisy, crowded with life in every storey, oozing vitality from
+every window; but of all the narrow vertical strips that make up the
+houses of the street, this strip numbered thirty-seven is empty, silent,
+and dead.  The shutters veil its windows; within it is dark, empty of
+furniture, and inhabited only by a memory and a spirit.  It is a strange
+place in which to stand and to think of all that has happened since the
+man of our thoughts looked forth from these windows, a common little boy.
+The world is very much alive in the Vico Dritto di Ponticello; the little
+freshet of life that flows there flows loud and incessant; and yet into
+what oceans of death and silence has it not poured since it carried forth
+Christopher on its stream!  One thinks of the continent of that New World
+that he discovered, and all the teeming millions of human lives that have
+sprung up and died down, and sprung up again, and spread and increased
+there; all the ploughs that have driven into its soil, the harvests that
+have ripened, the waving acres and miles of grain that have answered the
+call of Spring and Autumn since first the bow of his boat grated on the
+shore of Guanahani.  And yet of the two scenes this narrow shuttered
+house in a bye-street of Genoa is at once the more wonderful and more
+credible; for it contains the elements of the other.  Walls and floors
+and a roof, a place to eat and sleep in, a place to work and found a
+family, and give tangible environment to a human soul--there is all human
+enterprise and discovery, effort, adventure, and life in that.
+
+
+If Christopher wanted to go down to the sea he would have to pass under
+the Gate of St. Andrew, with the old prison, now pulled down to make room
+for the modern buildings, on his right, and go down the Salita del
+Prione, which is a continuation of the Vico Dritto di Ponticello.  It
+slopes downwards from the Gate as the first street sloped upwards to it;
+and it contains the same assortment of shops and of houses, the same
+mixture of handicrafts and industries, as were seen in the Vico Dritto di
+Ponticello.  Presently he would come to the Piazza dell' Erbe, where
+there is no grass, but only a pleasant circle of little houses and shops,
+with already a smack of the sea in them, chiefly suggested by the shops
+of instrument-makers, where to-day there are compasses and sextants and
+chronometers.  Out of the Piazza you come down the Via di San Donato and
+into the Piazza of that name, where for over nine centuries the church of
+San Donato has faced the sun and the weather.  From there Christopher's
+young feet would follow the winding Via di San Bernato, a street also
+inhabited by craftsmen and workers in wood and metal; and at the last
+turn of it, a gash of blue between the two cliffwalls of houses, you see
+the Mediterranean.
+
+Here, then, between the narrow little house by the Gate and the clamour
+and business of the sea-front, our Christopher's feet carried him daily
+during some part of his childish life.  What else he did, what he thought
+and felt, what little reflections he had, are but matters of conjecture.
+Genoa will tell you nothing more.  You may walk over the very spot where
+he was born; you may unconsciously tread in the track of his vanished
+feet; you may wander about the wharves of the city, and see the ships
+loading and unloading--different ships, but still trafficking in
+commodities not greatly different from those of his day; you may climb
+the heights behind Genoa, and look out upon the great curving Gulf from
+Porto Fino to where the Cape of the western Riviera dips into the sea;
+you may walk along the coast to Savona, where Domenico had one of his
+many habitations, where he kept the tavern, and whither Christopher's
+young feet must also have walked; and you may come back and search again
+in the harbour, from the old Mole and the Bank of St. George to where the
+port and quays stretch away to the medley of sailing-ships and steamers;
+but you will not find any sign or trace of Christopher.  No echo of the
+little voice that shrilled in the narrow street sounds in the Vico
+Dritto; the houses stand gaunt and straight, with a brilliant strip of
+blue sky between their roofs and the cool street beneath; but they give
+you nothing of what you seek.  If you see a little figure running towards
+you in a blue smock, the head fair-haired, the face blue-eyed and a
+little freckled with the strong sunshine, it is not a real figure; it is
+a child of your dreams and a ghost of the past.  You may chase him while
+he runs about the wharves and stumbles over the ropes, but you will never
+catch him.  He runs before you, zigzagging over the cobbles, up the sunny
+street, into the narrow house; out again, running now towards the Duomo,
+hiding in the porch of San Stefano, where the weavers held their
+meetings; back again along the wharves; surely he is hiding behind that
+mooring-post!  But you look, and he is not there--nothing but the old
+harbour dust that the wind stirs into a little eddy while you look.  For
+he belongs not to you or me, this child; he is not yet enslaved to the
+great purpose, not yet caught up into the machinery of life.  His eye has
+not yet caught the fire of the sun setting on a western sea; he is still
+free and happy, and belongs only to those who love him.  Father and
+mother, brothers Bartolomeo and Giacomo, sister Biancinetta, aunts,
+uncles, and cousins possibly, and possibly for a little while an old
+grandmother at Quinto--these were the people to whom that child belonged.
+The little life of his first decade, unviolated by documents or history,
+lives happily in our dreams, as blank as sunshine.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+YOUNG CHRISTOPHER
+
+Christopher was fourteen years old when he first went to sea.  That
+is his own statement, and it is one of the few of his autobiographical
+utterances that we need not doubt.  From it, and from a knowledge of
+certain other dates, we are able to construct some vague picture of his
+doings before he left Italy and settled in Portugal.  Already in his
+young heart he was feeling the influence that was to direct and shape
+his destiny; already, towards his home in Genoa, long ripples from the
+commotion of maritime adventure in the West were beginning to spread.
+At the age of ten he was apprenticed to his father, who undertook,
+according to the indentures, to provide him with board and lodging, a
+blue gabardine and a pair of good shoes, and various other matters in
+return for his service.  But there is no reason to suppose that he ever
+occupied himself very much with wool-weaving.  He had a vocation quite
+other than that, and if he ever did make any cloth there must have been
+some strange thoughts and imaginings woven into it, as he plied the
+shuttle.  Most of his biographers, relying upon a doubtful statement in
+the life of him written by his son Ferdinand, would have us send him at
+the age of twelve to the distant University of Pavia, there, poor mite,
+to sit at the feet of learned professors studying Latin, mathematics, and
+cosmography; but fortunately it is not necessary to believe so improbable
+a statement.  What is much more likely about his education--for education
+he had, although not of the superior kind with which he has been
+credited--is that in the blank, sunny time of his childhood he was sent
+to one of the excellent schools established by the weavers in their own
+quarter, and that there or afterwards he came under some influence, both
+religious and learned, which stamped him the practical visionary that he
+remained throughout his life.  Thereafter, between his sea voyagings and
+expeditions about the Mediterranean coasts, he no doubt acquired
+knowledge in the only really practical way that it can be acquired; that
+is to say, he received it as and when he needed it.  What we know is that
+he had in later life some knowledge of the works of Aristotle, Julius
+Caesar, Seneca, Pliny, and Ptolemy; of Ahmet-Ben-Kothair the Arabic
+astronomer, Rochid the Arabian, and the Rabbi Samuel the Jew; of Isadore
+the Spaniard, and Bede and Scotus the Britons; of Strabo the German,
+Gerson the Frenchman, and Nicolaus de Lira the Italian.  These names
+cover a wide range, but they do not imply university education.  Some of
+them merely suggest acquaintance with the 'Imago Mundi'; others imply
+that selective faculty, the power of choosing what can help a man's
+purpose and of rejecting what is useless to it, that is one of the marks
+of genius, and an outward sign of the inner light.
+
+We must think of him, then, at school in Genoa, grinding out the tasks
+that are the common heritage of all small boys; working a little at the
+weaving, interestedly enough at first, no doubt, while the importance of
+having a loom appealed to him, but also no doubt rapidly cooling off in
+his enthusiasm as the pastime became a task, and the restriction of
+indoor life began to be felt.  For if ever there was a little boy who
+loved to idle about the wharves and docks, here was that little boy.
+It was here, while he wandered about the crowded quays and listened to
+the medley of talk among the foreign sailors, and looked beyond the masts
+of the ships into the blue distance of the sea, that the desire to wander
+and go abroad upon the face of the waters must first have stirred in his
+heart.  The wharves of Genoa in those days combined in themselves all the
+richness of romance and adventure, buccaneering, trading, and
+treasure-snatching, that has ever crowded the pages of romance.  There
+were galleys and caravels, barques and feluccas, pinnaces and caraccas.
+There were slaves in the galleys, and bowmen to keep the slaves in
+subjection. There were dark-bearded Spaniards, fair-haired Englishmen;
+there were Greeks, and Indians, and Portuguese.  The bales of goods on
+the harbour-side were eloquent of distant lands, and furnished object
+lessons in the only geography that young Christopher was likely to be
+learning.  There was cotton from Egypt, and tin and lead from
+Southampton.  There were butts of Malmsey from Candia; aloes and cassia
+and spices from Socotra; rhubarb from Persia; silk from India; wool from
+Damascus, raw wool also from Calais and Norwich.  No wonder if the
+little house in the Vico Dritto di Ponticello became too narrow for the
+boy; and no wonder that at the age of fourteen he was able to have his
+way, and go to sea.  One can imagine him gradually acquiring an
+influence over his father, Domenico, as his will grew stronger and
+firmer--he with one grand object in life, Domenico with none; he with a
+single clear purpose, and Domenico with innumerable cloudy ones.  And
+so, on some day in the distant past, there were farewells and anxious
+hearts in the weaver's house, and Christopher, member of the crew of
+some trading caravel or felucca, a diminishing object to the wet eyes
+of his mother, sailed away, and faded into the blue distance.
+
+They had lost him, although perhaps they did not realise it; from the
+moment of his first voyage the sea claimed him as her own.  Widening
+horizons, slatting of cords and sails in the wind, storms and stars and
+strange landfalls and long idle calms, thunder of surges, tingle of
+spray, and eternal labouring and threshing and cleaving of infinite
+waters--these were to be his portion and true home hereafter.
+Attendances at Court, conferences with learned monks and bishops,
+sojourns on lonely islands, love under stars in the gay, sun-smitten
+Spanish towns, governings and parleyings in distant, undreamed-of lands
+--these were to be but incidents in his true life, which was to be
+fulfilled in the solitude of sea watches.
+
+When he left his home on this first voyage, he took with him one other
+thing besides the restless longing to escape beyond the line of sea and
+sky.  Let us mark well this possession of his, for it was his companion
+and guiding-star throughout a long and difficult life, his chart and
+compass, astrolabe and anchor, in one.  Religion has in our days fallen
+into decay among men of intellect and achievement.  The world has thrown
+it, like a worn garment or an old skin, from off its body, the thing
+itself being no longer real and alive, and in harmony with the life of
+an age that struggles towards a different kind of truth.  It is hard,
+therefore, for us to understand exactly how the religion of Columbus
+entered so deeply into his life and brooded so widely over his thoughts.
+
+Hardest of all is it for people whose only experience of religion is of
+Puritan inheritance to comprehend how, in the fifteenth century, the
+strong intellect was strengthened, and the stout heart fortified, by the
+thought of hosts of saints and angels hovering above a man's incomings
+and outgoings to guide and protect him.  Yet in an age that really had
+the gift of faith, in which religion was real and vital, and part of the
+business of every man's daily life; in which it stood honoured in the
+world, loaded with riches, crowned with learning, wielding government
+both temporal and spiritual, it was a very brave panoply for the soul of
+man.  The little boy in Genoa, with the fair hair and blue eyes and grave
+freckled face that made him remarkable among his dark companions, had no
+doubt early received and accepted the vast mysteries of the Christian
+faith; and as that other mystery began to grow in his mind, and that idea
+of worlds that might lie beyond the sea-line began to take shape in his
+thoughts, he found in the holy wisdom of the prophets, and the inspired
+writings of the fathers, a continual confirmation of his faith.  The full
+conviction of these things belongs to a later period of his life; but
+probably, during his first voyagings in the Mediterranean, there hung in
+his mind echoes of psalms and prophecies that had to do with things
+beyond the world of his vision and experience.  The sun, whose going
+forth is to the end of heaven, his circuit back to the end of it, and
+from whose heat there is nothing hid; the truth, holy and prevailing,
+that knows no speech nor language where its voice is not heard; the great
+and wide sea, with its creeping things innumerable, and beasts small and
+great--no wonder if these things impressed him, and if gradually, as his
+way fell clearer before him, and the inner light began to shine more
+steadily, he came to believe that he had a special mission to carry the
+torch of the faith across the Sea of Darkness, and be himself the bearer
+of a truth that was to go through all the earth, and of words that were
+to travel to the world's end.
+
+In this faith, then, and with this equipment, and about the year 1465,
+Christopher Columbus began his sea travels.  His voyages would be
+doubtless at first much along the coasts, and across to Alexandria and
+the Islands.  There would be returnings to Genoa, and glad welcomings by
+the little household in the narrow street; in 1472 and 1473 he was with
+his father at Savona, helping with the wool-weaving and tavern-keeping;
+possibly also there were interviews with Benincasa, who was at that time
+living in Genoa, and making his famous sea-charts.  Perhaps it was in his
+studio that Christopher first saw a chart, and first fell in love with
+the magic that can transfer the shapes of oceans and continents to a
+piece of paper.  Then he would be off again in another ship, to the
+Golden Horn perhaps, or the Black Sea, for the Genoese had a great
+Crimean trade.  This is all conjecture, but very reasonable conjecture;
+what we know for a fact is that he saw the white gum drawn from the
+lentiscus shrubs in Chio at the time of their flowering; that fragrant
+memory is preserved long afterwards in his own writings, evoked by some
+incident in the newly-discovered islands of the West.  There are vague
+rumours and stories of his having been engaged in various expeditions
+--among them one fitted out in Genoa by John of Anjou to recover the
+kingdom of Naples for King Rene of Provence; but there is no reason to
+believe these rumours: good reason to disbelieve them, rather.
+
+The lives that the sea absorbs are passed in a great variety of adventure
+and experience, but so far as the world is concerned they are passed in a
+profound obscurity; and we need not wonder that of all the mariners who
+used those seas, and passed up and down, and held their course by the
+stars, and reefed their sails before the sudden squalls that came down
+from the mountains, and shook them out again in the calm sunshine that
+followed, there is no record of the one among their number who was
+afterwards to reef and steer and hold his course to such mighty purpose.
+For this period, then, we must leave him to the sea, and to the vast
+anonymity of sea life.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+DOMENICO
+
+Christopher is gone, vanished over that blue horizon; and the tale of
+life in Genoa goes on without him very much as before, except that
+Domenico has one apprentice less, and, a matter becoming of some
+importance in the narrow condition of his finances, one boy less to feed
+and clothe.  For good Domenico, alas! is no economist.  Those hardy
+adventures of his in the buying and selling line do not prosper him; the
+tavern does not pay; perhaps the tavern-keeper is too hospitable; at any
+rate, things are not going well.  And yet Domenico had a good start; as
+his brother Antonio has doubtless often told him, he had the best of old
+Giovanni's inheritance; he had the property at Quinto, and other property
+at Ginestreto, and some ground rents at Pradella; a tavern at Savona, a
+shop there and at Genoa--really, Domenico has no excuse for his
+difficulties.  In 1445 he was selling land at Quinto, presumably with the
+consent of old Giovanni, if he was still alive; and if he was not living,
+then immediately after his death, in the first pride of possession.
+
+In 1450 he bought a pleasant house at Quarto, a village on the sea-shore
+about a mile to the west of Quinto and about five miles to the east of
+Genoa.  It was probably a pure speculation, as he immediately leased the
+house for two years, and never lived in it himself, although it was a
+pleasant place, with an orchard of olives and figs and various other
+trees--'arboratum olivis ficubus et aliis diversis arboribus'.  His next
+recorded transaction is in 1466, when he went security for a friend,
+doubtless with disastrous results.  In 1473 he sold the house at the
+Olive Gate, that suburban dwelling where probably Christopher was born,
+and in 1474 he invested the proceeds of that sale in a piece of land
+which I have referred to before, situated in the suburbs of Savona, with
+which were sold those agreeable and useless wine-vats.  Domenico was
+living at Savona then, and the property which he so fatuously acquired
+consisted of two large pieces of land on the Via Valcalda, containing a
+few vines, a plantation of fruit-trees, and a large area of shrub and
+underwood.  The price, however, was never paid in full, and was the cause
+of a lawsuit which dragged on for forty years, and was finally settled by
+Don Diego Columbus, Christopher's son, who sent a special authority from
+Hispaniola.
+
+Owing, no doubt, to the difficulties that this un fortunate purchase
+plunged him into, Domenico was obliged to mortgage his house at St.
+Andrew's Gate in the year 1477; and in 1489 he finally gave it up to
+Jacob Baverelus, the cheese-monger, his son-in-law.  Susanna, who had
+been the witness of his melancholy transactions for so many years, and
+possibly the mainstay of that declining household, died in 1494; but not,
+we may hope, before she had heard of the fame of her son Christopher.
+Domenico, in receipt of a pension from the famous Admiral of the Ocean,
+and no doubt talking with a deal of pride and inaccuracy about the
+discovery of the New World, lived on until 1498; when he died also, and
+vanished out of this world.  He had fulfilled a noble destiny in being
+the father of Christopher Columbus.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+SEA THOUGHTS
+
+The long years that Christopher Columbus spent at sea in making voyages
+to and from his home in Genoa, years so blank to us, but to him who lived
+them so full of life and active growth, were most certainly fruitful in
+training and equipping him for that future career of which as yet,
+perhaps, he did not dream.  The long undulating waves of the
+Mediterranean, with land appearing and dissolving away in the morning and
+evening mists, the business of ship life, harsh and rough in detail, but
+not too absorbing to the mind of a common mariner to prevent any thoughts
+he might have finding room to grow and take shape; sea breezes, sea
+storms, sea calms; these were the setting of his knowledge and experience
+as he fared from port to port and from sea to sea.  He is a very elusive
+figure in that environment of misty blue, very hard to hold and identify,
+very shy of our scrutiny, and inaccessible even to our speculation.  If
+we would come up with him, and place ourselves in some kind of sympathy
+with the thoughts that were forming in his brain, it is necessary that we
+should, for the moment, forget much of what we know of the world, and
+assume the imperfect knowledge of the globe that man possessed in those
+years when Columbus was sailing the Mediterranean.
+
+That the earth was a round globe of land and water was a fact that, after
+many contradictions and uncertainties, intelligent men had by this time
+accepted.  A conscious knowledge of the world as a whole had been a part
+of human thought for many hundreds of years; and the sphericity of the
+earth had been a theory in the sixth century before Christ.  In the
+fourth century Aristotle had watched the stars and eclipses; in the third
+century Eratosthenes had measured a degree of latitude, and measured it
+wrong;--[Not so very wrong.  D.W.]--in the second century the
+philosopher Crates had constructed a rude sort of globe, on which were
+marked the known kingdoms of the earth, and some also unknown.  With the
+coming of the Christian era the theory of the roundness of the earth
+began to be denied; and as knowledge and learning became gathered into
+the hands of the Church they lost something of their clarity and
+singleness, and began to be used arbitrarily as evidence for or against
+other and less material theories.  St. Chrysostom opposed the theory of
+the earth's roundness; St. Isidore taught it; and so also did St.
+Augustine, as we might expect from a man of his wisdom who lived so long
+in a monastery that looked out to sea from a high point, and who wrote
+the words 'Ubi magnitudo, ibi veritas'.  In the sixth century of the
+Christian era Bishop Cosmas gave much thought to this matter of a round
+world, and found a new argument which to his mind (poor Cosmas!) disposed
+of it very clearly; for he argued that, if the world were round, the
+people dwelling at the antipodes could not see Christ at His coming, and
+that therefore the earth was not round.  But Bede, in the eighth century,
+established it finally as a part of human knowledge that the earth and
+all the heavenly bodies were spheres, and after that the fact was not
+again seriously disputed.
+
+What lay beyond the frontier of the known was a speculation inseparable
+from the spirit of exploration.  Children, and people who do not travel,
+are generally content, when their thoughts stray beyond the paths trodden
+by their feet, to believe that the greater world is but a continuation on
+every side of their own environment; indeed, without the help of sight or
+suggestion, it is almost impossible to believe anything else.  If you
+stand on an eminence in a great plain and think of the unseen country
+that lies beyond the horizon, trying to visualise it and imagine that you
+see it, the eye of imagination can only see the continuance or projection
+of what is seen by the bodily sight.  If you think, you can occupy the
+invisible space with a landscape made up from your own memory and
+knowledge: you may think of mountain chains and rivers, although there
+are none visible to your sight, or you may imagine vast seas and islands,
+oceans and continents.  This, however, is thought, not pure imagination;
+and even so, with every advantage of thought and knowledge, you will not
+be able to imagine beyond your horizon a space of sea so wide that the
+farther shore is invisible, and yet imagine the farther shore also.  You
+will see America across the Atlantic and Japan across the Pacific; but
+you cannot see, in one single effort of the imagination, an Atlantic of
+empty blue water stretching to an empty horizon, another beyond that
+equally vast and empty, another beyond that, and so on until you have
+spanned the thousand horizons that lie between England and America.  The
+mind, that is to say, works in steps and spans corresponding to the spans
+of physical sight; it cannot clear itself enough from the body, or rise
+high enough beyond experience, to comprehend spaces so much vaster than
+anything ever seen by the eye of man.  So also with the stretching of the
+horizon which bounded human knowledge of the earth.  It moved step by
+step; if one of Prince Henry's captains, creeping down the west coast of
+Africa, discovered a cape a hundred miles south of the known world, the
+most he could probably do was to imagine that there might lie, still
+another hundred miles farther south, another cape; to sail for it in
+faith and hope, to find it, and to imagine another possibility yet
+another hundred miles away.  So far as experience went back, faith could
+look forward.  It is thus with the common run of mankind; yesterday's
+march is the measure of to-morrow's; as much as they have done once, they
+may do again; they fear it will be not much more; they hope it may be not
+much less.
+
+The history of the exploration of the world up to the day when Columbus
+set sail from Palos is just such a history of steps.  The Phoenicians
+coasting from harbour to harbour through the Mediterranean; the Romans
+marching from camp to camp, from country to country; the Jutes venturing
+in their frail craft into the stormy northern seas, making voyages a
+little longer and more daring every time, until they reached England; the
+captains of Prince Henry of Portugal feeling their way from voyage to
+voyage down the coast of Africa--there are no bold flights into the
+incredible here, but patient and business-like progress from one
+stepping-stone to another.  Dangers and hardships there were, and brave
+followings of the faint will-o'-the-wisp of faith in what lay beyond; but
+there were no great launchings into space.  They but followed a line that
+was the continuance or projection of the line they had hitherto followed;
+what they did was brave and glorious, but it was reasonable.  What
+Columbus did, on the contrary, was, as we shall see later, against all
+reason and knowledge.  It was a leap in the dark towards some star
+invisible to all but him; for he who sets forth across the desert sand or
+sea must have a brighter sun to guide him than that which sets and rises
+on the day of the small man.
+
+
+Our familiarity with maps and atlases makes it difficult for us to think
+of the world in other terms than those of map and diagram; knowledge and
+science have focussed things for us, and our imagination has in
+consequence shrunk.  It is almost impossible, when thinking of the earth
+as a whole, to think about it except as a picture drawn, or as a small
+globe with maps traced upon it.  I am sure that our imagination has a far
+narrower angle--to borrow a term from the science of lenses--than the
+imagination of men who lived in the fifteenth century.  They thought of
+the world in its actual terms--seas, islands, continents, gulfs, rivers,
+oceans.  Columbus had seen maps and charts--among them the famous
+'portolani' of Benincasa at Genoa; but I think it unlikely that he was so
+familiar with them as to have adopted their terms in his thoughts about
+the earth.  He had seen the Mediterranean and sailed upon it before he
+had seen a chart of it; he knew a good deal of the world itself before he
+had seen a map of it.  He had more knowledge of the actual earth and sea
+than he had of pictures or drawings of them; and therefore, if we are to
+keep in sympathetic touch with him, we must not think too closely of
+maps, but of land and sea themselves.
+
+The world that Columbus had heard about as being within the knowledge of
+men extended on the north to Iceland and Scandinavia, on the south to a
+cape one hundred miles south of the Equator, and to the east as far as
+China and Japan.  North and South were not important to the spirit of
+that time; it was East and West that men thought of when they thought of
+the expansion and the discovery of the world.  And although they admitted
+that the earth was a sphere, I think it likely that they imagined
+(although the imagination was contrary to their knowledge) that the line
+of West and East was far longer, and full of vaster possibilities, than
+that of North and South.  North was familiar ground to them--one voyage
+to England, another to Iceland, another to Scandinavia; there was nothing
+impossible about that.  Southward was another matter; but even here there
+was no ambition to discover the limit of the world.  It is an error
+continually made by the biographers of Columbus that the purpose of
+Prince Henry's explorations down the coast of Africa was to find a sea
+road to the West Indies by way of the East.  It was nothing of the kind.
+There was no idea in the minds of the Portuguese of the land which
+Columbus discovered, and which we now know as the West Indies.  Mr.
+Vignaud contends that the confusion arose from the very loose way in
+which the term India was applied in the Middle Ages.  Several Indias were
+recognised.  There was an India beyond the Ganges; a Middle India between
+the Ganges and the Indus; and a Lesser India, in which were included
+Arabia, Abyssinia, and the countries about the Red Sea.  These divisions
+were, however, quite vague, and varied in different periods.  In the time
+of Columbus the word India meant the kingdom of Prester John, that
+fabulous monarch who had been the subject of persistent legends since the
+twelfth century; and it was this India to which the Portuguese sought a
+sea road.  They had no idea of a barrier cape far to the south, the
+doubling of which would open a road for them to the west; nor were they,
+as Mr. Vignaud believes, trying to open a route for the spice trade with
+the Orient.  They had no great spice trade, and did not seek more; what
+they did seek was an extension of their ordinary trade with Guinea and
+the African coast.  To the maritime world of the fifteenth century, then,
+the South as a geographical region and as a possible point of discovery
+had no attractions.
+
+To the west stretched what was known as the Sea of Darkness, about which
+even the cool knowledge of the geographers and astronomers could not
+think steadily.  Nothing was known about it, it did not lead anywhere,
+there were no people there, there was no trade in that direction.  The
+tides of history and of life avoided it; only now and then some terrified
+mariner, blown far out of his course, came back with tales of sea
+monsters and enchanted disappearing islands, and shores that receded, and
+coasts upon which no one could make a landfall.  The farthest land known
+to the west was the Azores; beyond that stretched a vague and impossible
+ocean of terror and darkness, of which the Arabian writer Xerif al
+Edrisi, whose countrymen were the sea-kings of the Middle Ages, wrote as
+follows:
+
+     "The ocean encircles the ultimate bounds of the inhabited earth, and
+     all beyond it is unknown.  No one has been able to verify anything
+     concerning it, on account of its difficult and perilous navigation,
+     its great obscurity, its profound depth, and frequent tempests;
+     through fear of its mighty fishes and its haughty winds; yet there
+     are many islands in it, some peopled, others uninhabited.  There is
+     no mariner who dares to enter into its deep waters; or if any have
+     done so, they have merely kept along its coasts, fearful of
+     departing from them.  The waves of this ocean, although they roll as
+     high as mountains, yet maintain themselves without breaking; for if
+     they broke it would be impossible for a ship to plough them."
+
+It is another illustration of the way in which discovery and imagination
+had hitherto gone by steps and not by flights, that geographical
+knowledge reached the islands of the Atlantic (none of which were at a
+very great distance from the coast of Europe or from each other) at a
+comparatively early date, and stopped there until in Columbus there was
+found a man with faith strong enough to make the long flight beyond them
+to the unknown West.  And yet the philosophers, and later the
+cartographers, true to their instinct for this pedestrian kind of
+imagination, put mythical lands and islands to the westward of the known
+islands as though they were really trying to make a way, to sink stepping
+stones into the deep sea that would lead their thoughts across the
+unknown space.  In the Catalan map of the world, which was the standard
+example of cosmography in the early days of Columbus, most of these
+mythical islands are marked.  There was the island of Antilia, which was
+placed in 25 deg. 35' W., and was said to have been discovered by Don
+Roderick, the last of the Gothic kings of Spain, who fled there after
+his defeat by the Moors.  There was the island of the Seven Cities,
+which is sometimes identified with this Antilia, and was the object of a
+persistent belief or superstition on the part of the inhabitants of the
+Canary Islands.  They saw, or thought they saw, about ninety leagues to
+the westward, an island with high peaks and deep valleys.  The vision was
+intermittent; it was only seen in very clear weather, on some of those
+pure, serene days of the tropics when in the clear atmosphere distant
+objects appear to be close at hand.  In cloudy, and often in clear
+weather also, it was not to be seen at all; but the inhabitants of the
+Canaries, who always saw it in the same place, were so convinced of its
+reality that they petitioned the King of Portugal to allow them to go and
+take possession of it; and several expeditions were in fact despatched,
+but none ever came up with that fairy land.  It was called the island of
+the Seven Cities from a legend of seven bishops who had fled from Spain
+at the time of the Moorish conquest, and, landing upon this island, had
+founded there seven splendid cities.  There was the island of St.
+Brandan, called after the Saint who set out from Ireland in the sixth
+century in search of an island which always receded before his ships;
+this island was placed several hundred miles to the west of the Canaries
+on maps and charts through out the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
+There was the island of Brazil, to the west of Cape St. Vincent; the
+islands of Royllo, San Giorgio, and Isola di Mam; but they were all
+islands of dreams, seen by the eyes of many mariners in that imaginative
+time, but never trodden by any foot of man.  To Columbus, however, and
+the mariners of his day, they were all real places, which a man might
+reach by special good fortune or heroism, but which, all things
+considered, it was not quite worth the while of any man to attempt to
+reach.  They have all disappeared from our charts, like the Atlantis of
+Plato, that was once charted to the westward of the Straits of Gibraltar,
+and of which the Canaries were believed to be the last peaks unsubmerged.
+
+Sea myths and legends are strange things, and do not as a rule persist in
+the minds of men unless they have had some ghostly foundation; so it is
+possible that these fabled islands of the West were lands that had
+actually been seen by living eyes, although their position could never be
+properly laid down nor their identity assured.  Of all the wandering
+seamen who talked in the wayside taverns of Atlantic seaports, some must
+have had strange tales to tell; tales which sometimes may have been true,
+but were never believed.  Vague rumours hung about those shores, like
+spray and mist about a headland, of lands seen and lost again in the
+unknown and uncharted ocean.  Doubtless the lamp of faith, the inner
+light, burned in some of these storm-tossed men; but all they had was a
+glimpse here and there, seen for a moment and lost again; not the clear
+sight of faith by which Columbus steered his westward course.
+
+
+The actual outposts of western occupation, then, were the Azores, which
+were discovered by Genoese sailors in the pay of Portugal early in the
+fourteenth century; the Canaries, which had been continuously discovered
+and rediscovered since the Phoenicians occupied them and Pliny chose them
+for his Hesperides; and Madeira, which is believed to have been
+discovered by an Englishman under the following very romantic and moving
+circumstances.
+
+In the reign of Edward the Third a young man named Robert Machin fell in
+love with a beautiful girl, his superior in rank, Anne Dorset or d'Urfey
+by name.  She loved him also, but her relations did not love him; and
+therefore they had Machin imprisoned upon some pretext or other, and
+forcibly married the young lady to a nobleman who had a castle on the
+shores of the Bristol Channel.
+
+The marriage being accomplished, and the girl carried away by her
+bridegroom to his seat in the West, it was thought safe to release
+Machin.  Whereupon he collected several friends, and they followed the
+newly-married couple to Bristol and laid their plans for an abduction.
+One of the friends got himself engaged as a groom in the service of the
+unhappy bride, and found her love unchanged, and if possible increased by
+the present misery she was in.  An escape was planned; and one day, when
+the girl and her groom were riding in the park, they set spurs to their
+horses, and galloped off to a place on the shores of the Bristol Channel
+where young Robert had a boat on the beach and a ship in the offing.
+They set sail immediately, intending to make for France, where the
+reunited lovers hoped to live happily; but it came on to blow when they
+were off the Lizard, and a southerly gale, which lasted for thirteen
+days, drove them far out of their course.
+
+The bride, from her joy and relief, fell into a state of the gloomiest
+despondency, believing that the hand of God was turned against her,
+and that their love would never be enjoyed.  The tempest fell on the
+fourteenth day, and at the break of morning the sea-worn company saw
+trees and land ahead of them.  In the sunrise they landed upon an island
+full of noble trees, about which flights of singing birds were hovering,
+and in which the sweetest fruits, the most lovely flowers, and the purest
+and most limpid waters abounded.  Machin and his bride and their friends
+made an encampment on a flowery meadow in a sheltered valley, where for
+three days they enjoyed the sweetness and rest of the shore and the
+companionship of all kinds of birds and beasts, which showed no signs of
+fear at their presence.  On the third day a storm arose, and raged for a
+night over the island; and in the morning the adventurers found that
+their ship was nowhere to be seen.  The despair of the little company was
+extreme, and was increased by the condition of poor Anne, upon whom
+terror and remorse again fell, and so preyed upon her mind that in three
+days she was dead.  Her lover, who had braved so much and won her so
+gallantly, was turned to stone by this misfortune.  Remorse and aching
+desolation oppressed him; from the moment of her death he scarcely ate
+nor spoke; and in five days he also was dead, surely of a broken heart.
+They buried him beside his mistress under a spreading tree, and put up a
+wooden cross there, with a prayer that any Christians who might come to
+the island would build a chapel to Jesus the Saviour.  The rest of the
+party then repaired their little boat and put to sea; were cast upon the
+coast of Morocco, captured by the Moors, and thrown into prison.  With
+them in prison was a Spanish pilot named Juan de Morales, who listened
+attentively to all they could tell him about the situation and condition
+of the island, and who after his release communicated what he knew to
+Prince Henry of Portugal.  The island of Madeira was thus rediscovered in
+1418, and in 1425 was colonised by Prince Henry, who appointed as
+Governor Bartolomeo de Perestrello, whose daughter was afterwards to
+become the wife of Columbus.
+
+So much for the outposts of the Old World.  Of the New World, about the
+possibility of which Columbus is beginning to dream as he sails the
+Mediterranean, there was no knowledge and hardly any thought.  Though new
+in the thoughts of Columbus, it was very old in itself; generations of
+men had lived and walked and spoken and toiled there, ever since men came
+upon the earth; sun and shower, the thrill of the seasons, birth and life
+and death, had been visiting it for centuries and centuries.  And it is
+quite possible that, long before even the civilisation that produced
+Columbus was in its dawn, men from the Old World had journeyed there.
+There are two very old fragments of knowledge which indicate at least the
+possibility of a Western World of which the ancients had knowledge.
+There is a fragment, preserved from the fourth century before Christ, of
+a conversation between Silenus and Midas, King of Phrygia, in which
+Silenus correctly describes the Old World--Europe, Asia, and Africa--as
+being surrounded by the sea, but also describes, far to the west of it, a
+huge island, which had its own civilisation and its own laws, where the
+animals and the men were of twice our stature, and lived for twice our
+years.  There is also the story told by Plato of the island of Atlantis,
+which was larger than Africa and Asia together, and which in an
+earthquake disappeared beneath the waves, producing such a slime upon the
+surface that no ship was able to navigate the sea in that place.  This is
+the story which the priests of Sais told to Solon, and which was embodied
+in the sacred inscriptions in their temples.  It is strange that any one
+should think of this theory of the slime who had not seen or heard of the
+Sargasso Sea--that great bank of floating seaweed that the ocean currents
+collect and retain in the middle of the basin of the North Atlantic.
+
+The Egyptians, the Tartars, the Canaanites, the Chinese, the Arabians,
+the Welsh, and the Scandinavians have all been credited with the
+colonisation of America; but the only race from the Old World which had
+almost certainly been there were the Scandinavians.  In the year 983 the
+coast of Greenland was visited by Eric the Red, the son of a Norwegian
+noble, who was banished for the crime of murder.  Some fifteen years
+later Eric's son Lief made an expedition with thirty-five men and a ship
+in the direction of the new land.  They came to a coast where there were
+nothing but ice mountains having the appearance of slate; this country
+they named Helluland--that is, Land of Slate.  This country is our
+Newfoundland.  Standing out to sea again, they reached a level wooded
+country with white sandy cliffs, which they called Markland, or Land of
+Wood, which is our Nova Scotia.  Next they reached an island east of
+Markland, where they passed the winter, and as one of their number who
+had wandered some distance inland had found vines and grapes, Lief named
+the country Vinland or Vine Land, which is the country we call New
+England.  The Scandinavians continued to make voyages to the West and
+South; and finally Thorfinn Karlsefne, an Icelander, made a great
+expedition in the spring of 1007 with ships and material for
+colonisation.  He made much progress to the southwards, and the Icelandic
+accounts of the climate and soil and characteristics of the country leave
+no doubt that Greenland and Nova Scotia were discovered and colonised at
+this time.
+
+It must be remembered, however, that then and in the lifetime of Columbus
+Greenland was supposed to--be a promontory of the coast of Europe, and
+was not connected in men's minds with a western continent.  Its early
+discovery has no bearing on the significance of Columbus's achievement,
+the greatness of which depends not on his having been the first man from
+the Old World to set foot upon the shores of the New, but on the fact
+that by pure faith and belief in his own purpose he did set out for and
+arrive in a world where no man of his era or civilisation had ever before
+set foot, or from which no wanderer who may have been blown there ever
+returned.  It is enough to claim for him the merit of discovery in the
+true sense of the word.  The New World was covered from the Old by a veil
+of distance, of time and space, of absence, invisibility, virtual
+non-existence; and he discovered it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+IN PORTUGAL
+
+There is no reason to believe that before his twenty-fifth year Columbus
+was anything more than a merchant or mariner, sailing before the mast,
+and joining one ship after another as opportunities for good voyages
+offered themselves.  A change took place later, probably after his
+marriage, when he began to adapt himself rapidly to a new set of
+surroundings, and to show his intrinsic qualities; but all the attempts
+that have been made to glorify him socially--attempts, it must be
+remembered, in which he himself and his sons were in after years the
+leaders--are entirely mistaken.  That strange instinct for consistency
+which makes people desire to see the outward man correspond, in terms of
+momentary and arbitrary credit, with the inner and hidden man of the
+heart, has in truth led to more biographical injustice than is fully
+realised.  If Columbus had been the man some of his biographers would
+like to make him out--the nephew or descendant of a famous French
+Admiral, educated at the University of Pavia, belonging to a family of
+noble birth and high social esteem in Genoa, chosen by King Rene to be
+the commander of naval expeditions, learned in scientific lore, in the
+classics, in astronomy and in cosmography, the friend and correspondent
+of Toscanelli and other learned scientists--we should find it hard indeed
+to forgive him the shifts and deceits that he practised.  It is far more
+interesting to think of him as a common craftsman, of a lowly condition
+and poor circumstances, who had to earn his living during the formative
+period of his life by the simplest and hardest labour of the hand.  The
+qualities that made him what he was were of a very simple kind, and his
+character owed its strength, not to any complexity or subtlety of
+training and education, but rather to that very bareness and simplicity
+of circumstance that made him a man of single rather than manifold ideas.
+He was not capable of seeing both sides of a question; he saw only one
+side.  But he came of a great race; and it was the qualities of his race,
+combined with this simplicity and even perhaps vacancy of mind, that gave
+to his idea, when once the seed of it had lodged in his mind, so much
+vigour in growth and room for expansion.  Think of him, then, at the age
+of twenty-five as a typical plebeian Genoese, bearing all the
+characteristic traits of his century and people--the spirit of adventure,
+the love of gold and of power, a spirit of mysticism, and more than a
+touch of crafty and elaborate dissimulation, when that should be
+necessary.
+
+He had been at sea for ten or eleven years, making voyages to and from
+Genoa, with an occasional spell ashore and plunge into the paternal
+affairs, when in the year 1476 he found himself on board a Genoese vessel
+which formed one of a convoy going, to Lisbon.  This convoy was attacked
+off Cape St. Vincent by Colombo, or Colomb, the famous French corsair, of
+whom Christopher himself has quite falsely been called a relative.  Only
+two of the Genoese vessels escaped, and one of these two was the ship
+which carried Columbus.  It arrived at Lisbon, where Columbus went ashore
+and took up his abode.
+
+This, so far as can be ascertained, is the truth about the arrival of
+Columbus in Portugal.  The early years of an obscure man who leaps into
+fame late in life are nearly always difficult to gather knowledge about,
+because not only are the annals of the poor short and simple and in most
+cases altogether unrecorded, but there is always that instinct, to which
+I have already referred, to make out that the circumstances of a man who
+late in life becomes great and remarkable were always, at every point in
+his career, remarkable also.  We love to trace the hand of destiny
+guiding her chosen people, protecting them from dangers, and preserving
+them for their great moment.  It is a pleasant study, and one to which
+the facts often lend themselves, but it leads to a vicious method of
+biography which obscures the truth with legends and pretences that have
+afterwards laboriously to be cleared away.  It was so in the case of
+Columbus.  Before his departure on his first voyage of discovery there is
+absolutely no temporary record of him except a few dates in notarial
+registers.  The circumstances of his life and his previous conditions
+were supplied afterwards by himself and his contemporaries; and both he
+and they saw the past in the light of the present, and did their best to
+make it fit a present so wonderful and miraculous.  The whole trend of
+recent research on the subject of Columbus has been unfortunately in the
+direction of proving the complete insincerity of his own speech and
+writings about his early life, and the inaccuracy of Las Casas writings
+his contemporary biographer, and the first historian of the West Indies.
+Those of my readers, then, who are inclined to be impatient with the
+meagreness of the facts with which I am presenting them, and the
+disproportionate amount of theory to fact with regard to these early
+years of Columbus, must remember three things.  First, that the only
+record of the early years of Columbus was written long after those years
+had passed away, and in circumstances which did not harmonise with them;
+second, that there is evidence, both substantive and presumptive, that
+much of those records, even though it came from the hands of Columbus and
+his friends, is false and must be discarded; and third, that the only way
+in which anything like the truth can be arrived at is by circumstantial
+and presumptive evidence with regard to dates, names, places, and events
+upon which the obscure life of Columbus impinged.  Columbus is known to
+have written much about himself, but very little of it exists or remains
+in his own handwriting.  It remains in the form of quotation by others,
+all of whom had their reasons for not representing quite accurately what
+was, it must be feared, not even itself a candid and accurate record.
+The evidence for these very serious statements is the subject of
+numberless volumes and monographs, which cannot be quoted here; for it is
+my privilege to reap the results, and not to reproduce the material, of
+the immense research and investigation to which in the last fifty years
+the life of Columbus has been subjected.
+
+
+We shall come to facts enough presently; in the meantime we have but the
+vaguest knowledge of what Columbus did in Lisbon.  The one technical
+possession which he obviously had was knowledge of the sea; he had also a
+head on his shoulders, and plenty of judgment and common sense; he had
+likely picked up some knowledge of cartography in his years at Genoa,
+since (having abandoned wool-weaving) he probably wished to make progress
+in the profession of the sea; and it is, therefore, believed that he
+picked up a living in Lisbon by drawing charts and maps.  Such a living
+would only be intermittent; a fact that is indicated by his periodic
+excursions to sea again, presumably when funds were exhausted.  There
+were other Genoese in Lisbon, and his own brother Bartholomew was with
+him there for a time.  He may actually have been there when Columbus
+arrived, but it was more probable that Columbus, the pioneer of the
+family, seeing a better field for his brother's talent in Lisbon than in
+Genoa, sent for him when he himself was established there.  This
+Bartholomew, of whom we shall see a good deal in the future, is merely an
+outline at this stage of the story; an outline that will later be filled
+up with human features and fitted with a human character; at present he
+is but a brother of Christopher, with a rather bookish taste, a better
+knowledge of cartography than Christopher possessed, and some little
+experience of the book-selling trade.  He too made charts in Lisbon, and
+sold books also, and no doubt between them the efforts of the brothers,
+supplemented by the occasional voyages of Christopher, obtained them a
+sufficient livelihood.  The social change, in the one case from the
+society of Genoese wool-weavers, and in the other from the company of
+merchant sailors, must have been very great; for there is evidence that
+they began to make friends and acquaintances among a rather different
+class than had been formerly accessible to them.  The change to a new
+country also and to a new language makes a deep impression at the age of
+twenty-five; and although Columbus in his sea-farings had been in many
+ports, and had probably picked up a knowledge both of Portuguese and of
+Spanish, his establishment in the Portuguese capital could not fail to
+enlarge his outlook upon life.
+
+There is absolutely no record of his circumstances in the first year of
+his life at Lisbon, so we may look once more into the glass of
+imagination and try to find a picture there.  It is very dim, very
+minute, very, very far away.  There is the little shop in a steep Lisbon
+street, somewhere near the harbour we may be sure, with the shadows of
+the houses lying sharp on the white sunlight of the street; the cool
+darkness of the shop, with its odour of vellum and parchment, its rolls
+of maps and charts; and somewhere near by the sounds and commotion of the
+wharves and the shipping.  Often, when there was a purchaser in the shop,
+there would be talk of the sea, of the best course from this place to
+that, of the entrance to this harbour and the other; talk of the western
+islands too, of the western ocean, of the new astrolabe which the German
+Muller of Konigsberg, or Regiomontanus, as they called him in Portugal,
+had modified and improved.  And if there was sometimes an evening walk,
+it would surely be towards the coast or on a hill above the harbour, with
+a view of the sun being quenched in the sea and travelling down into the
+unknown, uncharted West.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+ADVENTURES BODILY AND SPIRITUAL
+
+Columbus had not been long in Portugal before he was off again to sea,
+this time on a longer voyage than any he had yet undertaken.  Our
+knowledge of it depends on his own words as reported by Las Casas, and,
+like so much other knowledge similarly recorded, is not to be received
+with absolute certainty; but on the whole the balance of probability is
+in favour of its truth.  The words in which this voyage is recorded are
+given as a quotation from a letter of Columbus, and, stripped of certain
+obvious interpolations of the historian, are as follows:--
+
+     "In the month of February, and in the year 1477, I navigated as far
+     as the island of Tile [Thule], a hundred leagues; and to this
+     island, which is as large as England, the English, especially those
+     of Bristol, go with merchandise; and when I was there the sea was
+     not frozen over, although there were very high tides, so much so
+     that in some parts the sea rose twenty-five 'brazas', and went down
+     as much, twice during the day."
+
+The reasons for doubting that this voyage took place are due simply to
+Columbus's habit of being untruthful in regard to his own past doings,
+and his propensity for drawing the long bow; and the reason that has been
+accepted by most of his biographers who have denied the truth of this
+statement is that, in the year 1492, when Columbus was addressing the
+King and Queen of Spain on his qualifications as a navigator, and when he
+wished to set forth his experience in a formidable light, he said nothing
+about this voyage, but merely described his explorations as having
+extended from Guinea on the south to England on the north.  A shrewd
+estimate of Columbus's character makes it indeed seem incredible that,
+if he had really been in Iceland, he should not have mentioned the fact
+on this occasion; and yet there is just one reason, also quite
+characteristic of Columbus, that would account for the suppression.
+It is just possible that when he was at Thule, by which he meant Iceland,
+he may have heard of the explorations in the direction of Greenland and
+Newfoundland; and that, although by other navigators these lands were
+regarded as a part of the continent of Europe, he may have had some
+glimmerings of an idea that they were part of land and islands in the
+West; and he was much too jealous of his own reputation as the great and
+only originator of the project for voyaging to the West, to give away any
+hints that he was not the only person to whom such ideas had occurred.
+There is deception and untruth somewhere; and one must make one's choice
+between regarding the story in the first place as a lie, or accepting it
+as truth, and putting down Columbus's silence about it on a later
+occasion to a rare instinct of judicious suppression.  There are other
+facts in his life, to which, we shall come later, that are in accordance
+with this theory.  There is no doubt, moreover, that Columbus had a very
+great experience of the sea, and was one of the greatest practical
+seamen, if not the greatest, that has ever lived; and it would be foolish
+to deny, except for the greatest reasons, that he made a voyage to the
+far North, which was neither unusual at the time nor a very great
+achievement for a seaman of his experience.
+
+Christopher returned from these voyages, of which we know nothing except
+the facts that he has given us, towards the end of 1477; and it was
+probably in the next year that an event very important in his life and
+career took place.  Hitherto there has been no whisper of love in that
+arduous career of wool-weaving, sailoring, and map-making; and it is not
+unlikely that his marriage represents the first inspiration of love in
+his life, for he was, in spite of his southern birth, a cool-blooded man,
+for whom affairs of the heart had never a very serious interest.  But at
+Lisbon, where he began to find himself with some footing and place in the
+world, and where the prospect of at least a livelihood began to open out
+before him, his thoughts took that turn towards domesticity and family
+life which marks a moment in the development of almost every man.  And
+now, since he has at last to emerge from the misty environment of
+sea-spray that has veiled him so long from our intimate sight, we may
+take a close look at him as he was in this year 1478.
+
+Unlike the southern Italians, he was fair in colouring; a man rather
+above the middle height, large limbed, of a shapely breadth and
+proportion, and of a grave and dignified demeanour.  His face was ruddy,
+and inclined to be freckled under the exposure to the sun, his hair at
+this age still fair and reddish, although in a few years later it turned
+grey, and became white while he was still a young man.  His nose was
+slightly aquiline, his face long and rather full; his eyes of a clear
+blue, with sharply defined eyebrows--seamen's eyes, which get an
+unmistakable light in them from long staring into the sea distances.
+Altogether a handsome and distinguished-looking young man, noticeable
+anywhere, and especially among a crowd of swarthy Portuguese.  He was not
+a lively young man; on the contrary, his manner was rather heavy, and
+even at times inclined to be pompous; he had a very good opinion of
+himself, had the clear calculating head and tidy intellectual methods of
+the able mariner; was shrewd and cautious--in a word, took himself and
+the world very seriously.  A strictly conventional man, as the
+conventions of his time and race went; probably some of his gayer and
+lighter-hearted contemporaries thought him a dull enough dog, who would
+not join in a carouse or a gallant adventure, but would probably get the
+better of you if he could in any commercial deal.  He was a great
+stickler for the observances of religion; and never a Sunday or feast-day
+passed, when he was ashore, without finding him, like the dutiful son of
+the Church that he was, hearing Mass and attending at Benediction.  Not,
+indeed, a very attractive or inspiring figure of a man; not the man whose
+company one would likely have sought very much, or whose conversation one
+would have found very interesting.  A man rather whose character was cast
+in a large and plain mould, without those many facets which add so much
+to the brightness of human intercourse, and which attract and reflect the
+light from other minds; a man who must be tried in large circumstances,
+and placed in a big setting, if his qualities are to be seen to advantage
+.  .  .  .  I seem to see him walking up from the shop near the harbour
+at Lisbon towards the convent of Saints; walking gravely and firmly, with
+a dignified demeanour, with his best clothes on, and glad, for the
+moment, to be free of his sea acquaintances, and to be walking in the
+direction of that upper-class world after which he has a secret hankering
+in his heart.  There are a great many churches in Lisbon nearer his house
+where he might hear Mass on Sundays; but he prefers to walk up to the
+rich and fashionable convent of Saints, where everybody is well dressed,
+and where those kindling eyes of his may indulge a cool taste for
+feminine beauty.
+
+
+While the chapel bell is ringing other people are hurrying through the
+sunny Lisbon streets to Mass at the convent.  Among the fashionable
+throng are two ladies, one young, one middle-aged; they separate at the
+church door, and the younger one leaves her mother and takes her place in
+the convent choir.  This is Philippa Moniz, who lives alone with her
+mother in Lisbon, and amuses herself with her privileges as a cavaliera,
+or dame, in one of the knightly orders attached to the rich convent of
+Saints.  Perhaps she has noticed the tall figure of the young Genoese in
+the strangers' part of the convent, perhaps not; but his roving blue eye
+has noticed her, and much is to come of it.  The young Genoese continues
+his regular and exemplary attendance at the divine Office, the young lady
+is zealous in observing her duties in the choir; some kind friend
+introduces them; the audacious young man makes his proposals, and,
+in spite of the melancholy protests of the young lady's exceedingly
+respectable and highly-connected relatives, the young people are
+betrothed and actually married before the elders have time to recover
+breath from their first shock at the absurdity of the suggestion.
+
+There is a very curious fact in connection with his marriage that is
+worthy of our consideration.  In all his voluminous writings, letters,
+memoirs, and journals, Columbus never once mentions his wife.  His sole
+reference to her is in his will, made at Valladolid many years later,
+long after her death; and is contained in the two words "my wife."
+He ordains that a chapel shall be erected and masses said for the repose
+of the souls of his father, his mother, and his wife.  He who wrote so
+much, did not write of her; he who boasted so much, never boasted of her;
+he who bemoaned so much, never bemoaned her.  There is a blank silence
+on his part about everything connected with his marriage and his wife.
+I like to think that it was because this marriage, which incidentally
+furnished him with one of the great impulses of his career, was in itself
+placid and uneventful, and belongs to that mass of happy days that do not
+make history.  Columbus was not a passionate man.  I think that love had
+a very small place in his life, and that the fever of passion was with
+him brief and soon finished with; but I am sure he was affectionate, and
+grateful for any affection and tenderness that were bestowed upon him.
+He was much away too, at first on his voyages to Guinea and afterwards on
+the business of his petitions to the Portuguese and Spanish Courts; and
+one need not be a cynic to believe that these absences did nothing to
+lessen the affection between him and his wife.  Finally, their married
+life was a short one; she died within ten years, and I am sure did not
+outlive his affections; so that there may be something solemn, some
+secret memories of the aching joy and sorrow that her coming into his
+life and passing out of it brought him, in this silence of Columbus
+concerning his wife.
+
+
+This marriage was, in the vulgar idiom of to-day, a great thing for
+Columbus.  It not only brought him a wife; it brought him a home,
+society, recognition, and a connection with maritime knowledge and
+adventure that was of the greatest importance to him.  Philippa Moniz
+Perestrello was the daughter of Bartolomeo Perestrello, who had been
+appointed hereditary governor of the island of Porto Santo on its
+colonisation by Prince Henry in 1425 and who had died there in 1457.
+Her grandfather was Gil Ayres Moniz, who was secretary to the famous
+Constable Pereira in the reign of John I, and is chiefly interesting to
+us because he founded the chapel of the "Piedad" in the Carmelite
+Monastery at Lisbon, in which the Moniz family had the right of interment
+for ever, and in which the body of Philippa, after her brief pilgrimage
+in this world was over, duly rested; and whence her son ordered its
+disinterment and re-burial in the church of Santa Clara in San Domingo.
+Philippa's mother, Isabel Moniz, was the second or third wife of
+Perestrello; and after her husband's death she had come to live in
+Lisbon.  She had another daughter, Violante by name, who had married one
+Mulier, or Muliartes, in Huelva; and a son named Bartolomeo, who was the
+heir to the governorship of Porto Santo; but as he was only a little boy
+at the time of his father's death his mother ceded the governorship to
+Pedro Correa da Cunha, who had married Iseult, the daughter of old
+Bartolomeo by his first wife.  The governorship was thus kept in the
+family during the minority of Bartolomeo, who resumed it later when he
+came of age.
+
+This Isabel, mother of Philippa, was a very important acquaintance indeed
+for Columbus.  It must be noted that he left the shop and poor
+Bartholomew to take care of themselves or each other, and went to live in
+the house of his mother-in-law.  This was a great social step for the
+wool-weaver of Genoa; and it was probably the result of a kind of
+compromise with his wife's horrified relatives at the time of her
+marriage.  It was doubtless thought impossible for her to go and live
+over the chart-maker's shop; and as you can make charts in one house as
+well as another, it was decided that Columbus should live with his
+mother-in-law, and follow his trade under her roof.  Columbus, in fact,
+seems to have been fortunate in securing the favour of his female
+relatives-in-law, and it was probably owing to the championship of
+Philippa's mother that a marriage so much to his advantage ever took
+place at all.  His wife had many distinguished relatives in the
+neighbourhood of Lisbon; her cousin was archbishop at this very time;
+but I can neither find that their marriage was celebrated with the
+archiepiscopal blessing or that he ever got much help or countenance from
+the male members of the Moniz family.  Archbishops even today do not much
+like their pretty cousins marrying a man of Columbus's position, whether
+you call him a woolweaver, a sailor, a map-maker, or a bookseller.
+"Adventurer" is perhaps the truest description of him; and the word was
+as much distrusted in the best circles in Lisbon in the fifteenth century
+as it is to-day.
+
+Those of his new relatives, however, who did get to know him soon began
+to see that Philippa had not made such a bad bargain after all.  With the
+confidence and added belief in himself that the recognition and
+encouragement of those kind women brought him, Columbus's mind and
+imagination expanded; and I think it was probably now that he began to
+wonder if all his knowledge and seamanship, his quite useful smattering
+of cartography and cosmography, his real love of adventure, and all his
+dreams and speculations concerning the unknown and uncharted seas, could
+not be turned to some practical account.  His wife's step-sister Iseult
+and her husband had, moreover, only lately returned to Lisbon from their
+long residence in Porto Santo; young Bartolomeo Perestrello, her brother,
+was reigning there in their stead, and no doubt sending home interesting
+accounts of ships and navigators that put in at Madeira; and all the
+circumstances would tend to fan the spark of Columbus's desire to have
+some adventure and glory of his own on the high seas.  He would wish
+to show all these grandees, with whom his marriage had brought
+him acquainted, that you did not need to be born a Perestrello
+--or Pallastrelli, as the name was in its original Italian form--to make
+a name in the world.  Donna Isabel, moreover, was never tired of talking
+about Porto Santo and her dead husband, and of all the voyages and sea
+adventures that had filled his life.  She was obviously a good teller of
+tales, and had all the old history and traditions of Madeira at her
+fingers' ends; the story of Robert Machin and Anne Dorset; the story of
+the isle of Seven Cities; and the black cloud on the horizon that turned
+out in the end to be Madeira.  She told Christopher how her husband, when
+he had first gone to Porto Santo, had taken there a litter of rabbits,
+and how the rabbits had so increased that in two seasons they had eaten
+up everything on the island, and rendered it uninhabitable for some time.
+
+She brought out her husband's sea-charts, memoranda, and log-books,
+the sight of which still farther inflamed Christopher's curiosity and
+ambition.  The great thing in those days was to discover something, if it
+was only a cape down the African coast or a rock in the Atlantic.  The
+key to fame, which later took the form of mechanical invention, and later
+still of discovery in the region of science, took the form then of actual
+discovery of parts of the earth's surface.  The thing was in the air;
+news was coming in every day of something new seen, something new
+charted.  If others had done so much, and the field was still half
+unexplored, could not he do something also?  It was not an unlikely
+thought to occur to the mind of a student of sea charts and horizons.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE FIRE KINDLES
+
+The next step in Columbus's career was a move to Porto Santo, which
+probably took place very soon after his marriage--that is to say, in the
+year 1479.  It is likely that he had the chance of making a voyage there;
+perhaps even of commanding a ship, for his experience of the sea and
+skill as a navigator must by this time have raised him above the rank of
+an ordinary seaman; and in that case nothing would be more natural than
+that he should take his young wife with him to visit her brother
+Bartolomeo, and to see the family property.  It is one of the charms of
+the seaman's profession that he travels free all over the world; and if
+he has no house or other fixed possessions that need to be looked after
+he has the freedom of the world, and can go where he likes free of cost.
+Porto Santo and Madeira, lying in the track of the busiest trade on the
+Atlantic coast, would provide Columbus with an excellent base from which
+to make other voyages; so it was probably with a heart full of eager
+anticipation for the future, and sense of quiet happiness in the present,
+that in the year 1479 Signor Cristoforo Colombo (for he did not yet call
+himself Senor Cristoval Colon) set out for Porto Santo--a lonely rock
+some miles north of Madeira.  Its southern shore is a long sweeping bay
+of white sand, with a huddle of sand-hills beyond, and cliffs and peaks
+of basalt streaked with lava fringing the other shores.  When Columbus
+and his bride arrived there the place was almost as bare as it is to-day.
+There were the governor's house; the settlement of Portuguese who worked
+in the mills and sugar-fields; the mills themselves, with the cultivated
+sugar-fields behind them; and the vineyards, with the dwarf Malmsey vines
+pegged down to the ground, which Prince Henry had imported from Candia
+fifty years before.  The forest of dragon-trees that had once covered the
+island was nearly all gone.  The wood had all been used either for
+building, making boats, or for fuel; and on the fruit of the few trees
+that were left a herd of pigs was fattened.  There was frequent
+communication by boat with Madeira, which was the chief of all the
+Atlantic islands, and the headquarters of the sugar trade; and Porto
+Santo itself was a favourite place of call for passing ships.  So that it
+was by no means lonely for Christopher Columbus and his wife, even if
+they had not had the society of the governor and his settlement.
+
+
+We can allow him about three years in Porto Santo, although for a part of
+this time at least he must have been at sea.  I think it not unlikely
+that it was the happiest time of his life.  He was removed from the
+uncomfortable environment of people who looked down upon him because of
+his obscure birth; he was in an exquisite climate; and living by the
+sea-shore, as a sailor loves to do; he got on well with Bartolomeo, who
+was no doubt glad enough of the company of this grave sailor who had
+seen so much and had visited so many countries; above all he had his
+wife there, his beautiful, dear, proud Philippa, all to himself, and out
+of reach of those abominable Portuguese noblemen who paid so much
+attention to her and so little to him, and made him so jealous; and
+there was a whispered promise of some one who was coming to make him
+happier still.  It is a splendid setting, this, for the sea adventurer;
+a charming picture that one has of him there so long ago, walking on the
+white shores of the great sweeping bay, with the glorious purple
+Atlantic sparkling and thundering on the sands, as it sparkles and
+thunders to-day.  A place empty and vivid, swept by the mellow winds;
+silent, but for the continuous roar of the sea; still, but for the
+scuttling of the rabbits among the sand-hills and the occasional passage
+of a figure from the mills up to the sugar-fields; but brilliant with
+sunshine and colour and the bright environment of the sea.  It was upon
+such scenes that he looked during this happy pause in his life; they
+were the setting of Philippa's dreams and anxieties as the time of
+motherhood drew near; and it was upon them that their little son first
+opened his eyes, and with the boom of the Atlantic breakers that he
+first mingled his small voice.
+
+It is but a moment of rest and happiness; for Christopher the scene is
+soon changed, and he must set forth upon a voyage again, while Philippa
+is left, with a new light in her eyes, to watch over the atom that wakes
+and weeps and twists and struggles and mews, and sleeps again, in her
+charge.  Sleep well, little son!  Yet a little while, and you too shall
+make voyages and conquests; new worlds lie waiting for you, who are so
+greatly astonished at this Old World; far journeys by land and sea, and
+the company of courtiers and kings; and much honour from the name and
+deeds of him who looked into your eyes with a laugh and, a sob, and was
+so very large and overshadowing!  But with her who quietly sings to you,
+whose hands soothe and caress you, in whose eyes shines that wonderful
+light of mother's love--only a little while longer.
+
+
+While Diego, as this son was christened, was yet only a baby in his
+cradle, Columbus made an important voyage to the, coast of Guinea as all
+the western part of the African continent was then called.  His solid and
+practical qualities were by this time beginning to be recognised even by
+Philippa's haughty family, and it was possibly through the interest of
+her uncle, Pedro Noronhas, a distinguished minister of the King of
+Portugal, that he got the command of a caravel in the expedition which
+set out for Guinea in December 1481.  A few miles from Cape Coast Castle,
+and on the borders of the Dutch colony, there are to-day the ruined
+remains of a fort; and it is this fort, the fortress of St. George, that
+the expedition was sent out to erect.  On the 11th of December the little
+fleet set sail for [from?  D.W.] Lisbon--ten caravels, and two barges or
+lighters laden with the necessary masonry and timber-work for the fort.
+Columbus was in command of one of the caravels, and the whole fleet was
+commanded by the Portuguese Admiral Azumbaga.  They would certainly see
+Porto Santo and Madeira on their way south, although they did not call
+there; and Philippa was no doubt looking out for them, and watching from
+the sand-hills the fleet of twelve ships going by in the offing.  They
+called at Cape Verde, where the Admiral was commissioned to present one
+of the negro kings with some horses and hawks, and incidentally to obtain
+his assent to a treaty.  On the 19th of January 1482, having made a very
+good voyage, they, landed just beyond the Cape of the Three Points, and
+immediately set about the business of the expedition.
+
+There was a state reception, with Admiral Azumbaga walking in front in
+scarlet and brocade, followed by his captains, Columbus among them,
+dressed in gorgeous tunics and cloaks with golden collars and, well
+hidden beneath their finery, good serviceable cuirasses.  The banner of
+Portugal was ceremoniously unfurled and dis played from the top of a tall
+tree.  An altar was erected and consecrated by the chaplain to the
+expedition, and a mass was sung for the repose of the soul of Prince
+Henry.  The Portugal contingent were then met by Caramansa, the king of
+the country, who came, surrounded by a great guard of blacks armed with
+assegais, their bodies scantily decorated with monkey fur and palm
+leaves.  The black monarch must have presented a handsome appearance,
+for his arms and legs were decked with gold bracelets and rings, he had
+a kind of dog-collar fitted with bells round his neck, and some pieces of
+gold were daintily twisted into his beard.  With these aids to diplomacy,
+and doubtless also with the help of a dram or two of spirits or of the
+wine of Oporto, the treaty was soon concluded, and a very shrewd stroke
+of business accomplished for the King of Portugal; for it gave him the
+sole right of exchanging gaudy rubbish from Portugal for the precious
+gold of Ethiopia.  When the contents of the two freight-ships had been
+unloaded they were beached and broken up by the orders of King John, who
+wished it to be thought that they had been destroyed in the whirlpools of
+that dangerous sea, and that the navigation of those rough waters was
+only safe for the caravels of the Navy.  The fort was built in twenty
+days, and the expedition returned, laden with gold and ivory; Admiral
+Azumbaga remained behind in command of the garrison.
+
+This voyage, which was a bold and adventurous one for the time, may be
+regarded as the first recognition of Columbus as a man of importance,
+for the expedition was manned and commanded by picked men; so it was for
+all reasons a very fortunate one for him, although the possession of the
+dangerous secret as to the whereabouts of this valuable territory might
+have proved to be not very convenient to him in the future.
+
+
+Columbus went back to Porto Santo with his ambitions thoroughly kindled.
+He had been given a definite command in the Portuguese Navy; he had been
+sailing with a fleet; he had been down to the mysterious coast of Africa;
+he had been trafficking with strange tribes; he had been engaged in a
+difficult piece of navigation such as he loved; and on the long dreamy
+days of the voyage home, the caravels furrowing the blue Atlantic before
+the steady trade-wind, he determined that he would find some way of
+putting his knowledge to use, and of earning distinction for himself.
+Living, as he had been lately, in Atlantic seaports overlooking the
+western ocean it is certain that the idea of discovering something in
+that direction occupied him more and more.  What it was that he was to
+discover was probably very vague in his mind, and was likely not
+designated by any name more exact than "lands."  In after years he tried
+to show that it was a logical and scientific deduction which led him to
+go and seek the eastern shore of the Indian continent by sailing west;
+but we may be almost certain that at this time he thought of no such
+thing.  He had no exact scientific knowledge at this date.  His map
+making had taught him something, and naturally he had kept his ears open,
+and knew all the gossip and hearsay about the islands of the West; and
+there gradually grew in his mind the intuition or conviction--I refuse to
+call it an opinion--that, over that blue verge of the West, there was
+land to be found.  How this seed of conviction first lodged in his mind
+it would be impossible to say; in any one of the steps through which we
+have followed him, it might have taken its root; but there it was,
+beginning to occupy his mind very seriously indeed; and he began to look
+out, as all men do who wish to act upon faith or conviction which they
+cannot demonstrate to another person, for some proofs that his conviction
+was a sound one.
+
+And now, just at the moment when he needs it most, comes an incident
+that, to a man of his religious and superstitious habit, seems like the
+pointing finger of Providence.  The story of the shipwrecked pilot has
+been discredited by nearly all the modern biographers of Columbus,
+chiefly because it does not fit in with their theory of his scientific
+studies and the alleged bearing of these on his great discovery; but it
+is given by Las Casas, who says that it was commonly believed by
+Columbus's entourage at Hispaniola.  Moreover, amid all the tangles of
+theory and argument in which the achievement of Columbus has been
+involved, this original story of shipwrecked mariners stands out with a
+strength and simplicity that cannot be entirely disregarded by the
+historian who permits himself some light of imagination by which to work.
+It is more true to life and to nature that Columbus should have received
+his last impulse, the little push that was to set his accumulated energy
+and determination in motion, from a thing of pure chance, than that he
+should have built his achievement up in a logical superstructure resting
+on a basis of profound and elaborate theory.
+
+In the year following Columbus's return from Guinea, then, he, and
+probably his family, had gone over to Madeira from Porto Santo, and were
+staying there.  While they were there a small ship put in to Madeira,
+much battered by storms and bad weather, and manned by a crew of five
+sick mariners.  Columbus, who was probably never far from the shore at
+Funchal when a ship came into the harbour, happened to see them.  Struck
+by their appearance, and finding them in a quite destitute and grievously
+invalid condition, he entertained them in his house until some other
+provision could be made for them.  But they were quite worn out.  One by
+one they succumbed to weakness and illness, until one only, a pilot from
+Huelva, was left.  He also was sinking, and when it was obvious that his
+end was near at hand, he beckoned his good host to his bedside, and, in
+gratitude for all his kindness, imparted to him some singular knowledge
+which he had acquired, and with which, if he had lived, he had hoped to
+win distinction for himself.
+
+The pilot's story, in so far as it has been preserved, and taking the
+mean of four contemporary accounts of it, was as follows.  This man,
+whose name is doubtful, but is given as Alonso Sanchez, was sailing on a
+voyage from one of the Spanish ports to England or Flanders.  He had a
+crew of seventeen men.  When they had got well out to sea a severe
+easterly gale sprung up, which drove the vessel before it to the
+westward.  Day after day and week after week, for twenty-eight days, this
+gale continued.  The islands were all left far behind, and the ship was
+carried into a region far beyond the limits of the ocean marked on the
+charts.  At last they sighted some islands, upon one of which they landed
+and took in wood and water.  The pilot took the bearings of the island,
+in so far as he was able, and made some observations, the only one of
+which that has remained being that the natives went naked; and, the wind
+having changed, set forth on his homeward voyage.  This voyage was long
+and painful.  The wind did not hold steady from the west; the pilot and
+his crew had a very hazy notion of where they were; their dead reckoning
+was confused; their provisions fell short; and one by one the crew
+sickened and died until they were reduced to five or six--the ones who,
+worn out by sickness and famine, and the labours of working the ship
+short-handed and in their enfeebled condition, at last made the island of
+Madeira, and cast anchor in the beautiful bay of Funchal, only to die
+there.  All these things we may imagine the dying man relating in
+snatches to his absorbed listener; who felt himself to be receiving a
+pearl of knowledge to be guarded and used, now that its finder must
+depart upon the last and longest voyage of human discovery.  Such
+observations as he had made--probably a few figures giving the bearings
+of stars, an account of dead reckoning, and a quite useless and
+inaccurate chart or map--the pilot gave to his host; then, having
+delivered his soul of its secret, he died.  This is the story; not an
+impossible or improbable one in its main outlines.  Whether the pilot
+really landed on one of the Antilles is extremely doubtful, although it
+is possible.  Superstitious and storm-tossed sailors in those days were
+only too ready to believe that they saw some of the fabled islands of the
+Atlantic; and it is quite possible that the pilot simply announced that
+he had seen land, and that the details as to his having actually set foot
+upon it were added later.  That does not seem to me important in so far
+as it concerns Columbus.  Whether it were true or not, the man obviously
+believed it; and to the mind of Columbus, possessed with an idea and a
+blind faith in something which could not be seen, the whole incident
+would appear in the light of a supernatural sign.  The bit of paper or
+parchment with the rude drawing on it, even although it were the drawing
+of a thing imagined and not of a thing seen, would still have for him a
+kind of authority that he would find it hard to ignore.  It seems
+unnecessary to disbelieve this story.  It is obviously absurd to regard
+it as the sole origin of Columbus's great idea; it probably belongs to
+that order of accidents, small and unimportant in themselves, which are
+so often associated with the beginnings of mighty events.  Walking on the
+shore at Madeira or Porto Santo, his mind brooding on the great and
+growing idea, Columbus would remember one or two other instances which,
+in the light of his growing conviction and know ledge, began to take on a
+significant hue.  He remembered that his wife's relative, Pedro Correa,
+who had come back from Porto Santo while Columbus was living in Lisbon,
+had told him about some strange flotsam that came in upon the shores of
+the island.  He had seen a piece of wood of a very dark colour curiously
+carved, but not with any tool of metal; and some great canes had also
+come ashore, so big that, every joint would hold a gallon of wine.  These
+canes, which were utterly unlike any thing known in Europe or the islands
+of the Atlantic, had been looked upon as such curiosities that they had
+been sent to the King at Lisbon, where they remained, and where Columbus
+himself afterwards saw them.  Two other stories, which he heard also at
+this time, went to strengthen his convictions.  One was the tale of
+Martin Vincenti, a pilot in the Portuguese Navy, who had found in the
+sea, four hundred and twenty leagues to the west of Cape St. Vincent,
+another piece of wood, curiously carved, that had evidently not been
+laboured with an iron instrument.  Columbus also remembered that the
+inhabitants of the Azores had more than once found upon their coasts the
+trunks of huge pine-trees, and strangely shaped canoes carved out of
+single logs; and, most significant of all, the people of Flares had taken
+from the water the bodies of two dead men, whose faces were of a strange
+broad shape, and whose features differed from those of any known race of
+mankind.  All these objects, it was supposed, were brought by westerly
+winds to the shores of Europe; it was not till long afterwards, when the
+currents of the Atlantic came to be studied, that the presence of such
+flotsam came to be attributed to the ocean currents, deflected by the
+Cape of Good Hope and gathered in the Gulf of Mexico, which are sprayed
+out across the Atlantic.
+
+The idea once fixed in his mind that there was land at a not impossible
+distance to the west, and perhaps a sea-road to the shores of Asia
+itself, the next thing to be done, was to go and discover it.  Rather a
+formidable task for a man without money, a foreigner in a strange
+land, among people who looked down upon him because of his obscure birth,
+and with no equipment except a knowledge of the sea, a great mastery of
+the art and craft of seamanship, a fearless spirit of adventure, and an
+inner light!  Some one else would have to be convinced before anything
+could be done; somebody who would provide ships and men and money and
+provisions.  Altogether rather a large order; for it was not an unusual
+thing in those days for master mariners, tired of the shore, to suggest
+to some grandee or other the desirability of fitting out a ship or two to
+go in search of the isle of St. Brandon, or to look up Antilia, or the
+island of the Seven Cities.  It was very hard to get an audience even for
+such a reasonable scheme as that; but to suggest taking a flotilla
+straight out to the west and into the Sea of Darkness, down that curving
+hill of the sea which it might be easy enough to slide down, but up which
+it was known that no ship could ever climb again, was a thing that hardly
+any serious or well-informed person would listen to.  A young man from
+Genoa, without a knowledge either of the classics or of the Fathers, and
+with no other argument except his own fixed belief and some vague talk
+about bits of wood and shipwrecked mariners, was not the person to
+inspire the capitalists of Portugal.  Yet the thing had to be done.
+Obviously it could not be done at Porto Santo, where there were no ships
+and no money.  Influence must be used; and Columbus knew that his
+proposals, if they were to have even a chance of being listened to, must
+be presented in some high-flown and elaborate form, giving reasons and
+offering inducements and quoting authorities.  He would have to get some
+one to help him in that; he would have to get up some scientific facts;
+his brother Bartholomew could help him, and some of those disagreeable
+relatives-in-law must also be pressed into the service of the Idea.
+Obviously the first thing was to go back to Lisbon; which accordingly
+Columbus did, about the year 1483.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+WANDERINGS WITH AN IDEA
+
+The man to whom Columbus proposed to address his request for means with
+which to make a voyage of discovery was no less a person than the new
+King of Portugal.  Columbus was never a man of petty or small ideas; if
+he were going to do a thing at all, he went about it in a large and
+comprehensive way; and all his life he had a way of going to the
+fountainhead, and of making flights and leaps where other men would only
+climb or walk, that had much to do with his ultimate success.  King John,
+moreover, had shown himself thoroughly sympathetic to the spirit of
+discovery; Columbus, as we have seen, had already been employed in a
+trusted capacity in one of the royal expeditions; and he rightly thought
+that, since he had to ask the help of some one in his enterprise, he
+might as well try to enlist the Crown itself in the service of his great
+Idea.  He was not prepared, however, to go directly to the King and ask
+for ships; his proposal would have to be put in a way that would appeal
+to the royal ambition, and would also satisfy the King that there was
+really a destination in view for the expedition.  In other words Columbus
+had to propose to go somewhere; it would not do to say that he was going
+west into the Atlantic Ocean to look about him.  He therefore devoted all
+his energies to putting his proposal on what is called a business
+footing, and expressing his vague, sublime Idea in common and practical
+terms.
+
+The people who probably helped him most in this were his brother
+Bartholomew and Martin Behaim, the great authority on scientific
+navigation, who had been living in Lisbon for some time and with whom
+Columbus was acquainted.  Behaim, who was at this time about forty eight
+years of age, was born at Nuremberg, and was a pupil of Regiomontanus,
+the great German astronomer.  A very interesting man, this, if we could
+decipher his features and character; no mere star-gazing visionary, but a
+man of the world, whose scientific lore was combined with a wide and
+liberal experience of life.  He was not only learned in cosmography and
+astronomy, but he had a genius for mechanics and made beautiful
+instruments; he was a merchant also, and combined a little business with
+his scientific travels.  He had been employed at Lisbon in adapting the
+astrolabe of Regiomontanus for the use of sailors at sea; and in these
+labours he was assisted by two people who were destined to have a weighty
+influence on the career of Columbus--Doctors Rodrigo and Joseph,
+physicians or advisers to the King, and men of great academic reputation.
+There was nothing known about cosmography or astronomy that Behaim did
+not know; and he had just come back from an expedition on which he had
+been despatched, with Rodrigo and Joseph, to take the altitude of the sun
+in Guinea.
+
+Columbus was not the man to neglect his opportunities, and there can be
+no doubt that as soon as his purpose had established itself in his mind
+he made use of every opportunity that presented itself for improving his
+meagre scientific knowledge, in order that his proposal might be set
+forth in a plausible form.  In other words, he got up the subject.  The
+whole of his geographical reading with regard to the Indies up to this
+time had been in the travels of Marco Polo; the others--whose works he
+quoted from so freely in later years were then known to him only by name,
+if at all.  Behaim, however, could tell him a good deal about the
+supposed circumference of the earth, the extent of the Asiatic continent,
+and so on.  Every new fact that Columbus heard he seized and pressed into
+the service of his Idea; where there was a choice of facts, or a
+difference of opinion between scientists, he chose the facts that were
+most convenient, and the opinions that fitted best with his own beliefs.
+The very word "Indies" was synonymous with unbounded wealth; there
+certainly would be riches to tempt the King with; and Columbus, being a
+religious man, hit also on the happy idea of setting forth the spiritual
+glory of carrying the light of faith across the Sea of Darkness, and
+making of the heathen a heritage for the Christian Church.  So that, what
+with one thing and another, he soon had his proposals formally arranged.
+
+Imagine him, then, actually at Court, and having an audience of the King,
+who could scarcely believe his ears.  Here was a man, of whom he knew
+nothing but that his conduct of a caravel had been well spoken of in the
+recent expedition to Guinea, actually proposing to sail out west into the
+Atlantic and to cross the unknown part of the world.  Certainly his
+proposals seemed plausible, but still--.  The earth was round, said
+Columbus, and therefore there was a way from East to West and from West
+to East.  The prophet Esdras, a scientific authority that even His
+Majesty would hardly venture to doubt, had laid it down that only
+one-seventh of the earth was covered by waters.  From this fact Columbus
+deduced that the maritime space extending westward between the shores of
+Europe and eastern coast of Asia could not be large; and by sailing
+westward he proposed to reach certain lands of which he claimed to have
+knowledge.  The sailors' tales, the logs of driftwood, the dead bodies,
+were all brought into the proposals; in short, if His Majesty would grant
+some ships, and consent to making Columbus Admiral over all the islands
+that he might discover, with full viceregal state, authority, and profit,
+he would go and discover them.
+
+There are two different accounts of what the King said when this proposal
+was made to him.  According to some authorities, John was impressed by
+Columbus's proposals, and inclined to provide him with the necessary
+ships, but he could not assent to all the titles and rewards which
+Columbus demanded as a price for his services.  Barros, the Portuguese
+historian, on the other hand, represents that the whole idea was too
+fantastic to be seriously entertained by the King for a moment, and that
+although he at once made up his mind to refuse the request he preferred
+to delegate his refusal to a commission.  Whatever may be the truth as to
+King John's opinions, the commission was certainly appointed, and
+consisted of three persons, to wit: Master Rodrigo, Master Joseph the
+Jew, and the Right Reverend Cazadilla, Bishop of Ceuta.
+
+
+Before these three learned men must Columbus now appear, a little less
+happy in his mind, and wishing that he knew more Latin.  Master Rodrigo,
+Master Joseph the Jew, the Right Reverend Cazadilla: three pairs of cold
+eyes turned rather haughtily on the Genoese adventurer; three brains much
+steeped in learning, directed in judgment on the Idea of a man with no
+learning at all.  The Right Reverend Cazadilla, being the King's
+confessor, and a bishop into the bargain, could speak on that matter of
+converting the heathen; and he was of opinion that it could not be done.
+Joseph the Jew, having made voyages, and worked with Behaim at the
+astrolabe, was surely an authority on navigation; and he was of opinion
+that it could not be done.  Rodrigo, being also a very learned man, had
+read many books which Columbus had not read; and he was of opinion that
+it could not be done.  Three learned opinions against one Idea; the Idea
+is bound to go.  They would no doubt question Columbus on the scientific
+aspect of the matter, and would soon discover his grievous lack of
+academic knowledge.  They would quote fluently passages from writers that
+he had not heard of; if he had not heard of them, they seemed to imply,
+no wonder he made such foolish proposals.  Poor Columbus stands there
+puzzled, dissatisfied, tongue-tied.  He cannot answer these wiseacres in
+their own learned lingo; what they say, or what they quote, may be true
+or it may not; but it has nothing to do with his Idea.  If he opens his
+mouth to justify himself, they refute him with arguments that he does not
+understand; there is a wall between them.  More than a wall; there is a
+world between them!  It is his 'credo' against their 'ignoro'; it is, his
+'expecto' against their 'non video'.  Yet in his 'credo' there lies a
+power of which they do not dream; and it rings out in a trumpet note
+across the centuries, saluting the life force that opposes its
+irresistible "I will" to the feeble "Thou canst not" of the worldly-wise.
+Thus, in about the year 1483, did three learned men sit in judgment upon
+our ignorant Christopher.  Three learned men: Doctors Rodrigo, Joseph the
+Jew, and the Right Reverend Cazadilla, Bishop of Ceuta; three risen,
+stuffed to the eyes and ears with learning; stuffed so full indeed that
+eyes and ears are closed with it.  And three men, it would appear, wholly
+destitute of mother-wit.
+
+
+After all his preparations this rebuff must have been a serious blow to
+Columbus.  It was not his only trouble, moreover.  During the last year
+he had been earning nothing; he was already in imagination the Admiral of
+the Ocean Seas; and in the anticipation of the much higher duties to
+which he hoped to be devoted it is not likely that he would continue at
+his humble task of making maps and charts.  The result was that he got
+into debt, and it was absolutely necessary that something should be done.
+But a darker trouble had also almost certainly come to him about this
+time.  Neither the day nor the year of Philippa's death is known;
+but it is likely that it occurred soon after Columbus's failure at the
+Portuguese Court, and immediately before his departure into Spain.  That
+anonymous life, fulfilling itself so obscurely in companionship and
+motherhood, as softly as it floated upon the page of history, as softly
+fades from it again.  Those kind eyes, that encouraging voice, that
+helping hand and friendly human soul are with him no longer; and after
+the interval of peace and restful growth that they afforded Christopher
+must strike his tent and go forth upon another stage of his pilgrimage
+with a heavier and sterner heart.
+
+Two things are left to him: his son Diego, now an articulate little
+creature with character and personality of his own, and with strange,
+heart-breaking reminiscences of his mother in voice and countenance and
+manner--that is one possession; the other is his Idea.  Two things alive
+and satisfactory, amid the ruin and loss of other possessions; two
+reasons for living and prevailing.  And these two possessions Columbus
+took with him when he set out for Spain in the year 1485.
+
+His first care was to take little Diego to the town of Huelva, where
+there lived a sister of Philippa's who had married a Spaniard named
+Muliartes.  This done, he was able to devote himself solely to the
+furtherance of his Idea.  For this purpose he went to Seville, where he
+attached himself for a little while to a group of his countrymen who were
+settled there, among them Antonio and Alessandro Geraldini, and made such
+momentary living as was possible to him by his old trade.  But the Idea
+would not sleep.  He talked of nothing else; and as men do who talk of an
+idea that possesses them wholly, and springs from the inner light of
+faith, he interested and impressed many of his hearers.  Some of them
+suggested one thing, some another; but every one was agreed that it would
+be a good thing if he could enlist the services of the great Count
+(afterwards Duke) of Medini Celi, who had a palace at Rota, near Cadiz.
+
+This nobleman was one of the most famous of the grandees of Spain, and
+lived in mighty state upon his territory along the sea-shore, serving the
+Crown in its wars and expeditions with the power and dignity of an ally
+rather than of a subject.  His domestic establishment was on a princely
+scale, filled with chamberlains, gentlemen-at-arms, knights, retainers,
+and all the panoply of social dignity; and there was also place in his
+household for persons of merit and in need of protection.  To this great
+man came Columbus with his Idea.  It attracted the Count, who was a judge
+of men and perhaps of ideas also; and Columbus, finding some hope at last
+in his attitude, accepted the hospitality offered to him, and remained at
+Rota through the winter of 1485-86.  He had not been very hopeful when he
+arrived there, and had told the Count that he had thought of going to the
+King of France and asking for help from him; but the Count, who found
+something respectable and worthy of consideration in the Idea of a man
+who thought nothing of a journey in its service from one country to
+another and one sovereign to another, detained him, and played with the
+Idea himself.  Three or four caravels were nothing to the Count of Medina
+Eeli; but on the other hand the man was a grandee and a diplomat, with a
+nice sense of etiquette and of what was due to a reigning house.  Either
+there was nothing in this Idea, in which case his caravels would be
+employed to no purpose, or there was so much in it that it was an
+undertaking, not merely for the Count of Medina Celi, but for the Crown
+of Castile.  Lands across the ocean, and untold gold and riches of the
+Indies, suggested complications with foreign Powers, and transactions
+with the Pope himself, that would probably be a little too much even for
+the good Count; therefore with a curious mixture of far-sighted
+generosity and shrewd security he wrote to Queen Isabella, recommending
+Columbus to her, and asking her to consider his Idea; asking her also,
+in case anything should come of it, to remember him (the Count), and to
+let him have a finger in the pie.  Thus, with much literary circumstance
+and elaboration of politeness, the Count of Medina Celi to Queen
+Isabella.
+
+Follows an interval of suspense, the beginning of a long discipline of
+suspense to which Columbus was to be subjected; and presently comes a
+favourable reply from the Queen, commanding that Columbus should be sent
+to her.  Early in 1486 he set out for Cordova, where the Court was then
+established, bearing another letter from the Count in which his own
+private requests were repeated, and perhaps a little emphasised.
+Columbus was lodged in the house of Alonso de Quintanilla, Treasurer to
+the Crown of Castile, there to await an audience with Queen Isabella.
+
+
+While he is waiting, and getting accustomed to his new surroundings, let
+us consider these two monarchs in whose presence he is soon to appear,
+and upon whose decision hangs some part of the world's destiny.  Isabella
+first; for in that strange duet of government it is her womanly soprano
+that rings most clearly down the corridors of Time.  We discern in her a
+very busy woman, living a difficult life with much tact and judgment, and
+exercising to some purpose that amiable taste for "doing good" that marks
+the virtuous lady of station in every age.  This, however, was a woman
+who took risks with her eyes open, and steered herself cleverly in
+perilous situations, and guided others with a firm hand also, and in
+other ways made good her claim to be a ruler.  The consent and the will
+of her people were her great strength; by them she dethroned her niece
+and ascended the throne of Castile.  She had the misfortune to be at
+variance with her husband in almost every matter of policy dear to his
+heart; she opposed the expulsion of the Jews and the establishment of the
+Inquisition; but when she failed to get her way, she was still able to
+preserve her affectionate relations with her husband without disagreement
+and with happiness.  If she had a fault it was the common one of being
+too much under the influence of her confessors; but it was a fault that
+was rarely allowed to disturb the balance of her judgment.  She liked
+clever people also; surrounded herself with men of letters and of
+science, fostered all learned institutions, and delighted in the details
+of civil administration.  A very dignified and graceful figure, that
+could equally adorn a Court drawing-room or a field of battle; for she
+actually went into the field, and wore armour as becomingly as silk and
+ermine.  Firm, constant, clever, alert, a little given to fussiness
+perhaps, but sympathetic and charming, with some claims to genius and
+some approach to grandeur of soul: so much we may say truly of her inner
+self.  Outwardly she was a woman well formed, of medium height, a very
+dignified and graceful carriage, eyes of a clear summer blue, and the red
+and gold of autumn in her hair--these last inherited from her English
+grandmother.
+
+Ferdinand of Aragon appears not quite so favourably in our pages, for he
+never thought well of Columbus or of his proposals; and when he finally
+consented to the expedition he did so with only half a heart, and against
+his judgment.  He was an extremely enterprising, extremely subtle,
+extremely courageous, and according to our modern notions, an extremely
+dishonest man; that is to say, his standards of honour were not those
+which we can accept nowadays.  He thought nothing of going back on a
+promise, provided he got a priestly dispensation to do so; he juggled
+with his cabinets, and stopped at nothing in order to get his way; he had
+a craving ambition, and was lacking in magnanimity; he loved dominion,
+and cared very little for glory.  A very capable man; so capable that in
+spite of his defects he was regarded by his subjects as wise and prudent;
+so capable that he used his weaknesses of character to strengthen and
+further the purposes of his reign.  A very cold man also, quick and sure
+in his judgments, of wide understanding and grasp of affairs; simple and
+austere in dress and diet, as austerity was counted in that period of
+splendour; extremely industrious, and close in his observations and
+judgments of men.  To the bodily eye he appeared as a man of middle size,
+sturdy and athletic, face burned a brick red with exposure to the sun and
+open air; hair and eyebrows of a bright chestnut; a well-formed and not
+unkindly mouth; a voice sharp and unmelodious, issuing in quick fluent
+speech.  This was the man that earned from the Pope, for himself and his
+successors, the title of "Most Catholic Majesty."
+
+
+The Queen was very busy indeed with military preparations; but in the
+midst of her interviews with nobles and officers, contractors and state
+officials, she snatched a moment to receive the person Christopher
+Columbus.  With that extreme mental agility which is characteristic of
+busy sovereigns all the force of this clever woman's mind was turned for
+a moment on Christopher, whose Idea had by this time invested him with a
+dignity which no amount of regal state could abash.  There was very
+little time.  The Queen heard what Columbus had to say, cutting him
+short, it is likely, with kindly tact, and suppressing his tendency to
+launch out into long-winded speeches.  What she saw she liked; and, being
+too busy to give to this proposal the attention that it obviously
+merited, she told Columbus that the matter would be fully gone into and
+that in the meantime he must regard himself as the guest of the Court.
+And so, in the countenance of a smile and a promise, Columbus bows
+himself out.  For the present he must wait a little and his hot heart
+must contain itself while other affairs, looming infinitely larger than
+his Idea on the royal horizon, receive the attention of the Court.
+
+It was not the happiest moment, indeed, in which to talk of ships and
+charts, and lonely sea-roads, and faraway undiscovered shores.  Things at
+home were very real and lively in those spring days at Cordova.  The war
+against the Moors had reached a critical stage; King Ferdinand was away
+laying siege to the city of Loxa, and though the Queen was at Cordova she
+was entirely occupied with the business of collecting and forwarding
+troops and supplies to his aid.  The streets were full of soldiers;
+nobles and grandees from all over the country were arriving daily with
+their retinues; glitter and splendour, and the pomp of warlike
+preparation, filled the city.  Early in June the Queen herself went to
+the front and joined her husband in the siege of Moclin; and when this
+was victoriously ended, and they had returned in triumph to Cordova, they
+had to set out again for Gallicia to suppress a rebellion there.  When
+that was over they did not come back to Cordova at all, but repaired at
+once to Salamanca to spend the winter there.
+
+At the house of Alonso de Quintanilla, however, Columbus was not
+altogether wasting his time.  He met there some of the great persons of
+the Court, among them the celebrated Pedro Gonzalez de Mendoza,
+Archbishop of Toledo and Grand Cardinal of Spain.  This was far too great
+a man to be at this time anything like a friend of Columbus; but Columbus
+had been presented to him; the Cardinal would know his name, and what his
+business was; and that is always a step towards consideration.  Cabrero,
+the royal Chamberlain, was also often a fellow-guest at the Treasurer's
+table; and with him Columbus contracted something like a friendship.
+Every one who met him liked him; his dignity, his simplicity of thought
+and manner, his experience of the sea, and his calm certainty and
+conviction about the stupendous thing which he proposed to do, could
+not fail to attract the liking and admiration of those with whom he came
+in contact.  In the meantime a committee appointed by the Queen sat upon
+his proposals.  The committee met under the presidentship of Hernando de
+Talavera, the prior of the monastery of Santa Maria del Prado, near
+Valladolid, a pious ecclesiastic, who had the rare quality of honesty,
+and who was therefore a favourite with Queen Isabella; she afterwards
+created him Archbishop of Granada.  He was not, however, poor honest
+soul! quite the man to grasp and grapple with this wild scheme for a
+voyage across the ocean.  Once more Columbus, as in Portugal, set forth
+his views with eloquence and conviction; and once more, at the tribunal
+of learning, his unlearned proposals were examined and condemned.  Not
+only was Columbus's Idea regarded as scientifically impossible, but it
+was also held to come perilously near to heresy, in its assumption of a
+state of affairs that was clearly at variance with the writings of the
+Fathers and the sacred Scriptures themselves.
+
+This new disappointment, bitter though it was, did not find Columbus in
+such friendless and unhappy circumstances as those in which he left
+Portugal.  He had important friends now, who were willing and anxious to
+help him, and among them was one to whom he turned, in his profound
+depression, for religious and friendly consolation.  This was Diego de
+DEA, prior of the Dominican convent of San Estevan at Salamanca, who was
+also professor of theology in the university there and tutor to the young
+Prince Juan.  Of all those who came in contact with Columbus at this time
+this man seems to have understood him best, and to have realised where
+his difficulty lay.  Like many others who are consumed with a burning
+idea Columbus was very probably at this time in danger of becoming
+possessed with it like a monomaniac; and his new friends saw that if he
+were to make any impression upon the conservative learning of the time to
+which a decision in such matters was always referred he must have some
+opportunity for friendly discussion with learned men who were not
+inimical to him, and who were not in the position of judges examining a
+man arraigned before them and pleading for benefits.
+
+When the Court went to Salamanca at the end of 1486, DEA arranged that
+Columbus should go there too, and he lodged him in a country farm called
+Valcuebo, which belonged to his convent and was equi-distant from it and
+the city.  Here the good Dominican fathers came and visited him, bringing
+with them professors from the university, who discussed patiently with
+Columbus his theories and ambitions, and, himself all conscious,
+communicated new knowledge to him, and quietly put him right on many a
+scientific point.  There were professors of cosmography and astronomy in
+the university, familiar with the works of Alfraganus and Regiomontanus.
+It is likely that it was at this time that Columbus became possessed of
+d'Ailly's 'Imago Mundi', which little volume contained a popular resume
+of the scientific views of Strabo, Pliny, Ptolemy, and others, and was
+from this time forth Columbus's constant companion.
+
+Here at Valcuebo and later, when winter came, in the great hall of the
+Dominican convent at Salamanca, known as the "De Profundis" hall, where
+the monks received guests and held discussions, the Idea of Columbus was
+ventilated and examined.  He heard what friendly sceptics had to say
+about it; he saw the kind of argument that he would have to oppose to the
+existing scientific and philosophical knowledge on cosmography.  There is
+no doubt that he learnt a good deal at this time; and more important even
+than this, he got his project known and talked about; and he made
+powerful friends, who were afterwards to be of great use to him.  The
+Marquesa de Moya, wife of his friend Cabrera, took a great liking to him;
+and as she was one of the oldest and closest friends of the Queen, it is
+likely that she spoke many a good word for Columbus in Isabella's ear.
+
+By the time the Court moved to Cordova early in 1487, Columbus was once
+more hopeful of getting a favourable hearing.  He followed the Court to
+Cordova, where he received a gracious message from the Queen to the
+effect that she had not forgotten him, and that as soon as her military
+preoccupations permitted it, she would go once more, and more fully, into
+his proposals.  In the meantime he was attached to the Court, and
+received a quarterly payment of 3000 maravedis.  It seemed as though the
+unfavourable decision of Talavera's committee had been forgotten.
+
+In the meantime he was to have a change of scene.  Isabella followed
+Ferdinand to the siege of Malaga, where the Court was established; and as
+there were intervals in which other than military business might be
+transacted, Columbus was ordered to follow them in case his affairs
+should come up for consideration.  They did not; but the man himself had
+an experience that may have helped to keep his thoughts from brooding too
+much on his unfulfilled ambition.  Years afterwards, when far away on
+lonely seas, amid the squalor of a little ship and the staggering buffets
+of a gale, there would surely sometimes leap into his memory a brightly
+coloured picture of this scene in the fertile valley of Malaga: the
+silken pavilions of the Court, the great encampment of nobility with its
+arms and banners extending in a semicircle to the seashore, all
+glistening and moving in the bright sunshine.  There was added excitement
+at this time at an attempt to assassinate Ferdinand and Isabella, a
+fanatic Moor having crept up to one of the pavilions and aimed a blow at
+two people whom he mistook for the King and Queen.  They turned out to be
+Don Alvaro de Portugal, who was dangerously wounded, and Columbus's
+friend, the Marquesa de Moya, who was unhurt; but it was felt that the
+King and Queen had had a narrow escape.  The siege was raised on the 18th
+of August, and the sovereigns went to spend the winter at Zaragoza; and
+Columbus, once more condemned to wait, went back to Cordova.
+
+
+It was here that he contracted his second and, so far as we know, his
+last romantic attachment.  The long idle days of summer and autumn at
+Cordova, empty of all serious occupation, gave nature an opportunity for
+indulging her passion for life and continuity.  Among Christopher's
+friends at Cordova was the family of Arana, friendly hospitable souls,
+by some accounts noble and by others not noble, and certainly in somewhat
+poor circumstances, who had welcomed him to their house, listened to his
+plans with enthusiasm, and formed a life-long friendship with him.  Three
+members of this family are known to us--two brothers, Diego and Pedro,
+both of whom commanded ships in Columbus's expeditions, and a sister
+Beatriz.  Columbus was now a man of six-and-thirty, while she was little
+more than a girl; he was handsome and winning, distinguished by the
+daring and importance of his scheme, full of thrilling and romantic talk
+of distant lands; a very interesting companion, we may be sure.  No
+wonder she fell in love with Christopher; no wonder that he, feeling
+lonely and depressed by the many postponements of his suit at Court, and
+in need of sympathy and encouragement, fell in these blank summer days
+into an intimacy that flamed into a brief but happy passion.  Why
+Columbus never married Beatriz de Arana we cannot be sure, for it is
+almost certain that his first wife had died some time before.  Perhaps he
+feared to involve himself in any new or embarrassing ties; perhaps he
+loved unwillingly, and against his reason; perhaps--although the
+suggestion is not a happy one--he by this time did not think poor Beatriz
+good enough for the Admiral-elect of the Ocean Seas; perhaps (and more
+probably) Beatriz was already married and deserted, for she bore the
+surname of Enriquez; and in that case, there being no such thing as a
+divorce in the Catholic Church, she must either sin or be celibate.  But
+however that may be, there was an uncanonical alliance between them which
+evidently did not in the least scandalise her brothers and which resulted
+in the birth of Ferdinand Columbus in the following year.  Christopher,
+so communicative and discursive upon some of his affairs, is as reticent
+about Beatriz as he was about Philippa.  Beatriz shares with his
+legitimate wife the curious distinction of being spoken of by Columbus to
+posterity only in his will, which was executed at Valladolid the day
+before he died.  In the dry ink and vellum of that ancient legal document
+is his only record of these two passions.  The reference to Beatriz is as
+follows:
+
+     "And I direct him [Diego] to make provision for Beatriz Enriquez,
+     mother of D. Fernando, my son, that she may be able to live
+     honestly, being a person to whom I am under very great obligation.
+     And this shall be done for the satisfaction of my conscience,
+     because this matter weighs heavily upon my soul.  The reason for
+     which it is not fitting to write here."
+
+About the condition of Beatriz, temporal and spiritual, there has been
+much controversy; but where the facts are all so buried and inaccessible
+it is unseemly to agitate a veil which we cannot lift, and behind which
+Columbus himself sheltered this incident of his life.  "Acquainted with
+poverty" is one fragment of fact concerning her that has come down to us;
+acquainted also with love and with happiness, it would seem, as many poor
+persons undoubtedly are.  Enough for us to know that in the city of
+Cordova there lived a woman, rich or poor, gentle or humble, married or
+not married, who brought for a time love and friendly companionship into
+the life of Columbus; that she gave what she had for giving, without
+stint or reserve, and that she became the mother of a son who inherited
+much of what was best in his father, and but for whom the world would be
+in even greater darkness than it is on the subject of Christopher
+himself.  And so no more of Beatriz Enriquez de Arana, whom "God has in
+his keeping"--and has had now these many centuries of Time.
+
+
+Thus passed the summer and autumn of 1487; precious months, precious
+years slipping by, and the great purpose as yet unfulfilled and seemingly
+no nearer to fulfilment.  It is likely that Columbus kept up his
+applications to the Court, and received polite and delaying replies.
+The next year came, and the Court migrated from Zaragoza to Murcia, from
+Murcia to Valladolid, from Valladolid to Medina del Campo.  Columbus
+attended it in one or other of these places, but without result.  In
+August Beatriz gave birth to a son, who was christened Ferdinand, and who
+lived to be a great comfort to his father, if not to her also.  But the
+miracle of paternity was not now so new and wonderful as it had been; the
+battle of life, with its crosses and difficulties, was thick about him;
+and perhaps he looked into this new-comer's small face with conflicting
+thoughts, and memories of the long white beach and the crashing surf at
+Porto Santo, and regret for things lost--so strangely mingled and
+inconsistent are the threads of human thought.  At last he decided to
+turn his face elsewhere.  In September 1488 he went to Lisbon, for what
+purpose it is not certain; possibly in connection with the affairs of his
+dead wife; and probably also in the expectation of seeing his brother
+Bartholomew, to whom we may now turn our attention for a moment.
+
+
+After the failure of Columbus's proposals to the King of Portugal in
+1486, and the break-up of his home there, Bartholomew had also left
+Lisbon.  Bartholomew Diaz, a famous Portuguese navigator, was leaving for
+the African coast in August, and Bartholomew Columbus is said to have
+joined his small expedition of three caravels.  As they neared the
+latitude of the Cape which he was trying to make, he ran into a gale
+which drove him a long way out of his course, west and south.
+
+The wind veered round from north-east to north-west, and he did not
+strike the land again until May 1487.  When he did so his crew insisted
+upon his returning, as they declined to go any further south.  He
+therefore turned to the west, and then made the startling discovery that
+in the course of the tempest he had been blown round the Cape, and that
+the land he had made was to the eastward of it; and he therefore rounded
+it on his way home.  He arrived back in Lisbon in December 1488, when
+Columbus met his brother again, and was present at the reception of Diaz
+by the King of Portugal.  They had a great deal to tell each other, these
+two brothers; in the two years and a half that had gone since they had
+parted a great deal had happened to them; and they both knew a good deal
+more about the great question in which they, were interested than they
+had known when last they talked.
+
+It is to this period that I attribute the inception, if not the
+execution, of the forgery of the Toscanelli correspondence, if, as I
+believe, it was a forgery.  Christopher's unpleasant experiences before
+learned committees and commissions had convinced him that unless he were
+armed with some authoritative and documentary support for his theories
+they had little chance of acceptance by the learned.  The, Idea was
+right; he knew that; but before he could convince the academic mind, he
+felt that it must have the imprimatur of a mind whose learning could not
+be impugned.  Therefore it is not an unfair guess--and it can be nothing
+more than a guess--that Christopher and Bartholomew at this point laid
+their heads together, and decided that the next time Christopher had to
+appear before a commission he would, so to speak, have something "up his
+sleeve."  It was a risky thing to do, and must in any case be used only
+as a very last resource; which would account for the fact that the
+Toscanelli correspondence was never used at all, and is not mentioned in
+any document known to men written until long after Columbus's death.
+
+But these summers and winters of suspense are at last drawing to a close,
+and we must follow Christopher rapidly through them until the hour of his
+triumph.  He was back in Spain in the spring of 1489, his travelling
+expenses being defrayed out of the royal purse; and a little later he was
+once more amid scenes of war at the siege of Baza, and, if report is
+true, taking a hand himself, not without distinction.  It was there that
+he saw the two friars from the convent of the Holy Sepulchre at
+Jerusalem, who brought a message from the Grand Soldan of Egypt,
+threatening the destruction of the Sepulchre if the Spanish sovereigns
+did not desist from the war against Granada; and it was there that in his
+simple and pious mind he formed the resolve that if ever his efforts
+should be crowned with success, and he himself become rich and powerful,
+he would send a crusade for the rescue of the Holy Sepulchre.  And it was
+there that, on the 22nd of December, he saw Boabdil, the elder of the two
+rival Kings of Granada, surrender all his rights and claims to Spain.
+Surely now there will be a chance for him?  No; there is another
+interruption, this time occasioned by the royal preparations for the
+marriage of the Princess Isabella to the heir of Portugal.  Poor
+Columbus, sickened and disappointed by these continual delays, irritated
+by a sense of the waste of his precious time, follows the Court about
+from one place to another, raising a smile here and a scoff there, and
+pointed at by children in the street.  There, is nothing so ludicrous as
+an Idea to those who do not share it.
+
+Another summer, another winter, lost out of a life made up of a limited
+number of summers and winters; a few more winters and summers, thinks
+Christopher, and I shall be in a world where Ideas are not needed, and
+where there is nothing left to discover!  Something had to be done.  In
+the beginning of 1491 there was only one thing spoken of at Court--the
+preparations for the siege of Granada, which did not interest Columbus at
+all.  The camp of King Ferdinand was situated at Santa Fe, a few miles to
+the westward of Granada, and Columbus came here late in the year,
+determined to get a final answer one way or the other to his question.
+He made his application, and the busy monarchs once more adopted their
+usual polite tactics.  They appointed a junta, which was presided over by
+no less a person than the Cardinal of Spain, Gonzales de Mendoza: Once
+more the weary business was gone through, but Columbus must have had some
+hopes of success, since he did not produce his forged Toscanelli
+correspondence.  It was no scruple of conscience that held him back, we
+may be sure; the crafty Genoese knew nothing about such scruples in the
+attainment of a great object; he would not have hesitated to adopt any
+means to secure an end which he felt to be so desirable.  So it is
+probable that either he was not quite sure of his ground and his courage
+failed him, or that he had hopes, owing to his friendship with so many of
+the members of the junta, that a favourable decision would at last be
+arrived at.  In this he was mistaken.  The Spanish prelates again quoted
+the Fathers of the Church, and disposed of his proposals simply on the
+ground that they were heretical.  Much talk, and much wagging of learned
+heads; and still no mother-wit or gleam of light on this obscurity of
+learning.  The junta decided against the proposals, and reported its
+decision to the King and Queen.  The monarchs, true to their somewhat
+hedging methods when there was anything to be gained by hedging, informed
+Columbus that at present they were too much occupied with the war to
+grant his requests; but that, when the preoccupations and expenses of the
+campaign were a thing of the past, they might again turn their attention
+to his very interesting suggestion.
+
+It was at this point that the patience of Columbus broke down.  Too many
+promises had been made to him, and hope had been held out to him too
+often for him to believe any more in it.  Spain, he decided, was useless;
+he would try France; at least he would be no worse off there.  But he had
+first of all to settle his affairs as well as possible.  Diego, now a
+growing boy nearly eleven years old, had been staying with Beatriz at
+Cordova, and going to school there; Christopher would take him back to
+his aunt's at Huelva before he went away.  He set out with a heavy heart,
+but with purpose and determination unimpaired.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+OUR LADY OF LA RABIDA
+
+It is a long road from Santa Fe to Huelva, a long journey to make on
+foot, and the company of a sad heart and a little talking boy, prone to
+sudden weariness and the asking of innumerable difficult questions, would
+not make it very much shorter.  Every step that Christopher took carried
+him farther away from the glittering scene where his hopes had once been
+so bright, and were now fallen to the dust; and every step brought him
+nearer that unknown destiny as to which he was in great darkness of mind,
+and certain only that there was some small next thing constantly to be
+done: the putting down of one foot after another, the request for food
+and lodging at the end of each short day's march, the setting out again
+in the morning.  That walk from Santa Fe, so real and painful and
+wearisome and long a thing to Christopher and Diego, is utterly blank and
+obliterated for us.  What he thought and felt and suffered are things
+quite dead; what he did-namely, to go and do the immediate thing that it
+seemed possible and right for him to do--is a living fact to-day, for it
+brought him, as all brave and honest doing will, a little nearer to his
+destiny, a little nearer to the truthful realisation of what was in him.
+
+At about a day's journey from Huelva, where the general slope of the land
+begins to fall towards the sea, two small rivers, the Odiel and the
+Tinto, which have hitherto been making music each for itself through the
+pleasant valleys and vineyards of Andalusia, join forces, and run with a
+deeper stream towards the sea at Palos.  The town of Palos lay on the
+banks of the river; a little to the south of it, and on the brow of a
+rocky promontory dark with pine trees, there stood the convent of Our
+Lady of La Rabida.  Stood, on this November evening in the year 1491;
+had stood in some form or other, and used for varying purposes, for many
+years and centuries before that, even to the time of the Romans; and
+still stands, a silent and neglected place, yet to be visited and seen by
+such as are curious.  To the door of this place comes Christopher as
+darkness falls, urged thereto by the plight of Diego, who is tired and
+hungry.  Christopher rings the bell, and asks the porter for a little
+bread and water for the child, and a lodging for them both.  There is
+some talk at the door; the Franciscan lay brother being given, at all
+times in the history of his order, to the pleasant indulgence of
+gossiping conversation, when that is lawful; and the presence of a
+stranger, who speaks with a foreign accent, being at all times a incident
+of interest and even of excitement in the quiet life of a monastery.  The
+moment is one big with import to the human race; it marks a period in the
+history of our man; the scene is worth calling up.  Dark night, with sea
+breezes moaning in the pine trees, outside; raying light from within
+falling on the lay brother leaning in the doorway and on the two figures
+standing without: on Christopher, grave, subdued, weary, yet now as
+always of pleasant and impressive address, and on the small boy who
+stands beside him round-eyed and expectant, his fatigue for the moment
+forgotten in curiosity and anticipation.
+
+While they are talking comes no less a person than the Prior of the
+monastery, Friar Juan Perez, bustling round, good-natured busybody that
+he is, to see what is all this talk at the door.  The Prior, as is the
+habit of monks, begins by asking questions.  What is the stranger's name?
+Where does he come from?  Where is he going to?  What is his business?
+Is the little boy his son?  He has actually come from Santa Fe?  The
+Prior, loving talk after the manner of his kind, sees in this grave and
+smooth-spoken stranger rich possibilities of talk; possibilities that
+cannot possibly be exhausted to-night, it being now hard on the hour of
+Compline; the stranger must come in and rest for tonight at least, and
+possibly for several nights.  There is much bustle and preparation; the
+travellers are welcomed with monkish hospitality; Christopher, we may be
+sure, goes and hears the convent singing Compline, and offers up devout
+prayers for a quiet night and for safe conduct through this vale of
+tears; and goes thankfully to bed with the plainsong echoing in his ears,
+and some stoic sense that all days, however hard, have an evening, and
+all journeys an end.
+
+Next morning the talk begins in earnest, and Christopher, never a very
+reserved man, finds in the friendly curiosity of the monks abundant
+encouragement to talk; and before very long he is in full swing with his
+oft-told story.  The Prior is delighted with it; he has not heard
+anything so interesting for a long time.  Moreover, he has not always
+been in a convent; he was not so long ago confessor to Queen Isabella
+herself, and has much to communicate and ask concerning that lady.
+Columbus's proposal does not strike him as being unreasonable at all;
+but he has a friend in Palos, a very learned man indeed, Doctor Garcia
+Hernandez, who often comes and has a talk with him; he knows all about
+astronomy and cosmography; the Prior will send for him.  And meanwhile
+there must be no word of Columbus's departure for a few days at any rate.
+
+Presently Doctor Garcia Hernandez arrives, and the whole story is gone
+over again.  They go at it hammer and tongs, arguments and
+counter-arguments, reasons for and against, encouragements, and
+objections.  The result is that Doctor Garcia Hernandez, whose learning
+seems not yet quite to have blinded or deafened him, thinks well of the
+scheme; thinks so well of it that he protests it will be a thousand
+pities if the chance of carrying it out is lost to Spain.  The worthy
+Prior, who has been somewhat out of it while the talk about degrees and
+latitudes has been going on, here strikes in again; he will use his
+influence.  Perhaps the good man, living up here among the pine trees
+and the sea winds, and involved in the monotonous round of Prime, Lauds,
+Nones, Vespers, has a regretful thought or two of the time when he moved
+in the splendid intricacy of Court life; at any rate he is not sorry to
+have an opportunity of recalling himself to the attention of Her
+Majesty, for the spiritual safety of whose soul he was once responsible;
+perhaps, being (in spite of his Nones and Vespers) a human soul, he is
+glad of an opportunity of opposing the counsels of his successor,
+Talavera.  In a word, he will use his Influence.  Then follow much
+drafting of letters, and laying of heads together, and clatter of
+monkish tongues; the upshot of which is that a letter is written in
+which Perez urges his daughter in the Lord in the strongest possible
+terms not to let slip so glorious an opportunity, not only of fame and
+increment to her kingdom, but of service to the Church and the kingdom
+of Heaven itself.  He assures her that Columbus is indeed about to
+depart from the country, but that he (Perez) will detain him at La
+Rabida until he has an answer from the Queen.
+
+A messenger to carry the letter was found in the person of Sebastian
+Rodriguez, a pilot of the port, who immediately set off to Santa Fe.
+It is not likely that Columbus, after so many rebuffs, was very hopeful;
+but in the meantime, here he was amid the pious surroundings in which the
+religious part of him delighted, and in a haven of rest after all his
+turmoils and trials.  He could look out to sea over the flecked waters of
+that Atlantic whose secrets he longed to discover; or he could look down
+into the busy little port of Palos, and watch the ships sailing in and
+out across the bar of Saltes.  He could let his soul, much battered and
+torn of late by trials and disappointments, rest for a time on the rock
+of religion; he could snuff the incense in the chapel to his heart's
+content, and mingle his rough top-gallant voice with the harsh croak of
+the monks in the daily cycle of prayer and praise.  He could walk with
+Diego through the sandy roads beneath the pine trees, or through the
+fields and vineyards below; and above all he could talk to the company
+that good Perez invited to meet him--among them merchants and sailors
+from Palos, of whom the chief was Martin Alonso Pinzon, a wealthy
+landowner and navigator, whose family lived then at Palos, owning the
+vineyards round about, and whose descendants live there to this day.
+Pinzon was a listener after Columbus's own heart; he not only believed in
+his project, but offered to assist it with money, and even to accompany
+the expedition himself.  Altogether a happy and peaceful time, in which
+hopes revived, and the inner light that, although it had now and then
+flickered, had never gone out, burned up again in a bright and steady
+flame.
+
+At the end of a fortnight, and much sooner than had been expected, the
+worthy pilot returned with a letter from the Queen.  Eager hands seized
+it and opened it; delight beamed from the eyes of the good Prior.  The
+Queen was most cordial to him, thanked him for his intervention, was
+ready to listen to him and even to be convinced by him; and in the
+meantime commanded his immediate appearance at the Court, asking that
+Columbus would be so good as to wait at La Rabida until he should hear
+further from her.  Then followed such a fussing and fuming, such a
+running hither and thither, and giving and taking of instructions and
+clatter of tongues as even the convent of La Rabida had probably never
+known.  Nothing will serve the good old busybody, although it is now near
+midnight, but that he must depart at once.  He will not wait for
+daylight; he will not, the good honest soul! wait at all.  He must be off
+at once; he must have this, he must have that; he will take this, he
+will leave that behind; or no, he will take that, and leave this behind.
+He must have a mule, for his old feet will not bear him fast enough;
+ex-confessors of Her Majesty, moreover, do not travel on foot; and after
+more fussing and running hither and thither a mule is borrowed from one
+Juan Rodriguez Cabezudo of Moguer; and with a God-speed from the group
+standing round the lighted doorway, the old monk sets forth into the
+night.
+
+It is a strange thing to consider what unimportant flotsam sometimes
+floats visibly upon the stream of history, while the gravest events are
+sunk deep beneath its flood.  We would give a king's ransom to know
+events that must have taken place in any one of twenty years in the life
+of Columbus, but there is no sign of them on the surface of the stream,
+nor will any fishing bring them to light.  Yet here, bobbing up like a
+cork, comes the name of Juan Rodriguez Cabezudo of Moguer, doubtless a
+good worthy soul, but, since he has been dead these four centuries and
+more, of no interest or importance to any human being; yet of whose life
+one trivial act, surviving the flood of time which has engulfed all else
+that he thought important, falls here to be recorded: that he did,
+towards midnight of a day late in December 1491 lend a mule to Friar Juan
+Perez.
+
+
+Of that heroic mule journey we have no record; but it brought results
+enough to compensate the good Prior for all his aching bones and
+rheumatic joints.  He was welcomed by the Queen, who had never quite lost
+her belief in Columbus, but who had hitherto deferred to the apathy of
+Ferdinand and the disapproval--of her learned advisers.  Now, however,
+the matter was reopened.  She, who sometimes listened to priests with
+results other than good, heard this worthy priest to good purpose.  The
+feminine friends of Columbus who remembered him at Court also spoke up
+for him, among them the Marquesa de Moya, with whom he had always been a
+favourite; and it was decided that his request should be granted and
+three vessels equipped for the expedition, "that he might go and make
+discoveries and prove true the words he had spoken."--Moreover, the
+machinery that had been so hard to move before, turned swiftly now.
+Diego Prieto, one of the magistrates of Palos, was sent to Columbus at La
+Rabida, bearing 20,000 maravedis  with which he was to buy a mule and
+decent clothing for himself, and repair immediately to the Court at Santa
+Fe.  Old Perez was in high feather, and busy with his pen.  He wrote to
+Doctor Garcia Hernandez, and also to Columbus, in whose letter the
+following pleasant passage occurs:
+
+     "Our Lord has listened to the prayers of His servant.  The wise and
+     virtuous Isabella, touched by the grace of Heaven, gave a favourable
+     hearing to the words of this poor monk.  All has turned out well.
+     Far from despising your project, she has adopted it from this time,
+     and she has summoned you to Court to propose the means which seem
+     best to you for the execution of the designs of Providence.  My
+     heart swims in a sea of comfort, and my spirit leaps with joy in the
+     Lord.  Start at once, for the Queen waits for you, and I much more
+     than she.  Commend me to the prayers of my brethren, and of your
+     little Diego.  The grace of God be with you, and may Our Lady of La
+     Rabida accompany you."
+
+The news of that day must have come upon Columbus like a burst of
+sunshine after rain.  I like to think how bright must have seemed to him
+the broad view of land and sea, how deeply the solemn words of the last
+office which he attended must have sunk into his soul, how great and glad
+a thing life must have been to him, and how lightly the miles must have
+passed beneath the feet of his mule as he jogged out on the long road to
+Santa Fe.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+THE CONSENT OF SPAIN
+
+Once more; in the last days of the year 1491, Columbus rode into the
+brilliant camp which he had quitted a few weeks before with so heavy a
+heart.  Things were changed now.  Instead of being a suitor, making a
+nuisance of himself, and forcing his affairs on the attention of
+unwilling officials, he was now an invited and honoured guest; much more
+than that, he was in the position of one who believed that he had a great
+service to render to the Crown, and who was at last to be permitted to
+render it.
+
+Even now, at the eleventh hour, there was one more brief interruption.
+On the 1st of January 1492 the last of the Moorish kings sent in his
+surrender to King Ferdinand, whom he invited to come and take possession
+of the city of Granada; and on the next day the Spanish army marched into
+that city, where, in front of the Alhambra, King Ferdinand received the
+keys of the castle and the homage of the Moorish king.  The wars of eight
+centuries were at an end, and the Christian banner of Spain floated at
+last over the whole land.  Victory and success were in the air, and the
+humble Genoese adventurer was to have his share in them.  Negotiations of
+a practical nature were now begun; old friends--Talavera, Luis de
+Santangel, and the Grand Cardinal himself--were all brought into
+consultation with the result that matters soon got to the documentary
+stage.  Here, however, there was a slight hitch.  It was not simply a
+matter of granting two, or three ships.  The Genoese was making a
+bargain, and asking an impossible price.  Even the great grandees and
+Court officials, accustomed to the glitter and dignity of titles, rubbed
+their eyes with astonishment, when they saw what Columbus was demanding.
+He who had been suing for privileges was now making conditions.  And what
+conditions!  He must be created Admiral of all the Ocean Seas and of the
+new lands, with equal privileges and prerogatives as those appertaining
+to the High Admiral of Castile, the supreme naval officer of Spain.
+Not content with sea dignities, he was also to be Viceroy and
+Governor-General in all islands or mainlands that he might acquire; he
+wanted a tenth part of the profits resulting from his discoveries, in
+perpetuity; and he must have the permanent right of contributing an
+eighth part of the cost of the equipment and have an additional eighth
+part of the profits; and all his heirs and descendants for ever were to
+have the same privileges.  These conditions were on such a scale as no
+sovereign could readily approve.  Columbus's lack of pedigree, and the
+fact also that he was a foreigner, made them seem the more preposterous;
+for although he might receive kindness and even friendship from some of
+the grand Spaniards with whom he associated, that friendship and
+kindness were given condescendingly and with a smile.  He was delightful
+when he was merely proposing as a mariner to confer additional grandeur
+and glory on the Crown; but when it came to demanding titles and
+privileges which would make him rank with the highest grandees in, the
+land, the matter took on quite a different colour.  It was nonsense; it
+could not be allowed; and many were the friendly hints that Columbus
+doubtless received at this time to relinquish his wild demands and not
+to overreach himself.
+
+But to the surprise and dismay of his friends, who really wished him to
+have a chance of distinguishing himself, and were shocked at the
+impediments he was now putting in his own way, the man from Genoa stood
+firm.  What he proposed to do, he said, was worthy of the rewards that he
+asked; they were due to the importance and grandeur of his scheme, and so
+on.  Nor did he fail to point out that the bestowal of them was a matter
+altogether contingent on results; if there were no results, there would
+be no rewards; if there were results, they would be worthy of the
+rewards.  This action of Columbus's deserves close study.  He had come to
+a turning-point in his life.  He had been asking, asking, asking, for six
+years; he had been put off and refused over and over again; people were
+beginning to laugh at him for a madman; and now, when a combination of
+lucky chances had brought him to the very door of success, he stood
+outside the threshold bargaining for a preposterous price before he would
+come in.  It seemed like the densest stupidity.  What is the explanation
+of it?
+
+The only explanation of it is to be found in the character of Columbus.
+We must try to see him as he is in this forty-second year of his life,
+bargaining with notaries, bishops, and treasurers; we must try to see
+where these forty years have brought him, and what they have made of him.
+Remember the little boy that played in the Vico Dritto di Ponticello,
+acquainted with poverty, but with a soul in him that could rise beyond it
+and acquire something of the dignity of that Genoa, arrogant, splendid
+and devout, which surrounded him during his early years.  Remember his
+long life of obscurity at sea, and the slow kindling of the light of
+faith in something beyond the familiar horizons; remember the social
+inequality of his marriage, his long struggle with poverty, his long
+familiarity with the position of one who asked and did not receive; the
+many rebuffs and indignities which his Ligurian pride must have received
+at the hands of all those Spanish dignitaries and grandees--remember all
+this, and then you will perhaps not wonder so much that Columbus, who was
+beginning to believe himself appointed by Heaven to this task of
+discovery, felt that he had much to pay himself back for.  One must
+recognise him frankly for what he was, and for no conventional hero of
+romance; a man who would reconcile his conscience with anything, and
+would stop at nothing in the furtherance of what he deemed a good object;
+and a man at the same time who had a conscience to reconcile, and would,
+whenever it was necessary, laboriously and elaborately perform the act of
+reconciliation.  When he made these huge demands in Granada he was
+gambling with his chances; but he was a calculating gambler, just about
+as cunning and crafty in the weighing of one chance against another as a
+gambler with a conscience can be; and he evidently realised that his own
+valuation of the services he proposed to render would not be without its
+influence on his sovereign's estimate of them.  At any rate he was
+justified by the results, for on the 17th of April 1492, after a deal of
+talk and bargaining, but apparently without any yielding on Columbus's
+part, articles of capitulation were drawn up in which the following
+provisions were made:--
+
+First, that Columbus and his heirs for ever should have the title and
+office of Admiral in all the islands and continents of the ocean that he
+or they might discover, with similar honours and prerogatives to those
+enjoyed by the High Admiral of Castile.
+
+Second, that he and his heirs should be Viceroys and Governors-General
+over all the said lands and continents, with the right of nominating
+three candidates for the governing of each island or province, one of
+whom should be appointed by the Crown.
+
+Third, that he end his heirs should be entitled to one-tenth of all
+precious stones, metals, spices, and other merchandises, however
+acquired, within his Admiralty, the cost of acquisition being first
+deducted.
+
+Fourth, that he or his lieutenants in their districts, and the High
+Admiral of Castile in his district, should be the sole judge in all
+disputes arising out of traffic between Spain and the new countries.
+
+Fifth, that he now, and he and his heirs at all times, should have the
+right to contribute the eighth part of the expense of fitting out
+expeditions, and receive the eighth part of the profits.
+
+In addition to these articles there was another document drawn up on the
+30th of April, which after an infinite preamble about the nature of the
+Holy Trinity, of the Apostle Saint James, and of the Saints of God
+generally in their relations to Princes, and with a splendid trailing of
+gorgeous Spanish names and titles across the page, confers upon our
+hitherto humble Christopher the right to call himself "Don," and finally
+raises him, in his own estimation at any rate, to a social level with his
+proud Spanish friends.  It is probably from this time that he adopted the
+Spanish form of his name, Christoval Colon; but in this narrative I shall
+retain the more universal form in which it has become familiar to the
+English-speaking world.
+
+He was now upon a Pisgah height, from which in imagination he could look
+forth and see his Land of Promise.  We also may climb up with him, and
+stand beside him as he looks westward.  We shall not see so clearly as he
+sees, for we have not his inner light; and it is probable that even he
+does not see the road at all, but only the goal, a single point of light
+shining across a gulf of darkness.  But from Pisgah there is a view
+backward as well as forward, and, we may look back for a moment on this
+last period of Christopher's life in Spain, inwardly to him so full of
+trouble and difficulty and disappointment, outwardly so brave and
+glittering, musical with high-sounding names and the clash of arms; gay
+with sun and shine and colour.  The brilliant Court moving from camp to
+camp with its gorgeous retinues and silken pavilions and uniforms and
+dresses and armours; the excitement of war, the intrigues of the
+antechamber--these are the bright fabric of the latter years; and against
+it, as against a background, stand out the beautiful names of the Spanish
+associates of Columbus at this time--Medina Celi, Alonso de Quintanilla,
+Cabrero, Arana, DEA, Hernando de Talavera, Gonzales de Mendoza, Alonso de
+Cardenas, Perez, Hernandez, Luis de Santangel, and Rodriguez de
+Maldonado--names that now, in his hour of triumph, are like banners
+streaming in the wind against a summer sky.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+THE PREPARATIONS AT PALOS
+
+The Palos that witnessed the fitting out of the ships of Columbus exists
+no longer.  The soul is gone from it; the trade that in those days made
+it great and busy has floated away from it into other channels; and it
+has dwindled and shrunk, until to-day it consists of nothing but a double
+street of poor white houses, such almost as you may see in any sea-coast
+village in Ireland.  The slow salt tides of the Atlantic come flooding in
+over the Manto bank, across the bar of Saltes, and, dividing at the
+tongue of land that separates the two rivers, creep up the mud banks of
+the Tinto and the Odiel until they lie deep beside the wharves of Huelva
+and Palos; but although Huelva still has a trade the tides bring nothing
+to Palos, and take nothing away with them again.  From La Rabida now you
+can no longer see, as Columbus saw, fleets of caravels lying-to and
+standing off and on outside the bar waiting for the flood tide; only a
+few poor boats fishing for tunny in the empty sunny waters, or the smoke
+of a steamer standing on her course for the Guadalquiver or Cadiz.
+
+But in those spring days of 1492 there was a great stir and bustle of
+preparation in Palos.  As soon as the legal documents had been signed
+Columbus returned there and, taking up his quarters at La Rabida, set
+about fitting out his expedition.  The reason Palos was chosen was an
+economical one.  The port, for some misdemeanour, had lately been
+condemned to provide two caravels for the service of the Crown for a
+period of twelve months; and in the impoverished state of the royal
+exchequer this free service came in very usefully in fitting out the
+expedition of discovery.  Columbus was quite satisfied, since he had such
+good friends at Palos; and he immediately set about choosing the ships.
+
+This, however, did not prove to be quite such a straightforward business
+as might have been expected.  The truth is that, whatever a few monks and
+physicians may have thought of it, the proposed expedition terrified the
+ordinary seafaring population of Palos.  It was thought to be the wildest
+and maddest scheme that any one had ever heard of.  All that was known
+about the Atlantic west of the Azores was that it was a sea of darkness,
+inhabited by monsters and furrowed by enormous waves, and that it fell
+down the slope of the world so steeply that no ship having once gone down
+could ever climb up it again.  And not only was there reluctance on the
+part of mariners to engage themselves for the expedition, but also a
+great shyness on the part of ship-owners to provide ships.  This
+reluctance proved so formidable an impediment that Columbus had to
+communicate with the King and Queen; with the result that on the 23rd of
+May the population was summoned to the church of Saint George, where the
+Notary Public read aloud to them the letter from the sovereigns
+commanding the port to furnish ships and men, and an additional order
+summoning the town to obey it immediately.  An inducement was provided in
+the offer of a free pardon to all criminals and persons under sentence
+who chose to enlist.
+
+Still the thing hung fire; and on June 20 a new and peremptory order was
+issued by the Crown authorising Columbus to impress the vessels and crew
+if necessary.  Time was slipping away; and in his difficulty Columbus
+turned to Martin Alonso Pinzon, upon whose influence and power in the
+town he could count.  There were three brothers then in this
+family--Martin Alonso, Vincenti Yanez, and Francisco Martin, all pilots
+themselves and owners of ships.  These three brothers saw some hope of
+profit out of the enterprise, and they exerted themselves on
+Christopher's behalf so thoroughly that, not only did they afford him
+help in the obtaining of ships, men, and supplies, but they all three
+decided to go with him.
+
+There was one more financial question to be settled--a question that
+remains for us in considerable obscurity, but was in all probability
+partly settled by the aid of these brothers.  The total cost of the
+expedition, consisting of three ships, wages of the crew, stores and
+provisions, was 1,167,542 maravedis, about L950(in 1900).  After all
+these years of pleading at Court, all the disappointments and deferred
+hopes and sacrifices made by Columbus, the smallness of this sum cannot
+but strike us with amazement.  Many a nobleman that Columbus must have
+rubbed shoulders with in his years at Court could have furnished the
+whole sum out of his pocket and never missed it; yet Columbus had to wait
+years and years before he could get it from the Crown.  Still more
+amazing, this sum was not all provided by the Crown; 167,000 maravedis
+were found by Columbus, and the Crown only contributed one million
+maravedis.  One can only assume that Columbus's pertinacity in
+petitioning the King and Queen to undertake the expedition, when he
+could with comparative ease have got the money from some of his noble
+acquaintance, was due to three things--his faith and belief in his Idea,
+his personal ambition, and his personal greed.  He believed in his Idea
+so thoroughly that he knew he was going to find something across the
+Atlantic.  Continents and islands cannot for long remain in the
+possession of private persons; they are the currency of crowns; and he
+did not want to be left in the lurch if the land he hoped to discover
+should be seized or captured by Spain or Portugal.  The result of his
+discoveries, he was convinced, was going to be far too large a thing to
+be retained and controlled by any machinery less powerful than that of a
+kingdom; therefore he was unwilling to accept either preliminary
+assistance or subsequent rewards from any but the same powerful hand.
+Admiralties, moreover, and Governor-Generalships and Viceroyships cannot
+be conferred by counts and dukes, however powerful; the very title Don
+could only be conferred by one power in Spain; and all the other titles
+and dignities that Columbus craved with all his Genoese soul were to be
+had from the hands of kings, and not from plutocrats.  It was
+characteristic of him all his life never to deal with subordinates, but
+always to go direct to the head man; and when the whole purpose and
+ambition of his life was to be put to the test it was only consistent in
+him, since he could not be independent, to go forth under the protection
+of the united Crown of Aragon and Castile.  Where or how he raised his
+share of the cost is not known; it is possible that his old friend the
+Duke of Medina Celi came to his help, or that the Pinzon family, who
+believed enough in the expedition to risk their lives in it, lent some of
+the necessary money.
+
+
+Ever since ships were in danger of going to sea short-handed methods of
+recruiting and manning them have been very much the same; and there must
+have been some hot work about the harbour of Palos in the summer of 1492.
+The place was in a panic.  It is highly probable that many of the
+volunteers were a ruffianly riff-raff from the prisons, to whom personal
+freedom meant nothing but a chance of plunder; and the recruiting office
+in Palos must have seen many a picturesque scoundrel coming and taking
+the oath and making his mark.  The presence of these adventurers, many of
+them entirely ignorant of the sea, would not be exactly an encouragement
+to the ordinary seaman.  It is here very likely that the influence of the
+Pinzon family was usefully applied.  I call it influence, since that is a
+polite term which covers the application of force in varying degrees;
+and it was an awkward thing for a Palos sailor to offend the Pinzons,
+who owned and controlled so much of the shipping in the port.  Little by
+little the preparations went on.  In the purchasing of provisions and
+stores the Pinzons were most helpful to Columbus and, it is not
+improbable, to themselves also.  They also procured the ships;
+altogether, in the whole history of the fitting out of expeditions,
+I know nothing since the voyage of the Ark which was so well kept within
+one family.  Moreover it is interesting to notice, since we know the
+names and places of residence of all the members of the expedition,
+that the Pinzons, who personally commanded two of the caravels, had them
+almost exclusively manned by sailors from Palos, while the Admiral's ship
+was manned by a miscellaneous crew from other places.  To be sure they
+gave the Admiral the biggest ship, but (in his own words) it proved "a
+dull sailer and unfit for discovery"; while they commanded the two
+caravels, small and open, but much faster and handier.  Clearly these
+Pinzons will take no harm from a little watching.  They may be honest
+souls enough, but their conduct is just a little suspicious, and we
+cannot be too careful.
+
+
+Three vessels were at last secured.  The first, named the Santa Maria,
+was the largest, and was chosen to be the flagship of Columbus.  She was
+of about one hundred tons burden, and would be about ninety feet in
+length by twenty feet beam.  She was decked over, and had a high poop
+astern and a high forecastle in the bows.  She had three masts, two of
+them square-rigged, with a latine sail on the mizzen mast; and she
+carried a crew of fifty-two persons.  Where and how they all stowed
+themselves away is a matter upon which we can only make wondering
+guesses; for this ship was about the size of an ordinary small coasting
+schooner, such as is worked about the coasts of these islands with a crew
+of six or eight men.  The next largest ship was the Pinta, which was
+commanded by Martin Alonso Pinzon, who took his brother Francisco with
+him as sailing-master.  The Pinta was of fifty tons burden, decked only
+at the bow and stern, and the fastest of the three ships; she also had
+three masts.  The third ship was a caravel of forty tons and called the
+Nina; she belonged to Juan Nino of Palos.  She was commanded by Vincenti
+Pinzon, and had a complement of eighteen men.  Among the crew of the
+flagship, whose names and places of residence are to be found in the
+Appendix, were an Englishman and an Irishman.  The Englishman is entered
+as Tallarte de Lajes (Ingles), who has been ingeniously identified with a
+possible Allard or AEthelwald of Winchelsea, there having been several
+generations of Allards who were sailors of Winchelsea in the fifteenth
+century.  Sir Clements Markham thinks that this Allard may have been
+trading to Coruna and have married and settled down at Lajes.  There is
+also Guillermo Ires, an Irishman from Galway.
+
+Allard and William, shuffling into the recruiting office in Palos,
+doubtless think that this is a strange place for them to meet, and rather
+a wild business that they are embarked upon, among all these bloody
+Spaniards.  Some how I feel more confidence in Allard than in William,
+knowing, as I do so well, this William of Galway, whether on his native
+heath or in the strange and distant parts of the world to which his
+sanguine temperament leads him.  Alas, William, you are but the first of
+a mighty stream that will leave the Old Country for the New World; the
+world destined to be good for the fortunes of many from the Old Country,
+but for the Old Country itself not good.  Little does he know, drunken
+William, willing to be on hand where there is adventure brewing, and to
+be after going with the boys and getting his health on the salt water,
+what a path of hope for those who go, and of heaviness for those who stay
+behind, he is opening up .  .  .  .  Farewell, William; I hope you were
+not one of those whom they let out of gaol.
+
+June slid into July, and still the preparations were not complete.  Down
+on the mud banks of the Tinto, where at low water the vessels were left
+high and dry, and where the caulking and refitting were in hand, there
+was trouble with the workmen.  Gomaz Rascon and Christoval Quintero, the
+owners of the Pinta, who had resented her being pressed into the service,
+were at the bottom of a good deal of it.  Things could not be found; gear
+mysteriously gave way after it had been set up; the caulking was found to
+have been carelessly and imperfectly done; and when the caulkers were
+commanded to do it over again they decamped.  Even the few volunteers,
+the picked hands upon whom Columbus was relying, gave trouble.  In those
+days of waiting there was too much opportunity for talk in the shore-side
+wine-shops; some of the volunteers repented and tried to cry off their
+bargains; others were dissuaded by their relatives, and deserted and hid
+themselves.  No mild measures were of any use; a reign of terror had to
+be established; and nothing short of the influence of the Pinzons was
+severe enough to hold the company together.  To these vigorous measures,
+however, all opposition gradually yielded.  By the end of July the
+provisions and stores were on board, the whole complement of eighty-seven
+persons collected and enlisted, and only the finishing touches left for
+Columbus.  It is a sign of the distrust and fear evinced with regard to
+this expedition, that no priest accompanied it--something of a sorrow to
+pious Christopher, who would have liked his chaplain.  There were two
+surgeons, or barbers, and a physician; there were an overseer, a
+secretary, a master-at-arms; there was an interpreter to speak to the
+natives of the new lands in Hebrew, Greek, German, Chaldean or Arabic;
+and there was an assayer and silversmith to test the quality of the
+precious metals that they were sure to find.  Up at La Rabida, with the
+busy and affectionate assistance of the old Prior, Columbus made his
+final preparations.  Ferdinand was to stay at Cordova with Beatriz, and
+to go to school there; while Diego was already embarked upon his life's
+voyage, having been appointed a page to the Queen's son, Prince Juan, and
+handed over to the care of some of the Court ladies.  The course to be
+sailed was talked over and over again; the bearings and notes of the
+pilot at Porto Santo consulted and discussed; and a chart was made by
+Columbus himself, and copied with his own hands for use on the three
+ships.
+
+On the 2nd of August everything was ready; the ships moored out in the
+stream, the last stragglers of the crew on board, the last sack of flour
+and barrel of beef stowed away.  Columbus confessed himself to the Prior
+of La Rabida--a solemn moment for him in the little chapel up on the
+pine-clad hill.  His last evening ashore would certainly be spent at the
+monastery, and his last counsels taken with Perez and Doctor Hernandez.
+We can hardly realise the feelings of Christopher on the eve of his
+departure from the land where all his roots were, to a land of mere faith
+and conjecture.  Even today, when the ocean is furrowed by crowded
+highways, and the earth is girdled with speaking wires, and distances are
+so divided and reduced that the traveller need never be very long out of
+touch with his home, few people can set out on a long voyage without some
+emotional disturbance, however slight it may be; and to Columbus on this
+night the little town upon which he looked down from the monastery, which
+had been the scene of so many delays and difficulties and vexations, must
+have seemed suddenly dear and familiar to him as he realised that after
+to-morrow its busy and well-known scenes might be for ever a thing of the
+past to him.  Behind him, living or dead, lay all he humanly loved and
+cared for; before him lay a voyage full of certain difficulties and
+dangers; dangers from the ships, dangers from the crews, dangers from
+the weather, dangers from the unknown path itself; and beyond them, a
+twinkling star on the horizon of his hopes, lay the land of his belief.
+That he meant to arrive there and to get back again was beyond all doubt
+his firm intention; and in the simple grandeur of that determination the
+weaknesses of character that were grouped about it seem unimportant.  In
+this starlit hour among the pine woods his life came to its meridian;
+everything that was him was at its best and greatest there.  Beneath him,
+on the talking tide of the river, lay the ships and equipment that
+represented years of steady effort and persistence; before him lay the
+pathless ocean which he meant to cross by the inner light of his faith.
+What he had suffered, he had suffered by himself; what he had won, he had
+won by himself; what he was to finish, he would finish by himself.
+
+But the time for meditations grows short.  Lights are moving about in the
+town beneath; there is an unwonted midnight stir and bustle; the whole
+population is up and about, running hither and thither with lamps and
+torches through the starlit night.  The tide is flowing; it will be high
+water before dawn; and with the first of the ebb the little fleet is to
+set sail.  The stream of hurrying sailors and townspeople sets towards
+the church of Saint George, where mass is to be said and the Sacrament
+administered to the voyagers.  The calls and shouts die away; the bell
+stops ringing; and the low muttering voice of the priest is heard
+beginning the Office.  The light of the candles shines upon the gaudy
+roof, and over the altar upon the wooden image of Saint George
+vanquishing the dragon, upon which the eyes of Christopher rested during
+some part of the service, and where to-day your eyes may rest also if you
+make that pilgrimage.  The moment approaches; the bread and the wine are
+consecrated; there is a shuffling of knees and feet; and then a pause.
+The clear notes of the bell ring out upon the warm dusky silence--once,
+twice, thrice; the living God and the cold presence of dawn enter the
+church together.  Every head is bowed; and for once at least every heart
+of that company beats in unison with the rest.  And then the Office goes
+on, and the dark-skinned congregation streams up to the sanctuary and
+receives the Communion, while the blue light of dawn increases and the
+candles pale before the coming day.  And then out again to the boats with
+shoutings and farewells, for the tide has now turned; hoisting of sails
+and tripping of anchors and breaking out of gorgeous ensigns; and the
+ships are moving!  The Maria leads, with the sign of the Redemption
+painted on her mainsail and the standard of Castile flying at her mizzen;
+and there is cheering from ships and from shore, and a faint sound of
+bells from the town of Huelva.
+
+Thus, the sea being--calm, and a fresh breeze blowing off the land, did
+Christopher Columbus set sail from Palos at sunrise on Friday the 3rd of
+August 1492.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+EVENTS OF THE FIRST VOYAGE
+
+     "In nomine D.N. Jesu Christi--Friday, August 3, 1492, at eight
+     o'clock we started from the bar of Saltes.  We went with a strong
+     sea breeze sixty miles,--[Columbus reckoned in Italian miles, of
+     which four = one league.]--which are fifteen leagues, towards the
+     south, until sunset: afterwards to the south-west and to the south,
+     quarter south-west, which was the way to the Canaries."
+
+     [The account of Columbus's first voyage is taken from a Journal
+     written by himself, but which in its original form does not exist.
+     Las Casas had it in his possession, but as he regarded it (no doubt
+     with justice) as too voluminous and discursive to be interesting, he
+     made an abridged edition, in which the exact words of Columbus were
+     sometimes quoted, but which for the most part is condensed into a
+     narrative in the third person.  This abridged Journal, consisting of
+     seventy-six closely written folios, was first published by
+     Navarrette in 1825.  When Las Casas wrote his 'Historie,' however,
+     he appears here and there to have restored sections of the original
+     Journal into the abridged one; and many of these restorations are of
+     importance.  If the whole account of his voyage written by Columbus
+     himself were available in its exact form I would print it here; but
+     as it is not, I think it better to continue my narrative, simply
+     using the Journal of Las Casas as a document.]
+
+With these rousing words the Journal of Columbus's voyage begins; and
+they sound a salt and mighty chord which contains the true diapason of
+the symphony of his voyages.  There could not have been a more fortunate
+beginning, with clear weather and a calm sea, and the wind in exactly
+the right quarter.  On Saturday and Sunday the same conditions held, so
+there was time and opportunity for the three very miscellaneous ships'
+companies to shake down into something like order, and for all the
+elaborate discipline of sea life to be arranged and established; and we
+may employ the interval by noting what aids to navigation Columbus had
+at his disposal.
+
+
+The chief instrument was the astrolabe, which was an improvement on the
+primitive quadrant then in use for taking the altitude of the sun.  The
+astrolabe, it will be remembered, had been greatly improved, by Martin
+Behaim and the Portuguese Commission in 1840--[1440  D.W.]; and it was
+this instrument, a simplification of the astrolabe used in astronomy
+ashore, that Columbus chiefly used in getting his solar altitudes.  As
+will be seen from the illustration, its broad principle was that of a
+metal circle with a graduated circumference and two arms pivoted in the
+centre.  It was made as heavy as possible; and in using it the observer
+sat on deck with his back against the mainmast and with his left hand
+held up the instrument by the ring at the top.  The long arm was moved
+round until the two sights fixed upon it were on with the sun.  The point
+where the other arm then cut the circle gave the altitude.  In
+conjunction with this instrument were used the tables of solar
+declination compiled by Regiomontanus, and covering the sun's declination
+between the years 1475 and 1566.
+
+The compass in Columbus's day existed, so far as all essentials are
+concerned, as it exists to-day.  Although it lacked the refinements
+introduced by Lord Kelvin it was swung in double-cradles, and had the
+thirty-two points painted upon a card.  The discovery of the compass, and
+even of the lodestone, are things wrapt in obscurity; but the lodestone
+had been known since at least the eleventh century, and the compass
+certainly since the thirteenth.  With the compass were used the sea
+charts, which were simply maps on a rather larger and more exact scale
+than the land maps of the period.  There were no soundings or currents
+marked on the old charts, which were drawn on a plane projection; and
+they can have been of little--practical use to navigators except in the
+case of coasts which were elaborately charted on a large scale.  The
+chart of Columbus, in so far as it was concerned with the ocean westward
+of the Azores, can of course have contained nothing except the
+conjectured islands or lands which he hoped to find; possibly the land
+seen by the shipwrecked pilot may have been marked on it, and his failure
+to find that land may have been the reason why, as we shall see, he
+changed his course to the southward on the 7th of October.  It must be
+remembered that Columbus's conception of the world was that of the
+Portuguese Mappemonde of 1490, a sketch of which is here reproduced.
+This conception of the world excluded the Pacific Ocean and the continent
+of North and South America, and made it reasonable to suppose that any
+one who sailed westward long enough from Spain would ultimately reach
+Cathay and the Indies.  Behaim's globe, which was completed in the year
+1492, represented the farthest point that geographical knowledge had
+reached previous to the discoveries of Columbus, and on it is shown the
+island of Cipango or Japan.
+
+By far the most important element in the navigation of Columbus, in so
+far as estimating his position was concerned, was what is known as
+"dead-reckoning" that is to say, the computation of the distance
+travelled by the ship through the water.  At present this distance is
+measured by a patent log, which in its commonest form is a
+propeller-shaped instrument trailed through the water at the end of a
+long wire or cord the inboard end of which is attached to a registering
+clock.  On being dragged through the water the propeller spins round and
+the twisting action is communicated by the cord to the clock-work
+machinery which counts the miles.  In the case of powerful steamers and
+in ordinary weather dead-reckoning is very accurately calculated by the
+number of revolutions of the propellers recorded in the engine-room; and
+a device not unlike this was known to the Romans in the time of the
+Republic.  They attached small wheels about four feet in diameter to the
+sides of their ships; the passage of the water turned the wheels, and a
+very simple gearing was arranged which threw a pebble into a tallypot at
+each revolution.  This device, however, seems to have been abandoned or
+forgotten in Columbus's day, when there was no more exact method of
+estimating dead-reckoning than the primitive one of spitting over the
+side in calm weather, or at other times throwing some object into the
+water and estimating the rate of progress by its speed in passing the
+ship's side.  The hour-glass, which was used to get the multiple for
+long distances, was of course the only portable time measurer available
+for Columbus.  These, with a rough knowledge of astronomy, and the
+taking of the altitude of the polar star, were the only known means for
+ascertaining the position of his ship at sea.
+
+
+The first mishap occurred on Monday, August 6th, when the Pinta carried
+away her rudder.  The Pinta, it will be remembered, was commanded by
+Martin Alonso Pinzon, and was owned by Gomaz Rascon and Christoval
+Quintero, who had been at the bottom of some of the troubles ashore; and
+it was thought highly probable that these two rascals had something to do
+with the mishap, which they had engineered in the hope that their vessel
+would be left behind at the Canaries.  Martin Alonso, however, proved a
+man of resource, and rigged up a sort of steering gear with ropes.  There
+was a choppy sea, and Columbus could not bring his own vessel near enough
+to render any assistance, though he doubtless bawled his directions to
+Pinzon, and looked with a troubled eye on the commotion going on on board
+the Pinta.  On the next day the jury-rigged rudder carried away again,
+and was again repaired, but it was decided to try and make the island of
+Lanzarote in the Canaries, and to get another caravel to replace the
+Pinta.  All through the next day the Santa Maria and the Nina had to
+shorten sail in order not to leave the damaged Pinta behind; the three
+captains had a discussion and difference of opinion as to where they
+were; but Columbus, who was a genius at dead-reckoning, proved to be
+right in his surmise, and they came in sight of the Canaries on Thursday
+morning, August 9th.
+
+Columbus left Pinzon on the Grand Canary with orders to try to obtain a
+caravel there, while he sailed on to Gomera, which he reached on Sunday
+night, with a similar purpose.  As he was unsuccessful he sent a message
+by a boat that was going back to tell Pinzon to beach the Pinta and
+repair her rudder; and having spent more days in fruitless search for a
+vessel, he started back to join Pinzon on August 23rd.  During the night
+he passed the Peak of Teneriffe, which was then in eruption.  The repairs
+to the Pinta, doubtless in no way expedited by Messrs. Rascon and
+Quintera, took longer than had been expected; it was found necessary to
+make an entirely new rudder for her; and advantage was taken of the delay
+to make some alterations in the rig of the Nina, which was changed from a
+latine rig to a square rig, so that she might be better able to keep up
+with the others.  September had come before these two jobs were
+completed; and on the 2nd of September the three ships sailed for Gomera,
+the most westerly of the islands, where they anchored in the north-east
+bay.  The Admiral was in a great hurry to get away from the islands and
+from the track of merchant ships, for he had none too much confidence in
+the integrity of his crews, which were already murmuring and finding
+every mishap a warning sign from God.  He therefore only stayed long
+enough at Gomera to take in wood and water and provisions, and set sail
+from that island on the 6th of September.
+
+The wind fell lighter and lighter, and on Friday the little fleet lay
+becalmed within sight of Ferro.  But on Saturday evening north-east airs
+sprang up again, and they were able to make nine leagues of westing.  On
+Sunday they had lost sight of land; and at thus finding their ships three
+lonely specks in the waste of ocean the crew lost heart and began to
+lament.  There was something like a panic, many of the sailors bursting
+into tears and imploring Columbus to take them home again.  To us it may
+seem a rather childish exhibition; but it must be remembered that these
+sailors were unwillingly embarked upon a voyage which they believed would
+only lead to death and disaster.  The bravest of us to-day, if he found
+himself press-ganged on board a balloon and embarked upon a journey, the
+object of which was to land upon Mars or the moon, might find it
+difficult to preserve his composure on losing sight of the earth; and the
+parallel is not too extreme to indicate the light in which their present
+enterprise must have appeared to many of the Admiral's crew.
+
+Columbus gave orders to the captains of the other two ships that, in case
+of separation, they were to sail westward for 700 leagues-that being the
+distance at which he evidently expected to find land--and there to lie-to
+from midnight until morning.  On this day also, seeing the temper of the
+sailors, he began one of the crafty stratagems upon which he prided
+himself, and which were often undoubtedly of great use to him; he kept
+two reckonings, one a true one, which he entered in his log, and one a
+false one, by means of which the distance run was made out to be less
+than what it actually was, so that in case he could not make land as soon
+as he hoped the crew would not be unduly discouraged.  In other words, he
+wished to have a margin at the other end, for he did not want a mutiny
+when he was perhaps within a few leagues of his destination.  On this day
+he notes that the raw and inexperienced seamen were giving trouble in
+other ways, and steering very badly, continually letting the ship's
+head fall off to the north; and many must have been the angry remonstrances
+from the captain to the man at the wheel.  Altogether rather a trying day
+for Christopher, who surely has about as much on his hands as ever mortal
+had; but he knows how to handle ships and how to handle sailors, and so
+long as this ten-knot breeze lasts, he can walk the high poop of the
+Santa Maria with serenity, and snap his fingers at the dirty rabble
+below.
+
+
+On Monday they made sixty leagues, the Admiral duly announcing
+forty-eight; on Tuesday twenty leagues, published as sixteen; and on
+this day they saw a large piece of a mast which had evidently belonged
+to a ship of at least 120 tons burden.  This was not an altogether
+cheerful sight for the eighteen souls on board the little Nina, who
+wondered ruefully what was going to happen to them of forty tons when
+ships three times their size had evidently been unable to live in this
+abominable sea!
+
+On Thursday, September 13th, when Columbus took his observations, he made
+a great scientific discovery, although he did not know it at the time.
+He noticed that the needle of the compass was declining to the west of
+north instead of having a slight declination to the east of north, as all
+mariners knew it to have.  In other words, he had passed the line of true
+north and of no variation, and must therefore have been in latitude
+28 deg. N.  and longitude 29 deg. 37' W.  of Greenwich.  With his usual
+secrecy he said nothing about it; perhaps he was waiting to see if the
+pilots on the other ships had noticed it, but apparently they were not so
+exact in their observations as he was.  On the next day, Friday, the wind
+falling a little lighter, they, made only twenty leagues.  "Here the
+persons on the caravel Nina said they had seen a jay and a ringtail, and
+these birds never come more than twenty-five leagues from land at most."
+--Unhappy "persons on the Nina"!  Nineteen souls, including the captain,
+afloat in a very small boat, and arguing God knows what from the fact
+that a jay and a ringtail never went more than twenty-five leagues from
+land!--The next day also was not without its incident; for on Saturday
+evening they saw a meteor, or "marvellous branch of fire" falling from
+the serene violet of the sky into the sea.
+
+They were now well within the influence of the trade-wind, which in these
+months blows steadily from the east, and maintains an exquisite and balmy
+climate.  Even the Admiral, never very communicative about his
+sensations, deigns to mention them here, and is reported to have said
+that "it was a great pleasure to enjoy the morning; that nothing was
+lacking except to hear the nightingales, and that the weather was like
+April in Andalusia."  On this day they saw some green grasses, which the
+Admiral considered must have floated off from some island; "not the
+continent," says the Admiral, whose theories are not to be disturbed by a
+piece of grass, "because I make the continental land farther onward."
+The crew, ready to take the most depressing and pessimistic view of
+everything, considered that the lumps of grass belonged to rocks or
+submerged lands, and murmured disparaging things about the Admiral.
+As a matter of fact these grasses were masses of seaweed detached from
+the Sargasso Sea, which they were soon to enter.
+
+On Monday, September 17th, four days after Columbus had noted it, the
+other pilots noted the declination of the needle, which they had found on
+taking the position of the North star.  They did not like it; and
+Columbus, whose knowledge of astronomy came to his aid, ordered them to
+take the position of the North star at dawn again, which they did, and
+found that the needles were true.  He evidently thought it useless to
+communicate to them his scientific speculations, so he explained to them
+that it was the North star which was moving in its circle, and not the
+compass.  One is compelled to admit that in these little matters of
+deceit the Admiral always shone.  To-day, among the seaweed on the ship's
+side, he picked up a little crayfish, which he kept for several days,
+presumably in a bottle in his cabin; and perhaps afterwards ate.
+
+So for several days this calm and serene progress westward was
+maintained.  The trade-wind blew steady and true, balmy and warm also;
+the sky was cloudless, except at morning and evening dusk; and there were
+for scenery those dazzling expanses of sea and sky, and those gorgeous
+hues of dawn and sunset, which are only to be found in the happy
+latitudes.  The things that happened to them, the bits of seaweed and
+fishes that they saw in the water, the birds that flew around them, were
+observed with a wondering attention and wistful yearning after their
+meaning such as is known only to children and to sailors adventuring on
+uncharted seas.  The breezes were milder even than those of the Canaries,
+and the waters always less salt; and the men, forgetting their fears of
+the monsters of the Sea of Darkness, would bathe alongside in the limpid
+blue.  The little crayfish was a "sure indication of land"; a tunny fish,
+killed by the company on the Nina, was taken to be an indication from the
+west, "where I hope in that exalted God, in whose hands are all
+victories, that land will very soon appear"; they saw another ringtail,
+"which is not accustomed to sleep on the sea"; two pelicans came to the
+ship, "which was an indication that land was near"; a large dark cloud
+appeared to the north, "which is a sign that land is near"; they saw one
+day a great deal of grass, "although the previous day they had not seen
+any"; they took a bird with their hands which was like a jay; "it was a
+river bird and not a sea bird"; they saw a whale, "which is an indication
+that they are near land, because they always remain near it"; afterwards
+a pelican came from the west-north-west and went to the south-east,
+"which was an indication that it left land to the west-north-west,
+because these birds sleep on land and in the morning they come to the sea
+in search of food, and do not go twenty leagues from land."  And "at dawn
+two or three small land birds came singing to the ships; and afterwards
+disappeared before sunrise."
+
+Such beautiful signs, interpreted by the light of their wishes, were the
+events of this part of the voyage.  In the meantime, they have their
+little differences.  Martin Alonso Pinzon, on Tuesday, September 18th,
+speaks from the Pinta to the Santa Maria, and says that he will not wait
+for the others, but will go and make the land, since it is so near; but
+apparently he does not get very far out of the way, the wind which wafts
+him wafting also the Santa Maria and the Nina.
+
+
+On September the 19th there was a comparison of dead-reckonings.  The
+Nina's pilot made it 440 leagues from the Canaries, the Pinta's 420
+leagues, and the Admiral's pilot, doubtless instructed by the Admiral,
+made it 400.  On Sunday the 23rd they were getting into the seaweed and
+finding crayfish again; and there being no reasonable cause for complaint
+a scare was got up among the crew on an exceedingly ingenious point.  The
+wind having blown steadily from the east for a matter of three weeks,
+they said that it would never blow in any other direction, and that they
+would never be able to get back to Spain; but later in the afternoon the
+sea got up from the westward, as though in answer to their fears, and as
+if to prove that somewhere or other ahead of them there was a west wind
+blowing; and the Admiral remarks that "the high sea was very necessary to
+me, as it came to pass once before in the time when the Jews went out of
+Egypt with Moses, who took them from captivity."  And indeed there was
+something of Moses in this man, who thus led his little rabble from a
+Spanish seaport out across the salt wilderness of the ocean, and
+interpreted the signs for them, and stood between them and the powers of
+vengeance and terror that were set about their uncharted path.
+
+But it appears that the good Admiral had gone just a little too far in
+interpreting everything they saw as a sign that they were approaching
+land; for his miserable crew, instead of being comforted by this fact,
+now took the opportunity to be angry because the signs were not
+fulfilled.  The more the signs pointed to their nearness to land, the
+more they began to murmur and complain because they did not see it.  They
+began to form together in little groups--always an ominous sign at sea
+--and even at night those who were not on deck got together in murmuring
+companies.  Some, of the things that they said, indeed, were not very far
+from the truth; among others, that it was "a great madness on their part
+to venture their lives in following out the madness of a foreigner who to
+make himself a great lord had risked his life, and now saw himself and
+all of them in great exigency and was deceiving so many people."  They
+remembered that his proposition, or "dream" as they not inaptly call it,
+had been contradicted by many great and lettered men; and then followed
+some very ominous words indeed.  They held
+
+     [The substance of these murmurings is not in the abridged Journal,
+     but is given by Las Casas under the date of September 24.]
+
+that "it was enough to excuse them from whatever might be done in the
+matter that they had arrived where man had never dared to navigate, and
+that they were not obliged to go to the end of the world, especially as,
+if they delayed more, they would not be able to have provisions to
+return."  In short, the best thing would be to throw him into the sea
+some night, and make a story that he had fallen, into the water while
+taking the position of a star with his astrolabe; and no one would ask
+any questions, as he was a foreigner.  They carried this talk to the
+Pinzons, who listened to them; after all, we have not had to wait long
+for trouble with the Pinzons!  "Of these Pinzons Christopher Columbus
+complains greatly, and of the trouble they had given him."
+
+There is only one method of keeping down mutiny at sea, and of preserving
+discipline.  It is hard enough where the mutineers are all on one ship
+and the commander's officers are loyal to him; but when they are
+distributed over three ships, the captains of two of which are willing to
+listen to them, the problem becomes grave indeed.  We have no details of
+how Columbus quieted them; but it is probable that his strong personality
+awed them, while his clever and plausible words persuaded them.  He was
+the best sailor of them all and they knew it; and in a matter of this
+kind the best and strongest man always wins, and can only in a pass of
+this kind maintain his authority by proving his absolute right to it.
+So he talked and persuaded and bullied and encouraged and cheered them;
+"laughing with them," as Las Casas says, "while he was weeping at heart."
+
+
+Probably as a result of this unpleasantness there was on the following
+day, Tuesday, September 25th, a consultation between: Martin Alonso
+Pinzon and the Admiral.  The Santa Maria closed up with the Pinta, and a
+chart was passed over on a cord.  There were islands marked on the chart
+in this region, possibly the islands reported by the shipwrecked pilot,
+possibly the island of Antilla; and Pinzon said he thought that they were
+somewhere in the region of them, and the Admiral said that he thought so
+too.  There was a deal of talk and pricking of positions on charts; and
+then, just as the sun was setting, Martin Alonso, standing on the stern
+of the Pinta, raised a shout and said that he saw land; asking
+(business-like Martin) at the same time for the reward which had been
+promised to the first one who should see land: They all saw it, a low
+cloud to the southwest, apparently about twenty-five leagues distant;
+and honest Christopher, in the emotion of the moment, fell on his knees
+in gratitude to God.  The crimson sunset of that evening saw the rigging
+of the three ships black with eager figures, and on the quiet air were
+borne the sounds of the Gloria in Excelsis, which was repeated by each
+ship's company.
+
+The course was altered to the south-west, and they sailed in that
+direction seventeen leagues during the night; but in the morning there
+was no land to be seen.  The sunset clouds that had so often deceived the
+dwellers in the Canaries and the Azores, and that in some form or other
+hover at times upon all eagerly scanned horizons, had also deceived
+Columbus and every one of his people; but they created a diversion which
+was of help to the Admiral in getting things quiet again, for which in
+his devout soul he thanked the merciful providence of God.
+
+And so they sailed on again on a westward course.  They were still in the
+Sargasso Sea, and could watch the beautiful golden floating mass of the
+gulf-weed, covered with berries and showing, a little way under the clear
+water, bright green leaves.  The sea was as smooth as the river in
+Seville; there were frigate pelicans flying about, and John Dorys in the
+water; several gulls were seen; and a youth on board the Nina killed a
+pelican with a stone.  On Monday, October 1st, there was a heavy shower
+of rain; and Juan de la Cosa, Columbus's pilot, came up to him with the
+doleful information that they had run 578 leagues from the island of
+Ferro.  According to Christopher's doctored reckoning the distance
+published was 584 leagues; but his true reckoning, about which he said
+nothing to a soul, showed that they had gone 707 leagues.  The breeze
+still kept steady and the sea calm; and day after day, with the temper of
+the crews getting uglier and uglier, the three little vessels forged
+westward through the blue, weed-strewn waters, their tracks lying
+undisturbed far behind them.  On Saturday, October 6th, the Admiral was
+signalled by Alonso Pinzon, who wanted to change the course to the
+south-west.  It appears that, having failed to find the, islands of the
+shipwrecked pilot, they were now making for the island of Cipango, and
+that this request of Pinzon had something to do with some theory of his
+that they had better turn to the south to reach that island; while
+Columbus's idea now evidently was--to push straight on to the mainland of
+Cathay.  Columbus had his way; but the grumbling and murmuring in creased
+among the crew.
+
+On the next day, Sunday, and perhaps just in time to avert another
+outbreak, there was heard the sound of a gun, and the watchers on the
+Santa Maria and the Pinta saw a puff of smoke coming from the Nina, which
+was sailing ahead, and hoisting a flag on her masthead.  This was the
+signal agreed upon for the discovery of land, and it seemed as though
+their search was at last at an end.  But it was a mistake.  In the
+afternoon the land that the people of the Nina thought they had seen had
+disappeared, and the horizon was empty except for a great flight of birds
+that was seen passing from the north to the south-west.  The Admiral,
+remembering how often birds had guided the Portuguese in the islands in
+their possessions, argued that the birds were either going to sleep on
+land or were perhaps flying from winter, which he assumed to be
+approaching in the land from whence they came.  He therefore altered.
+his course from west to west-south-west.  This course was entered upon an
+hour before sunset and continued throughout the night and the next day.
+"The sea was like the river of Seville," says the Admiral; "the breezes
+as soft as at Seville in April, and very fragrant."  More birds were to
+be seen, and there were many signs of land; but the crew, so often
+disappointed in their hopeful interpretations of the phenomena
+surrounding them, kept on murmuring and complaining.  On Tuesday, October
+9th, the wind chopped round a little and the course was altered, first to
+south-west and then at evening to a point north of west; and the journal
+records that "all night they heard birds passing."  The next day Columbus
+resumed the west-southwesterly course and made a run of fifty-nine
+leagues; but the mariners broke out afresh in their discontent, and
+declined to go any farther.  They complained of the long voyage, and
+expressed their views strongly to the commander.  But they had to deal
+with a man who was determined to begin with, and who saw in the many
+signs of land that they had met with only an additional inducement to go
+on.  He told them firmly that with or without their consent he intended
+to go on until he had found the land he had come to seek.
+
+
+The next day, Thursday, October 11th, was destined to be for ever
+memorable in the history of the world.  It began ordinarily enough, with
+a west-south-west wind blowing fresh, and on a sea rather rougher than
+they had had lately.  The people on the Santa Maria saw some petrels and
+a green branch in the water; the Pinta saw a reed and two small sticks
+carved with iron, and one or two other pieces of reeds and grasses that
+had been grown on shore, as well as a small board.  Most wonderful of
+all, the people of the Nina saw "a little branch full of dog roses"; and
+it would be hard to estimate the sweet significance of this fragment of a
+wild plant from land to the senses of men who had been so long upon a sea
+from which they had thought never to land alive.  The day drew to its
+close; and after nightfall, according to their custom, the crew of the
+ships repeated the Salve Regina.  Afterwards the Admiral addressed the
+people and sailors of his ship, "very merry and pleasant," reminding them
+of the favours God had shown them with regard to the weather, and begging
+them, as they hoped to see land very soon, within an hour or so, to keep
+an extra good look-out that night from the forward forecastle; and adding
+to the reward of an annuity of 10,000 maravedis, offered by the Queen to
+whoever should sight land first, a gift on his own account of a silk
+doublet.
+
+The moon was in its third quarter, and did not rise until eleven o'clock.
+The first part of the night was dark, and there was only a faint
+starlight into which the anxious eyes of the look-out men peered from the
+forecastles of the three ships.  At ten o'clock Columbus was walking on
+the poop of his vessel, when he suddenly saw a light right ahead.  The
+light seemed to rise and fall as though it were a candle or a lantern
+held in some one's hand and waved up and down.  The Admiral called Pedro
+Gutierrez to him and asked him whether he saw anything; and he also saw
+the light.  Then he sent for Rodrigo Sanchez and asked him if he saw the
+light; but he did not, perhaps because from where he was standing it was
+occulted.  But the others were left in no doubt, for the light was seen
+once or twice more, and to the eyes of the anxious little group standing
+on the high stern deck of the Santa Maria it appeared unmistakably.  The
+Nina was not close at hand, and the Pinta had gone on in front hoping to
+make good her mistake; but there was no doubt on board the Santa Maria
+that the light which they had seen was a light like a candle or a torch
+waved slowly up and down.  They lost the light again; and as the hours in
+that night stole away and the moon rose slowly in the sky the seamen on
+the Santa Maria must have almost held their breath.
+
+At about two o'clock in the morning the sound of a gun was heard from the
+Pinta, who could be seen hoisting her flags; Rodrigo de Triana, the
+look-out on board of her, having reported land in sight; and there sure
+enough in the dim light lay the low shores of an island a few miles ahead
+of them.
+
+Immediately all sails were lowered, except a small trysail which enabled
+the ships to lie-to and stand slowly off and on, waiting for the
+daylight.  I suppose there was never a longer night than that; but dawn
+came at last, flooding the sky with lemon and saffron and scarlet and
+orange, until at last the pure gold of the sun glittered on the water.
+And when it rose it showed the sea-weary mariners an island lying in the
+blue sea ahead of them: the island of Guanahani; San Salvador, as it was
+christened by Columbus; or, to give it its modern name, Watling's Island.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+LANDFALL
+
+During the night the ships had drifted a little with the current, and
+before the north-east wind.  When the look-out man on the Pinta first
+reported land in sight it was probably the north-east corner of the
+island, where the land rises to a height of 120 feet, that he saw.  The
+actual anchorage of Columbus was most likely to the westward of the
+island; for there was a strong north-easterly breeze, and as the whole of
+the eastern coast is fringed by a barrier reef, he would not risk his
+ships on a lee shore.  Finding himself off the north end of the island at
+sunrise, the most natural thing for him to do, on making sail again,
+would be to stand southward along the west side of the island looking for
+an anchorage.  The first few miles of the shore have rocky exposed
+points, and the bank where there is shoal water only extends half a mile
+from the shore.  Immediately beyond that the bottom shelves rapidly down
+to a depth of 2000 fathoms, so that if Columbus was sounding as he came
+south he would find no bottom there.  Below what are called the Ridings
+Rocks, however, the land sweeps to the south and east in a long sheltered
+bay, and to the south of these rocks there is good anchorage and firm
+holding-ground in about eight fathoms of water.
+
+We may picture them, therefore, approaching this land in the bright
+sunshine of the early morning, their ears, that had so long heard nothing
+but the slat of canvas and the rush and bubble of water under the prows,
+filled at last with the great resounding roar of the breakers on the
+coral reef; their eyes, that had so long looked upon blue emptiness and
+the star-spangled violet arch of night, feasting upon the living green of
+the foliage ashore; and the easterly breeze carrying to their eager
+nostrils the perfumes of land.  Amid an excitement and joyful
+anticipation that it is exhilarating even to think about the cables were
+got up and served and coiled on deck, and the anchors, which some of them
+had thought would never grip the bottom again, unstopped and cleared.
+The leadsman of the Santa Maria, who has been finding no bottom with his
+forty-fathom line, suddenly gets a sounding; the water shoals rapidly
+until the nine-fathom mark is unwetted, and the lead comes up with its
+bottom covered with brown ooze.  Sail is shortened; one after another the
+great ungainly sheets of canvas are clewed up or lowered down on deck;
+one after another the three helms are starboarded, and the three ships
+brought up to the wind.  Then with three mighty splashes that send the
+sea birds whirling and screaming above the rocks the anchors go down; and
+the Admiral stands on his high poop-deck, and looks long and searchingly
+at the fragment of earth, rock-rimmed, surf-fringed, and tree-crowned, of
+which he is Viceroy and Governor-General.
+
+
+Watling's Island, as it is now called, or San Salvador, as Columbus named
+it, or Guanahani, as it was known to the aborigines, is situated in
+latitude 24 deg. 6' N., and longitude 74 deg 26' W., and is an
+irregularly shaped white sandstone islet in about the middle of the great
+Bahama Bank.  The space occupied by the whole group is shaped like an
+irregular triangle extending from the Navidad Bank in the Caribbean Sea
+at the south-east corner, to Bahama Island in Florida Strait on the
+north, about 200 miles.  The south side trends west by north for 600
+miles, and the north side north-west by north 720 miles.  Most of the
+islands and small rocks in this group, called Keys or Cays, are very low,
+and rise only a few feet above the sea; the highest is about 400 feet
+high.  They are generally situated on the edge of coral and sand banks,
+some of which are of a very dangerous character.  They are thinly wooded,
+except in the case of one or two of the larger islands which contain
+timber of moderate dimensions.  The climate of the Bahamas is mild and
+temperate, with refreshing sea breezes in the hottest months; and there
+is a mean temperature of 75 deg. from November to April.  Watling's
+Island is about twelve miles in length by six in breadth, with rocky
+shores slightly indented.  The greater part of its area is occupied by
+salt-water lagoons, separated from one another by small wooded hills from
+too to 140 feet high.  There is plenty of grass; indeed the island is now
+considered to be the most fertile in the Bahamas, and raises an excellent
+breed of cattle and sheep.  In common with the other islands of the group
+it was originally settled by the Spaniards, and afterwards by the British,
+who were driven from the Bahamas again by the Spanish in the year 1641.
+After a great deal of changing hands they were ceded to Great Britain in
+1783, and have remained in her possession ever since.  In 1897 the
+population of the whole group was estimated at 52,000 the whites being in
+the proportion of one to six of the coloured population.  Watling's
+Island contains about 600 inhabitants scattered over the surface, with a
+small settlement called Cockburn Town on the west side, nearly opposite
+the landfall of Columbus.  The seat of the local government is in the
+island of New Providence, and the inhabitants of Watling's Island and of
+Rum Cay unite in sending one representative to the House of Assembly.  It
+is high water, full and change, at Watling's Island at 7 h. 40 m., as it
+was in the days of Columbus; and these facts form about the sum of the
+world's knowledge of and interest in Watling's Island to-day.
+
+
+But it was a different matter on Friday morning, October 12, 1492, when,
+all having been made snug on board the Santa Maria, the Admiral of the
+Ocean Seas put on his armour and his scarlet cloak over it and prepared
+to go ashore.
+
+     [This date is reckoned in the old style.  The true astronomical date
+     would be October 21st, which is the modern anniversary of the
+     discovery]
+
+The boat was lowered and manned by a crew well armed, and Columbus took
+with him Rodrigo de Escovedo, the secretary to the expedition, and
+Rodrigo Sanchez his overseer; they also took on board Martin Alonso
+Pinzon and Vincenti Yanez Pinzon, the captains of the other two ships.
+As they rowed towards the shore they saw a few naked inhabitants, who
+hid themselves at their approach.  Columbus carried with him the royal
+standard, and the two captains each had a banner of the expedition,
+which was a square flag with an "F" and a "Y" upon either side, each
+letter being surmounted by the crown of the sovereigns and a green cross
+covering the whole.  Columbus assembled his little band around him and
+called upon them to bear witness that in the presence of them all he was
+taking possession of the island for the King and Queen of Spain; duly
+making depositions in writing on the spot, and having them signed and
+witnessed.  Then he gave the name of San Salvador to the island and said
+a prayer; and while this solemn little ceremony was in progress, the
+astonished natives crept out of their hiding and surrounded the strange
+white men.  They gesticulated and grovelled and pointed upwards,
+as though this gang of armed and bearded Spaniards, with the tall
+white-bearded Italian in the midst of them, had fallen from the skies.
+
+The first interest of the voyagers was in the inhabitants of this
+delightful land.  They found them well built, athletic-looking men, most
+of them young, with handsome bodies and intelligent faces.  Columbus,
+eager to begin his missionary work, gave them some red caps and some
+glass beads, with which he found them so delighted that he had good hopes
+of making converts, and from which he argued that "they were a people who
+would better be freed and converted to our Holy Faith by love than by
+force," which sentence of his contains within itself the whole missionary
+spirit of the time.  These natives, who were the freest people in the
+world, were to be "freed"; freed or saved from the darkness of their
+happy innocence and brought to the light of a religion that had just
+evolved the Inquisition; freed by love if possible, and by red caps and
+glass beads; if not possible, then freed by force and with guns; but
+freed they were to be at all costs.  It is a tragic thought that, at the
+very first impact of the Old World upon this Eden of the West, this
+dismal error was set on foot and the first links in the chain of slavery
+forged.  But for the moment nothing of it was perceptible; nothing but
+red caps and glass beads, and trinkets and toys, and freeing by love.
+The sword that Columbus held out to them, in order to find out if they
+knew the use of weapons, they innocently grasped by the blade and so cut
+their fingers; and that sword, extended with knowledge and grasped with
+fearless ignorance, is surely an emblem of the spread of civilisation and
+of its doubtful blessings in the early stages.  Let us hear Columbus
+himself, as he recorded his first impression of Guanahani:
+
+     "Further, it appeared to me that they were a very poor people, in
+     everything.  They all go naked as their mothers gave them birth, and
+     the women also, although I only saw one of the latter who was very
+     young, and all those whom I saw were young men, none more than
+     thirty years of age.  They were very well built with very handsome
+     bodies, and very good faces.  Their hair was almost as coarse as
+     horses' tails, and short, and they wear it over the eyebrows, except
+     a small quantity behind, which they wear long and never cut.  Some
+     paint themselves blackish, and they are of the colour of the
+     inhabitants of the Canaries, neither black nor white, and some paint
+     themselves white, some red, some whatever colour they find: and some
+     paint their faces, some all the body, some only the eyes, and some
+     only the nose.  They do not carry arms nor know what they are,
+     because I showed them swords and they took them by the edge and
+     ignorantly cut themselves.  They have no iron: their spears are
+     sticks without iron, and some of them have a fish's tooth at the end
+     and others have other things.  They are all generally of good
+     height, of pleasing appearance and well built: I saw some who had
+     indications of wounds on their bodies, and I asked them by signs if
+     it was that, and they showed me that other people came there from
+     other islands near by and wished to capture them and they defended
+     themselves: and I believed and believe, that they come here from the
+     continental land to take them captive.  They must be good servants
+     and intelligent, as I see that they very quickly say all that is
+     said to them, and I believe that they would easily become
+     Christians, as it appeared to me that they had no sect.  If it
+     please our Lord, at the time of my departure, I will take six of
+     them from here to your Highnesses that they may learn to speak.
+     I saw no beast of any kind except parrots on this island."
+
+They very quickly say all that is said to them, and they will very easily
+become good slaves; good Christians also it appears, since the Admiral's
+research does not reveal the trace of any religious sect.  And finally
+"I will take six of them"; ostensibly that they may learn to speak the
+language, but really that they may form the vanguard of cargo after cargo
+of slaves ravished from their happy islands of dreams and sunshine and
+plenty to learn the blessings of Christianity under the whip and the
+sword.  It is all, alas, inevitable; was inevitable from the moment that
+the keel of Columbus's boat grated upon the shingle of Guanahani.  The
+greater must prey upon the less, the stronger must absorb and dominate
+the weaker; and the happy gardens of the Golden Cyclades must be spoiled
+and wasted for the pleasure and enrichment of a corrupting civilisation.
+But while we recognise the inevitable, and enter into the joy and pride
+of Columbus and his followers on this first happy morning of their
+landing, we may give a moment's remembrance to the other side of the
+picture, and admit that for this generation of innocents the discovery
+that was to be all gain for the Old World was to be all loss to them.
+In the meantime, decrees the Admiral, they are to be freed and converted;
+and "I will take six of them that they may learn to speak."
+
+
+There are no paths or footprints left in the sea, and the water furrowed
+on that morning more than four hundred years ago by the keels of
+Columbus's little fleet is as smooth and trackless as it was before they
+clove it.  Yet if you approach Guanahani from the east during the hours
+of darkness you also will see a light that waxes and wanes on the
+horizon.  What the light was that Columbus saw is not certain; it was
+probably the light from a torch held by some native woman from the door
+of her hut; but the light that you will see is from the lighthouse on
+Dixon Hill, where a tower of coral holds a lamp one hundred and sixty
+feet above the sea at the north-east point of the island.  It was erected
+in no sentimental spirit, but for very practical purposes, and at a date
+when Watling's Island had not been identified with the Guanahani of
+Columbus's landfall; and yet of all the monuments that have been raised
+to him I can think of nothing more appropriate than this lonely tower
+that stands by day amid the bright sunshine in the track of the trade
+wind, and by night throws its powerful double flash every half-minute
+across the dark lonely sea.  For it was by a light, although not of man's
+kindling, that Columbus was guided upon his lonely voyage and through his
+many difficulties; amid all his trials and disappointments, dimly as it
+must have burned sometimes, it never quite went out.  Darkness was the
+name of the sea across which he took his way; darkness, from his
+religious point of view, was the state of the lands to which he
+journeyed; and, whatever its subsequent worth may have been, it was a
+burning fragment from the living torch of the Christian religion that he
+carried across the world with him, and by which he sought to kindle the
+fire of faith in the lands of his discovery.  So that there is a profound
+symbolism in those raying beams that now, night after night, month by
+month, and year after year, shine out across the sea from Watling's
+Island in the direction of the Old World.
+
+
+In the preparations for this voyage, and in the conduct and
+accomplishment of it, the personality of the man Columbus stands clearly
+revealed.  He was seen at his best, as all men are who have a chance of
+doing the thing for which they are best fitted.  The singleness of aim
+that can accomplish so much is made manifest in his dogged search for
+means with which to make his voyage; and his Italian quality of
+unscrupulousness in the means employed to attain a good end was exercised
+to the full.  The, practical seaman in him carried him through the
+easiest part of his task, which was the actual sailing of his ships from
+Palos to Guanahani; Martin Alonso Pinzon could have done as much as that.
+But no Martin Alonso Pinzon or any other man of that time known to
+history had the necessary combination of defective and effective
+qualities that made Columbus, once he had conceived his glorious hazy
+idea, spend the best years of his life, first in acquiring the position
+that would make him listened to by people powerful enough to help him,
+and then in besieging them in the face of every rebuff and
+discouragement.  Another man, proposing to venture across the unknown
+ocean to unknown lands, would have required a fleet for his conveyance,
+and an army for his protection; but Columbus asked for what he thought he
+had some chance of getting, and for the barest equipment that would carry
+him across the water.  Another man would at least have had a bodyguard;
+but Columbus relied upon himself, and alone held his motley crew in the
+bonds of discipline.  A Pinzon could have navigated the fleet from Palos
+to Guanahani; but only a Columbus, only a man burning with belief is
+himself and in his quest, could have kept that superstitious crowd of
+loafers and malefactors and gaol-birds to their duties, and bent them to
+his will.  He was destined in after years for situations which were
+beyond his power to deal with, and for problems that were beyond his
+grasp; but here at least he was supreme, master of himself and of his
+material, and a ruler over circumstances.  The supreme thing that he had
+professed to be able to do and which he had guaranteed to do was, in the
+sublime simplicity of his own phrase, "to discover new lands," and luck
+or no luck, help or hindrance, he did it at the very first attempt and in
+the space of thirty-five days.  And although it was from the Pinta that
+the gun was fired, and the first loom of the actual land seen in the
+early morning, I am glad to think that, of all the number of eager
+watching men, it was Columbus who first saw the dim tossing light that
+told him his journey was at an end.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE NEW WORLD
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE ENCHANTED ISLANDS
+
+Columbus did not intend to remain long at San Salvador.  His landfall
+there, although it signified the realisation of one part of his dream,
+was only the starting-point of his explorations in the New World.  Now
+that he had made good his undertaking to "discover new lands," he had to
+make good his assurance that they were full of wealth and would swell the
+revenues of the King and Queen of Spain.  A brief survey of this first
+island was all he could afford time for; and after the first exquisite
+impression of the white beach, and the blue curve of the bay sparkling in
+the sunshine, and the soft prismatic colours of the acanthus beneath the
+green wall of the woods had been savoured and enjoyed, he was anxious to
+push on to the rich lands of the Orient of which he believed this island
+to be only an outpost.
+
+On the morning after his arrival the natives came crowding down to the
+beach and got down their canoes, which were dug out of the trunk of a
+single tree, and some of which were large enough to contain forty or
+forty-five men: They came paddling out to the ship, sometimes, in the
+case of the smaller canoes which only held one man, being upset by the
+surf, and swimming gaily round and righting their canoes again and
+bailing them out with gourds.  They brought balls of spun cotton, and
+parrots and spears.  All their possessions, indeed, were represented in
+the offerings they made to the strangers.  Columbus, whose eye was now
+very steadily fixed on the main chance, tried to find out if they had any
+gold, for he noticed that some of them wore in their noses a ring that
+looked as though it were made of that metal; and by making signs he asked
+them if there was any more of it to be had.  He understood them to say
+that to the south of the island there dwelt a king who had large vessels
+of gold, and a great many of them; he tried to suggest that some of the
+natives should come and show him the way, but he "saw that they were not
+interested in going."
+
+The story of the Rheingold was to be enacted over again, and the whole of
+the evils that followed in its glittering train to be exemplified in this
+voyage of discovery.  To the natives of these islands, who guarded the
+yellow metal and loved it merely for its shining beauty, it was harmless
+and powerless; they could not buy anything with it, nor did they seek by
+its aid to secure any other enjoyments but the happiness of looking at it
+and admiring it.  As soon as the gold was ravished from their keeping,
+however, began the reign of lust and cruelty that always has attended and
+always will attend the knowledge that things can be bought with it.  In
+all its history, since first it was brought up from the dark bowels of
+the earth to glitter in the light of day, there is no more significant
+scene than this that took place on the bright sands of San Salvador so
+long ago--Columbus attentively examining the ring in the nose of a happy
+savage, and trying to persuade him to show him the place that it was
+brought from; and the savage "not interested in going."
+
+
+From his sign-conversation with the natives Columbus understood that
+there was land to the south or the south-west, and also to the
+north-west, and that the people from the north-west went to the
+south-west in search of gold and precious stones.  In the meantime he
+determined to spend the Sunday in making a survey of the island, while
+the rest of Saturday was passed in barterings with the natives, who were
+very happy and curious to see all the strange things belonging to the
+voyagers; and so innocent were their ideas of value that "they give all
+they have for whatever thing may be given them."  Columbus, however, who
+was busy making calculations, would not allow the members of the crew to
+take anything more on their own account, ordering that where any article
+of commerce existed in quantity it was to be acquired for the sovereigns
+and taken home to Spain.
+
+Early on Sunday morning a boat was prepared from each ship, and a little
+expedition began to row north about the island.  As they coasted the
+white rocky shores people came running to the beach and calling to them;
+"giving thanks to God," says Columbus, although this is probably a flight
+of fancy.  When they saw that the boats were not coming to land they
+threw themselves into the water and came swimming out to them, bringing
+food and drink.  Columbus noticed a tongue of land lying between the
+north-west arm of the internal lagoon and the sea, and saw that by
+cutting a canal through it entrance could be secured to a harbour that
+would float "as many ships as there are in Christendom."  He did not,
+apparently, make a complete circuit of the island, but returned in the
+afternoon to the ships, having first collected seven natives to take with
+him, and got under way again; and before night had fallen San Salvador
+had disappeared below the north-west horizon.
+
+About midday he reached another island to the southeast.  He sailed along
+the coast until evening, when he saw yet another island in the distance
+to the south-west; and he therefore lay-to for the night.  At dawn the
+next morning he landed on the island and took formal possession of it,
+naming it Santa Maria de la Concepcion, which is the Rum Cay of the
+modern charts.  As the wind chopped round and he found himself on a
+lee-shore he did not stay there, but sailed again before night.  Two
+of the unhappy prisoners from Guanahani at this point made good their
+escape by swimming to a large canoe which one of the natives of the new
+island had rowed out--a circumstance which worried Columbus not a
+little; since he feared it would give him a bad name with the natives.
+He tried to counteract it by loading with presents another native who
+came to barter balls of cotton, and sending him away again.
+
+The effect of all that he was seeing, of the bridge of islands that
+seemed to be stretching towards the south-west and leading him to the
+region of untold wealth, was evidently very stimulating and exciting to
+Columbus.  His Journal is almost incoherent where he attempts to set down
+all he has got to say.  Let us listen to him for a moment:
+
+     "These islands are very green and fertile, and the breezes are very
+     soft, and there may be many things which I do not know, because I
+     did not wish to stop, in order to discover and search many islands
+     to find gold.  And since these people make signs thus, that they
+     wear gold on their arms and legs,--and it is gold, because I showed
+     them some pieces which I have,--I cannot fail, with the aid of our
+     Lord, in finding it where it is native.  And being in the middle of
+     the gulf between these two islands, that is to say, the island of
+     Santa Maria and this large one, which I named Fernandina, I found a
+     man alone in a canoe who was going from the island of Santa Maria to
+     Fernandina, and was carrying a little of his bread which might have
+     been about as large as the fist, and a gourd of water, and a piece
+     of reddish earth reduced to dust and afterwards kneaded, and some
+     dry leaves--[Tobacco]--which must be a thing very much appreciated
+     among them, because they had already brought me some of them as a
+     present at San Salvador: and he was carrying a small basket of their
+     kind, in which he had a string of small glass beads and two blancas,
+     by which I knew that he came from the island of San Salvador, and
+     had gone from there to Santa Maria and was going to Fernandina.  He
+     came to the ship: I caused him to enter it, as he asked to do so,
+     and I had his canoe placed on the ship and had everything which he
+     was carrying guarded and I ordered that bread and honey be given him
+     to eat and something to drink.  And I will go to Fernandina thus and
+     will give him everything, which belongs to him, that he may give
+     good reports of us.  So that, when your Highnesses send here, our
+     Lord pleasing, those who come may receive honour and the Indians
+     will give them of everything which they have."
+
+This hurried gabbling about gold and the aid of our Lord, interlarded
+with fragments of natural and geographical observation, sounds strangely
+across the gulf of time and impresses one with a disagreeable sense of
+bewildered greed--like that of a dog gulping at the delicacies in his
+platter and unwilling to do justice to one for fear the others should
+escape him; and yet it is a natural bewilderment, and one with which we
+must do our best to sympathise.
+
+Fernandina was the name which Columbus had already given to Long Island
+when he sighted it from Santa Maria; and he reached it in the evening of
+Tuesday, October 16th.  The man in the canoe had arrived before him; and
+the astute Admiral had the satisfaction of finding that once more his
+cleverness had been rewarded, and that the man in the canoe had given
+such glowing accounts of his generosity that there was no difficulty
+about his getting water and supplies.  While the barrels of water were
+being filled he landed and strolled about in the pleasant groves,
+observing the islanders and their customs, and finding them on the whole
+a little more sophisticated than those of San Salvador.  The women wore
+mantillas on their heads and "little pieces of cotton" round their
+loins-a sufficiently odd costume; and they appeared to Columbus to be a
+little more astute than the other islanders, for though they brought
+cotton in quantities to the ships they exacted payment of beads for it.
+In the charm and wonder of his walk in this enchanted land he was able
+for a moment to forget his hunger for gold and to admire the great
+branching palm-trees, and the fish that
+
+     "are here so different from ours that it is wonderful.  There are
+     some formed like cocks of the finest colours in the world, blue,
+     yellow, red and of all colours, and others tinted in a thousand
+     manners: and the colours are so fine, that there is not a man who
+     does not wonder at them, and who does not take great pleasure in
+     seeing them.  Also, there are whales.  I saw no beasts on land of
+     any kind except parrots and lizards.  A boy told me that he saw a
+     large snake.  I did not see sheep nor goats, nor any other beast;
+     although I have been here a very short time, as it is midday, still
+     if there had been any, I could not have missed seeing some."
+
+Columbus was not a very good descriptive writer, and he has but two
+methods of comparison; either a thing is like Spain, or it is not like
+Spain.  The verdure was "in such condition as it is in the month of May
+in Andalusia; and the trees  were all as different from ours as day from
+night, and also the fruits and grasses and the stones and all the
+things."  The essay written by a cockney child after a day at the seaside
+or in the country, is not greatly different from some of the verbatim
+passages of this journal; and there is a charm in that fact too, for it
+gives us a picture of Columbus, in spite of his hunt for gold and
+precious stones, wandering, still a child at heart, in the wonders of the
+enchanted world to which he had come.
+
+There was trouble on this day, because some of the crew had found an
+Indian with a piece of gold in his nose, and they got a scolding from
+Columbus for not detaining him and bartering with him for it.  There was
+bad weather also, with heavy rain and a threatening of tempest; there was
+a difference of opinion with Martin Alonso Pinzon about which way they
+should go round the island: but the next day the weather cleared, and the
+wind settled the direction of their course for them.  Columbus, whose eye
+never missed anything of interest to the sailor and navigator, notes thus
+early a fact which appears in every book of sailing directions for the
+Bahama Islands--that the water is so clear and limpid that the bottom can
+be seen at a great depth; and that navigation is thus possible and even
+safe among the rockstrewn coasts of the islands, when thus performed by
+sight and with the sun behind the ship.  He was also keenly alive to
+natural charm and beauty in the new lands that he was visiting, and there
+are unmistakable fragments of himself in the journal that speak
+eloquently of his first impressions.  "The singing of the little birds is
+such that it appears a man would wish never to leave here, and the flocks
+of parrots obscure the sun."
+
+But life, even to the discoverer of a New World, does not consist of
+wandering in the groves, and listening to the singing birds, and smelling
+the flowers, and remembering the May nights of Andalusia.  There was gold
+to be found and the mainland of Cathay to be discovered, and a letter,
+written by the sovereigns at his earnest request, to be delivered to the
+Great Khan.  The natives had told him of an island called Samoete to the
+southward, which was said to contain a quantity of gold.  He sailed
+thither on the 19th, and called it Isabella; its modern name is Crooked
+Island.  He anchored here and found it to be but another step in the
+ascending scale of his delight; it was greener and more beautiful than
+any of the islands he had yet seen.  He spent some time looking for the
+gold, but could not find any; although he heard of the island of Cuba,
+which he took to be the veritable Cipango.  He weighed anchor on October
+24th and sailed south-west, encountering some bad weather on the way; but
+on Sunday the 28th he came up with the north coast of Cuba and entered
+the mouth of a river which is the modern Nuevitas.  To the island of Cuba
+he gave the name of Juana in honour of the young prince to whom his son
+Diego had been appointed a page.
+
+
+If the other islands had seemed beautiful to him, Cuba seemed like heaven
+itself.  The mountains grandly rising in the interior, the noble rivers
+and long sweeping plains, the headlands melting into the clear water, and
+the gorgeous colours and flowers and birds and insects on land acted like
+a charm on Columbus and his sailors.  As they entered the river they
+lowered a boat in order to go ahead and sound for an anchorage; and two
+native canoes put off from the shore, but, when they saw the boat
+approaching, fled again.  The Admiral landed and found two empty houses
+containing nets and hooks and fishing-lines, and one of the strange
+silent dogs, such as they had encountered on the other island--dogs that
+pricked their ears and wagged their tails, but that never barked.  The
+Admiral, in spite of his greed for gold and his anxiety to "free" the
+people of the island, was now acting much more discreetly, and with the
+genuine good sense which he always possessed and which was only sometimes
+obscured.  He would not allow anything in the empty houses to be
+disturbed or taken away, and whenever he saw the natives he tried to show
+them that he intended to do them no harm, and to win their good will by
+making them presents of beads and toys for which he would take no return.
+As he went on up the river the scenery became more and more enchanting,
+so that he felt quite unhappy at not being able to express all the
+wonders and beauties that he saw.  In the pure air and under the serene
+blue of the sky those matchless hues of blossom and foliage threw a
+rainbow-coloured garment on either bank of the river; the flamingoes, the
+parrots and woodpeckers and humming-birds calling to one another and
+flying among the tree-tops, made the upper air also seem alive and shot
+with all the colours of the rainbow.  Humble Christopher, walking amid
+these gorgeous scenes, awed and solemnised by the strangeness and
+magnificence of nature around him, tries to identify something that he
+knows; and thinks, that amid all these strange chorusings of unknown
+birds, he hears the familiar note of a nightingale.  Amid all his
+raptures, however, the main chance is not forgotten; everything that he
+sees he translates into some terms of practical utility.  Just as on the
+voyage out every seaweed or fish or flying bird that he saw was hailed by
+him as a sign that land was near, so amid the beauty of this virgin world
+everything that he sees is taken to indicate either that he is close upon
+the track of the gold, or that he must be in Cipango, or that the natives
+will be easy to convert to Christianity.  In the fragrance of the woods
+of Cuba, Columbus thought that he smelled Oriental spices, which Marco
+Polo had described as abounding in Cipango; when he walked by the shore
+and saw the shells of pearl oysters, he believed the island to be loaded
+with pearls and precious stones; when he saw a scrap of tinsel or bright
+metal adorning a native, he argued that there was a gold mine close at
+hand.  And so he went on in an increasing whirl of bewildering
+enchantment from anchorage to anchorage and from island to island, always
+being led on by that yellow will o'-the-wisp, gold, and always believing
+that the wealth of the Orient would be his on the morrow.  As he coasted
+along towards the west he entered the river which he called Rio de Mares.
+He found a large village here full of palm-branch houses furnished with
+chairs and hammocks and adorned with wooden masks and statues; but in
+spite of his gentleness and offer of gifts the inhabitants all fled to
+the mountains, while he and his men walked curiously through the deserted
+houses.
+
+On Tuesday, October 30th, Martin Alonso Pinzon, whose communications the
+Admiral was by this time beginning to dread, came with some exciting
+news.  It seemed that the Indians from San Salvador who were on board the
+Pinta had told him that beyond the promontory, named by Columbus the Cape
+of Palms, there was a river, four days' journey upon which would bring
+one to the city of Cuba, which was very rich and large and abounded with
+gold; and that the king of that country was at war with a monarch whom
+they called Cami, and whom Pinzon identified with the Great Khan.  More
+than this, these natives assured him that the land they were on at
+present was the mainland itself, and that they could not be very far from
+Cathay.  Columbus for once found himself in agreement with Martin Alonso.
+The well-thumbed copy of Marco Polo was doubtless brought out, and
+abundant evidence found in it; and it was decided to despatch a little
+embassy to this city in order to gain information about its position and
+wealth.  When they continued their course, however, and rounded the cape,
+no river appeared; they sailed on, and yet promontory after promontory
+was opened ahead of them; and as the wind turned against them and the
+weather was very threatening they decided to turn back and anchor again
+in the Rio de Mares.
+
+Columbus was now, as he thought, hot upon the track of the Great Khan
+himself; and on the first of November he sent boats ashore and told the
+sailors to get information from the houses; but the inhabitants fled
+shyly into the woods.  Having once postulated the existence of the Great
+Khan in this immediate territory Columbus, as his habit was, found that
+everything fitted with the theory; and he actually took the flight of the
+natives, although it had occurred on a dozen other occasions, as a proof
+that they mistook his bands of men for marauding expeditions despatched
+by the great monarch himself.  He therefore recalled them, and sent a
+boat ashore with an Indian interpreter who, standing in the boat at the
+edge of the water, called upon the natives to draw near, and harangued
+them.  He assured them of the peaceable intentions of the great Admiral,
+and that he had nothing whatever to do with the Great Khan; which cannot
+very greatly have thrilled the Cubans, who knew no more about the Great
+Khan than they did about Columbus.  The interpreter then swam ashore and
+was well received; so well, that in the evening some sixteen canoes came
+off to the ships bringing cotton yarn and spears for traffic.  Columbus,
+with great astuteness, forbade any trading in cotton or indeed in
+anything at all except gold, hoping by this means to make the natives
+produce their treasures; and he would no doubt have been successful if
+the natives had possessed any gold, but as the poor wretches had nothing
+but the naked skins they stood up in, and the few spears and pots and
+rolls of cotton that they were offering, the Admiral's astuteness was for
+once thrown away.  There was one man, however, with a silver ring in his
+nose, who was understood to say that the king lived four days' journey in
+the interior, and that messengers had been sent to him to tell him of the
+arrival of the strange ships; which messengers would doubtless soon
+return bringing merchants with them to trade with the ships.  If this
+native was lying he showed great ingenuity in inventing the kind of story
+that his questioners wanted; but it is more likely that his utterances
+were interpreted by Columbus in the light of his own ardent beliefs.  At
+any rate it was decided to send at once a couple of envoys to this great
+city, and not to wait for the arrival of the merchants.  Two Spaniards,
+Rodrigo de Jerez and Luis de Torres, the interpreter to the expedition
+--who had so far found little use for his Hebrew and Chaldean--were chosen;
+and with them were sent two Indians, one from San Salvador and the other
+a local native who went as guide.  Red caps and beads and hawks' bells
+were duly provided, and a message for the king was given to them telling
+him that Columbus was waiting with letters and presents from Spanish
+sovereigns, which he was to deliver personally.  After the envoys had
+departed, Columbus, whose ships were anchored in a large basin of deep
+water with a clean and steep beach, decided to take the opportunity of
+having the vessels careened.  Their hulls were covered with shell and
+weed; the caulking, which had been dishonestly done at Palos, had also
+to be attended to; so the ships were beached and hove down one at a time
+--an unnecessary precaution, as it turned out, for there was no sign of
+treachery on the part of the natives.  While the men were making fires to
+heat their tar they noticed that the burning wood sent forth a heavy
+odour which was like mastic; and the Admiral, now always busy with
+optimistic calculations, reckoned that there was enough in that vicinity
+to furnish a thousand quintals every year.  While the work on the ships
+was going forward he employed himself in his usual way, going ashore,
+examining the trees and vegetables and fruits, and holding such
+communication as he was able with the natives.  He was up every morning
+at dawn, at one time directing the work of his men, at another going
+ashore after some birds that he had seen; and as dawn comes early in
+those islands his day was probably a long one, and it is likely that he
+was in bed soon after dark.  On the day that he went shooting, Martin
+Alonso Pinzon was waiting for him on his return; this time not to make
+any difficulties or independent proposals, but to show him two pieces of
+cinnamon that one of his men had got from an Indian who was carrying a
+quantity of it.  "Why did the man not get it all from him?" says greedy
+Columbus.  "Because of the prohibition of the Admiral's that no one
+should do any trading," says Martin Alonso, and conceives himself to have
+scored; for truly these two men do not love one another.  The boatswain
+of the Pinta, adds Martin Alonso, has found whole trees of it.  "The
+Admiral then went there and found that it was not cinnamon."  The Admiral
+was omnipotent; if he had said that it was manna they would have had to
+make it so, and as he chose to say that it was not cinnamon, we must take
+his word for it, as Martin Alonso certainly had to do; so that it was the
+Admiral who scored this time.  Columbus, however, now on the track of
+spices, showed some cinnamon and pepper to the natives; and the obliging
+creatures "said by signs that there was a great deal of it towards the
+south-east."  Columbus then showed them some gold and pearls; and
+"certain old men" replied that in a place they called Bo-No there was any
+amount of gold; the people wore it in their ears and on their arms and
+legs, and there were pearls also, and large ships and merchandise--all to
+the south-east.  Finding this information, which was probably entirely
+untrue and merely a polite effort to do what was expected of them, well
+received, the natives added that "a long distance from there, there were
+men with one eye, and other men with dogs' snouts who ate men, and that
+when they caught a man they beheaded him and drank his blood." .  .  .
+Soon after this the Admiral went on board again and began to write up his
+Journal, solemnly entering all these facts in it.  It is the most
+childish nonsense; but after all, how interesting and credible it must
+have been!  To live thus smelling the most heavenly perfumes, breathing
+the most balmy air, viewing the most lovely scenes, and to be always hot
+upon the track of gold and pearls and spices and wealth and dog-nosed,
+blood-drinking monstrosities--what an adventure, what a vivid piece of
+living!
+
+
+After a few days--on Tuesday, November 6th--the two men who had been sent
+inland to the great and rich city came back again with their report.
+Alas for visions of the Great Khan!  The city turned out to be a village
+of fifty houses with twenty people in each house.  The envoys had been
+received with great solemnity; and all the men "as well as the women"
+came to see them, and lodged them in a fine house.  The chief people in
+the village came and kissed their hands and feet, hailing them as
+visitors from the skies, and seating them in two chairs, while they sat
+round on the floor.  The native interpreter, doubtless according to
+instructions, then told them "how the Christians lived and how they were
+good people"; and I would give a great deal to have heard that brief
+address.  Afterwards the men went out and the women came in, also kissing
+the hands and feet of the visitors, and "trying them to see if they were
+of flesh and of bone like themselves."  The results were evidently so
+satisfactory that the strangers were implored to remain at least five
+days.  The real business of the expedition was then broached.  Had they
+any gold or pearls?  Had they any cinnamon or spices?  Answer, as usual:
+"No, but they thought there was a great deal of it to the south-east."
+The interest of the visitors then evaporated, and they set out for the
+coast again; but they found that at least five hundred men and women
+wanted to come with them, since they believed that they were returning to
+heaven.  On their journey back the two Spaniards noticed many people
+smoking, as the Admiral himself had done a few days before; and this is
+the first known discovery of tobacco by Europeans.
+
+They saw a great many geese, and the strange dogs that did not bark, and
+they saw potatoes also, although they did not know what they were.
+Columbus, having heard this report, and contemplating these gentle
+amiable creatures, so willing to give all they had in return for a scrap
+of rubbish, feels his heart lifted in a pious aspiration that they might
+know the benefits of the Christian religion.  "I have to say, Most Serene
+Princes," he writes,
+
+     "that by means of devout religious persons knowing their language
+     well, all would soon become Christians: and thus I hope in our Lord
+     that Your Highnesses will appoint such persons with great diligence
+     in order to turn to the Church such great peoples, and that they
+     will convert them, even as they have destroyed those who would not
+     confess the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit: and after their
+     days, as we are all mortal, they will leave their realms--in a very
+     tranquil condition and freed from heresy and wickedness, and will be
+     well received before the Eternal Creator, Whom may it please to give
+     them a long life and a great increase of larger realms and
+     dominions, and the will and disposition to spread the holy Christian
+     religion, as they have done up to the present time, Amen.  To-day I
+     will launch the ship and make haste to start on Thursday, in the
+     name of God, to go to the southeast and seek gold and spices, and
+     discover land."
+                    Thus Christopher Columbus, in the Name of God,
+
+     November 11, 1492.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE EARTHLY PARADISE
+
+When Columbus weighed anchor on the 12th of November he took with him six
+captive Indians.  It was his intention to go in search of the island of
+Babeque, which the Indians alleged lay about thirty leagues to the
+east-south-east, and where, they said, the people gathered gold out of the
+sand with candles at night, and afterwards made bars of it with a hammer.
+They told him this by signs; and we have only one more instance of the
+Admiral's facility in interpreting signs in favour of his own beliefs.
+It is only a few days later that in the same Journal he says, "The people
+of these lands do not understand me, nor do I nor any other person I have
+with me understand them; and these Indians I am taking with me, many
+times understand things contrary to what they are."  It was a fault at
+any rate not exclusively possessed by the Indians, who were doubtless
+made the subject of many philological experiments on the part of the
+interpreter; all that they seemed to have learned at this time were
+certain religious gestures, such as making the Sign of the Cross, which
+they did continually, greatly to the edification of the crew.
+
+In order to keep these six natives in a good temper Columbus kidnapped
+"seven women, large and small, and three children," in order, he alleged,
+that the men might conduct themselves better in Spain because of having
+their "wives" with them; although whether these assorted women were
+indeed the wives of the kidnapped natives must at the best be a doubtful
+matter.  The three children, fortunately, had their father and mother
+with them; but that was only because the father, having seen his wife and
+children kidnapped, came and offered to go with them of his own accord.
+This taking of the women raises a question which must be in the mind of
+any one who studies this extraordinary voyage--the question of the
+treatment of native women by the Spaniards.  Columbus is entirely silent
+on the subject; but taking into account the nature of the Spanish rabble
+that formed his company, and his own views as to the right which he had
+to possess the persons and goods of the native inhabitants, I am afraid
+that there can be very little doubt that in this matter there is a good
+reason, for his silence.  So far as Columbus himself was concerned, it is
+probable that he was innocent enough; he was not a sensualist by nature,
+and he was far too much interested and absorbed in the principal objects
+of his expedition, and had too great a sense of his own personal dignity,
+to have indulged in excesses that would, thus sanctioned by him, have
+produced a very disastrous effect on the somewhat rickety discipline of
+his crew.  He was too wise a master, however, to forbid anything that it
+was not in his power to prevent; and it is probable that he shut his eyes
+to much that, if he did not tolerate it, he at any rate regarded as a
+matter of no very great importance.  His crew had by this time learned to
+know their commander well enough not to commit under his eyes offences
+for which he would have been sure to punish them.
+
+
+For two days they ran along the coast with a fair wind; but on the 14th a
+head wind and heavy sea drove them into the shelter of a deep harbour
+called by Columbus Puerto del Principe, which is the modern Tanamo.  The
+number of islands off this part of the coast of Cuba confirmed Columbus
+in his profound geographical error; he took them to be "those innumerable
+islands which in the maps of the world are placed at the end of the
+east."  He erected a great wooden cross on an eminence here, as he always
+did when he took possession of a new place, and made some boat excursions
+among the islands in the harbour.  On the 17th of November two of the six
+youths whom he had taken on board the week before swam ashore and
+escaped.  When he started again on his voyage he was greatly
+inconvenienced by the wind, which veered about between the north and
+south of east, and was generally a foul wind for him.  There is some
+difference of opinion as to what point of the wind the ships of
+Columbus's time would sail on; but there is no doubt that they were
+extremely unhandy in anything approaching a head wind, and that they were
+practically no good at all at beating to windward.  The shape of their
+hulls, the ungainly erections ahead and astern, and their comparatively
+light hold on the water, would cause them to drift to leeward faster than
+they could work to windward.  In this head wind, therefore, Columbus
+found that he was making very little headway, although he stood out for
+long distances to the northward.  On Wednesday, November 21st, occurred a
+most disagreeable incident, which might easily have resulted in the
+Admiral's never reaching Spain alive.  Some time in the afternoon he
+noticed the Pinta standing away ahead of him in a direction which was not
+the course which he was steering; and he signalled her to close up with
+him.  No answer, however, was made to his signal, which he repeated, but
+to which he failed to attract any response.  He was standing south at the
+time, the wind being well in the north-east; and Martin Alonso Pinzon,
+whose caravel pointed into the wind much better than the unhandy Santa
+Maria, was standing to the east.  When evening fell he was still in
+sight, at a distance of sixteen miles.  Columbus was really concerned,
+and fired lombards and flew more signals of invitation; but there was no
+reply.  In the evening he shortened sail and burned a torch all night,
+"because it appeared that Martin Alonso was returning to me; and the
+night was very clear, and there was a nice little breeze by which to come
+to me if he wished."  But he did not wish, and he did not come.
+
+Martin Alonso has in fact shown himself at last in his true colours.  He
+has got the fastest ship, he has got a picked company of his own men from
+Palos; he has got an Indian on board, moreover, who has guaranteed to
+take him straight to where the gold is; and he has a very agreeable plan
+of going and getting it, and returning to Spain with the first news and
+the first wealth.  It is open mutiny, and as such cannot but be a matter
+of serious regret and trouble to the Admiral, who sits writing up his
+Journal by the swinging lamp in his little cabin.  To that friend and
+confidant he pours out his troubles and his long list of grievances
+against Martin Alonso; adding, "He has done and said many other things
+to me."  Up on deck the torch is burning to light the wanderer back
+again, if only he will come; and there is "a nice little breeze" by which
+to come if he wishes; but Martin Alonso has wishes quite other than that.
+
+
+The Pinta was out of sight the next morning, and the little Nina was all
+that the Admiral had to rely upon for convoy.  They were now near the
+east end of the north coast of Cuba, and they stood in to a harbour which
+the Admiral called Santa Catalina, and which is now called Cayo de Moa.
+As the importance of the Nina to the expedition had been greatly
+increased by the defection of the Pinta, Columbus went on board and
+examined her.  He found that some of her spars were in danger of giving
+way; and as there was a forest of pine trees rising from the shore he was
+able to procure a new mizzen mast and latine yard in case it should be
+necessary to replace those of the Nina.  The next morning he weighed
+anchor at sunrise and continued east along the coast.  He had now arrived
+at the extreme end of Cuba, and was puzzled as to what course he should
+take.  Believing Cuba, as he did, to be the mainland of Cathay, he would
+have liked to follow the coast in its trend to the south-west, in the
+hope of coming upon the rich city of Quinsay; but on the other hand there
+was looming to the south-west some land which the natives with him
+assured him was Bohio, the place where all the gold was.  He therefore
+held on his course; but when the Indians found that he was really going
+to these islands they became very much alarmed, and made signs that the
+people would eat them if they went there; and, in order further to
+dissuade the Admiral, they added that the people there had only one eye,
+and the faces, of dogs.  As it did not suit Columbus to believe them he
+said that they were lying, and that he "felt" that the island must belong
+to the domain of the Great Khan.  He therefore continued his course,
+seeing many beautiful and enchanting bays opening before him, and longing
+to go into them, but heroically stifling his curiosity, "because he was
+detained more than he desired by the pleasure and delight he felt in
+seeing and gazing on the beauty and freshness of those countries wherever
+he entered, and because he did not wish to be delayed in prosecuting what
+he was engaged upon; and for these reasons he remained that night beating
+about and standing off and on until day."  He could not trust himself,
+that is to say, to anchor in these beautiful harbours, for he knew he
+would be tempted to go ashore and waste valuable time exploring the
+woods; and so he remained instead, beating about in the open sea.
+
+As it was, what with contrary winds and his own indecision as to which
+course he should pursue, it was December the 6th before he came up with
+the beautiful island of Hayti, and having sent the Nina in front to
+explore for a harbour, entered the Mole Saint Nicholas, which he called
+Puerto Maria.  Towards the east he saw an island shaped like a turtle,
+and this island he named Tortuga; and the harbour, which he entered that
+evening on the hour of Vespers, he called Saint Nicholas, as it was the
+feast of that saint.  Once more his description flounders among
+superlatives: he thought Cuba was perfect; but he finds the new island
+more perfect still.  The climate is like May in Cordova; the tracts of
+arable land and fertile valleys and high mountains are like those in
+Castile; he finds mullet like those of Castile; soles and other fish like
+those in Castile; nightingales and other small birds like those in
+Castile; myrtle and other trees and grasses like those in Castile!  In
+short, this new land is so like Spain, only more wonderful and beautiful,
+that he christens it Espanola.
+
+They stayed two days in the harbour of Saint Nicholas, and then began to
+coast eastwards along the shores of Espaniola.  Their best progress was
+made at dawn and sunset, when the land breeze blew off the island; and
+during the day they encountered a good deal of colder weather and
+easterly winds, which made their progress slow.  Every day they put in at
+one or other of the natural harbours in which that beautiful coast
+abounds; every day they saw natives on the shores who generally fled at
+their approach, but were often prevailed upon to return and to converse
+with the natives on board the Admiral's ship, and to receive presents and
+bring parrots and bits of gold in exchange.  On one day a party of men
+foraging ashore saw a beautiful young girl, who fled at their approach;
+and they chased her a long way through the woods, finally capturing her
+and bringing her on board.  Columbus "caused her to be clothed"
+--doubtless a diverting occupation for Rodrigo, Juan, Garcia, Pedro,
+William, and the rest of them, although for the poor, shy, trembling
+captive not diverting at all--and sent her ashore again loaded with beads
+and brass rings--to act as a decoy.  Having sown this good seed the
+Admiral waited for a night, and then sent a party of men ashore, "well
+prepared with arms and adapted for such an affair," to have some
+conversation with the people.  The innocent harvest was duly reaped; the
+natives met the Spaniards with gifts of food and drink, and understanding
+that the Admiral would like to have a parrot, they sent as many parrots
+as were wanted.  The husband of the girl who had been captured and
+clothed came back with her to the shore with a large body of natives,
+in order to thank the Admiral for his kindness and clemency; and their
+confidence was not misplaced, as the Admiral did not at that moment wish
+to do any more kidnapping.  The Spaniards were more and more amazed and
+impressed with the beauty and fertility of these islands.  The lands were
+more lovely than the finest land in Castile; the rivers were large and
+wide, the trees green and full of fruit, the grasses knee-deep and
+starred with flowers; the birds sang sweetly all night; there were mastic
+trees and aloes and plantations of cotton.  There was fishing in plenty;
+and if there were not any gold mines immediately at hand, they here sure
+to be round the next headland or, at the farthest, in the next island.
+The people, too, charmed and delighted the Admiral, who saw in them a
+future glorious army of souls converted to the Christian religion.  They
+were taller and handsomer than the inhabitants of the other islands, and
+the women much fairer; indeed, if they had not been so much exposed to
+the sun, and if they could only be clothed in the decent garments of
+civilisation, the Admiral thought that their skins would be as white as
+those of the women of Spain--which was only another argument for bringing
+them within the fold of the Holy Catholic Church.  The men were powerful
+and apparently harmless; they showed no truculent or suspicious spirit;
+they had no knowledge of arms; a thousand of them would not face three
+Christians; and
+
+     "so they are suitable to be governed and made to work and sow and do
+     everything else that shall be necessary, and to build villages and
+     be taught to wear clothing and observe our customs."
+
+At present, you see, they are but poor happy heathens, living in a
+paradise of their own, where the little birds sing all through the warm
+nights, and the rivers murmur through flowery meadows, and no one has any
+knowledge of arms or desire of such knowledge, and every one goes naked
+and unashamed.  High time, indeed, that they should be taught to wear
+clothing and observe our customs.
+
+
+The local chief came on a visit of state to the ship; and the Admiral
+paid him due honour, telling him that he came as an envoy from the
+greatest sovereigns in the world.  But this charming king, or cacique as
+they called him, would not believe this; he thought that Columbus was,
+for reasons of modesty, speaking less than the truth--a new charge to
+bring against our Christopher!  He believed that the Spaniards came from
+heaven, and that the realms of the sovereigns of Castile were in the
+heavens and not in this world.  He took some refreshment, as his
+councillors did also, little dreaming, poor wretches, what in after years
+was to come to them through all this palavering and exchanging of
+presents.  The immediate result of the interview, however, was to make
+intercourse with the natives much freer and pleasanter even than it had
+been before; and some of the sailors went fishing with the natives.
+It was then that they were shown some cane arrows with hardened points,
+which the natives said belonged to the people of 'Caniba', who, they
+alleged, came to the island to capture and eat the natives.  The Admiral
+did not believe it; his sublime habit of rejecting everything that did
+not fit in with his theory of the moment, and accepting everything that
+did, made him shake his head when this piece of news was brought to him.
+He could not get the Great Khan out of his head, and his present theory
+was that this island, being close to the mainland of Cathay, was visited
+by the armies of the Great Khan, and that it was his men who had used the
+arrows and made war upon the natives.  It was no good for the natives to
+show him some of their mutilated bodies, and to tell him that the
+cannibals ate them piecemeal; he had no use for such information.  His
+mind was like a sieve of which the size of the meshes could be adjusted
+at will; everything that was not germane to the idea of the moment fell
+through it, and only confirmative evidence remained; and at the moment he
+was not believing any stories which did not prove that the Great Khan
+was, so to speak, just round the corner.  If they talked about gold he
+would listen to them; and so the cacique brought him a piece of gold the
+size of his hand and, breaking it into pieces, gave it to him a bit at a
+time.  This the Admiral took to be sign of great intelligence.  They told
+him there was gold at Tortuga, but he preferred to believe that it came
+from Babeque, which may have been Jamaica and may have been nothing at
+all.
+
+But his theory was that it existed on Espanola only in small pieces
+because that country was so rich that the natives had no need for it;
+an economic theory which one grows dizzy in pondering.  At any rate
+"the Admiral believed that he was very near the fountainhead, and that
+Our Lord was about to show him where the gold originates."
+
+On Tuesday, December 18th, the ships were all dressed in honour of a
+religious anniversary, and the cacique, hearing the firing of the
+lombards with which the festival was greeted, came down to the shore to
+see what was the matter.  As Columbus was sitting at dinner on deck
+beneath the poop the cacique arrived with all his people; and the account
+of his visit is preserved in Columbus's own words.
+
+     "As he entered the ship he found that I was eating at the table
+     below the stern forecastle, and he came quickly to seat himself
+     beside me, and would not allow me to go to meet him or get up from
+     the table, but only that I should eat.  I thought that he would like
+     to eat some of our viands and I then ordered that things should be
+     brought him to eat.  And when he entered under the forecastle, he
+     signed with his hand that all his people should remain without, and
+     they did so with the greatest haste and respect in the world, and
+     all seated themselves on the deck, except two men of mature age whom
+     I took to be his counsellors and governors, and who came and seated
+     themselves at his feet: and of the viands which I placed before him
+     he took of each one as much as may be taken for a salutation, and
+     then he sent the rest to his people and they all ate some of it, and
+     he did the same with the drink, which he only touched to his mouth,
+     and then gave it to the others in the same way, and it was all done
+     in wonderful state and with very few words, and whatever he said,
+     according to what I was able to understand, was very formal and
+     prudent, and those two looked in his face and spoke for him and with
+     him, and with great respect.
+
+     "After eating, a page brought a belt which is like those of Castile
+     in shape, but of a different make, which he took and gave me, and
+     also two wrought pieces of gold, which were very thin, as I believe
+     they obtain very little of it here, although I consider they are
+     very near the place where it has its home, and that there is a great
+     deal of it.  I saw that a drapery that I had upon my bed pleased
+     him.  I gave it to him, and some very good amber beads which I wore
+     around my neck and some red shoes and a flask of orange-flower
+     water, with which he was so pleased it was wonderful; and he and his
+     governor and counsellors were very sorry that they did not
+     understand me, nor I them.  Nevertheless I understood that he told
+     me that if anything from here would satisfy me that all the island
+     was at my command.  I sent for some beads of mine, where as a sign I
+     have a 'excelente' of gold upon which the images of your Highnesses
+     are engraved, and showed it to him, and again told him the same as
+     yesterday, that your Highnesses command and rule over all the best
+     part of the world, and that there are no other such great Princes:
+     and I showed him the royal banners and the others with the cross,
+     which he held in great estimation: and he said to his counsellors
+     that your Highnesses must be great Lords, since you had sent me here
+     from so far without fear: and many other things happened which I did
+     not understand, except that I very well saw he considered everything
+     as very wonderful."
+
+Later in the day Columbus got into talk with an old man who told him that
+there was a great quantity of gold to be found on some island about a
+hundred leagues away; that there was one island that was all gold; and
+that in the others there was such a quantity that they natives gathered
+it and sifted it with sieves and made it into bars.  The old man pointed
+out vaguely the direction in which this wonderful country lay; and if he
+had not been one of the principal persons belonging to the King Columbus
+would have detained him and taken him with him; but he decided that he
+had paid the cacique too much respect to make it right that he should
+kidnap one of his retinue.  He determined, however, to go and look for
+the gold.  Before he left he had a great cross erected in the middle of
+the Indian village; and as he made sail out of the harbour that evening
+he could see the Indians kneeling round the cross and adoring it.  He
+sailed eastward, anchoring for a day in the Bay of Acul, which he called
+Cabo de Caribata, receiving something like an ovation from the natives,
+and making them presents and behaving very graciously and kindly to them.
+
+It was at this time that Columbus made the acquaintance of a man whose
+character shines like a jewel amid the dismal scenes that afterwards
+accompanied the first bursting of the wave of civilisation on these happy
+shores.  This was the king of that part of the island, a young man named
+Guacanagari.  This king sent out a large canoe full of people to the
+Admiral's ship, with a request that Columbus would land in his country,
+and a promise that the chief would give him whatever he had.  There
+must have been an Intelligence Department in the island, for the chief
+seemed to know what would be most likely to attract the Admiral; and with
+his messengers he sent out a belt with a large golden mask attached to
+it.  Unfortunately the natives on board the Admiral's ship could not
+understand Guacanagari's messengers, and nearly the whole of the day was
+passed in talking before the sense of their message was finally made out
+by means of signs.  In the evening some Spaniards were sent ashore to see
+if they could not get some gold; but Columbus, who had evidently had some
+recent experience of their avariciousness, and who was anxious to keep on
+good terms with the chiefs of the island, sent his secretary with them to
+see that they did nothing unjust or unreasonable.  He was scrupulous to
+see that the natives got their bits of glass and beads in exchange for
+the gold; and it is due to him to remember that now, as always, he was
+rigid in regulating his conduct with other men in accordance with his
+ideas of justice and honour, however elastic those ideas may seem to have
+been.  The ruffianly crew had in their minds only the immediate
+possession of what they could get from the Indians; the Admiral had in
+his mind the whole possession of the islands and the bodies and souls of
+its inhabitants.  If you take a piece of gold without giving a glass bead
+in exchange for it, it is called stealing; if you take a country and its
+inhabitants, and steal their peace from them, and give them blood and
+servitude in exchange for it, it is called colonisation and
+Empire-building.  Every one understands the distinction; but so few
+people see the difference that Columbus of all men may be excused for
+his unconsciousness of it.
+
+Indeed Columbus was seeing yellow at this point in his career.  The word
+"gold" is scattered throughout every page of his journal; he can
+understand nothing that the natives say to him except that there is a
+great quantity of gold somewhere about.  He is surrounded by natives
+pressing presents upon him, protesting their homage, and assuring him (so
+he thinks) that there are any amount of gold mines; and no wonder that
+the yellow light blinds his eyes and confounds his senses, and that
+sometimes, even when the sun has gone down and the natives have retired
+to their villages and he sits alone in the seclusion of his cabin, the
+glittering motes still dance before his eyes and he becomes mad, maudlin,
+ecstatic .  .  .  .  The light flickers in the lamp as the ship swings a
+little on the quiet tide and a night breeze steals through the cabin
+door; the sound of voices ashore sounds dimly across the water; the brain
+of the Admiral, overfilled with wonders and promises and hopes, sends its
+message to the trembling hand that holds the pen, and the incoherent
+words stream out on the ink.  "May our Lord in His mercy direct me until
+I find this gold, I say this Mine, because I have many people here who
+say that they know it."
+
+On Christmas Eve a serious misfortune befell Columbus.  What with looking
+for gold, and trying to understand the people who talked about it, and
+looking after his ships, and writing up his journal, he had had
+practically no sleep for two days and a night; and at eleven o'clock on
+the 24th of December, the night being fine and his ship sailing along the
+coast with a light land breeze, he decided to lie down to get some sleep.
+There were no difficulties in navigation to be feared, because the ship's
+boats had been rowed the day before a distance of about ten miles ahead
+on the course which they were then steering and had seen that there was
+open water all the way.  The wind fell calm; and the man at the helm,
+having nothing to do, and feeling sleepy, called a ship's boy to him,
+gave him the helm, and went off himself to lie down.  This of course was
+against all rules; but as the Admiral was in his cabin and there was no
+one to tell them otherwise the watch on deck thought it a very good
+opportunity to rest.  Suddenly the boy felt the rudder catch upon
+something, saw the ship swinging, and immediately afterwards heard the
+sound of tide ripples.  He cried out; and in a moment Columbus, who was
+sleeping the light sleep of an anxious shipmaster, came tumbling up to
+see what was the matter.  The current, which flows in that place at a
+speed of about two knots, had carried the ship on to a sand bank, but she
+touched so quietly that it was hardly felt.  Close on the heels of,
+Columbus came the master of the ship and the delinquent watch; and the
+Admiral immediately ordered them to launch the ship's boat--and lay out
+an anchor astern so that they could warp her off.  The wretches lowered
+the boat, but instead of getting the anchor on board rowed off in the
+direction of the Nina, which was lying a mile and a half to windward.
+As soon as Columbus saw what they were doing he ran to the side and,
+seeing that the tide was failing and that the ship had swung round across
+the bank, ordered the remainder of the crew to cut away the mainmast and
+throw the deck hamper overboard, in order to lighten the ship.  This took
+some time; the tide was falling, and the ship beginning to heel over on
+her beam; and by the time it was done the Admiral saw that it would be of
+no use, for the ship's seams had opened and she was filling.
+
+At this point the miserable crew in the ship's boat came back, the loyal
+people on the Nina having refused to receive them and sent them back to
+the assistance of the Admiral.  But it was now too late to do anything to
+save the ship; and as he did not know but that she might break up,
+Columbus decided to tranship the people to the Nina, who had by this time
+sent her own boat.  The whole company boarded the Nina, on which the
+Admiral beat about miserably till morning in the vicinity of his doomed
+ship.  Then he sent Diego de Arana, the brother of Beatriz and a trusty
+friend, ashore in a boat to beg the help of the King; and Guacanagari
+immediately sent his people with large canoes to unload the wrecked ship,
+which was done with great efficiency and despatch, and the whole of her
+cargo and fittings stored on shore under a guard.  And so farewell to the
+Santa Maria, whose bones were thenceforward to bleach upon the shores of
+Hayti, or incongruously adorn the dwellings of the natives.  She may have
+been "a bad sailer and unfit for discovery"; but no seaman looks without
+emotion upon the wreck of a ship whose stem has cut the waters of home,
+which has carried him safely over thousands of uncharted miles, and which
+has for so long been his shelter and sanctuary.
+
+
+At sunrise the kind-hearted cacique came down to the Nina, where Columbus
+had taken up his quarters, and with tears in his eyes begged the Admiral
+not to grieve at his losses, for that he, the cacique, would give him
+everything that he possessed; that he had already given two large houses
+to the Spaniards from the Santa Maria who had been obliged to encamp on
+shore, and that he would provide more accommodation and help if
+necessary.  In fact, the day which had been ushered in so disastrously
+turned into a very happy one; and before it was over Columbus had decided
+that, as he could not take the whole of his company home on the Nina, he
+would establish a settlement on shore so that the men who were left
+behind could collect gold and store it until more ships could be sent
+from Spain.  The natives came buzzing round anxious to barter whatever
+they had for hawks' bells, which apparently were the most popular of the
+toys that had been brought for bartering; "they shouted and showed the
+pieces of gold, saying chuq, chuq, for hawks' bells, as they are in a
+likely state to become crazy for them."  The cacique was delighted to see
+that the Admiral was pleased with the gold that was brought to him, and
+he cheered him up by telling him that there was any amount in Cibao,
+which Columbus of course took for Cipango.  The cacique entertained
+Columbus to a repast on shore, at which the monarch wore a shirt and a
+pair of gloves that Columbus had given him; "and he rejoiced more over
+the gloves than anything that had been given him."  Columbus was pleased
+with his clean and leisurely method of eating, and with his dainty
+rubbing of his hands with herbs after he had eaten.  After the repast
+Columbus gave a little demonstration of bow-and-arrow shooting and the
+firing of lombards and muskets, all of which astonished and impressed the
+natives.
+
+The afternoon was spent in deciding on a site for the fortress which was
+to be constructed; and Columbus had no difficulty in finding volunteers
+among the crews to remain in the settlement.  He promised to leave with
+them provisions of bread and wine for a year, a ship's boat, seeds for
+sowing crops, and a carpenter, a caulker, a gunner, and a cooper.  Before
+the day was out he was already figuring up the profit that would arise
+out of his misfortune of the day before; and he decided that it was the
+act of God which had cast his ship away in order that this settlement
+should be founded.  He hoped that the settlers would have a ton of gold
+ready for him when he came back from Castile, so that, as he had said in
+the glittering camp of Santa Fe, where perhaps no one paid very much heed
+to him, there might be such a profit as would provide for the conquest of
+Jerusalem and the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre.  After all, if he was
+greedy for gold, he had a pious purpose for its employment.
+
+
+The last days of the year were very busy ones for the members of the
+expedition.  Assisted by the natives they were building the fort which,
+in memory of the day on which it was founded, Columbus called La
+Villa-de la Navidad.  The Admiral spent much time with King Guacanagari,
+who "loved him so much that it was wonderful," and wished to cover him
+all over with gold before he went away, and begged him not to go before
+it was done.  On December 27th there was some good news; a caravel had
+been seen entering a harbour a little further along the coast; and as
+this could only mean that the Pinta had returned, Columbus borrowed a
+canoe from the king, and despatched a sailor in it to carry news of his
+whereabouts to the Pinta.  While it was away Guacanagari collected all
+the other kings and chiefs who were subject to him, and held a kind of
+durbar.  They all wore their crowns; and Guacanagari took off his crown
+and placed it on Columbus's head; and the Admiral, not to be outdone,
+took from his own neck "a collar of good bloodstones and very beautiful
+beads of fine colours; which appeared very good in all parts, and placed
+it upon the King; and he took off a cloak of fine scarlet cloth which he
+had put on that day, and clothed the King with it; and he sent for some
+coloured buskins which he made him put on, and placed upon his finger a
+large silver ring"--all of which gives us a picturesque glimpse into the
+contents of the Admiral's wardrobe, and a very agreeable picture of King
+Guacanagari, whom we must now figure as clothed, in addition to his
+shirt and gloves, in a pair of coloured buskins, a collar of
+bloodstones, a scarlet cloak and a silver ring.
+
+But the time was running short; the Admiral, hampered as he was by the
+possession of only one small ship, had now but one idea, which was to get
+back to Castile as quickly as possible, report the result of his
+discoveries, and come back again with a larger and more efficient
+equipment.  Before he departed he had an affectionate leave-taking with
+King Guacanagari; he gave him another shirt, and also provided a
+demonstration of the effect of lombards by having one loaded, and firing
+at the old Santa Maria where she lay hove down on the sandbank.  The shot
+went clean through her hull and fell into the sea beyond, and produced
+what might be called a very strong moral effect, although an unnecessary
+one, on the natives.  He then set about the very delicate business of
+organising the settlement.  In all, forty-two men were to remain behind,
+with Diego de Arana in the responsible position of chief lieutenant,
+assisted by Pedro Gutierrez and Rodrigo de Escovedo, the nephew of Friar
+Juan Perez of La Rabida.  To these three he delegated all his powers and
+authority as Admiral and Viceroy; and then, having collected the
+colonists, gave them a solemn address.  First, he reminded them of the
+goodness of God to them, and advised them to remain worthy of it by
+obeying the Divine command in all their actions.  Second, he ordered
+them, as a representative of the Sovereigns of Spain, to obey the captain
+whom he had appointed for them as they would have obeyed himself.  Third,
+he urged them to show respect and reverence towards King Guacanagari and
+his chiefs, and to the inferior chiefs, and to avoid annoying them or
+tormenting them, since they were to remain in a land that was as yet
+under native dominion; to "strive and watch by their soft and honest
+speech to gain their good-will and keep their friendship and love, so
+that he should find them as friendly and favourable and more so when he
+returned."  Fourth, he commanded them "and begged them earnestly" to do
+no injury and use no force against any natives; to take nothing from them
+against their will; and especially to be on their guard to avoid injury
+or violence to the women, "by which they would cause scandal and set a
+bad example to the Indians and show the infamy of the Christians."
+Fifth, he charged them not to scatter themselves or leave the place where
+they then were, but to remain together until he returned.  Sixth, he
+"animated" them to suffer their solitude and exile cheerfully and
+bravely, since they had willingly chosen it.  The seventh order was, that
+they should get help from the King to send boat expeditions in search of
+the gold mines; and lastly, he promised that he would petition the
+Sovereigns to honour them with special favours and rewards.  To this very
+manly, wise and humane address the people listened with some emotion,
+assuring Columbus that they placed their hopes in him, "begging him
+earnestly to remember them always, and that as quickly as he could he
+should give them the great joy which they anticipated from his coming
+again."
+
+All of which things being done, the ships [ship--there was only the Nina]
+loaded and provisioned, and the Admiral's final directions given, he
+makes his farewells and weighs anchor at sunrise on Friday, January 4.,
+1493.  Among the little crowd on the shore who watch the Nina growing
+smaller in the distance are our old friends Allard and William, tired of
+the crazy confinement of a ship and anxious for shore adventures.  They
+are to have their fill of them, as it happens; adventures that are to
+bring to the settlers a sudden cloud of blood and darkness, and for the
+islanders a brief return to their ancient peace.  But death waits for
+Allard and William in the sunshine and silence of Espanola.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE VOYAGE HOME
+
+Columbus did not stand out to sea on his homeward course immediately, but
+still coasted along the shores of the island as though he were loth to
+leave it, and as though he might still at some bend of a bay or beyond
+some verdant headland come upon the mines and jewels that he longed for.
+The mountain that he passed soon after starting he called Monte Christi,
+which name it bears to this day; and he saw many other mountains and
+capes and bays, to all of which he gave names.  And it was a fortunate
+chance which led him thus to stand along the coast of the island; for on
+January 6th the sailor who was at the masthead, looking into the clear
+water for shoals and rocks, reported that he saw the caravel Pinta right
+ahead.  When she came up with him, as they were in very shallow water not
+suitable for anchorage, Columbus returned to the bay of Monte Christi to
+anchor there.  Presently Martin Alonso Pinzon came on board to report
+himself--a somewhat crestfallen Martin, we may be sure, for he had failed
+to find the gold the hope of which had led him to break his honour as a
+seaman.  But the Martin Alonsos of this world, however sorry their
+position may be, will always find some kind of justification for it.  It
+must have been a trying moment for Martin Alonso as his boat from the
+Pinta drew near the Nina, and he saw the stalwart commanding figure of
+the white-haired Admiral walking the poop.  He knew very well that
+according to the law and custom of the sea Columbus would have been well
+within his right in shooting him or hanging him on the spot; but Martin
+puts on a bold face as, with a cold dread at his heart and (as likely as
+not) an ingratiating smile upon his face he comes up over the side.
+Perhaps, being in some ways a cleverer man than Christopher, he knew the
+Admiral's weak points; knew that he was kind-hearted, and would remember
+those days of preparation at Palos when Martin Alonso had been his
+principal stay and help.  Martin's story was that he had been separated
+from the Admiral against his will; that the crew insisted upon it, and
+that in any case they had only meant to go and find some gold and bring
+it back to the Admiral.  Columbus did not believe him for a moment, but
+either his wisdom or his weakness prevented him from saying so.  He
+reproached Martin Alonso for acting with pride and covetousness "that
+night when he went away and left him"; and Columbus could not think "from
+whence had come the haughty actions and dishonesty Martin had shown
+towards him on that voyage."  Martin had done a good trade and had got a
+certain amount of gold; and no doubt he knew well in what direction to
+turn the conversation when it was becoming unpleasant to himself.  He
+told Columbus of an island to the south of Juana--[Cuba]--called
+Yamaye,--[Jamaica]--where pieces of gold were taken from the mines as
+large as kernels of wheat, and of another island towards the east which
+was inhabited only by women.
+
+The unpleasantness was passed over as soon as possible, although the
+Admiral felt that the sooner he got home the better, since he was
+practically at the mercy of the Pinzon brothers and their following from
+Palos.  He therefore had the Pinta beached and recaulked and took in wood
+and water, and continued his voyage on Tuesday, January 8th.  He says
+that "this night in the name of our Lord he will start on his journey
+without delaying himself further for any matter, since he had found what
+he had sought, and he did not wish to have more trouble with that Martin
+Alonso until their Highnesses learned the news of the voyage and what he
+has done."  After that it will be another matter, and his turn will come;
+for then, he says, "I will not suffer the bad deeds of persons without
+virtue, who, with little respect, presume to carry out their own wills in
+opposition to those who did them honour."  Indeed, for several days, the
+name of "that Martin Alonso" takes the place of gold in Columbus's
+Journal.  There were all kinds of gossip about the ill deeds of Martin
+Alonso, who had taken four Indian men and two young girls by force; the
+Admiral releasing them immediately and sending them back to their homes.
+Martin Alonso, moreover, had made a rule that half the gold that was
+found was to be kept by himself; and he tried to get all the people of
+his ship to swear that he had been trading for only six days, but "his
+wickedness was so public that he could not hide it."  It was a good thing
+that Columbus had his journal to talk to, for he worked off a deal of
+bitterness in it.  On Sunday, January 13th, when he had sent a boat
+ashore to collect some "ajes" or potatoes, a party of natives with their
+faces painted and with the plumes of parrots in their hair came and
+attacked the party from the boat; but on getting a slash or two with a
+cutlass they took to flight and escaped from the anger of the Spaniards.
+Columbus thought that they were cannibals or caribs, and would like to
+have taken some of them, but they did not come back, although afterwards
+he collected four youths who came out to the caravel with cotton and
+arrows.
+
+Columbus was very curious about the island of Matinino,--[Martinique]
+--which was the one said to be inhabited only by women, and he wished very
+much to go there; but the caravels were leaking badly, the crews were
+complaining, and he was reluctantly compelled to shape his course for
+Spain.  He sailed to the north-east, being anxious apparently to get into
+the region of westerly winds which he correctly guessed would be found to
+the north of the course he had sailed on his outward voyage.  By the 17th
+of January he was in the vicinity of the Sargasso Sea again, which this
+time had no terrors for him.  From his journal the word "gold" suddenly
+disappears; the Viceroy and Governor-General steps off the stage; and in
+his place appears the sea captain, watching the frigate birds and
+pelicans, noting the golden gulf-weed in the sea, and smelling the
+breezes that are once more as sweet as the breezes of Seville in May.  He
+had a good deal of trouble with his dead-reckoning at this time, owing to
+the changing winds and currents; but he made always from fifty to seventy
+miles a day in a direction between north-by-east and north-north-east.
+The Pinta was not sailing well, and he often had to wait for her to come
+up with him; and he reflected in his journal that if Martin Alonso Pinzon
+had taken as much pains to provide himself with a good mast in the Indies
+as he had to separate himself from the Admiral, the Pinta would have
+sailed better.
+
+And so he went on for several days, with the wind veering always south
+and south-west, and pointing pretty steadily to the north-east.  On
+February 4th he changed his course, and went as near due east as he
+could.  They now began to find themselves in considerable doubt as to
+their position.  The Admiral said he was seventy-five leagues to the
+south of Flores; Vincenti Pinzon and the pilots thought that they had
+passed the Azores and were in the neighbourhood of Madeira.  In other
+words, there was a difference of 600 miles between their estimates,
+and the Admiral remarks that "the grace of God permitting, as soon as
+land is seen, it will be known who has calculated the surest."
+
+A great quantity of birds that began to fly about the ship made him think
+that they were near land, but they turned out to be the harbingers of a
+storm.  On Tuesday, February 12th, the sea and wind began to rise, and it
+continued to blow harder throughout that night and the next day.  The
+wind being aft he went under bare poles most of the night, and when day
+came hoisted a little sail; but the sea was terrible, and if he had not
+been so sure of the staunch little Nina he would have felt himself in
+danger of being lost.  The next day the sea, instead of going down,
+increased in roughness; there was a heavy cross sea which kept breaking
+right over the ship, and it became necessary to make a little sail in
+order to run before the wind, and to prevent the vessel falling back into
+the trough of the seas.  All through Thursday he ran thus under the half
+hoisted staysail, and he could see the Pinta running also before the
+wind, although since she presented more surface, and was able to carry a
+little more sail than the Nina, she was soon lost to sight.  The Admiral
+showed lights through the night, and this time there was no lack of
+response from Martin Alonso; and for some part of that dark and stormy
+night these two humanly freighted scraps of wood and cordage staggered
+through the gale showing lights to each other; until at last the light
+from the Pinta disappeared.  When morning came she was no longer to be
+seen; and the wind and the sea had if anything increased.  The Nina was
+now in the greatest danger.  Any one wave of the heavy cross sea, if it
+had broken fairly across her, would have sunk her; and she went swinging
+and staggering down into the great valleys and up into the hills, the
+steersman's heart in his mouth, and the whole crew in an extremity of
+fear.  Columbus, who generally relied upon his seamanship, here invoked
+external aid, and began to offer bargains to the Almighty.  He ordered
+that lots should be cast, and that he upon whom the lot fell should make
+a vow to go on pilgrimage to Santa Maria de Guadaloupe carrying a white
+candle of five pounds weight.  Same dried peas were brought, one for
+every member of the crew, and on one of them a cross was marked with a
+knife; the peas were well shaken and were put into a cap.  The first to
+draw was the Admiral; he drew the marked pea, and he made the vow.  Lots
+were again drawn, this time for a greater pilgrimage to Santa Maria de
+Loretto in Ancona; and the lot fell on a seaman named Pedro de Villa,
+--the expenses of whose pilgrimage Columbus promised to pay.  Again lots
+were drawn for a pilgrimage to the shrine of Santa Clara of Moguer, the
+pilgrim to watch and pray for one night there; and again the lot fell on
+Columbus.  In addition to these, every one, since they took themselves
+for lost, made some special and private vow or bargain with God; and
+finally they all made a vow together that at the first land they reached
+they would go in procession in their shirts to pray at an altar of Our
+Lady.
+
+The scene thus conjured up is one peculiar to the time and condition of
+these people, and is eloquent and pathetic enough: the little ship
+staggering and bounding along before the wind, and the frightened crew,
+who had gone through so many other dangers, huddled together under the
+forecastle, drawing peas out of a cap, crossing themselves, making vows
+upon their knees, and seeking to hire the protection of the Virgin by
+their offers of candles and pilgrimages.  Poor Christopher, standing in
+his drenched oilskins and clinging to a piece of rigging, had his own
+searching of heart and examining of conscience.  He was aware of the
+feverish anxiety and impatience that he felt, now that he had been
+successful in discovering a New World, to bring home the news and fruits
+of it; his desire to prove true what he had promised was so great that,
+in his own graphic phrase, "it seemed to him that every gnat could
+disturb and impede it"; and he attributed this anxiety to his lack of
+faith in God.  He comforted himself, like Robinson Crusoe in a similar
+extremity, by considering on the other hand what favours God had shown
+him, and by remembering that it was to the glory of God that the fruits
+of his discovery were to be dedicated.  But in the meantime here he was
+in a ship insufficiently ballasted (for she was now practically empty of
+provisions, and they had found it necessary to fill the wine and water
+casks with salt water in order to trim her) and flying before a tempest
+such as he had never experienced in his life.  As a last resource, and in
+order to give his wonderful news a chance of reaching Spain in case the
+ship were lost, he went into his cabin and somehow or other managed to
+write on a piece of parchment a brief account of his discoveries, begging
+any one who might find it to carry it to the Spanish Sovereigns.  He tied
+up the parchment in a waxed cloth, and put it into a large barrel without
+any one seeing him, and then ordered the barrel to be thrown into the
+sea, which the crew took to be some pious act of sacrifice or devotion.
+Then he went back on deck and watched the last of the daylight going and
+the green seas swelling and thundering about his little ship, and thought
+anxiously of his two little boys at school in Cordova, and wondered what
+would become of them if he were lost.  The next morning the wind had
+changed a little, though it was still very high; but he was able to hoist
+up the bonnet or topsail, and presently the sea began to go down a
+little.  When the sun rose they saw land to the east-north-east.  Some of
+them thought it was Madeira, others the rock of Cintra in Portugal; the
+pilots said it was the coast of Spain, the Admiral thought it was the
+Azores; but at any rate it was land of some kind.  The sun was shining
+upon it and upon the tumbling sea; and although the waves were still
+raging mast-high and the wind still blowing a hard gale, the miserable
+crew were able to hope that, having lived through the night, they could
+live through the day also.  They had to beat about to make the land,
+which was now ahead of them, now on the beam, and now astern; and
+although they had first sighted it at sunrise on Friday morning it was
+early on Monday morning, February 18th, before Columbus was able to cast
+anchor off the northern coast of an island which he discovered to be the
+island of Santa Maria in the Azores.  On this day Columbus found time to
+write a letter to Luis de Santangel, the royal Treasurer, giving a full
+account of his voyage and discoveries; which letter he kept and
+despatched on the 4th of March, after he had arrived in Lisbon.  Since it
+contained a postscript written at the last moment we shall read it at
+that stage of our narrative.  The inhabitants of Santa Maria received the
+voyagers with astonishment, for they believed that nothing could have
+lived through the tempest that had been raging for the last fortnight.
+They were greatly excited by the story of the discoveries; and the
+Admiral, who had now quite recovered command of himself, was able to
+pride himself on the truth of his dead-reckoning, which had proved to be
+so much more accurate than that of the pilots.
+
+On the Tuesday evening three men hailed them from the shore, and when
+they were brought off to the ship delivered a message from the Portuguese
+Governor of the island, Juan de Castaneda, to the effect that he knew the
+Admiral very well, and that he was delighted to hear of his wonderful
+voyage.  The next morning Columbus, remembering the vow that had been
+made in the storm, sent half the crew ashore in their shirts to a little
+hermitage, which was on the other side of a point a short distance away,
+and asked the Portuguese messenger to send a priest to say Mass for them.
+While the members of the crew were at their prayers, however, they
+received a rude surprise.  They were suddenly attacked by the islanders,
+who had come up on horses under the command of the treacherous Governor,
+and taken prisoners.  Columbus waited unsuspectingly for the boat to come
+back with them, in order that he and the other half of the crew could go
+and perform their vow.
+
+When the boat did not come back he began to fear that some accident must
+have happened to it, and getting his anchor up he set sail for the point
+beyond which the hermitage was situated.  No sooner had he rounded the
+point than he saw a band of horsemen, who dismounted, launched the boat
+which was drawn up on the beach, and began to row out, evidently with the
+intention of attacking the Admiral.  When they came up to the Nina the
+man in command of them rose and asked Columbus to assure him of personal
+safety; which assurance was wonderingly given; and the Admiral inquired
+how it was that none of his own people were in the boat?  Columbus
+suspected treachery and tried to meet it with treachery also,
+endeavouring with smooth words to get the captain to come on board so
+that he could seize him as a hostage.  But as the Portuguese would not
+come on board Columbus told them that they were acting very unwisely in
+affronting his people; that in the land of the Sovereigns of Castile the
+Portuguese were treated with great honour and security; that he held
+letters of recommendation from the Sovereigns addressed to every ruler in
+the world, and added that he was their Admiral of the Ocean Seas and
+Viceroy of the Indies, and could show the Portuguese his commission to
+that effect; and finally, that if his people were not returned to him, he
+would immediately make sail for Spain with the crew that was left to him
+and report this insult to the Spanish Sovereigns.  To all of which the
+Portuguese captain replied that he did not know any Sovereigns of
+Castile; that neither they nor their letters were of any account in that
+island; that they were not afraid of Columbus; and that they would have
+him know that he had Portugal to deal with--edging away in the boat at
+the same time to a convenient distance from the caravel.  When he thought
+he was out of gunshot he shouted to Columbus, ordering him to take his
+caravel back to the harbour by command of the Governor of the island.
+Columbus answered by calling his crew to witness that he pledged his word
+not to descend from or leave his caravel until he had taken a hundred
+Portuguese to Castile, and had depopulated all their islands.  After
+which explosion of words he returned to the harbour and anchored there,
+"as the weather and wind were very unfavourable for anything else."
+
+He was, however, in a very bad anchorage, with a rocky bottom which
+presently fouled his anchors; and on the Wednesday he had to make sail
+towards the island of San Miguel if order to try and find a better
+anchorage.
+
+But the wind and sea getting up again very badly he was obliged to beat
+about all night in a very unpleasant situation, with only three sailors
+who could be relied upon, and a rabble of gaol-birds and longshoremen who
+were of little use in a tempest but to draw lots and vow pilgrimages.
+Finding himself unable to make the island of San Miguel he decided to go
+back to Santa Maria and make an attempt to recover his boat and his crew
+and the anchor and cables he had lost there.
+
+In his Journal for this day, and amid all his anxieties, he found time to
+note down one of his curious visionary cosmographical reflections.  This
+return to a region of storms and heavy seas reminded him of the long
+months he had spent in the balmy weather and calm waters of his
+discovery; in which facts he found a confirmation of the theological idea
+that the Eden, or Paradise, of earth was "at the end of the Orient,
+because it is a most temperate place.  So that these lands which he had
+now discovered are at the end of the Orient."  Reflections such as these,
+which abound in his writings, ought in themselves to be a sufficient
+condemnation of those who have endeavoured to prove that Columbus was a
+man of profound cosmographical learning and of a scientific mind.  A man
+who would believe that he had discovered the Orient because in the place
+where he had been he had found calm weather, and because the theologians
+said that the Garden of Eden must be in the Orient since it is a
+temperate place, would believe anything.
+
+Late on Thursday night, when he anchored again in the harbour of San
+Lorenzo at Santa Maria, a man hailed them from the rocks, and asked them
+not to go away.  Presently a boat containing five sailors, two priests,
+and a notary put off from the beach; and they asked for a guarantee of
+security in order that they might treat with the Admiral.  They slept on
+board that night, and in the morning asked him to show them his authority
+from the Spanish Sovereigns, which the Admiral did, understanding that
+they had asked for this formality in order to save their dignity.  He
+showed them his general letter from the King and Queen of Spain,
+addressed to "Princes and Lords of High Degree"; and being satisfied with
+this they went ashore and released the Admiral's people, from whom he
+learned that what had been done had been done by command of the King of
+Portugal, and that he had issued an order to the Governors of all the
+Portuguese islands that if Columbus landed there on his way home he was
+to be taken prisoner.
+
+He sailed again on Sunday, February 24th, encountering heavy winds and
+seas, which troubled him greatly with fears lest some disaster should
+happen at the eleventh hour to interfere with his, triumph.  On Sunday,
+March 3rd, the wind rose to the force of a hurricane, and, on a sudden
+gust of violent wind splitting all the sails, the unhappy crew gathered
+together again and drew more lots and made more vows.  This time the
+pilgrimage was to be to the shrine of Santa Maria at Huelva, the pilgrim
+to go as before in his shirt; and the lot fell to the Admiral.  The rest
+of them made a vow to fast on the next Saturday on bread and water; but
+as they all thought it extremely unlikely that by that time they would be
+in need of any bodily sustenance the sacrifice could hardly have been a
+great one.  They scudded along under bare poles and in a heavy cross sea
+all that night; but at dawn on Monday they saw land ahead of them, which
+Columbus recognised as the rock of Cintra at Lisbon; and at Lisbon sure
+enough they landed some time during the morning.  As soon as they were
+inside the river the people came flocking down with stories of the gale
+and of all the wrecks that there had been on the coast.  Columbus hurried
+away from the excited crowds to write a letter to the King of Portugal,
+asking him for a safe conduct to Spain, and assuring him that he had come
+from the Indies, and not from any of the forbidden regions of Guinea.
+
+The next day brought a visit from no less a person than Bartholomew Diaz.
+Columbus had probably met him before in 1486, when Diaz had been a
+distinguished man and Columbus a man not distinguished; but now things
+were changed.  Diaz ordered Columbus to come on board his small vessel in
+order to go and report himself to the King's officers; but Columbus
+replied that he was the Admiral of the Sovereigns of Castile, "that he
+did not render such account to such persons," and that he declined to
+leave his ship.  Diaz then ordered him to send the captain of the Nina;
+but Columbus refused to send either the captain or any other person, and
+otherwise gave himself airs as the Admiral of the Ocean Seas.  Diaz then
+moderated his requests, and merely asked Columbus to show him his letter
+of authority, which Columbus did; and then Diaz went away and brought
+back with him the captain of the Portuguese royal yacht, who came in
+great state on board the shabby little Nina, with kettle-drums and
+trumpets and pipes, and placed himself at the disposal of Columbus.  It
+is a curious moment, this, in which the two great discoverers of their
+time, Diaz and Columbus, meet for an hour on the deck of a forty-ton
+caravel; a curious thing to consider that they who had performed such
+great feats of skill and bravery, one to discover the southernmost point
+of the old world and the other to voyage across an uncharted ocean to the
+discovery of an entirely new world, could find nothing better to talk
+about than their respective ranks and glories; and found no more
+interesting subject of discussion than the exact amount of state and
+privilege which should be accorded to each.
+
+
+During the day or two in which Columbus waited in the port crowds of
+people came down from Lisbon to see the little Nina, which was an object
+of much admiration and astonishment; to see the Indians also, at whom
+they greatly marvelled.  It was probably at this time that the letter
+addressed to Luis de Santangel, containing the first official account of
+the voyage, was despatched.
+
+                                   *
+                                 *****
+                                   *
+                                   *
+
+     "Sir: As I am sure you will be pleased at the great victory which
+     the Lord has given me in my voyage, I write this to inform you that
+     in twenty' days I arrived in the Indies with the squadron which
+     their Majesties had placed under my command.  There I discovered
+     many islands, inhabited by a numerous population, and took
+     possession of them for their Highnesses, with public ceremony and
+     the royal flag displayed, without molestation.
+
+     "The first that I discovered I named San Salvador, in remembrance of
+     that Almighty Power which had so miraculously bestowed them.  The
+     Indians call it Guanahani.  To the second I assigned the name of
+     Santa Marie de Conception; to the third that of Fernandina; to the
+     fourth that of Isabella; to the fifth Juana; and so on, to every one
+     a new name.
+
+     "When I arrived at Juana, I followed the coast to the westward, and
+     found it so extensive that I considered it must be a continent and a
+     province of Cathay.  And as I found no towns or villages by the
+     seaside, excepting some small settlements, with the people of which
+     I could not communicate because they all ran away, I continued my
+     course to the westward, thinking I should not fail to find some
+     large town and cities.  After having coasted many leagues without
+     finding any signs of them, and seeing that the coast took me to the
+     northward, where I did not wish to go, as the winter was already set
+     in, I considered it best to follow the coast to the south and the
+     wind being also scant, I determined to lose no more time, and
+     therefore returned to a certain port, from whence I sent two
+     messengers into the country to ascertain whether there was any king
+     there or any large city.
+
+     "They travelled for three days, finding an infinite number of small
+     settlements and an innumerable population, but nothing like a city:
+     on which account--they returned.  I had tolerably well ascertained
+     from some Indians whom I had taken that this land was only an
+     island, so I followed the coast of it to the east 107 leagues, to
+     its termination.  And about eighteen leagues from this cape, to the
+     east, there was another island, to which I shortly gave the name of
+     Espanola.  I went to it, and followed the north coast of it, as I
+     had done that of Juana, for 178--[should be 188]--long leagues due
+     east.
+
+     "This island is very fertile, as well, indeed, as all the rest.  It
+     possesses numerous harbours, far superior to any I know in Europe,
+     and what is remarkable, plenty of large inlets.  The land is high,
+     and contains many lofty ridges and some very high mountains, without
+     comparison of the island of Centrefrey;--[Tenerife]--all of them
+     very handsome and of different forms; all of them accessible and
+     abounding in trees of a thousand kinds, high, and appearing as if
+     they would reach the skies.  And I am assured that the latter never
+     lose their fresh foliage, as far as I can understand, for I saw them
+     as fresh and flourishing as those of Spain in the month of May.
+     Some were in blossom, some bearing fruit, and others in other
+     states, according to their nature.
+
+     "The nightingale and a thousand kinds of birds enliven the woods
+     with their song, in the month of November, wherever I went.  There
+     are seven or eight kinds of palms, of various elegant forms, besides
+     various other trees, fruits, and herbs.  The pines of this island
+     are magnificent.  It has also extensive plains, honey, and a great
+     variety of birds and fruits.  It has many metal mines, and a
+     population innumerable.
+
+     "Espanola is a wonderful island, with mountains, groves, plains, and
+     the country generally beautiful and rich for planting and sowing,
+     for rearing sheep and cattle of all kinds, and ready for towns and
+     cities.  The harbours must be seen to be appreciated; rivers are
+     plentiful and large and of excellent water; the greater part of them
+     contain gold.  There is a great difference between the trees,
+     fruits, and herbs of this island and those of Juana.  In this island
+     there are many spices, and large mines of gold and other metals.
+
+     "The people of this island and of all the others which I have
+     discovered or heard of, both men and women, go naked as they were
+     born, although some of the women wear leaves of herbs or a cotton
+     covering made on purpose.  They have no iron or steel, nor any
+     weapons; not that they are not a well-disposed people and of fine
+     stature, but they are timid to a degree.  They have no other arms
+     excepting spears made of cane, to which they fix at the end a sharp
+     piece of wood, and then dare not use even these.  Frequently I had
+     occasion to send two or three of my men onshore to some settlement
+     for information, where there would be multitudes of them; and as
+     soon as they saw our people they would run away every soul, the
+     father leaving his child; and this was not because any one had done
+     them harm, for rather at every cape where I had landed and been able
+     to communicate with them I have made them presents of cloth and many
+     other things without receiving anything in return; but because they
+     are so timid.  Certainly, where they have confidence and forget
+     their fears, they are so open-hearted and liberal with all they
+     possess that it is scarcely to be believed without seeing it.  If
+     anything that they have is asked of them they never deny it; on the
+     contrary, they will offer it.  Their generosity is so great that
+     they would give anything, whether it is costly or not, for anything
+     of every kind that is offered them and be contented with it.  I was
+     obliged to prevent such worth less things being given them as pieces
+     of broken basins, broken glass, and bits of shoe-latchets, although
+     when they obtained them they esteemed them as if they had been the
+     greatest of treasures.  One of the seamen for a latchet received a
+     piece of gold weighing two dollars and a half, and others, for other
+     things of much less value, obtained more.  Again, for new silver
+     coin they would give everything they possessed, whether it was worth
+     two or three doubloons or one or two balls of cotton.  Even for
+     pieces of broken pipe-tubes they would take them and give anything
+     for them, until, when I thought it wrong, I prevented it.  And I
+     made them presents of thousands of things which I had, that I might
+     win their esteem, and also that they might be made good Christians
+     and be disposed to the service of Your Majesties and the whole
+     Spanish nation, and help us to obtain the things which we require
+     and of which there is abundance in their country.
+
+     "And these people appear to have neither religion nor idolatry,
+     except that they believe that good and evil come from the skies; and
+     they firmly believed that our ships and their crews, with myself,
+     came from the skies, and with this persuasion,--after having lost
+     their fears, they always received us.  And yet this does not proceed
+     from ignorance, for they are very ingenious, and some of them
+     navigate their seas in a wonderful manner and give good account of
+     things, but because they never saw people dressed or ships like
+     ours.
+
+     "And as soon as I arrived in the Indies, at the first island at
+     which I touched, I captured some of them, that we might learn from
+     them and obtain intelligence of what there was in those parts.  And
+     as soon as we understood each other they were of great service to
+     us; but yet, from frequent conversation which I had with them, they
+     still believe we came from the skies.  These were the first to
+     express that idea, and others ran from house to house, and to the
+     neighbouring villages, crying out, "Come and see the people from the
+     skies."  And thus all of them, men and women, after satisfying
+     themselves of their safety, came to us without reserve, great and
+     small, bringing us something to eat and drink, and which they gave
+     to us most affectionately.
+
+     "They have many canoes in those islands propelled by oars, some of
+     them large and others small, and many of them with eight or ten
+     paddles of a side, not very wide, but all of one trunk, and a boat
+     cannot keep way with them by oars, for they are incredibly fast; and
+     with these they navigate all the islands, which are innumerable, and
+     obtain their articles of traffic.  I have seen some of these canoes
+     with sixty or eighty men in them, and each with a paddle.
+
+     "Among the islands I did not find much diversity of formation in the
+     people, nor in their customs, nor their language.  They all
+     understand each other, which is remarkable; and I trust Your
+     Highnesses will determine on their being converted to our faith, for
+     which they are very well disposed.
+
+     "I have already said that I went 107 leagues along the coast of
+     Juana, from east to west.  Thus, according to my track, it is larger
+     than England and Scotland together, for, besides these 107 leagues,
+     there were further west two provinces to which I did not go, one of
+     which is called Cibau, the people of which are born with tails;
+     which provinces must be about fifty or sixty leagues long, according
+     to what I can make out from the Indians I have with me, who know all
+     the islands.  The other island (Espanola) is larger in circuit than
+     the whole of Spain, from the Straits of Gibralter (the Columns) to
+     Fuentarabia in Biscay, as I sailed 138 long leagues in a direct line
+     from west to east.  Once known it must be desired, and once seen one
+     desires never to leave it; and which, being taken possession of for
+     their Highnesses, and the people being at present in a condition
+     lower than I can possibly describe, the Sovereigns of Castile may
+     dispose of it in any manner they please in the most convenient
+     places.  In this Espanola, and in the best district, where are gold
+     mines, and, on the other side, from thence to terra firma, as well
+     as from thence to the Great Khan, where everything is on a splendid
+     scale--I have taken possession of a large town, to which I gave the
+     name of La Navidad, and have built a fort in it, in every respect
+     complete.  And I have left sufficient people in it to take care of
+     it, with artillery and provisions for more than a year; also a boat
+     and coxswain with the equipments, in complete friendship with the
+     King of the islands, to that degree that he delighted to call me and
+     look on me as his brother.  And should they fall out with these
+     people, neither he nor his subjects know anything of weapons, and go
+     naked, as I have said, and they are the most timorous people in the
+     world.  The few people left there are sufficient to conquer the
+     country, and the island would thus remain without danger to them,
+     they keeping order among themselves.
+
+     "In all these islands it appeared to me the men are contented with
+     one wife, but to their governor or king they allow twenty.  The
+     women seem to work more than the men.  I have not been able to
+     discover whether they respect personal property, for it appeared to
+     me things were common to all, especially in the particular of
+     provisions.  Hitherto I have not seen in any of these islands any
+     monsters, as there were supposed to be; the people, on the contrary,
+     are generally well formed, nor are they black like those of the
+     Guinea, saving their hair, and they do not reside in places exposed
+     to the sun's rays.  It is true that the sun is most powerful there,
+     and it is only twenty-six degrees from the equator.  In this last
+     winter those islands which were mountainous were cold, but they were
+     accustomed to it, with good food and plenty of spices and hot
+     nutriment.  Thus I have found no monsters nor heard of any, except
+     at an island which is the second in going to the Indies, and which
+     is inhabited by a people who are considered in all the islands as
+     ferocious, and who devour human flesh.  These people have many
+     canoes, which scour all the islands of India, and plunder all they
+     can.  They are not worse formed than the others, but they wear the
+     hair long like women, and use bows and arrows of the same kind of
+     cane, pointed with a piece of hard wood instead of iron, of which
+     they have none.  They are fierce compared with the other people, who
+     are in general but sad cowards; but I do not consider them in any
+     other way superior to them.  These are they who trade in women, who
+     inhabit the first island met with in going from Spain to the Indies,
+     in which there are no men whatever.  They have no effeminate
+     exercise, but bows and arrows, as before said, of cane, with which
+     they arm themselves, and use shields of copper, of which they have
+     plenty.
+
+     "There is another island, I am told, larger than Espanola, the
+     natives of which have no hair.  In this there is gold without limit,
+     and of this and the others I have Indians with me to witness.
+
+     "In conclusion, referring only to what has been effected by this
+     voyage, which was made with so much haste, Your Highnesses may see
+     that I shall find as much gold as desired with the very little
+     assistance afforded to me; there is as much spice and cotton as can
+     be wished for, and also gum, which hitherto has only been found in
+     Greece, in the island of Chios, and they may sell it as they please,
+     and the mastich, as much as may be desired, and slaves, also, who
+     will be idolators.  And I believe that I have rhubarb, and cinnamon,
+     and a thousand other things I shall find, which will be discovered
+     by those whom I have left behind, for I did not stop at any cape
+     when the wind enabled me to navigate, except at the town of Navidad,
+     where I was very safe and well taken care of.  And in truth much
+     more I should have done if the ships had served me as might have
+     been expected.  This is certain, that the Eternal God our Lord gives
+     all things to those who obey Him, and the victory when it seems
+     impossible, and this, evidently, is an instance of it, for although
+     people have talked of these lands, all was conjecture unless proved
+     by seeing them, for the greater part listened and judged more by
+     hearsay than by anything else.
+
+     "Since, then, our Redeemer has given this victory to our illustrious
+     King and Queen and celebrated their reigns by such a great thing,
+     all Christendom should rejoice and make great festivals, and give
+     solemn thanks to the Blessed Trinity, with solemn praises for the
+     exaltation of so much people to our holy faith; and next for the
+     temporal blessings which not only Spain but they will enjoy in
+     becoming Christians, and which last may shortly be accomplished.
+
+     "Written in the caravel off Santa Maria; on the eighteenth of
+     February, ninety-three."
+
+The following postscript was added to the letter before it was
+despatched:
+
+     "After writing the above, being in the Castilian Sea (off the coast
+     of Castile), I experienced so severe a wind from south and
+     south-east that I have been obliged to run to-day into this port of
+     Lisbon, and only by a miracle got safely in, from whence I intended
+     to write to Your Highnesses.  In all parts of the Indies I have
+     found the weather like that of May, where I went in ninety-three
+     days, and returned in seventy-eight, saving these thirteen days of
+     bad weather that I have been detained beating about in this sea.
+     Every seaman here says that never was so severe a winter, nor such
+     loss of ships."
+
+
+On the Friday a messenger came from the King in the person of Don Martin
+de Noronha, a relative of Columbus by marriage, and one who had perhaps
+looked down upon him in the days when he attended the convent chapel at
+Lisbon, but who was now the bearer of a royal invitation and in the
+position of a mere envoy.  Columbus repaired to Paraiso where the King
+was, and where he was received with great honour.
+
+King John might well have been excused if he had felt some mortification
+at this glorious and successful termination of a project which had been
+offered to him and which he had rejected; but he evidently behaved with
+dignity and a good grace, and did everything that he could to help
+Columbus.  It was extremely unlikely that he had anything to do with the
+insult offered to Columbus at the Azores, for though he was bitterly
+disappointed that the glory of this discovery belonged to Spain and not
+to Portugal, he was too much of a man to show it in this petty and
+revengeful manner.  He offered to convey Columbus by land into Spain; but
+the Admiral, with a fine dramatic sense, preferred to arrive by sea on
+board of all that was left of the fleet with which he had sailed.  He
+sailed for Seville on Wednesday, March 13th, but during the next day,
+when he was off Cape Saint Vincent, he evidently changed his mind and
+decided to make for Palos.  Sunrise on Friday saw him off the bar of
+Saltes, with the white walls of La Rabida shining on the promontory among
+the dark fir-trees.  During the hours in which he stood off and on
+waiting for the tide he was able to recognise again all the old landmarks
+and the scenes which had been so familiar to him in those busy days of
+preparation nine months before; and at midday he sailed in with the flood
+tide and dropped his anchor again in the mud of the river by Palos.
+
+The caravel had been sighted some time before, probably when she was
+standing off, the bar waiting for the tide; she was flying the Admiral's
+flag and there was no mistaking her identity; and we can imagine the news
+spreading throughout the town of Palos, and reaching Huelva, and one by
+one the bells beginning to ring, and the places of business to be closed,
+and the people to come pouring out into the streets to be ready to greet
+their friends.  Some more impatient than the others would sail out in
+fishing-boats to get the first news; and I should be surprised to know
+that a boat did not put off from the little pier beneath La Rabida, to
+row round the point and out to where the Nina was lying--to beyond the
+Manto Bank.  When the flood began to make over the bar and to cover the
+long sandbank that stretches from the island of Saltes, the Nina came
+gliding in, greeted by every joyful sound and signal that the inhabitants
+of the two seaports could make.  Every one hurried down to Palos as the
+caravel rounded the Convent Point.  Hernando, Marchena, and good old Juan
+Perez were all there, we may be sure.  Such excitements, such triumphs as
+the bronzed, white-bearded Admiral steps ashore at last, and is seized by
+dozens of eager hands!  Such excitements as all the wives and inamoratas
+of the Rodrigos and Juans and Franciscos rush to meet the swarthy
+voyagers and cover them with embraces; such disappointments also, when it
+is realised that some two score of the company are still on a sunbaked
+island infinitely far over the western horizon.
+
+Tears of joy and grief, shouts and feastings, firing of guns and flying
+of flags, processions and receptions with these the deathless day is
+filled; and the little Nina, her purpose staunchly fulfilled, swings
+deserted on the turning tide, the ripples of her native Tinto making a
+familiar music under her bowsprit.
+
+
+And in the evening, with the last of the flood, another ship comes
+gliding round the point and up the estuary.  The inhabitants of Palos
+have all left the shore and are absorbed in the business of welcoming the
+great man; and there is no one left to notice or welcome the Pinta.  For
+it is she that, by a strange coincidence, and after many dangers and
+distresses endured since she had parted company from the Nina in the
+storm, now has made her native port on the very same day as the Nina.
+Our old friend Martin Alonso Pinzon is on board, all the fight and
+treachery gone out of him, and anxious only to get home unobserved.  For
+(according to the story) he had made the port of Bayona on the north-west
+coast of Spain, and had written a letter from there to the Sovereigns
+announcing his arrival and the discoveries that he had made; and it is
+said that he had received an unpleasant letter in return, reproaching him
+for not waiting for his commander and forbidding him to come to Court.
+This story is possible if his letter reached the Sovereigns after the
+letter from the Admiral; for it is probable that Columbus may have
+reported some of Martin's doings to them.
+
+Be that as it may, there are no flags and guns for him as he comes
+creeping in up the river; his one anxiety is to avoid the Admiral and to
+get home as quickly and quietly as he can.  For he is ill, poor Martin
+Alonso; whether from a broken heart, as the early historians say, or from
+pure chagrin and disappointment, or, as is more likely, from some illness
+contracted on the voyage, it is impossible to say.  He has endured his
+troubles and hardships like all the rest of them; no less skilfully than
+Columbus has he won through that terrible tempest of February; and his
+foolish and dishonest conduct has deprived him not only of the rewards
+that he tried to steal, but of those which would otherwise have been his
+by right.  He creeps quietly ashore and to his home, where at any rate we
+may hope that there is some welcome for him; takes to his bed, turns his
+face to the wall; and dies in a few days.  So farewell to Martin Alonso,
+who has borne us company thus far.  He did not fail in the great matters
+of pluck and endurance and nautical judgment, but only in the small
+matters of honesty and decent manly conduct.  We will not weep for Martin
+Alonso; we will make our farewells in silence, and leave his deathbed
+undisturbed by any more accusations or reproaches.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE HOUR OF TRIUMPH
+
+From the moment when Columbus set foot on Spanish soil in the spring of
+1493 he was surrounded by a fame and glory which, although they were
+transient, were of a splendour such as few other men can have ever
+experienced.  He had not merely discovered a country, he had discovered a
+world.  He had not merely made a profitable expedition; he had brought
+the promise of untold wealth to the kingdom of Spain.  He had not merely
+made himself the master of savage tribes; he had conquered the
+supernatural, and overcome for ever those powers of darkness that had
+been thought to brood over the vast Atlantic.  He had sailed away in
+obscurity, he had returned in fame; he had departed under a cloud of
+scepticism and ridicule, he had come again in power and glory.  He had
+sailed from Palos as a seeker after hidden wealth, hidden knowledge; he
+returned as teacher, discoverer, benefactor.  The whole of Spain rang
+with his fame, and the echoes of it spread to Portugal, France, England,
+Germany, and Italy; and it reached the ears of his own family, who had
+now left the Vico Dritto di Ponticello in Genoa and were living at
+Savona.
+
+His life ashore in the first weeks following his return was a succession
+of triumphs and ceremonials.  His first care on landing had been to go
+with the whole of his crew to the church of Saint George, where a Te Deum
+was sung in honour of his return; and afterwards to perform those vows
+that he had made at sea in the hour of danger.  There was a certain
+amount of business to transact at Palos in connection with the paying of
+the ships' crews, writing of reports to the Sovereigns, and so forth; and
+it is likely that he stayed with his friends at the monastery of La
+Rabida while this was being done.  The Court was at Barcelona; and it was
+probably only a sense of his own great dignity and importance that
+prevented Christopher from setting off on the long journey immediately.
+But he who had made so many pilgrimages to Court as a suitor could revel
+in a position that made it possible for him to hang back, and to be
+pressed and invited; and so when his business at Palos was finished he
+sent a messenger with his letters and reports to Barcelona, and himself,
+with his crew and his Indians and all his trophies, departed for Seville,
+where he arrived on Palm Sunday.
+
+His entrance into that city was only a foretaste of the glory in which he
+was to move across the whole of Spain.  He was met at the gates of the
+city by a squadron of cavalry commanded by an envoy sent by Queen
+Isabella; and a procession was formed of members of the crew carrying
+parrots, alive and stuffed, fruits, vegetables, and various other
+products of the New World.
+
+In a prominent place came the Indians, or rather four of them, for one
+had died on the day they entered Palos and three were too ill to leave
+that town; but the ones that took part in the procession got all the more
+attention and admiration.  The streets of Seville were crowded; crowded
+also were the windows, balconies, and roofs.  The Admiral was entertained
+at the house of the Count of Cifuentes, where his little museum of dead
+and live curiosities was also accommodated, and where certain favoured
+visitors were admitted to view it.  His two sons, Diego and Ferdinand,
+were sent from Cordova to join him; and perhaps he found time to visit
+Beatriz, although there is no record of his having been to Cordova or of
+her having come to Seville.
+
+
+Meanwhile his letters and messengers to the King and Queen had produced
+their due effect.  The almost incredible had come to pass, and they saw
+themselves the monarchs not merely of Spain, but of a new Empire that
+might be as vast as Europe and Africa together.  On the 30th of March
+they despatched a special messenger with a letter to Columbus, whose eyes
+must have sparkled and heart expanded when he read the superscription:
+"From the King and Queen to Don Christoval Colon, their Admiral of the
+Ocean Seas and Viceroy and Governor of the Islands discovered in the
+Indies."  No lack of titles and dignities now!  Their Majesties express a
+profound sense of his ability and distinction, of the greatness of his
+services to them, to the Church, and to God Himself.  They hope that he
+will lose no time, but repair to Barcelona immediately, so that they can
+have the pleasure of hearing from his own lips an account of his
+wonderful expedition, and of discussing with him the preparations that
+must immediately be set on foot to fit out a new one.  On receiving this
+letter Christopher immediately drew up a list of what he thought
+necessary for the new expedition and, collecting all his retinue and his
+museum of specimens, started by road for Barcelona.
+
+Every one in Spain had by this time heard more or less exaggerated
+accounts of the discoveries, and the excitement in the towns and villages
+through which he passed was extreme.  Wherever he went he was greeted and
+feasted like a king returning from victorious wars; the people lined the
+streets of the towns and villages, and hung out banners, and gazed their
+fill at the Indians and at the strange sun-burned faces of the crew.  At
+Barcelona, where they arrived towards the end of April, the climax of
+these glittering dignities was reached.  When the King and Queen heard
+that Columbus was approaching the town they had their throne prepared
+under a magnificent pavilion, and in the hot sunshine of that April day
+they sat and waited the--coming of the great man.  A glittering troop of
+cavalry had been sent out to meet him, and at the gates of the town a
+procession was formed similar to that at Seville.  He had now six natives
+with him, who occupied an important place in the procession; sailors
+also, who carried baskets of fruit and vegetables from Espanola, with
+stuffed birds and animals, and a monstrous lizard held aloft on a stick.
+The Indians were duly decked out in all their paint and feathers; but if
+they were a wonder and marvel to the people of Spain, what must Spain
+have been to them with its great buildings and cities, its carriages and
+horses, its glittering dresses and armours, its splendour and luxury!
+We have no record of what the Indians thought, only of what the crowd
+thought who gaped upon them and upon the gaudy parrots that screeched and
+fluttered also in the procession.  Columbus came riding on horseback, as
+befitted a great Admiral and Viceroy, surrounded by his pilots and
+principal officers; and followed by men bearing golden belts, golden
+masks, nuggets of gold and dust of gold, and preceded by heralds,
+pursuivants, and mace-bearers.
+
+What a return for the man who three years before had been pointed at and
+laughed to scorn in this same brilliant society!  The crowds pressed so
+closely that the procession could hardly get through the streets; the
+whole population was there to witness it; and the windows and balconies
+and roofs of the houses, as well as the streets themselves, were thronged
+with a gaily dressed and wildly excited crowd.  At length the procession
+reaches the presence of the King and Queen and, crowning and
+unprecedented honour!  as the Admiral comes before them Ferdinand and
+Isabella rise to greet him.  Under their own royal canopy a seat is
+waiting for him; and when he has made his ceremonial greeting he is
+invited to sit in their presence and give an account of his voyage.
+
+He is fully equal to the situation; settles down to do himself and his
+subject justice; begins, we may be sure, with a preamble about the
+providence of God and its wisdom and consistency in preserving the
+narrator and preparing his life for this great deed; putting in a deal of
+scientific talk which had in truth nothing to do with the event, but was
+always applied to it in Columbus's writings from this date onwards; and
+going on to describe the voyage, the sea of weeds, the landfall, his
+intercourse with the natives, their aptitude for labour and Christianity,
+and the hopes he has of their early conversion to the Catholic Church.
+And then follows a long description of the wonderful climate, "like May
+in Andalusia," the noble rivers, and gorgeous scenery, the trees and
+fruits and flowers and singing birds; the spices and the cotton; and
+chief of all, the vast stores of gold and pearls of which the Admiral had
+brought home specimens.  At various stages in his narrative he produces
+illustrations; now a root of rhubarb or allspice; now a raw nugget of
+gold; now a piece of gold laboured into a mask or belt; now a native
+decorated with the barbaric ornaments that were the fashion in Espanola.
+These things, says Columbus, are mere first-fruits of the harvest that is
+to come; the things which he, like the dove that had flown across the sea
+from the Ark and brought back an olive leaf in its mouth, has brought
+back across the stormy seas to that Ark of civilisation from which he had
+flown forth.
+
+It was to Columbus an opportunity of stretching his visionary wings and
+creating with pompous words and images a great halo round himself of
+dignity and wonder and divine distinction,--an opportunity such as he
+loved, and such as he never failed to make use of.
+
+The Sovereigns were delighted and profoundly impressed.  Columbus wound
+up his address with an eloquent peroration concerning the glory to
+Christendom of these new discoveries; and there followed an impressive
+silence, during which the Sovereigns sank on their knees and raised hands
+and tearful eyes to heaven, an example in which they were followed by the
+whole of the assembly; and an appropriate gesture enough, seeing what was
+to come of it all.  The choir of the Chapel Royal sang a solemn Te Deum
+on the spot; and the Sovereigns and nobles, bishops, archbishops,
+grandees, hidalgos, chamberlains, treasurers, chancellors and other
+courtiers, being exhausted by these emotions, retired to dinner.
+
+
+During his stay at Barcelona Columbus was the guest of the
+Cardinal-Archbishop of Toledo, and moved thus in an atmosphere of
+combined temporal and spiritual dignity such as his soul loved.  Very
+agreeable indeed to him was the honour shown to him at this time.  Deep
+down in his heart there was a secret nerve of pride and vanity which
+throughout his life hitherto had been continually mortified and wounded;
+but he was able now to indulge his appetite for outward pomp and honour
+as much as he pleased.  When King Ferdinand went out to ride Columbus
+would be seen riding on one side of him, the young Prince John riding on
+the other side; and everywhere, when he moved among the respectful and
+admiring throng, his grave face was seen to be wreathed in complacent
+smiles.  His hair, which had turned white soon after he was thirty, gave
+him a dignified and almost venerable appearance, although he was only in
+his forty-third year; and combined with his handsome and commanding
+presence to excite immense enthusiasm among the Spaniards.  They forgot
+for the moment what they had formerly remembered and were to remember
+again--that he was a foreigner, an Italian, a man of no family and of
+poor origin. They saw in him the figure-head of a new empire and a new
+glory, an emblem of power and riches, of the dominion which their proud
+souls loved; and so there beamed upon him the brief fickle sunshine of
+their smiles and favour, which he in his delusion regarded as an earnest
+of their permanent honour and esteem.
+
+It is almost always thus with a man not born to such dignities, and who
+comes by them through his own efforts and labours.  No one would grudge
+him the short-lived happiness of these summer weeks; but although he
+believed himself to be as happy as a man can be, he appears to quietly
+contemplating eyes less happy and fortunate than when he stood alone on
+the deck of his ship, surrounded by an untrustworthy crew, prevailing by
+his own unaided efforts over the difficulties and dangers with which he
+was surrounded.  Court functions and processions, and the companionship
+of kings and cardinals, are indeed no suitable reward for the kind of
+work that he did.  Courtly dignities are suited to courtly services; but
+they are no suitable crown for rough labour and hardship at sea, or for
+the fulfilment of a man's self by lights within him; no suitable crown
+for any solitary labour whatsoever, which must always be its own and only
+reward.
+
+
+It is to this period of splendour that the story of the egg, which is to
+some people the only familiar incident in Columbian biography, is
+attributed.  The story is that at a banquet given by the Cardinal-Arch
+bishop the conversation ran, as it always did in those days when he was
+present, on the subject of the Admiral's discoveries; and that one of the
+guests remarked that it was all very well for Columbus to have done what
+he did, but that in a country like Spain, where there were so many men
+learned in science and cosmography, and many able mariners besides, some
+one else would certainly have been found who would have done the same
+thing.  Whereupon Columbus, calling for an egg, laid a wager that none of
+the company but him self could make it stand on its end without support.
+The egg was brought and passed round, and every one tried to make it
+stand on end, but without success.  When it came to Columbus he cracked
+the shell at one end, making a flat surface on which the egg stood
+upright; thus demonstrating that a thing might be wonderful, not because
+it was difficult or impossible, but merely because no one had ever
+thought of doing it before.  A sufficiently inane story, and by no means
+certainly true; but there is enough character in this little feat,
+ponderous, deliberate, pompous, ostentatious, and at bottom a trick and
+deceitful quibble, to make it accord with the grandiloquent public manner
+of Columbus, and to make it easily believable of one who chose to show
+himself in his speech and writings so much more meanly and pretentiously
+than he showed himself in the true acts and business of his life.
+
+
+But pomp and parade were not the only occupation of these Barcelona days.
+There were long consultations with Ferdinand and Isabella about the
+colonisation of the new lands; there were intrigues, and parrying of
+intrigues, between the Spanish and Portuguese Courts on the subject of
+the discoveries and of the representative rights of the two nations to be
+the religious saviours of the New World.  The Pope, to whose hands the
+heathen were entrusted by God to be handed for an inheritance to the
+highest and most religious bidder, had at that time innocently divided
+them into two portions, to wit: heathen to the south of Spain and
+Portugal, and heathen to the west of those places.  By the Bull of 1438,
+granted by Pope Martin V., the heathen to the west had been given to the
+Spanish, and the heathen to the south to the Portuguese, and the two
+crowns had in 1479 come to a working agreement.  Now, however, the
+existence of more heathen to the west of the Azores introduced a new
+complication, and Ferdinand sent a message to Pope Alexander VI. praying
+for a confirmation of the Spanish title to the new discoveries.
+
+This Pope, who was a native of Aragon and had been a subject of
+Ferdinand, was a stolid, perverse, and stubborn being; so much is
+advertised in his low forehead, impudent prominent nose, thick sensual
+lips, and stout bull neck.  This Pope considers the matter; considers,
+by such lights as he has, to whom he shall entrust the souls of these new
+heathen; considers which country, Spain or Portugal, is most likely to
+hold and use the same for the increase of the Christian faith in general,
+the furtherance of the Holy Catholic Church in special, and the
+aggrandisement of Popes in particular; and shrewdly decides that the
+country in which the.  Inquisition can flourish is the country to whom
+the heathen souls should be entrusted.  He therefore issues a Bull, dated
+May 3, 1493, granting to the Spanish the possession of all lands, not
+occupied by Christian powers, that lie west of a meridian drawn one
+hundred leagues to the westward of the Azores, and to the Portuguese
+possession of all similar lands lying to the eastward of that line.  He
+sleeps upon this Bull, and has inspiration; and on the morrow, May 4th,
+issues another Bull, drawing a line from the arctic to the antarctic
+pole, and granting to Spain all heathen inheritance to the westward of
+the same.  The Pope, having signed this Bull, considers it
+further-assisted, no doubt, by the Portuguese Ambassador at the Vatican,
+to whom it has been shown; realises that in the wording of the Bull an
+injustice has been done to Portugal, since Spain is allowed to fix very
+much at her own convenience the point at which the line drawn from pole
+to pole shall cut the equator; and also because, although Spain is given
+all the lands in existence within her territory, Portugal is only given
+the lands which she may actually have occupied.  Even the legal mind of
+the Pope, although much drowsed and blunted by brutish excesses,
+discerns faultiness in this document; and consequently on the same day
+issues a third Bull, in which the injustice to Portugal is redressed.
+Nothing so easy, thinks the Pope, as to issue Bulls; if you make a
+mistake in one Bull, issue another; and, having issued three Bulls in
+twenty-four hours, he desists for the present, having divided the
+earthly globe.
+
+Thus easy it is for a Pope to draw lines from pole to pole, and across
+the deep of the sea.  Yet the poles sleep still in their icy virginal
+sanctity, and the blue waves through which that papal line passes shift
+and shimmer and roll in their free salt loneliness, unaffected by his
+demarcation; the heathen also, it appears, since that distant day, have
+had something to say to their disposition.  If he had slept upon it
+another night, poor Pope, it might have occurred to him that west and
+east might meet on a meridian situated elsewhere on the globe than one
+hundred miles west of the Azores; and that the Portuguese, who for the
+moment had nothing heathen except Africa left to them, might according to
+his demarcation strike a still richer vein of heathendom than that
+granted to Spain.  But the holy Pontiff, bull neck, low forehead,
+impudent prominent nose, and sensual lips notwithstanding, is exhausted
+by his cosmographical efforts, and he lets it rest at that.  Later, when
+Spain discovers that her privileges have been abated, he will have to
+issue another Bull; but not to-day.  Sufficient unto the day are the
+Bulls thereof.  For the moment King proposes and Pope disposes; but the
+matter lies ultimately in the hands of the two eternal protagonists, man
+and God.
+
+
+In the meantime here are six heathen alive and well, or at any rate well
+enough to support, willy-nilly, the rite of holy baptism.  They must have
+been sufficiently dazed and bewildered by all that had happened to them
+since they were taken on board the Admiral's ship, and God alone knows
+what they thought of it all, or whether they thought anything more than
+the parrots that screamed and fluttered and winked circular eyes in the
+procession with them.  Doubtless they were willing enough; and indeed,
+after all they had come through, a little cold water could not do them
+any harm.  So baptized they were in Barcelona; pompously baptized with
+infinite state and ceremony, the King and Queen and Prince Juan
+officiating as sponsors.  Queen Isabella, after the manner of queens,
+took a kindly feminine interest in these heathen, and in their brethren
+across the sea.  She had seen a good deal of conquest, and knew her
+Spaniard pretty intimately; and doubtless her maternal heart had some
+misgivings about the ultimate happiness of the gentle, handsome creatures
+who lived in the sunshine in that distant place.  She made their souls
+her especial care, and honestly believed that by providing for their
+spiritual conversion she was doing them the greatest service in her
+power.  She provided from her own private chapel vestments and altar
+furniture for the mission church in Espanola; she had the six exiles in
+Barcelona instructed under her eye; and she gave Columbus special orders
+to inflict severe punishments on any one who should offer the natives
+violence or injustice of any kind.  It must be remembered to her credit
+that in after days, when slavery and an intolerable bloody and brutish
+oppression had turned the paradise of Espanola into a shambles, she
+fought almost singlehanded, and with an ethical sense far in advance of
+her day, against the system of slavery practised by Spain upon the
+inhabitants of the New World.
+
+
+The dignities that had been provisionally granted to Columbus before his
+departure on the first voyage were now elaborately confirmed; and in
+addition he was given another title--that of Captain-General of the large
+fleet which was to be fitted out to sail to the new colonies.  He was
+entrusted with the royal seal, which gave him the right to grant letters
+patent, to issue commissions, and to Appoint deputies in the royal name.
+A coat-of-arms was also granted to him in which, in its original form,
+the lion and castle of Leon and Castile were quartered with islands of
+the sea or on a field azure, and five anchors or on a field azure.  This
+was changed from time to time, chiefly by Columbus himself, who
+afterwards added a continent to the islands, and modified the blazonry of
+the lion and castle to agree with those on the royal arms--a piece of
+ignorance and childish arrogance which was quite characteristic of him.
+
+
+
+     [A motto has since been associated with the coat-of-arms, although
+     it is not certain that Columbus adopted it in his lifetime.  In one
+     form it reads:
+                      "Por Castilla e por Leon
+                       Nueva Mundo hallo Colon."]
+
+           (For Castile and Leon Columbus found a New World.)
+
+And in the other:
+
+                       "A Castilla y a Leon
+                        Nuevo Mundo dio Colon."
+
+            (To Castile and Leon Columbus gave a New World.)
+
+
+Equally characteristic and less excusable was his acceptance of the
+pension of ten thousand maravedis which had been offered to the member of
+the expedition who should first sight land.  Columbus was granted a very
+large gratuity on his arrival in Barcelona, and even taking the product
+of the islands at a tenth part of their value as estimated by him, he
+still had every right to suppose himself one of the richest men in Spain.
+Yet he accepted this paltry pension of L8. 6s. 8d.  in our modern
+money (of 1900), which, taking the increase in the purchasing power of
+money at an extreme estimate, would not be more than the equivalent of
+$4000 now.  Now Columbus had not been the first person to see land; he
+saw the light, but it was Rodrigo de Triana, the look-out man on the
+Pinta, who first saw the actual land.  Columbus in his narrative to the
+King and Queen would be sure to make much of the seeing of the light, and
+not so much of the actual sighting of land; and he was on the spot, and
+the reward was granted to him.  Even if we assume that in strict equity
+Columbus was entitled to it, it was at least a matter capable of
+argument, if only Rodrigo de Triana had been there to argue it; and what
+are we to think of the Admiral of the Ocean Seas and Viceroy of the
+Indies who thus takes what can only be called a mean advantage of a poor
+seaman in his employ?  It would have been a competence and a snug little
+fortune to Rodrigo de Triana; it was a mere flea-bite to a man who was
+thinking in eighth parts of continents.  It may be true, as Oviedo
+alleges, that Columbus transferred it to Beatriz Enriquez; but he had no
+right to provide for her out of money that in all equity and decency
+ought to have gone to another and a poorer man.  His biographers, some of
+whom have vied with his canonisers in insisting upon seeing virtue in his
+every action, have gone to all kinds of ridiculous extremes in accounting
+for this piece of meanness.  Irving says that it was "a subject in which
+his whole ambition was involved"; but a plain person will regard it as an
+instance of greed and love of money.  We must not shirk facts like this
+if we wish to know the man as he really was.  That he was capable of
+kindness and generosity, and that he was in the main kind-hearted, we
+have fortunately no reason to doubt; and if I dwell on some of his less
+amiable characteristics it is with no desire to magnify them out of their
+due proportion.  They are part of that side of him that lay in shadow, as
+some side of each one of us lies; for not all by light nor all by shade,
+but by light and shade combined, is the image of a man made visible to
+us.
+
+
+It is quite of a piece with the character of Columbus that while he was
+writing a receipt for the look-out man's money and thinking what a pretty
+gift it would make for Beatriz Enriquez he was planning a splendid and
+spectacular thank-offering for all the dignities to which he had been
+raised; and, brooding upon the vast wealth that was now to be his, that
+he should register a vow to furnish within seven years an expedition of
+four thousand horse and fifty thousand foot for the rescue of the Holy
+Sepulchre, and a similar force within five years after the first if it
+should be necessary.  It was probable that the vow was a provisional one,
+and that its performance was to be contingent on his actual receipt and
+possession of the expected money; for as we know, there was no money and
+no expedition.  The vow was in effect a kind of religious flourish much
+beloved by Columbus, undertaken seriously and piously enough, but
+belonging rather to his public than to his private side.  A much more
+simple and truly pious act of his was, not the promising of visionary but
+the sending of actual money to his old father in Savona, which he did
+immediately after his arrival in Spain.  The letter which he wrote with
+that kindly remittance, not being couched in the pompous terms which he
+thought suitable for princes, and doubtless giving a brief homely account
+of what he had done, would, if we could come by it, be a document beyond
+all price; but like every other record of his family life it has utterly
+perished.
+
+He wrote also from Barcelona to his two brothers, Bartholomew and
+Giacomo, or James, since we may as well give him the English equivalent
+of his name.  Bartholomew was in France, whither he had gone some time
+after his return from his memorable voyage with Bartholomew Diaz; he was
+employed as a map-maker at the court of Anne de Beaujeu, who was reigning
+in the temporary absence of her brother Charles VIII.  Columbus's letter
+reached him, but much too late for him to be able to join in the second
+expedition; in fact he did not reach Seville until five months after it
+had sailed.  James, however, who was now twenty-five years old, was still
+at Savona; he, like Columbus, had been apprenticed to his father, but had
+apparently remained at home earning his living either as a wool-weaver or
+merchant.  He was a quiet, discreet young fellow, who never pushed
+himself forward very much, wore very plain clothes, and was apparently
+much overawed by the grandeur and dignity of his elder brother.  He was,
+however, given a responsible post in the new expedition, and soon had his
+fill of adventure.
+
+
+The business of preparing for the new expedition was now put in hand, and
+Columbus, having taken leave of Ferdinand and Isabella, went to Seville
+to superintend the preparations.  All the ports in Andalusia were ordered
+to supply such vessels as might be required at a reasonable cost, and the
+old order empowering the Admiral to press mariners into the service was
+renewed.  But this time it was unnecessary; the difficulty now was rather
+to keep down the number of applicants for berths in the expedition, and
+to select from among the crowd of adventurers who offered themselves
+those most suitable for the purposes of the new colony.  In this work
+Columbus was assisted by a commissioner whom the Sovereigns had appointed
+to superintend the fitting out of the expedition.  This man was a cleric,
+Juan Rodriguez de Fonseca, Archdeacon of Seville, a person of excellent
+family and doubtless of high piety, and of a surpassing shrewdness for
+this work.  He was of a type very commonly produced in Spain at this
+period; a very able organiser, crafty and competent, but not altogether
+trustworthy on a point of honour.  Like so many ecclesiastics of this
+stamp, he lived for as much power and influence as he could achieve; and
+though he was afterwards bishop of three sees successively, and became
+Patriarch of the Indies, he never let go his hold on temporal affairs.
+He began by being jealous of Columbus, and by objecting to the personal
+retinue demanded by the Admiral; and in this, if I know anything of the
+Admiral, he was probably justified.  The matter was referred to the
+Sovereigns, who ordered Fonseca to carry out the Admiral's wishes; and
+the two were immediately at loggerheads.  When the Council for the Indies
+was afterwards formed Fonseca became head, of it, and had much power to
+make things pleasant or otherwise for Columbus.
+
+It became necessary now to raise a considerable sum of money for the new
+expedition.  Two-thirds of the ecclesiastical tithes were appropriated,
+and a large proportion of the confiscated property of the Jews who had
+been banished from Spain the year before; but this was not enough; and
+five million maravedis were borrowed from the Duke of Medina Sidonia in
+order to complete the financial supplies necessary for this very costly
+expedition.  There was a treasurer, Francisco Pinelo, and an accountant,
+Juan de Soria, who had charge of all the financial arrangements; but the
+whole of the preparations were conducted on a ruinously expensive scale,
+owing to the haste which the diplomatic relations with Portugal made
+necessary.  The provisioning was done by a Florentine merchant named
+Juonato Beradi, who had an assistant named Amerigo Vespucci--who, by a
+strange accident, was afterwards to give his name to the continent of the
+New World.
+
+
+While these preparations were going on the game of diplomacy was being
+played between the Courts of Spain and Portugal.  King John of Portugal
+had the misfortune to be badly advised; and he was persuaded that,
+although he had lost the right to the New World through his rejection of
+Columbus's services when they were first offered to him, he might still
+discover it for himself, relying for protection on the vague wording of
+the papal Bulls.  He immediately began to prepare a fleet, nominally to
+go to the coast of Africa, but really to visit the newly discovered lands
+in the west.  Hearing of these preparations, King Ferdinand sent an
+Ambassador to the Portuguese Court; and King John agreed also to appoint
+an Ambassador to discuss the whole matter of the line of demarcation, and
+in the meantime not to allow any of his ships to sail to the west for a
+period of sixty days after his Ambassador had reached Barcelona.  There
+followed a good deal of diplomatic sharp practice; the Portuguese bribing
+the Spanish officials to give them information as to what was going on,
+and the Spaniards furnishing their envoys with double sets of letters and
+documents so that they could be prepared to counter any movement on the
+part of King John.  The idea of the Portuguese was that the line of
+demarcation should be a parallel rather than a meridian; and that
+everything north of the Canaries should belong to Spain and everything
+south to Portugal; but this would never do from the Spanish point of
+view.  The fact that a proposal had come from Portugal, however, gave
+Ferdinand an opportunity of delaying the diplomatic proceedings until his
+own expedition was actually ready to set sail; and he wrote to Columbus
+repeatedly, urging him to make all possible haste with his preparations.
+In the meantime he despatched a solemn embassy to Portugal, the purport
+of which, much beclouded and delayed by preliminary and impossible
+proposals, was to submit the whole question to the Pope for arbitration.
+And all the time he was busy petitioning the Pope to restore to Spain
+those concessions granted in the second Bull, but taken away again in the
+third.
+
+This, being much egged on to it, the Pope ultimately did; waking up on
+September 26th, the day after Columbus's departure, and issuing another
+Bull in which the Spanish Sovereigns were given all lands and islands,
+discovered or not discovered, which might be found by sailing west and
+south.  Four Bulls; and after puzzling over them for a year, the Kings of
+Spain and Portugal decided to make their own Bull, and abide by it,
+which, having appointed commissioners, they did on June 7, 1494., when by
+the Treaty of Tordecillas the line of demarcation was finally fixed to
+pass from north to south through a point 370 leagues west of the Cape
+Verde Islands.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+GREAT EXPECTATIONS
+
+July, August, and September in the year 1493 were busy months for
+Columbus, who had to superintend the buying or building and fitting of
+ships, the choice and collection of stores, and the selection of his
+company.  There were fourteen caravels, some of them of low tonnage and
+light draught, and suitable for the navigation of rivers; and three large
+carracks, or ships of three to four hundred tons.  The number of
+volunteers asked for was a thousand, but at least two thousand applied
+for permission to go with the expedition, and ultimately some fourteen or
+fifteen hundred did actually go, one hundred stowaways being included in
+the number.  Unfortunately these adventurers were of a class compared
+with whom even the cut-throats and gaol-birds of the humble little
+expedition that had sailed the year before from Palos were useful and
+efficient.  The universal impression about the new lands in the West was
+that they were places where fortunes could be picked up like dirt, and
+where the very shores were strewn with gold and precious stones; and
+every idle scamp in Spain who had a taste for adventure and a desire to
+get a great deal of money without working for it was anxious to visit the
+new territory.  The result was that instead of artisans, farmers,
+craftsmen, and colonists, Columbus took with him a company at least half
+of which consisted of exceedingly well-bred young gentlemen who had no
+intention of doing any work, but who looked forward to a free and lawless
+holiday and an early return crowned with wealth and fortune.  Although
+the expedition was primarily for the establishment of a colony, no
+Spanish women accompanied it; and this was but one of a succession of
+mistakes and stupidities.
+
+The Admiral, however, was not to be so lonely a person as he had been on
+his first voyage; friends of his own choice and of a rank that made
+intimacy possible even with the Captain-General were to accompany him.
+There was James his brother; there was Friar Bernardo Buil, a Benedictine
+monk chosen by the Pope to be his apostolic vicar in the New World; there
+was Alonso de Ojeda, a handsome young aristocrat, cousin to the
+Inquisitor of Spain, who was distinguished for his dash and strength and
+pluck; an ideal adventurer, the idol of his fellows, and one of whose
+daring any number of credible and incredible tales were told.  There was
+Pedro Margarite, a well-born Aragonese, who was destined afterwards to
+cause much trouble; there was Juan Ponce de Leon, the discoverer of
+Florida; there was Juan de La Cosa, Columbus's faithful pilot on the
+Santa Maria on his first voyage; there was Pedro de Las Casas, whose son,
+at this time a student in Seville, was afterwards to become the historian
+of the New World and the champion of decency and humanity there.  There
+was also Doctor Chanca, a Court physician who accompanied the expedition
+not only in his professional capacity but also because his knowledge of
+botany would enable him to make, a valuable report on the vegetables and
+fruits of the New World; there was Antonio de Marchena, one of Columbus's
+oldest friends, who went as astronomer to the expedition.  And there was
+one Coma, who would have remained unknown to this day but that he wrote
+an exceedingly elegant letter to his friend Nicolo Syllacio in Italy,
+describing in flowery language the events of the second voyage; which
+letter, and one written by Doctor Chanca, are the only records of the
+outward voyage that exist.  The journal kept by Columbus on this voyage
+has been lost, and no copy of it remains.
+
+
+Columbus settled at Cadiz during the time in which he was engaged upon
+the fitting out of the expedition.  It was no light matter to superintend
+the appointment of the crews and passengers, every one of whom was
+probably interviewed by Columbus himself, and at the same time to keep
+level with Archdeacon Fonseca.  This official, it will be remembered,
+had a disagreement with Columbus as to the number of personal attendants
+he was to be allowed; and on the matter being referred to the King and
+Queen they granted Columbus the ridiculous establishment of ten footmen
+and twenty other servants.
+
+Naturally Fonseca held up his hands and wondered where it would all end.
+It was no easy matter, moreover, on receipt of letters from the Queen
+about small matters which occurred to her from time to time, to answer
+them fully and satisfactorily, and at the same time to make out all the
+lists of things that would likely be required both for provisioning the
+voyage and establishing a colony.  The provisions carried in those days
+were not very different from the provisions carried on deep-sea vessels
+at the present time--except that canned meat, for which, with its horrors
+and conveniences, the world may hold Columbus responsible, had not then
+been invented.  Unmilled wheat, salted flour, and hard biscuit formed the
+bulk of the provisions; salted pork was the staple--of the meat supply,
+with an alternative of salted fish; while cheese, peas, lentils and
+beans, oil and vinegar, were also carried, and honey and almonds and
+raisins for the cabin table.  Besides water a large provision of rough
+wine in casks was taken, and the dietary scale would probably compare
+favourably with that of the British and American mercantile service sixty
+years ago.  In addition a great quantity of seeds of all kinds were taken
+for planting in Espanola; sugar cane, rice, and vines also, and an
+equipment of agricultural implements, as well as a selection of horses
+and other domestic animals for breeding purposes.  Twenty mounted
+soldiers were also carried, and the thousand and one impedimenta of
+naval, military, and domestic existence.
+
+In the middle of all these preparations news came that a Portuguese
+caravel had set sail from Madeira in the direction of the new lands.
+Columbus immediately reported this to the King and Queen, and suggested
+detaching part of his fleet to pursue her; but instead King John was
+communicated with, and he declared that if the vessel had sailed as
+alleged it was without his knowledge and permission, and that he would
+send three ships after her to recall her--an answer which had to be
+accepted, although it opened up rather alarming possibilities of four
+Portuguese vessels reaching the new islands instead of one.  Whether
+these ships ever really sailed or not, or whether the rumour was merely a
+rumour and an alarm, is not certain; but Columbus was ordered to push on
+his preparations with the greatest possible speed, to avoid Portuguese
+waters, but to capture any vessels which he might find in the part of the
+ocean allotted to Spain, and to inflict summary punishment on the crews.
+As it turned out he never saw any Portuguese vessels, and before he had
+returned to Spain again the two nations had come to an amicable agreement
+quite independently of the Pope and his Bulls.  Spain undertook to make
+no discoveries to the east of the line of demarcation, and Portugal none
+to the west of it; and so the matter remained until the inhabitants of
+the discovered lands began to have a voice in their own affairs.
+
+
+With all his occupations Columbus found time for some amenities, and he
+had his two sons, Diego and Ferdinand, staying with him at Cadiz.  Great
+days they must have been for these two boys; days filled with excitement
+and commotion, with the smell of tar and the loading of the innumerable
+and fascinating materials of life; and many a journey they must have made
+on the calm waters of Cadiz harbour from ship to ship, dreaming of the
+distant seas that these high, quaintly carven prows would soon be
+treading, and the wonderful bays and harbours far away across the world
+into the waters of which their anchors were to plunge.
+
+
+September 24th, the day before the fleet sailed, was observed as a
+festival; and in full ceremonial the blessing of God upon the enterprise
+was invoked.  The ships were hung with flags and with dyed silks and
+tapestries; every vessel flew the royal standard; and the waters of the
+harbour resounded with the music of trumpets and harps and pipes and the
+thunder of artillery.  Some Venetian galleys happened to enter the
+harbour as the fleet was preparing to weigh, and they joined in the
+salutes and demonstrations which signalled the departure.  The Admiral
+hoisted his flag on the 'Marigalante', one of the largest of the ships;
+and somewhere among the smaller caravels the little Nina, re-caulked and
+re-fitted, was also preparing to brave again the dangers over which she
+had so staunchly prevailed.  At sunrise on the 25th the fleet weighed
+anchor, with all the circumstance and bustle and apparent confusion that
+accompanies the business of sailing-ships getting under weigh.  Up to the
+last minute Columbus had his two sons on board with him, and it was not
+until the ripples were beginning to talk under the bow of the Marigalante
+that he said good-bye to them and saw them rowed ashore.  In bright
+weather, with a favourable breeze, in glory and dignity, and with high
+hopes in his heart, the Admiral set out once more on the long sea-road.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE SECOND VOYAGE
+
+The second voyage of Columbus, profoundly interesting as it must have
+been to him and to the numerous company to whom these waters were a
+strange and new region, has not the romantic interest for us that his
+first voyage had.  To the faith that guided him on his first venture
+knowledge and certainty had now been added; he was going by a familiar
+road; for to the mariner a road that he has once followed is a road that
+he knows.  As a matter of fact, however, this second voyage was a far
+greater test of Columbus's skill as a navigator than the first voyage had
+been.  If his navigation had been more haphazard he might never have
+found again the islands of his first discovery; and the fact that he made
+a landfall exactly where he wished to make it shows a high degree of
+exactness in his method of ascertaining latitude, and is another instance
+of his skill in estimating his dead-reckoning.  If he had been equipped
+with a modern quadrant and Greenwich chronometers he could not have made
+a quicker voyage nor a more exact landfall.
+
+It will be remembered that he had been obliged to hurry away from
+Espanola without visiting the islands of the Caribs as he had wished to
+do.  He knew that these islands lay to the south-east of Espanola, and on
+his second voyage he therefore took a course rather more southerly in
+order, to make them instead of Guanahani or Espanola.  From the day they
+left Spain his ships had pleasant light airs from the east and north-east
+which wafted them steadily but slowly on their course.  In a week they
+had reached the Grand Canary, where they paused to make some repairs to
+one of the ships which, was leaking.  Two days later they anchored at
+Gomera, and loaded up with such supplies as could be procured there
+better than in Spain.  Pigs, goats, sheep and cows were taken on board;
+domestic fowls also, and a variety of orchard plants and fruit seeds, as
+well as a provision of oranges, lemons, and melons.  They sailed from
+Gomera on the 7th of October, but the winds were so light that it was a
+week later before they had passed Ferro and were once more in the open
+Atlantic.
+
+On setting his course from Ferro Columbus issued sealed instructions to
+the captain of each ship which, in the event of the fleet becoming
+scattered, would guide them to the harbour of La Navidad in Espanola;
+but the captains had strict orders not to open these instructions unless
+their ships became separated from the fleet, as Columbus still wished to
+hold for himself the secret of this mysterious road to the west.  There
+were no disasters, however, and no separations.  The trade wind blew soft
+and steady, wafting them south and west; and because of the more
+southerly course steered on this voyage they did not even encounter the
+weed of the Sargasso Sea, which they left many leagues on their starboard
+hand.  The only incident of the voyage was a sudden severe hurricane, a
+brief summer tempest which raged throughout one night and terrified a
+good many of the voyagers, whose superstitious fears were only allayed
+when they saw the lambent flames of the light of Saint Elmo playing about
+the rigging of the Admiral's ship.  It was just the Admiral's luck that
+this phenomenon should be observed over his ship and over none of the
+others; it added to his prestige as a person peculiarly favoured by the
+divine protection, and confirmed his own belief that he held a heavenly
+as well as a royal commission.
+
+The water supply had been calculated a little too closely, and began to
+run low.  The hurried preparation of the ships had resulted as usual in
+bad work; most of them were leaking, and the crew were constantly at work
+at the pumps; and there was the usual discontent.  Columbus, however,
+knew by the signs as well as by his dead-reckoning that he was somewhere
+close to land; and with a fine demonstration of confidence he increased
+the ration of water, instead of lowering it, assuring the crews that they
+would be ashore in a day or two.  On Saturday evening, November 2nd,
+although no land was in sight, Columbus was so sure of his position that
+he ordered the fleet to take in sail and go on slowly until morning.  As
+the Sunday dawned and the sky to the west was cleared of the morning bank
+of clouds the look-out on the Marigalante reported land ahead; and sure
+enough the first sunlight of that day showed them a green and verdant
+island a few leagues away.
+
+As they approached it Columbus christened it Dominica in honour of the
+day on which it was discovered.  He sailed round it; but as there was no
+harbour, and as another island was in sight to the north, he sailed on in
+that direction.  This little island he christened Marigalante; and going
+ashore with his retinue he hoisted the royal banner, and formally took
+possession of the whole group of six islands which were visible from the
+high ground.  There were no inhabitants on the island, but the voyagers
+spent some hours wandering about its tangled woods and smelling the rich
+odours of spice, and tasting new and unfamiliar fruits.  They next sailed
+on to an island to the north which Columbus christened Guadaloupe as a
+memorial of the shrine in Estremadura to which he had made a pious
+pilgrimage.  They landed on this island and remained a week there, in the
+course of which they made some very remarkable discoveries.
+
+The villagers were not altogether unfriendly, although they were shy at
+first; but red caps and hawks' bells had their usual effect.  There were
+signs of warfare, in the shape of bone-tipped arrows; there were tame
+parrots much larger than those of the northern islands; they found
+pottery and rough wood carving, and the unmistakable stern timber of a
+European vessel.  But they discovered stranger things than that.  They
+found human skulls used as household utensils, and gruesome fragments of
+human bodies, unmistakable remains of a feast; and they realised that at
+last they were in the presence of a man-eating tribe.  Later they came to
+know, something of the habits of the islanders; how they made raiding
+expeditions to the neighbouring islands, and carried off large numbers of
+prisoners, retaining the women as concubines and eating the men.  The
+boys were mutilated and fattened like capons, being employed as labourers
+until they had arrived at years of discretion, at which point they were
+killed and eaten, as these cannibal epicures did not care for the flesh
+of women and boys.  There were a great number of women on the island, and
+many of them were taken off to the ships--with their own consent,
+according to Doctor Chanca.  The men, however, eluded the Spaniards and
+would not come on board, having doubtless very clear views about the
+ultimate destination of men who were taken prisoners.  Some women from a
+neighbouring island, who had been captured by the cannibals, came to
+Columbus and begged to be taken on board his ship for protection; but
+instead of receiving them he decked them with ornaments and sent them
+ashore again.  The cannibals artfully stripped off their ornaments and
+sent them back to get some more.
+
+The peculiar habits of the islanders added an unusual excitement to shore
+leave, and there was as a rule no trouble in collecting the crews and
+bringing them off to the ships at nightfall.  But on one evening it was
+discovered that one of the captains and eight men had not returned.  An
+exploring party was sent of to search for them, but they came back
+without having found anything, except a village in the middle of the
+forest from which the inhabitants had fled at their approach, leaving
+behind them in the cooking pots a half-cooked meal of human remains--an
+incident which gave the explorers a distaste for further search.  Young
+Alonso de Ojeda, however, had no fear of the cannibals; this was just the
+kind of occasion in which he revelled; and he offered to take a party of
+forty men into the interior to search for the missing men.  He went right
+across the island, but was able to discover nothing except birds and
+fruits and unknown trees; and Columbus, in great distress of mind, had to
+give up his men for lost.  He took in wood and water, and was on the
+point of weighing anchor when the missing men appeared on the shore and
+signalled for a boat.  It appeared that they had got lost in a tangled
+forest in the interior, that they had tried to climb the trees in order
+to get their bearings by the stars, but without success; and that they
+had finally struck the sea-shore and followed it until they had arrived
+opposite the anchorage.
+
+They brought some women and boys with them, and the fleet must now have
+had a large number of these willing or unwilling captives.  This was the
+first organised transaction of slavery on the part of Columbus, whose
+design was to send slaves regularly back to Spain in exchange for the
+cattle and supplies necessary for the colonies.  There was not very much
+said now about religious conversion, but only about exchanging the
+natives for cattle.  The fine point of Christopher's philosophy on this
+subject had been rubbed off; he had taken the first step a year ago on
+the beach at Guanahani, and after that the road opened out broad before
+him.  Slaves for cattle, and cattle for the islands; and wealth from
+cattle and islands for Spain, and payment from Spain for Columbus, and
+money from Columbus for the redemption of the Holy Sepulchre--these were
+the links in the chain of hope that bound him to his pious idea.  He had
+seen the same thing done by the Portuguese on the Guinea coast, and it
+never occurred to him that there was anything the matter with it.  On the
+contrary, at this time his idea was only to take slaves from among the
+Caribs and man-eating islanders as a punishment for their misdeeds; but
+this, like his other fine ideas, soon had to give way before the tide of
+greed and conquest.
+
+The Admiral was now anxious to get back to La Navidad, and discover the
+condition of the colony which he had left behind him there.  He therefore
+sailed from Guadaloupe on November 20th and steered to the north-west.
+His captive islanders told him that the mainland lay to the south; and if
+he had listened to them and sailed south he would have probably landed on
+the coast of South America in a fortnight.  He shaped his course instead
+to the north-west, passing many islands, but not pausing until the 14th,
+when he reached the island named by him Santa Cruz.  He found more Caribs
+here, and his men had a brush with them, one of the crew being wounded by
+a poisoned arrow of which he died in a few days.  The Carib Chiefs were
+captured and put in irons.  They sailed again and passed a group of
+islets which Columbus named after Saint Ursula and the Eleven Thousand
+Virgins; discovered Porto Rico also, in one of the beautiful harbours of
+which they anchored and stayed for two days.  Sailing now to the west
+they made land again on the 22nd of November; and coasting along it they
+soon sighted the mountain of Monte Christi, and Columbus recognised that
+he was on the north coast of Espanola.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE EARTHLY PARADISE REVISITED
+
+On the 25th November 1493, Columbus once more dropped his anchor in the
+harbour of Monte Christi, and a party was sent ashore to prospect for a
+site suitable for the new town which he intended to build, for he was not
+satisfied with the situation of La Navidad.  There was a large river
+close by; and while the party was surveying the land they came suddenly
+upon two dead bodies lying by the river-side, one with a rope round its
+neck and the other with a rope round its feet.  The bodies were too much
+decomposed to be recognisable; nevertheless to the party rambling about
+in the sunshine and stillness of that green place the discovery was a
+very gruesome one.  They may have thought much, but they said little.
+They returned to the ship, and resumed their search on the next day, when
+they found two more corpses, one of which was seen to have a large
+quantity of beard.  As all the natives were beardless this was a very
+significant and unpleasant discovery, and the explorers returned at once
+and reported what they had seen to Columbus.  He thereupon set sail for
+La Navidad, but the navigation off that part of the coast was necessarily
+slow because of the number of the shoals and banks, on one of which the
+Admiral's ship had been lost the year before; and the short voyage
+occupied three days.
+
+They arrived at La Navidad late on the evening of the 27th--too late to
+make it advisable to land.  Some natives came out in a canoe, rowed round
+the Admiral's ship, stopped and looked at it, and then rowed away again.
+When the fleet had anchored Columbus ordered two guns to be fired; but
+there was no response except from the echoes that went rattling among the
+islands, and from the frightened birds that rose screaming and circling
+from the shore.  No guns and no signal fires; no sign of human habitation
+whatever; and no sound out of the weird darkness except the lap of the
+water and the call of the birds .  .  .  .  The night passed in anxiety
+and depression, and in a certain degree of nervous tension, which was
+relieved at two or three o'clock in the morning by the sound of paddles
+and the looming of a canoe through the dusky starlight.  Native voices
+were heard from the canoe asking in a loud voice for the Admiral; and
+when the visitors had been directed to the Marigalante they refused to go
+on board until Columbus himself had spoken to them, and they had seen by
+the light of a lantern that it was the Admiral himself.  The chief of
+them was a cousin of Guacanagari, who said that the King was ill of a
+wound in his leg, or that he would certainly have come himself to welcome
+the Admiral.  The Spaniards?  Yes, they were well, said the young chief;
+or rather, he added ominously, those that remained were well, but some
+had died of illness, and some had been killed in quarrels that had arisen
+among them.  He added that the province had been invaded by two
+neighbouring kings who had burned many of the native houses.  This news,
+although grave, was a relief from the dreadful uncertainty that had
+prevailed in the early part of the night, and the Admiral's company,
+somewhat consoled, took a little sleep.
+
+In the morning a party was sent ashore to La Navidad.  Not a boat was in
+sight, nor any native canoes; the harbour was silent and deserted.  When
+the party had landed and gone up to the place where the fort had been
+built they found no fort there; only the blackened and charred remains of
+a fort.  The whole thing had been burned level with the ground, and amid
+the blackened ruins they found pieces of rag and clothing.  The natives,
+instead of coming to greet them, lurked guiltily behind trees, and when
+they were seen fled away into the woods.  All this was very disquieting
+indeed, and in significant contrast to their behaviour of the year
+before.  The party from the ship threw buttons and beads and bells to the
+retiring natives in order to try and induce them to come forward, but
+only four approached, one of whom was a relation of Guacanagari.  These
+four consented to go into the boat and to be rowed out to the ship.
+Columbus then spoke to them through his interpreter; and they admitted
+what had been only too obvious to the party that went ashore--that the
+Spaniards were all dead, and that not one of the garrison remained.  It
+seemed that two neighbouring kings, Caonabo and Mayreni, had made an
+attack upon the fort, burned the buildings, and killed and wounded most
+of the defenders; and that Guacanagari, who had been fighting on their
+behalf, had also been wounded and been obliged to retire.  The natives
+offered to go and fetch Guacanagari himself, and departed with that
+object.
+
+In the greatest anxiety the Admiral and his company passed that day and
+night waiting for the King to come.  Early the next morning Columbus
+himself went ashore and visited the spot where the settlement had been.
+There he found destruction whole and complete, with nothing but a few
+rags of clothing as an evidence that the place had ever been inhabited by
+human beings.  As Guacanagari did not appear some of the Spaniards began
+to suspect that he had had a hand in the matter, and proposed immediate
+reprisal; but Columbus, believing still in the man who had "loved him so
+much that it was wonderful" did not take this view, and his belief in
+Guacanagari's loyalty was confirmed by the discovery that his own
+dwelling had also been burned down.
+
+Columbus set some of his party searching in the ditch of the fort in case
+any treasure should have been buried there, as he had ordered it should
+be in event of danger, and while this was going on he walked along the
+coast for a few miles to visit a spot which he thought might be suitable
+for the new settlement.  At a distance of a mile or two he found a
+village of seven or eight huts from which the inhabitants fled at his
+approach, carrying such of their goods as were portable, and leaving the
+rest hidden in the grass.  Here were found several things that had
+belonged to the Spaniards and which were not likely to have been
+bartered; new Moorish mantles, stockings, bolts of cloth, and one of the
+Admiral's lost anchors; other articles also, among them a dead man's head
+wrapped up with great care in a small basket.  Shaking their own living
+heads, Columbus and his party returned.  Suddenly they came on some
+suspicious-looking mounds of earth over which new grass was growing.  An
+examination of these showed them to be the graves of eleven of the
+Spaniards, the remains of the clothing being quite sufficient to identify
+them.  Doctor Chanca, who examined them, thought that they had not been
+dead two months.  Speculation came to an end in the face of this eloquent
+certainty; there were the dead bodies of some of the colonists; and the
+voyagers knelt round with bare heads while the bodies were replaced in
+the grave and the ceremony of Christian burial performed over them.
+
+Little by little the dismal story was elicited from the natives, who
+became less timid when they saw that the Spaniards meant them no harm.
+It seemed that Columbus had no sooner gone away than the colonists began
+to abandon themselves to every kind of excess.  While the echo of the
+Admiral's wise counsels was yet in their ears they began to disobey his
+orders.  Honest work they had no intention of doing, and although Diego
+Arana, their commander, did his best to keep order, and although one or
+two of the others were faithful to him and to Columbus, their authority
+was utterly insufficient to check the lawless folly of the rest.  Instead
+of searching for gold mines, they possessed themselves by force of every
+ounce of gold they could steal or seize from the natives, treating them
+with both cruelty and contempt.  More brutal excesses followed as a
+matter of course.  Guacanagari, in his kindly indulgence and generosity,
+had allowed them to take three native wives apiece, although he himself
+and his people were content with one.  But of course the Spaniards had
+thrown off all restraint, however mild, and ran amok among the native
+inhabitants, seizing their wives and seducing their daughters.  Upon this
+naturally followed dissensions among themselves, jealousy coming hot upon
+the heels of unlawful possession; and, in the words of Irving, "the
+natives beheld with astonishment the beings whom they had worshipped as
+descended from the skies abandoned to the grossest of earthly passions
+and raging against each other with worse than brutal ferocity."
+
+Upon their strifes and dissensions followed another breach of the
+Admiral's wise regulations; they no longer cared to remain together in
+the fort, but split up into groups and went off with their women into the
+woods, reverting to a savagery beside which the gentle existence of the
+natives was high civilisation.  There were squabbles and fights in which
+one or two of the Spaniards were killed; and Pedro Gutierrez and Rodrigo
+de Escovedo, whom Columbus had appointed as lieutenants to Arana, headed
+a faction of revolt against his authority, and took themselves off with
+nine other Spaniards and a great number of women.  They had heard a great
+deal about the mines of Cibao, and they decided to go in search of them
+and secure their treasures for themselves.  They went inland into a
+territory which was under the rule of King Caonabo, a very fierce Carib
+who was not a native of Espanola, but had come there as an adventurer and
+remained as a conqueror.  Although he resented the intrusion of the
+Spaniards into the island he would not have dared to come and attack them
+there if they had obeyed the Admiral's orders and remained in the
+territory of Guacanagari; but when they came into his own country he had
+them in a trap, and it was easy for him to fall upon those foolish
+swaggering Spaniards and put them to death.  He then decided to go and
+take the fort.
+
+He formed an alliance with the neighbouring king, Mayreni, whose province
+was in the west of the island.  Getting together a force of warriors
+these two kings marched rapidly and stealthily through the, forest for
+several days until they arrived at its northern border.  They came in the
+dead of night to the neighbourhood of La Navidad, where the inhabitants
+of the fortress, some ten in number, were fast asleep.  Fast asleep were
+the remaining dozen or so of the Spaniards who were living in houses or
+huts in the neighbourhood; fast asleep also the gentle natives, not
+dreaming of troubles from any quarter but that close at hand.  The sweet
+silence of the tropical night was suddenly broken by frightful yells as
+Caonabo and his warriors rushed the fortress and butchered the
+inhabitants, setting fire to it and to the houses round about.  As their
+flimsy huts burst into flames the surprised Spaniards rushed out, only to
+be fallen upon by the infuriated blacks.  Eight of the Spaniards rushed
+naked into the sea and were drowned; the rest were butchered.
+Guacanagari manfully came to their assistance and with his own followers
+fought throughout the night; but his were a gentle and unwarlike people,
+and they were easily routed.  The King himself was badly wounded in the
+thigh, but Caonabo's principal object seems to have been the destruction
+of the Spaniards, and when that was completed he and his warriors, laden
+with the spoils, retired.
+
+Thus Columbus, walking on the shore with his native interpreter, or
+sitting in his cabin listening with knitted brow to the accounts of the
+islanders, learns of the complete and utter failure of his first hopes.
+It has come to this.  These are the real first-fruits of his glorious
+conquest and discovery.  The New World has served but as a virgin field
+for the Old Adam.  He who had sought to bring light and life to these
+happy islanders had brought darkness and death; they had innocently
+clasped the sword he had extended to them and cut themselves.  The
+Christian occupation of the New World had opened with vice, cruelty, and
+destruction; the veil of innocence had been rent in twain, and could
+never be mended or joined again.  And the Earthly Paradise in which life
+had gone so happily, of which sun and shower had been the true rulers,
+and the green sprouting harvests the only riches, had been turned into a
+shambles by the introduction of human rule and civilised standards of
+wealth.  Gold first and then women, things beautiful and innocent in the
+happy native condition of the islands, had been the means of the
+disintegration and death of this first colony.  These are serious
+considerations for any coloniser; solemn considerations for a discoverer
+who is only on the verge and beginning of his empire-making; mournful
+considerations for Christopher as he surveys the blackened ruins of the
+fort, or stands bare-headed by the grass-covered graves.
+
+There seemed to be a certain hesitancy on the part of Guacanagari to
+present himself; for though he kept announcing his intention of coming to
+visit the Admiral he did not come.  A couple of days after the discovery
+of the remains, however, he sent a message to Columbus begging him to
+come and see him, which the Admiral accordingly did, accompanied by a
+formal retinue and carrying with him the usual presents.  Guacanagari was
+in bed sure enough complaining of a wounded leg, and he told the story of
+the settlement very much as Columbus had already heard it from the other
+natives.  He pointed to his own wounded leg as a sign that he had been
+loyal and faithful to his friendly promises; but when the leg was
+examined by the surgeon in order that it might be dressed no wound could
+be discovered, and it was obvious to Doctor Chanca that the skin had not
+been broken.  This seemed odd; Friar Buil was so convinced that the whole
+story was a deception that he wished the Admiral to execute Guacanagari
+on the spot.  Columbus, although he was puzzled, was by no means
+convinced that Guacanagari had been unfaithful to him, and decided to do
+nothing for the present.  He invited the cacique to come on board the
+flagship; which he did, being greatly interested by some of the Carib
+prisoners, notably a handsome woman, named by the Spaniards Dofia
+Catalina, with whom he held a long conversation.
+
+Relations between the Admiral and the cacique, although outwardly
+cordial, were altogether different from what they had been in, the happy
+days after their first meeting; the man seemed to shrink from all the
+evidence of Spanish power, and when they proposed to hang a cross round
+his neck the native king, much as he loved trinkets and toys, expressed a
+horror and fear of this jewel when he learned that it was an emblem of
+the Christian faith.  He had seen a little too much of the Christian
+religion; and Heaven only knows with what terror and depression the
+emblem of the cross inspired him.  He went ashore; and when a messenger
+was sent to search for him a few days afterwards, it was found that he
+had moved his whole establishment into the interior of the island.  The
+beautiful native woman Catalina escaped to shore and disappeared at the
+same time; and the two events were connected in the minds of some of the
+Spaniards, and held, wrongly as it turned out, to be significant of a
+deep plot of native treachery.
+
+The most urgent need was to build the new settlement and lay out a town.
+Several small parties were sent out to reconnoitre the coast in both
+directions, but none of them found a suitable place; and on December 7th
+the whole fleet sailed to the east in the hope of finding a better
+position.  They were driven by adverse winds into a harbour some thirty
+miles to the east of Monte Christi, and when they went ashore they
+decided that this was as good a site as any for the new town.  There was
+about a quarter of a mile of level sandy beach enclosed by headlands on
+either side; there was any amount of rock and stones for building, and
+there was a natural barrier of hills and mountains a mile or so inland
+that would protect a camp from that side.--The soil was very fertile,
+the vegetation luxuriant; and the mango swamps a little way inland
+drained into a basin or lake which provided an unlimited water supply.
+Columbus therefore set about establishing a little town, to which he gave
+the name of Isabella.  Streets and squares were laid out, and rows of
+temporary buildings made of wood and thatched with grass were hastily run
+up for the accommodation of the members of the expedition, while the
+foundations of three stone buildings were also marked out and the
+excavations put in hand.  These buildings were the church, the
+storehouse, and a residence for Columbus as Governor-General.  The stores
+were landed, the horses and cattle accommodated ashore, the provisions,
+ammunition, and agricultural implements also.  Labourers were set to
+digging out the foundations of the stone buildings, carpenters to cutting
+down trees and running up the light wooden houses that were to serve as
+barracks for the present; masons were employed in hewing stones and
+building landing-piers; and all the crowd of well-born adventurers were
+set to work with their hands, much to their disgust.  This was by no
+means the life they had imagined, and at the first sign of hard work they
+turned sulky and discontented.  There was, to be sure, some reason for
+their discontent.  Things had not quite turned out as Columbus had
+promised they should; there was no store of gold, nor any sign of great
+desire on the part of the natives to bring any; and to add to their other
+troubles, illness began to break out in the camp.  The freshly-turned
+rank soil had a bad effect on the health of the garrison; the lake, which
+had promised to be so pleasant a feature in the new town, gave off
+dangerous malarial vapours at night; and among the sufferers from this
+trouble was Columbus himself, who endured for some weeks all the pains
+and lassitude of the disagreeable fever.
+
+The ships were now empty and ready for the return voyage, and as soon as
+Columbus was better he set to work to face the situation.  After all his
+promises it would never do to send them home empty or in ballast; a cargo
+of stones from the new-found Indies would not be well received in Spain.
+The natives had told him that somewhere in the island existed the gold
+mines of Cibao, and he determined to make an attempt to find these, so
+that he could send his ships home laden with a cargo that would be some
+indemnity for the heavy cost of the expedition and some compensation for
+the bad news he must write with regard to his first settlement.  Young
+Ojeda was chosen to lead an expedition of fifteen picked men into the
+interior; and as the gold mines were said to be in a part of the island
+not under the command of Guacanagari, but in the territory of the dreaded
+Caonabo, there was no little anxiety felt about the expedition.
+
+Ojeda started in the beginning of January 1494, and marched southwards
+through dense forests until, having crossed a mountain range, he came
+down into a beautiful and fertile valley, where they were hospitably
+received by the natives.  They saw plenty of gold in the sand of the
+river that watered the valley, which sand the natives had a way of
+washing so that the gold was separated from it; and there seemed to be so
+much wealth there that Ojeda hurried back to the new city of Isabella to
+make his report to Columbus.  The effect upon the discontented colonists
+was remarkable.  Once more everything was right; wealth beyond the dreams
+of avarice was at their hand; and all they had to do was to stretch out
+their arms and take it.  Columbus felt that he need no longer delay the
+despatch of twelve of his ships on the homeward voyage.  If he had not
+got golden cargoes for them, at any rate he had got the next best thing,
+which was the certainty of gold; and it did not matter whether it was in
+the ships or in his storehouse.  He had news to send home at any rate,
+and a great variety of things to ask for in return, and he therefore set
+about writing his report to the Sovereigns.  Other people, as we know,
+were writing letters too; the reiterated promise of gold, and the
+marvellous anecdotes which these credulous settlers readily believed from
+the natives, such as that there was a rock close by out of which gold
+would burst if you struck it with a club, raised greed and expectation in
+Spain to a fever pitch, and prepared the reaction which followed.
+
+We may now read the account of the New World as Columbus sent it home to
+the King and Queen of Spain in the end of January 1494, and as they read
+it some weeks later.  Their comments, written in the margin of the
+original, are printed in italics at the end of each paragraph.  It was
+drawn up in the form of a memorandum, and entrusted to Antonio de Torres,
+who was commanding the return expedition.
+
+
+"What you, Antonio de Torres, captain of the ship Marigalante and Alcalde
+of the City of Isabella, are to say and supplicate on my part to the King
+and Queen, our Lords, is as follows:--
+
+     "First.  Having delivered the letters of credence which you carry
+     from me for their Highnesses, you will kiss for me their Royal feet
+     and hands and will recommend me to their Highnesses as to a King and
+     Queen, my natural Lords, in whose service I desire to end my days:
+     as you will be able to say this more fully to their Highnesses,
+     according to what you have seen and known of me.
+
+          ["Their Highnesses hold him in their favour.]
+
+     "Item.  Although by the letters I write to their Highnesses, and
+     also the father Friar Buil and the Treasurer, they will be able to
+     understand all that has been done here since our arrival, and this
+     very minutely and extensively: nevertheless, you will say to their
+     Highnesses on my part, that it has pleased God to give me such
+     favour in their service, that up to the present time.  I do not find
+     less, nor has less been found in anything than what I wrote and said
+     and affirmed to their Highnesses in the past: but rather, by the
+     Grace of God, I hope that it will appear, by works much more clearly
+     and very soon, because such signs and indications of spices have
+     been found on the shores of the sea alone, without having gone
+     inland, that there is reason that very much better results may be
+     hoped for: and this also may be hoped for in the mines of gold,
+     because by two persons only who went to investigate, each one on his
+     own part, without remaining there because there was not many people,
+     so many rivers have been discovered so filled with gold, that all
+     who saw it and gathered specimens of it with the hands alone, came
+     away so pleased and say such things in regard to its abundance, that
+     I am timid about telling it and writing it to their Highnesses: but
+     because Gorbalan, who was one of the discoverers, is going yonder,
+     he will tell what he saw, although another named Hojeda remains
+     here, a servant of the Duke of Medinaceli, a very discreet youth and
+     very prudent, who without doubt and without comparison even,
+     discovered much more according to the memorandum which he brought of
+     the rivers, saying that there is an incredible quantity in each one
+     of them for this their Highnesses may give thanks to God, since He
+     has been so favourable to them in all their affairs.
+
+          ["Their Highnesses give many thanks to God for this, and
+          consider as a very signal service all that the Admiral has done
+          in this matter and is doing: because they know that after God
+          they are indebted to him for all they have had, and will have
+          in this affair: and as they are writing him more fully about
+          this, they refer him to their letter.]
+
+     "Item. You will say to their Highnesses, although I already have
+     written it to them, that I desired greatly to be able to send them a
+     larger quantity of gold in this fleet, from that which it is hoped
+     may be gathered here, but the greater part of our people who are
+     here, have fallen suddenly ill: besides, this fleet cannot remain
+     here longer, both on account of the great expense it occasions and
+     because this time is suitable for those persons who are to bring the
+     things which are greatly needed here, to go and be able to return:
+     as, if they delay going away from here, those who are to return will
+     not be able to do so by May: and besides this, if I wished to
+     undertake to go to the mines or rivers now, with the well people who
+     are here, both on the sea and in the settlement on land, I would
+     have many difficulties and even dangers, because in order to go
+     twenty-three or twenty-four leagues from here where there are
+     harbours and rivers to cross, and in order to cover such a long
+     route and reach there at the time which would be necessary to gather
+     the gold, a large quantity of provisions would have to be carried,
+     which cannot be carried on the shoulders, nor are there beasts of
+     burden here which could be used for this purpose: nor are the roads
+     and passes sufficiently prepared, although I have commenced to get
+     them in readiness so as to be passable: and also it was very
+     inconvenient to leave the sick here in an open place, in huts, with
+     the provisions and supplies which are on land: for although these
+     Indians may have shown themselves to the discoverers and show
+     themselves every day, to be very simple and not malicious
+     nevertheless, as they come here among us each day, it did not appear
+     that it would be a good idea to risk losing these people and the
+     supplies.  This loss an Indian with a piece of burning wood would be
+     able to cause by setting fire to the huts, because they are always
+     going and coming by night and by day: on their account, we have
+     guards in the camp, while the settlement is open and defenceless.
+
+          ["That he did well.]
+
+     "Moreover, as we have seen among those who went by land to make
+     discoveries that the greater part fell sick after returning, and
+     some of them even were obliged to turn back on the road, it was also
+     reasonable to fear that the same thing would happen to those who are
+     well, who would now go, and as a consequence they would run the risk
+     of two dangers: the one, that of falling sick yonder, in the same
+     work, where there is no house nor any defence against that cacique
+     who is called Caonabb, who is a very bad man according to all
+     accounts, and much more audacious and who, seeing us there, sick and
+     in such disorder, would be able to undertake what he would not dare
+     if we were well: and with this difficulty there is another--that of
+     bringing here what gold we might obtain, because we must either
+     bring a small quantity and go and come each day and undergo the risk
+     of sickness, or it must be sent with some part of the people,
+     incurring the same danger of losing it.
+
+          ["He did well.]
+
+     "So that, you will say to their Highnesses, that these are the
+     causes why the fleet has not been at present detained, and why more
+     gold than the specimens has not been sent them: but confiding in the
+     mercy of God, who in everything and for everything has guided us as
+     far as here, these people will quickly become convalescent, as they
+     are already doing, because only certain places in the country suit
+     them and they then recover; and it is certain that if they had some
+     fresh meat in order to convalesce, all with the aid of God would
+     very quickly be on foot, and even the greater part would already be
+     convalescent at this time: nevertheless they will be re-established.
+     With the few healthy ones who remain here, each day work is done
+     toward enclosing the settlement and placing it in a state of some
+     defence and the supplies in safety, which will be accomplished in a
+     short time, because it is to be only a small dry wall.  For the
+     Indians are not a people to undertake anything unless they should
+     find us sleeping, even though they might have thought of it in the
+     manner in which they served the others who remained here.  Only on
+     account of their (the Spaniards') lack of caution--they being so
+     few--and the great opportunities they gave the Indians to have and
+     do what they did, they would never have dared to undertake to injure
+     them if they had seen that they were cautious.  And this work being
+     finished, I will then undertake to go to the said rivers, either
+     starting upon the road from here and seeking the best possible
+     expedients, or going around the island by sea as far as that place
+     from which it is said it cannot be more than six or seven leagues to
+     the said rivers.  In such a manner that the gold can be gathered and
+     placed in security in some fortress or tower which can then be
+     constructed there, in order to keep it securely until the time when
+     the two caravels return here, and in order that then, with the first
+     suitable weather for sailing this course, it may be sent to a place
+     of safety.
+
+          ["That this is well and must be done in this manner.]
+
+     "Item.  You will say to their Highnesses, as has been said, that the
+     cause of the general sicknesses common to all is the change of water
+     and air, because we see that it extends to all conditions and few
+     are in danger: consequently, for the preservation of health, after
+     God, it is necessary that these people be provided with the
+     provisions to which they are accustomed in Spain, because neither
+     they, nor others who may come anew, will be able to serve their
+     Highnesses if they are not well: and this provision must continue
+     until a supply is accumulated here from what shall be sowed and
+     planted here.  I say wheat and barley, and vines, of which little
+     has been done this year because a site for the town could not be
+     selected before, and then when it was selected the few labourers who
+     were here became sick, and they, even though they had been well, had
+     so few and such lean and meagre beasts of burden, that they were
+     able to do but little: nevertheless, they have sown something, more
+     in order to try the soil which appears very wonderful, so that from
+     it some relief may be hoped in our necessities.  We are very sure,
+     as the result makes it apparent to us, that in this country wheat as
+     well as the vine will grow very well: but the fruit must be waited
+     for, which, if it corresponds to the quickness with which the wheat
+     grows and of some few vine-shoots which were planted, certainly will
+     not cause regret here for the productions of Andalusia or Sicily:
+     neither is it different with the sugar-canes according to the manner
+     in which some few that were planted have grown.  For it is certain
+     that the sight of the land of these islands, as well of the
+     mountains and sierras and waters as of the plains where there are
+     rich rivers, is so beautiful, that no other land on which the sun
+     shines can appear better or as beautiful.
+
+          ["Since the land is such, it must be managed that the greatest
+          possible quantity of all things shall be sown, and Don Juan de
+          Fonseca is to be written to send continually all that is
+          necessary for this purpose.]
+
+     "Item.  You will say that, inasmuch as much of the wine which the
+     fleet brought was wasted on this journey, and this, according to
+     what the greater number say, was because of the bad workmanship
+     which the coopers did in Seville, the greatest necessity we feel
+     here at the present time is for wines, and it is what we desire most
+     to have and although we may have biscuit as well as wheat sufficient
+     for a longer time, nevertheless it is necessary that a reasonable
+     quantity should also be sent, because the journey is long and
+     provision cannot be made each day and in the same manner some salted
+     meat, I say bacon, and other salt meat better than that we brought
+     on this journey.  It is necessary that each time a caravel comes
+     here, fresh meat shall be sent, and even more than that, lambs and
+     little ewe lambs, more females than males, and some little yearling
+     calves, male and female, and some he-asses and she-asses and some
+     mares for labour and breeding, as there are none of these animals
+     here of any value or which can be made use of by man.  And because I
+     apprehend that their Highnesses may not be, in Seville, and that the
+     officials or ministers will not provide these things without their
+     express order, and as it is necessary they should come at the first
+     opportunity, and as in consultation and reply the time for the
+     departure of the vessels-which must be here during all of Maywill be
+     past: you will say to their Highnesses that I charged and commanded
+     you to pledge the gold you are carrying yonder and place it in
+     possession of some merchant in Seville, who will furnish therefor
+     the necessary maravedis to load two caravels with wine and wheat and
+     the other things of which you are taking a memorandum; which
+     merchant will carry or send the said gold to their Highnesses that
+     they may see it and receive it, and cause what shall have been
+     expended for fitting out and loading of the said two caravels to be
+     paid: and in order to comfort and strengthen these people remaining
+     here, the utmost efforts must be made for the return of these
+     caravels for all the month of May, that the people before commencing
+     the summer may see and have some refreshment from these things,
+     especially the invalids: the things of which we are already in great
+     need here are such as raisins, sugar, almonds, honey and rice, which
+     should have been sent in large quantities and very little was sent,
+     and that which came is already used and consumed, and even the
+     greater part of the medicines which were brought from there, on
+     account of the multitude of sick people.  You are carrying memoranda
+     signed by my hand, as has been said, of things for the people in
+     good health as well as for the sick.  You will provide these things
+     fully if the money is sufficient, or at least the things which it is
+     most necessary to send at once, in order that the said two vessels
+     can bring them, and you can arrange with their Highnesses, to have
+     the remaining things sent by other vessels as quickly as possible.
+
+          ["Their Highnesses sent an order to Don Juan de Fonseca to
+          obtain at once information about the persons who committed the
+          fraud of the casks, and to cause all the damage to the wine to
+          be recovered from them, with the costs: and he must see that
+          the canes which are sent are of good quality, and that the
+          other things mentioned here are provided at once.]
+
+     "Item.  You will say to their Highnesses that as there is no
+     language here by means of which these people can be made to
+     understand our Holy Faith, as your Highnesses and also we who are
+     here desire, although we will do all we can towards it--I am sending
+     some of the cannibals in the vessels, men and women and male and
+     female children, whom their Highnesses can order placed with persons
+     from whom they can better learn the language, making use of them in
+     service, and ordering that little by little more pains be taken with
+     them than with other slaves, that they may learn one from the other:
+     if they do not see or speak with each other until some time has
+     passed, they will learn more quickly there than here, and will be
+     better interpreters--although we will not cease to do as much as
+     possible here.  It is true that as there is little intercourse
+     between these people from one island to another, there is some
+     difference in their language, according to how far distant they are
+     from each other.  And as, of the other islands, those of the
+     cannibals are very large and very well populated, it would appear
+     best to take some of their men and women and send them yonder to
+     Castile, because by taking them away, it may cause them to abandon
+     at once that inhuman custom which they have of eating men: and by
+     learning the language there in Castile, they will receive baptism
+     much more quickly, and provide for the safety of their souls.  Even
+     among the peoples who are not cannibals we shall gain great credit,
+     by their seeing that we can seize and take captive those from whom
+     they are accustomed to receive injuries, and of whom they are in
+     such terror that they are frightened by one man alone.  You will
+     certify to their Highnesses that the arrival here and sight of such
+     a fine fleet all together has inspired very great authority here and
+     assured very great security for future things: because all the
+     people on this great island and in the other islands, seeing the
+     good treatment which those who well behave receive, and the bad
+     treatment given to those who behave ill, will very quickly render
+     obedience, so that they can be considered as vassals of their
+     Highnesses.  And as now they not only do willingly whatever is
+     required of them by our people, but further, they voluntarily
+     undertake everything which they understand may please us, their
+     Highnesses may also be certain that in many respects, as much for
+     the present as for the future, the coming of this fleet has given
+     them a great reputation, and not less yonder among the Christian
+     princes: which their Highnesses will be better able to consider and
+     understand than I can tell them.
+
+          ["That he is to be told what has befallen the cannibals who
+          came here.  That it is very well and must be done in this
+          manner, but that he must try there as much as possible to bring
+          them to our Holy Catholic faith and do the same with the
+          inhabitants of the islands where he is.]
+
+     "Item.  You will say to their Highnesses that the safety of the
+     souls of the said cannibals, and further of those here, has inspired
+     the thought that the more there are taken yonder, the better it will
+     be, and their Highnesses can be served by it in this manner: having
+     seen how necessary the flocks and beasts of burden are here, for the
+     sustenance of the people who must be here, and even of all these
+     islands, their Highnesses can give licence and permission to a
+     sufficient number of caravels to come here each year, and bring the
+     said flocks and other supplies and things to settle the country and
+     make use of the land: and this at reasonable prices at the expense
+     of those who bring them: and these things can be paid for in slaves
+     from among these cannibals, a very proud and comely people, well
+     proportioned and of good intelligence, who having been freed from
+     that inhumanity, we believe will be better than any other slaves.
+     They will be freed from this cruelty as soon as they are outside
+     their country, and many of them can be taken with the row-boats
+     which it is known how to build here: it being understood, however,
+     that a trustworthy person shall be placed on each one of the
+     caravels coming here, who shall forbid the said caravels to stop at
+     any other place or island than this place, where the loading and
+     unloading of all the merchandise must be done.  And further, their
+     Highnesses will be able to establish their rights over these slaves
+     which are taken from here yonder to Spain.  And you will bring or
+     send a reply to this, in order that the necessary preparations may
+     be made here with more confidence if it appears well to their
+     Highnesses.
+
+          ["This project must be held in abeyance for the present until
+          another method is suggested from there, and the Admiral may
+          write what he thinks in regard to it.]
+
+     "Item.  Also you will say to their Highnesses that it is more
+     profitable and costs less to hire the vessels as the merchants hire
+     them for Flanders, by tons, rather than in any other manner:
+     therefore I charged you to hire the two caravels which you are to
+     send here, in this manner: and all the others which their Highnesses
+     send here can be hired thus, if they consider it for their service
+     but I do not intend to say this of those vessels which are to come
+     here with their licence, for the slave trade.
+
+          ["Their Highnesses order Don Juan de Fonseca to hire the
+          caravels in this manner if it can be done.]
+
+     "Item.  You will say to their Highnesses, that to avoid any further
+     cost, I bought these caravels of which you are taking a memorandum
+     in order to retain them here with these two ships: that is to say
+     the Gallega and that other, the Capitana, of which I likewise
+     purchased the three-eighths from the master of it, for the price
+     given in the said memorandum which you are taking, signed by my
+     hand.  These ships not only will give authority and great security
+     to the people who are obliged to remain inland and make arrangements
+     with the Indians to gather the gold, but they will also be of
+     service in any other dangerous matter which may arise with a strange
+     people; besides the caravels are necessary for the discovery of the
+     mainland and the other islands which lie between here and there: and
+     you will entreat their Highnesses to order the maravedis which these
+     ships cost, paid at the times which they have been promised, because
+     without doubt they will soon receive what they cost, according to
+     what I believe and hope in the mercy of God.
+
+          ["The Admiral has done well, and to tell him that the sum has
+          been paid here to the one who sold the ship, and Don Juan de
+          Fonseca has been ordered to pay for the two caravels which the
+          Admiral bought.]
+
+     "Item.  You will say to their Highnesses, and will supplicate on my
+     part as humbly as possible, that it may please them to reflect on
+     what they will learn most fully from the letters and other writings
+     in regard to the peace and tranquillity and concord of those who are
+     here: and that for the service of their Highnesses such persons may
+     be selected as shall not be suspected, and who will give more
+     attention to the matters for which they are sent than to their own
+     interests: and since you saw and knew everything in regard to this
+     matter, you will speak and will tell their Highnesses the truth
+     about all the things as you understood them, and you will endeavour
+     that the provision which their Highnesses make in regard to it shall
+     come with the first ships if possible, in order that there may be no
+     scandals here in a matter of so much importance in the service of
+     their Highnesses.
+
+          ["Their Highnesses are well informed in regard to this matter,
+          and suitable provision will be made for everything.]
+
+     "Item.  You will tell their Highnesses of the situation of this
+     city, and the beauty of the surrounding province as you saw and
+     understood it, and how I made you its Alcade, by the powers which I
+     have for same from their Highnesses: whom I humbly entreat to hold
+     the said provision in part satisfaction of your services, as I hope
+     from their Highnesses.
+
+          ["It pleases their Highnesses that you shall be Alcade.]
+
+     "Item.  Because Mosen Pedro Margarite, servant of their Highnesses,
+     has done good service, and I hope he will do the same henceforward
+     in matters which are entrusted to him, I have been pleased to have
+     him remain here, and also Gaspar and Beltran, because they are
+     recognised servants of their Highnesses, in order to intrust them
+     with matters of confidence.  You will specialty entreat their
+     Highnesses in regard to the said Mosen Pedro, who is married and has
+     children, to provide him with some charge in the order of Santiago,
+     whose habit he wears, that his wife and children may have the
+     wherewith to live.  In the same manner you will relate how well and
+     diligently Juan Aguado, servant of their Highnesses, has rendered
+     service in everything which he has been ordered to do, and that I
+     supplicate their Highnesses to have him and the aforesaid persons in
+     their charge and to reward them.
+
+          ["Their Highnesses order 30,000 maravedis to be assigned to
+          Mosen Pedro each year, and to Gaspar and Beltran, to each one,
+          15,000 maravedis each year, from the present, August 15, 1494,
+          henceforward: and thus the Admiral shall cause to be paid to
+          them whatever must be paid yonder in the Indies, and Don Juan
+          de Fonseca whatever must be paid here: and in regard to Juan
+          Iguado, their Highnesses will hold him in remembrance.]
+
+     "Item.  You will tell their Highnesses of the labour performed by
+     Dr. Chanca, confronted with so many invalids, and still more because
+     of the lack of provisions and nevertheless, he acts with great
+     diligence and charity in everything pertaining to his office.  And
+     as their Highnesses referred to me the salary which he was to
+     receive here, because, being here, it is certain that he cannot take
+     or receive anything from any one, nor earn money by his office as he
+     earned it in Castile, or would be able to earn it being at his ease
+     and living in a different manner from the way he lives here;
+     therefore, notwithstanding he swears that he earned more there,
+     besides the salary which their Highnesses gave him, I did not wish
+     to allow more than 50,000 maravedis each year for the work he
+     performs here while he remains here.  This I entreat their
+     Highnesses to order allowed to him with the salary from here, and
+     that, because he says and affirms that all the physicians of their
+     Highnesses who are employed in Royal affairs or things similar to
+     this, are accustomed to have by right one day's wages in all the
+     year from all the people.  Nevertheless, I have been informed and
+     they tell me, that however this may be, the custom is to give them a
+     certain sum, fixed according to the will and command of their
+     Highnesses in compensation for that day's wages.  You will entreat
+     their Highnesses to order provision made as well in the matter of
+     the salary as of this custom, in such manner that the said Dr.
+     Chanca may have reason to be satisfied.
+
+          ["Their Highnesses are pleased in regard to this matter of Dr.
+          Chanca, and that he shall be paid what the Admiral has assigned
+          him, together with his salary.
+          "In regard to the day's wages of the physicians, they are not
+          accustomed to receive it, save where the King, our Lord, may be
+          in persona.]
+
+     "Item.  You will say to their Highnesses that Coronel is a man for
+     the service of their Highnesses in many things, and how much service
+     he has rendered up to the present in all the most necessary matters,
+     and the need we feel of him now that he is sick; and that rendering
+     service in such a manner, it is reasonable that he should receive
+     the fruit of his service, not only in future favours, but in his
+     present salary, so that he and those who are here may feel that
+     their service profits them; because, so great is the labour which
+     must be performed here in gathering the gold that the persons who
+     are so diligent are not to be held in small consideration; and as,
+     for his skill, he was provided here by me with the office of
+     Alguacil Mayor of these Indies; and since in the provision the
+     salary is left blank, you will say that I supplicate their
+     Highnesses to order it filled in with as large an amount as they may
+     think right, considering his services, confirming to him the
+     provision I have given him here, and assuring it to him annually.
+
+          ["Their Highnesses order that 15,000 maravedis more than his
+          salary shall be assigned him each year, and that it shall be
+          paid to him with his salary.]
+
+     "In the same manner you will tell their Highnesses how the lawyer
+     Gil Garcia came here for Alcalde Mayor and no salary has been named
+     or assigned to him; and he is a capable person, well educated and
+     diligent, and is very necessary here; that I entreat their
+     Highnesses to order his salary named and assigned, so that he can
+     sustain himself, and that it may be paid from the money allowed for
+     salaries here.
+
+          "[Their Highnesses order 20,000 maravedis besides his salary
+          assigned to him each year, as long as he remains yonder, and
+          that it shall be paid him when his salary is paid.]
+
+     "Item.  You will say to their Highnesses, although it is already
+     written in the letters, that I do not think it will be possible to
+     go to make discoveries this year, until these rivers in which gold
+     is found are placed in the most suitable condition for the service
+     of their Highnesses, as afterwards it can be done much better.
+     Because it is a thing which no one can do without my presence,
+     according to my will or for the service of their Highnesses, however
+     well it may be done, as it is doubtful what will be satisfactory to
+     a man unless he is present.
+
+          ["Let him endeavour that the amount of this gold may be known
+          as precisely as possible.]
+
+     "Item.  You will say to their Highnesses that the Squires who came
+     from Granada showed good horses in the review which took place at
+     Seville, and afterward at the embarkation I did not see them because
+     I was slightly unwell, and they replaced them with such horses that
+     the best of them do not appear to be worth 2000 maravedis, as they
+     sold the others and bought these; and this was done in the same way
+     to many people as I very well saw yonder, in the reviews at Seville.
+     It appears that Juan de Soria, after he had been given the money for
+     the wages, for some interest of his own substituted others in place
+     of those I expected to find here, and I found people whom I had
+     never seen.  In this matter he was guilty of great wickedness, so
+     that I do not know if I should complain of him alone.  On this
+     account, having seen that the expenses of these Squires have been
+     defrayed until now, besides their wages and also wages for their
+     horses, and it is now being done: and they are persons who, when
+     they are sick or when they do not desire to do so, will not allow
+     any use to be made of their horses save by themselves: and their,
+     Highnesses do not desire that these horses should be purchased of
+     them, but that they should be used in the service of their
+     Highnesses: and it does not appear to them that they should do
+     anything or render any service except on horseback, which at the
+     present time is not much to the purpose: on this account, it seems
+     that it would be better to buy the horses from them, since they are
+     of so little value, and not have these disagreements with them every
+     day.  Therefore their Highnesses may determine this as will best
+     serve them.
+
+          ["Their Highnesses order Don Juan de Fonseca to inform himself
+          in regard to this matter of the horses, and if it shall be
+          found true that this fraud was committed, those persons shall
+          be sent to their Highnesses to be punished: and also he is to
+          inform himself in regard to what is said of the other people,
+          and send the result in the examination to their Highnesses; and
+          in regard to these Squires, their Highnesses command that they
+          remain there and render service, since they belong to the
+          guards and servants of their Highnesses: and their Highnesses
+          order the Squires to give up the horses each time it is
+          necessary and the Admiral orders it, and if the horses receive
+          any injury through others using them, their Highnesses order
+          that the damage shall be paid to them by means of the Admiral.]
+
+     "Item.  You will say to their Highnesses that more than 200 persons
+     have come here without wages, and there are some of them who render
+     good service.  And as it is ordered that the others rendering
+     similar service should be paid: and as for these first three years
+     it would be of great benefit to have 1000 men here to settle, and
+     place this island and the rivers of gold in very great security, and
+     even though there were 100 horsemen nothing would be lost, but
+     rather it seems necessary, although their Highnesses will be able to
+     do without these horsemen until gold is sent: nevertheless, their
+     Highnesses must send to say whether wages shall be paid to these 200
+     persons, the same as to the others rendering good service, because
+     they are certainly necessary, as I have said in the beginning of
+     this memorandum.
+
+          ["In regard to these 200 persons, who are here said to have
+          gone without wages, their Highnesses order that they shall take
+          the places of those who went for wages, who have failed or
+          shall fail to fulfil their engagements, if they are skilful and
+          satisfactory to the Admiral.  And their Highnesses order the
+          Purser (Contador) to enrol them in place of those who fail to
+          fulfil their engagements, as the Admiral shall instruct him.]
+
+     "Item.  As the cost of these people can be in some degree lightened
+     and the better part of the expense could be avoided by the same
+     means employed by other Princes in other places: it appears, that it
+     would be well to order brought in the ships, besides the other
+     things which are for the common maintenance and the medicines, shoes
+     and the skins from which to order the shoes made, common shirts and
+     others, jackets, linen, sack-coats, trowsers and cloths suitable for
+     wearing apparel, at reasonable prices: and other things like
+     conserves which are not included in rations and are for the
+     preservation of health, which things all the people here would
+     willingly receive to apply on their wages and if these were
+     purchased yonder in Spain by faithful Ministers who would act for
+     the advantage of their Highnesses, something would be saved.
+     Therefore you will learn the will of their Highnesses about this
+     matter, and if it appears to them to be of benefit to them, then it
+     must be placed in operation.
+
+          ["This arrangement is to be in abeyance until the Admiral
+          writes more fully, and at another time they will send to order
+          Don Juan de Fonseca with Jimeno de Bribiesca to make provision
+          for the same.]
+
+     "Item.  You will say to their Highnesses that inasmuch as yesterday
+     in the review people were found who were without arms, which I think
+     happened in part by that exchange which took place yonder in
+     Seville, or in the harbour when those who presented themselves armed
+     were left, and others were taken who gave something to those who
+     made the exchange, it seems that it would be well to order 200
+     cuirasses sent, and 100 muskets and 100 crossbows, and a large
+     quantity of arsenal supplies, which is what we need most, and all
+     these arms can be given to those who are unarmed.
+
+          ["Already Don Juan de Fonseca has been written to make
+          provision for this.]
+
+     "Item.  Inasmuch as some artisans who came here, such as masons and
+     other workmen, are married and have wives yonder in Spain, and would
+     like to have what is owing them from their wages given to their
+     wives or to the persons to whom they will send their requirements in
+     order that they may buy for them the things which they need here I
+     supplicate their Highnesses to order it paid to them, because it is
+     for their benefit to have these persons provided for here.
+
+          ["Their Highnesses have already sent orders to Don Juan de
+          Fonseca to make provision for this matter.]
+
+     "Item.  Because, besides the other things which are asked for there
+     according to the memoranda which you are carrying signed by my hand,
+     for the maintenance of the persons in good health as well as for the
+     sick ones, it would be very well to have fifty casks of molasses
+     (miel de azucar) from the island of Madeira, as it is the best
+     sustenance in the world and the most healthful, and it does not
+     usually cost more than two ducats per cask, without the cask: and if
+     their Highnesses order some caravel to stop there in returning, it
+     can be purchased and also ten cases of sugar, which is very
+     necessary; as this is the best season of the year to obtain it, I
+     say between the present time and the month of April, and to obtain
+     it at a reasonable price.  If their Highnesses command it, the order
+     could be given, and it would not be known there for what place it is
+     wanted.
+
+          ["Let Don Juan de Fonseca make provision for this matter.]
+
+     "Item.  You will say to their Highnesses that although the rivers
+     contain gold in the quantity related by those who have seen it, yet
+     it is certain that the gold is not engendered in the rivers but
+     rather on the land, the waters of the rivers which flow by the mines
+     bringing it enveloped in the sands: and as among these rivers which
+     have been discovered there are some very large ones, there are
+     others so small that they are fountains rather than rivers, which
+     are not more than two fingers of water in depth, and then the source
+     from which they spring may be found: for this reason not only
+     labourers to gather it in the sand will be profitable, but others to
+     dig for it in the earth, which will be the most particular operation
+     and produce a great quantity.  And for this, it will be well for
+     their Highnesses to send labourers, and from among those who work
+     yonder in Spain in the mines of Almaden, that the work may be done
+     in both ways.  Although we will not await them here, as with the
+     labourers we have here we hope, with the aid of God, once the people
+     are in good health, to amass a good quantity of gold to be sent on
+     the first caravels which return.
+
+          ["This will be fully provided for in another manner.  In the
+          meantime their Highnesses order Don Yuan de Fonseca to send the
+          best miners he can obtain; and to write to Almaden to have the
+          greatest possible number taken from there and sent.]
+
+     "Item.  You will entreat their Highnesses very humbly on my part, to
+     consider Villacorta as speedily recommended to them, who, as their
+     Highnesses know, has rendered great service in this business, and
+     with a very good will, and as I know him, he is a diligent person
+     and very devoted to their service: it will be a favour to me if he
+     is given some confidential charge for which he is fitted, and where
+     he can show his desire to serve them and his diligence: and this you
+     will obtain in such a way that Villacorta may know by the result,
+     that what he has done for me when I needed him profits him in this
+     manner.
+
+          ["It will be done thus.]
+
+     "Item.  That the said Mosen Pedro and Gaspar and Beltran and others
+     who have remained here gave up the captainship of caravels, which
+     have now returned, and are not receiving wages: but because they are
+     persons who must be employed in important matters and of confidence,
+     their compensation, which must be different from the others, has not
+     been determined.  You will entreat their Highnesses on my part to
+     determine what is to be given them each year, or by the month,
+     according to their service.
+
+     "Done in the city of Isabella, January 30, 1494.
+
+          ["This has already been replied to above, but as it is stated
+          in the said item that they enjoy their salary, from the present
+          time their Highnesses order that their wages shall be paid to
+          all of them from the time they left their captainships."]
+
+
+This document is worth studying, written as it was in circumstances that
+at one moment looked desperate and at another were all hope.  Columbus
+was struggling manfully with difficulties that were already beginning to
+be too much for him.  The Man from Genoa, with his guiding star of faith
+in some shore beyond the mist and radiance of the West--see into what
+strange places and to what strange occupations this star has led him!
+The blue visionary eyes, given to seeing things immediately beyond the
+present horizon, must fix themselves on accounts and requisitions, on the
+needs of idle, aristocratic, grumbling Spaniards; must fix themselves
+also on that blank void in the bellies of his returning ships, where the
+gold ought to have been.  The letter has its practical side; the
+requisitions are made with good sense and a grasp of the economic
+situation; but they have a deeper significance than that.  All this talk
+about little ewe lambs, wine and bacon (better than the last lot, if it
+please your Highnesses), little yearling calves, and fifty casks of
+molasses that can be bought a ducat or two cheaper in Madeira in the
+months of April and May than at any other time or place, is only half
+real.  Columbus fills his Sovereigns' ears with this clamour so that he
+shall not hear those embarrassing questions that will inevitably be asked
+about the gold and the spices.  He boldly begins his letter with the old
+story about "indications of spices" and gold "in incredible quantities,"
+with a great deal of "moreover" and "besides," and a bold, pompous,
+pathetic "I will undertake"; and then he gets away from that subject by
+wordy deviations, so that to one reading his letter it really might seem
+as though the true business of the expedition was to provide Coronel,
+Mosen Pedro, Gaspar, Beltran, Gil Garcia, and the rest of them with work
+and wages.  Everything that occurs to him, great or little, that makes it
+seem as though things were humming in the new settlement, he stuffs into
+this document, shovelling words into the empty hulls of the ships, and
+trying to fill those bottomless pits with a stream of talk.  A system of
+slavery is boldly and bluntly sketched; the writer, in the hurry and
+stress of the moment, giving to its economic advantages rather greater
+prominence than to its religious glories.  The memorandum, for all its
+courageous attempt to be very cool and orderly and practical, gives us,
+if ever a human document did, a picture of a man struggling with an
+impossible situation which he will not squarely face, like one who should
+try to dig up the sea-shore and keep his eyes shut the while.
+
+In the royal comments written against the document one seems to trace the
+hand of Isabella rather than of Ferdinand.  Their tone is matter-of-fact,
+cool, and comforting, like the coolness of a woman's hand placed on a
+feverish brow.  Isabella believed in him; perhaps she read between the
+lines of this document, and saw, as we can see, how much anxiety and
+distress were written there; and her comments are steadying and
+encouraging.  He has done well; what he asks is being attended to; their
+Highnesses are well informed in regard to this and that matter; suitable
+provision will be made for everything; but let him endeavour that the
+amount of this gold may be known as precisely as possible.  There is no
+escaping from that.  The Admiral (no one knows it better than himself)
+must make good his dazzling promises, and coin every boastful word into a
+golden excelente of Spain.  Alas!  he must no longer write about the lush
+grasses, the shining rivers, the brightly coloured parrots, the gaudy
+flies and insects, the little singing birds, and the nights that are like
+May in Cordova.  He must find out about the gold; for it has come to grim
+business in the Earthly Paradise.
+
+
+
+
+DESPERATE REMEDIES
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE VOYAGE TO CUBA
+
+The sight of the greater part of their fleet disappearing in the
+direction of home threw back the unstable Spanish colony into doubt and
+despondency.  The brief encouragement afforded by Ojeda's report soon
+died away, and the actual discomforts of life in Isabella were more
+important than visionary luxuries that seemed to recede into the distance
+with the vanishing ships.  The food supply was the cause of much
+discomfort; the jobbery and dishonesty which seem inseparable from the
+fitting out of a large expedition had stored the ships with bad wine and
+imperfectly cured provisions; and these combined with the unhealthy
+climate to produce a good deal of sickness.  The feeling against
+Columbus, never far below the Spanish surface, began to express itself
+definitely in treacherous consultations and plots; and these were
+fomented by Bernal Diaz, the comptroller of the colony, who had access to
+Columbus's papers and had seen the letter sent by him to Spain.  Columbus
+was at this time prostrated by an attack of fever, and Diaz took the
+opportunity to work the growing discontent up to the point of action.  He
+told the colonists that Columbus had painted their condition in far too
+favourable terms; that he was deceiving them as well as the Sovereigns;
+and a plot was hatched to seize the ships that remained and sail for
+home, leaving Columbus behind to enjoy the riches that he had falsely
+boasted about.  They were ready to take alarm at anything, and to believe
+anything one way or the other; and as they had believed Ojeda when he
+came back with his report of riches, now they believed Cado, the assayer,
+who said that even such gold as had been found was of a very poor and
+worthless quality.  The mutiny developed fast; and a table of charges
+against Columbus, which was to be produced in Spain as a justification
+for it, had actually been drawn up when the Admiral, recovering from his
+illness, discovered what was on foot.  He dealt promptly and firmly with
+it in his quarterdeck manner, which was always far more effective than
+his viceregal manner.  Diaz was imprisoned and lodged in chains on board
+one of the ships, to be sent to Spain for trial; and the other
+ringleaders were punished also according to their deserts.  The guns and
+ammunition were all stored together on one ship under a safe guard, and
+the mutiny was stamped out.  But the Spaniards did not love Columbus any
+the better for it; did not any the more easily forgive him for being in
+command of them and for being a foreigner.
+
+
+But it would never do for the colony to stagnate in Isabella, and
+Columbus decided to make a serious attempt, not merely to discover the
+gold of Cibao, but to get it.  He therefore organised a military
+expedition of about 400 men, including artificers, miners, and carriers,
+with the little cavalry force that had been brought out from Spain.
+Every one who had armour wore it, flags and banners were carried, drums
+and trumpets were sounded; the horses were decked out in rich caparisons,
+and as glittering and formidable a show was made as possible.  Leaving
+his brother James in command of the settlement, Columbus set out on the
+12th of March to the interior of the island.  Through the forest and up
+the mountainside a road was cut by pioneers from among the aristocratic
+adventurers who had come with the party; which road, the first made in
+the New World, was called El Puerto de los Hidalgos.  The formidable,
+glittering cavalcade inspired the natives with terror and amazement; they
+had never seen horses before, and when one of the soldiers dismounted it
+seemed to them as though some terrifying two-headed, six-limbed beast had
+come asunder.  What with their fright of the horses and their desire to
+possess the trinkets that were carried they were very friendly and
+hospitable, and supplied the expedition with plenty of food.  At last,
+after passing mountain ranges that made their hearts faint, and rich
+valleys that made them hopeful again, the explorers came to the mountains
+of Cibao, and passing over the first range found themselves in a little
+valley at the foot of the hills where a river wound round a fertile plain
+and there was ample accommodation for an encampment.  There were the
+usual signs of gold, and Columbus saw in the brightly coloured stones of
+the river-bed evidence of unbounded wealth in precious stones.  At last
+he had come to the place!  He who had doubted so much, and whose faith
+had wavered, had now been led to a place where he could touch and handle
+the gold and jewels of his desire; and he therefore called the place
+Saint Thomas.  He built a fort here, leaving a garrison of fifty-six men
+under the command of Pedro Margarite to collect gold from the natives,
+and himself returned to Isabella, which he reached at the end of March.
+
+
+Enforced absence from the thing he has organised is a great test of
+efficiency in any man.  The world is full of men who can do things
+themselves; but those who can organise from the industry of their men a
+machine which will steadily perform the work whether the organiser is
+absent or present are rare indeed.  Columbus was one of the first class.
+His own power and personality generally gave him some kind of mastery
+over any circumstances in which he was immediately concerned; but let him
+be absent for a little time, and his organisation went to pieces.  No one
+was better than he at conducting a one-man concern; and his conduct of
+the first voyage, so long as he had his company under his immediate
+command, was a model of efficiency.  But when the material under his
+command began to grow and to be divided into groups his life became a
+succession of ups and downs.  While he was settling and disciplining one
+group mutiny and disorder would attack the other; and when he went to
+attend to them, the first one immediately fell into confusion again.  He
+dealt with the discontent in Isabella, organising the better disposed
+part of it in productive labour, and himself marching the malcontents
+into something like discipline and order, leaving them at Saint Thomas,
+as we have seen, usefully collecting gold.  But while he was away the
+people at Isabella had got themselves into trouble again, and when he
+arrived there on the morning of March 29th he found the town in a
+deplorable condition.  The lake beside which the city had been built, and
+which seemed so attractive and healthy a spot, turned out to be nothing
+better than a fever trap.  Drained from the malarial marshes, its sickly
+exhalations soon produced an epidemic that incapacitated more than half
+the colony and interrupted the building operations.  The time of those
+who were well was entirely occupied with the care of those who were sick,
+and all productive work was at a standstill.  The reeking virgin soil had
+produced crops in an incredibly short time, and the sowings of January
+were ready for reaping in the beginning of April.  But there was no one
+to reap them, and the further cultivation of the ground had necessarily
+been neglected.
+
+The faint-hearted Spaniards, who never could meet any trouble without
+grumbling, were now in the depths of despair and angry discontent;
+and it had not pleased them to be put on a short allowance of even the
+unwholesome provisions that remained from the original store.  A couple
+of rude hand-mills had been erected for the making of flour, and as food
+was the first necessity Columbus immediately put all the able-bodied men
+in the colony, whatever their rank, to the elementary manual work of
+grinding.  Friar Buil and the twelve Benedictine brothers who were with
+him thought this a wise order, assuming of course that as clerics they
+would not be asked to work.  But great was their astonishment, and loud
+and angry their criticism of the Admiral, when they found that they also
+were obliged to labour with their hands.  But Columbus was firm; there
+were absolutely no exceptions made; hidalgo and priest had to work
+alongside of sailor and labourer; and the curses of the living mingled
+with those of the dying on the man whose boastful words had brought them
+to such a place and such a condition.
+
+It was only in the nature of things that news should now arrive of
+trouble at Saint Thomas.  Gold and women again; instead of bartering or
+digging, the Spaniards had been stealing; and discipline had been
+relaxed, with the usual disastrous results with regard to the women of
+the adjacent native tribes.  Pedro Margarite sent a nervous message to
+Columbus expressing his fear that Caonabo, the native king, should be
+exasperated to the point of attacking them again.  Columbus therefore
+despatched Ojeda in command of a force of 350 armed men to Saint Thomas
+with instructions that he was to take over the command of that post,
+while Margarite was to take out an expedition in search of Caonabo whom,
+with his brothers, Margarite was instructed to capture at all costs.
+
+Having thus set things going in the interior, and once more restored
+Isabella to something like order, he decided to take three ships and
+attempt to discover the coast of Cathay.  The old Nina, the San Juan, and
+the Cordera, three small caravels, were provisioned for six months and
+manned by a company of fifty-two men.  Francisco Nino went once more with
+the Admiral as pilot, and the faithful Juan de la Cosa was taken to draw
+charts; one of the monks also, to act as chaplain.  The Admiral had a
+steward, a secretary, ten seamen and six boys to complete the company on
+the Nina.  The San Juan was commanded by Alonso Perez Roldan and the
+Cordera by Christoval Nino.  Diego was again left in command of the
+colony, with four counsellors, Friar Buil, Fernandez Coronel, Alonso
+Sanchez Carvajal, and Juan de Luxan, to assist his authority.
+
+The Admiral sailed on April 24th, steering to the westward and touching
+at La Navidad before he bore away to the island of Cuba, the southern
+shore of which it was now his intention to explore.  At one of his first
+anchorages he discovered a native feast going on, and when the boats from
+his ships pulled ashore the feasters fled in terror--the hungry Spaniards
+finishing their meal for them.  Presently, however, the feasters were
+induced to come back, and Columbus with soft speeches made them a
+compensation for the food that had been taken, and produced a favourable
+impression, as his habit was; with the result that all along the coast he
+was kindly received by the natives, who supplied him with food and fresh
+fruit in return for trinkets.  At the harbour now known as Santiago de
+Cuba, where he anchored on May 2nd, he had what seemed like authentic
+information of a great island to the southward which was alleged to be
+the source of all the gold.  The very compasses of Columbus's ships seem
+by this time to have become demagnetised, and to have pointed only to
+gold; for no sooner had he heard this report than he bore away to the
+south in pursuit of that faint yellow glitter that had now quite taken
+the place of the original inner light of faith.
+
+
+The low coast of Jamaica, hazy and blue at first, but afterwards warming
+into a golden belt crowned by the paler and deeper greens of the foliage,
+was sighted first by Columbus on Sunday, May 4th; and he anchored the
+next day in the beautiful harbour of Saint Anne, to which he gave the
+name of Santa Gloria.  To the island itself he gave the name of Santiago,
+which however has never displaced its native name of Jamaica.  The dim
+blue mountains and clumps of lofty trees about the bay were wonderful
+even to Columbus, whose eyes must by this time have been growing
+accustomed to the beauty of the West Indies, and he lost his heart to
+Jamaica from the first moment that his eyes rested on its green and
+golden shores.  Perhaps he was by this time a little out of conceit with
+Hayti; but be that as it may he retracted all the superlatives he had
+ever used for the other lands of his discovery, and bestowed them in his
+heart upon Jamaica.
+
+He was not humanly so well received as he had been on the other islands,
+for when he cast anchor the natives came out in canoes threatening
+hostilities and had to be appeased with red caps and hawks' bells.  Next
+day, however, Columbus wished to careen his ships, and sailed a little to
+the west until he found a suitable beach at Puerto Bueno; and as he
+approached the shore some large canoes filled with painted and feathered
+warriors came out and attacked his ships, showering arrows and javelins,
+and whooping and screaming at the Spaniards.  The guns were discharged,
+and an armed party sent ashore in a boat, and the natives were soon put
+to flight.  There was no renewal of hostilities; the next day the local
+cacique came down offering provisions and help; presents were exchanged,
+and cordial relations established.  Columbus noticed that the Jamaicans
+seemed to be a much more virile community than either the Cubans or the
+people of Espanola.  They had enormous canoes hollowed out of single
+mahogany trees, some of them 96 feet long and 8 feet broad, which they
+handled with the greatest ease and dexterity; they had a merry way with
+them too, were quick of apprehension and clever at expressing their
+meaning, and in their domestic utensils and implements they showed an
+advance in civilisation on the other islanders of the group.  Columbus
+did some trade with the islanders as he sailed along the coast, but he
+does not seem to have believed much in the gold story, for after sailing
+to the western point of the island he bore away to the north again and
+sighted the coast of Cuba on the 18th of May.
+
+
+The reason why Columbus kept returning to the coast of Cuba was that he
+believed it to be the mainland of Asia.  The unlettered natives, who had
+never read Marco Polo, told him that it was an island, although no man
+had ever seen the end of it; but Columbus did not believe them, and
+sailed westward in the belief that he would presently come upon the
+country and city of Cathay.  Soon he found himself in the wonderful
+labyrinth of islets and sandbanks off the south coast; and because of the
+wonderful colours of their flowers and climbing plants he called them
+Jardin de la Reina or Queen's Garden.  Dangerous as the navigation
+through these islands was, he preferred to risk the shoals and sandbanks
+rather than round them out at sea to the southward, for he believed them
+to be the islands which, according to Marco Polo, lay in masses along the
+coast of Cathay.  In this adventure he had a very hard time of it; the
+lead had to be used all the time, the ships often had to be towed, the
+wind veered round from every quarter of the compass, and there were
+squalls and tempests, and currents that threatened to set them ashore.
+By great good fortune, however, they managed to get through the
+Archipelago without mishap.  By June 3rd they were sailing along the
+coast again, and Columbus had some conversation with an old cacique who
+told him of a province called Mangon (or so Columbus understood him) that
+lay to the west.  Sir John Mandeville had described the province of Mangi
+as being the richest in Cathay; and of course, thought the Admiral, this
+must be the place.  He went westward past the Gulf of Xagua and got into
+the shallow sandy waters, now known as the Jardinillos Bank, where the
+sea was whitened with particles of sand.  When he had got clear of this
+shoal water he stood across a broad bay towards a native settlement where
+he was able to take in yams, fruit, fish, and fresh water.
+
+But this excitement and hard work were telling on the Admiral, and when a
+native told him that there was a tribe close by with long tails, he
+believed him; and later, when one of his men, coming back from a shore
+expedition, reported that he had seen some figures in a forest wearing
+white robes, Columbus believed that they were the people with the tails,
+who wore a long garment to conceal them.
+
+
+He was moving in a world of enchantment; the weather was like no weather
+in any known part of the world; there were fogs, black and thick, which
+blew down suddenly from the low marshy land, and blew away again as
+suddenly; the sea was sometimes white as milk, sometimes black as pitch,
+sometimes purple, sometimes green; scarlet cranes stood looking at them
+as they slid past the low sandbanks; the warm foggy air smelt of roses;
+shoals of turtles covered the waters, black butterflies circled in the
+mist; and the fever that was beginning to work in the Admiral's blood
+mounted to his brain, so that in this land of bad dreams his fixed ideas
+began to dominate all his other faculties, and he decided that he must
+certainly be on the coast of Cathay, in the magic land described by Marco
+Polo.
+
+
+There is nothing which illustrates the arbitrary and despotic government
+of sea life so well as the nautical phrase "make it so."  The very hours
+of the day, slipping westward under the keel of an east-going ship, are
+"made" by rigid decree; the captain takes his observation of sun or
+stars, and announces the position of the ship to be at a certain spot on
+the surface of the globe; any errors of judgment or deficiencies of
+method are covered by the words "make it so."  And in all the elusive
+phenomena surrounding him the fevered brain of the Admiral discerned
+evidence that he was really upon the coast of Asia, although there was no
+method by which he could place the matter beyond a doubt.  The word Asia
+was not printed upon the sands of Cuba, as it might be upon a map; the
+lines of longitude did not lie visibly across the surface of the sea;
+there was nothing but sea and land, the Admiral's charts, and his own
+conviction.  Therefore Columbus decided to "make it so."  If there was no
+other way of being sure that this was the coast of Cathay, he would
+decree it to be the coast of Cathay by a legal document and by oaths and
+affidavits.  He would force upon the members of his expedition a
+conviction at least equal to his own; and instead of pursuing any further
+the coast that stretched interminably west and south-west, he decided to
+say, in effect, and once and for all, "Let this be the mainland of Asia."
+
+He called his secretary to him and made him draw up a form of oath or
+testament, to which every member of the expedition was required to
+subscribe, affirming that the land off which they were then lying (12th
+June 1494), was the mainland of the Indies and that it was possible to
+return to Spain by land from that place; and every officer who should
+ever deny it in the future was laid under a penalty of ten thousand
+maravedis, and every ship's boy or seaman under a penalty of one hundred
+lashes; and in addition, any member of the expedition denying it in the
+future was to have his tongue cut out.
+
+No one will pretend that this was the action of a sane man; neither will
+any one wonder that Columbus was something less than sane after all he
+had gone through, and with the beginnings of a serious illness already in
+his blood.  His achievement was slipping from his grasp; the gold had not
+been found, the wonders of the East had not been discovered; and it was
+his instinct to secure something from the general wreck that seemed to be
+falling about him, and to force his own dreams to come true, that caused
+him to cut this grim and fantastic legal caper off the coast of Cuba.  He
+thought it at the time unlikely, seeing the difficulties of navigation
+that he had gone through, which he might be pardoned for regarding as
+insuperable to a less skilful mariner, that any one should ever come that
+way again; even he himself said that he would never risk his life again
+in such a place.  He wished his journey, therefore, not to have been made
+in vain; and as he himself believed that he had stood on the mainland of
+Asia he took care to take back with him the only kind of evidence that
+was possible namely, the sworn affidavits of the ships' crews.
+
+
+Perhaps in his madness he would really have gone on and tried to reach
+the Golden Chersonesus of Ptolemy, which according to Marco Polo lay just
+beyond, and so to steer homeward round Ceylon and the Cape of Good Hope;
+in which case he would either have been lost or would have discovered
+Mexico.  The crews, however, would not hear of the voyage being continued
+westward.  The ships were leaking and the salt water was spoiling the
+already doubtful provisions and he was forced to turn back.  He stood to
+the south-east, and reached the Isle of Pines, to which he gave the name
+of Evangelista, where the water-casks were filled, and from there he
+tried to sail back to the east.  But he found himself surrounded by
+islands and banks in every direction, which made any straight course
+impossible.  He sailed south and east and west and north, and found
+himself always back again in the middle of this charmed group of islands.
+He spent almost a month trying to escape from them, and once his ship
+went ashore on a sandbank and was only warped off with the greatest
+difficulty.  On July 7th he was back again in the region of the "Queen's
+Gardens," from which he stood across to the coast of Cuba.
+
+He anchored and landed there, and being in great distress and difficulty
+he had a large cross erected on the mainland, and had mass said.  When
+the Spaniards rose from their knees they saw an old native man observing
+them; and the old man came and sat down beside Columbus and talked to him
+through the interpreter.  He told him that he had been in Jamaica and
+Espanola as well as in Cuba, and that the coming of the Spaniards had
+caused great distress to the people of the islands.
+
+He then spoke to Columbus about religion, and the gist of what he said
+was something like this: "The performance of your worship seems good to
+me.  You believe that this life is not everything; so do we; and I know
+that when this life is over there are two places reserved for me, to one
+of which I shall certainly go; one happy and beautiful, one dreadful and
+miserable.  Joy and kindness reign in the one place, which is good enough
+for the best of men; and they will go there who while they have lived on
+the earth have loved peace and goodness, and who have never robbed or
+killed or been unkind.  The other place is evil and full of shadows, and
+is reserved for those who disturb and hurt the sons of men; how important
+it is, therefore, that one should do no evil or injury in this world!"
+
+Columbus replied with a brief statement of his own theological views, and
+added that he had been sent to find out if there were any persons in
+those islands who did evil to others, such as the Caribs or cannibals,
+and that if so he had come to punish them.  The effect of this ingenuous
+speech was heightened by a gift of hawks' bells and pieces of broken
+glass; upon receiving which the good old man fell down on his knees, and
+said that the Spaniards must surely have come from heaven.
+
+
+A few days later the voyage to the, south-east was resumed, and some
+progress was made along the coast.  But contrary winds arose which made
+it impossible for the ships to round Cape Cruz, and Columbus decided to
+employ the time of waiting in completing his explorations in Jamaica.
+He therefore sailed due south until he once more sighted the beautiful
+northern coast of that island, following it to the west and landing, as
+his custom was, whenever he saw a good harbour or anchorage.  The wind
+was still from the east, and he spent a month beating to the eastward
+along the south coast of the island, fascinated by its beauty, and
+willing to stay and explore it, but prevented by the discontent of his
+crews, who were only anxious to get back to Espanola.  He had friendly
+interviews with many of the natives of Jamaica, and at almost the last
+harbour at which he touched a cacique with his wife and family and
+complete retinue came off in canoes to the ship, begging Columbus to take
+him and his household back to Spain.
+
+Columbus considers this family, and thinks wistfully how well they would
+look in Barcelona.  Father dressed in a cap of gold and green jewels,
+necklace and earrings of the same; mother decked out in similar regalia,
+with the addition of a small cotton apron; two sons and five brothers
+dressed principally in a feather or two; two daughters mother-naked,
+except that the elder, a handsome girl of eighteen, wears a jewelled
+girdle from which depends a tablet as big as an ivy leaf, made of various
+coloured stones embroidered on cotton.  What an exhibit for one of the
+triumphal processions: "Native royal family, complete"!  But Columbus
+thinks also of the scarcity of provisions on board his ships, and wonders
+how all these royalties would like to live on a pint of sour wine and a
+rotten biscuit each per day.  Alas! there is not sour wine and rotten
+biscuit enough for his own people; it is still a long way to Espanola;
+and he is obliged to make polite excuses, and to say that he will come
+back for his majesty another time.
+
+
+It was on the 20th of August that Columbus, having the day before seen
+the last of the dim blue hills of Jamaica, sighted again the long
+peninsula of Hayti, called by him Cape San Miguel, but known to us as
+Cape Tiburon; although it was not until he was hailed by a cacique who
+called out to him "Almirante, Almirante," that the seaworn mariners
+realised with joy that the island must be Espanola.  But they were a long
+way from Isabella yet.  They sailed along the south coast, meeting
+contrary winds, and at one point landing nine men who were to cross the
+island, and try to reach Isabella by land.  Week followed week, and they
+made very poor progress.  In the beginning of September they were caught
+in a severe tempest, which separated the ships for a time, and held the
+Admiral weather-bound for eight days.  There was an eclipse of the moon
+during this period, and he took advantage of it to make an observation
+for longitude, by which he found himself to be 5 hrs. 23 min., or 80 deg.
+40', west of Cadiz.  In this observation there is an error of eighteen
+degrees, the true longitude of the island of Saona, where the observation
+was taken, being 62 deg. 20' west of Cadiz; and the error is accounted
+for partly by the inaccuracy of the tables of Regiomontanus and partly by
+the crudity and inexactness of the Admiral's methods.  On the 24th of
+September they at last reached the easternmost point of Espanola, named
+by Columbus San Rafael.  They stood to the east a little longer, and
+discovered the little island of Mona, which lies between Espanola and
+Puerto Rico; and from thence shaped their course west-by-north for
+Isabella.  And no sooner had the course been set for home than the
+Admiral suddenly and completely collapsed; was carried unconscious to his
+cabin; and lay there in such extremity that his companions gave him up
+for lost.
+
+It is no ordinary strain to which poor Christopher has succumbed.  He has
+been five months at sea, sharing with the common sailors their bad food
+and weary vigils, but bearing alone on his own shoulders a weight of
+anxiety of which they knew nothing.  Watch has relieved watch on his
+ships, but there has been no one to relieve him, or to lift the burden
+from his mind.  The eyes of a nation are upon him, watchful and jealous
+eyes that will not forgive him any failure; and to earn their approval he
+has taken this voyage of five months, during which he has only been able
+to forget his troubles in the brief hours of slumber.  Strange uncharted
+seas, treacherous winds and currents, drenching surges have all done
+their part in bringing him to this pass; and his body, now starved on
+rotten biscuits, now glutted with unfamiliar fruits, has been preyed upon
+by the tortured mind as the mind itself has been shaken and loosened by
+the weakness of the body.  He lies there in his cabin in a deep stupor;
+memory, sight, and all sensation completely gone from him; dead but for
+the heart that beats on faintly, and the breath that comes and goes
+through the parted lips.  Nino, de la Cosa, and the others come and look
+at him, shake their heads, and go away again.  There is nothing to be
+done; perhaps they will get him back to Isabella in time to bury him
+there; perhaps not.
+
+And meanwhile they are back again in calm and safe waters, and coasting a
+familiar shore; and the faithful little Nina, shaking out her wings in
+the sunny breezes, trips under the guidance of unfamiliar hands towards
+her moorings in the Bay of Isabella.  It is a sad company that she
+carries; for in the cabin, deaf and blind and unconscious, there lies the
+heart and guiding spirit of the New World.  He does not hear the talking
+of the waters past the Nina's timbers, does not hear the stamping on the
+deck and shortening of sail and unstopping of cables and getting out of
+gear; does not hear the splash of the anchor, nor the screams of birds
+that rise circling from the shore.  Does not hear the greetings and the
+news; does not see bending over him a kind, helpful, and well-beloved
+face.  He sees and hears and knows nothing; and in that state of rest and
+absence from the body they carry him, still living and breathing, ashore.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE CONQUEST OF ESPANOLA
+
+We must now go back to the time when Columbus, having made what
+arrangements he could for the safety of Espanola, left it under the
+charge of his brother James.  Ojeda had duly marched into the interior
+and taken over the command of Fort St. Thomas, thus setting free
+Margarite, according to his instructions, to lead an expedition for
+purposes of reconnoitre and demonstration through the island.  These, at
+any rate, were Margarite's orders, duly communicated to him by Ojeda; but
+Margarite will have none of them.  Well born, well educated, well bred,
+he ought at least to have the spirit to carry out orders so agreeable to
+a gentleman of adventure; but unfortunately, although Margarite is a
+gentleman by birth, he is a low and dishonest dog by nature.  He cannot
+take the decent course, cannot even play the man, and take his share in
+the military work of the colony.  Instead of cutting paths through the
+forest, and exhibiting his military strength in an orderly and proper way
+as the Admiral intended he should, he marches forth from St. Thomas, on
+hearing that Columbus has sailed away, and encamps no further off than
+the Vega Real, that pleasant place of green valleys and groves and
+murmuring rivers.  He encamps there, takes up his quarters there, will
+not budge from there for any Admiral; and as for James Columbus and his
+counsellors, they may go to the devil for all Margarite cares.  One of
+them at least, he knows--Friar Buil--is not such a fool as to sit down
+under the command of that solemn-faced, uncouth young snip from Genoa;
+and doubtless when he is tired of the Vega Real he and Buil can arrange
+something between them.  In the meantime, here is a very beautiful
+sunshiny place, abounding in all kinds of provisions; food for more than
+one kind of appetite, as he has noticed when he has thrust his rude way
+into the native houses and seen the shapely daughters of the islanders.
+He has a little army of soldiers to forage for him; they can get him food
+and gold, and they are useful also in those other marauding expeditions
+designed to replenish the seraglio that he has established in his camp;
+and if they like to do a little marauding and woman-stealing on their own
+account, it is no affair of his, and may keep the devils in a good
+temper.  Thus Don Pedro Margarite to himself.
+
+The peaceable and gentle natives soon began to resent these gross doings.
+To robbery succeeded outrage, and to outrage murder--all three committed
+in the very houses of the natives; and they began to murmur, to withhold
+that goodwill which the Spaniards had so sorely tried, and to develop a
+threatening attitude that was soon communicated to the natives in the
+vicinity of Isabella, and came under the notice of James Columbus and his
+council.  Grave, bookish, wool-weaving young James, not used to military
+affairs, and not at all comfortable in his command, can think of no other
+expedient than--to write a letter to Margarite remonstrating with him for
+his licentious excesses and reminding him of the Admiral's instructions,
+which were being neglected.
+
+Margarite receives the letter and reads it with a contemptuous laugh.  He
+is not going to be ordered about by a family of Italian wool-weavers, and
+the only change in his conduct is that he becomes more and more careless
+and impudent, extending the area of his lawless operations, and making
+frequent visits to Isabella itself, swaggering under the very nose of
+solemn James, and soon deep in consultation with Friar Buil.
+
+At this moment, that is to say very soon after the departure of
+Christopher on his voyage to Cuba and Jamaica, three ships dropped anchor
+in the Bay of Isabella.  They were laden with the much-needed supplies
+from Spain, and had been sent out under the command of Bartholomew
+Columbus.  It will be remembered that when Christopher reached Spain
+after his first voyage one of his first cares had been to write to
+Bartholomew, asking him to join him.  The letter, doubtless after many
+wanderings, had found Bartholomew in France at the court of Charles
+VIII., by whom he was held in some esteem; in fact it was Charles who
+provided him with the necessary money for his journey to Spain, for
+Bartholomew had not greatly prospered, in spite of his voyage with Diaz
+to the Cape of Good Hope and of his having been in England making
+exploration proposals at the court of Henry VII.  He had arrived in Spain
+after Columbus had sailed again, and had presented himself at court with
+his two nephews, Ferdinand and Diego, both of whom were now in the
+service of Prince Juan as pages.  Ferdinand and Isabella seem to have
+received Bartholomew kindly.  They liked this capable navigator, who had
+much of Christopher's charm of manner, and was more a man of the world
+than he.  Much more practical also; Ferdinand would be sure to like him
+better than he liked Christopher, whose pompous manner and long-winded
+speeches bored him.  Bartholomew was quick, alert, decisive and
+practical; he was an accomplished navigator--almost as accomplished as
+Columbus, as it appeared.  He was offered the command of the three ships
+which were being prepared to go to Espanola with supplies; and he duly
+arrived there after a prosperous voyage.  It will be remembered that
+Christopher had, so far as we know, kept the secret of the road to the
+new islands; and Bartholomew can have had nothing more to guide him than
+a rough chart showing the islands in a certain latitude, and the distance
+to be run towards them by dead-reckoning.  That he should have made an
+exact landfall and sailed into the Bay of Isabella, never having been
+there before, was a certificate of the highest skill in navigation.
+
+Unfortunately it was James who was in charge of the colony; Bartholomew
+had no authority, for once his ships had arrived in port his mission was
+accomplished until Christopher should return and find him employment.
+He was therefore forced to sit still and watch his young brother
+struggling with the unruly Spaniards.  His presence, however, was no
+doubt a further exasperation to the malcontents.  There existed in
+Isabella a little faction of some of the aristocrats who had never,
+forgiven Columbus for employing them in degrading manual labour; who had
+never forgiven him in fact for being there at all, and in command over
+them.  And now here was another woolweaver, or son of a wool-weaver, come
+to put his finger in the pie that Christopher has apparently provided so
+carefully for himself and his family.
+
+Margarite and Buil and some others, treacherous scoundrels all of them,
+but clannish to their own race and class, decide that they will put up
+with it no longer; they are tired of Espanola in any case, and Margarite,
+from too free indulgence among the native women, has contracted an
+unpleasant disease, and thinks that a sea voyage and the attentions of a
+Spanish doctor will be good for him.  It is easy for them to put their
+plot into execution.  There are the ships; there is nothing, for them to
+do but take a couple of them, provision them, and set sail for Spain,
+where they trust to their own influence, and the story they will be able
+to tell of the falseness of the Admiral's promises, to excuse their
+breach of discipline.  And sail they do, snapping their fingers at the
+wool-weavers.
+
+James and Bartholomew were perhaps glad to be rid of them, but their
+relief was tempered with anxiety as to the result on Christopher's
+reputation and favour when the malcontents should have made their false
+representations at Court.  The brothers were powerless to do anything in
+that matter, however, and the state of affairs in Espanola demanded their
+close attention.  Margarite's little army, finding itself without even
+the uncertain restraint of its commander, now openly mutinied and
+abandoned itself to the wildest excesses.  It became scattered and
+disbanded, and little groups of soldiers went wandering about the
+country, robbing and outraging and carrying cruelty and oppression among
+the natives.  Long-suffering as these were, and patiently as they bore
+with the unspeakable barbarities of the Spanish soldiers, there came a
+point beyond which their forbearance would not go.  An aching spirit of
+unforgiveness and revenge took the place of their former gentleness and
+compliance; and here and there, when the Spaniards were more brutal and
+less cautious than was their brutal and incautious habit, the natives
+fell upon them and took swift and bloody revenge.  Small parties found
+themselves besieged and put to death whole villages, whose hospitality
+had been abused, cut off wandering groups of the marauders and burned the
+houses where they lodged.  The disaffection spread; and Caonabo, who had
+never abated his resentment at the Spanish intrusion into the island,
+thought the time had come to make another demonstration of native power.
+
+Fortunately for the Spaniards his object was the fort of St. Thomas,
+commanded by the alert Ojeda; and this young man, who was not easily to
+be caught napping, had timely intelligence of his intention.  When
+Caonabo, mustering ten thousand men, suddenly surrounded the fort and
+prepared to attack it, he found the fifty Spaniards of the garrison more
+than ready for him, and his naked savages dared not advance within the
+range of the crossbows and arquebuses.  Caonabo tried to besiege the
+station, watching every gorge and road through which supplies could reach
+it, but Ojeda made sallies and raids upon the native force, under which
+it became thinned and discouraged; and Caonabo had finally to withdraw to
+his own territory.
+
+But he was not yet beaten.  He decided upon another and much larger
+enterprise, which was to induce the other caciques of the island to
+co-operate with him in an attack upon Isabella, the population of which
+he knew would have been much thinned and weakened by disease.  The
+island was divided into five native provinces.  The northeastern part,
+named Marien, was under the rule of Guacanagari, whose headquarters were
+near the abandoned La Navidad.  The remaining eastern part of the
+island, called Higuay, was under a chief named Cotabanama.  The western
+province was Xaragua, governed by one Behechio, whose sister, Anacaona,
+was the wife of Caonabo.  The middle of the island was divided into two
+provinces-that which extended from the northern coast to the Cibao
+mountains and included the Vega Real being governed by Guarionex, and
+that which extended from the Cibao mountains to the south being governed
+by Caonabo.  All these rulers were more or less embittered by the
+outrages and cruelties of the Spaniards, and all agreed to join with
+Caonabo except Guacanagari.  That loyal soul, so faithful to what he
+knew of good, shocked and distressed as he was by outrages from which
+his own people had suffered no less than the others, could not bring
+himself to commit what he regarded as a breach of the laws of
+hospitality.  It was upon his shores that Columbus had first landed; and
+although it was his own country and his own people whose wrongs were to
+be avenged, he could not bring himself to turn traitor to the grave
+Admiral with whom, in those happy days of the past, he had enjoyed so
+much pleasant intercourse.  His refusal to co-operate delayed the plan
+of Caonabo, who directed the island coalition against Guacanagari
+himself in order to bring him to reason.  He was attacked by the
+neighbouring chiefs; one of his wives was killed and another captured;
+but still he would not swerve from his ideal of conduct.
+
+
+The first thing that Columbus recognised when he opened his eyes after
+his long period of lethargy and insensibility was the face of his brother
+Bartholomew bend-over him where he lay in bed in his own house at
+Espanola.  Nothing could have been more welcome to him, sick, lonely and
+discouraged as he was, than the presence of that strong, helpful brother;
+and from the time when Bartholomew's friendly face first greeted him he
+began to get better.  His first act, as soon as he was strong enough to
+sign a paper, was to appoint Bartholomew to the office of Adelantado, or
+Lieutenant-Governor--an indiscreet and rather tactless proceeding which,
+although it was not outside his power as a bearer of the royal seal, was
+afterwards resented by King Ferdinand as a piece of impudent encroachment
+upon the royal prerogative.  But Columbus was unable to transact business
+himself, and James was manifestly of little use; the action was natural
+enough.
+
+In the early days of his convalescence he had another pleasant
+experience, in the shape of a visit from Guacanagari, who came to express
+his concern at the Admiral's illness, and to tell him the story of what
+had been going on in his absence.  The gentle creature referred again
+with tears to the massacre at La Navidad, and again asserted that
+innocence of any hand in it which Columbus had happily never doubted; and
+he told him also of the secret league against Isabella, of his own
+refusal to join it, and of the attacks to which he had consequently been
+subjected.  It must have been an affecting meeting for these two, who
+represented the first friendship formed between the Old World and the
+New, who were both of them destined to suffer in the impact of
+civilisation and savagery, and whose names and characters were happily
+destined to survive that impact, and to triumph over the oblivion of
+centuries.
+
+
+So long as the native population remained hostile and unconquered by
+kindness or force, it was impossible to work securely at the development
+of the colony; and Columbus, however regretfully, had come to feel that
+circumstances more or less obliged him to use force.  At first he did not
+quite realise the gravity of the position, and attempted to conquer or
+reconcile the natives in little groups.  Guarionex, the cacique of the
+Vega Real, was by gifts and smooth words soothed back into a friendship
+which was consolidated by the marriage of his daughter with Columbus's
+native interpreter.  It was useless, how ever, to try and make friends
+with Caonabo, that fierce irreconcilable; and it was felt that only by
+stratagem could he be secured.  No sooner was this suggested than Ojeda
+volunteered for the service.  Amid the somewhat slow-moving figures of
+our story this man appears as lively as a flea; and he dances across our
+pages in a sensation of intrepid feats of arms that make his great
+popularity among the Spaniards easily credible to us.  He did not know
+what fear was; he was always ready for a fight of any kind; a quarrel in
+the streets of Madrid, a duel, a fight with a man or a wild beast,
+a brawl in a tavern or a military expedition, were all the same to him,
+if only they gave him an opportunity for fighting.  He had a little
+picture of the Virgin hung round his neck, by which he swore, and to
+which he prayed; he had never been so much as scratched in all his
+affrays, and he believed that he led a charmed life.  Who would go out
+against Caonabo, the Goliath of the island?  He, little David Ojeda, he
+would go out and undertake to fetch the giant back with him; and all he
+wanted was ten men, a pair of handcuffs, a handful of trinkets, horses
+for the whole of his company, and his little image or picture of the
+Virgin.
+
+Columbus may have smiled at this proposal, but he knew his man; and Ojeda
+duly departed with his horses and his ten men.  Plunging into the forest,
+he made his way through sixty leagues of dense undergrowth until he
+arrived in the very heart of Caonabo's territory and presented himself at
+the chiefs house.  The chief was at home, and, not unimpressed by the
+valour of Ojeda, who represented himself as coming on a friendly mission,
+received him under conditions of truce.  He had an eye for military
+prowess, this Caonabo, and something of the lion's heart in him; he
+recognised in Ojeda the little man who kept him so long at bay outside
+Fort St. Thomas; and, after the manner of lion-hearted people, liked him
+none the worse for that.
+
+Ojeda proposes that the King should accompany him to Isabella to make
+peace.  No, says Caonabo.  Then Ojeda tries another way.  There is a
+poetical side to this big fighting savage, and often in more friendly
+days, when the bell in the little chapel of Isabella has been ringing for
+Vespers, the cacique has been observed sitting alone on some hill
+listening, enchanted by the strange silver voice that floated to him
+across the sunset.  The bell has indeed become something of a personality
+in the island: all the neighbouring savages listen to its voice with awe
+and fascination, pausing with inclined heads whenever it begins to speak
+from its turret.
+
+Ojeda talks to Caonabo about the bell, and tells him what a wonderful
+thing it is; tells him also that if he will come with him to Isabella he
+shall have the bell for a present.  Poetry and public policy struggle
+together in Caonabo's heart, but poetry wins; the great powerful savage,
+urged thereto by his childish lion-heart, will come to Isabella if they
+will give him the bell.  He sets forth, accompanied by a native retinue,
+and by Ojeda and his ten horsemen.  Presently they come to a river and
+Ojeda produces his bright manacles; tells the King that they are royal
+ornaments and that he has been instructed to bestow them upon Caonabo as
+a sign of honour.  But first he must come alone to the river and bathe,
+which he does.  Then he must sit with Ojeda upon his horse; which he
+does.  Then he must have fitted on to him the shining silver trinkets;
+which he does, the great grinning giant, pleased with his toys.  Then, to
+show him what it is like to be on a horse, Ojeda canters gently round in
+widening and ever widening circles; a turn of his spurred heels, and the
+canter becomes a gallop, the circle becomes a straight line, and Caonabo
+is on the road to Isabella.  When they are well beyond reach of the
+natives they pause and tie Caonabo securely into his place; and by this
+treachery bring him into Isabella, where he is imprisoned in the
+Admiral's house.
+
+The sulky giant, brought thus into captivity, refuses to bend his proud,
+stubborn heart into even a form of submission.  He takes no notice of
+Columbus, and pays him no honour, although honour is paid to himself as
+a captive king.  He sits there behind his bars gnawing his fingers,
+listening to the voice of the bell that has lured him into captivity,
+and thinking of the free open life which he is to know no more.  Though
+he will pay no deference to the Admiral, will not even rise when he
+enters his presence, there is one person he holds in honour, and that is
+Ojeda.  He will not rise when the Admiral comes; but when Ojeda comes,
+small as he is, and without external state, the chief makes his obeisance
+to him.  The Admiral he sets at defiance, and boasts of his destruction
+of La Navidad, and of his plan to destroy Isabella; Ojeda he respects and
+holds in honour, as being the only man in the island brave enough to come
+into his house and carry him off a captive.  There is a good deal of the
+sportsman in Caonabo.
+
+The immediate result of the capture of Caonabo was to rouse the islanders
+to further hostilities, and one of the brothers of the captive king led a
+force of seven thousand men to the vicinity of St. Thomas, to which
+Ojeda, however, had in the meantime returned.  His small force was
+augmented by some men despatched by Bartholomew Columbus on receipt of an
+urgent message; and in command of this force Ojeda sallied forth against
+the natives and attacked them furiously on horse and on foot, killing a
+great part of them, taking others prisoner, and putting the rest to
+flight.  This was the beginning of the end of the island resistance.  A
+month or two later, when Columbus was better, he and Bartholomew together
+mustered the whole of their available army and marched out in search of
+the native force, which he knew had been rallied and greatly augmented.
+
+The two forces met near the present town of Santiago, in the plain known
+as the Savanna of Matanza.  The Spanish force was divided into three main
+divisions, under the command of Christopher and Bartholomew Columbus and
+Ojeda respectively.  These three divisions attacked the Indians
+simultaneously from different points, Ojeda throwing his cavalry upon
+them, riding them down, and cutting them to pieces.  Drums were beaten
+and trumpets blown; the guns were fired from the cover of the trees; and
+a pack of bloodhounds, which had been sent out from Spain with
+Bartholomew, were let loose upon the natives and tore their bodies to
+pieces.  It was an easy and horrible victory.  The native force was
+estimated by Columbus at one hundred thousand men, although we shall
+probably be nearer the mark if we reduce that estimate by one half.
+
+The powers of hell were let loose that day into the Earthly Paradise.
+The guns mowed red lines of blood through the solid ranks of the natives;
+the great Spanish horses trod upon and crushed their writhing bodies, in
+which arrows and lances continually stuck and quivered; and the ferocious
+dogs, barking and growling, seized the naked Indians by the throat,
+dragged them to the ground, and tore out their very entrails .  .  .  .
+Well for us that the horrible noises of that day are silent now; well for
+the world that that place of bloodshed and horror has grown green again;
+better for us and for the world if those cries had never been heard, and
+that quiet place had never received a stain that centuries of green
+succeeding springtides can never wash away.
+
+
+It was some time before this final battle that the convalescence of the
+Admiral was further assisted by the arrival of four ships commanded by
+Antonio Torres, who must have passed, out of sight and somewhere on the
+high seas, the ships bearing Buil and Margarite back to Spain.  He
+brought with him a large supply of fresh provisions for the colony, and a
+number of genuine colonists, such as fishermen, carpenters, farmers,
+mechanics, and millers.  And better still he brought a letter from the
+Sovereigns, dated the 16th of August 1494, which did much to cheer the
+shaken spirits of Columbus.  The words with which he had freighted his
+empty ships had not been in vain; and in this reply to them he was warmly
+commended for his diligence, and reminded that he enjoyed the unshaken
+confidence of the Sovereigns.  They proposed that a caravel should sail
+every month from Spain and from Isabella, bearing intelligence of the
+colony and also, it was hoped, some of its products.  In a general letter
+addressed to the colony the settlers were reminded of the obedience they
+owed to the Admiral, and were instructed to obey him in all things under
+the penalty of heavy fines.  They invited Columbus to come back if he
+could in order to be present at the convention which was to establish the
+line of demarcation between Spanish and Portuguese possessions; or if he
+could not come himself to send his brother Bartholomew.  There were
+reasons, however, which made this difficult.  Columbus wished to despatch
+the ships back again as speedily as possible, in order that news of him
+might help to counteract the evil rumours that he knew Buil and Margarite
+would be spreading.  He himself was as yet (February 1494) too ill to
+travel; and during his illness Bartholomew could not easily be spared.
+It was therefore decided to send home James, who could most easily be
+spared, and whose testimony as a member of the governing body during the
+absence of the Admiral on his voyage to Cuba might be relied upon to
+counteract the jealous accusations of Margarite and Buil.
+
+Unfortunately there was no golden cargo to send back with him.  As much
+gold as possible was scraped together, but it was very little.  The usual
+assortment of samples of various island products was also sent; but still
+the vessels were practically empty.  Columbus must have been painfully
+conscious that the time for sending samples had more than expired, and
+that the people in Spain might reasonably expect some of the actual
+riches of which there had been so many specimens and promises.  In
+something approaching desperation, he decided to fill the empty holds of
+the ships with something which, if it was not actual money, could at
+least be made to realise money.  From their sunny dreaming life on the
+island five hundred natives were taken and lodged in the dark holds of
+the caravels, to be sent to Spain and sold there for what they would
+fetch.  Of course they were to be "freed" and converted to Christianity
+in the process; that was always part of the programme, but it did not
+interfere with business.  They were not man-eating Caribs or fierce
+marauding savages from neighbouring islands, but were of the mild and
+peaceable race that peopled Espanola.  The wheels of civilisation were
+beginning to turn in the New World.
+
+After the capture of Caonabo and the massacre of April 25th Columbus
+marched through the island, receiving the surrender and submission of the
+terrified natives.  At the approach of his force the caciques came out
+and sued for peace; and if here and there there was a momentary
+resistance, a charge of cavalry soon put an end to it.  One by one the
+kings surrendered and laid down their arms, until all the island rulers
+had capitulated with the exception of Behechio, into whose territory
+Columbus did not march, and who sullenly retired to the south-western
+corner of the island.  The terms of peace were harsh enough, and were
+suggested by the dilemma of Columbus in his frantic desire to get
+together some gold at any cost.  A tribute of gold-dust was laid upon
+every adult native in the island.  Every three months a hawk's bell full
+of gold was to be brought to the treasury at Isabella, and in the case 39
+of caciques the measure was a calabash.  A receipt in the form of a brass
+medal was fastened to the neck of every Indian when he paid his tribute,
+and those who could not show the medal with the necessary number of marks
+were to be further fined and punished.  In the districts where there was
+no gold, 25 lbs. of cotton was accepted instead.
+
+This levy was made in ignorance of the real conditions under which the
+natives possessed themselves of the gold.  What they had in many cases
+represented the store of years, and in all but one or two favoured
+districts it was quite impossible for them to keep up the amount of the
+tribute.  Yet the hawks' bells, which once had been so eagerly coveted
+and were now becoming hated symbols of oppression, had to be filled
+somehow; and as the day of payment drew near the wretched natives, who
+had formerly only sought for gold when a little of it was wanted for a
+pretty ornament, had now to work with frantic energy in the river sands;
+or in other cases, to toil through the heat of the day in the cotton
+fields which they had formerly only cultivated enough to furnish their
+very scant requirements of use and adornment.  One or two caciques,
+knowing that their people could not possibly furnish the required amount
+of gold, begged that its value in grain might be accepted instead; but
+that was not the kind of wealth that Columbus was seeking.  It must be
+gold or nothing; and rather than receive any other article from the
+gold-bearing districts, he consented to take half the amount.
+
+
+Thus step by step, and under the banner of the Holy Catholic religion,
+did dark and cruel misery march through the groves and glades of the
+island and banish for ever its ancient peace.  This long-vanished race
+that was native to the island of Espanola seems to have had some of the
+happiest and most lovable qualities known to dwellers on this planet.
+They had none of the brutalities of the African, the paralysing wisdom of
+the Asian, nor the tragic potentialities of the European peoples.  Their
+life was from day to day, and from season to season, like the life of
+flowers and birds.  They lived in such order and peaceable community as
+the common sense of their own simple needs suggested; they craved no
+pleasures except those that came free from nature, and sought no wealth
+but what the sun gave them.  In their verdant island, near to the heart
+and source of light, surrounded by the murmur of the sea, and so enriched
+by nature that the idea, of any other kind of riches never occurred to
+them, their existence went to a happy dancing measure like that of the
+fauns and nymphs in whose charmed existence they believed.  The sun and
+moon were to them creatures of their island who had escaped from a cavern
+by the shore and now wandered free in the upper air, peopling it with
+happy stars; and man himself they believed to have sprung from crevices
+in the rocks, like the plants that grew tall and beautiful wherever there
+was a handful of soil for their roots.  Poor happy children!  You are all
+dead a long while ago now, and have long been hushed in the great humming
+sleep and silence of Time; the modern world has no time nor room for
+people like you, with so much kindness and so little ambition .  .  .  .
+Yet their free pagan souls were given a chance to be penned within the
+Christian fold; the priest accompanied the gunner and the bloodhound, the
+missionary walked beside the slave-driver; and upon the bewildered
+sun-bright surface of their minds the shadow of the cross was for a moment
+thrown.  Verily to them the professors of Christ brought not peace, but a
+sword.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+UPS AND DOWNS
+
+While Columbus was toiling under the tropical sun to make good his
+promises to the Crown, Margarite and Buil, having safely come home to
+Spain from across the seas, were busy setting forth their view of the
+value of his discoveries.  It was a view entirely different from any that
+Ferdinand and Isabella had heard before, and coming as it did from two
+men of position and importance who had actually been in Espanola, and
+were loyal and religious subjects of the Crown, it could not fail to
+receive, if not immediate and complete credence, at any rate grave
+attention.  Hitherto the Sovereigns had only heard one side of the
+matter; an occasional jealous voice may have been raised from the
+neighbourhood of the Pinzons or some one else not entirely satisfied with
+his own position in the affair; but such small cries of dissent had
+naturally had little chance against the dignified eloquence of the
+Admiral.
+
+Now, however, the matter was different.  People who were at least the
+equals of Columbus in intelligence, and his superiors by birth and
+education, had seen with their own eyes the things of which he had
+spoken, and their account differed widely from his.  They represented
+things in Espanola as being in a very bad way indeed, which was true
+enough; drew a dismal picture of an overcrowded colony ravaged with
+disease and suffering from lack of provisions; and held forth at length
+upon the very doubtful quality of the gold with which the New World was
+supposed to abound.  More than this, they brought grave charges against
+Columbus himself, representing him as unfit to govern a colony, given to
+favouritism, and, worst of all, guilty of having deliberately
+misrepresented for his own ends the resources of the colony.  This as we
+know was not true.  It was not for his own ends, or for any ends at all
+within the comprehension of men like Margarite and Buil, that poor
+Christopher had spoken so glowingly out of a heart full of faith in what
+he had seen and done.  Purposes, dim perhaps, but far greater and loftier
+than any of which these two mean souls had understanding, animated him
+alike in his discoveries and in his account of them; although that does
+not alter the unpleasant fact that at the stage matters had now reached
+it seemed as though there might have been serious misrepresentation.
+
+Ferdinand and Isabella, thus confronted with a rather difficult
+situation, acted with great wisdom and good sense.  How much or how
+little they believed we do not know, but it was obviously their duty,
+having heard such an account from responsible officers, to investigate
+matters for themselves without assuming either that the report was true
+or untrue.  They immediately had four caravels furnished with supplies,
+and decided to appoint an agent to accompany the expedition, investigate
+the affairs of the colony, and make a report to them.  If the Admiral was
+still absent when their agent reached the colony he was to be entrusted
+with the distribution of the supplies which were being sent out; for
+Columbus's long absence from Espanola had given rise to some fears for
+his safety.
+
+The Sovereigns had just come to this decision (April 1495) when a letter
+arrived from the Admiral himself, announcing his return to Espanola after
+discovering the veritable mainland of Asia, as the notarial document
+enclosed with the letter attested.  Torres and James Columbus had arrived
+in Spain, bearing the memorandum which some time ago we saw the Admiral
+writing; and they were able to do something towards allaying the fears of
+the Sovereigns as to the condition of the colony.  The King and Queen,
+nevertheless, wisely decided to carry out their original intention, and
+in appointing an agent they very handsomely chose one of the men whom
+Columbus had recommended to them in his letter--Juan Aguado.  This action
+shows a friendliness to Columbus and confidence in him that lead one to
+suspect that the tales of Margarite and Buil had been taken with a grain
+of salt.
+
+At the same time the Sovereigns made one or two orders which could not
+but be unwelcome to Columbus.  A decree was issued making it lawful for
+all native-born Spaniards to make voyages of discovery, and to settle in
+Espanola itself if they liked.  This was an infringement of the original
+privileges granted to the Admiral--privileges which were really absurd,
+and which can only have been granted in complete disbelief that anything
+much would come of his discovery.  It took Columbus two years to get this
+order modified, and in the meantime a great many Spanish adventurers, our
+old friends the Pinzons among them, did actually make voyages and added
+to the area explored by the Spaniards in Columbus's lifetime.  Columbus
+was bitterly jealous that any one should be admitted to the western
+ocean, which he regarded as his special preserve, except under his
+supreme authority; and he is reported to have said that once the way to
+the West had been pointed out "even the very tailors turned explorers."
+There, surely, spoke the long dormant woolweaver in him.
+
+The commission given to Aguado was very brief, and so vaguely worded
+that it might mean much or little, according to the discretion of the
+commissioner and the necessities of the case as viewed by him.  "We send
+to you Juan Aguada, our Groom of the Chambers, who will speak to you on
+our part.  We command you to give him faith and credit."  A letter was
+also sent to Columbus in which he was instructed to reduce the number of
+people dependent on the colony to five hundred instead of a thousand; and
+the control of the mines was entrusted to one Pablo Belvis, who was sent
+out as chief metallurgist.  As for the slaves that Columbus had sent
+home, Isabella forbade their sale until inquiry could be made into the
+condition of their capture, and the fine moral point involved was
+entrusted to the ecclesiastical authorities for examination and solution.
+Poor Christopher, knowing as he did that five hundred heretics were being
+burned every year by the Grand Inquisitor, had not expected this
+hair-splitting over the fate of heathens who had rebelled against Spanish
+authority; and it caused him some distress when he heard of it.  The
+theologians, however, proved equal to the occasion, and the slaves were
+duly sold in Seville market.
+
+
+Aguado sailed from Cadiz at the end of August 1495, and reached Espanola
+in October.  James Columbus (who does not as yet seem to be in very great
+demand anywhere, and who doubtless conceals behind his grave visage much
+honest amazement at the amount of life that he is seeing) returned with
+him.  Aguado, on arriving at Isabella, found that Columbus was absent
+establishing forts in the interior of the island, Bartholomew being left
+in charge at Isabella.
+
+Aguado, who had apparently been found faithful in small matters, was
+found wanting in his use of the authority that had been entrusted to him.
+It seems to have turned his head; for instead of beginning quietly to
+investigate the affairs of the colony as he had been commanded to do he
+took over from Bartholomew the actual government, and interpreted his
+commission as giving him the right to supersede the Admiral himself.  The
+unhappy colony, which had no doubt been enjoying some brief period of
+peace under the wise direction of Bartholomew, was again thrown into
+confusion by the doings of Aguado.  He arrested this person, imprisoned
+that; ordered that things should be done this way, which had formerly
+been done that way; and if they had formerly been done that way, then he
+ordered that they should be done this way--in short he committed every
+mistake possible for a man in his situation armed with a little brief
+authority.  He did not hesitate to let it be known that he was there to
+examine the conduct of the Admiral himself; and we may be quite sure that
+every one in the colony who had a grievance or an ill tale to carry,
+carried it to Aguado.  His whole attitude was one of enmity and
+disloyalty to the Admiral who had so handsomely recommended him to the
+notice of the Sovereigns; and so undisguised was his attitude that even
+the Indians began to lodge their complaints and to see a chance by which
+they might escape from the intolerable burden of the gold tribute.
+
+It was at this point that Columbus returned and found Aguado ruling in
+the place of Bartholomew, who had wisely made no protest against his own
+deposition, but was quietly waiting for the Admiral to return.  Columbus
+might surely have been forgiven if he had betrayed extreme anger and
+annoyance at the doings of Aguado; and it is entirely to his credit that
+he concealed such natural wrath as he may have felt, and greeted Aguado
+with extreme courtesy and ceremony as a representative of the Sovereigns.
+He made no protest, but decided to return himself to Spain and confront
+the jealousy and ill-fame that were accumulating against him.
+
+Just as the ships were all ready to sail, one of the hurricanes which
+occur periodically in the West Indies burst upon the island, lashing the
+sea into a wall of advancing foam that destroyed everything before it.
+Among other things it destroyed three out of the four ships, dashing them
+on the beach and reducing them to complete wreckage.  The only one that
+held to her anchor and, although much battered and damaged, rode out the
+gale, was the Nina, that staunch little friend that had remained faithful
+to the Admiral through so many dangers and trials.  There was nothing for
+it but to build a new ship out of the fragments of the wrecks, and to
+make the journey home with two ships instead of with four.
+
+
+At this moment, while he was waiting for the ship to be completed,
+Columbus heard a piece of news of a kind that never failed to rouse his
+interest.  There was a young Spaniard named Miguel Diaz who had got into
+disgrace in Isabella some time before on account of a duel, and had
+wandered into the island until he had come out on the south coast at the
+mouth of the river Ozama, near the site of the present town of Santo
+Domingo.  There he had fallen in love with a female cacique and had made
+his home with her.  She, knowing the Spanish taste, and anxious to please
+her lover and to retain him in her territory, told him of some rich
+gold-mines that there were in the neighbourhood, and suggested that he
+should inform the Admiral, who would perhaps remove the settlement from
+Isabella to the south coast.  She provided him with guides and sent him
+off to Isabella, where, hearing that his antagonist had recovered, and
+that he himself was therefore in no danger of punishment, he presented
+himself with his story.
+
+Columbus immediately despatched Bartholomew with a party to examine the
+mines; and sure enough they found in the river Hayna undoubted evidence
+of a wealth far in excess of that contained in the Cibao gold-mines.
+Moreover, they had noticed two ancient excavations about which the
+natives could tell them nothing, but which made them think that the mines
+had once been worked.
+
+Columbus was never backward in fitting a story and a theory to whatever
+phenomena surrounded him; and in this case he was certain that the
+excavations were the work of Solomon, and that he had discovered the gold
+of Ophir.  "Sure enough," thinks the Admiral, "I have hit it this time;
+and the ships came eastward from the Persian Gulf round the Golden
+Chersonesus, which I discovered this very last winter."  Immediately, as
+his habit was, Columbus began to build castles in Spain.  Here was a fine
+answer to Buil and Margarite!  Without waiting a week or two to get any
+of the gold this extraordinary man decided to hurry off at once to Spain
+with the news, not dreaming that Spain might, by this time, have had a
+surfeit of news, and might be in serious need of some simple, honest
+facts.  But he thought his two caravels sufficiently freighted with this
+new belief--the belief that he had discovered the Ophir of Solomon.
+
+The Admiral sailed on March 10th, 1496, carrying with him in chains the
+vanquished Caonabo and other natives.  He touched at Marigalante and at
+Guadaloupe, where his people had an engagement with the natives, taking
+several prisoners, but releasing them all again with the exception of one
+woman, a handsome creature who had fallen in love with Caonabo and
+refused to go.  But for Caonabo the joys of life and love were at an end;
+his heart and spirit were broken.  He was not destined to be paraded as a
+captive through the streets of Spain, and it was somewhere in the deep
+Atlantic that he paid the last tribute to the power that had captured and
+broken him.  He died on the voyage, which was longer and much more full
+of hardships than usual.  For some reason or other Columbus did not take
+the northerly route going home, but sailed east from Gaudaloupe,
+encountering the easterly trade winds, which delayed him so much that the
+voyage occupied three months instead of six weeks.
+
+Once more he exhibited his easy mastery of the art of navigation and his
+extraordinary gift for estimating dead-reckoning.  After having been out
+of sight of land for eight weeks, and while some of the sailors thought
+they might be in the Bay of Biscay, and others that they were in the
+English Channel, the Admiral suddenly announced that they were close to
+Cape Saint Vincent.
+
+No land was in sight, but he ordered that sail should be shortened that
+evening; and sure enough the next morning they sighted the land close by
+Cape Saint Vincent.  Columbus managed his landfalls with a fine dramatic
+sense as though they were conjuring tricks; and indeed they must have
+seemed like conjuring tricks, except that they were almost always
+successful.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+IN SPAIN AGAIN
+
+The loiterers about the harbour of Cadiz saw a curious sight on June
+11th, 1496, when the two battered ships, bearing back the voyagers from
+the Eldorado of the West, disembarked their passengers.  There were some
+220 souls on board, including thirty Indians: and instead of leaping
+ashore, flushed with health, and bringing the fortunes which they had
+gone out to seek, they crawled miserably from the boats or were carried
+ashore, emaciated by starvation, yellow with disease, ragged and unkempt
+from poverty, and with practically no possessions other than the clothes
+they stood up in.  Even the Admiral, now in his forty-sixth year, hardly
+had the appearance that one would expect in a Viceroy of the Indies.  His
+white hair and beard were rough and matted, his handsome face furrowed by
+care and sunken by illness and exhaustion, and instead of the glittering
+armour and uniform of his office he wore the plain robe and girdle of the
+Franciscan order--this last probably in consequence of some vow or other
+he had made in an hour of peril on the voyage.
+
+One lucky coincidence marked his arrival.  In the harbour, preparing to
+weigh anchor, was a fleet of three little caravels, commanded by Pedro
+Nino, about to set out for Espanola with supplies and despatches.
+Columbus hurried on board Nino's ship, and there read the letters from
+the Sovereigns which it had been designed he should receive in Espanola.
+The letters are not preserved, but one can make a fair guess at their
+contents.  Some searching questions would certainly be asked, kind
+assurances of continued confidence would doubtless be given, with many
+suggestions for the betterment of affairs in the distant colony.  Only
+their result upon the Admiral is known to us.  He sat down there and then
+and wrote to Bartholomew, urging him to secure peace in the island by
+every means in his power, to send home any caciques or natives who were
+likely to give trouble, and most of all to push on with the building of a
+settlement on the south coast where the new mines were, and to have a
+cargo of gold ready to send back with the next expedition.  Having
+written this letter, the Admiral saw the little fleet sail away on June
+17th, and himself prepared with mingled feelings to present himself
+before his Sovereigns.
+
+While he was waiting for their summons at Los Palacios, a small town near
+Seville, he was the guest of the curate of that place, Andrez Bernaldez,
+who had been chaplain to Christopher's old friend DEA, the Archbishop of
+Seville.  This good priest evidently proved a staunch friend to Columbus
+at this anxious period of his life, for the Admiral left many important
+papers in his charge when he again left Spain, and no small part of the
+scant contemporary information about Columbus that has come down to us is
+contained in the 'Historia de los Reyes Catolicos', which Bernaldez wrote
+after the death of Columbus.
+
+
+Fickle Spain had already forgotten its first sentimental enthusiasm over
+the Admiral's discoveries, and now was only interested in their financial
+results.  People cannot be continually excited about a thing which they
+have not seen, and there were events much nearer home that absorbed the
+public interest.  There was the trouble with France, the contemplated
+alliance of the Crown Prince with Margaret of Austria, and of the Spanish
+Princess Juana with Philip of Austria; and there were the designs of
+Ferdinand upon the kingdom of Naples, which was in his eyes a much more
+desirable and valuable prize than any group of unknown islands beyond the
+ocean.
+
+Columbus did his very best to work up enthusiasm again.  He repeated the
+performance that had been such a success after his first voyage--the kind
+of circus procession in which the natives were marched in column
+surrounded by specimens of the wealth of the Indies.  But somehow it did
+not work so well this time.  Where there had formerly been acclamations
+and crowds pressing forward to view the savages and their ornaments,
+there were now apathy and a dearth of spectators.  And although Columbus
+did his very best, and was careful to exhibit every scrap of gold that he
+had brought, and to hang golden collars and ornaments about the necks of
+the marching Indians, his exhibition was received either in ominous
+silence or, in some quarters, with something like derision.  As I have
+said before, there comes a time when the best-disposed debtors do not
+regard themselves as being repaid by promises, and when the most
+enthusiastic optimist desires to see something more than samples.
+It was only old Colon going round with his show again--flamingoes,
+macaws, seashells, dye-woods, gums and spices; some people laughed,
+and some were angry; but all were united in thinking that the New World
+was not a very profitable speculation.
+
+Things were a little better, however, at Court.  Isabella certainly
+believed still in Columbus; Ferdinand, although he had never been
+enthusiastic, knew the Admiral too well to make the vulgar mistake of
+believing him an impostor; and both were too polite and considerate to
+add to his obvious mortification and distress by any discouraging
+comments.  Moreover, the man himself had lost neither his belief in the
+value of his discoveries nor his eloquence in talking of them; and when
+he told his story to the Sovereigns they could not help being impressed,
+not only with his sincerity but with his ability and single-heartedness
+also.  It was almost the same old story, of illimitable wealth that was
+just about to be acquired, and perhaps no one but Columbus could have
+made it go down once more with success; but talking about his exploits
+was never any trouble to him, and his astonishing conviction, the lofty
+and dignified manner in which he described both good and bad fortune, and
+the impressive way in which he spoke of the wealth of the gold of Ophir
+and of the far-reaching importance of his supposed discovery of the
+Golden Chersonesus and the mainland of Asia, had their due effect on his
+hearers.
+
+It was always his way, plausible Christopher, to pass lightly over the
+premises and to dwell with elaborate detail on the deductions.  It was by
+no means proved that he had discovered the mines of King Solomon; he had
+never even seen the place which he identified with them; it was in fact
+nothing more than an idea in his own head; but we may be sure that he
+took it as an established fact that he had actually discovered the mines
+of Ophir, and confined his discussion to estimates of the wealth which
+they were likely to yield, and of what was to be done with the wealth
+when the mere details of conveying it from the mines to the ships had
+been disposed of.  So also with the Golden Chersonesus.  The very name
+was enough to stop the mouths of doubters; and here was the man himself
+who had actually been there, and here was a sworn affidavit from every
+member of his crew to say that they had been there too.  This kind of
+logic is irresistible if you only grant the first little step; and
+Columbus had the art of making it seem an act of imbecility in any of his
+hearers to doubt the strength of the little link by which his great
+golden chains of argument were fastened to fact and truth.
+
+For Columbus everything depended upon his reception by the Sovereigns at
+this time.  Unless he could re-establish his hold upon them and move to a
+still more secure position in their confidence he was a ruined man and
+his career was finished; and one cannot but sympathise with him as he
+sits there searching his mind for tempting and convincing arguments, and
+speaking so calmly and gravely and confidently in spite of all the doubts
+and flutterings in his heart.  Like a tradesman setting out his wares,
+he brought forth every inducement he could think of to convince the
+Sovereigns that the only way to make a success of what they had already
+done was to do more; that the only way to make profitable the money that
+had already been spent was to spend more; that the only way to prove the
+wisdom of their trust in him was to trust him more.  One of his
+transcendent merits in a situation of this kind was that he always had
+something new and interesting to propose.  He did not spread out his
+hands and say, "This is what I have done: it is the best I can do; how
+are you going to treat me?"  He said in effect, "This is what I have
+done; you will see that it will all come right in time; do not worry
+about it; but meanwhile I have something else to propose which I think
+your Majesties will consider a good plan."
+
+His new demand was for a fleet of six ships, two of which were to convey
+supplies to Espanola, and the other four to be entrusted to him for the
+purpose of a voyage of discovery towards the mainland to the south of
+Espanola, of which he had heard consistent rumours; which was said to be
+rich in gold, and (a clever touch) to which the King of Portugal was
+thinking of sending a fleet, as he thought that it might lie within the
+limits of his domain of heathendom.  And so well did he manage, and so
+deeply did he impress the Sovereigns with his assurance that this time
+the thing amounted to what is vulgarly called "a dead certainty," that
+they promised him he should have his ships.
+
+But promise and performance, as no one knew better than Columbus, are
+different things; and it was a long while before he got his ships.  There
+was the usual scarcity of money, and the extensive military and
+diplomatic operations in which the Crown was then engaged absorbed every
+maravedi that Ferdinand could lay his hands on.  There was an army to be
+maintained under the Pyrenees to keep watch over France; fleets had to be
+kept patrolling both the Mediterranean and Atlantic seaboards; and there
+was a whole armada required to convey the princesses of Spain and Austria
+to their respective husbands in connection with the double matrimonial
+alliance arranged between the two countries.  And when at last, in
+October 1496, six million maravedis were provided wherewith Columbus
+might equip his fleet, they were withdrawn again under very mortifying
+circumstances.  The appropriation had just been made when a letter
+arrived from Pedro Nino, who had been to Espanola and come back again,
+and now wrote from Cadiz to the Sovereigns, saying that his ships were
+full of gold.  He did not present himself at Court, but went to visit his
+family at Huelva; but the good news of his letter was accepted as an
+excuse for this oversight.
+
+No one was better pleased than the Admiral.  "What did I tell you?"  he
+says; "you see the mines of Hayna are paying already."  King Ferdinand,
+equally pleased, and having an urgent need of money in connection with
+his operations against France, took the opportunity to cancel the
+appropriation of the six million maravedis, giving Columbus instead an
+order for the amount to be paid out of the treasure brought home by Nino.
+Alas, the mariner's boast of gold had been a figure of speech.  There was
+no gold; there was only a cargo of slaves, which Nino deemed the
+equivalent of gold; and when Bartholomew's despatches came to be read he
+described the affairs of Espanola as being in very much the same
+condition as before.  This incident produced a most unfortunate
+impression.  Even Columbus was obliged to keep quiet for a little while;
+and it is likely that the mention of six million maravedis was not
+welcomed by him for some time afterwards.
+
+After the wedding of Prince Juan in March 1497, when Queen Isabella had
+more time to give to external affairs, the promise to Columbus was again
+remembered, and his position was considered in detail.  An order was made
+(April 23rd, 1497), restoring to the Admiral the original privileges
+bestowed upon him at Santa Fe.  He was offered a large tract of land in
+Espanola, with the title of Duke; but much as he hankered after titular
+honours, he was for once prudent enough to refuse this gift.  His reason
+was that it would only further damage his influence, and give apparent
+justification to those enemies who said that the whole enterprise had
+been undertaken merely in his own interests; and it is possible also that
+his many painful associations with Espanola, and the bloodshed and
+horrors that he had witnessed there, had aroused in his superstitious
+mind a distaste for possessions and titles in that devastated Paradise.
+Instead, he accepted a measure of relief from the obligations incurred by
+his eighth share in the many unprofitable expeditions that had been sent
+out during the last three years, agreeing for the next three years to
+receive an eighth share of the gross income, and a tenth of the net
+profits, without contributing anything to the cost.  His appointment of
+Bartholomew to the office of Adelantado, which had annoyed Ferdinand, was
+now confirmed; the universal license which had been granted to Spanish
+subjects to settle in the new lands was revoked in so far as it infringed
+the Admiral's privileges; and he was granted a force of 330 officers,
+soldiers, and artificers to be at his personal disposal in the
+prosecution of his next voyage.
+
+The death of Prince Juan in October 1497 once more distracted the
+attention of the Court from all but personal matters; and Columbus
+employed the time of waiting in drafting a testamentary document in which
+he was permitted to create an entail on his title and estates in favour
+of his two sons and their heirs for ever.  This did not represent his
+complete or final testament, for he added codicils at various times,
+the latest being executed the day before his death.  The document is
+worth studying; it reveals something of the laborious, painstaking mind
+reaching out down the rivers and streams of the future that were to flow
+from the fountain of his own greatness; it reveals also his triple
+conception of the obligations of human life in this world--the
+cultivation and retention of temporal dignity, the performance of pious
+and charitable acts, and the recognition of duty to one's family.  It was
+in this document that Columbus formulated the curious cipher which he
+always now used in signing his name, and of which various readings are
+given in the Appendix.  He also enjoined upon his heir the duty of using
+the simple title which he himself loved and used most--"The Admiral."
+
+After the death of Prince Juan, Queen Isabella honoured Columbus by
+attaching his two sons to her own person as pages; and her friendship
+must at this time have gone far to compensate him for the coolness shown
+towards him by the public at large.  He might talk as much as he pleased,
+but he had nothing to show for all his talk except a few trinkets, a
+collection of interesting but valueless botanical specimens, and a
+handful of miserable slaves.  Lives and fortunes had been wrecked on the
+enterprise, which had so far brought nothing to Spain but the promise of
+luxurious adventure that was not fulfilled and of a wealth and glory that
+had not been realised.  It must have been a very humiliating circumstance
+to Columbus that in the preparations which he was now (February 1498)
+making for the equipment of his new expedition a great difficulty was
+found in procuring ships and men.  Not even before the first voyage had
+so much reluctance been shown to risk life and property in the
+enterprise.  Merchants and sailors had then been frightened of dangers
+which they did not know; now, it seemed, the evils of which they did know
+proved a still greater deterrent.  The Admiral was at this time the guest
+of his friend Bernaldez, who has told us something of his difficulties;
+and the humiliating expedient of seizing ships under a royal order had
+finally to be adopted.  But it would never have done to impress the
+colonists also; that would have been too open a confession of failure for
+the proud Admiral to tolerate.
+
+Instead he had recourse to the miserable plan of which he had made use in
+Palos; the prisons were opened, and criminals under sentence invited to
+come forth and enjoy the blessings of colonial life.  Even then there was
+not that rush from the prison doors that might have been expected, and
+some desperate characters apparently preferred the mercies of a Spanish
+prison to what they had heard of the joys of the Earthly Paradise.  Still
+a number of criminals did doubtfully crawl forth and furnish a retinue
+for the great Admiral and Viceroy.  Trembling, suspicious, and with more
+than half a mind to go back to their bonds, some part of the human vermin
+of Spain was eventually cajoled and chivied on board the ships.
+
+The needs of the colony being urgent, and recruiting being slow, two
+caravels laden with provisions were sent off in advance; but even for
+this purpose there was a difficulty about money, and good Isabella
+furnished the expense, at much inconvenience, from her private purse.
+
+Columbus had to supervise everything himself; and no wonder that by the
+end of May, when he was ready to sail, his patience and temper were
+exhausted and his much-tried endurance broke down under the petty
+gnatlike irritations of Fonseca and his myrmidons.  It was on the deck of
+his own ship, in the harbour of San Lucar, that he knocked down and
+soundly kicked Ximeno de Breviesca, Fonseca's accountant, whose nagging
+requisitions had driven the Admiral to fury.
+
+After all these years of gravity and restraint and endurance, this
+momentary outbreak of the old Adam in our hero is like a breath of wind
+through an open window.
+
+To the portraits of Columbus hanging in the gallery of one's imagination
+this must surely be added; in which Christopher, on the deck of his ship,
+with the royal standard and the Admiral's flag flying from his masthead,
+is observed to be soundly kicking a prostrate accountant.  The incident
+is worthy of a date, which is accordingly here given, as near as may be--
+May 29, 1498.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE THIRD VOYAGE
+
+Columbus was at sea again; firm ground to him, although so treacherous
+and unstable to most of us; and as he saw the Spanish coast sinking down
+on the horizon he could shake himself free from his troubles, and feel
+that once more he was in a situation of which he was master.  He first
+touched at Porto Santo, where, if the story of his residence there be
+true, there must have been potent memories for him in the sight of the
+long white beach and the plantations, with the Governor's house beyond.
+He stayed there only a few hours and then crossed over to Madeira,
+anchoring in the Bay of Funchal, where he took in wood and water.  As it
+was really unnecessary for him to make a port so soon after leaving,
+there was probably some other reason for his visit to these islands;
+perhaps a family reason; perhaps nothing more historically important than
+the desire to look once more on scenes of bygone happiness, for even on
+the page of history every event is not necessarily big with significance.
+From Madeira he took a southerly course to the Canary Islands, and on
+June 16th anchored at Gomera, where he found a French warship with two
+Spanish prizes, all of which put to sea as the Admiral's fleet
+approached.  On June 21st, when he sailed from Gomera, he divided his
+fleet of six vessels into two squadrons.  Three ships were despatched
+direct to Espanola, for the supplies which they carried were urgently
+needed there.  These three ships were commanded by trustworthy men: Pedro
+de Arana, a brother of Beatriz, Alonso Sanchez de Carvajal, and Juan
+Antonio Colombo--this last no other than a cousin of Christopher's from
+Genoa.  The sons of Domenico's provident younger brother had not
+prospered, while the sons of improvident Domenico were now all in high
+places; and these three poor cousins, hearing of Christopher's greatness,
+and deciding that use should be made of him, scraped together enough
+money to send one of their number to Spain.  The Admiral always had a
+sound family feeling, and finding that cousin Antonio had sea experience
+and knew how to handle a ship he gave him command of one of the caravels
+on this voyage--a command of which he proved capable and worthy.  From
+these three captains, after giving them full sailing directions for
+reaching Espanola, Columbus parted company off the island of Ferro.  He
+himself stood on a southerly course towards the Cape Verde Islands.
+
+His plan on this voyage was to find the mainland to the southward, of
+which he had heard rumours in Espanola.  Before leaving Spain he had
+received a letter from an eminent lapidary named Ferrer who had travelled
+much in the east, and who assured him that if he sought gold and precious
+stones he must go to hot lands, and that the hotter the lands were, and
+the blacker the inhabitants, the more likely he was to find riches there.
+This was just the kind of theory to suit Columbus, and as he sailed
+towards the Cape Verde Islands he was already in imagination gathering
+gold and pearls on the shores of the equatorial continent.
+
+He stayed for about a week at the Cape Verde Islands, getting in
+provisions and cattle, and curiously observing the life of the Portuguese
+lepers who came in numbers to the island of Buenavista to be cured there
+by eating the flesh and bathing in the blood of turtles.  It was not an
+inspiriting week which he spent in that dreary place and enervating
+climate, with nothing to see but the goats feeding among the scrub, the
+turtles crawling about the sand, and the lepers following the turtles.
+It began to tell on the health of the crew, so he weighed anchor on July
+5th and stood on a southwesterly course.
+
+This third voyage, which was destined to be the most important of all,
+and the material for which had cost him so much time and labour, was
+undertaken in a very solemn and determined spirit.  His health, which he
+had hoped to recover in Spain, had been if anything damaged by his
+worryings with officialdom there; and although he was only forty-seven
+years of age he was in some respects already an old man.  He had entered,
+although happily he did not know it, on the last decade of his life; and
+was already beginning to suffer from the two diseases, gout and
+ophthalmia, which were soon to undermine his strength and endurance.
+Religion of a mystical fifteenth-century sort was deepening in him;
+he had undertaken this voyage in the name of the Holy Trinity; and to
+that theological entity he had resolved to dedicate the first new land
+that he should sight.
+
+For ten days light baffling winds impeded his progress; but at the end of
+that time the winds fell away altogether, and the voyagers found
+themselves in that flat equatorial calm known to mariners as the
+Doldrums.  The vertical rays of the sun shone blisteringly down upon
+them, making the seams of the ships gape and causing the unhappy crews
+mental as well as bodily distress, for they began to fear that they had
+reached that zone of fire which had always been said to exist in the
+southern ocean.
+
+Day after day the three ships lay motionless on the glassy water, with
+wood-work so hot as to burn the hands that touched it, with the meat
+putrefying in the casks below, and the water running from the loosened
+casks, and no one with courage and endurance enough to venture into the
+stifling hold even to save the provisions.  And through all this the
+Admiral, racked with gout, had to keep a cheerful face and assure his
+prostrate crew that they would soon be out of it.
+
+There were showers of rain sometimes, but the moisture in that baking
+atmosphere only added to its stifling and enervating effects.  All the
+while, however, the great slow current of the Atlantic was moving
+westward, and there came a day when a heavenly breeze, stirred in the
+torrid air and the musical talk of ripples began to rise again from the
+weedy stems of the ships.  They sailed due west, always into a cooler and
+fresher atmosphere; but still no land was sighted, although pelicans
+and smaller birds were continually seen passing from south-west to
+north-east.  As provisions were beginning to run low, Columbus decided
+on the 31st July to alter his course to north-by-east, in the hope of
+reaching the island of Dominica.  But at mid-day his servant Alonso
+Perez, happening to go to the masthead, cried out that there was land in
+sight; and sure enough to the westward there rose three peaks of land
+united at the base.  Here was the kind of coincidence which staggers
+even the unbeliever.  Columbus had promised to dedicate the first land
+he saw to the Trinity; and here was the land, miraculously provided when
+he needed it most, three peaks in one peak, in due conformity with the
+requirements of the blessed Saint Athanasius.  The Admiral was deeply
+affected; the God of his belief was indeed a good friend to him; and he
+wrote down his pious conviction that the event was a miracle, and
+summoned all hands to sing the Salve Regina, with other hymns in praise
+of God and the Virgin Mary.  The island was duly christened La Trinidad.
+By the hour of Compline (9 o'clock in the evening) they had come up with
+the south coast of the island, but it was the next day before the
+Admiral found a harbour where he could take in water.  No natives were
+to be seen, although there were footprints on the shore and other signs
+of human habitation.
+
+He continued all day to sail slowly along the shore of the island, the
+green luxuriance of which astonished him; and sometimes he stood out from
+the coast to the southward as he made a long board to round this or that
+point.  It must have been while reaching out in this way to the southward
+that he saw a low shore on his port hand some sixty miles to the south of
+Trinidad, and that his sight, although he did not know it, rested for the
+first time on the mainland of South America.  The land seen was the low
+coast to the west of the Orinoco, and thinking that it was an island he
+gave it the name of Isla Sancta.
+
+On the 2nd of August they were off the south-west of Trinidad, and saw
+the first inhabitants in the shape of a canoe full of armed natives, who
+approached the ships with threatening gestures.  Columbus had brought out
+some musicians with him, possibly for the purpose of impressing the
+natives, and perhaps with the idea of making things a little more
+cheerful in Espanola; and the musicians were now duly called upon to give
+a performance, a tambourine-player standing on the forecastle and beating
+the rhythm for the ships' boys to dance to.  The effect was other than
+was anticipated, for the natives immediately discharged a thick flight of
+arrows at the musicians, and the music and dancing abruptly ceased.
+Eventually the Indians were prevailed upon to come on board the two
+smaller ships and to receive gifts, after which they departed and were
+seen no more.  Columbus landed and made some observations of the
+vegetation and climate of Trinidad, noticing that the fruits and-trees
+were similar to those of Espanola, and that oysters abounded, as well as
+"very large, infinite fish, and parrots as large as hens."
+
+He saw another peak of the mainland to the northwest, which was the
+peninsula of Paria, and to which Columbus, taking it to be another
+island, gave the name of Isla de Gracia.  Between him and this land lay a
+narrow channel through which a mighty current was flowing--that press of
+waters which, sweeping across the Atlantic from Africa, enters the
+Caribbean Sea, sprays round the Gulf of Mexico, and turns north again in
+the current known as the Gulf Stream.  While his ships were anchored at
+the entrance to this channel and Columbus was wondering how he should
+cross it, a mighty flood of water suddenly came down with a roar, sending
+a great surging wave in front of it.  The vessels were lifted up as
+though by magic; two of them dragged their anchors from the bottom, and
+the other one broke her cable.  This flood was probably caused by a
+sudden flush of fresh water from one of the many mouths of the Orinoco;
+but to Columbus, who had no thought of rivers in his mind, it was very
+alarming.  Apparently, however, there was nothing for it but to get
+through the channel, and having sent boats on in front to take soundings
+and see that there was clear water he eventually piloted his little
+squadron through, with his heart in his mouth and his eyes fixed on the
+swinging eddies and surging circles of the channel.  Once beyond it he
+was in the smooth water of the Gulf of Paria.  He followed the westerly
+coast of Trinidad to the north until he came to a second channel narrower
+than the first, through which the current boiled with still greater
+violence, and to which he gave the name of Dragon's Mouth.  This is the
+channel between the northwesterly point of Trinidad and the eastern
+promontory of Paria.  Columbus now began to be bewildered, for he
+discovered that the water over the ship's side was fresh water, and he
+could not make out where it came from.  Thinking that the peninsula of
+Paria was an island, and not wishing to attempt the dangerous passage of
+the Dragon's Mouth, he decided to coast along the southern shore of the
+land opposite, hoping to be able to turn north round its western
+extremity.
+
+
+Sweeter blew the breezes, fresher grew the water, milder and more balmy
+the air, greener and deeper the vegetation of this beautiful region.  The
+Admiral was ill with the gout, and suffering such pain from his eyes that
+he was sometimes blinded by it; but the excitement of the strange
+phenomena surrounding him kept him up, and his powers of observation,
+always acute, suffered no diminution.  There were no inhabitants to be
+seen as they sailed along the coast, but monkeys climbed and chattered in
+the trees by the shore, and oysters were found clinging to the branches
+that dipped into the water.  At last, in a bay where they anchored to
+take in water, a native canoe containing three, men was seen cautiously
+approaching; and the men, who were shy, were captured by the device of a
+sailor jumping on to the gunwale of the canoe and overturning it, the
+natives being easily caught in the water, and afterwards soothed and
+captivated by the unfailing attraction of hawks' bells.  They were tall
+men with long hair, and they told Columbus that the name of their country
+was Paria; and when they were asked about other inhabitants they pointed
+to the west and signified that there was a great population in that
+direction.
+
+On the 10th of August 1498 a party landed on this coast and formally took
+possession of it in the name of the Sovereigns of Spain.  By an unlucky
+chance Columbus himself did not land.  His eyes were troubling him so
+much that he was obliged to lie down in his cabin, and the formal act of
+possession was performed by a deputy.  If he had only known!  If he could
+but have guessed that this was indeed the mainland of a New World that
+did not exist even in his dreams, what agonies he would have suffered
+rather than permit any one else to pronounce the words of annexation!
+But he lay there in pain and suffering, his curious mystical mind
+occupied with a conception very remote indeed from the truth.
+
+
+For in that fertile hotbed of imagination, the Admiral's brain, a new and
+staggering theory had gradually been taking shape.  As his ships had been
+wafted into this delicious region, as the airs had become sweeter, the
+vegetation more luxuriant, and the water of the sea fresher,--he had
+solemnly arrived at the conclusion that he was approaching the region of
+the true terrestrial Paradise: the Garden of Eden that some of the
+Fathers had declared to be situated in the extreme east of the Old World,
+and in a region so high that the flood had not overwhelmed it.  Columbus,
+thinking hard in his cabin, blood and brain a little fevered, comes to
+the conclusion that the world is not round but pear-shaped.  He knows
+that all this fresh water in the sea must come from a great distance and
+from no ordinary river; and he decides that its volume and direction have
+been acquired in its fall from the apex of the pear, from the very top of
+the world, from the Garden of Eden itself.  It was a most beautiful
+conception; a theory worthy to be fitted to all the sweet sights and
+sounds in the world about him; but it led him farther and farther away
+from the truth, and blinded him to knowledge and understanding of what he
+had actually accomplished.
+
+He had thought the coast of Cuba the mainland, and he now began to
+consider it at least possible that the peninsula of Paria was mainland
+also--another part of the same continent.  That was the truth--Paria was
+the mainland--and if he had not been so bemused by his dreams and
+theories he might have had some inkling of the real wonder and
+significance of his discovery.  But no; in his profoundly unscientific
+mind there was little of that patience which holds men back from
+theorising and keeps them ready to receive the truth.  He was patient
+enough in doing, but in thinking he was not patient at all.  No sooner
+had he observed a fact than he must find a theory which would bring it
+into relation with the whole of his knowledge; and if the facts would not
+harmonise of themselves he invented a scheme of things by which they were
+forced into harmony.  He was indeed a Darwinian before his time, an adept
+in the art of inventing causes to fit facts, and then proving that the
+facts sprang from the causes; but his origins were tangible, immovable
+things of rock and soil that could be seen and visited by other men, and
+their true relation to the terrestrial phenomena accurately established;
+so that his very proofs were monumental, and became themselves the
+advertisements of his profound misjudgment.  But meanwhile he is the
+Admiral of the Ocean Seas, and can "make it so"; and accordingly, in a
+state of mental instability, he makes the Gulf of Paria to be a slope of
+earth immediately below the Garden of Eden, although fortunately he does
+not this time provide a sworn affidavit of trembling ships' boys to
+confirm his discovery.
+
+Meanwhile also here were pearls; the native women wore ropes of them all
+over their bodies, and a fair store of them were bartered for pieces of
+broken crockery.  Asked as usual about the pearls the natives, also as
+usual, pointed vaguely to the west and south-west, and explained that
+there were more pearls in that direction.  But the Admiral would not
+tarry.  Although he believed that he was within reach of Eden and pearls,
+he was more anxious to get back to Espanola and send the thrilling news
+to Spain than he was to push on a little farther and really assure
+himself of the truth.  How like Christopher that was!  Ideas to him were
+of more value than facts, as indeed they are to the world at large; but
+one is sometimes led to wonder whether he did not sometimes hesitate to
+turn his ideas into facts for very fear that they should turn out to be
+only ideas.  Was he, in his relations with Spain and the world, a trader
+in the names rather than the substance of things?  We have seen him going
+home to Spain and announcing the discovery of the Golden Chersonesus,
+although he had only discovered what he erroneously supposed to be an
+indication of it; proclaiming the discovery of the Ophir of Solomon
+without taking the trouble to test for himself so tremendous an
+assumption; and we now see him hurrying away to dazzle Spain with the
+story that he has discovered the Garden of Eden, without even trying to
+push on for a few days more to secure so much as a cutting from the Tree
+of Life.
+
+These are grave considerations; for although happily the Tree of Life is
+now of no importance to any human being, the doings of Admiral
+Christopher were of great importance to himself and to his fellow-men at
+that time, and are still to-day, through the infinite channels in which
+human thought and action run and continue thoughout the world, of grave
+importance to us.  Perhaps this is not quite the moment, now that the
+poor Admiral is lying in pain and weakness and not quite master of his
+own mind, to consider fully how he stands in this matter of honesty; we
+will leave it for the present until he is well again, or better still,
+until his tale of life and action is complete, and comes as a whole
+before the bar of human judgment.
+
+
+On August 11th Columbus turned east again after having given up the
+attempt to find a passage to the north round Paria.  There were practical
+considerations that brought him to this action.  As the water was growing
+shoaler and shoaler he had sent a caravel of light draft some way further
+to the westward, and she reported that there lay ahead of her a great
+inner bay or gulf consisting of almost entirely fresh water.  Provisions,
+moreover, were running short, and were, as usual, turning bad; the
+Admiral's health made vigorous action of any kind impossible for him; he
+was anxious about the condition of Espanola--anxious also, as we have
+seen, to send this great news home; and he therefore turned back and
+decided to risk the passage of the Dragon's Mouth.  He anchored in the
+neighbouring harbour until the wind was in the right quarter, and with
+some trepidation put his ships into the boiling tideway.  When they were
+in the middle of the passage the wind fell to a dead calm, and the ships,
+with their sails hanging loose, were borne on the dizzy surface of
+eddies, overfalls, and whirls of the tide.  Fortunately there was deep
+water in the passage, and the strength of the current carried them safely
+through.  Once outside they bore away to the northward, sighting the
+islands of Tobago and Grenada and, turning westward again, came to the
+islands of Cubagua and Margarita, where three pounds of pearls were
+bartered from the natives.  A week after the passage of the Dragon's
+Mouth Columbus sighted the south coast of Espanola, which coast he made
+at a point a long way to the east of the new settlement that he had
+instructed Bartholomew to found; and as the winds were contrary, and he
+feared it might take him a long time to beat up against them, he sent a
+boat ashore with a letter which was to be delivered by a native messenger
+to the Adelantado.  The letter was delivered; a few days later a caravel
+was sighted which contained Bartholomew himself; and once more, after a
+long separation, these two friends and brothers were united.
+
+
+The see-saw motion of all affairs with which Columbus had to do was in
+full swing.  We have seen him patching up matters in Espanola; hurrying
+to Spain just in time to rescue his damaged reputation and do something
+to restore it; and now when he had come back it was but a sorry tale that
+Bartholomew had to tell him.  A fortress had been built at the Hayna
+gold-mines, but provisions had been so scarce that there had been
+something like a famine among the workmen there; no digging had been
+done, no planting, no making of the place fit for human occupation and
+industry.  Bartholomew had been kept busy in collecting the native
+tribute, and in planning out the beginnings of the settlement at the
+mouth of the river Ozema, which was at first called the New Isabella, but
+was afterwards named San Domingo in honour of old Domenico at Savona.
+The cacique Behechio had been giving trouble; had indeed marched out with
+an army against Bartholomew, but had been more or less reconciled by the
+intervention of his sister Anacaona, widow of the late Caonabo, who had
+apparently transferred her affections to Governor Bartholomew.  The
+battle was turned into a friendly pagan festival--one of the last ever
+held on that once happy island--in which native girls danced in a green
+grove, with the beautiful Anacaona, dressed only in garlands, carried on
+a litter in their midst.
+
+But in the Vega Real, where a chapel had been built by the priests of the
+neighbouring settlement who were beginning to make converts, trouble had
+arisen in consequence of an outrage on the wife of the cacique Guarionex.
+The chapel was raided, the shrine destroyed, and the sacred vessels
+carried off.  The Spaniards seized a number of Indians whom they
+suspected of having had a hand in the desecration, and burned them at the
+stake in the most approved manner of the Inquisition--a hideous
+punishment that fanned the remaining embers of the native spirit into
+flame, and produced a hostile combination of Guarionex and several other
+caciques, whose rebellion it took the Adelantado some trouble and display
+of arms to quench.
+
+But the worst news of all was the treacherous revolt of Francisco Roldan,
+a Spaniard who had once been a servant of the Admiral's, and who had been
+raised by him to the office of judge in the island--an able creature,
+but, like too many recipients of Christopher's favour, a treacherous
+rascal at bottom.  As soon as the Admiral's back was turned Roldan had
+begun to make mischief, stirring up the discontent that was never far
+below the surface of life in the colony, and getting together a large
+band of rebellious ruffians.  He had a plan to murder Bartholomew
+Columbus and place himself at the head of the colony, but this fell
+through.  Then, in Bartholomew's absence, he had a passage with James
+Columbus, who had now returned to the island and had resumed his.
+official duties at Isabella.  Bartholomew, who was at another part of the
+coast collecting tribute, had sent a caravel laden with cotton to
+Isabella, and well-meaning James had her drawn up on the beach.  Roldan
+took the opportunity to represent this innocent action as a sign of the
+intolerable autocracy of the Columbus family, who did not even wish a
+vessel to be in a condition to sail for Spain with news of their
+misdeeds.  Insolent Roldan formally asks James to send the caravel to
+Spain with supplies; poor James refuses and, perhaps being at bottom
+afraid of Roldan and his insolences, despatches him to the Vega Real with
+a force to bring to order some caciques who had been giving trouble.
+Possibly to his surprise, although not to ours, Roldan departs with
+alacrity at the head of seventy armed men.  Honest, zealous James, no
+doubt; but also, we begin to fear, stupid James.
+
+
+The Vega Real was the most attractive part of the colony, and the scene
+of infinite idleness and debauchery in the early days of the Spanish
+settlement.  As Margarite and other mutineers had acted, so did Roldan
+and his soldiers now act, making sallies against several of the chain of
+forts that stretched across the island, and even upon Isabella itself;
+and returning to the Vega to the enjoyment of primitive wild pleasures.
+Roldan and Bartholomew Columbus stalked each other about the island with
+armed forces for several months, Roldan besieging Bartholomew in the
+fortress at the Vega, which he had occupied in Roldan's absence, and
+trying to starve him out there.  The arrival in February 1498 of the two
+ships which had been sent out from Spain in advance, and which brought
+also the news of the Admiral's undamaged favour at Court, and of the
+royal confirmation of Bartholomew's title, produced for the moment a good
+moral effect; Roldan went and sulked in the mountains, refusing to have
+any parley or communication with the Adelantado, declining indeed to
+treat with any one until the Admiral himself should return.  In the
+meantime his influence with the natives was strong enough to produce a
+native revolt, which Bartholomew had only just succeeded in suppressing
+when Christopher arrived on August 30th.
+
+The Admiral was not a little distressed to find that the three ships from
+which he had parted company at Ferro had not yet arrived.  His own voyage
+ought to have taken far longer than theirs; they had now been nine weeks
+at sea, and there was nothing to account for their long delay.  When at
+last they did appear, however they brought with them only a new
+complication.  They had lost their way among the islands and had been
+searching about for Espanola, finally making a landfall there on the
+coast of Xaragua, the south-western province of the island, where Roldan
+and his followers were established.  Roldan had received them and,
+concealing the fact of his treachery, procured a large store of
+provisions from them, his followers being meanwhile busy among the crews
+of the ships inciting them to mutiny and telling them of the oppression
+of the Admiral's rule and the joys of a lawless life.  The gaol-birds
+were nothing loth; after eight weeks at sea a spell ashore in this
+pleasant land, with all kinds of indulgences which did not come within
+the ordinary regimen of convicts and sailors, greatly appealing to them.
+The result was that more than half of the crews mutinied and joined
+Roldan, and the captains were obliged to put to sea with their small
+loyal remnant.  Carvajal remained behind in order to try to persuade
+Roldan to give himself up; but Roldan had no such idea, and Carvajal had
+to make his way by land to San Domingo, where he made his report to the
+Admiral.  Roldan has in fact delivered a kind of ultimatum.  He will
+surrender to no one but the Admiral, and that only on condition that he
+gets a free pardon.  If negotiations are opened, Roldan will treat with
+no one but Carvajal.  The Admiral, whose grip of the situation is getting
+weaker and weaker, finds himself in a difficulty.  His loyal army is only
+some seventy strong, while Roldan has, of disloyal settlers, gaol-birds,
+and sailors, much more than that.  The Admiral, since he cannot reduce
+his enemy's force by capturing them, seeks to do it by bribing them; and
+the greatest bribe that he can think of to offer to these malcontents is
+that any who like may have a free passage home in the five caravels which
+are now waiting to return to Spain.  To such a pass have things come in
+the paradise of Espanola!  But the rabble finds life pleasant enough in
+Xaragua, where they are busy with indescribable pleasures; and for the
+moment there is no great response to this invitation to be gone.
+Columbus therefore despatches his ships, with such rabble of colonists,
+gaol-birds, and mariners as have already had their fill both of pain and
+pleasure, and writes his usual letter to the Sovereigns--half full of the
+glories of the new discoveries he has made, the other half setting forth
+the evil doings of Roldan, and begging that he may be summoned to Spain
+for trial there.  Incidentally, also, he requests a further licence for
+two years for the capture and despatch of slaves to Spain.  So the
+vessels sail back on October 18, 1498, and the Admiral turns wearily to
+the task of disentangling the web of difficulty that has woven itself
+about him.
+
+Carvajal and Ballester--another loyal captain--were sent with a letter to
+Roldan urging him to come to terms, and Carvajal and Ballester added
+their own honest persuasions.  But Roldan was firm; he wished to be quit
+of the Admiral and his rule, and to live independently in the island; and
+of his followers, although some here and there showed signs of
+submission, the greater number were so much in love with anarchy that
+they could not be counted upon.  For two months negotiations of a sort
+were continued, Roldan even presenting himself under a guarantee of
+safety at San Domingo, where he had a fruitless conference with the
+Admiral; where also he had an opportunity of observing what a sorry state
+affairs in the capital were in, and what a mess Columbus was making of it
+all.  Roldan, being a simple man, though a rascal, had only to remain
+firm in order to get his way against a mind like the Admiral's, and get
+his way he ultimately did.  The Admiral made terms of a kind most
+humiliating to him, and utterly subversive of his influence and
+authority.  The mutineers were not only to receive a pardon but a
+certificate (good Heavens!) of good conduct.  Caravels were to be sent to
+convey them to Spain; and they were to be permitted to carry with them
+all the slaves that they had collected and all the native young women
+whom they had ravished from their homes.
+
+Columbus signs this document on the 21st of November, and promises that
+the ships shall be ready in fifty days; and then, at his wits' end, and
+hearing of irregularities in the interior of the island, sets off with
+Bartholomew to inspect the posts and restore them to order.  In his
+absence the see-saw, in due obedience to the laws that govern all
+see-saws, gives a lurch to the other side, and things go all wrong again
+in San Domingo.  The preparations for the despatch of the caravels are
+neglected as soon as his back is turned; not fifty days, but nearly one
+hundred days elapse before they are ready to sail from San Domingo to
+Xaragua.  Even then they are delayed by storms and head-winds; and when
+they do arrive Roldan and his company will not embark in them.  The
+agreement has been broken; a new one must be made.  Columbus, returning
+to San Domingo after long and harassing struggles on the other end of
+the see-saw, gets news of this deadlock, and at the same time has news
+from Fonseca in Spain of a far from agreeable character.  His complaints
+against the people under him have been received by the Sovereigns and
+will be duly considered, but their Majesties have not time at the moment
+to go into them.  That is the gist of it, and very cold cheer it is for
+the Admiral, balancing himself on this turbulent see-saw with anxious
+eyes turned to Spain for encouragement and approval.
+
+
+In the depression that followed the receipt of this letter he was no
+match for Roldan.  He even himself took a caravel and sailed towards
+Xaragua, where he was met by Roldan, who boarded his ship and made his
+new proposals.  Their impudence is astounding; and when we consider that
+the Admiral had in theory absolute powers in the island, the fact that
+such proposals could be made, not to say accepted, shows how far out of
+relation were his actual with his nominal powers.  Roldan proposed that
+he should be allowed to give a number of his friends a free passage to
+Spain; that to all who should remain free grants of land should be given;
+and (a free pardon and certificate of good conduct contenting him no
+longer) that a proclamation should be made throughout the island
+admitting that all the charges of disloyalty and mutiny which had been
+brought against him and his followers were without foundation; and,
+finally, that he should be restored to his office of Alcalde Mayor or
+chief magistrate.
+
+Here was a bolus for Christopher to swallow; a bolus compounded of his
+own words, his own acts, his hope, dignity, supremacy.  In dismal
+humiliation he accepted the terms, with the addition of a clause more
+scandalous still--to the effect that the mutineers reserved the right,
+in case the Admiral should fail in the exact performance of any of his
+promises, to enforce them by compulsion of arms or any other method they
+might think fit.  This precious document was signed on September 28, 1499
+just twelve months after the agreement which it was intended to replace;
+and the Admiral, sailing dismally back to San Domingo, ruefully pondered
+on the fruits of a year's delay.  Even then he was trying to make excuses
+for himself, such as he made afterwards to the Sovereigns when he tried
+to explain that this shameful capitulation was invalid.  That he signed
+under compulsion; that he was on board a ship, and so was not on his
+viceregal territory; that the rebels had already been tried, and that he
+had not the power to revoke a sentence which bore the authority of the
+Crown; that he had not the power to dispose of the Crown property
+--desperate, agonised shuffling of pride and self-esteem in the coils of
+trial and difficulty.  Enough of it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+AN INTERLUDE
+
+A breath of salt air again will do us no harm as a relief from these
+perilous balancings of Columbus on the see-saw at Espanola.  His true
+work in this world had indeed already been accomplished.  When he smote
+the rock of western discovery many springs flowed from it, and some were
+destined to run in mightier channels than that which he himself followed.
+Among other men stirred by the news of Columbus's first voyage there was
+one walking the streets of Bristol in 1496 who was fired to a similar
+enterprise--a man of Venice, in boyhood named Zuan Caboto, but now known
+in England, where he has some time been settled, as Captain John Cabot.
+A sailor and trader who has travelled much through the known sea-roads
+of this world, and has a desire to travel upon others not so well known.
+He has been in the East, has seen the caravans of Mecca and the goods
+they carried, and, like Columbus, has conceived in his mind the roundness
+of the world as a practical fact rather than a mere mathematical theory.
+Hearing of Columbus's success Cabot sets what machinery in England he has
+access to in motion to secure for him patents from King Henry VII.; which
+patents he receives on March 5, 1496.  After spending a long time in
+preparation, and being perhaps a little delayed by diplomatic protests
+from the Spanish Ambassador in London, he sails from Bristol in May 1497.
+
+After sailing west two thousand leagues Cabot found land in the
+neighbourhood of Cape Breton, and was thus in all probability the first
+discoverer, since the Icelanders, of the mainland of the New World.  He
+turned northward, sailed through the strait of Belle Isle, and came home
+again, having accomplished his task in three months.  Cabot, like
+Columbus, believed he had seen the territory of the Great Khan, of whom
+he told the interested population of Bristol some strange things.  He
+further told them of the probable riches of this new land if it were
+followed in a southerly direction; told them some lies also, it appears,
+since he said that the waters there were so dense with fish that his
+vessels could hardly move in them.  He received a gratuity of L10 and a
+pension, and made a great sensation in Bristol by walking about the city
+dressed in fine silk garments.  He took other voyages also with his son
+Sebastian, who followed with him the rapid widening stream of discovery
+and became Pilot Major of Spain, and President of the Congress appointed
+in 1524 to settle the conflicting pretensions of various discoverers; but
+so far as our narrative is concerned, having sailed across from Bristol
+and discovered the mainland of the New World some years before Columbus
+discovered it, John Cabot sails into oblivion.
+
+
+Another great conquest of the salt unknown taken place a few days before
+Columbus sailed on his third voyage.  The accidental discovery of the
+Cape by Bartholomew Diaz in 1486 had not been neglected by Portugal; and
+the achievements of Columbus, while they cut off Portuguese enterprise
+from the western ocean, had only stimulated it to greater activity within
+its own spheres.  Vasco da Gama sailed from Lisbon in July 1497; by the
+end of November he had rounded the Cape of Good Hope; and in May 1498,
+after a long voyage full of interest, peril, and hardship he had landed
+at Calicut on the shores of the true India.  He came back in 1499 with a
+battered remnant, his crew disabled by sickness and exhaustion, and half
+his ships lost; but he had in fact discovered a road for trade and
+adventure to the East that was not paved with promises, dreams, or mad
+affidavits, but was a real and tangible achievement, bringing its reward
+in commerce and wealth for Portugal.  At that very moment Columbus was
+groping round the mainland of South America, thinking it to be the coast
+of Cathay, and the Garden of Eden, and God knows what other
+cosmographical--theological abstractions; and Portugal, busy with her
+arrangements for making money, could afford for the moment to look on
+undismayed at the development of the mine of promises discovered by the
+Spanish Admiral.
+
+
+The anxiety of Columbus to communicate the names of things before he had
+made sure of their substance received another rude chastisement in the
+events that followed the receipt in Spain of his letter announcing the
+discovery of the Garden of Eden and the land of pearls.  People in Spain
+were not greatly interested in his theories of the terrestrial Paradise;
+but more than one adventurer pricked up his ears at the name of pearls,
+and among the first was our old friend Alonso de Ojeda, who had returned
+some time before from Espanola and was living in Spain.  His position as
+a member of Columbus's force on the second voyage and the distinction he
+had gained there gave him special opportunities of access to the letters
+and papers sent home by Columbus; and he found no difficulty in getting
+Fonseca to show him the maps and charts of the coast of Paria sent back
+by the Admiral, the veritable pearls which had been gathered, and the
+enthusiastic descriptions of the wealth of this new coast.  Knowing
+something of Espanola, and of the Admiral also, and reading in the
+despatches of the turbulent condition of the colony, he had a shrewd idea
+that Columbus's hands would be kept pretty full in Espanola itself, and
+that he would have no opportunity for some time to make any more voyages
+of discovery.  He therefore represented to Fonseca what a pity it would
+be if all this revenue should remain untapped just because one man had
+not time to attend to it, and he proposed that he should take out an
+expedition at his own cost and share the profits with the Crown.
+
+This proposal was too tempting to be refused; unlike the expeditions of
+Columbus, which were all expenditure and no revenue, it promised a chance
+of revenue without any expenditure at all.  The Paria coast, having been
+discovered subsequent to the agreement made with Columbus, was considered
+by Fonseca to be open to private enterprise; and he therefore granted
+Ojeda a licence to go and explore it.  Among those who went with him were
+Amerigo Vespucci and Columbus's old pilot, Juan de la Cosa, as well as
+some of the sailors who had been with the Admiral on the coast of Paria
+and had returned in the caravels which had brought his account of it back
+to Spain.  Ojeda sailed on May 20, 1499; made a landfall some hundreds of
+miles to the eastward of the Orinoco, coasted thence as far as the island
+of Trinidad, and sailed along the northern coast of the peninsula of
+Paria until he came to a country where the natives built their hots on
+piles in the water, and to which he gave the name of Venezuela.  It was
+by his accidental presence on this voyage that Vespucci, the
+meat-contractor, came to give his name to America--a curious story of
+international jealousies, intrigues, lawsuits, and lies which we have not
+the space to deal with here.  After collecting a considerable quantity of
+pearls Ojeda, who was beginning to run short of provisions, turned
+eastward again and sought the coast of Espanola, where we shall presently
+meet with him again.
+
+
+And Ojeda was not the only person in Spain who was enticed by Columbus's
+glowing descriptions to go and look for the pearls of Paria.  There was
+in fact quite a reunion of old friends of his and ours in the western
+ocean, though they went thither in a spirit far different from that of
+ancient friendship.  Pedro Alonso Nino, who had also been on the Paria
+coast with Columbus, who had come home with the returning ships, and
+whose patience (for he was an exceedingly practical man) had perhaps been
+tried by the strange doings of the Admiral in the Gulf of Paria, decided
+that he as well as any one else might go and find some pearls.  Nino is a
+poor man, having worked hard in all his voyagings backwards and forwards
+across the Atlantic; but he has a friend with money, one Luis Guerra, who
+provides him with the funds necessary for fitting out a small caravel
+about the size of his old ship the Nifta.  Guerra, who has the money,
+also has a brother Christoval; and his conditions are that Christoval
+shall be given the command of the caravel.  Practical Niflo does not care
+so long as he reaches the place where the pearls are.  He also applies to
+Fonseca for licence to make discoveries; and, duly receiving it, sails
+from Palos in the beginning of June 1499, hot upon the track of Ojeda.
+
+They did a little quiet discovery, principally in the domain of human
+nature, caroused with the friendly natives, but attended to business all
+the time; with the result that in the following April they were back in
+Spain with a treasure of pearls out of which, after Nifio had been made
+independent for life and Guerra, Christoval, and the rest of them had
+their shares, there remained a handsome sum for the Crown.  An extremely
+practical, businesslike voyage this; full of lessons for our poor
+Christopher, could he but have known and learned them.
+
+
+Yet another of our old friends profited by the Admiral's discovery.  What
+Vincenti Yafiez Pinzon has been doing all these years we have no record;
+living at Palos, perhaps, doing a little of his ordinary coasting
+business, administering the estates of his brother Martin Alonso, and,
+almost for a certainty, talking pretty big about who it was that really
+did all the work in the discovery of the New World.  Out of the obscurity
+of conjecture he emerges into fact in December 1499, when he is found at
+Palos fitting out four caravels for the purpose of exploring farther
+along the coast of the southern mainland.  That he also was after pearls
+is pretty certain; but on the other hand he was more of a sailor than an
+adventurer, was a discoverer at heart, and had no small share of the
+family taste for sea travel.  He took a more southerly course than any of
+the others and struck the coast of America south of the equator on
+January 20, 1500.  He sailed north past the mouths of the Amazon and
+Orinoco through the Gulf of Paria, and reached Espanola in June 1500.
+He only paused there to take in provisions, and sailed to the west in
+search of further discoveries; but he lost two of his caravels in a gale
+and had to put back to Espanola.
+
+He sailed thence for Palos, and reached home in September 1500, having
+added no inconsiderable share to the mass of new geographical knowledge
+that was being accumulated.  In later years he took a high place in the
+maritime world of Spain.
+
+
+And finally, to complete the account of the chief minor discoveries of
+these two busy years, we must mention Pedro Alvarez Cabral of Portugal,
+who was despatched in March 1, 1500 from Lisbon to verify the discoveries
+of Da Gama.  He reached Calicut six months later, losing on the voyage
+four of his caravels and most of his company.  Among the lost was
+Bartholomew Diaz, the first discoverer of the Cape of Good Hope, who was
+on this voyage in a subordinate capacity, and whose bones were left to
+dissolve in the stormy waters that beat round the Cape whose barrier he
+was the first to pass.  The chief event of this voyage, however, was not
+the reaching of Calicut nor the drowning of Diaz (which was chiefly of
+importance to himself, poor soul!) but the discovery of Brazil, which
+Cabral made in following the southerly course too far to the west.
+He landed there, in the Bay of Porto Seguro, on May 1, 1500, and took
+formal possession of the land for the Crown of Portugal, naming it Vera
+Cruz, or the Land of the True Cross.
+
+In the assumption of Columbus and his contemporaries all these doings
+were held to detract from the glory of his own achievements, and were the
+subject of endless affidavits, depositions, quarrels, arguments, proofs
+and claims in the great lawsuit that was in after years carried on
+between the Crown of Spain and the heirs of Columbus concerning his
+titles and revenues.  We, however, may take a different view.  With the
+exception of the discoveries of the Cape of Good Hope and the coast of
+Brazil all these enterprises were directly traceable to Columbus's own
+achievements and were inspired by his example.  The things that a man can
+do in his own person are limited by the laws of time and space; it is
+only example and influence that are infinite and illimitable, and in
+which the spirit of any achievement can find true immortality.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE THIRD VOYAGE-(continued)
+
+It may perhaps be wearisome to the reader to return to the tangled and
+depressing situation in Espanola, but it cannot be half so wearisome as
+it was for Columbus, whom we left enveloped in that dark cloud of error
+and surrender in which he sacrificed his dignity and good faith to the
+impudent demands of a mutinous servant.  To his other troubles in San
+Domingo the presence of this Roldan was now added; and the reinstated
+Alcalde was not long in making use of the victory he had gained.  He bore
+himself with intolerable arrogance and insolence, discharging one of
+Columbus's personal bodyguard on the ground that no one should hold any
+office on the island except with his consent.  He demanded grants of land
+for himself and his followers, which Columbus held himself obliged to
+concede; and the Admiral, further to pacify him, invented a very
+disastrous system of repartimientos, under which certain chiefs were
+relieved from paying tribute on condition of furnishing feudal service to
+the settlers--a system which rapidly developed into the most cruel and
+oppressive kind of slavery.  The Admiral at this time also, in despair of
+keeping things quiet by his old methods of peace and conciliation,
+created a kind of police force which roamed about the island, exacting
+tribute and meting out summary punishment to all defaulters.  Among other
+concessions weakly made to Roldan at this time was the gift of the Crown
+estate of Esperanza, situated in the Vega Real, whither he betook himself
+and embarked on what was nothing more nor less than a despotic reign,
+entirely ignoring the regulations and prerogatives of the Admiral, and
+taking prisoners and administering punishment just as he pleased.  The
+Admiral was helpless, and thought of going back to Spain, but the
+condition of the island was such that he did not dare to leave it.
+Instead, he wrote a long letter to the Sovereigns, full of complaints
+against other people and justifications of himself, in the course of
+which he set forth those quibbling excuses for his capitulation to Roldan
+which we have already heard.  And there was a pathetic request at the end
+of the letter that his son Diego might be sent out to him.  As I have
+said, Columbus was by this time a prematurely old man, and feeling the
+clouds gathering about him, and the loneliness and friendlessness of his
+position at Espanola, he instinctively looked to the next generation for
+help, and to the presence of his own son for sympathy and comfort.
+
+
+It was at this moment (September 5, 1499) that a diversion arose in the
+rumour that four caravels had been seen off the western end of Espanola
+and duly reported to the Admiral; and this announcement was soon followed
+by the news that they were commanded by Ojeda, who was collecting
+dye-wood in the island forests.  Columbus, although he had so far as we
+know had no previous difficulties with Ojeda, had little cause now to
+credit any adventurer with kindness towards himself; and Ojeda's secrecy
+in not reporting himself at San Domingo, and, in fact, his presence on
+the island at all without the knowledge of the Admiral, were sufficient
+evidence that he was there to serve his own ends.  Some gleam of
+Christopher's old cleverness in handling men was--now shown by his
+instructing Roldan to sally forth and bring Ojeda to order.  It was a
+case of setting a thief to catch a thief and, as it turned out, was not
+a bad stroke.  Roldan, nothing loth, sailed round to that part of the
+coast where Ojeda's ships were anchored, and asked to see his licence;
+which was duly shown to him and rather took the wind out of his sails.
+He heard a little gossip from Ojeda, moreover, which had its own
+significance for him.  The Queen was ill; Columbus was in disgrace;
+there was talk of superseding him.  Ojeda promised to sail round to San
+Domingo and report himself; but instead, he sailed to the east along the
+coast of Xaragua, where he got into communication with some discontented
+Spanish settlers and concocted a scheme for leading them to San Domingo
+to demand redress for their imagined grievances.  Roldan, however, who
+had come to look for Ojeda, discovered him at this point; and there
+ensued some very pretty play between the two rascals, chiefly in
+trickery and treachery, such as capturing each other's boats and
+emissaries, laying traps for one another, and taking prisoner one
+another's crews.  The end of it was that Ojeda left the island without
+having reported himself to Columbus, but not before he had completed his
+business--which was that of provisioning his ships and collecting
+dye-wood and slaves.
+
+And so exit Ojeda from the Columbian drama.  Of his own drama only one
+more act remained to be played; which, for the sake of our past interest
+in him, we will mention here.  Chiefly on account of his intimacy with
+Fonseca he was some years later given a governorship in the neighbourhood
+of the Gulf of Darien; Juan de la Cosa accompanying him as unofficial
+partner.  Ojeda has no sooner landed there than he is fighting the
+natives; natives too many for him this time; Ojeda forced to hide in the
+forest, where he finds the body of de la Cosa, who has come by a shocking
+death.  Ojeda afterwards tries to govern his colony, but is no good at
+that; cannot govern his own temper, poor fellow.  Quarrels with his crew,
+is put in irons, carried to Espanola, and dies there (1515) in great
+poverty and eclipse.  One of the many, evidently, who need a strong
+guiding hand, and perish without it.
+
+It really began to seem as though Roldan, having had his fling and
+secured the excessive privileges that he coveted, had decided that
+loyalty to Christopher was for the present the most profitable policy;
+but the mutinous spirit that he had cultivated in his followers for his
+own ends could not be so readily converted into this cheap loyalty.  More
+trouble was yet to come of this rebellion.  There was in the island a
+young Spanish aristocrat, Fernando de Guevara by name, one of the many
+who had come out in the hope of enjoying himself and making a fortune
+quickly, whose more than outrageously dissolute life in San Domingo had
+caused Columbus to banish him thence; and he was now living near Xaragua
+with a cousin of his, Adrian de Moxeca, who had been one of the
+ringleaders in Roldan's conspiracy.  Within this pleasant province of
+Xaragua lived, as we have seen, Anacaona, the sister of Caonabo, the Lord
+of the House of Gold.  She herself was a beautiful woman, called by her
+subjects Bloom of the Gold; and she had a still more beautiful daughter,
+Higuamota, who appears in history, like so many other women, on account
+of her charms and what came of them.
+
+Of pretty Higuamota, who once lived like a dryad among the groves of
+Espanola and has been dead now for so long, we know nothing except that
+she was beautiful, which, although she doubtless did not think so while
+she lived, turns out to have been the most important thing about her.
+Young Guevara, coming to stay with his cousin Adrian, becomes a visitor
+at the house of Anacaona; sees the pretty daughter and falls in love with
+her.  Other people also, it appears, have been in a similar state, but
+Higuamota is not very accessible; a fact which of course adds to the
+interest of the chase, and turns dissolute Fernando's idle preference
+into something like a passion.  Roldan, who has also had an eye upon her,
+and apparently no more than an eye, discovers that Fernando, in order to
+gratify his passion, is proposing to go the absurd length of marrying the
+young woman, and has sent for a priest for that purpose.  Roldan,
+instigated thereto by primitive forces, thinks it would be impolitic for
+a Spanish grandee to marry with a heathen; very well, then, Fernando will
+have her baptized--nothing simpler when water and a priest are handy.
+Roldan, seeing that the young man is serious, becomes peremptory, and
+orders him to leave Xaragua.  Fernando ostentatiously departs, but is
+discovered a little later actually living in the house of Anacaona, who
+apparently is sympathetic to Love's young dream.  Once more ordered away,
+this time with anger and threats, Guevara changes his tune and implores
+Roldan to let him stay, promising that he will give up the marriage
+project and also, no doubt, the no-marriage project.  But Guevara has
+sympathisers.  The mutineers have not forgiven Roldan for deserting them
+and becoming a lawful instead of an unlawful ruler.  They are all on the
+side of Guevara, who accordingly moves to the next stage of island
+procedure, and sets on foot some kind of plot to kill Roldan and the
+Admiral.  Fortunately where there is treachery it generally works both
+ways; this plot came to the ears of the authorities; the conspirators
+were arrested and sent to San Domingo.
+
+This action came near to bringing the whole island about Columbus's ears.
+Adrian de Moxeca was furious at what he conceived to be the treachery of
+Roldan, for Roldan was in such a pass that the barest act of duty was
+necessarily one of treachery to his friends.  Moxeca took the place of
+chief rebel that Roldan had vacated; rallied the mutineers round him, and
+was on the point of starting for Concepcion, one of the chain of forts
+across the island where Columbus was at present staying, when the Admiral
+discovered his plan.  All that was strongest and bravest in him rose up
+at this menace.  His weakness and cowardice were forgotten; and with the
+spirit of an old sea-lion he sallied forth against the mutineers.  He had
+only a dozen men on whom he could rely, but he armed them well and
+marched secretly and swiftly under cloud of night to the place where
+Moxeca and his followers were encamped in fond security, and there
+suddenly fell upon them, capturing Moxeca and the chief ringleaders.  The
+rest scattered in terror and escaped.  Moxeca was hurried off to the
+battlements of San Domingo and there, in the very midst of a longdrawn
+trembling confession to the priest in attendance, was swung off the
+ramparts and hanged.  The others, although also condemned to death, were
+kept in irons in the fortress, while Christopher and Bartholomew, roused
+at last to vigorous action, scoured the island hunting down the
+remainder, killing some who resisted, hanging others on the spot, and
+imprisoning the remainder at San Domingo.
+
+After these prompt measures peace reigned for a time in the island, and
+Columbus was perhaps surprised to see what wholesome effects could be
+produced by a little exemplary severity.  The natives, who under the
+weakness of his former rule had been discontented and troublesome, now
+settled down submissively to their yoke; the Spaniards began to work in
+earnest on their farms; and there descended upon island affairs a brief
+St. Martin's Summer of peace before the final winter of blight and death
+set in.  The Admiral, however, was obviously in precarious health; his
+ophthalmia became worse, and the stability of his mind suffered.  He had
+dreams and visions of divine help and comfort, much needed by him, poor
+soul, in all his tribulations and adversities.  Even yet the cup was not
+full.
+
+
+We must now turn back to Spain and try to form some idea of the way in
+which the doings of Columbus were being regarded there if we are to
+understand the extraordinary calamity that was soon to befall him.  It
+must be remembered first of all that his enterprise had never really been
+popular from the first.  It was carried out entirely by the energy and
+confidence of Queen Isabella, who almost alone of those in power believed
+in it as a thing which was certain to bring ultimate glory, as well as
+riches and dominion, to Spain and the Catholic faith.  As we have seen,
+there had been a brief ebullition of popular favour when Columbus
+returned from his first voyage, but it was a popularity excited solely by
+the promises of great wealth that Columbus was continually holding forth.
+When those promises were not immediately fulfilled popular favour
+subsided; and when the adventurers who had gone out to the new islands on
+the strength of those promises had returned with shattered health and
+empty pockets there was less chance than ever of the matter being
+regarded in its proper light by the people of Spain.  Columbus had either
+found a gold mine or he had found nothing--that was the way in which the
+matter was popularly regarded.  Those who really understood the
+significance of his discoveries and appreciated their scientific
+importance did not merely stay at home in Spain and raise a clamour; they
+went out in the Admiral's footsteps and continued the work that he had
+begun.  Even King Ferdinand, for all his cleverness, had never understood
+the real lines on which the colony should have been developed.  His eyes
+were fixed upon Europe; he saw in the discoveries of Columbus a means
+rather than an end; and looked to them simply as a source of revenue with
+the help of which he could carry on his ambitious schemes.  And when, as
+other captains made voyages confirming and extending the work of
+Columbus, he did begin to understand the significance of what had been
+done, he realised too late that the Admiral had been given powers far in
+excess of what was prudent or sensible.
+
+During all the time that Columbus and his brothers were struggling with
+the impossible situation at Espanola there was but one influence at work
+in Spain, and that was entirely destructive to the Admiral.  Every
+caravel that came from the New World brought two things.  It brought a
+crowd of discontented colonists, many of whom had grave reasons for their
+discontent; and it brought letters from the Admiral in which more and
+more promises were held out, but in which also querulous complaints
+against this and that person, and against the Spanish settlers generally,
+were set forth at wearisome length.  It is not remarkable that the people
+of Spain, even those who were well disposed towards Columbus, began to
+wonder if these two things were not cause and effect.  The settlers may
+have been a poor lot, but they were the material with which Columbus had
+to deal; he had powers enough, Heaven knew, powers of life and death; and
+the problem began to resolve itself in the minds of those at the head of
+affairs in Spain in the following terms.  Given an island, rich and
+luxuriant beyond the dreams of man; given a native population easily
+subdued; given settlers of one kind or another; and given a Viceroy with
+unlimited powers--could he or could he not govern the island?  It was a
+by no means unfair way of putting the case, and there is little justice
+in the wild abuse that has been hurled at Ferdinand and Isabella on this
+ground.  Columbus may have been the greatest genius in the world; very
+possibly they admitted it; but in the meanwhile Spain was resounding with
+the cries of the impoverished colonists who had returned from his ocean
+Paradise.  No doubt the Sovereigns ignored them as much as they possibly
+could; but when it came to ragged emaciated beggars coming in batches of
+fifty at a time and sitting in the very courts of the Alhambra,
+exhibiting bunches of grapes and saying that that was all they could
+afford to live upon since they had come back from the New World, some
+notice had to be taken of it.  Even young Diego and Ferdinand, the
+Admiral's sons, came in for the obloquy with which his name was
+associated; the colonial vagabonds hung round the portals of the palace
+and cried out upon them as they passed so that they began to dislike
+going out.  Columbus, as we know, had plenty of enemies who had access to
+the King and Queen; and never had enemies an easier case to urge.  Money
+was continually being spent on ships and supplies; where was the return
+for it?  What about the Ophir of Solomon?  What about the Land of Spices?
+What about the pearls?  And if you want to add a touch of absurdity, what
+about the Garden of Eden and the Great Khan?
+
+To the most impartial eyes it began to appear as though Columbus were
+either an impostor or a fool.  There is no evidence that Ferdinand and
+Isabella thought that he was an impostor or that he had wilfully deceived
+them; but there is some evidence that they began to have an inkling as to
+what kind of a man he really was, and as to his unfitness for governing a
+colony.  Once more something had to be done.  The sending out of a
+commissioner had not been a great success before, but in the difficulties
+of the situation it seemed the only thing.  Still there was a good deal
+of hesitation, and it is probable that Isabella was not yet fully
+convinced of the necessity for this grave step.  This hesitation was
+brought to an end by the arrival from Espanola of the ships bearing the
+followers of Roldan, who had been sent back under the terms of Columbus's
+feeble capitulation.  The same ships brought a great quantity of slaves,
+which the colonists were able to show had been brought by the permission
+of the Admiral; they carried native girls also, many of them pregnant,
+many with new-born babies; and these also came with the permission of the
+Admiral.  The ships further carried the Admiral's letter complaining of
+the conspiracy of Roldan and containing the unfortunate request for a
+further licence to extend the slave trade.  These circumstances were
+probably enough to turn the scale of Isabella's opinion against the
+Admiral's administration.  The presence of the slaves particularly
+angered her kind womanly heart.  "What right has he to give away my
+vassals?"  she exclaimed, and ordered that they should all be sent back,
+and that in addition all the other slaves who had come home should be
+traced and sent back; although of course it was impossible to carry out
+this last order.
+
+At any rate there was no longer any hesitation about sending out a
+commissioner, and the Sovereigns chose one Francisco de Bobadilla, an
+official of the royal household, for the performance of this difficult
+mission.  As far as we can decipher him he was a very ordinary official
+personage; prejudiced, it is possible, against an administration that had
+produced such disastrous results and which offended his orderly official
+susceptibilities; otherwise to be regarded as a man exactly honest in the
+performance of what he conceived to be his duties, and entirely
+indisposed to allow sentiment or any other extraneous matter to interfere
+with such due performance.  We shall have need to remember, when we see
+him at work in Espanola, that he was not sent out to judge between
+Columbus and his Sovereigns or between Columbus and the world, but to
+investigate the condition of the colony and to take what action he
+thought necessary.  The commission which he bore to the Admiral was in
+the following terms:
+
+     "The King and the Queen: Don Christopher Columbus, our Admiral of
+     the Ocean-sea.  We have directed Francisco de Bobadilla, the bearer
+     of this, to speak to you for us of certain things which he will
+     mention: we request you to give him faith and credence and to obey
+     him.  From Madrid, May 26, '99.  I THE KING.  I THE QUEEN.  By their
+     command.  Miguel Perez de Almazan."
+
+In addition Bobadilla bore with him papers and authorities giving him
+complete control and possession of all the forts, arms, and royal
+property in the island, in case it should be necessary for him to use
+them; and he also had a number of blank warrants which were signed, but
+the substance of which was not filled in.  This may seem very dreadful to
+us, with our friendship for the poor Admiral; but considering the grave
+state of affairs as represented to the King and Queen, who had their
+duties to their colonial subjects as well as to Columbus, there was
+nothing excessive in it.  If they were to send out a commissioner at all,
+and if they were satisfied, as presumably they were, that the man they
+had chosen was trustworthy, it was only right to make his authority
+absolute.  Thus equipped Francisco de Bobadilla sailed from Spain in July
+1500.
+
+
+
+
+TOWARDS THE SUNSET
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+DEGRADATION
+
+The first things seen by Francisco de Bobadilla when he entered the
+harbour of San Domingo on the morning of the 23rd of August 1500 were the
+bodies of several Spaniards, hanging from a gibbet near the water-side
+--a grim confirmation of what he had heard about the troubled state of the
+island.  While he was waiting for the tide so that he might enter the
+harbour a boat put off from shore to ascertain who was on board the
+caravels; and it was thus informally that Bobadilla first announced that
+he had come to examine into the state of the island.  Columbus was not at
+San Domingo, but was occupied in settling the affairs of the Vega Real;
+Bartholomew also was absent, stamping out the last smouldering embers of
+rebellion in Xaragua; and only James was in command to deal with this
+awkward situation.
+
+Bobadilla did not go ashore the first day, but remained on board his ship
+receiving the visits of various discontented colonists who, getting early
+wind of the purpose of his visit, lost no time in currying favour with
+him, Probably he heard enough that first day to have damned the
+administration of a dozen islands; but also we must allow him some
+interest in the wonderful and strange sights that he was seeing; for
+Espanola, which has perhaps grown wearisome to us, was new to him.  He
+had brought with him an armed body-guard of twenty-five men, and in the
+other caravel were the returned slaves, babies and all, under the charge
+of six friars.  On the day following his arrival Bobadilla landed and
+heard mass in state, afterwards reading out his commission to the
+assembled people.  Evidently he had received a shocking impression of the
+state of affairs in the island; that is the only explanation of the
+action suddenly taken by him, for his first public act was to demand from
+James the release of all the prisoners in the fortress, in order that
+they and their accusers should appear before him.
+
+James is in a difficulty; and, mule-like, since he does not know which
+way to turn, stands stock still.  He can do nothing, he says, without the
+Admiral's consent.  The next day Bobadilla, again hearing mass in state,
+causes further documents to be read showing that a still greater degree
+of power had been entrusted to his hands.  Mule-like, James still stands
+stock still; the greatest power on earth known to him is his eldest
+brother, and he will not, positively dare not, be moved by anything less
+than that.  He refuses to give up the prisoners on any grounds
+whatsoever, and Bobadilla has to take the fortress by assault--an easy
+enough matter since the resistance is but formal.
+
+The next act of Bobadilla's is not quite so easy to understand.  He
+quartered himself in Columbus's house; that perhaps was reasonable enough
+since there may not have been another house in the settlement fit to
+receive him; but he also, we are told, took possession of all his papers,
+public and private, and also seized the Admiral's store of money and
+began to pay his debts with it for him, greatly to the satisfaction of
+San Domingo.  There is an element of the comic in this interpretation of
+a commissioner's powers; and it seemed as though he meant to wind up the
+whole Columbus business, lock, stock, and barrel.  It would not be in
+accordance with our modern ideas of honour that a man's private papers
+should be seized unless he were suspected of treachery or some criminal
+act; but apparently Bobadilla regarded it as necessary.  We must remember
+that although he had only heard one side of the case it was evidently so
+positive, and the fruits of misgovernment were there so visibly before
+his eyes, that no amount of evidence in favour of Columbus would make him
+change his mind as to his fitness to govern.  Poor James, witnessing
+these things and unable to do anything to prevent them, finds himself
+suddenly relieved from the tension of the situation.  Since inaction is
+his note, he shall be indulged in it; and he is clapped in irons and cast
+into prison.  James can hardly believe the evidence of his senses.  He
+has been studying theology lately, it appears, with a view to entering
+the Church and perhaps being some day made Bishop of Espanola, but this
+new turn of affairs looks as though there were to be an end of all
+careers for him, military and ecclesiastical alike.
+
+Christopher at Fort Concepcion had early news of the arrival of
+Bobadilla, but in the hazy state of his mind he did not regard it as an
+event of sufficient importance to make his immediate presence at San
+Domingo advisable.  The name of Bobadilla conveyed nothing to him; and
+when he heard that he had come to investigate, he thought that he came
+to set right some disputed questions between the Admiral and other
+navigators as to the right of visiting Espanola and the Paria coast.
+As the days went on, however, he heard more disquieting rumours; grew at
+last uneasy, and moved to a fort nearer San Domingo in case it should be
+necessary for him to go there.  An officer met him on the road bearing
+the proclamations issued by Bobadilla, but not the message from the
+Sovereigns requiring the Admiral's obedience to the commissioner.
+Columbus wrote to the commissioner a curious letter, which is not
+preserved, in which he sought to gain time; excusing himself from
+responsibility for the condition of the island, and assuring Bobadilla
+that, as he intended to return to Spain almost immediately, he
+(Bobadilla) would have ample opportunity for exercising his command in
+his absence.  He also wrote to the Franciscan friars who had accompanied
+Bobadilla asking them to use their influence--the Admiral having some
+vague connection with the Franciscan order since his days at La Rabida.
+
+No reply came to any of these letters, and Columbus sent word that he
+still regarded his authority as paramount in the island.  For reply to
+this he received the Sovereigns' message to him which we have seen,
+commanding him to put himself under the direction of Bobadilla.  There
+was no mistaking this; there was the order in plain words; and with I
+know not what sinkings of heart Columbus at last set out for San Domingo.
+Bobadilla had expected resistance, but the Admiral, whatever his faults,
+knew how to behave with, dignity in a humiliating position; and he came
+into the city unattended on August 23, 1500.  On the outskirts of the
+town he was met by Bobadilla's guards, arrested, put in chains, and
+lodged in the fortress, the tower of which exists to this day.  He seemed
+to himself to be the victim of a particularly petty and galling kind of
+treachery, for it was his own cook, a man called Espinoza, who riveted
+his gyves upon him.
+
+There remained Bartholomew to be dealt with, and he, being at large and
+in command of the army, might not have proved such an easy conquest, but
+that Christopher, at Bobadilla's request, wrote and advised him to submit
+to arrest without any resistance.  Whether Bartholomew acquiesced or not
+is uncertain; what is certain is that he also was captured and placed in
+irons, and imprisoned on one of the caravels.  James in one caravel,
+Bartholomew in another, and Christopher in the fortress, and all in
+chains--this is what it has come to with the three sons of old Domenico.
+
+The trial was now begun, if trial that can be called which takes place in
+the absence of the culprit or his representative.  It was rather the
+hearing of charges against Christopher and his brothers; and we may be
+sure that every discontented feeling in the island found voice and was
+formulated into some incriminating charge.  Columbus was accused of
+oppressing the Spanish settlers by making them work at harsh and
+unnecessary labour; of cutting down their allowance of food, and
+restricting their liberty; of punishing them cruelly and unduly; of
+waging wars unjustly with the natives; of interfering with the conversion
+of the natives by hastily collecting them and sending them home as
+slaves; of having secreted treasures which should have been delivered to
+the Sovereigns--this last charge, like some of the others, true.  He had
+an accumulation of pearls of which he had given no account to Fonseca,
+and the possession of which he excused by the queer statement that he was
+waiting to announce it until he could match it with an equal amount of
+gold!  He was accused of hating the Spaniards, who were represented as
+having risen in the late rebellion in order to protect the natives and
+avenge their own wrongs--, and generally of having abused his office in
+order to enrich his own family and gratify his own feelings.  Bobadilla
+appeared to believe all these charges; or perhaps he recognised their
+nature, and yet saw that there was a sufficient degree of truth in them
+to disqualify the Admiral in his position as Viceroy.  In all these
+affairs his right-hand man was Roldan, whose loyalty to Columbus, as we
+foresaw, had been short-lived.  Roldan collects evidence; Roldan knows
+where he can lay his hands on this witness; Roldan produces this and that
+proof; Roldan is here, there, and everywhere--never had Bobadilla found
+such a useful, obliging man as Roldan.  With his help Bobadilla soon
+collected a sufficient weight of evidence to justify in his own mind his
+sending Columbus home to Spain, and remaining himself in command of the
+island.
+
+The caravels having been made ready, and all the evidence drawn up and
+documented, it only remained to embark the prisoners and despatch them to
+Spain.  Columbus, sitting in his dungeon, suffering from gout and
+ophthalmic as well as from misery and humiliation, had heard no news;
+but he had heard the shouting of the people in the streets, the beating
+of drums and blowing of horns, and his own name and that of his brothers
+uttered in derision; and he made sure that he was going to be executed.
+Alonso de Villegio, a nephew of Bishop Fonseca's, had been appointed to
+take charge of the ships returning to Spain; and when he came into the
+prison the Admiral thought his last hour had come.
+
+"Villegio," he asked sadly, "where are you taking me?"
+
+"I am taking you to the ship, your Excellency, to embark," replied the
+other.
+
+"To embark?" repeated the Admiral incredulously.  "Villegio! are you
+speaking the truth?"
+
+"By the life of your Excellency what I say is true," was the reply, and
+the news came with a wave of relief to the panic-stricken heart of the
+Admiral.
+
+In the middle of October the caravels sailed from San Domingo, and the
+last sounds heard by Columbus from the land of his discovery were the
+hoots and jeers and curses hurled after him by the treacherous,
+triumphant rabble on the shore.  Villegio treated him and his brothers
+with as much kindness as possible, and offered, when they had got well
+clear of Espanola, to take off the Admiral's chains.  But Columbus, with
+a fine counterstroke of picturesque dignity, refused to have them
+removed.  Already, perhaps, he had realised that his subjection to this
+cruel and quite unnecessary indignity would be one of the strongest
+things in his favour when he got to Spain, and he decided to suffer as
+much of it as he could.  "My Sovereigns commanded me to submit to what
+Bobadilla should order.  By his authority I wear these chains, and I
+shall continue to wear them until they are removed by order of the
+Sovereigns; and I will keep them afterwards as reminders of the reward I
+have received for my services."  Thus the Admiral, beginning to pick up
+his spirits again, and to feel the better for the sea air.
+
+The voyage home was a favourable one and in the course of it Columbus
+wrote the following letter to a friend of his at Court, Dona Juana de la
+Torre, who had been nurse to Prince Juan and was known by him to be a
+favourite of the Queen:
+
+     "MOST VIRTUOUS LADY,--Though my complaint of the world is new, its
+     habit of ill-using is very ancient.  I have had a thousand struggles
+     with it, and have thus far withstood them all, but now neither arms
+     nor counsels avail me, and it cruelly keeps me under water.  Hope in
+     the Creator of all men sustains me: His help was always very ready;
+     on another occasion, and not long ago, when I was still more
+     overwhelmed, He raised me with His right arm, saying, 'O man of
+     little faith, arise: it is I; be not afraid.'
+
+     "I came with so much cordial affection to serve these Princes, and
+     have served them with such service, as has never been heard of or
+     seen.
+
+     "Of the new heaven and earth which our Lord made, when Saint John
+     was writing the Apocalypse, after what was spoken by the mouth of
+     Isaiah, He made me the messenger, and showed me where it lay.  In
+     all men there was disbelief, but to the Queen, my Lady, He gave the
+     spirit of understanding, and great courage, and made her heiress of
+     all, as a dear and much loved daughter.  I went to take possession
+     of all this in her royal name.  They sought to make amends to her
+     for the ignorance they had all shown by passing over their little
+     knowledge and talking of obstacles and expenses.  Her Highness, on
+     the other hand, approved of it, and supported it as far as she was
+     able.
+
+     "Seven years passed in discussion and nine in execution.  During
+     this time very remarkable and noteworthy things occurred whereof no
+     idea at all had been formed.  I have arrived at, and am in, such a
+     condition that there is no person so vile but thinks he may insult
+     me: he shall be reckoned in the world as valour itself who is
+     courageous enough not to consent to it.
+
+     "If I were to steal the Indies or the land which lies towards them,
+     of which I am now speaking, from the altar of Saint Peter, and give
+     them to the Moors, they could not show greater enmity towards me in
+     Spain.  Who would believe such a thing where there was always so
+     much magnanimity?
+
+     "I should have much desired to free myself from this affair had it
+     been honourable towards my Queen to do so.  The support of our Lord
+     and of her Highness made me persevere: and to alleviate in some
+     measure the sorrows which death had caused her, I undertook a fresh
+     voyage to the new heaven and earth which up to that time had
+     remained hidden; and if it is not held there in esteem like the
+     other voyages to the Indies, that is no wonder, because it came to
+     be looked upon as my work.
+
+     "The Holy Spirit inflamed Saint Peter and twelve others with him,
+     and they all contended here below, and their toils and hardships
+     were many, but last of all they gained the victory.
+
+     "This voyage to Paria I thought would somewhat appease them on
+     account of the pearls, and of the discovery of gold in Espanola.
+     I ordered the pearls to be collected and fished for by people with
+     whom an arrangement was made that I should return for them, and, as
+     I understood, they were to be measured by the bushel.  If I did not
+     write about this to their Highnesses, it was because I wished to
+     have first of all done the same thing with the gold.
+
+     "The result to me in this has been the same as in many other things;
+     I should not have lost them nor my honour, if I had sought my own
+     advantage, and had allowed Espanola to be ruined, or if my
+     privileges and contracts had been observed.  And I say just the same
+     about the gold which I had then collected, and [for] which with such
+     great afflictions and toils I have, by divine power, almost
+     perfected [the arrangements].
+
+     "When I went from Paria I found almost half the people from Espanola
+     in revolt, and they have waged war against me until now, as against
+     a Moor; and the Indians on the other side grievously [harassed me].
+     At this time Hojeda arrived and tried to put the finishing stroke:
+     he said that their Highnesses had sent him with promises of gifts,
+     franchises and pay: he gathered together a great band, for in the
+     whole of Espanola there are very few save vagabonds, and not one
+     with wife and children.  This Hojeda gave me great trouble; he was
+     obliged to depart, and left word that he would soon return with more
+     ships and people, and that he had left the Royal person of the
+     Queen, our Lady, at the point of death.  Then Vincente Yanez arrived
+     with four caravels; there was disturbance and mistrust but no
+     mischief: the Indians talked of many others at the Cannibals
+     [Caribbee Islands] and in Paria; and afterwards spread the news of
+     six other caravels, which were brought by a brother of the Alcalde,
+     but it was with malicious intent.  This occurred at the very last,
+     when the hope that their Highnesses would ever send any ships to the
+     Indies was almost abandoned, nor did we expect them; and it was
+     commonly reported that her Highness was dead.
+
+     "A certain Adrian about this time endeavoured to rise in rebellion
+     again, as he had done previously, but our Lord did not permit his
+     evil purpose to succeed.  I had purposed in myself never to touch a
+     hair of anybody's head, but I lament to say that with this man,
+     owing to his ingratitude, it was not possible to keep that resolve
+     as I had intended: I should not have done less to my brother, if he
+     had sought to kill me, and steal the dominion which my King and
+     Queen had given me in trust.
+
+     "This Adrian, as it appears, had sent Don Ferdinand to Xaragua to
+     collect some of his followers, and there a dispute arose with the
+     Alcalde from which a deadly contest ensued, and he [Adrian] did not
+     effect his purpose.  The Alcalde seized him and a part of his band,
+     and the fact was that he would have executed them if I had not
+     prevented it; they were kept prisoners awaiting a caravel in which
+     they might depart.  The news of Hojeda which I told them made them
+     lose the hope that he would now come again.
+
+     "For six months I had been prepared to return to their Highnesses
+     with the good news of the gold, and to escape from governing a
+     dissolute people Who fear neither God nor their King and Queen,
+     being full of vices and wickedness.
+
+     "I could have paid the people in full with six hundred thousand, and
+     for this purpose I had four millions of tenths and somewhat more,
+     besides the third of the gold.
+
+     "Before my departure I many times begged their Highnesses to send
+     there, at my expense, some one to take charge of the administration
+     of justice; and after finding the Alcalde in arms I renewed my
+     supplications to have either some troops or at least some servant of
+     theirs with letters patent; for my reputation is such that even if I
+     build churches and hospitals, they will always be called dens of
+     thieves.
+
+     "They did indeed make provision at last, but it was the very
+     contrary of what the matter demanded: it may be successful, since it
+     was according to their good pleasure.
+
+     "I was there for two years without being able to gain a decree of
+     favour for myself or for those who went there, yet this man brought
+     a coffer full: whether they will all redound to their [Highnesses]
+     service, God knows.  Indeed, to begin with, there are exemptions for
+     twenty years, which is a man's lifetime; and gold is collected to
+     such an extent that there was one person who became worth five marks
+     in four hours; whereof I will speak more fully later on.
+
+     "If it would please their Highnesses to remove the grounds of a
+     common saying of those who know my labours, that the calumny of the
+     people has done me more harm than much service and the maintenance
+     of their [Highnesses] property and dominion has done me good, it
+     would be a charity, and I should be re-established in my honour, and
+     it would be talked about all over the world: for the undertaking is
+     of such a nature that it must daily become more famous and in higher
+     esteem.
+
+     "When the Commander Bobadilla came to Santo Domingo, I was at La
+     Vega, and the Adelantado at Xaragua, where that Adrian had made a
+     stand, but then all was quiet, and the land rich and all men at
+     peace.  On the second day after his arrival, he created himself
+     Governor, and appointed officers and made executions, and proclaimed
+     immunities of gold and tenths and in general of everything else for
+     twenty years, which is a man's lifetime, and that he came to pay
+     everybody in full up to that day, even though they had not rendered
+     service; and he publicly gave notice that, as for me, he had charge
+     to send me in irons, and my brothers likewise, as he has done, and
+     that I should nevermore return thither, nor any other of my family:
+     alleging a thousand disgraceful and discourteous things about me.
+     All this took place on the second day after his arrival, as I have
+     said, and while I was absent at a distance, without my knowing
+     either of him or of his arrival.
+
+     "Some letters of their Highnesses signed in blank, of which he
+     brought a number, he filled up and sent to the Alcalde and to his
+     company with favours and commendations: to me he never sent either
+     letter or messenger, nor has he done so to this day.  Imagine what
+     any one holding my office would think when one who endeavoured to
+     rob their Highnesses, and who has done so much evil and mischief, is
+     honoured and favoured, while he who maintained it at such risks is
+     degraded.
+
+     "When I heard this I thought that this affair would be like that of
+     Hojeda or one of the others, but I restrained myself when I learnt
+     for certain from the friars that their Highnesses had sent him.  I
+     wrote to him that his arrival was welcome, and that I was prepared
+     to go to the Court and had sold all I possessed by auction; and that
+     with respect to the immunities he should not be hasty, for both that
+     matter and the government I would hand over to him immediately as
+     smooth as my palm.  And I wrote to the same effect to the friars,
+     but neither he nor they gave me any answer.  On the contrary, he put
+     himself in a warlike attitude, and compelled all who went there to
+     take an oath to him as Governor; and they told me that it was for
+     twenty years.
+
+     "Directly I knew of those immunities, I thought that I would repair
+     such a great error and that he would be pleased, for he gave them
+     without the need or occasion necessary in so vast a matter: and he
+     gave to vagabond people what would have been excessive for a man who
+     had brought wife and children.  So I announced by word and letters
+     that he could not use his patents because mine were those in force;
+     and I showed them the immunities which John Aguado brought.
+
+     "All this was done by me in order to gain time, so that their
+     Highnesses might be informed of the condition of the country, and
+     that they might have an opportunity of issuing fresh commands as to
+     what would best promote their service in that respect.
+
+     "It is useless to publish such immunities in the Indies: to the
+     settlers who have taken up residence it is a pure gain, for the best
+     lands are given to them, and at a low valuation they will be worth
+     two-hundred thousand at the end of the four years when the period of
+     residence is ended, without their digging a spadeful in them.  I
+     would not speak thus if the settlers were married, but there are not
+     six among them all who are not on the look-out to gather what they
+     can and depart speedily.  It would be a good thing if they should go
+     from Castile, and also if it were known who and what they are, and
+     if the country could be settled with honest people.
+
+     "I had agreed with those settlers that they should pay the third of
+     the gold, and the tenths, and this at their own request; and they
+     received it as a great favour from their Highnesses.  I reproved
+     them when I heard that they ceased to do this, and hoped that the
+     Commander would do likewise, and he did the contrary.
+
+     "He incensed them against me by saying that I wanted to deprive them
+     of what their Highnesses had given them; and he endeavoured to set
+     them at variance with me, and did so; and he induced them to write
+     to their Highnesses that they should never again send me back to the
+     government, and I likewise make the same supplication to them for
+     myself and for my whole family, as long as there are not different
+     inhabitants.  And he together with them ordered inquisitions
+     concerning me for wickednesses the like whereof were never known in
+     hell.  Our Lord, who rescued Daniel and the three children, is
+     present with the same wisdom and power as He had then, and with the
+     same means, if it should please Him and be in accordance with His
+     will.
+
+     "I should know how to remedy all this, and the rest of what has been
+     said and has taken place since I have been in the Indies, if my
+     disposition would allow me to seek my own advantage, and if it
+     seemed honourable to me to do so, but the maintenance of justice and
+     the extension of the dominion of her Highness has hitherto kept me
+     down.  Now that so much gold is found, a dispute arises as to which
+     brings more profit, whether to go about robbing or to go to the
+     mines.  A hundred castellanos are as easily obtained for a woman as
+     for a farm, and it is very general, and there are plenty of dealers
+     who go about looking for girls: those from nine to ten are now in
+     demand, and for all ages a good price must be paid.
+
+     "I assert that the violence of the calumny of turbulent persons has
+     injured me more than my services have profited me; which is a bad
+     example for the present and for the future.  I take my oath that a
+     number of men have gone to the Indies who did not deserve water in
+     the sight of God and of the world; and now they are returning
+     thither, and leave is granted them.
+
+     "I assert that when I declared that the Commander could not grant
+     immunities, I did what he desired, although I told him that it was
+     to cause delay until their Highnesses should, receive information
+     from the country, and should command anew what might be for their
+     service.
+
+     "He excited their enmity against me, and he seems, from what took
+     place and from his behaviour, to have come as my enemy and as a very
+     vehement one; or else the report is true that he has spent much to
+     obtain this employment.  I do not know more about it than what I
+     hear.  I never heard of an inquisitor gathering rebels together and
+     accepting them, and others devoid of credit and unworthy of it, as
+     witnesses against their Governor.
+
+     "If their Highnesses were to make a general inquisition there, I
+     assure you that they would look upon it as a great wonder that the
+     island does not founder.
+
+     "I think your Ladyship will remember that when, after losing my
+     sails, I was driven into Lisbon by a tempest, I was falsely accused
+     of having gone there to the King in order to give him the Indies.
+     Their Highnesses afterwards learned the contrary, and that it was
+     entirely malicious.
+
+     "Although I may know but little, I do not think any one considers me
+     so stupid as not to know that even if the Indies were mine I could
+     not uphold myself without the help of some Prince.
+
+     "If this be so, where could I find better support and security than
+     in the King and Queen, our Lords, who have raised me from nothing to
+     such great honour, and are the most exalted Princes of the world on
+     sea and on land, and who consider that I have rendered them service,
+     and who preserve to me my privileges and rewards: and if any one
+     infringes them, their Highnesses increase them still more, as was
+     seen in the case of John Aguado; and they order great honour to be
+     conferred upon me, and, as I have already said, their Highnesses
+     have received service from me, and keep my sons in their household;
+     all which could by no means happen with another prince, for where
+     there is no affection, everything else fails.
+
+     "I have now spoken thus in reply to a malicious slander, but against
+     my will, as it is a thing which should not recur to memory even in
+     dreams; for the Commander Bobadilla maliciously seeks in this way to
+     set his own conduct and actions in a brighter light; but I shall
+     easily show him that his small knowledge and great cowardice,
+     together with his inordinate cupidity, have caused him to fail
+     therein.
+
+     "I have already said that I wrote to him and to the friars, and
+     immediately set out, as I told him, almost alone, because all the
+     people were with the Adelantado, and likewise in order to prevent
+     suspicion on his part.  When he heard this, he seized Don Diego and
+     sent him on board a caravel loaded with irons, and did the same to
+     me upon my arrival, and afterwards to the Adelantado when he came;
+     nor did I speak to him any more, nor to this day has he allowed any
+     one to speak to me; and I take my oath that I cannot understand why
+     I am made a prisoner.
+
+     "He made it his first business to seize the gold, which he did
+     without measuring or weighing it and in my absence; he said that he
+     wanted it to pay the people, and according to what I hear he
+     assigned the chief part to himself and sent fresh exchangers for the
+     exchanges.  Of this gold I had put aside certain specimens, very big
+     lumps, like the eggs of geese, hens, and pullets, and of many other
+     shapes, which some persons had collected in a short space of time,
+     in order that their Highnesses might be gladdened, and might
+     comprehend the business upon seeing a quantity of large stones full
+     of gold.  This collection was the first to be given away, with
+     malicious intent, so that their Highnesses should not hold the
+     matter in any account until he has feathered his nest, which he is
+     in great haste to do.  Gold which is for melting diminishes at the
+     fire: some chains which would weigh about twenty marks have never
+     been seen again.
+
+     "I have been more distressed about this matter of the gold than even
+     about the pearls, because I have not brought it to her Highness.
+
+     "The Commander at once set to work upon anything which he thought
+     would injure me.  I have already said that with six hundred thousand
+     I could pay every one without defrauding anybody, and that I had
+     more than four millions of tenths and constabulary [dues] without
+     touching the gold.  He made some free gifts which are ridiculous,
+     though I believe that he began by assigning the chief part to
+     himself.  Their Highnesses will find it out when they order an
+     account to be obtained from him, especially if I should be present
+     thereat.  He does nothing but reiterate that a large sum is owing,
+     and it is what I have said, and even less.  I have been much
+     distressed that there should be sent concerning me an inquisitor who
+     is aware that if the inquisition which he returns is very grave he
+     will remain in possession of the government.
+
+     "Would that it had pleased our Lord that their Highnesses had sent
+     him or some one else two years ago, for I know that I should now be
+     free from scandal and infamy, and that my honour would not be taken
+     from me, nor should I lose it.  God is just, and will make known the
+     why and the wherefore.
+
+     "They judge me over there as they would a governor who had gone to
+     Sicily, or to a city or town placed under regular government, and
+     where the laws can be observed in their entirety without fear of
+     ruining everything; and I am greatly injured thereby.
+
+     "I ought to be judged as a captain who went from Spain to the Indies
+     to conquer a numerous and warlike people, whose customs and religion
+     are very contrary to ours; who live in rocks and mountains, without
+     fixed settlements, and not like ourselves: and where, by the Divine
+     Will, I have placed under the dominion of the King and Queen, our
+     Sovereigns, a second world, through which Spain, which was reckoned
+     a poor country, has become the richest.
+
+     "I ought to be judged as a captain who for such a long time up to
+     this day has borne arms without laying them aside for an hour, and
+     by gentlemen adventurers and by custom, and not by letters, unless
+     they were from Greeks or Romans or others of modern times of whom
+     there are so many and such noble examples in Spain; or otherwise I
+     receive great injury, because in the Indies there is neither town
+     nor settlement.
+
+     "The gate to the gold and pearls is now open, and plenty of
+     everything--precious stones, spices and a thousand other things--may
+     be surely expected, and never could a worse misfortune befall me:
+     for by the name of our Lord the first voyage would yield them just
+     as much as would the traffic of Arabia Felix as far as Mecca, as I
+     wrote to their Highnesses by Antonio de Tomes in my reply respecting
+     the repartition of the sea and land with the Portuguese; and
+     afterwards it would equal that of Calicut, as I told them and put in
+     writing at the monastery of the Mejorada.
+
+     "The news of the gold that I said I would give is, that on the day
+     of the Nativity, while I was much tormented, being harassed by
+     wicked Christians and by Indians, and when I was on the point of
+     giving up everything, and if possible escaping from life, our Lord
+     miraculously comforted me and said, 'Fear not violence, I will
+     provide for all things: the seven years of the term of the gold have
+     not elapsed, and in that and in everything else I will afford thee a
+     remedy.'
+
+     "On that day I learned that there were eighty leagues of land with
+     mines at every point thereof.  The opinion now is that it is all
+     one.  Some have collected a hundred and twenty castellanos in one
+     day, and others ninety, and even the number of two hundred and fifty
+     has been reached.  From fifty to seventy, and in many more cases
+     from fifteen to fifty, is considered a good day's work, and many
+     carry it on.  The usual quantity is from six to twelve, and any one
+     obtaining less than this is not satisfied. It seems to me that these
+     mines are like others, and do not yield equally every day.  The
+     mines are new, and so are the workers: it is the opinion of
+     everybody that even if all Castile were to go there, every
+     individual, however inexpert he might be, would not obtain less than
+     one or two castellanos daily, and now it is only commencing.  It is
+     true that they keep Indians, but the business is in the hands of the
+     Christians.  Behold what discernment Bobadilla had, when he gave up
+     everything for nothing, and four millions of tenths, without any
+     reason or even being requested, and without first notifying it to
+     their Highnesses.  And this is not the only loss.
+
+     "I know that my errors have not been committed with the intention of
+     doing evil, and I believe that their Highnesses regard the matter
+     just as I state it: and I know and see that they deal mercifully
+     even with those who maliciously act to their disservice.  I believe
+     and consider it very certain that their clemency will be both
+     greater and more abundant towards me, for I fell therein through
+     ignorance and the force of circumstances, as they will know fully
+     hereafter; and I indeed am their creature, and they will look upon
+     my services, and will acknowledge day by day that they are much
+     profited.  They will place everything in the balance, even as Holy
+     Scripture tells us good and evil will be at the day of judgment.
+
+     "If, however, they command that another person do judge me, which I
+     cannot believe, and that it be by inquisition in the Indies, I very
+     humbly beseech them to send thither two conscientious and honourable
+     persons at my expense, who I believe will easily, now that gold is
+     discovered, find five marks in four hours.  In either case it is
+     needful for them to provide for this matter.
+
+     "The Commander on his arrival at San Domingo took up his abode in my
+     house, and just as he found it so he appropriated everything to
+     himself.  Well and good; perhaps he was in want of it.  A pirate
+     never acted thus towards a merchant.  About my papers I have a
+     greater grievance, for he has so completely deprived me of them that
+     I have never been able to obtain a single one from him; and those
+     that would have been most useful in my exculpation are precisely
+     those which he has kept most concealed.  Behold the just and honest
+     inquisitor!  Whatever he may have done, they tell me that there has
+     been an end to justice, except in an arbitrary form.  God, our Lord,
+     is present with His strength and wisdom, as of old, and always
+     punishes in the end, especially ingratitude and injuries."
+
+We must keep in mind the circumstances in which this letter was written
+if we are to judge it and the writer wisely.  It is a sad example of
+querulous complaint, in which everything but the writer's personal point
+of view is ignored.  No one indeed is more terrible in this world than
+the Man with a Grievance.  How rarely will human nature in such
+circumstances retire into the stronghold of silence!  Columbus is asking
+for pity; but as we read his letter we incline to pity him on grounds
+quite different from those which he represented.  He complains that the
+people he was sent to govern have waged war against him as against a
+Moor; he complains of Ojeda and of Vincenti Yanez Pinzon; of Adrian de
+Moxeca, and of every other person whom it was his business to govern and
+hold in restraint.  He complains of the colonists--the very people, some
+of them, whom he himself took and impressed from the gaols and purlieus
+of Cadiz; and then he mingles pious talk about Saint Peter and Daniel in
+the den of lions with notes on the current price of little girls and big
+lumps of gold like the eggs of geese, hens, and pullets.  He complains
+that he is judged as a man would be judged who had been sent out to
+govern a ready-made colony, and represents instead that he went out to
+conquer a numerous and warlike people "whose custom and religion are very
+contrary to ours, and who lived in rocks and mountains"; forgetting that
+when it suited him for different purposes he described the natives as so
+peaceable and unwarlike that a thousand of them would not stand against
+one Christian, and that in any case he was sent out to create a
+constitution and not merely to administer one.  Very sore indeed is
+Christopher as he reveals himself in this letter, appealing now to his
+correspondent, now to the King and Queen, now to that God who is always
+on the side of the complainant.  "God our Lord is present with His
+strength and wisdom, as of old, and always punishes in the end,
+especially ingratitude and injuries."  Not boastfulness and weakness, let
+us hope, or our poor Admiral will come off badly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+CRISIS IN THE ADMIRAL'S LIFE
+
+Columbus was not far wrong in his estimate of the effect likely to be
+produced by his manacles, and when the ships of Villegio arrived at Cadiz
+in October, the spectacle of an Admiral in chains produced a degree of
+commiseration which must have exceeded his highest hopes.  He was now in
+his fiftieth year and of an extremely venerable appearance, his kindling
+eye looking forth from under brows of white, his hair and beard
+snow-white, his face lined and spiritualised with suffering and sorrow.
+It must be remembered that before the Spanish people he had always
+appeared in more or less state.  They had not that intimacy with him, an
+intimacy which perhaps brought contempt, which the people in Espanola
+enjoyed; and in Spain, therefore, the contrast between his former
+grandeur and this condition of shame and degradation was the more
+striking.  It was a fact that the people of Spain could not neglect. It
+touched their sense of the dramatic and picturesque, touched their
+hearts also perhaps--hearts quick to burn, quick to forget.  They had
+forgotten him before, now they burned with indignation at the picture of
+this venerable and much-suffering man arriving in disgrace.
+
+His letter to Dofia Juana, hastily despatched by him, probably through
+the office of some friendly soul on board, immediately on his arrival at
+Cadiz, was the first news from the ship received by the King and Queen,
+and naturally it caused them a shock of surprise.  It was followed by the
+despatches from Bobadilla and by a letter from the Alcalde of Cadiz
+announcing that Columbus and his brothers were in his custody awaiting
+the royal orders.  Perhaps Ferdinand and Isabella had already repented
+their drastic action and had entertained some misgivings as to its
+results; but it is more probable that they had put it out of their heads
+altogether, and that their hasty action now was prompted as much by the
+shock of being recalled to a consciousness of the troubled state of
+affairs in the New World as by any real regret for what they had done.
+Moreover they had sent out Bobadilla to quiet things down; and the first
+result of it was that Spain was ringing with the scandal of the Admiral's
+treatment.  In that Spanish world, unsteadfast and unstable, when one end
+of the see-saw was up the other must be down; and it was Columbus who now
+found himself high up in the heavens of favour, and Bobadilla who was
+seated in the dust.  Equipoise any kind was apparently a thing
+impossible; if one man was right the other man must be wrong; no excuses
+for Bobadilla; every excuse for the Admiral.
+
+The first official act, therefore, was an order for the immediate release
+of the Admiral and his brothers, followed by an invitation for him to
+proceed without delay to the Court at Granada, and an order for the
+immediate payment to him of the sum of 2000 ducats [perhaps $250,000 in
+the year 2000  D.W.] this last no ungenerous gift to a Viceroy whose
+pearl accounts were in something less than order.  Perhaps Columbus had
+cherished the idea of appearing dramatically before the very Court in his
+rags and chains; but the cordiality of their letter as well as the gift
+of money made this impossible.  Instead, not being a man to do things by
+halves, he equipped himself in his richest and most splendid garments,
+got together the requisite number of squires and pages, and duly
+presented himself at Granada in his full dignity.  The meeting was an
+affecting one, touched with a humanity which has survived the intervening
+centuries, as a touch of true humanity will when details of mere parade
+and etiquette have long perished.  Perhaps the Admiral, inspired with a
+deep sense of his wrongs, meant to preserve a very stiff and cold
+demeanour at the beginning of this interview; but when he looked into the
+kind eyes of Isabella and saw them suffused with tears at the thought of
+his sorrows all his dignity broke down; the tears came to his own eyes,
+and he wept there naturally like a child.  Ferdinand looking on kind but
+uncomfortable; Isabella unaffectedly touched and weeping; the Admiral, in
+spite of his scarlet cloak and golden collar and jewelled sword, in spite
+of equerries, squires, pages and attendants, sobbing on his knees like a
+child or an old man-these were the scenes and kindly emotions of this
+historic moment.
+
+
+The tears were staunched by kindly royal words and handkerchiefs supplied
+by attendant pages; sobbings breaking out again, but on the whole soon
+quieted; King and Queen raising the gouty Christopher from his knees,
+filling the air with kind words of sympathy, praise, and encouragement;
+the lonely worn heart, somewhat arid of late, and parched from want of
+human sympathy, much refreshed by this dew of kindness.  The Admiral was
+soon himself again, and he would not have been himself if upon recovering
+he had not launched out into what some historians call a "lofty and
+dignified vindication of his loyalty and zeal."  No one, indeed, is
+better than the Admiral at such lofty and dignified vindications.  He
+goes into the whole matter and sets forth an account of affairs at
+Espanola from his own point of view; and can even (so high is the
+thermometer of favour) safely indulge in a little judicious
+self-depreciation, saying that if he has erred it has not been from want
+of zeal but from want of experience in dealing with the kind of material
+he has been set to govern.  All this is very human, natural, and
+understandable; product of that warm emotional atmosphere, bedewed with
+tears, in which the Admiral finds himself; and it is not long before the
+King and Queen, also moved to it by the emotional temperature, are
+expressing their unbroken and unbounded confidence in him and
+repudiating the acts of Bobadilla, which they declare to have been
+contrary to their instructions; undertaking also that he shall be
+immediately dismissed from his post.  Poor Bobadilla is not here in the
+warm emotional atmosphere; he had his turn of it six months ago, when no
+powers were too high or too delicate to be entrusted to him; he is out
+in the cold at the other end of the see-saw, which has let him down to
+the ground with a somewhat sudden thump.
+
+
+Columbus, relying on the influence of these emotions, made bold to ask
+that his property in the island should be restored to him, which was
+immediately granted; and also to request that he should be reinstated in
+his office of Viceroy and allowed to return at once in triumph to
+Espanola.  But emotions are unstable things; they present a yielding
+surface which will give to any extent, but which, when it has hardened
+again after the tears have evaporated, is often found to be in much the
+same condition as before.  At first promises were made that the whole
+matter should be fully gone into; but when it came to cold fact,
+Ferdinand was obliged to recognise that this whole business of discovery
+and colonisation had become a very different thing to what it had been
+when Columbus was the only discoverer; and he was obviously of opinion
+that, as Columbus's office had once been conveniently withdrawn from him,
+it would only be disastrous to reinstate him in it.  Of course he did not
+say so at once; but reasons were given for judicious delay in the
+Admiral's reappointment.  It was represented to him that the colony,
+being in an extremely unsettled state, should be given a short period of
+rest, and also that it would be as well for him to wait until the people
+who had given him so much trouble in the island could be quietly and
+gradually removed.  Two years was the time mentioned as suitable for an
+interregnum, and it is probable that it was the intention of Isabella,
+although not of Ferdinand, to restore Columbus to his office at the end
+of that time.
+
+
+In the meantime it became necessary to appoint some one to supersede
+Bobadilla; for the news that arrived periodically from Espanola during
+the year showed that he had entirely failed in his task of reducing the
+island to order.  For the wholesome if unequal rigours of Columbus
+Bobadilla had substituted laxness and indulgence, with the result that
+the whole colony was rapidly reduced to a state of the wildest disorder.
+Vice and cruelty were rampant; in fact the barbarities practised upon the
+natives were so scandalous that even Spanish opinion, which was never
+very sympathetic to heathen suffering, was thoroughly shocked and
+alarmed.  The Sovereigns therefore appointed Nicholas de Ovando to go out
+and take over the command, with instructions to use very drastic means
+for bringing the colony to order.  How he did it we shall presently see;
+in the meantime all that was known of him (the man not having been tried
+yet) was that he was a poor knight of Calatrava, a man respected in royal
+circles for the performance of minor official duties, but no very popular
+favourite; honest according to his lights--lights turned rather low and
+dim, as was often the case in those days.  A narrow-minded man also,
+without sympathy or imagination, capable of cruelty; a tough,
+stiff-necked stock of a man, fit to deal with Bobadilla perhaps, but
+hardly fit to deal with the colony.  Spain in those days was not a
+nursery of administration.  Of all the people who were sent out
+successively to govern Espanola and supersede one another, the only one
+who really seems to have had the necessary natural ability, had he but
+been given the power, was Bartholomew Columbus; but unfortunately things
+were in such a state that the very name of Columbus was enough to bar a
+man from acceptance as a governor of Espanola.
+
+It was not for any lack of powers and equipment that this procession of
+governors failed in their duties.  We have seen with what authority
+Bobadilia had been entrusted; and Ovando had even greater advantages.
+The instructions he received showed that the needs of the new colonies
+were understood by Ferdinand and Isabella, if by no one else.  Ovando was
+not merely appointed Governor of Espanola but of the whole of the new
+territory discovered in the west, his seat of government being San
+Domingo.  He was given the necessary free hand in the matters of
+punishment, confiscation, and allotment of lands.  He was to revoke the
+orders which had been made by Bobadilla reducing the proportion of gold
+payable to the Crown, and was empowered to take over one-third of the.
+gold that was stored on the island, and one-half of what might be found
+in the future.  The Crown was to have a monopoly of all trade, and
+ordinary supplies were only to be procured through the Crown agent.
+On the other hand, the natives were to be released from slavery, and
+although forced to work in the mines, were to be paid for their labour
+--a distinction which in the working out did not produce much difference.
+A body of Franciscan monks accompanied Ovando for the purpose of tackling
+the religious question with the necessary energy; and every regulation
+that the kind heart of Isabella could think of was made for the happiness
+and contentment of the Indians.
+
+Unhappily the real mischief had already been done.  The natives, who had
+never been accustomed to hard and regular work under the conditions of
+commerce and greed, but had only toiled for the satisfaction of their own
+simple wants, were suffering cruelly under the hard labour in the mines,
+and the severe driving of their Spanish masters.  Under these unnatural
+conditions the native population was rapidly dying off, and there was
+some likelihood that there would soon be a scarcity of native labour.
+These were the circumstances in which the idea of importing black African
+labour to the New World was first conceived--a plan which was destined to
+have results so tremendous that we have probably not yet seen their full
+and ghastly development.  There were a great number of African negro
+slaves at that time in Spain; a whole generation of them had been born in
+slavery in Spain itself; and this generation was bodily imported to
+Espanola to relieve and assist the native labour.
+
+
+These preparations were not made all at once; and it was more than a year
+after the return of Columbus before Ovando was ready to sail.  In the
+meantime Columbus was living in Granada, and looking on with no very
+satisfied eye at the plans which were being made to supersede him, and
+about which he was probably not very much consulted; feeling very sore
+indeed, and dividing his attention between the nursing of his grievances
+and other even less wholesome occupations.  There was any amount of
+smiling kindness for him at Court, but very little of the satisfaction
+that his vanity and ambition craved; and in the absence of practical
+employment he fell back on visionary speculations.  He made great friends
+at this time with a monk named Gaspar Gorricio, with whose assistance he
+began to make some kind of a study of such utterances of the Prophets and
+the Fathers as he conceived to have a bearing on his own career.
+
+Columbus was in fact in a very queer way at this time; and what with his
+readings and his meditatings and his grievances, and his visits to his
+monkish friend in the convent of Las Cuevas, he fell into a kind of
+intellectual stupor, of which the work called 'Libro de las Profecias,'
+or Book of the Prophecies, in which he wrote down such considerations as
+occurred to him in his stupor, was the result.  The manuscript of this
+work is in existence, although no human being has ever ventured to
+reprint the whole of it; and we would willingly abstain from mentioning
+it here if it were not an undeniable act of Columbus's life.  The
+Admiral, fallen into theological stupor, puts down certain figures upon
+paper; discovers that St. Augustine said that the world would only last
+for 7000 years; finds that some other genius had calculated that before
+the birth of Christ it had existed for 5343 years and 318 days; adds 1501
+years from the birth of Christ to his own time; adds up, and finds that
+the total is 6844 years; subtracts, and discovers that this earthly globe
+can only last 155 years longer.  He remembers also that, still according
+to the Prophets, certain things must happen before the end of the world;
+Holy Sepulchre restored to Christianity, heathen converted, second coming
+of Christ; and decides that he himself is the man appointed by God and
+promised by the Prophets to perform these works.  Good Heavens! in what
+an entirely dark and sordid stupor is our Christopher now sunk--a
+veritable slough and quag of stupor out of which, if he does not manage
+to flounder himself, no human hand can pull him.
+
+
+But amid his wallowings in this slough of stupor, when all else, in him
+had been well-nigh submerged by it, two dim lights were preserved towards
+which, although foundered up to the chin, he began to struggle; and by
+superhuman efforts did at last extricate himself from the theological
+stupor and get himself blown clean again by the salt winds before he
+died.  One light was his religion; not to be confounded with theological
+stupor, but quite separate from it in my belief; a certain steadfast and
+consuming faith in a Power that could see and understand and guide him to
+the accomplishment of his purpose.  This faith had been too often a good
+friend and help to Christopher for him to forget it very long, even while
+he was staggering in the quag with Isaiah, Jeremiah, and the Fathers; and
+gradually, as I say, he worked himself out into the region of activity
+again.  First, thinking it a pity that his flounderings in the slough
+should be entirely wasted, he had a copy of his precious theological work
+made and presented it to the Sovereigns, with a letter urging them (since
+he himself was unable to do it) to undertake a crusade for the recovery
+of the Holy Sepulchre--not an altogether wild proposal in those days.
+But Ferdinand had other uses for his men and his money, and contented
+himself with despatching Peter Martyr on a pacific mission to the Grand
+Soldan of Egypt.
+
+The other light left unquenched in Columbus led him back to the firm
+ground of maritime enterprise; he began to long for the sea again, and
+for a chance of doing something to restore his reputation.  An infinitely
+better and more wholesome frame of mind this; by all means let him mend
+his reputation by achievement, instead of by writing books in a
+theological trance or stupor, and attempting to prove that he was chosen
+by the Almighty.  He now addressed himself to the better task of getting
+himself chosen by men to do something which should raise him again in
+their esteem.
+
+
+His maritime ambition was no doubt stimulated at this time by witnessing
+the departure of Ovando, in February 1502, with a fleet of thirty-five
+ships and a company of 2500 people.  It was not in the Admiral's nature
+to look on without envy at an equipment the like of which he himself had
+never been provided with, and he did not restrain his sarcasms at its
+pomp and grandeur, nor at the ease with which men could follow a road
+which had once been pointed out to them.  Ovando had a great body-guard
+such as Columbus had never had; and he also carried with him a great
+number of picked married men with their families, all with knowledge of
+some trade or craft, whose presence in the colony would be a guarantee
+of permanence and steadiness.  He perhaps remembered his own crowd of
+ruffians and gaol-birds, and realised the bitterness of his own mistakes.
+It was a very painful moment for him, and he was only partially
+reconciled to it by the issue of a royal order to Ovando under which he
+was required to see to the restoration of the Admiral's property.  If it
+had been devoted to public purposes it was to be repaid him from the
+royal funds; but if it had been merely distributed among the colonists
+Bobadilla was to be made responsible for it.  The Admiral was also
+allowed to send out an agent to represent him and look after his
+interests; and he appointed Alonso de Carvajal to this office.
+
+
+Ovando once gone, the Admiral could turn again to his own affairs.
+It is true there were rumours that the whole fleet had perished, for it
+encountered a gale very soon after leaving Cadiz, and a great quantity of
+the deck hamper was thrown overboard and was washed on the shores of
+Spain; and the Sovereigns were so bitterly distressed that, as it is
+said, they shut them selves up for eight days.  News eventually came,
+however, that only one ship had been lost and that the rest had proceeded
+safely to San Domingo.  Columbus, much recovered in body and mind, now
+began to apply for a fleet for himself.  He had heard of the discovery by
+the Portuguese of the southern route to India; no doubt he had heard also
+much gossip of the results of the many private voyages of discovery that
+were sailing from Spain at this time; and he began to think seriously
+about his own discoveries and the way in which they might best be
+extended.  He thought much of his voyage to the west of Trinidad and of
+the strange pent-up seas and currents that he had discovered there.  He
+remembered the continual westward trend of the current, and how all the
+islands in that sea had their greatest length east and west, as though
+their shores had been worn into that shape by the constant flowing of the
+current; and it was not an unnatural conclusion for him to suppose that
+there was a channel far to the west through which these seas poured and
+which would lead him to the Golden Chersonesus.  He put away from him
+that nightmare madness that he transacted on the coast of Cuba.  He knew
+very well that he had not yet found the Golden Chersonesus and the road
+to India; but he became convinced that the western current would lead him
+there if only he followed it long enough.  There was nothing insane about
+this theory; it was in fact a very well-observed and well-reasoned
+argument; and the fact that it happened to be entirely wrong is no
+reflection on the Admiral's judgment.  The great Atlantic currents at
+that time had not been studied; and how could he know that the western
+stream of water was the northern half of a great ocean current which
+sweeps through the Caribbean Sea, into and round the Gulf of Mexico, and
+flows out northward past Florida in the Gulf Stream?
+
+His applications for a fleet were favourably received by the King and
+Queen, but much frowned upon by certain high officials of the Court.
+They were beginning to regard Columbus as a dangerous adventurer who,
+although he happened to have discovered the western islands, had brought
+the Spanish colony there to a dreadful state of disorder; and had also,
+they alleged, proved himself rather less than trustworthy in matters of
+treasure.  Still in the summer days of 1501 he was making himself very
+troublesome at Court with constant petitions and letters about his rights
+and privileges; and Ferdinand was far from unwilling to adopt a plan by
+which they would at least get rid of him and keep him safely occupied at
+the other side of the world at the cost of a few caravels.  There was,
+besides, always an element of uncertainty.  His voyage might come to
+nothing, but on the other hand the Admiral was no novice at this game of
+discovery, and one could not tell but that something big might come of
+it.  After some consideration permission was given to him to fit out a
+fleet of four ships, and he proceeded to Seville in the autumn of 1501
+to get his little fleet ready.  Bartholomew was to come with him, and his
+son Ferdinand also, who seems to have much endeared himself to the
+Admiral in these dark days, and who would surely be a great comfort to
+him on the voyage.  Beatriz Enriquez seems to have passed out of his
+life; certainly he was not living with her either now or on his last
+visit to Spain; one way or another, that business is at an end for him.
+Perhaps poor Beatriz, seeing her son in such a high place at Court, has
+effaced herself for his sake; perhaps the appointment was given on
+condition of such effacement; we do not know.
+
+
+Columbus was in no hurry over his preparations.  In the midst of them he
+found time to collect a whole series of documents relating to his titles
+and dignities, which he had copied and made into a great book which he
+called his "Book of Privileges," and the copies of which were duly
+attested before a notary at Seville on January 5, 1502.  He wrote many
+letters to various friends of his, chiefly in relation to these
+privileges; not interesting or illuminating letters to us, although very
+important to busy Christopher when he wrote them.  Here is one written to
+Nicolo Oderigo, a Genoese Ambassador who came to Spain on a brief mission
+in the spring of 1502, and who, with certain other residents in Spain, is
+said to have helped Columbus in his preparations for his fourth voyage:
+
+     "Sir,--The loneliness in which you have left us cannot be described.
+     I gave the book containing my writings to Francisco de Rivarol that
+     he may send it to you with another copy of letters containing
+     instructions.  I beg you to be so kind as to write Don Diego in
+     regard to the place of security in which you put them.  Duplicates
+     of everything will be completed and sent to you in the same manner
+     and by the same Francisco.  Among them you will find a new document.
+     Their Highnesses promised to give all that belongs to me and to
+     place Don Diego in possession of everything, as you will see.  I
+     wrote to Senor Juan Luis and to Sefora Catalina.  The letter
+     accompanies this one.  I am ready to start in the name of the Holy
+     Trinity as soon as the weather is good.  I am well provided with
+     everything.  If Jeronimo de Santi Esteban is coming, he must await
+     me and not embarrass himself with anything, for they will take away
+     from him all they can and silently leave him.  Let him come here and
+     the King and the Queen will receive him until I come.  May our Lord
+     have you in His holy keeping.
+
+               "Done at Seville, March 21, 1502.
+               "At your command.
+
+                                                    .S.
+                                                  .S.A.S.
+                                                  Xpo FERENS."
+
+
+His delays were not pleasing to Ferdinand, who wanted to get rid of him,
+and he was invited to hurry his departure; but he still continued to go
+deliberately about his affairs, which he tried to put in order as far as
+he was able, since he thought it not unlikely that he might never see
+Spain again.  Thinking thus of his worldly duties, and his thoughts
+turning to his native Genoa, it occurred to him to make some benefaction
+out of the riches that were coming to him by which his name might be
+remembered and held in honour there.  This was a piece of practical
+kindness the record of which is most precious to us; for it shows the
+Admiral in a truer and more human light than he often allowed to shine
+upon him.  The tone of the letter is nothing; he could not forbear
+letting the people of Genoa see how great he was.  The devotion of his
+legacy to the reduction of the tax on simple provisions was a genuine
+charity, much to be appreciated by the dwellers in the Vico Dritto di
+Ponticello, where wine and provision shops were so very necessary to
+life.  The letter was written to the Directors of the famous Bank of
+Saint George at Genoa.
+
+     "VERY NOBLE LORDS,--Although my body is here, my heart is
+     continually yonder.  Our Lord has granted me the greatest favour he
+     has granted any one since the time of David.  The results of my
+     undertaking already shine, and they would make a great light if the
+     obscurity of the Government did not conceal them.  I shall go again
+     to the Indies in the name of the Holy Trinity, to return
+     immediately.  And as I am mortal, I desire my son Don Diego to give
+     to you each year, for ever, the tenth part of all the income
+     received, in payment of the tax on wheat, wine, and other
+     provisions.  If this tenth amounts to anything, receive it, and if
+     not, receive my will for the deed.  I beg you as a favour to have
+     this son of mine in your charge.  Nicolo de Oderigo knows more about
+     my affairs than I myself.  I have sent him the copy of my privileges
+     and letters, that he may place them in safe keeping.  I would be
+     glad if you could see them.  The King and the Queen, my Lords, now
+     wish to honour me more than ever.  May the Holy Trinity guard your
+     noble persons, and increase the importance of your very magnificent
+     office.
+               "Done in Seville, April a, 1502.
+
+     "The High-Admiral of the Ocean-Sea and Viceroy and Governor-General
+     of the islands and mainland of Asia and the Indies, belonging to the
+     King and Queen, my Lords, and the Captain-General of the Sea, and a
+     Member of their Council.
+
+                                               .S.
+                                             .S.A.S.
+                                              X M Y
+                                            Xpo FERENS."
+
+
+Columbus was anxious to touch at Espanola on his voyage to the West; but
+he was expressly forbidden to do so, as it was known that his presence
+there could not make for anything but confusion; he was to be permitted,
+however, to touch there on his return journey.  The Great Khan was not
+out of his mind yet; much in it apparently, for he took an Arabian
+interpreter with him so that he could converse with that monarch.  In
+fact he did not hesitate to announce that very big results indeed were to
+come of this voyage of his; among other things he expected to
+circumnavigate the globe, and made no secret of his expectation.  In the
+meantime he was expected to find some pearls in order to pay for the
+equipment of his fleet; and in consideration of what had happened to the
+last lot of pearls collected by him, an agent named Diego de Porras was
+sent along with him to keep an account of the gold and precious stones
+which might be discovered.  Special instructions were issued to Columbus
+about the disposal of these commodities.  He does not seem to have minded
+these somewhat humiliating precautions; he had a way of rising above
+petty indignities and refusing to recognise them which must have been of
+great assistance to his self-respect in certain troubled moments in his
+life.
+
+His delays, however, were so many that in March 1502 the Sovereigns were
+obliged to order him to depart without any more waiting.  Poor
+Christopher, who once had to sue for the means with which to go, whose
+departures were once the occasion of so much state and ceremony, has now
+to be hustled forth and asked to go away.  Still he does not seem to
+mind; once more, as of old, his gaze is fixed beyond the horizon and his
+mind is filled with one idea.  They may not think much of him in Spain
+now, but they will when he comes back; and he can afford to wait.
+Completing his preparations without undignified haste he despatched
+Bartholomew with his four little vessels from Seville to Cadiz, where the
+Admiral was to join them.  He took farewell of his son Diego and of his
+brother James; good friendly James, who had done his best in a difficult
+position, but had seen quite enough of the wild life of the seas and was
+now settled in Seville studying hard for the Church.  It had always been
+his ambition, poor James; and, studying hard in Seville, he did in time
+duly enter the sacred pale and become a priest--by which we may see that
+if our ambitions are only modest enough we may in time encompass them.
+Sometimes I think that James, enveloped in priestly vestments, nodding in
+the sanctuary, lulled by the muttering murmur of the psalms or dozing
+through a long credo, may have thought himself back amid the brilliant
+sunshine and strange perfumes of Espanola; and from a dream of some nymph
+hiding in the sweet groves of the Vega may have awakened with a sigh to
+the strident Alleluias of his brother priests.  At any rate, farewell to
+James, safely seated beneath the Gospel light, and continuing to sit
+there until, in the year 1515, death interrupts him.  We are not any more
+concerned with James in his priestly shelter, but with those elder
+brothers of his who are making ready again to face the sun and the
+surges.
+
+Columbus's ships were on the point of sailing when word came that the
+Moors were besieging a Portuguese post on the coast of Morocco, and, as
+civility was now the order of the day between Spain and Portugal, the
+Admiral was instructed to call on his way there and afford some relief.
+This he did, sailing from Cadiz on the 9th or 10th of May to Ercilla on
+the Morocco coast, where he anchored on the 13th.  But the Moors had all
+departed and the siege was over; so Columbus, having sent Bartholomew and
+some of his officers ashore on a civil visit, which was duly returned,
+set out the same day on his last voyage.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE LAST VOYAGE
+
+The four ships that made up the Admiral's fleet on his fourth and last
+voyage were all small caravels, the largest only of seventy tons and the
+smallest only of fifty.  Columbus chose for his flagship the Capitana,
+seventy tons, appointing Diego Tristan to be his captain.  The next best
+ship was the Santiago de Palos under the command of Francisco Porras;
+Porras and his brother Diego having been more or less foisted on to
+Columbus by Morales, the Royal Treasurer, who wished to find berths for
+these two brothers-in-law of his.  We shall hear more of the Porras
+brothers.  The third ship was the Gallega, sixty tons, a very bad sailer
+indeed, and on that account entrusted to Bartholomew Columbus, whose
+skill in navigation, it was hoped, might make up for her bad sailing
+qualities.  Bartholomew had, to tell the truth, had quite enough of the
+New World, but he was too loyal to Christopher to let him go alone,
+knowing as he did his precarious state of health and his tendency to
+despondency.  The captain of the Gallega was Pedro de Terreros, who had
+sailed with the Admiral as steward on all his other voyages and was now
+promoted to a command.  The fourth ship was called the Vizcaina, fifty
+tons, and was commanded by Bartolome Fieschi, a friend of Columbus's from
+Genoa, and a very sound, honourable man.  There were altogether 143 souls
+on board the four caravels.
+
+The fleet as usual made the Canary Islands, where they arrived on the
+20th of May, and stopped for five days taking in wood and water and fresh
+provisions.  Columbus was himself again--always more himself at sea than
+anywhere else; he was following a now familiar road that had no
+difficulties or dangers for him; and there is no record of the voyage out
+except that it was quick and prosperous, with the trade wind blowing so
+steadily that from the time they left the Canaries until they made land
+twenty days later they had hardly to touch a sheet or a halliard.  The
+first land they made was the island of Martinique, where wood and water
+were taken in and the men sent ashore to wash their linen.  To young
+Ferdinand, but fourteen years old, this voyage was like a fairy tale come
+true, and his delight in everything that he saw must have added greatly
+to Christopher's pleasure and interest in the voyage.  They only stayed a
+few days at Martinique and then sailed westward along the chain of
+islands until they came to Porto Rico, where they put in to the sunny
+harbour which they had discovered on a former voyage.
+
+It was at this point that Columbus determined, contrary to his precise
+orders, to stand across to Espanola.  The place attracted him like a
+magnet; he could not keep away from it; and although he had a good enough
+excuse for touching there, it is probable that his real reason was a very
+natural curiosity to see how things were faring with his old enemy
+Bobadilla.  The excuse was that the Gallega, Bartholomew's ship, was so
+unseaworthy as to be a drag on the progress of the rest of the fleet and
+a danger to her own crew.  In the slightest sea-way she rolled almost
+gunwale under, and would not carry her sail; and Columbus's plan was to
+exchange her for a vessel out of the great fleet which he knew had by
+this time reached Espanola and discharged its passengers.
+
+
+He arrived off the harbour of San Domingo on the 29th of June in very
+threatening weather, and immediately sent Pedro de Terreros ashore with a
+message to Ovando, asking to be allowed to purchase or exchange one of
+the vessels that were riding in the harbour, and also leave to shelter
+his own vessels there during the hurricane which he believed to be
+approaching.  A message came back that he was neither permitted to buy a
+ship nor to enter the harbour; warning him off from San Domingo, in fact.
+
+With this unfavourable message Terreros also brought back the news of the
+island.  Ovando had been in San Domingo since the 15th of April, and had
+found the island in a shocking state, the Spanish population having to a
+man devoted itself to idleness, profligacy, and slave-driving.  The only
+thing that had prospered was the gold-mining; for owing to the licence
+that Bobadilla had given to the Spaniards to employ native labour to an
+unlimited extent there had been an immense amount of gold taken from the
+mines.  But in no other respect had island affairs prospered, and Ovando
+immediately began the usual investigation.  The fickle Spaniards, always
+unfaithful to whoever was in authority over them, were by this time tired
+of Bobadilla, in spite of his leniency, and they hailed the coming of
+Ovando and his numerous equipment with enthusiasm.  Bobadilla had also by
+this time, we may suppose, had enough of the joys of office; at any rate
+he showed no resentment at the coming of the new Governor, and handed
+over the island with due ceremony.  The result of the investigation of
+Ovando, however, was to discover a state of things requiring exemplary
+treatment; friend Roldan was arrested, with several of his allies, and
+put on board one of the ships to be sent back to Spain for trial.  The
+cacique Guarionex, who had been languishing in San Domingo in chains for
+a long time, was also embarked on one of the returning ships; and about
+eighteen hundred-weights of gold which had been collected were also
+stowed into cases and embarked.  Among this gold there was a nugget
+weighing 35 lbs. which had been found by a native woman in a river, and
+which Ovando was sending home as a personal offering to his Sovereigns;
+and some further 40 lbs. of gold belonging to Columbus, which Carvajal
+had recovered and placed in a caravel to be taken to Spain for the
+Admiral.  The ships were all ready to sail, and were anchored off the
+mouth of the river when Columbus arrived in San Domingo.
+
+When he found that he was not to be allowed to enter the harbour himself
+Columbus sent a message to Ovando warning him that a hurricane was coming
+on, and begging him to take measures for the safety of his large fleet.
+This, however, was not done, and the fleet put to sea that evening.  It
+had only got so far as the eastern end of Espanola when the hurricane, as
+predicted by Columbus, duly came down in the manner of West Indian
+hurricanes, a solid wall of wind and an advancing wave of the sea which
+submerged everything in its path.  Columbus's little fleet, finding
+shelter denied them, had moved a little way along the coast, the Admiral
+standing close in shore, the others working to the south for sea-room;
+and although they survived the hurricane they were scattered, and only
+met several days later, in an extremely battered condition, at the
+westerly end of the island.  But the large home-going fleet had not
+survived.  The hurricane, which was probably from the north-east, struck
+them just as they lost the lee of the island, and many of them, including
+the ships with the treasure of gold and the caravels bearing Roldan,
+Bobadilla, and Guarionex, all went down at once and were never seen or
+heard of again.  Other ships survived for a little while only to founder
+in the end; a few, much shattered, crept back to the shelter of San
+Domingo; but only one, it is said, survived the hurricane so well as to
+be able to proceed to Spain; and that was the one which carried Carvajal
+and Columbus's little property of gold.  The Admiral's luck again; or the
+intervention of the Holy Trinity--whichever you like.
+
+After the shattering experience of the storm, Columbus, although he did
+not return to San Domingo, remained for some time on the coast of
+Espanola repairing his ships and resting his exhausted crews.  There were
+threatenings of another storm which delayed them still further, and it
+was not until the middle of July that the Admiral was able to depart on
+the real purpose of his voyage.  His object was to strike the mainland
+far to the westward of the Gulf of Paria, and so by following it back
+eastward to find the passage which he believed to exist.  But the winds
+and currents were very baffling; he was four days out of sight of land
+after touching at an island north of Jamaica; and finally, in some
+bewilderment, he altered his course more and more northerly until he
+found his whereabouts by coming in sight of the archipelago off the
+south-western end of Cuba which he had called the Gardens.  From here he
+took a departure south-west, and on the 30th of July came in sight of a
+small island off the northern coast of Honduras which he called Isla de
+Pinos, and from which he could see the hills of the mainland.  At this
+island he found a canoe of immense size with a sort of house or caboose
+built amidships, in which was established a cacique with his family and
+dependents; and the people in the canoe showed signs of more advanced
+civilisation than any seen by Columbus before in these waters.  They wore
+clothing, they had copper hatchets, and bells, and palm-wood swords in
+the edges of which were set sharp blades of flint.  They had a fermented
+liquor, a kind of maize beer which looked like English ale; they had some
+kind of money or medium of exchange also, and they told the Admiral that
+there was land to the west where all these things existed and many more.
+It is strange and almost inexplicable that he did not follow this trail
+to the westward; if he had done so he would have discovered Mexico.  But
+one thing at a time always occupied him to the exclusion of everything
+else; his thoughts were now turned to the eastward, where he supposed the
+Straits were; and the significance of this canoe full of natives was lost
+upon him.
+
+They crossed over to the mainland of Honduras on August 15th, Bartholomew
+landing and attending mass on the beach as the Admiral himself was too
+ill to go ashore.  Three days later the cross and banner of Castile were
+duly erected on the shores of the Rio Tinto and the country was formally
+annexed.  The natives were friendly, and supplied the ships with
+provisions; but they were very black and ugly, and Columbus readily
+believed the assertion of his native guide that they were cannibals.
+They continued their course to the eastward, but as the gulf narrowed the
+force of the west-going current was felt more severely.  Columbus,
+believing that the strait which he sought lay to the eastward, laboured
+against the current, and his difficulties were increased by the bad
+weather which he now encountered.  There were squalls and hurricanes,
+tempests and cross-currents that knocked his frail ships about and almost
+swamped them.  Anchors and gear were lost, the sails were torn out of the
+bolt-ropes, timbers were strained; and for six weeks this state of
+affairs went on to an accompaniment of thunder and lightning which added
+to the terror and discomfort of the mariners.
+
+This was in August and the first half of September--six weeks of the
+worst weather that Columbus had ever experienced.  It was the more
+unfortunate that his illness made it impossible for him to get actively
+about the ship; and he had to have a small cabin or tent rigged up on
+deck, in which he could lie and direct the navigation.  It is bad enough
+to be as ill as he was in a comfortable bed ashore; it is a thousand
+times worse amid the discomforts of a small boat at sea; but what must it
+have been thus to have one's sick-bed on the deck of a cockle-shell which
+was being buffeted and smashed in unknown seas, and to have to think and
+act not for oneself alone but for the whole of a suffering little fleet!
+No wonder the Admiral's distress of mind was great; but oddly enough his
+anxieties, as he recorded them in a letter, were not so much on his own
+account as on behalf of others.  The terrified seamen making vows to the
+Virgin and promises of pilgrimages between their mad rushes to the sheets
+and furious clinging and hauling; his son Ferdinand, who was only
+fourteen, but who had to endure the same pain and fatigue as the rest of
+them, and who was enduring it with such pluck that "it was as if he had
+been at sea eighty years"; the dangers of Bartholomew, who had not wanted
+to come on this voyage at all, but was now in the thick of it in the
+worst ship of the squadron, and fighting for his life amid tempests and
+treacherous seas; Diego at home, likely to be left an orphan and at the
+mercy of fickle and doubtful friends--these were the chief causes of the
+Admiral's anxiety.  All he said about himself was that "by my misfortune
+the twenty years of service which I gave with so much fatigue and danger
+have profited me so little that to-day I have in Castile no roof, and if
+I wished to dine or sup or sleep I have only the tavern for my last
+refuge, and for that, most of the time, I would be unable to pay the
+score."  Not cheerful reflections, these, to add to the pangs of acute
+gout and the consuming anxieties of seamanship under such circumstances.
+Dreadful to him, these things, but not dreadful to us; for they show us
+an Admiral restored to his true temper and vocation, something of the old
+sea hero breaking out in him at last through all these misfortunes, like
+the sun through the hurrying clouds of a stormy afternoon.
+
+
+Forty days of passage through this wilderness of water were endured
+before the sea-worn mariners, rounding a cape on September 12th, saw
+stretching before them to the southward a long coast of plain and
+mountain which they were able to follow with a fair wind.  Gradually the
+sea went down; the current which had opposed them here aided them, and
+they were able to recover a little from the terrible strain of the last
+six weeks.  The cape was called by Columbus 'Gracios de Dios'; and on the
+16th of September they landed at the entrance to a river to take in
+water.  The boat which was sent ashore, however, capsized on the sandy
+bar of the entrance, two men being drowned, and the river was given the
+name of Rio de Desastre.  They found a better anchorage, where they
+rested for ten days, overhauled their stores, and had some intercourse
+with the natives and exploration on shore.  Some incidents occurred which
+can best be described in the Admiral's own language as he recorded them
+in his letter to the Sovereigns.
+
+     " . . . When I reached there, they immediately sent me two young
+     girls dressed in rich garments.  The older one might not have been
+     more than eleven years of age and the other seven; both with so much
+     experience, so much manner, and so much appearance as would have
+     been sufficient if they had been public women for twenty years.
+     They bore with them magic powder and other things belonging to their
+     art.  When they arrived I gave orders that they should be adorned
+     with our things and sent them immediately ashore.  There I saw a
+     tomb within the mountain as large as a house and finely worked with
+     great artifice, and a corpse stood thereon uncovered, and, looking
+     within it, it seemed as if he stood upright.  Of the other arts they
+     told me that there was excellence.  Great and little animals are
+     there in quantities, and very different from ours; among which I saw
+     boars of frightful form so that a dog of the Irish breed dared not
+     face them.  With a cross-bow I had wounded an animal which exactly
+     resembles a baboon only that it was much larger and has a face like
+     a human being.  I had pierced it with an arrow from one side to the
+     other, entering in the breast and going out near the tail, and
+     because it was very ferocious I cut off one of the fore feet which
+     rather seemed to be a hand, and one of the hind feet.  The boars
+     seeing this commenced to set up their bristles and fled with great
+     fear, seeing the blood of the other animal.  When I saw this I
+     caused to be thrown them the 'uegare,'--[Peccary]--certain animals
+     they call so, where it stood, and approaching him, near as he was to
+     death, and the arrow still sticking in his body, he wound his tail
+     around his snout and held it fast, and with the other hand which
+     remained free, seized him by the neck as an enemy.  This act, so
+     magnificent and novel, together with the fine country and hunting of
+     wild beasts, made me write this to your Majesties."
+
+
+The natives at this anchorage of Cariari were rather suspicious, but
+Columbus seized two of them to act as guides in his journey further down
+the coast.  Weighing anchor on October 5th he worked along the Costa Rica
+shore, which here turns to the eastward again, and soon found a tribe of
+natives who wore large ornaments of gold.  They were reluctant to part
+with the gold, but as usual pointed down the coast and said that there
+was much more gold there; they even gave a name to the place where the
+gold could be found--Veragua; and for once this country was found to have
+a real existence.  The fleet anchored there on October 17th, being
+greeted by defiant blasts of conch shells and splashing of water from the
+indignant natives.  Business was done, however: seventeen gold discs in
+exchange for three hawks' bells.
+
+Still Columbus went on in pursuit of his geographical chimera; even gold
+had no power to detain him from the earnest search for this imaginary
+strait.  Here and there along the coast he saw increasing signs of
+civilisation--once a wall built of mud and stone, which made him think of
+Cathay again.  He now got it into his head that the region he was in was
+ten days' journey from the Ganges, and that it was surrounded by water;
+which if it means anything means that he thought he was on a large island
+ten days' sail to the eastward of the coast of India.  Altogether at sea
+as to the facts, poor Admiral, but with heart and purpose steadfast and
+right enough.
+
+They sailed a little farther along the coast, now between narrow islands
+that were like the streets of Genoa, where the boughs of trees on either
+hand brushed the shrouds of the ships; now past harbours where there were
+native fairs and markets, and where natives were to be seen mounted on
+horses and armed with swords; now by long, lonely stretches of the coast
+where there was nothing to be seen but the low green shore with the
+mountains behind and the alligators basking at the river mouths.  At last
+(November 2nd) they arrived at the cape known as Nombre de Dios, which
+Ojeda had reached some time before in his voyage to the West.
+
+The coast of the mainland had thus been explored from the Bay of Honduras
+to Brazil, and Columbus was obliged to admit that there was no strait.
+Having satisfied himself of that he decided to turn back to Veragua,
+where he had seen the natives smelting gold, in order to make some
+arrangement for establishing a colony there.  The wind, however, which
+had headed him almost all the way on his easterly voyage, headed him
+again now and began to blow steadily from the west.  He started on his
+return journey on the 5th of December, and immediately fell into almost
+worse troubles than he had been in before.  The wood of the ships had
+been bored through and through by seaworms, so that they leaked very
+badly; the crews were sick, provisions were spoilt, biscuits rotten.
+Young Ferdinand Columbus, if he did not actually make notes of this
+voyage at the time, preserved a very lively recollection of it, and it is
+to his Historie, which in its earlier passages is of doubtful
+authenticity, that we owe some of the most human touches of description
+relating to this voyage.  Any passage in his work relating to food or
+animals at this time has the true ring of boyish interest and
+observation, and is in sharp contrast to the second-hand and artificial
+tone of the earlier chapters of his book.  About the incident of the
+howling monkey, which the Admiral's Irish hound would not face, Ferdinand
+remarks that it "frighted a good dog that we had, but frighted one of our
+wild boars a great deal more"; and as to the condition of the biscuits
+when they turned westward again, he says that they were "so full of
+weevils that, as God shall help me, I saw many that stayed till night to
+eat their sop for fear of seeing them."
+
+After experiencing some terrible weather, in the course of which they had
+been obliged to catch sharks for food and had once been nearly
+overwhelmed by a waterspout, they entered a harbour where, in the words
+of young Ferdinand, "we saw the people living like birds in the tops of
+the trees, laying sticks across from bough to bough and building their
+huts upon them; and though we knew not the reason of the custom we
+guessed that it was done for fear of their enemies, or of the griffins
+that are in this island."  After further experiences of bad weather they
+made what looked like a suitable harbour on the coast of Veragua, which
+harbour, as they entered it on the day of the Epiphany (January 9, 1503),
+they named Belem or Bethlehem.  The river in the mouth of which they were
+anchored, however, was subject to sudden spouts and gushes of water from
+the hills, one of which occurred on January 24th and nearly swamped the
+caravels.  This spout of water was caused by the rainy season, which had
+begun in the mountains and presently came down to the coast, where it
+rained continuously until the 14th of February.  They had made friends
+with the Quibian or chief of the country, and he had offered to conduct
+them to the place where the gold mines were; so Bartholomew was sent off
+in the rain with a boat party to find this territory.  It turned out
+afterwards that the cunning Quibian had taken them out of his own country
+and showed them the gold mined of a neighbouring chief, which were not so
+rich as his own.
+
+Columbus, left idle in the absence of Bartholomew, listening to the
+continuous drip and patter of the rain on the leaves and the water,
+begins to dream again--to dream of gold and geography.  Remembers that
+David left three thousand quintals of gold from the Indies to Solomon for
+the decoration of the Temple; remembers that Josephus said it came from
+the Golden Chersonesus; decides that enough gold could never have been
+got from the mines of Hayna in Espanola; and concludes that the Ophir of
+Solomon must be here in Veragua and not there in Espanola.  It was always
+here and now with Columbus; and as he moved on his weary sea pilgrimages
+these mythical lands with their glittering promise moved about with him,
+like a pillar of fire leading him through the dark night of his quest.
+
+
+The rain came to an end, however, the sun shone out again, and activity
+took the place of dreams with Columbus and with his crew.  He decided to
+found a settlement in this place, and to make preparations for seizing
+and working the gold mines.  It was decided to leave a garrison of eighty
+men, and the business of unloading the necessary arms and provisions and
+building houses ashore was immediately begun.  Hawks' bells and other
+trifles were widely distributed among the natives, with special toys and
+delicacies for the Quibian, in order that friendly relations might be
+established from the beginning; and special regulations were framed to
+prevent the possibility of any recurrence of the disasters that overtook
+the settlers of Isabella.
+
+Such are the orderly plans of Columbus; but the Quibian has his plans
+too, which are found to be of quite a different nature.  The Quibian does
+not like intruders, though he likes their hawks' bells well enough; he is
+not quite so innocent as poor Guacanagari and the rest of them were; he
+knows that gold is a thing coveted by people to whom it does not belong,
+and that trouble follows in its train.  Quibian therefore decides that
+Columbus and his followers shall be exterminated--news of which intention
+fortunately came to the ears of Columbus in time, Diego Mendez and
+Rodrigo de Escobar having boldly advanced into the Quibian's village and
+seen the warlike preparations.  Bartholomew, returning from his visit to
+the gold mines, was informed of this state of affairs.  Always quick to
+strike, Bartholomew immediately started with an armed force, and advanced
+upon the village so rapidly that the savages were taken by surprise,
+their headquarters surrounded, and the Quibian and fifty of his warriors
+captured.  Bartholomew triumphantly marched the prisoners back, the
+Quibian being entrusted to the charge of Juan Sanchez, who was rowing him
+in a little boat.  The Quibian complained that his bonds were hurting
+him, and foolish Sanchez eased them a little; Quibian, with a quick
+movement, wriggled overboard and dived to the bottom; came up again
+somewhere and reached home alive.  No one saw him come up, however, and
+they thought had had been drowned.
+
+Columbus now made ready to depart, and the caravels having been got over
+the shallow bar, their loading was completed and they were ready to sail.
+On April 6th Diego Tristan was sent in charge of a boat with a message to
+Bartholomew, who was to be left in command of the settlement; but when
+Tristan had rounded the point at the entrance to the river and come in
+sight of the shore he had an unpleasant surprise; the settlement was
+being savagely attacked by the resurrected Quibian and his followers.
+The fight had lasted for three hours, and had been going badly against
+the Spaniards, when Bartholomew and Diego Mendes rallied a little force
+round them and, calling to Columbus's Irish dog which had been left with
+them, made a rush upon the savages and so terrified them that they
+scattered.  Bartholomew with eight of the other Spaniards was wounded,
+and one was killed; and it was at this point that Tristan's boat arrived
+at the settlement.  Having seen the fight safely over, he went on up the
+river to get water, although he was warned that it was not safe; and sure
+enough, at a point a little farther up the river, beyond some low green
+arm of the shore, he met with a sudden and bloody death.  A cloud of
+yelling savages surrounded his boat hurling javelins and arrows, and only
+one seaman, who managed to dive into the water and crawl ashore, escaped
+to bring the evil tidings.
+
+The Spaniards under Bartholomew's command broke into a panic, and taking
+advantage of his wounded condition they tried to make sail on their
+caravel and join the ships of Columbus outside; but since the time of the
+rains the river had so much gone down that she was stuck fast in the
+sand.  They could not even get a boat over the bar, for there was a heavy
+cross sea breaking on it; and in the meantime here they were, trapped
+inside this river, the air resounding with dismal blasts of the natives'
+conch-shells, and the natives themselves dancing round and threatening to
+rush their position; while the bodies of Tristan and his little crew were
+to be seen floating down the stream, feasted upon by a screaming cloud of
+birds.  The position of the shore party was desperate, and it was only by
+the greatest efforts that the wounded Adelantado managed to rally his
+crew and get them to remove their little camp to an open place on the
+shore, where a kind of stockade was made of chests, casks, spars, and the
+caravel's boat.  With this for cover, the Spanish fire-arms, so long as
+there was ammunition for them, were enough to keep the natives at bay.
+
+
+Outside the bar, in his anchorage beyond the green wooded point, the
+Admiral meanwhile was having an anxious time.  One supposes the entrance
+to the river to have been complicated by shoals and patches of broken
+water extending some considerable distance, so that the Admiral's
+anchorage would be ten or twelve miles away from the camp ashore, and of
+course entirely hidden from it.  As day after day passed and Diego
+Tristan did not return, the Admiral's anxiety increased.  Among the three
+caravels that now formed his little squadron there was only one boat
+remaining, the others, not counting one taken by Tristan and one left
+with Bartholomew, having all been smashed in the late hurricanes.  In the
+heavy sea that was running on the bar the Admiral dared not risk his last
+remaining boat; but in the mean time he was cut off from all news of the
+shore party and deprived of any means of finding out what had happened to
+Tristan.  And presently to these anxieties was added a further disaster.
+It will be remembered that when the Quibian had been captured fifty
+natives had been taken with him; and these were confined in the
+forecastle of the Capitana and covered by a large hatch, on which most of
+the crew slept at night.  But one night the natives collected a heap of
+big stones from the ballast of the ship, and piled them up to a kind of
+platform beneath the hatch; some of the strongest of them got upon the
+platform and set their backs horizontally against the hatch, gave a great
+heave and, lifted it off.  In the confusion that followed, a great many
+of the prisoners escaped into the sea, and swam ashore; the rest were
+captured and thrust back under the hatch, which was chained down; but
+when on the following morning the Spaniards went to attend to this
+remnant it was found that they had all hanged themselves.
+
+This was a great disaster, since it increased the danger of the garrison
+ashore, and destroyed all hope of friendship with the natives.  There was
+something terrible and powerful, too, in the spirit of people who could
+thus to a man make up their minds either to escape or die; and the
+Admiral must have felt that he was in the presence of strange, powerful
+elements that were far beyond his control.  At any moment, moreover, the
+wind might change and put him on a lee shore, or force him to seek safety
+in sea-room; in which case the position of Bartholomew would be a very
+critical one.  It was while things were at this apparent deadlock that a
+brave fellow, Pedro Ledesma, offered to attempt to swim through the surf
+if the boat would take him to the edge of it.  Brave Pedro, his offer
+accepted, makes the attempt; plunges into the boiling surf, and with
+mighty efforts succeeds in reaching the shore; and after an interval is
+seen by his comrades, who are waiting with their boat swinging on the
+edge of the surf, to be returning to them; plunges into the sea, comes
+safely through the surf again, and is safely hauled on board, having
+accomplished a very real and satisfactory bit of service.
+
+The story he had to tell the Admiral was as we know not a pleasant one
+--Tristan and his men dead, several of Bartholomew's force, including the
+Adelantado himself, wounded, and all in a state of panic and fear at the
+hostile natives.  The Spaniards would do nothing to make the little
+fortress safer, and were bent only on escaping from the place of horror.
+Some of them were preparing canoes in which to come out to the ships when
+the sea should go down, as their one small boat was insufficient; and
+they swore that if the Admiral would not take them they would seize their
+own caravel and sail out themselves into the unknown sea as soon as they
+could get her floated over the bar, rather than remain in such a dreadful
+situation.  Columbus was in a very bad way.  He could not desert
+Bartholomew, as that would expose him to the treachery of his own men
+and the hostility of the savages.  He could not reinforce him, except by
+remaining himself with the whole of his company; and in that case there
+would be no means of sending the news of his rich discovery to Spain.
+There was nothing for it, therefore, but to break up the settlement and
+return some other time with a stronger force sufficient to occupy the
+country.  And even this course had its difficulties; for the weather
+continued bad, the wind was blowing on to the shore, the sea was--so
+rough as to make the passage of the bar impossible, and any change for
+the worse in the weather would probably drive his own crazy ships ashore
+and cut off all hope of escape.
+
+The Admiral, whose health was now permanently broken, and who only had
+respite from his sufferings in fine weather and when he was relieved from
+a burden of anxieties such as had been continually pressing on him now
+for three months, fell into his old state of sleeplessness, feverishness,
+and consequent depression; and it, these circumstances it is not
+wonderful that the firm ground of fact began to give a little beneath him
+and that his feet began to sink again into the mire or quag of stupor.
+Of these further flounderings in the quag he himself wrote an account to
+the King and Queen, so we may as well have it in his own words.
+
+     "I mounted to the top of the ship crying out with a weak voice,
+     weeping bitterly, to the commanders of your Majesties' army, and
+     calling again to the four winds to help; but they did not answer me.
+     Tired out, I fell asleep and sighing I heard a voice very full of
+     pity which spoke these words:  O fool!  and slow to believe and to
+     serve Him, thy God and the God of all.  What did He more for Moses?
+     and for David His servant?  Since thou wast born He had always so
+     great care for thee.  When He saw thee in an age with which He was
+     content He made thy name sound marvellously through the world.  The
+     Indies, which are so rich apart of the world, He has given to thee
+     as thine.  Thou hast distributed them wherever it has pleased thee;
+     He gave thee power so to do.  Of the bonds of the ocean which were
+     locked with so strong chains He gave thee the keys, and thou wast
+     obeyed in all the land, and among the Christians thou hast acquired
+     a good and honourable reputation.  What did He more for the people
+     of Israel when He brought them out of Egypt?  or yet for David, whom
+     from being a shepherd He made King of Judea?  Turn to Him and
+     recognise thine error, for His mercy is infinite.  Thine old age
+     will be no hindrance to all great things.  Many very great
+     inheritances are in His power.  Abraham was more than one hundred
+     years old when he begat Isaac and also Sarah was not young.  Thou
+     art calling for uncertain aid.  Answer me, who has afflicted thee so
+     much and so many times--God or the world?  The privileges and
+     promises which God makes He never breaks to any one; nor does He say
+     after having received the service that His intention was not so and
+     it is to be understood in another manner: nor imposes martyrdom to
+     give proof of His power.  He abides by the letter of His word.  All
+     that He promises He abundantly accomplishes.  This is His way.  I
+     have told thee what the Creator hath done for thee and does for all.
+     Now He shows me the reward and payment of thy suffering and which
+     thou hast passed in the service of others.  And thus half dead, I
+     heard everything; but I could never find an answer to make to words
+     so certain, and only I wept for my errors.  He, who ever he might
+     be, finished speaking, saying: Trust and fear not, for thy
+     tribulations are written in marble and not without reason."
+
+
+Mere darkness of stupor; not much to be deciphered from it, nor any
+profitable comment to be made on it, except that it was our poor
+Christopher's way of crying out his great suffering and misery.  We must
+not notice it, much as we should like to hold out a hand of sympathy and
+comfort to him; must not pay much attention to this dark eloquent
+nonsense--merely words, in which the Admiral never does himself justice.
+Acts are his true conversation; and when he speaks in that language all
+men must listen.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+HEROIC ADVENTURES BY LAND AND SEA
+
+No man ever had a better excuse for his superstitions than the Admiral;
+no sooner had he got done with his Vision than the wind dropped, the sun
+came out, the sea fell, and communication with the land was restored.
+While he had been sick and dreaming one of his crew, Diego Mendez, had
+been busy with practical efforts in preparation for this day of fine
+weather; he had made a great raft out of Indian canoes lashed together,
+with mighty sacks of sail cloth into which the provisions might be
+bundled; and as soon as the sea had become calm enough he took this raft
+in over the bar to the settlement ashore, and began the business of
+embarking the whole of the stores and ammunition of Bartholomew's
+garrison.  By this practical method the whole establishment was
+transferred from the shore to the ships in the space of two days, and
+nothing was left but the caravel, which it was found impossible to float
+again.  It was heavy work towing the raft constantly backwards and
+forwards from the ships to the shore, but Diego Mendez had the
+satisfaction of being the last man to embark from the deserted
+settlement, and to see that not an ounce of stores or ammunition had been
+lost.
+
+Columbus, always quick to reward the services of a good man, kissed Diego
+Mendez publicly--on both cheeks, and (what doubtless pleased him much
+better) gave him command of the caravel of which poor Tristan had been
+the captain.
+
+With a favourable wind they sailed from this accursed shore at the end of
+April 1503.  It is strange, as Winsor points out, that in the name of
+this coast should be preserved the only territorial remembrance of
+Columbus, and that his descendant the Duke of Veragua should in his title
+commemorate one of the most unfortunate of the Admiral's adventures.  And
+if any one should desire a proof of the utterly misleading nature of most
+of Columbus's writings about himself, let him know that a few months
+later he solemnly wrote to the Sovereigns concerning this very place that
+"there is not in the world a country whose inhabitants are more timid;
+and the whole place is capable of being easily put into a state of
+defence.  Your people that may come here, if they should wish to become
+masters of the products of other lands, will have to take them by force
+or retire empty-handed.  In this country they will simply have to trust
+their persons in the hands of the savages."  The facts being that the
+inhabitants were extremely fierce and warlike and irreconcilably hostile;
+that the river was a trap out of which in the dry season there was no
+escape, and the harbour outside a mere shelterless lee shore; that it
+would require an army and an armada to hold the place against the
+natives, and that any one who trusted himself in their hands would
+share the fate of the unhappy Diego Tristan.  One may choose between
+believing that the Admiral's memory had entirely failed him (although he
+had not been backward in making a minute record, of all his sufferings)
+or that he was craftily attempting to deceive the Sovereigns.  My own
+belief is that he was neither trying to deceive anybody nor that he had
+forgotten anything, but that he was simply incapable of uttering the bare
+truth when he had a pen in his hand.
+
+
+From their position on the coast of Veragua Espanola bore almost due
+north; but Columbus was too good a seaman to attempt to make the island
+by sailing straight for it.  He knew that the steady west-going current
+would set him far down on his course, and he therefore decided to work up
+the coast a long way to the eastward before standing across for Espanola.
+The crew grumbled very much at this proceeding, which they did not
+understand; in fact they argued from it that the Admiral was making
+straight for Spain, and this, in the crazy condition of the vessels,
+naturally alarmed them.  But in his old high-handed, secret way the
+Admiral told them nothing; he even took away from the other captains all
+the charts that they had made of this coast, so that no one but himself
+would be able to find the way back to it; and he took a kind of pleasure
+in the complete mystification thus produced on his fellow-voyagers.
+"None of them could explain whither I went nor whence I came; they did
+not know the way to return thither," he writes, somewhat childishly.
+
+But he was not back in Espanola yet, and his means for getting there were
+crumbling away beneath his feet.  One of the three remaining caravels was
+entirely riddled by seaworms and had to be abandoned at the harbour
+called Puerto Bello; and the company was crowded on to two ships.  The
+men now became more than ever discontented at the easterly course, and on
+May 1st, when he had come as far east as the Gulf of Darien, Columbus
+felt obliged to bear away to the north, although as it turned out he had
+not nearly made enough easting.  He stood on this course, for nine days,
+the west-going current setting him down all the time; and the first land
+that he made, on May 10th, was the group of islands off the western end
+of Cuba which he had called the Queen's Gardens.
+
+He anchored for six days here, as the crews were completely exhausted;
+the ships' stores were reduced to biscuits, oil, and vinegar; the vessels
+leaked like sieves, and the pumps had to be kept going continually.  And
+no sooner had they anchored than a hurricane came on, and brought up a
+sea so heavy that the Admiral was convinced that his ships could not live
+within it.  We have got so accustomed to reading of storms and tempests
+that it seems useless to try and drive home the horror and terror of
+them; but here were these two rotten ships alone at the end of the world,
+far beyond the help of man, the great seas roaring up under them in the
+black night, parting their worn cables, snatching away their anchors from
+them, and finally driving them one upon the other to grind and strain and
+prey upon each other, as though the external conspiracy of the elements
+against them both were not sufficient!  One writes or reads the words,
+but what does it mean to us? and can we by any conceivable effort of
+imagination realise what it meant to this group of human beings who lived
+through that night so many hundred years ago--men like ourselves with
+hearts to sink and faint, capable of fear and hunger, capable of misery,
+pain, and endurance?  Bruised and battered, wet by the terrifying surges,
+and entirely uncomforted by food or drink, they did somehow endure these
+miseries; and were to endure worse too before they were done with it.
+
+Their six days' sojourn amid the Queen's Gardens, then, was not a great
+success; and as soon as they were able they set sail again, standing
+eastward when the wind permitted them.  But wind and current were against
+them and all through the month of May and the early part of June they
+struggled along the south coast of Cuba, their ships as full of holes as
+a honeycomb, pumps going incessantly, and in addition the worn-out seamen
+doing heroic labour at baling with buckets and kettles.  Lee helm!  Down
+go the buckets and kettles and out run the wretched scarecrows of seamen
+to the weary business of tacking ship, letting go, brailing up, hauling
+in, and making fast for the thousandth time; and then back to the pumps
+and kettles again.  No human being could endure this for an indefinite
+time; and though their diet of worms represented by the rotten biscuit
+was varied with cassava bread supplied by friendly natives, the Admiral
+could not make his way eastward further than Cape Cruz.  Round that cape
+his leaking, strained vessels could not be made to look against the wind
+and the tide.  Could hardly indeed be made to float or swim upon the
+water at all; and the Admiral had now to consider, not whether he could
+sail on a particular point of the compass, but whether he could by any
+means avoid another course which the fates now proposed to him--namely, a
+perpendicular course to the bottom of the sea.  It was a race between the
+water and the ships, and the only thing the Admiral could think of was to
+turn southward across to Jamaica, which he did on June 23rd, putting into
+Puerto Bueno, now called Dry Harbour.  But there was no food there, and
+as his ships were settling deeper and deeper in the water he had to make
+sail again and drive eastwards as far as Puerto Santa Gloria, now called
+Don Christopher's Cove.  He was just in time.  The ships were run ashore
+side by side on a sandy beach, the pumps were abandoned, and in one tide
+the ships were full of water.  The remaining anchor cables were used to
+lash the two ships together so that they would not move; although there
+was little fear of that, seeing the weight of water that was in them.
+Everything that could be saved was brought up on deck, and a kind of
+cabin or platform which could be fortified was rigged on the highest part
+of the ships.  And so no doubt for some days, although their food was
+almost finished, the wretched and exhausted voyagers could stretch their
+cramped limbs, and rest in the warm sun, and listen, from their safe
+haven on the firm sands, to the hated voice of the sea.
+
+
+Thanks to careful regulations made by the Admiral, governing the
+intercourse between the Spaniards and the natives ashore, friendly
+relations were soon established, and the crews were supplied with cassava
+bread and fruit in abundance.  Two officials superintended every purchase
+of provisions to avoid the possibility of any dispute, for in the event
+of even a momentary hostility the thatched-roof structures on the ships
+could easily have been set on fire, and the position of the Spaniards,
+without shelter amid a hostile population, would have been a desperate
+one.  This disaster, however, was avoided; but the Admiral soon began to
+be anxious about the supply of provisions from the immediate
+neighbourhood, which after the first few days began to be irregular.
+There were a large number of Spaniards to be fed, the natives never kept
+any great store of provisions for themselves, and the Spaniards were
+entirely at their mercy for, provisions from day to day.  Diego Mendez,
+always ready for active and practical service, now offered to take three
+men and make a journey through the island to arrange for the purchase of
+provisions from different villages, so that the men on the ships would
+not be dependent upon any one source.  This offer was gratefully
+accepted; and Mendez, with his lieutenants well supplied with toys and
+trinkets, started eastward along the north coast of Jamaica.  He made no
+mistakes; he was quick and clever at ingratiating himself with the
+caciques, and he succeeded in arranging with three separate potentates to
+send regular supplies of provisions to the men on the ships.  At each
+place where he made this arrangement he detached one of his assistants
+and sent him back with the first load of provisions, so that the regular
+line of carriage might be the more quickly established; and when they had
+all gone he borrowed a couple of natives and pushed on by himself until
+he reached the eastern end of the island.  He made friends here with a
+powerful cacique named Amerro, from whom he bought a large canoe, and
+paid for it with some of the clothing off his back.  With the canoe were
+furnished six Indians to row it, and Mendez made a triumphant journey
+back by sea, touching at the places where his depots had been established
+and seeing that his commissariat arrangements were working properly.  He
+was warmly received on his return to the ships, and the result of his
+efforts was soon visible in the daily supplies of food that now regularly
+arrived.
+
+Thus was one difficulty overcome; but it was not likely that either
+Columbus himself or any of his people would be content to remain for ever
+on the beach of Jamaica.  It was necessary to establish communication
+with Espanola, and thence with Spain; but how to do it in the absence of
+ships or even boats?  Columbus, pondering much upon this matter, one day
+calls Diego Mendez aside; walks him off, most likely, under the great
+rustling trees beyond the beach, and there tells him his difficulty.
+"My son," says he, "you and I understand the difficulties and dangers of
+our position here better than any one else.  We are few; the Indians are
+many; we know how fickle and easily irritated they are, and how a
+fire-brand thrown into our thatched cabins would set the whole thing
+ablaze. It is quite true that you have very cleverly established a
+provision supply, but it is dependent entirely upon the good nature of
+the natives and it might cease to-morrow.  Here is my plan: you have a
+good canoe; why should some one not go over to Espanola in it and send
+back a ship for us?"
+
+Diego Mendez, knowing very well what is meant, looks down upon the
+ground.  His spoken opinion is that such a journey is not merely
+difficult but impossible journey in a frail native canoe across one
+hundred and fifty miles of open and rough sea; although his private
+opinion is other than that.  No, he cannot imagine such a thing being
+done; cannot think who would be able to do it.
+
+Long silence from the Admiral; eloquent silence, accompanied by looks no
+less eloquent.
+
+"Admiral," says Mendez again, "you know very well that I have risked my
+life for you and the people before and would do it again.  But there are
+others who have at least as good a right to this great honour and peril
+as I have; let me beg of you, therefore, to summon all the company
+together, make this proposal to them, and see if any one will undertake
+it.  If not, I will once more risk my life."
+
+The proposal being duly made to the assembled crews, every one, as
+cunning Mendez had thought, declares it impossible; every one hangs back.
+Upon which Diego Mendez with a fine gesture comes forward and volunteers;
+makes his little dramatic effect and has his little ovation.  Thoroughly
+Spanish this, significant of that mixture of vanity and bravery, of
+swagger and fearlessness, which is characteristic of the best in Spain.
+It was a desperately brave thing to venture upon, this voyage from
+Jamaica to Espanola in a native canoe and across a sea visited by
+dreadful hurricanes; and the volunteer was entitled to his little piece
+of heroic drama.
+
+While Mendez was making his preparations, putting a false keel on the
+canoe and fixing weather boards along its gunwales to prevent its
+shipping seas, fitting a mast and sail and giving it a coat of tar, the
+Admiral retired into his cabin and busied himself with his pen.  He wrote
+one letter to Ovando briefly describing his circumstances and requesting
+that a ship should be sent for his relief; and another to the Sovereigns,
+in which a long rambling account was given of the events of the voyage,
+and much other matter besides, dismally eloquent of his floundering in
+the quag.  Much in it--about Solomon and Josephus, of the Abbot Joachim,
+of Saint Jerome and the Great Khan; more about the Holy Sepulchre and the
+intentions of the Almighty in that matter; with some serious practical
+concern for the rich land of Veragua which he had discovered, lest it
+should share the fate of his other discoveries and be eaten up by idle
+adventurers.  "Veragua," he says, "is not a little son which may be given
+to a stepmother to nurse.  Of Espanola and Paria and all the other lands
+I never think without the tears falling from my eyes; I believe that the
+example of these ought to serve for the others."  And then this passage:
+
+     "The good and sound purpose which I always had to serve your
+     Majesties, and the dishonour and unmerited ingratitude, will not
+     suffer the soul to be silent although I wished it, therefore I ask
+     pardon of your Majesties.  I have been so lost and undone; until now
+     I have wept for others that your Majesties might have compassion on
+     them; and now may the heavens weep for me and the earth weep for me
+     in temporal affairs; I have not a farthing to make as an offering in
+     spiritual affairs.  I have remained here on the Indian islands in
+     the manner I have before said in great pain and infirmity, expecting
+     every day death, surrounded by innumerable savages full of cruelty
+     and by our enemies, and so far from the sacraments of the Holy
+     Mother Church that I believe the soul will be forgotten when it
+     leaves the body.  Let them weep for me who have charity, truth and
+     justice.  I did not undertake this voyage of navigation to gain
+     honour or material things, that is certain, because the hope already
+     was entirely lost; but I did come to serve your Majesties with
+     honest intention and with good charitable zeal, and I do not lie."
+
+Poor old heart, older than its years, thus wailing out its sorrows to
+ears none too sympathetic; sad old voice, uplifted from the bright shores
+of that lonely island in the midst of strange seas!  It will not come
+clear to the head alone; the echoes of this cry must reverberate in the
+heart if they are to reach and animate the understanding.
+
+
+At this time also the Admiral wrote to his friend Gaspar Gorricio.  For
+the benefit of those who may be interested I give the letter in English.
+
+
+     REVEREND AND VERY DEVOUT FATHER:
+
+     "If my voyage should be as conducive to my personal health and the
+     repose of my house as it seems likely to be conducive to the
+     aggrandisement of the royal Crown of the King and Queen, my Lords,
+     I might hope to live more than a hundred years.  I have not time to
+     write more at length.  I hope that the bearer of this letter may be
+     a person of my house who will tell you verbally more than can be
+     told in a thousand papers, and also Don Diego will supply
+     information.  I beg as a favour of the Father Prior and all the
+     members of your religious house, that they remember me in all their
+     prayers.
+
+     "Done on the island of Jamaica, July 7, 1503.
+     "I am at the command of your Reverence.
+
+                                               .S.
+                                             .S.A.S.  XMY
+                                              Xpo FERENS."
+
+
+Diego Mendez found some one among the Spaniards to accompany him, but his
+name is not recorded.  The six Indians were taken to row the canoe.  They
+had to make their way at first against the strong currents along the
+northern coast of Jamaica, so as to reach its eastern extremity before
+striking across to Espanola.  At one point they met a flotilla of Indian
+canoes, which chased them and captured them, but they escaped.  When they
+arrived at the end of the easterly point of Jamaica, now known as Morant
+Point, they had to wait two or three days for calm weather and a
+favourable wind to waft them across to Espanola, and while thus waiting
+they were suddenly surrounded and captured by a tribe of hostile natives,
+who carried them off some nine or ten miles into the island, and
+signified their intention of killing them.
+
+But they began to quarrel among themselves as to how they should divide
+the spoils which they had captured with the canoe, and decided that the
+only way of settling the dispute was by some elaborate trial of hazard
+which they used.  While they were busy with their trial Diego Mendez
+managed to escape, got back to the canoe, and worked his way back in it
+alone to the harbour where the Spaniards were encamped.  The other
+Spaniard who was with him probably perished, for there is no record of
+what became of him--an obscure life lost in a brave enterprise.
+
+One would have thought that Mendez now had enough of canoe voyages, but
+he had no sooner got back than he offered to set out again, only
+stipulating that an armed force should march along the coast by land to
+secure his safety until he could stand across to Espanola.  Bartholomew
+Columbus immediately put himself at the head of a large and well-armed
+party for this purpose, and Bartolomeo Fieschi, the Genoese captain of
+one of the lost caravels, volunteered to accompany Mendez in a second
+canoe.  Each canoe was now manned by six Spanish volunteers and ten
+Indians to row; Fieschi, as soon as they had reached the coast of
+Espanola, was to bring the good news to the Admiral; while Mendez must go
+on to San Domingo, procure a ship, and himself proceed to Spain with the
+Admiral's letters.  The canoes were provisioned with water, cassava
+bread, and fish; and they departed on this enterprise some time in August
+1503.
+
+Their passage along the coast was protected by Bartholomew Columbus, who
+marched along with them on the shore.  They waited a few days at the end
+of the island for favourable weather, and finally said farewell to the
+good Adelantado, who we may be sure stood watching them until they were
+well out of sight.
+
+
+There was not a cloud in the sky when the canoes stood out to sea; the
+water was calm, and reflected the blistering heat of the sun.  It was not
+a pleasant situation for people in an open boat; and Mendez and Fieschi
+were kept busy, as Irving says, "animating the Indians who navigated
+their canoes, and who frequently paused at their labour."  The poor
+Indians, evidently much in need of such animation, would often jump into
+the water to escape the intolerable heat, and after a short immersion
+there would return to their task.  Things were better when the sun went
+down, and the cool night came on; half the Indians then slept and half
+rowed, while half of the Spaniards also slept and the other half, I
+suppose, "animated."  Irving also says that the animating half "kept
+guard with their weapons in hand, ready to defend themselves in the case
+of any perfidy on the part of their savage companions"; such perfidy
+being far enough from the thoughts of the savage companions, we may
+imagine, whose energies were entirely occupied with the oars.
+
+The next day was the same: savage companions rowing, Spaniards animating;
+Spaniards and savage companions alike drinking water copiously without
+regard for the smallness of their store.  The second night was very hot,
+and the savage companions finished the water, with the result that on the
+third day the thirst became a torment, and at mid-day the poor companions
+struck work.  Artful Mendez, however, had concealed two small kegs of
+water in his canoe, the contents of which he now administered in small
+doses, so that the poor Indians were enabled to take to their oars again,
+though with vigour much abated.  Presumably the Spaniards had put up
+their weapons by this time, for the only perfidy shown on the part of the
+savage companions was that one of them died in the following night and
+had to be thrown overboard, while others lay panting on the bottom of the
+canoes; and the Spaniards had to take their turn at the oars, although
+they were if anything in a worse case than the Indians.
+
+Late in the night, however, the moon rose, and Mendez had the joy of
+seeing its lower disc cut by a jagged line which proved to be the little
+islet or rock of Navassa, which lies off the westerly end of Espanola.
+New hope now animated the sufferers, and they pushed on until they were
+able to land on this rock, which proved to be without any vegetation
+whatsoever, but on the surface of which there were found some precious
+pools of rain-water.  Mendez was able to restrain the frantic appetites
+of his fellow-countrymen, but the savage companions were less wise, and
+drank their fill; so that some of them died in torment on the spot, and
+others became seriously ill.  The Spaniards were able to make a fire of
+driftwood, and boil some shell-fish, which they found on shore, and they
+wisely spent the heat of the day crouching in the shade of the rocks, and
+put off their departure until the evening.  It was then a comparatively
+easy journey for them to cross the dozen miles that separated them from
+Espanola, and they landed the next day in a pleasant harbour near Cape
+Tiburon.  Fieschi, true to his promise, was then ready to start back for
+Jamaica with news of the safe accomplishment of the voyage; but the
+remnant of the crews, Spaniards and savage companions alike, had had
+enough of it, and no threats or persuasions would induce them to embark
+again.  Mendez, therefore, left his friends to enjoy some little repose
+before continuing their journey to San Domingo, and, taking six natives
+of Espanola to row his canoe; set off along the coast towards the
+capital.  He had not gone half-way when he learned that Ovando was not
+there, but was in Xaragua, so he left his canoe and struck northward
+through the forest until he arrived at the Governor's camp.
+
+Ovando welcomed Mendez cordially, praised him for his plucky voyage, and
+expressed the greatest concern at the plight of the Admiral; but he was
+very busy at the moment, and was on the point of transacting a piece of
+business that furnished a dismal proof of the deterioration which had
+taken place in him.  Anacaona--the lady with the daughter whom we
+remember--was now ruling over the province of Xaragua, her brother having
+died; and as perhaps her native subjects had been giving a little trouble
+to the Governor, he had come to exert his authority.  The narrow official
+mind, brought into contact with native life, never develops in the
+direction of humanity; and Ovando had now for some time made the great
+discovery that it was less trouble to kill people than to try to rule
+over them wisely.  There had evidently always been a streak of Spanish
+cruelty in him, which had been much developed by his residence in
+Espanola; and to cruelty and narrow officialdom he now added treachery of
+a very monstrous and horrible kind.
+
+He announced his intention of paying a state visit to Anacaona, who
+thereupon summoned all her tributary chiefs to a kind of levee held in
+his honour.  In the midst of the levee, at a given signal, Ovando's
+soldiers rushed in, seized the caciques, fastened them to the wooden
+pillars of the house, and set the whole thing on fire; the caciques being
+thus miserably roasted alive.  While this was going on the atrocious work
+was completed by the soldiers massacring every native they could see
+--children, women, and old men included--and Anacaona herself was taken
+and hanged.
+
+All these things Diego Mendez had to witness; and when they were over,
+Ovando still had excuses for not hurrying to the relief of the Admiral.
+He had embarked on a campaign of extermination against the natives, and
+he followed up his atrocities at Xaragua by an expedition to the eastern
+end of Espanola, where very much the same kind of business was
+transacted.  Weeks and months passed in this bloody cruelty, and there
+was always an excuse for putting off Mendez.  Now it was because of the
+operations which he dignified by the name of wars, and now because he had
+no ship suitable for sending to Jamaica; but the truth was that Ovando,
+the springs of whose humanity had been entirely dried up during his
+disastrous reign in Espanola, did not want Columbus to see with his own
+eyes the terrible state of the island, and was callous enough to leave
+him either to perish or to find his own way back to the world.  It was
+only when news came that a fleet of caravels was expected from Spain that
+Ovando could no longer prevent Mendez from going to San Domingo and,
+purchasing one of them.
+
+Ovando had indeed lost all but the outer semblance of a man; the soul or
+animating part of him had entirely gone to corruption.  He had no
+interest in rescuing the Admiral; he had, on the contrary, great interest
+in leaving him unrescued; but curiosity as to his fate, and fear as to
+his actions in case he should return to Espanola, induced the Governor to
+make some effort towards spying cut his condition.  He had a number of
+trained rascals under his command--among them Diego de Escobar, one of
+Roldan's bright brigade; and Ovando had no sooner seen Mendez depart on
+his journey to San Domingo than he sent this Escobar to embark in a small
+caravel on a visit to Jamaica in order to see if the Admiral was still
+alive.  The caravel had to be small, so that there could be no chance of
+bringing off the 130 men who had been left to perish there; and various
+astute instructions were given to Escobar in order to prevent his arrival
+being of any comfort or assistance to the shipwrecked ones.  And so
+Escobar sailed; and so, in the month of March 1504, eight months after
+the vanishing of Mendez below the eastern horizon, the miserable company
+encamped on the two decaying ships on the sands at Puerto Santa Gloria
+descried with joyful excitement the sails of a Spanish caravel standing
+in to the shore.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE ECLIPSE OF THE MOON
+
+We must now return to the little settlement on the coast of Jamaica
+--those two wornout caravels, lashed together with ropes and bridged by an
+erection of wood and thatch, in which the forlorn little company was
+established.  In all communities of men so situated there are alternate
+periods of action and reaction, and after the excitement incidental to
+the departure of Mendez, and the return of Bartholomew with the news that
+he had got safely away, there followed a time of reaction, in which the
+Spaniards looked dismally out across the empty sea and wondered when, if
+ever, their salvation would come.  Columbus himself was now a confirmed
+invalid, and could hardly ever leave his bed under the thatch; and in his
+own condition of pain and depression his influence on the rest of the
+crew must inevitably have been less inspiriting than it had formerly
+been.  The men themselves, moreover, began to grow sickly, chiefly on
+account of the soft vegetable food, to which they were not accustomed,
+and partly because of their cramped quarters and the moist, unhealthy
+climate, which was the very opposite of what they needed after their long
+period of suffering and hardship at sea.
+
+As the days and weeks passed, with no occupation save the daily business
+of collecting food that gradually became more and more nauseous to them,
+and of straining their eyes across the empty blue of the sea in an
+anxious search for the returning canoes of Fieschi, the spirits of the
+castaways sank lower and lower.  Inevitably their discontent became
+articulate and broke out into murmurings.  The usual remedy for this
+state of affairs is to keep the men employed at some hard work; but there
+was no work for them to do, and the spirit of dissatisfaction had ample
+opportunity to spread.  As usual it soon took the form of hostility to
+the Admiral.  They seem to have borne him no love or gratitude for his
+masterly guiding of them through so many dangers; and now when he lay ill
+and in suffering his treacherous followers must needs fasten upon him the
+responsibility for their condition.  After a month or two had passed, and
+it became certain that Fieschi was not coming back, the castaways could
+only suppose that he and Mendez had either been captured by natives or
+had perished at sea, and that their fellow-countrymen must still be
+without news of the Admiral's predicament.  They began to say also that
+the Admiral was banished from Spain; that there was no desire or
+intention on the part of the Sovereigns to send an expedition to his
+relief; even if they had known of his condition; and that in any case
+they must long ago have given him up for lost.
+
+When the pot boils the scum rises to the surface, and the first result of
+these disloyal murmurings and agitations was to bring into prominence the
+two brothers, Francisco and Diego de Porras, who, it will be remembered,
+owed their presence with the expedition entirely to the Admiral's good
+nature in complying with the request of their brother-in-law Morales, who
+had apparently wished to find some distant occupation for them.  They had
+been given honourable posts as officers, in which they had not proved
+competent; but the Admiral had always treated them with kindness and
+courtesy, regarding them more as guests than as servants.  Who or what
+these Porras brothers were, where they came from, who were their father
+and mother, or what was their training, I do not know; it is enough for
+us to know that the result of it all had been the production of a couple
+of very mean scoundrels, who now found an opportunity to exercise their
+scoundrelism.
+
+When they discovered the nature of the murmuring and discontent among the
+crew they immediately set them to work it up into open mutiny.  They
+represented that, as Mendez had undoubtedly perished, there was no hope
+of relief from Espanola; that the Admiral did not even expect such
+relief, knowing that the island was forbidden ground to him.  They
+insinuated that he was as well content to remain in Jamaica as anywhere
+else, since he had to undergo a period of banishment until his friends at
+Court could procure his forgiveness.  They were all, said the Porras
+brothers, being made tools for the Admiral's convenience; as he did not
+wish to leave Jamaica himself, he was keeping them all there, to perish
+as likely as not, and in the meantime to form a bodyguard, and establish
+a service for himself.  The Porras brothers suggested that, under these
+circumstances, it would be as well to take a fleet of native canoes from
+the Indians and make their own way to Espanola; the Admiral would never
+undertake the voyage himself, being too helpless from the gout; but it
+would be absurd if the whole company were to be allowed to perish because
+of the infirmities of one man.  They reminded the murmurers that they
+would not be the first people who had rebelled with success against the
+despotic rule of Columbus, and that the conduct of the Sovereigns on a
+former occasion afforded them some promise that those who rebelled again
+would receive something quite different from punishment.
+
+Christmas passed, the old year went out in this strange, unhomelike
+place, and the new year came in.  The Admiral, as we have seen, was now
+almost entirely crippled and confined to his bed; and he was lying alone
+in his cabin on the second day of the year when Francisco de Porras
+abruptly entered.  Something very odd and flurried about Porras; he jerks
+and stammers, and suddenly breaks out into a flood of agitated speech, in
+which the Admiral distinguishes a stream of bitter reproach and
+impertinence.  The thing forms itself into nothing more or less than a
+hurried, gabbling complaint; the people are dissatisfied at being kept
+here week after week with no hope of relief; they accuse the Admiral of
+neglecting their interests; and so on.  Columbus, raising himself in his
+bed, tries to pacify Porras; gives him reasons why it is impossible for
+them to depart in canoes; makes every endeavour, in short, to bring this
+miserable fellow back to his duties.  He is watching Porras's eye all the
+time; sees that he is too excited to be pacified by reason, and suspects
+that he has considerable support behind him; and suggests that the crew
+had better all be assembled and a consultation held as to the best course
+to pursue.
+
+It is no good to reason with mutineers; and the Admiral has no sooner
+made this suggestion than he sees that it was a mistake.  Porras scoffs
+at it; action, not consultation, is what he demands; in short he presents
+an ultimatum to the Admiral--either to embark with the whole company at
+once, or stay behind in Jamaica at his own pleasure.  And then, turning
+his back on Columbus and raising his voice, he calls out, "I am for
+Castile; those who choose may follow me!"
+
+The shout was a signal, and immediately from every part of the vessel
+resounded the voices of the Spaniards, crying out that they would follow
+Porras.  In the midst of the confusion Columbus hobbled out of his bed
+and staggered on to the deck; Bartholomew seized his weapons and prepared
+for action; but the whole of the crew was not mutinous, and there was a
+large enough loyal remnant to make it unwise for the chicken-hearted
+mutineers to do more for the moment than shout: Some of them, it is true,
+were heard threatening the life of the Admiral, but he was hurried back
+to his bed by a few of the faithful ones, and others of them rushed up to
+the fierce Bartholomew, and with great difficulty persuaded him to drop
+his lance and retire to Christopher's cabin with him while they dealt
+with the offenders.  They begged Columbus to let the scoundrels go if
+they wished to, as the condition of those who remained would be improved
+rather than hurt by their absence, and they would be a good riddance.
+They then went back to the deck and told Porras and his followers that
+the sooner they went the better, and that nobody would interfere with
+their going as long as they offered no one any violence.
+
+The Admiral had some time before purchased some good canoes from the
+natives, and the mutineers seized ten of these and loaded them with
+native provisions.  Every effort was made to add to the number of the
+disloyal ones; and when they saw their friends making ready to depart
+several of these did actually join.  There were forty-eight who finally
+embarked with the brothers Porras; and there would have been more, but
+that so many of them were sick and unable to face the exposure of the
+voyage.  As it was, those who remained witnessed with no very cheerful
+emotions the departure of their companions, and even in some cases fell
+to tears and lamentations.  The poor old Admiral struggled out of his bed
+again, went round among the sick and the loyal, cheering them and
+comforting them, and promising to use every effort of the power left to
+him to secure an adequate reward for their loyalty when he should return
+to Spain.
+
+We need only follow the career of Porras and his deserters for the
+present far enough to see them safely off the premises and out of the way
+of the Admiral and our narrative.  They coasted along the shore of
+Jamaica to the eastward as Mendez had done, landing whenever they had a
+mind to, and robbing and outraging the natives; and they took a
+particularly mean and dirty revenge on the Admiral by committing all
+their robbings and outragings as though under his authority, assuring the
+offended Indians that what they did they did by his command and that what
+they took he would pay for; so that as they went along they sowed seeds
+of grievance and hostility against the Admiral.  They told the natives,
+moreover, that Columbus was an enemy of all Indians, and that they would
+be very well advised to kill him and get him out of the way.
+
+They had not managed very well with the navigation of the canoes; and
+while they were waiting for fine weather at the eastern end of the island
+they collected a number of natives to act as oarsmen.  When they thought
+the weather suitable they put to sea in the direction of Espanola.  They
+were only about fifteen miles from the shore, however, when the wind
+began to head them and to send up something of a sea; not rough, but
+enough to make the crank and overloaded canoes roll heavily, for they had
+not been prepared, as those of Mendez were, with false keels and
+weather-boards.  The Spaniards got frightened and turned back to
+Jamaica; but the sea became rougher, the canoes rolled more and more,
+they often shipped a quantity of water, and the situation began to look
+serious.  All their belongings except arms and provisions were thrown
+overboard; but still, as the wind rose and the sea with it, it became
+obvious that unless the canoes were further lightened they would not
+reach the shore in safety. Under these circumstances the Spaniards
+forced the natives to leap into the water, where they swam about like
+rats as well as they could, and then came back to the canoes in order to
+hold on and rest themselves. When they did this the Spaniards slashed at
+them with their swords or cut off their hands, so that one by one they
+fell back and, still swimming about feebly as well as they could with
+their bleeding hands or stumps of arms, the miserable wretches perished
+and sank at last.
+
+By this dreadful expedient the Spaniards managed to reach Jamaica again,
+and when they landed they immediately fell to quarrelling as to what they
+should do next.  Some were for trying to make the island of Cuba, the
+wind being favourable for that direction; others were for returning and
+making their submission to the Admiral; others for going back and seizing
+the remainder of his arms and stores; others for staying where they were
+for the present, and making another attempt to reach Espanola when the
+weather should be more favourable.  This last plan, being the counsel of
+present inaction, was adopted by the majority of the rabble; so they
+settled themselves at a neighbouring Indian village, behaving in: the
+manner with which we are familiar.  A little later, when the weather was
+calm, they made another attempt at the voyage, but were driven back in
+the same way; and being by this time sick of canoe voyages, they
+abandoned the attempt, and began to wander back westward through the
+island, maltreating the natives as before, and sowing seeds of bitter
+rancour and hostility against the Admiral; in whose neighbourhood we
+shall unfortunately hear of them again.
+
+In the meantime their departure had somewhat relieved the condition of
+affairs on board the hulks.  There were more provisions and there was
+more peace; the Admiral, rising above his own infirmities to the
+necessities of the occasion, moved unweariedly among the sick, cheering
+them and nursing them back into health and good humour, so that gradually
+the condition of the little colony was brought into better order and
+health than it had enjoyed since its establishment.
+
+But now unfortunately the evil harvest sown by the Porras gang in their
+journey to the east of the island began to ripen.  The supplies of
+provisions, which had hitherto been regularly brought by the natives,
+began to appear with less punctuality, and to fall off both in quantity
+and quality.  The trinkets with which they were purchased had now been
+distributed in such quantities that they began to lose their novelty and
+value; sometimes the natives demanded a much higher price for the
+provisions they brought, and (having by this time acquired the art of
+bargaining) would take their stores away again if they did not get the
+price they asked.
+
+But even of this device they soon grew weary; from being irregular, the
+supplies of provisions from some quarters ceased altogether, and the
+possibilities of famine began to stare the unhappy castaways in the face.
+It must be remembered that they were in a very weak physical condition,
+and that among the so-called loyal remnant there were very few who were
+not invalids; and they were unable to get out into the island and forage
+for themselves.  If the able-bodied handful were to sally forth in search
+of provisions, the hulks would be left defenceless and at the mercy of
+the natives, of whose growing hostility the Admiral had by this time
+discovered abundant evidence.  Thus little by little the food supply
+diminished until there was practically nothing left, and the miserable
+company of invalids were confronted with the alternative of either dying
+of starvation or desperately attempting a canoe voyage.
+
+
+It was from this critical situation that the spirit and resource of
+Columbus once more furnished a way of escape, and in these circumstances
+that he invented and worked a device that has since become famous--the
+great Eclipse Trick.  Among his small library in the cabin of the ship
+was the book containing the astronomical tables of Regiomontanus; and
+from his study of this work he was aware that an eclipse of the moon was
+due on a certain date near at hand.  He sent his Indian interpreter to
+visit the neighbouring caciques, summoning them to a great conference to
+be held on the evening of the eclipse, as the Admiral had matters of
+great importance to reveal to them.  They duly arrived on the evening
+appointed; not the caciques alone, but large numbers of the native
+population, well prepared for whatever might take place.  Columbus then
+addressed them through his interpreter, informing him that he was under
+the protection of a God who dwelt in the skies and who rewarded all who
+assisted him and punished all his enemies.  He made an effective use of
+the adventures of Mendez and Porras, pointing out that Mendez, who took
+his voyage by the Admiral's orders, had got away in safety, but that
+Porras and his followers, who had departed in disobedience and mutiny,
+had been prevented by the heavenly power from achieving their object.  He
+told them that his God was angry with them for their hostility and for
+their neglect to supply him with provisions; and that in token of his
+anger he was going to send them a dreadful punishment, as a sign of which
+they would presently see the moon change colour and lose its light, and
+the earth become dark.
+
+This address was spun out as long as possible; but even so it was
+followed by an interval in which, we may be sure, Columbus anxiously eyed
+the serene orb of night, and doubtless prayed that Regiomontanus might
+not have made a mistake in his calculations.  Some of the Indians were
+alarmed, some of them contemptuous; but it was pretty clearly realised on
+both sides that matters between them had come to a head; and probably if
+Regiomontanus, who had worked out these tables of figures and
+calculations so many years ago in his German home, had done his work
+carelessly or made a mistake, Columbus and his followers would have been
+massacred on the spot.  But Regiomontanus, God bless him!  had made no
+mistake.  Sure enough, and punctually to the appointed time, the dark
+shadow began to steal over the moon's disc; its light gradually faded,
+and a ghostly darkness crept over the face of the world.  Columbus,
+having seen that all was right with the celestial machinery, had retired
+to his cabin; and presently he found himself besieged there in the dark
+night by crowds of natives frantically bringing what provisions they had
+and protesting their intention of continuing to bring them for the rest
+of their lives.  If only the Admiral would ask his God to forgive them,
+there was no limit to the amount of provisions that he might have!  The
+Admiral, piously thankful, and perhaps beginning to enjoy the situation a
+little, kept himself shut up in his cabin as though communing with the
+implacable deity, while the darkness deepened over the land and the shore
+resounded with the howling and sobbing of the terrified natives.  He kept
+a look-out on the sky; and when he saw that the eclipse was about to pass
+away, he came out and informed the natives that God had decided to pardon
+them on condition of their remaining faithful in the matter of
+provisions, and that as a sign of His mercy He would restore the light.
+The beautiful miracle went on through its changing phases; and, watching
+in the darkness, the terrified natives saw the silver edge of the moon
+appearing again, the curtain that had obscured it gradually rolling away,
+and land and sea lying visible to them and once more steeped in the
+serene light which they worshipped.  It is likely that Christopher slept
+more soundly that night than he had slept for many nights before.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+RELIEF OF THE ADMIRAL
+
+There was no further difficulty about provisions, which were punctually
+brought by the natives on the old terms; but the familiar, spirit of
+sedition began to work again among the unhappy Spaniards, and once more a
+mutiny, led this time by the apothecary Bernardo, took form--the
+intention being to seize the remaining canoes and attempt to reach
+Espanola.  This was the point at which matters had arrived, in March
+1504, when as the twilight was falling one evening a cry was raised that
+there was a ship in sight; and presently a small caravel was seen
+standing in towards the shore.  All ideas of mutiny were forgotten, and
+the crew assembled in joyful anticipation to await, as they thought, the
+coming of their deliverers.  The caravel came on with the evening breeze;
+but while it was yet a long way off the shore it was seen to be lying to;
+a boat was lowered and rowed towards the harbour.
+
+As the boat drew near Columbus could recognise in it Diego de Escobar,
+whom he remembered having condemned to death for his share in the
+rebellion of Roldan.  He was not the man whom Columbus would have most
+wished to see at that moment.  The boat came alongside the hulks, and a
+barrel of wine and a side of bacon, the sea-compliment customary on such
+occasions, was handed up.  Greatly to the Admiral's surprise, however,
+Escobar did not come on board, but pushed his boat off and began to speak
+to Columbus from a little distance.  He told him that Ovando was greatly
+distressed at the Admiral's misfortunes; that he had been much occupied
+by wars in Espanola, and had not been able to send a message to him
+before; that he greatly regretted he had no ship at present large enough
+to bring off the Admiral and his people, but that he would send one as
+soon as he had it.  In the meantime the Admiral was to be assured that
+all his affairs in Espanola were being attended to faithfully, and that
+Escobar was instructed to bring back at once any letters which the
+Admiral might wish to write.
+
+The coolness and unexpectedness of this message completely took away
+the breath of the unhappy Spaniards, who doubtless stood looking in
+bewilderment from Escobar to Columbus, unable to believe that the caravel
+had not been sent for their relief.  Columbus, however, with a
+self-restraint which cannot be too highly praised, realised that Escobar
+meant what he said, and that by protesting against his action or trying
+to interfere with it he would only be putting himself in the wrong.  He
+therefore retired immediately to his cabin and wrote a letter to Ovando,
+in which he drew a vivid picture of the distress of his people, reported
+the rebellion of the Porras brothers, and reminded Ovando that he relied
+upon the fulfilment of his promise to send relief.  The letter was
+handed over to Escobar, who rowed back with it to his caravel and
+immediately sailed away with it into the night.
+
+
+Before he could retire to commune with his own thoughts or to talk with
+his faithful brother, Columbus had the painful duty of speaking to his
+people, whose puzzled and disappointed faces must have cost him some
+extra pangs.  He told them that he was quite satisfied with the message
+from Ovando, that it was a sign of kindness on his part thus to send them
+news in advance that relief was coming, that their situation was now
+known in San Domingo, and that vessels would soon be here to take them
+away.  He added that he himself was so sure of these things that he had
+refused to go back with Escobar, but had preferred to remain with them
+and share their lot until relief should come.  This had the desired
+effect of cheering the Spaniards; but it was far from representing the
+real sentiments of Columbus on the subject.  The fact that Escobar had
+been chosen to convey this strange empty message of sympathy seemed to
+him suspicious, and with his profound distrust of Ovando Columbus began
+to wonder whether some further scheme might not be on foot to damage him
+in the eyes of the Sovereigns.  He was convinced that Ovando had meant to
+let him starve on the island, and that the real purpose of Escobar's
+visit had been to find out what condition the Admiral was in, so that
+Ovando might know how to act.  It is very hard to get at the truth of
+what these two men thought of each other.  They were both suspicious,
+each was playing for his own hand, and Ovando was only a little more
+unscrupulous than Columbus; but there can be no doubt that whatever his
+motives may have been Ovando acted with abominable treachery and cruelty
+in leaving the Admiral unrelieved for nearly nine months.
+
+
+Columbus now tried to make use of the visit of Escobar to restore to
+allegiance the band of rebels that were wandering about in the
+neighbourhood under the leadership of the Porras brothers.  Why he should
+have wished to bring them back to the ships is not clear, for by all
+accounts he was very well rid of them; but probably his pride as a
+commander was hurt by the thought that half of his company had defied his
+authority and were in a state of mutiny.  At any rate he sent out an
+ambassador to Porras, offering to receive the mutineers back without any
+punishment, and to give them a free passage to Espanola in the vessels
+which were shortly expected, if they would return to their allegiance
+with him.
+
+The folly of this overture was made manifest by the treatment which it
+received.  It was bad enough to make advances to the Porras brothers, but
+it was still worse to have those advances repulsed, and that is what
+happened.  The Porras brothers, being themselves incapable of any
+single-mindedness, affected not to believe in the sincerity of the
+Admiral's offer; they feared that he was laying some kind of trap for
+them; moreover, they were doing very well in their lawless way, and
+living very comfortably on the natives; so they told Columbus's
+ambassadors that his offer was declined.  At the same time they
+undertook to conduct themselves in an amicable and orderly manner on
+condition that, when the vessels arrived, one of them should be
+apportioned to the exclusive use of the mutineers; and that in the
+meantime the Admiral should share with them his store of provisions
+and trinkets, as theirs were exhausted.
+
+This was the impertinent decision of the Porras brothers; but it did not
+quite commend itself to their followers, who were fearful of the possible
+results if they should persist in their mutinous conduct.  They were very
+much afraid of being left behind in the island, and in any case, having
+attempted and failed in the main object of their mutiny, they saw no
+reason why they should refuse a free pardon.  But the Porras brothers
+lied busily.  They said that the Admiral was merely laying a trap in
+order to get them into his power, and that he would send them home to
+Spain in chains; and they even went so far as to assure their
+fellow-rebels that the story of a caravel having arrived was not really
+true; but that Columbus, who was an adept in the arts of necromancy, had
+really made his people believe that they had seen a caravel in the dusk;
+and that if one had really arrived it would not have gone away so
+suddenly, nor would the Admiral and his brother and son have failed to
+take their passage in it.
+
+To consolidate the effect of these remarkable statements on the still
+wavering mutineers, the Porras brothers decided to commit them to an open
+act of violence which would successfully alienate them from the Admiral.
+They formed them, therefore, into an armed expedition, with the idea of
+seizing the stores remaining on the wreck and taking the Admiral
+personally.  Columbus fortunately got news of this, as he nearly always
+did when there was treachery in the wind; and he sent Bartholomew to try
+to persuade them once more to return to their duty--a vain and foolish
+mission, the vanity and folly of which were fully apparent to
+Bartholomew.  He duly set out upon it; but instead of mild words he took
+with him fifty armed men--the whole available able-bodied force, in
+fact--and drew near to the position occupied by the rebels.
+
+
+The exhortation of the Porras brothers had meanwhile produced its effect,
+and it was decided that six of the strongest men among the mutineers
+should make for Bartholomew himself and try to capture or kill him.  The
+fierce Adelantado, finding himself surrounded by six assailants, who
+seemed to be directing their whole effort against his life, swung his
+sword in a berserk rage and slashed about him, to such good purpose that
+four or five of his assailants soon lay round him killed or wounded.  At
+this point Francisco de Porras rushed in and cleft the shield held by
+Bartholomew, severely wounding the hand that held it; but the sword.
+stuck in the shield, and while Porras was endeavouring to draw it out
+Bartholomew and some others closed upon him, and after a sharp struggle
+took him prisoner.  The battle, which was a short one, had been meanwhile
+raging fiercely among the rest of the forces; but when the mutineers saw
+their leader taken prisoner, and many of their number lying dead or
+wounded, they scattered and fled, but not before Bartholomew's force had
+taken several prisoners.  It was then found that, although the rebels had
+suffered heavily, none of Bartholomew's men were killed, and only one
+other besides himself was wounded.  The next day the mutineers all came
+in to surrender, submitting an abject oath of allegiance; and Columbus,
+always strangely magnanimous to rebels and insurgents, pardoned them all
+with the exception of Francisco de Porras, who, one is glad to know, was
+confined in irons to be sent to Spain for trial.
+
+
+This submission, which was due to the prompt action of Bartholomew rather
+than to the somewhat feeble diplomacy of the Admiral, took place on March
+20th, and proved somewhat embarrassing to Columbus.  He could put no
+faith in the oaths and protestations of the mutineers; and he was very
+doubtful about the wisdom of establishing them once more on the wrecks
+with the hitherto orderly remnant.  He therefore divided them up into
+several bands, and placing each under the command of an officer whom he
+could trust, he supplied them with trinkets and despatched them to
+different parts of the island, for the purpose of collecting provisions
+and carrying on barter with the natives.  By this means the last month or
+two of this most trying and exciting sojourn on the island of Jamaica
+were passed in some measure of peace; and towards the end of June it was
+brought to an end by the arrival of two caravels.  One of them was the
+ship purchased by Diego Mendez out of the three which had arrived from
+Spain; and the other had been despatched by Ovando in deference, it is
+said, to public feeling in San Domingo, which had been so influenced by
+Mendez's account of the Admiral's heroic adventures that Ovando dared not
+neglect him any longer.  Moreover, if it had ever been his hope that the
+Admiral would perish on the island of Jamaica, that hope was now doomed
+to frustration, and, as he was to be rescued in spite of all, Ovando no
+doubt thought that he might as well, for the sake of appearances, have a
+hand in the rescue.
+
+The two caravels, laden with what was worth saving from the two abandoned
+hulks, and carrying what was left of the Admiral's company, sailed from
+Jamaica on June 28, 1504.  Columbus's joy, as we may imagine, was deep
+and heartfelt.  He said afterwards to Mendez that it was the happiest day
+of his life, for that he had never hoped to leave the place alive.
+
+The mission of Mendez, then, had been successful, although he had had to
+wait for eight months to fulfil it.  He himself, in accordance with
+Columbus's instructions, had gone to Spain in another caravel of the
+fleet out of which he had purchased the relieving ship; and as he passes
+out of our narrative we may now take our farewell of him.  Among the many
+men employed in the Admiral's service no figure stands out so brightly as
+that of Diego Mendez; and his record, almost alone of those whose service
+of the Admiral earned them office and distinction, is unblotted by any
+stain of crime or treachery.  He was as brave as a lion and as faithful
+as a dog, and throughout his life remained true to his ideal of service
+to the Admiral and his descendants.  He was rewarded by King Ferdinand
+for his distinguished services, and allowed to bear a canoe on his
+coat-of-arms; he was with the Admiral at his death-bed at Valladolid,
+and when he himself came to die thirty years afterwards in the same
+place he made a will in which he incorporated a brief record of the
+events of the adventurous voyage in which he had borne the principal
+part, and also enshrined his devotion to the name and family of
+Columbus.  His demands for himself were very modest, although there is
+reason to fear that they were never properly fulfilled.  He was
+curiously anxious to be remembered chiefly by his plucky canoe voyage;
+and in giving directions for his tomb, and ordering that a stone should
+be placed over his remains, he wrote: "In the centre of the said stone
+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 three hundred
+leagues, and let some letters be placed above it saying: Canoa."  The
+epitaph that he chose for himself was in the following sense:
+
+                   Here lies the Honourable Gentleman
+
+                              DIEGO MENDEZ
+
+             He greatly served the royal crown of Spain in
+             the discovery and conquest of the Indies with
+                the Admiral Don Christopher Columbus of
+               glorious memory who discovered them, and
+              afterwards by himself, with his own ships,
+                         at his own expense.
+                            He died, etc.
+                  He begs from charity a PATERNOSTER
+                           and an AVE MARIA.
+
+
+Surely he deserves them, if ever an honourable gentleman did.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE HERITAGE OF HATRED
+
+Although the journey from Jamaica to Espanola had been accomplished in
+four days by Mendez in his canoe, the caravels conveying the party
+rescued from Puerto Santa Gloria were seven weary weeks on this short
+voyage; a strong north-west wind combining with the west-going current to
+make their progress to the north-west impossible for weeks at a time.  It
+was not until the 13th of August 1503 that they anchored in the harbour
+of San Domingo, and Columbus once more set foot, after an absence of more
+than two years, on the territory from the governorship of which he had
+been deposed.
+
+He was well enough received by Ovando, who came down in state to meet
+him, lodged him in his own house, and saw that he was treated with the
+distinction suitable to his high station.  The Spanish colony, moreover,
+seemed to have made something of a hero of Columbus during his long
+absence, and they received him with enthusiasm.  But his satisfaction in
+being in San Domingo ended with that.  He was constantly made to feel
+that it was Ovando and not he who was the ruler there;--and Ovando
+emphasised the difference between them by numerous acts of highhanded
+authority, some of them of a kind calculated to be extremely mortifying
+to the Admiral.  Among these things he insisted upon releasing Porras,
+whom Columbus had confined in chains; and he talked of punishing those
+faithful followers of Columbus who had taken part in the battle between
+Bartholomew and the rebels, because in this fight some of the followers
+of Porras had been killed.  Acts like these produced weary bickerings and
+arguments between Ovando and Columbus, unprofitable to them, unprofitable
+to us.  The Admiral seems now to have relapsed into a condition in which
+he cared only for two things, his honours and his emoluments.  Over every
+authoritative act of Ovando's there was a weary squabble between him and
+the Admiral, Ovando claiming his right of jurisdiction over the whole
+territory of the New World, including Jamaica, and Columbus insisting
+that by his commission and letters of authority he had been placed in
+sole charge of the members of his own expedition.
+
+And then, as regards his emoluments, the Admiral considered himself (and
+not without justice) to have been treated most unfairly.  By the
+extravagant terms of his original agreement he was, as we know, entitled
+to a share of all rents and dues, as well as of the gold collected; but
+it had been no one's business to collect these for him, and every one's
+business to neglect them.  No one had cared; no one had kept any accounts
+of what was due to the Admiral; he could not find out what had been paid
+and what had not been paid.  He accused Ovando of having impeded his
+agent Carvajal in his duty of collecting the Admiral's revenues, and of
+disobeying the express orders of Queen Isabella in that matter; and so
+on-a state of affairs the most wearisome, sordid, and unprofitable in
+which any man could be involved.
+
+And if Columbus turned his eyes from the office in San Domingo inland to
+that Paradise which he had entered twelve years before, what change and
+ruin, dreary, horrible and complete, did he not discover!  The birds
+still sang, and the nights were still like May in Cordova; but upon that
+happy harmony the sound of piteous cries and shrieks had long since
+broken, and along and black December night of misery had spread its pall
+over the island.  Wherever he went, Columbus found the same evidence of
+ruin and desolation.  Where once innumerable handsome natives had
+thronged the forests and the villages, there were now silence and smoking
+ruin, and the few natives that he met were emaciated, terrified, dying.
+Did he reflect, I wonder, that some part of the responsibility of all
+this horror rested on him?  That many a system of island government, the
+machinery of which was now fed by a steady stream of human lives, had
+been set going by him in ignorance, or greed of quick commercial returns?
+It is probable that he did not; for he now permanently regarded himself
+as a much-injured man, and was far too much occupied with his own wrongs
+to realise that they were as nothing compared with the monstrous stream
+of wrong and suffering that he had unwittingly sent flowing into the
+world.
+
+In the island under Ovando's rule Columbus saw the logical results of his
+own original principles of government, which had recognised the right of
+the Christians to possess the persons and labours of the heathen natives.
+Las Casas, who was living in Espanola as a young priest at this time, and
+was destined by long residence there and in the West Indies to qualify
+himself as their first historian, saw what Columbus saw, and saw also the
+even worse things that happened in after years in Cuba and Jamaica; and
+it is to him that we owe our knowledge of the condition of island affairs
+at this time.  The colonists whom Ovando had brought out had come very
+much in the spirit that in our own day characterised the rush to the
+north-western goldfields of America.  They brought only the slightest
+equipment, and were no sooner landed at San Domingo than they set out
+into the island like so many picnic parties, being more careful to carry
+vessels in which to bring back the gold they were to find than proper
+provisions and equipment to support them in the labour of finding it.
+The roads, says Las Casas, swarmed like ant-hills with these adventurers
+rushing forth to the mines, which were about twenty-five miles distant
+from San Domingo; they were in the highest spirits, and they made it a
+kind of race as to who should get there first.  They thought they had
+nothing to do but to pick up shining lumps of gold; and when they found
+that they had to dig and delve in the hard earth, and to dig
+systematically and continuously, with a great deal of digging for very
+little gold, their spirits fell.  They were not used to dig; and it
+happened that most of them began in an unprofitable spot, where they
+digged for eight days without finding any gold.  Their provisions were
+soon exhausted; and in a week they were back again in San Domingo, tired,
+famished, and bitterly disappointed.  They had no genius for steady
+labour; most of them were virtually without means; and although they
+lived in San Domingo, on what they had as long as possible, they were
+soon starving there, and selling the clothes off their backs to procure
+food.  Some of them took situations with the other settlers, more fell
+victims to the climate of the island and their own imprudences and
+distresses; and a thousand of them had died within two years.
+
+Ovando had revived the enthusiasm for mining by two enactments.  He
+reduced the share of discovered gold payable to the Crown, and he
+developed Columbus's system of forced labour to such an extent that the
+mines were entirely worked by it.  To each Spaniard, whether mining or
+farming, so many natives were allotted.  It was not called slavery; the
+natives were supposed to be paid a minute sum, and their employers were
+also expected to teach them the Christian religion.  That was the plan.
+The way in which it worked was that, a body of native men being allotted
+to a Spanish settler for a period, say, of six or eight months--for the
+enactment was precise in putting a period to the term of slavery--the
+natives would be marched off, probably many days' journey from their
+homes and families, and set to work under a Spanish foreman.  The work,
+as we have already seen, was infinitely harder than that to which they
+were accustomed; and most serious of all, it was done under conditions
+that took all the heart out of the labour.  A man will toil in his own
+garden or in tilling his own land with interest and happiness, not
+counting the hours which he spends there; knowing in fact that his work
+is worth doing, because he is doing it for a good reason.  But put the
+same man to work in a gang merely for the aggrandisement of some other
+over-man; and the heart and cheerfulness will soon die out of him.
+
+It was so with these children of the sun.  They were put to work ten
+times harder than any they had ever done before, and they were put to it
+under the lash.  The light diet of their habit had been sufficient to
+support them in their former existence of happy idleness and dalliance,
+and they had not wanted anything more than their cassava bread and a
+little fish and fruit; now, however, they were put to work at a pressure
+which made a very different kind of feeding necessary to them, and this
+they did not get.  Now and then a handful of pork would be divided among
+a dozen of them, but they were literally starved, and were accustomed to
+scramble like dogs for the bones that were thrown from the tables of the
+Spaniards, which bones they ground up and mixed with their, bread so that
+no portion of them might be lost.  They died in numbers under these hard
+conditions, and, compared with their lives, their deaths must often have
+been happy.  When the time came for them to go home they were generally
+utterly worn out and crippled, and had to face a long journey of many
+days with no food to support them but what they could get on the journey;
+and the roads were strewn with the dead bodies of those who fell by the
+way.
+
+And far worse things happened to them than labour and exhaustion.  It
+became the custom among the Spaniards to regard the lives of the natives
+as of far less value than those of the dogs that were sometimes set upon
+them in sport.  A Spaniard riding along would make a wager with his
+fellow that he would cut the head off a native with one stroke of his
+sword; and many attempts would be laughingly made, and many living bodies
+hideously mutilated and destroyed, before the feat would be accomplished.
+Another sport was one similar to pigsticking as it is practised in India,
+except that instead of pigs native women and children were stuck with the
+lances.  There was no kind of mutilation and monstrous cruelty that was
+not practised.  If there be any powers of hell, they stalked at large
+through the forests and valleys of Espanola.  Lust and bloody cruelty, of
+a kind not merely indescribable but unrealisable by sane men and women,
+drenched the once happy island with anguish and terror.  And in payment
+for it the Spaniards undertook to teach the heathen the Christian
+religion.
+
+
+The five chiefs who had ruled with justice and wisdom over the island of
+Espanola in the early days of Columbus were all dead, wiped out by the
+wave of wild death and cruelty that had swept over the island.  The
+gentle Guacanagari, when he saw the desolation that was beginning to
+overwhelm human existence, had fled into the mountains, hiding his face
+in shame from the sons of men, and had miserably died there.  Caonabo,
+Lord of the House of Gold, fiercest and bravest of them all, who first
+realised that the Spaniards were enemies to the native peace, after
+languishing in prison in the house of Columbus at Isabella for some time,
+had died in captivity during the voyage to Spain.  Anacaona his wife, the
+Bloom of the Gold, that brave and beautiful woman, whose admiration of
+the Spaniards had by their bloody cruelties been turned into detestation,
+had been shamefully betrayed and ignominiously hanged.  Behechio, her
+brother, the only cacique who did not sue for peace after the first
+conquest of the island by Christopher and Bartholomew Columbus, was dead
+long ago of wounds and sorrow.  Guarionex, the Lord of the Vega Real, who
+had once been friendly enough, who had danced to the Spanish pipe and
+learned the Paternoster and Ave Maria, and whose progress in conversion
+to Christianity the seduction of his wives by those who were converting
+him had interrupted, after wandering in the mountains of Ciguay had been
+imprisoned in chains, and drowned in the hurricane of June 30, 1502.
+
+The fifth chief, Cotabanama, Lord of the province of Higua, made the last
+stand against Ovando in defence of the native right to existence, and was
+only defeated after severe battles and dreadful slaughters.  His
+territory was among the mountains, and his last insurrection was caused,
+as so many others had been, by the intolerable conduct of the Spaniards
+towards the wives and daughters of the Indians.  Collecting all his
+warriors, Cotabanama attacked the Spanish posts in his neighbourhood.
+At every engagement his troops were defeated and dispersed, but only to
+collect again, fight again with even greater fury, be defeated and
+dispersed again, and rally again against the Spaniards.  They literally
+fought to the death.  After every battle the Spaniards made a massacre of
+all the natives they could find, old men, children, and pregnant women
+being alike put to the sword or burned in their houses.  When their
+companions fell beside them, instead of being frightened they became more
+furious; and when they were wounded they would pluck the arrows out of
+their bodies and hurl them back at the Spaniards, falling dead in the
+very act.  After one such severe defeat and massacre the natives
+scattered for many months, hiding among the mountains and trying to
+collect and succour their decimated families; but the Spaniards, who with
+their dogs grew skilful at tracking the Indians and found it pleasant
+sport, came upon them in the places of refuge where little groups of them
+were sheltering their women and children, and there slowly and cruelly
+slaughtered them, often with the addition of tortures and torments in
+order to induce them to reveal the whereabouts of other bands.  When it
+was possible the Spaniards sometimes hanged thirteen of them in a row in
+commemoration of their Blessed Saviour and the Twelve Apostles; and while
+they were hanging, and before they had quite died, they would hack at
+them with their swords in order to test the edge of the steel.  At the
+last stand, when the fierceness and bitterness of the contest rose to a
+height on both sides, Cotabanama was captured and a plan made to broil
+him slowly to death; but for some reason this plan was not carried out,
+and the brave chief was taken to San Domingo and publicly hanged like a
+thief.
+
+
+After that there was never any more resistance; it was simply a case of
+extermination, which the Spaniards easily accomplished by cutting of the
+heads of women as they passed by, and impaling infants and little
+children on their lances as they rode through the villages.  Thus, in the
+twelve years since the discovery of Columbus, between half a million and
+a million natives, perished; and as the Spanish colonisation spread
+afterwards from island to island, and the banner of civilisation and
+Christianity was borne farther abroad throughout the Indies, the same
+hideous process was continued.  In Cuba, in Jamaica, throughout the
+Antilles, the cross and the sword, the whip-lash and the Gospel advanced
+together; wherever the Host was consecrated, hideous cries of agony and
+suffering broke forth; until happily, in the fulness of time, the dire
+business was complete, and the whole of the people who had inhabited this
+garden of the world were exterminated and their blood and race wiped from
+the face of the earth .  .  .  .  Unless, indeed, blood and race and hatred
+be imperishable things; unless the faithful Earth that bred and reared
+the race still keeps in her soil, and in the waving branches of the trees
+and the green grasses, the sacred essences of its blood and hatred;
+unless in the full cycle of Time, when that suffering flesh and blood
+shall have gone through all the changes of substance and condition, from
+corruption and dust through flowers and grasses and trees and animals
+back into the living body of mankind again, it shall one day rise up
+terribly to avenge that horror of the past.  Unless Earth and Time
+remember, O Children of the Sun!  for men have forgotten, and on the soil
+of your Paradise the African negro, learned in the vices of Europe,
+erects his monstrous effigy of civilisation and his grotesque mockery of
+freedom; unless it be through his brutish body, into which the blood and
+hatred with which the soil of Espanola was soaked have now passed, that
+they shall dreadfully strike at the world again.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE ADMIRAL COMES HOME
+
+On September 12, 1504., Christopher Columbus did many things for the last
+time.  He who had so often occupied himself in ports and harbours with
+the fitting out of ships and preparations for a voyage now completed at
+San Domingo the simple preparations for the last voyage he was to take.
+The ship he had come in from Jamaica had been refitted and placed under
+the command of Bartholomew, and he had bought another small caravel in
+which he and his son were to sail.  For the last time he superintended
+those details of fitting out and provisioning which were now so familiar
+to him; for the last time he walked in the streets of San Domingo and
+mingled with the direful activities of his colony; he looked his last
+upon the place where the vital scenes of his life had been set, for the
+last time weighed anchor, and took his last farewell of the seas and
+islands of his discovery.  A little steadfast looking, a little straining
+of the eyes, a little heart-aching no doubt, and Espanola has sunk down
+into the sea behind the white wake of the ships; and with its fading away
+the span of active life allotted to this man shuts down, and his powerful
+opportunities for good or evil are withdrawn.
+
+There was something great and heroic about the Admiral's last voyage.
+Wind and sea rose up as though to make a last bitter attack upon the man
+who had disclosed their mysteries and betrayed their secrets.  He had
+hardly cleared the island before the first gale came down upon him and
+dismasted his ship, so that he was obliged to transfer himself and his
+son to Bartholomew's caravel and send the disabled vessel back to
+Espanola.  The shouting sea, as though encouraged by this triumph, hurled
+tempest after tempest upon the one lonely small ship that was staggering
+on its way to Spain; and the duel between this great seaman and the vast
+elemental power that he had so often outwitted began in earnest.  One
+little ship, one enfeebled man to be destroyed by the power of the sea:
+that was the problem, and there were thousands of miles of sea-room, and
+two months of time to solve it in!  Tempest after tempest rose and drove
+unceasingly against the ship.  A mast was sprung and had to be cut away;
+another, and the woodwork from the forecastles and high stern works had
+to be stripped and lashed round the crazy mainmast to preserve it from
+wholesale destruction.  Another gale, and the mast had to be shortened,
+for even reinforced as it was it would not bear the strain; and so
+crippled, so buffeted, this very small ship leapt and staggered on her
+way across the Atlantic, keeping her bowsprit pointed to that region of
+the foamy emptiness where Spain was.
+
+The Admiral lay crippled in his cabin listening to the rush and bubble of
+the water, feeling the blows and recoils of the unending battle,
+hearkening anxiously to the straining of the timbers and the vessel's
+agonised complainings under the pounding of the seas.  We do not know
+what his thoughts were; but we may guess that they looked backward rather
+than forward, and that often they must have been prayers that the present
+misery would come somehow or other to an end.  Up on deck brother
+Bartholomew, who has developed some grievous complaint of the jaws and
+teeth--complaint not known to us more particularly, but dreadful enough
+from that description--does his duty also, with that heroic manfulness
+that has marked his whole career; and somewhere in the ship young
+Ferdinand is sheltering from the sprays and breaking seas, finding his
+world of adventure grown somewhat gloomy and sordid of late, and feeling
+that he has now had his fill of the sea .  .  .  .  Shut your eyes and
+let the illusions of time and place fade from you; be with them for a
+moment on this last voyage; hear that eternal foaming and crashing of
+great waves, the shrieking of wind in cordage, the cracking and slatting
+of the sails, the mad lashing of loose ropes; the painful swinging, and
+climbing up and diving down, and sinking and staggering and helpless
+strivings of the small ship in the waste of water.  The sea is as empty
+as chaos, nothing for days and weeks but that infinite tumbling surface
+and heaven of grey storm-clouds; a world of salt surges encircled by
+horizons of dim foam.  Time and place are nothing; the agony and pain of
+such moments are eternal.
+
+But the two brothers, grim and gigantic in their sea power, subtle as the
+wind itself in their sea wit, win the battle.  Over the thousands of
+miles of angry surges they urge that small ship towards calm and safety;
+until one day the sea begins to abate a little, and through the spray and
+tumult of waters the dim loom of land is seen.  The sea falls back
+disappointed and finally conquered by Christopher Columbus, whose ship,
+battered, crippled, and strained, comes back out of the wilderness of
+waters and glides quietly into the smooth harbour of San Lucar, November
+7, 1504.  There were no guns or bells to greet the Admiral; his only
+salute was in the thunder of the conquered seas; and he was carried
+ashore to San Lucar, and thence to Seville, a sick and broken man.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+THE LAST DAYS
+
+Columbus, for whom rest and quiet were the first essentials, remained in
+Seville from November 1504 to May 1505, when he joined the Court at
+Segovia and afterwards at Salamanca and Valladolid, where he remained
+till his death in May 1506.  During this last period, when all other
+activities were practically impossible to him, he fell into a state of
+letter-writing--for the most part long, wearisome complainings and
+explainings in which he poured out a copious flood of tears and self-pity
+for the loss of his gold.
+
+It has generally been claimed that Columbus was in bitter penury and want
+of money, but a close examination of the letters and other documents
+relating to this time show that in his last days he was not poor in any
+true sense of the word.  He was probably a hundred times richer than any
+of his ancestors had ever been; he had, money to give and money to spend;
+the banks honoured his drafts; his credit was apparently indisputable.
+But compared with the fabulous wealth to which he would by this time have
+been entitled if his original agreement with the Crown of Spain had been
+faithfully carried out he was no doubt poor.  There is no evidence that
+he lacked any comfort or alleviation that money could buy; indeed he
+never had any great craving for the things that money can buy--only for
+money itself.  There must have been many rich people in Spain who would
+gladly have entertained him in luxury and dignity; but he was not the
+kind of man to set much store by such things except in so far as they
+were a decoration and advertisement of his position as a great man.  He
+had set himself to the single task of securing what he called his rights;
+and in these days of sunset he seems to have been illumined by some
+glimmer of the early glory of his first inspiration.  He wanted the
+payment of his dues now, not so much for his own enrichment, but as a
+sign to the world that his great position as Admiral and Viceroy was
+recognised, so that his dignities and estates might be established and
+consolidated in a form which he would be able to transmit to his remote
+posterity.
+
+Since he wrote so copiously and so constantly in these last days, the
+best picture of his mood and condition is afforded in his letters to his
+son Diego; letters which, in spite of their infinitely wearisome
+recapitulation and querulous complaint, should be carefully read by those
+who wish to keep in touch with the Admiral to the end.
+
+     Letter written by CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS to DON DIEGO, his Son,
+     November 21, 1504.
+
+     "VERY DEAR SON,--I received your letter by the courier.  You did
+     well in remaining yonder to remedy our affairs somewhat and to
+     employ yourself now in our business.  Ever since I came to Castile,
+     the Lord Bishop of Palencia has shown me favour and has desired that
+     I should be honoured.  Now he must be entreated that it may please
+     him to occupy himself in remedying my many grievances and in
+     ordering that the agreement and letters of concession which their
+     Highnesses gave me be fulfilled, and that I be indemnified for so
+     many damages.  And he may be certain that if their Highnesses do
+     this, their estate and greatness will be multiplied to them in an
+     incredible degree.  And it must not appear to him that forty
+     thousand pesos in gold is more than a representation of it; because
+     they might have had a much greater quantity if Satan had not
+     hindered it by impeding my design; for, when I was taken away from
+     the Indies, I was prepared to give them a sum of gold incomparable
+     to forty thousand pesos.  I make oath, and this may be for thee
+     alone, that the damage to me in the matter of the concessions their
+     Highnesses have made to me, amounts to ten millions each year, and
+     never can be made good.  You see what will be, or is, the injury to
+     their Highnesses in what belongs to them, and they do not perceive
+     it.  I write at their disposal and will strive to start yonder.  My
+     arrival and the rest is in the hands of our Lord.  His mercy is
+     infinite.  What is done and is to be done, St. Augustine says is
+     already done before the creation of the world.  I write also to
+     these other Lords named in the letter of Diego Mendez.  Commend me
+     to their mercy and tell them of my going as I have said above.  For
+     certainly I feel great fear, as the cold is so inimical to this, my
+     infirmity, that I may have to remain on the road.
+
+     "I was very much pleased to hear the contents of your letter and
+     what the King our Lord said, for which you kissed his royal hands.
+     It is certain that I have served their Highnesses with as much
+     diligence and love as though it had been to gain Paradise, and more,
+     and if I have been at fault in anything it has been because it was
+     impossible or because my knowledge and strength were not sufficient.
+     God, our Lord, in such a case, does not require more from persons
+     than the will.
+
+     "At the request of the Treasurer Morales, I left two brothers in the
+     Indies, who are called Porras.  The one was captain and the other
+     auditor.  Both were without capacity for these positions: and I was
+     confident that they could fill them, because of love for the person
+     who sent them to me.  They both became more vain than they had been.
+     I forgave them many incivilities, more than I would do with a
+     relation, and their offences were such that they merited another
+     punishment than a verbal reprimand.  Finally they reached such a
+     point that even had I desired, I could not have avoided doing what I
+     did.  The records of the case will prove whether I lie or not.  They
+     rebelled on the island of Jamaica, at which I was as much astonished
+     as I would be if the sun's rays should cast darkness.  I was at the
+     point of death, and they martyrised me with extreme cruelty during
+     five months and without cause.  Finally I took them all prisoners,
+     and immediately set them free, except the captain, whom I was
+     bringing as a prisoner to their Highnesses.  A petition which they
+     made to me under oath, and which I send you with this letter, will
+     inform you at length in regard to this matter, although the records
+     of the case explain it fully.  These records and the Notary are
+     coming on another vessel, which I am expecting from day to day.  The
+     Governor in Santo Domingo took this prisoner.--His courtesy
+     constrained him to do this.  I had a chapter in my instructions in
+     which their Highnesses ordered all to obey me, and that I should
+     exercise civil and criminal justice over all those who were with me:
+     but this was of no avail with the Governor, who said that it was not
+     understood as applying in his territory.  He sent the prisoner to
+     these Lords who have charge of the Indies without inquiry or record
+     or writing.  They did not receive him, and both brothers go free.
+     It is not wonderful to me that our Lord punishes.  They went there
+     with shameless faces.  Such wickedness or such cruel treason were
+     never heard of.  I wrote to their Highnesses about this matter in
+     the other letter, and said that it was not right for them to consent
+     to this offence.  I also wrote to the Lord Treasurer that I begged
+     him as a favour not to pass sentence on the testimony given by these
+     men until he heard me.  Now it will be well for you to remind him of
+     it anew.  I do, not know how they dare to go before him with such an
+     undertaking.  I have written to him about it again and have sent him
+     the copy of the oath, the same as I send to you and likewise to
+     Doctor Angulo and the Licentiate Zapata.  I commend myself to the
+     mercy of all, with the information that my departure yonder will
+     take place in a short time.
+
+     "I would be glad to receive a letter from their Highnesses and to
+     know what they order.  You must procure such a letter if you see the
+     means of so doing.  I also commend myself to the Lord Bishop and to
+     Juan Lopez, with the reminder of illness and of the reward for my
+     services.
+
+     "You must read the letters which go with this one in order to act in
+     conformity with what they say.  Acknowledge the receipt of his
+     letter to Diego Mendez.  I do not write him as he will learn
+     everything from you, and also because my illness prevents it.
+
+     "It would be well for Carbajal and Jeronimo--[Jeronimo de Aguero, a
+     landowner in Espanola and a friend of Columbus]--to be at the-Court
+     at this time, and talk of our affairs with these Lords and with the
+     Secretary.
+
+     "Done in Seville, November 21.
+
+     "Your father who loves you more than himself.
+
+                                                    .S.
+                                                  .S.A.S.
+                                                    XMY
+                                                 Xpo FERENS."
+
+     "I wrote again to their Highnesses entreating them to order that
+     these people who went with me should be paid, because they are poor
+     and it is three years since they left their homes.  The news which
+     they bring is more than extraordinary.  They have endured infinite
+     dangers and hardships.  I did not wish to rob the country, so as not
+     to cause scandal, because reason advises its being populated, and
+     then gold will be obtained freely without scandal.  Speak of this to
+     the Secretary and to the Lord Bishop and to Juan Lopez and to
+     whomever you think it advisable to do so."
+
+
+The Bishop of Palencia referred to in this letter is probably Bishop
+Fonseca--probably, because it is known that he did become Bishop of
+Palencia, although there is a difference of opinion among historians as
+to whether the date of his translation to that see was before or after
+this letter.  No matter, except that one is glad to think that an old
+enemy--for Fonseca and Columbus had bitter disagreements over the fitting
+out of various expeditions--had shown himself friendly at last.
+
+
+     Letter written by CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS to DON DIEGO, November 28,
+     1504.
+
+     "VERY DEAR SON,--I received your letters of the 15th of this month.
+     It is eight days since I wrote you and sent the letter by a courier.
+     I enclosed unsealed letters to many other persons, in order that you
+     might see them, and having read them, seal and deliver them.
+     Although this illness of mine troubles me greatly, I am preparing
+     for my departure in every way.  I would very much like to receive
+     the reply from their Highnesses and wish you might procure it: and
+     also I wish that their Highnesses would provide for the payment of
+     these poor people, who have passed through incredible hardships and
+     have brought them such great news that infinite thanks should be
+     given to God, our Lord, and they should rejoice greatly over it.
+     If I [lie ?] the 'Paralipomenon'--[ The Book of Chronicles]--and
+     the Book of Kings and the Antiquities of Josephus, with very many
+     others, will tell what they know of this.  I hope in our Lord to
+     depart this coming week, but you must not write less often on that
+     account.  I have not heard from Carbajal and Jeronimo.  If they are
+     there, commend me to them.  The time is such that both Carbajals
+     ought to be at Court, if illness does not prevent them.  My regards
+     to Diego Mendez.
+
+     "I believe that his truth and efforts will be worth as much as the
+     lies of the Porras brothers.  The bearer of this letter is Martin de
+     Gamboa.  I am sending by him a letter to Juan Lopez and a letter of
+     credit.  Read the letter to Lopez and then give it to him.  If you
+     write me, send the letters to Luis de Soria that he may send them
+     wherever I am, because if I go in a litter, I believe it will be by
+     La Plata.--[The old Roman road from Merida to Salamanca.]--May our
+     Lord have you in His holy keeping.  Your uncle has been very sick
+     and is now, from trouble with his jaws and his teeth.
+
+     "Done in Seville, November 28.
+
+     "Your father who loves you more than himself.
+
+                                                    .S.
+                                                  .S.A.S.
+                                                    XMY
+                                                 Xpo FERENS."
+
+
+Bartholomew Columbus and Ferdinand were remaining with Christopher at
+Seville; Bartholomew probably very nearly as ill as the Admiral, although
+we do not hear so many complaints about it.  At any rate Diego, being ay
+Court, was the great mainstay of his father; and you can see the sick man
+sitting there alone with his grievances, and looking to the next
+generation for help in getting them redressed.  Diego, it is to be
+feared, did not receive these letters with so much patience and attention
+as he might have shown, nor did he write back to his invalid father with
+the fulness and regularity which the old man craved.  It is a fault
+common to sons.  Those who are sons will know that it does not
+necessarily imply lack of affection on Diego's part; those who are
+fathers will realise how much Christopher longed for verbal assurance of
+interest and affection, even though he did not doubt their reality.  News
+of the serious illness of Queen Isabella had evidently reached Columbus,
+and was the chief topic of public interest.
+
+
+     Letter written by CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS to DON DIEGO, his Son,
+     December 1, 1504.
+
+     "VERY DEAR SON,--Since I received your letter of November 15 I have
+     heard nothing from you.  I wish that you would write me more
+     frequently.  I would like to receive a letter from you each hour.
+     Reason must tell you that now I have no other repose.  Many couriers
+     come each day, and the news is of such a nature and so abundant that
+     on hearing it all my hair stands on end; it is so contrary to what
+     my soul desires.  May it please the Holy Trinity to give health to
+     the Queen, our Lady, that she may settle what has already been
+     placed under discussion.  I wrote you by another courier Thursday,
+     eight days ago.  The courier must already be on his way back here.
+     I told you in that letter that my departure was certain, but that
+     the hope of my arrival there, according to experience, was very
+     uncertain, because my sickness is so bad, and the cold is so well
+     suited to aggravate it, that I could not well avoid remaining in
+     some inn on the road.  The litter and everything were ready.  The
+     weather became so violent that it appeared impossible to every one
+     to start when it was getting so bad, and that it was better for so
+     well-known a person as myself to take care of myself and try to
+     regain my health rather than place myself in danger.  I told you in
+     those letters what I now say, that you decided well in remaining
+     there (at such a time), and that it was right to commence occupying
+     yourself with our affairs; and reason strongly urges this.  It
+     appears to me that a good copy should be made of the chapter of that
+     letter which their Highnesses wrote me where they say they will
+     fulfil their promises to me and will place you in possession of
+     everything: and that this copy should be given to them with another
+     writing telling of my sickness, and that it is now impossible for me
+     to go and kiss their Royal feet and hands, and that the Indies are
+     being lost, and are on fire in a thousand places, and that I have
+     received nothing, and am receiving nothing, from the revenues
+     derived from them, and that no one dares to accept or demand
+     anything there for me, and I am living upon borrowed funds.  I spent
+     the money which I got there in bringing those people who went with
+     me back to their homes, for it would be a great burden upon my
+     conscience to have left them there and to have abandoned them.  This
+     must be made known to the Lord Bishop of Palencia, in whose favour
+     I have so much confidence, and also to the Lord Chamberlain.
+     I believed that Carbajal and Jeronimo would be there at such a time.
+     Our Lord is there, and He will order everything as He knows it to be
+     best for us.
+
+     "Carbajal reached here yesterday.  I wished to send him immediately
+     with this same order, but he excused himself profusely, saying that
+     his wife was at the point of death.  I shall see that he goes,
+     because he knows a great deal about these affairs.  I will also
+     endeavour to have your brother and your uncle go to kiss the hands
+     of Their Highnesses, and give them an account of the voyage if my
+     letters are not sufficient.  Take good care of your brother.  He has
+     a good disposition, and is no longer a boy.  Ten brothers would not
+     be too many for you.  I never found better friends to right or to
+     left than my brothers.  We must strive to obtain the government of
+     the Indies and then the adjustment of the revenues.  I gave you a
+     memorandum which told you what part of them belongs to me.  What
+     they gave to Carbajal was nothing and has turned to nothing.
+     Whoever desires to do so takes merchandise there, and so the eighth
+     is nothing, because, without contributing the eighth, I could send
+     to trade there without rendering account or going in company with
+     any one.  I said a great many times in the past that the
+     contribution of the eighth would come to nothing.  The eighth and
+     the rest belongs to me by reason of the concession which their
+     Highnesses made to me, as set forth in the book of my Privileges,
+     and also the third and the tenth.  Of the tenth I received nothing,
+     except the tenth of what their Highnesses receive; and it must be
+     the tenth of all the gold and other things which are found and
+     obtained, in whatever manner it may be, within this Admiralship, and
+     the tenth of all the merchandise which goes and comes from there,
+     after the expenses are deducted.  I have already said that in the
+     Book of Privileges the reason for this and for the rest which is
+     before the Tribunal of the Indies here in Seville, is clearly set
+     forth.
+
+     "We must strive to obtain a reply to my letter from their
+     Highnesses, and to have them order that these people be paid.  I
+     wrote in regard to this subject four days ago, and sent the letter
+     by Martin de Gamboa, and you must have seen the letter of Juan Lopez
+     with your own.
+
+     "It is said here that it has been ordered that three or four Bishops
+     of the Indies shall be sent or created, and that this matter is
+     referred to the Lord Bishop of Palencia.  After having commended me
+     to his Worship, tell him that I believe it will best serve their
+     Highnesses for me to talk with him before this matter is settled.
+
+     "Commend me to Diego Mendez, and show him this letter.  My illness
+     permits me to write only at night, because in the daytime my hands
+     are deprived of strength.  I believe that a son of Francisco Pinelo
+     will carry this letter.  Entertain him well, because he does
+     everything for me that he can, with much love and a cheerful
+     goodwill.  The caravel which broke her mast in starting from Santo
+     Domingo has arrived in the Algarves.  She brings the records of the
+     case of the Porras brothers.  Such ugly things and such grievous
+     cruelty as appear in this matter never were seen.  If their
+     Highnesses do not punish it, I do not know who will dare to go out
+     in their service with people.
+
+     "To-day is Monday.  I will endeavour to have your uncle and brother
+     start to-morrow.  Remember to write me very often, and tell Diego
+     Mendez to write at length.  Each day messengers go from here yonder.
+     May our Lord have you in His Holy keeping.
+
+     "Done in Seville, December 1.
+
+     "Your father who loves you as himself.
+
+                                                    .S.
+                                                  .S.A.S.
+                                                    XMY
+                                                 Xpo FERENS."
+
+
+The gout from which the Admiral suffered made riding impossible to him,
+and he had arranged to have himself carried to Court on a litter when he
+was able to move.  There is a grim and dismal significance in the
+particular litter that had been chosen: it was no other than the funeral
+bier which belonged to the Cathedral of Seville and had been built for
+Cardinal Mendoza.  A minute of the Cathedral Chapter records the granting
+to Columbus of the use of this strange conveyance; but one is glad to
+think that he ultimately made his journey in a less grim though more
+humble method.  But what are we to think of the taste of a man who would
+rather travel in a bier, so long as it had been associated with the
+splendid obsequies of a cardinal, than in the ordinary litter of
+every-day use?  It is but the old passion for state and splendour thus
+dismally breaking out again.
+
+He speaks of living on borrowed funds and of having devoted all his
+resources to the payment of his crew; but that may be taken as an
+exaggeration.  He may have borrowed, but the man who can borrow easily
+from banks cannot be regarded as a poor man.  One is nevertheless
+grateful for these references, since they commemorate the Admiral's
+unfailing loyalty to those who shared his hardships, and his unwearied
+efforts to see that they received what was due to them.  Pleasant also
+are the evidences of warm family affection in those simple words of
+brotherly love, and the affecting advice to Diego that he should love his
+brother Ferdinand as Christopher loved Bartholomew.  It is a pleasant
+oasis in this dreary, sordid wailing after thirds and tenths and eighths.
+Good Diego Mendez, that honourable gentleman, was evidently also at Court
+at this time, honestly striving, we may be sure, to say a good word for
+the Admiral.
+
+Some time after this letter was written, and before the writing of the
+next, news reached Seville of the death of Queen Isabella.  For ten years
+her kind heart had been wrung by many sorrows.  Her mother had died in
+1496; the next year her only son and heir to the crown had followed; and
+within yet another year had died her favourite daughter, the Queen of
+Portugal.  Her other children were all scattered with the exception of
+Juana, whose semi-imbecile condition caused her parents an anxiety
+greater even than that caused by death.  As Isabella's life thus closed
+sombrely in, she applied herself more closely and more narrowly to such
+pious consolations as were available.  News from Flanders of the
+scandalous scenes between Philip and Juana in the summer of 1504 brought
+on an illness from which she really never recovered, a kind of feverish
+distress of mind and body in which her only alleviation was the
+transaction of such business as was possible for her in the direction of
+humanity and enlightenment.  She still received men of intellect and
+renown, especially travellers.  But she knew that her end was near, and
+as early as October she had made her will, in which her wishes as to the
+succession and government of Castile were clearly laid down.  There was
+no mention of Columbus in this will, which afterwards greatly mortified
+him; but it is possible that the poor Queen had by this time, even
+against her wish, come to share the opinions of her advisers that the
+rule of Columbus in the West Indies had not brought the most humane and
+happy results possible to the people there.
+
+During October and November her life thus beat itself away in a
+succession of duties faithfully performed, tasks duly finished,
+preparations for the great change duly made.  She died, as she would have
+wished to die, surrounded by friends who loved and admired her, and
+fortified by the last rites of the Church for her journey into the
+unknown.  Date, November 26, 1504, in the fifty-fourth year of her age.
+
+Columbus had evidently received the news from a public source, and felt
+mortified that Diego should not have written him a special letter.
+
+
+     Letter written by CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS to DON DIEGO, his Son,
+     December 3, 1504.
+
+     "VERY DEAR SON,--I wrote you at length day before yesterday and sent
+     it by Francisco Pinelo, and with this letter I send you a very full
+     memorandum.  I am very much astonished not to receive a letter from
+     you or from any one else, and this astonishment is shared by all who
+     know me.  Every one here has letters, and I, who have more reason to
+     expect them, have none.  Great care should be taken about this
+     matter.  The memorandum of which I have spoken above says enough,
+     and on this account I do not speak more at length here.  Your
+     brother and your uncle and Carbajal are going yonder.  You will
+     learn from them what is not said here.  May our Lord have you in His
+     Holy keeping.
+
+     "Done in Seville, December 3.
+
+     "Your father who loves you more than himself.
+
+                                                    .S.
+                                                  .S.A.S.
+                                                    XMY
+                                                 Xpo FERENS."
+
+
+     Document of COLUMBUS addressed to his Son, DIEGO, and intended to
+     accompany the preceding letter.
+
+     "A memorandum for you, my very dear son, Don Diego, of what occurs
+     to me at the present time which must be done:--The principal thing
+     is, affectionately and with great devotion to commend the soul of
+     the Queen, our Lady, to God.  Her life was always Catholic and Holy
+     and ready for all the things of His holy service, and for this
+     reason it must be believed that she is in His holy glory and beyond
+     the desires of this rough and wearisome world.  Then the next thing
+     is to be watchful and exert one's self in the service of the King,
+     our Lord, and to strive to keep him from being troubled.  His
+     Highness is the head of Christendom.  See the proverb which says
+     that when the head aches, all the members ache.  So that all good
+     Christians should entreat that he may have long life and health: and
+     those of us who are obliged to serve him more than others must join
+     in this supplication with great earnestness and diligence.  This
+     reason prompts me now with my severe illness to write you what I am
+     writing here, that his Highness may dispose matters for his service:
+     and for the better fulfilment I am sending your brother there, who,
+     although he is a child in days, is not a child in understanding; and
+     I am sending your uncle and Carbajal, so that if this, my writing,
+     is not sufficient, they, together with yourself, can furnish verbal
+     evidence.  In my opinion there is nothing so necessary for the
+     service of his Highness as the disposition and remedying of the
+     affair of the Indies.
+
+     "His Highness must now have there more than 40,000 or 50,000 gold
+     pieces.  I learned when I was there that the Governor had no desire
+     to send it to him.  It is believed among the other people as well
+     that there will be 150,000 pesos more, and the mines are very rich
+     and productive.  Most of the people there are common and ignorant,
+     and care very little for the circumstances.  The Governor is very
+     much hated by all of them, and it is to be feared that they may at
+     some time rebel.  If this should occur, which God forbid, the remedy
+     for the matter would then be difficult: and so it would be if
+     injustice were used toward them, either here or in other places,
+     with the great fame of the gold.  My opinion is that his Highness
+     should investigate this affair quickly and by means of a person who
+     is interested and who can go there with 150 or 200 people well
+     equipped, and remain there until it is well settled and without
+     suspicion, which cannot be done in less than three months: and that
+     an endeavour be made to raise two or three forces there.  The gold
+     there is exposed to great risk, as there are very few people to
+     protect it.  I say that there is a proverb here which says that the
+     presence of the owner makes the horse fat.  Here and wherever I may
+     be, I shall serve their Highnesses with joy, until my soul leaves
+     this body.
+
+     "Above I said that his Highness is the head of the Christians, and
+     that it is necessary for him to occupy himself in preserving them
+     and their lands.  For this reason people say that he cannot thus
+     provide a good government for all these Indies, and that they are
+     being lost and do not yield a profit, neither are they being handled
+     in a reasonable manner.  In my opinion it would serve him to intrust
+     this matter to some one who is distressed over the bad treatment of
+     his subjects.
+
+     "I wrote a very long letter to his Highness as soon as I arrived
+     here, fully stating the evils which require a prompt and efficient
+     remedy at once.  I have received no reply, nor have I seen any
+     provision made in the matter.  Some vessels are detained in San
+     Lucar by the weather.  I have told these gentlemen of the Board of
+     Trade that they must order them held until the King, our Lord, makes
+     provision in the matter, either by some person with other people,
+     or by writing.  This is very necessary and I know what I say.  It is
+     necessary that the authorities should order all the ports searched
+     diligently, to see that no one goes yonder to the Indies without
+     licence.  I have already said that there is a great deal of gold
+     collected in straw houses without any means of defence, and there
+     are many disorderly people in the country, and that the Governor is
+     hated, and that little punishment is inflicted and has been
+     inflicted upon those who have committed crimes and have come out
+     with their treasonable conduct approved.
+
+     "If his Highness decides to make some provision, it must be done at
+     once, so that these vessels may not be injured.
+
+     "I have heard that three Bishops are to be elected and sent to
+     Espanola.  If it pleases his Highness to hear me before concluding
+     this matter, I will tell in what manner God our Lord may be well
+     served and his Highness served and satisfied.
+
+     "I have given lengthy consideration to the provision for Espanola:"
+
+
+Yes, the Queen is in His Holy Glory, and beyond the desires of this rough
+and wearisome world; but we are not; we are still in a world where fifty
+thousand gold pieces can be of use to us, and where a word spoken in
+season, even in such a season of darkness, may have its effect with the
+King.  A strange time to talk to the King about gold; and perhaps Diego
+was wiser and kinder than his father thought in not immediately taking
+this strange document to King Ferdinand.
+
+
+     Letter written by CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS to DON DIEGO, his Son,
+     December 13, 1504
+
+     "VERY DEAR SON,--It is now eight days since your uncle and your
+     brother and Carbajal left here together, to kiss the royal hands of
+     his Highness, and to give an account of the voyage, and also to aid
+     you in the negotiation of whatever may prove to be necessary there.
+
+     "Don Ferdinand took from here 150 ducats to be expended at his
+     discretion.  He will have to spend some of it, but he will give you
+     what he has remaining.  He also carries a letter of credit for these
+     merchants.  You will see that it is very necessary to be careful in
+     dealing with them, because I had trouble there with the Governor, as
+     every one told me that I had there 11,000 or 12,000 castellanos, and
+     I had only 4000.  He wished to charge me with things for which I am
+     not indebted, and I, confiding in the promise of their Highnesses,
+     who ordered everything restored to me, decided to leave these
+     charges in the hope of calling him to account for them.  If any one
+     has money there, they do not dare ask for it, on account of his
+     haughtiness.  I very well know that after my departure he must have
+     received more than 5000 castellanos.  If it were possible for you to
+     obtain from his Highness an authoritative letter to the Governor,
+     ordering him to send the money without delay and a full account of
+     what belongs to me, by the person I might send there with my power
+     of attorney, it would be well; because he will not give it in any
+     other manner, neither to my friend Diaz or Velasquez, and they dare
+     not even speak of it to him.  Carbajal will very well know how this
+     must be done.  Let him see this letter.  The 150 ducats which Luis
+     de Soria sent you when I came are paid according to his desire.
+
+     "I wrote you at length and sent the letter by Don Ferdinand, also a
+     memorandum.  Now that I have thought over the matter further, I say
+     that, since at the time of my departure their Highnesses said over
+     their signature and verbally, that they would give me all that
+     belongs to me, according to my privileges--that the claim for the
+     third or the tenth and eighth mentioned in the memorandum must be
+     relinquished, and instead the chapter of their letter must be shown
+     where they write what I have said, and all that belongs to me must
+     be required, as you have it in writing in the Book of Privileges, in
+     which is also set forth the reason for my receiving the third,
+     eighth, and tenth; as there is always an opportunity to reduce the
+     sum desired by a person, although his Highness says in his letter
+     that he wishes to give me all that belongs to me.  Carbajal will
+     understand me very well if he sees this letter, and every one else
+     as well, as it is very clear.  I also wrote to his Highness and
+     finally reminded him that he must provide at once for this affair of
+     the Indies, that the people there may not be disturbed, and also
+     reminding him of the promise stated above.  You ought to see the
+     letter.
+
+     "With this letter I send you another letter of credit for the said
+     merchants.  I have already explained to you the reasons why expenses
+     should be moderated.  Show your uncle due respect, and treat your
+     brother as an elder brother should treat a younger.  You have no
+     other brother, and praised be our Lord, he is such a one as you need
+     very much.  He has proved and proves to be very intelligent.  Honour
+     Carbajal and Jeronimo and Diego Mendez.  Commend me to them all.  I
+     do not write them as there is nothing to write and this messenger is
+     in haste.  It is frequently rumoured here that the Queen, whom God
+     has, has left an order that I be restored to the possession of the
+     Indies.  On arrival, the notary of the fleet will send you the
+     records and the original of the case of the Porras brothers.  I have
+     received no news from your uncle and brother since they left.  The
+     water has been so high here that the river entered the city.
+
+     "If Agostin Italian and Francisco de Grimaldo do not wish to give
+     you the money you need, look for others there who are willing to
+     give it to you.  On the arrival here of your signature I will at
+     once pay them all that you have received: for at present there is
+     not a person here by whom I can send you money.
+
+     "Done to-day, Friday, December 13, 1504
+
+     "Your father who loves you more than himself.
+
+                                                    .S.
+                                                  .S.A.S.
+                                                    XMY
+                                                 Xpo FERENS."
+
+
+     Letter written by CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS to his Son, DON DIEGO,
+     December 21, 1504.
+
+     "VERY DEAR SON, The Lord Adelantado and your brother and Carbajal
+     left here sixteen days ago to go to the Court.  They have not
+     written me since.  Don Ferdinand carried 150 ducats.  He must spend
+     what is necessary, and he carries a letter, that the merchants may
+     furnish you with money.  I have sent you another letter since, with
+     the endorsement of Francisco de Ribarol, by Zamora, the courier, and
+     told you that if you had made provision for yourself by means of my
+     letter, not to use that of Francisco de Ribarol.  I say the same now
+     in regard to another letter which I send you with this one, for
+     Francisco Doria, which letter I send you for greater security that
+     you may not fail to be provided with money.  I have already told you
+     how necessary it is to be careful in the expenditure of the money,
+     until their Highnesses give us law and justice.  I also told you
+     that I had spent 1200 castellanos in bringing these people to
+     Castile, of which his Highness owes me the greater part, and I wrote
+     him in regard to it asking him to order the account settled.
+
+     "If possible I should like to receive letters here each day.  I
+     complain of Diego Mendez and of Jeronimo, as they do not write me:
+     and then of the others who do not write when they arrive there.  We
+     must strive to learn whether the Queen, whom God has in His keeping,
+     said anything about me in her will, and we must hurry the Lord
+     Bishop of Palencia, who caused the possession of the Indies by their
+     Highnesses and my remaining in Castile, for I was already on my way
+     to leave it.  And the Lord Chamberlain of his Highness must also be
+     hurried.  If by chance the affair comes to discussion, you must
+     strive to have them see the writing which is in the Book of
+     Privileges, which shows the reason why the third, eighth, and tenth
+     are owing me, as I told you in another letter.
+
+     "I have written to the Holy Father in regard to my voyage, as he
+     complained of me because I did not write him.  I send you a copy of
+     the letter.  I would like to have the King, our Lord, or the Lord
+     Bishop of Palencia see it before I send the letter, in order to
+     avoid false representations.
+
+     "Camacho has told a thousand falsehoods about me.  To my regret I
+     ordered him arrested.  He is in the church.  He says that after the
+     Holidays are past, he will go there if he is able.  If I owe him, he
+     must show by what reason; for I make oath that I do not know it, nor
+     is it true.
+
+     "If without importunity a licence can be procured for me to go on
+     mule-back, I will try to leave for the Court after January, and I
+     will even go without this licence.  But haste must be made that the
+     loss of the Indies, which is now imminent, may not take place.  May
+     our Lord have you in His keeping.
+
+     "Done to-day, December 21.
+
+     "Your father who loves you more than himself.
+
+                                                    .S.
+                                                  .S.A.S.
+                                                    XMY
+                                                 Xpo FERENS."
+
+
+     "This tenth which they give me is not the tenth which was promised
+     me.  The Privileges tell what it is, and there is also due me the
+     tenth of the profit derived from merchandise and from all other
+     things, of which I have received nothing.  Carbajal understands me
+     well.  Also remind Carbajal to obtain a letter from his Highness for
+     the Governor, directing him to send his accounts and the money I
+     have there, at once.  And it would be well that a Repostero of his
+     Highness should go there to receive this money, as there must be a
+     large amount due me.  I will strive to have these gentlemen of the
+     Board of Trade send also to say to the Governor that he must send my
+     share together with the gold belonging to their Highnesses.  But the
+     remedy for the other matter must not be neglected there on this
+     account.  I say that 7000 or 8000 pesos must have passed to my
+     credit there, which sum has been received since I left, besides the
+     other money which was not given to me.
+
+     "To my very dear son Don Diego at the Court."
+
+
+All this struggling for the due payment of eighths and tenths makes
+wearisome reading, and we need not follow the Admiral into his
+distinctions between one kind of tenth and another.  There is something
+to be said on his side, it must be remembered; the man had not received
+what was due to him; and although he was not in actual poverty, his only
+property in this world consisted of these very thirds and eighths and
+tenths.  But if we are inclined to think poorly of the Admiral for his
+dismal pertinacity, what are we to think of the people who took advantage
+of their high position to ignore consistently the just claims made upon
+them?
+
+There is no end to the Admiral's letter-writing at this time.
+Fortunately for us his letter to the Pope has been lost, or else we
+should have to insert it here; and we have had quite enough of his
+theological stupors.  As for the Queen's will, there was no mention of
+the Admiral in it; and her only reference to the Indies showed that she
+had begun to realise some of the disasters following his rule there, for
+the provisions that are concerned with the New World refer exclusively to
+the treatment of the natives, to whose succour, long after they were past
+succour, the hand of Isabella was stretched out from the grave.  The
+licence to travel on mule-back which the Admiral asked for was made
+necessary by a law which had been passed forbidding the use of mules for
+this purpose throughout Spain.  There had been a scarcity of horses for
+mounting the royal cavalry, and it was thought that the breeding of
+horses had been neglected on account of the greater cheapness and utility
+of mules.  It was to encourage the use and breeding of horses that an
+interdict was laid on the use of mules, and only the very highest persons
+in the land were allowed to employ them.
+
+
+Letter written by CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS to his Son, DON DIEGO,
+December 29, 1504.
+
+     "VERY DEAR SON,--I wrote you at length and sent it by Don Ferdinand,
+     who left to go yonder twenty-three days ago to-day, with the Lord
+     Adelantado and Carbajal, from whom I have since heard nothing.
+     Sixteen days ago to-day I wrote you and sent it by Zamora, the
+     courier, and I sent you a letter of credit for these merchants
+     endorsed by Francisco de Ribarol, telling them to give you the money
+     you might ask for.  And then, about eight days ago, I sent you by
+     another courier a letter endorsed by Francisco Soria, and these
+     letters are directed to Pantaleon and Agostin Italian, that they may
+     give it to you.  And with these letters goes a copy of a letter
+     which I wrote to the Holy Father in regard to the affairs of the
+     Indies, that he might not complain of me any more.  I sent this copy
+     for his Highness to see, or the Lord Bishop of Palencia, so as to
+     avoid false representations.  The payment of the people who went
+     with me has been delayed.  I have provided for them here what I have
+     been able.  They are poor and obliged to go in order to earn a
+     living.  They decided to go yonder.  They have been told here that
+     they will be dealt with as favourably as possible, and this is
+     right, although among them there are some who merit punishment more
+     than favours.  This is said of the rebels.  I gave these people a
+     letter for the Lord Bishop of Palencia.  Read it, and if it is
+     necessary for them to go and petition his Highness, urge your uncle
+     and brother and Carbajal to read it also, so that you can all help
+     them as much as possible.  It is right and a work of mercy, for no
+     one ever earned money with so many dangers and hardships and no one
+     has ever rendered such great service as these people.  It is said
+     that Camacho and Master Bernal wish to go there--two creatures for
+     whom God works few miracles: but if they go, it will be to do harm
+     rather than good.  They can do little because the truth always
+     prevails, as it did in Espanola, from which wicked people by means
+     of falsehoods have prevented any profit being received up to the
+     present time.  It is said that this Master Bernal was the beginning
+     of the treason.  He was taken and accused of many misdemeanours,
+     for each one of which he deserved to be quartered.  At the request
+     of your uncle and of others he was pardoned, on condition that if he
+     ever said the least word against me and my state the pardon should
+     be revoked and he should be under condemnation.  I send you a copy
+     of the case in this letter.  I send you a legal document about
+     Camacho.  For more than eight days he has not left the church on
+     account of his rash statements and falsehoods.  He has a will made
+     by Terreros, and other relatives of the latter have another will of
+     more recent date, which renders the first will null, as far as the
+     inheritance is concerned: and I am entreated to enforce the latter
+     will, so that Camacho will be obliged to restore what he has
+     received.  I shall order a legal document drawn up and served upon
+     him, because I believe it is a work of mercy to punish him, as he is
+     so unbridled in his speech that some one must punish him without the
+     rod: and it will not be so much against the conscience of the
+     chastiser, and will injure him more.  Diego Mendez knows Master
+     Bernal and his works very well.  The Governor wished to imprison him
+     at Espanola and left him to my consideration.  It is said that he
+     killed two men there with medicines in revenge for something of less
+     account than three beans.  I would be glad of the licence to travel
+     on muleback and of a good mule, if they can be obtained without
+     difficulty.  Consult all about our affairs, and tell them that I do
+     not write them in particular on account of the great pain I feel
+     when writing.  I do not say that they must do the same, but that
+     each one must write me and very often, for I feel great sorrow that
+     all the world should have letters from there each day, and I have
+     nothing, when I have so many people there.  Commend me to the Lord
+     Adelantado in his favour, and give my regards to your brother and to
+     all the others.
+
+     "Done at Seville, December 29.
+
+     "Your father who loves you more than himself.
+
+                                                    .S.
+                                                  .S.A.S.
+                                                    XMY
+                                                 Xpo FERENS."
+
+
+"I say further that if our affairs are to be settled according to
+conscience, that the chapter of the letter which their Highnesses wrote
+me when I departed, in which they say they will order you placed in
+possession, must be shown; and the writing must also be shown which is in
+the Book of Privileges, which shows how in reason and in justice the
+third and eighth and the tenth are mine.  There will always be
+opportunity to make reductions from this amount."
+
+Columbus's requests were not all for himself; nothing could be more
+sincere or generous than the spirit in which he always strove to secure
+the just payment of his mariners.
+
+Otherwise he is still concerned with the favour shown to those who were
+treasonable to him.  Camacho was still hiding in a church, probably from
+the wrath of Bartholomew Columbus; but Christopher has more subtle ways
+of punishment.  A legal document, he considers, will be better than a
+rod; "it will not be so much against the conscience of the chastiser, and
+will injure him (the chastised) more."
+
+
+     Letter written by CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS to DON DIEGO, his Son,
+     January 18, 1505.
+
+     "VERY DEAR SON,--I wrote you at length by the courier who will
+     arrive there to-day, and sent you a letter for the Lord Chamberlain.
+     I intended to inclose in it a copy of that chapter of the letter
+     from their Highnesses in which they say they will order you placed
+     in possession; but I forgot to do it here.  Zamora, the courier,
+     came.  I read your letter and also those of your uncle and brother
+     and Carbajal, and felt great pleasure in learning that they had
+     arrived well, as I had been very anxious about them.  Diego Mendez
+     will leave here in three or four days with the order of payment
+     prepared.  He will take a long statement of everything and I will
+     write to Juan Velasquez.  I desire his friendship and service.  I
+     believe that he is a very honourable gentleman.  If the Lord Bishop
+     of Palencia has come, or comes, tell him how much pleased I have
+     been with his prosperity, and that if I go there I must stop with
+     his Worship even if he does not wish it, and that we must return to
+     our first fraternal love.  And that he could not refuse it because
+     my service will force him to have it thus.  I said that the letter
+     for the Holy Father was sent that his Worship might see it if he was
+     there, and also the Lord Archbishop of Seville, as the King might
+     not have opportunity to read it.  I have already told you that the
+     petition to their Highnesses must be for the fulfilment of what they
+     wrote me about the possession and of the rest which was promised me.
+     I said that this chapter of the letter must be shown them and said
+     that it must not be delayed, and that this is advisable for an
+     infinite number of reasons.  His Highness may believe that, however
+     much he gives me, the increase of his exalted dominions and revenue
+     will be in the proportion of 100 to 1, and that there is no
+     comparison between what has been done and what is to be done.  The
+     sending of a Bishop to Espanola must be delayed until I speak to his
+     Highness.  It must not be as in the other cases when it was thought
+     to mend matters and they were spoiled.  There have been some cold
+     days here and they have caused me great fatigue and fatigue me now.
+     Commend me to the favour of the Lord Adelantado.  May our Lord guard
+     and bless you and your brother.  Give my regards to Carbajal and
+     Jeronimo.  Diego Mendez will carry a full pouch there.  I believe
+     that the affair of which you wrote can be very easily managed.  The
+     vessels from the Indies have not arrived from Lisbon.  They brought
+     a great deal of gold, and none for me.  So great a mockery was never
+     seen, for I left there 60,000 pesos smelted.  His Highness should
+     not allow so great an affair to be ruined, as is now taking place.
+     He now sends to the Governor a new provision.  I do not know what it
+     is about.  I expect letters each day.  Be very careful about
+     expenditures, for it is necessary.
+
+     "Done January 18.
+     "Your father who loves you more than himself.
+
+
+There is playful reference here to Fonseca, with whom Columbus was
+evidently now reconciled; and he was to be buttonholed and made to read
+the Admiral's letter to the Pope.  Diego Mendez is about to start, and is
+to make a "long statement"; and in the meantime the Admiral will write as
+many long letters as he has time for.  Was there no friend at hand, I
+wonder, with wit enough to tell the Admiral that every word he wrote
+about his grievances was sealing his doom, so far as the King was
+concerned?  No human being could have endured with patience this
+continuous heavy firing at long range to which the Admiral subjected his
+friends at Court; every post that arrived was loaded with a shrapnel of
+grievances, the dull echo of which must have made the ears of those who
+heard it echo with weariness.  Things were evidently humming in Espanola;
+large cargoes of negroes had been sent out to take the place of the dead
+natives, and under the harsh driving of Ovando the mines were producing
+heavily.  The vessels that arrived from the Indies brought a great deal
+of gold; "but none for me."
+
+
+     Letter written by CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS to his Son, DON DIEGO,
+     February 5, 1505.
+
+     "VERY DEAR SON,--Diego Mendez left here Monday, the 3rd of this
+     month.  After his departure I talked with Amerigo Vespucci, the
+     bearer of this letter, who is going yonder, where he is called in
+     regard to matters of navigation.  He was always desirous of pleasing
+     me.  He is a very honourable man.  Fortune has been adverse to him
+     as it has been to many others.  His labours have not profited him as
+     much as reason demands.  He goes for me, and is very desirous of
+     doing something to benefit me if it is in his power.  I do not know
+     of anything in which I can instruct him to my benefit, because I do
+     not know what is wanted of him there.  He is going with the
+     determination to do everything for me in his power.  See what he can
+     do to profit me there, and strive to have him do it; for he will do
+     everything, and will speak and will place it in operation: and it
+     must all be done secretly so that there may be no suspicion.
+
+     "I have told him all that could be told regarding this matter, and
+     have informed him of the payment which has been made to me and is
+     being made.  This letter is for the Lord Adelantado also, that he
+     may see how Amerigo Vespucci can be useful, and advise him about it.
+     His Highness may believe that his ships went to the best and richest
+     of the Indies, and if anything remains to be learned more than has
+     been told, I will give the information yonder verbally, because it
+     is impossible to give it in writing.  May our Lord have you in his
+     Holy keeping.
+
+     "Done in Seville, February 5.
+
+     "Your father who loves you more than himself.
+
+
+This letter has a significance which raises it out of the ruck of this
+complaining correspondence.  Amerigo Vespucci had just returned from his
+long voyage in the West, when he had navigated along an immense stretch
+of the coast of America, both north and south, and had laid the
+foundations of a fame which was, for a time at least, to eclipse that of
+Columbus.  Probably neither of the two men realised it at this interview,
+or Columbus would hardly have felt so cordially towards the man who was
+destined to rob him of so much glory.  As a matter of fact the practical
+Spaniards were now judging entirely by results; and a year or two later,
+when the fame of Columbus had sunk to insignificance, he was merely
+referred to as the discoverer of certain islands, while Vespucci, who
+after all had only followed in his lead, was hailed as the discoverer of
+a great continent.  Vespucci has been unjustly blamed for this state of
+affairs, although he could no more control the public estimate of his
+services than Columbus could.  He was a more practical man than Columbus,
+and he made a much better impression on really wise and intelligent men;
+and his discoveries were immediately associated with trade and colonial
+development, while Columbus had little to show for his discoveries during
+his lifetime but a handful of gold dust and a few cargoes of slaves.  At
+any rate it was a graceful act on the part of Vespucci, whose star was in
+the ascendant, to go and seek out the Admiral, whose day was fast verging
+to night; it was one of those disinterested actions that live and have a
+value of their own, and that shine out happily amid the surrounding murk
+and confusion.
+
+
+     Letter signed by CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS to DON DIEGO, his Son,
+     February 25, 1505.
+
+     "VERY DEAR SON,--The Licientiate de Zea is a person whom I desire to
+     honour.  He has in his charge two men who are under prosecution at
+     the hands of justice, as shown by the information which is inclosed
+     in this letter.  See that Diego Mendez places the said petition with
+     the others, that they may be given to his Highness during Holy Week
+     for pardon.  If the pardon is granted, it is well, and if not, look
+     for some other manner of obtaining it.  May our Lord have you in His
+     Holy keeping.  Done in Seville, February 25, 1505.  I wrote you and
+     sent it by Amerigo Vespucci.  See that he sends you the letter
+     unless you have already received it.
+
+     "Your father.
+                    Xpo FERENS.//"
+
+
+This is the last letter of Columbus known to us otherwise an entirely
+unimportant document, dealing with the most transient affairs.  With it
+we gladly bring to an end this exposure of a greedy and querulous period,
+which speaks so eloquently for itself that the less we say and comment on
+it the better.
+
+In the month of May the Admiral was well enough at last to undertake the
+journey to Segovia.  He travelled on a mule, and was accompanied by his
+brother Bartholomew and his son Ferdinand.  When he reached the Court he
+found the King civil and outwardly attentive to his recitals, but
+apparently content with a show of civility and outward attention.
+Columbus was becoming really a nuisance; that is the melancholy truth.
+The King had his own affairs to attend to; he was already meditating a
+second marriage, and thinking of the young bride he was to bring home to
+the vacant place of Isabella; and the very iteration of Columbus's
+complaints and demands had made them lose all significance for the King.
+He waved them aside with polite and empty promises, as people do the
+demands of importunate children; and finally, to appease the Admiral and
+to get rid of the intolerable nuisance of his applications, he referred
+the whole question, first to Archbishop DEA, and then to the body of
+councillors which had been appointed to interpret Queen Isabella's will.
+The whole question at issue was whether or not the original agreement
+with Columbus, which had been made before his discoveries, should be
+carried out.  The King, who had foolishly subscribed to it simply as a
+matter of form, never believing that anything much could come of it, was
+determined that it should not be carried out, as it would give Columbus a
+wealth and power to which no mere subject of a crown was entitled.  The
+Admiral held fast to his privileges; the only thing that he would consent
+to submit to arbitration was the question of his revenues; but his titles
+and territorial authorities he absolutely stuck to.  Of course the
+council did exactly what the King had done.  They talked about the thing
+a great deal, but they did nothing.  Columbus was an invalid and broken
+man, who might die any day, and it was obviously to their interest to
+gain time by discussion and delay--a cruel game for our Christopher, who
+knew his days on earth to be numbered, and who struggled in that web of
+time in which mortals try to hurry the events of the present and delay
+the events of the future.  Meanwhile Philip of Austria and his wife
+Juana, Isabella's daughter, had arrived from Flanders to assume the crown
+of Castile, which Isabella had bequeathed to them.  Columbus saw a chance
+for himself in this coming change, and he sent Bartholomew as an envoy to
+greet the new Sovereigns, and to enlist their services on the Admiral's
+behalf.  Bartholomew was very well received, but he was too late to be of
+use to the Admiral, whom he never saw again; and this is our farewell to
+Bartholomew, who passes out of our narrative here.  He went to Rome after
+Christopher's death on a mission to the Pope concerning some fresh
+voyages of discovery; and in 1508 he made, so far as we know, his one
+excursion into romance, when he assisted at the production of an
+illegitimate little girl--his only descendant.  He returned to Espanola
+under the governorship of his nephew Diego, and died there in 1514
+--stern, valiant, brotherly soul, whose devotion to Christopher must be
+for ever remembered and honoured with the name of the Admiral.
+
+
+From Segovia Columbus followed the Court to Salamanca and thence to
+Valladolid, where his increasing illness kept him a prisoner after the
+Court had left to greet Philip and Juana.  He had been in attendance upon
+it for nearly a year, and without any results: and now, as his infirmity
+increased, he turned to the settling of his own affairs, and drawing up
+of wills and codicils--all very elaborate and precise.  In these
+occupations his worldly affairs were duly rounded off; and on May 19,
+1506, having finally ratified a will which he had made in Segovia a year
+before, in which the descent of his honours was entailed upon Diego and
+his heirs, or failing him Ferdinand and his heirs, or failing him
+Bartholomew and his heirs, he turned to the settlement of his soul.
+
+His illness had increased gradually but surely, and he must have known
+that he was dying.  He was not without friends, among them the faithful
+Diego Mendez, his son Ferdinand, and a few others.  His lodging was in a
+small house in an unimportant street of Valladolid, now called the "Calle
+de Colon"; the house, .No. 7, still standing, and to be seen by curious
+eyes.  As the end approached, the Admiral, who was being attended by
+Franciscan monks, had himself clothed in a Franciscan habit; and so, on
+the 20th May 1506, he lay upon his bed, breathing out his life.
+
+               .  .  .  And as strange thoughts
+               Grow with a certain humming in my ears,
+               About the life before I lived this life,
+               And this life too, Popes, Cardinals, and priests,
+               Your tall pale mother with her talking eyes
+               And new-found agate urns fresh as day .  .  .
+
+.  .  .  we do not know what his thoughts were, as the shadows grew
+deeper about him, as the sounds of the world, the noises from the sunny
+street, grew fainter, and the images and sounds of memory clearer and
+louder.  Perhaps as he lay there with closed eyes he remembered things
+long forgotten, as dying people do; sounds and smells of the Vico Dritto
+di Ponticelli, and the feel of the hot paving-stones down which his
+childish feet used to run to the sea; noises of the sea also, the
+drowning swish of waters and sudden roar of breakers sounding to
+anxiously strained ears in the still night; bright sunlit pictures of
+faraway tropical shores, with handsome olive figures glistening in the
+sun; the sight of strange faces, the sound of strange speech, the smell
+of a strange land; the glitter of gold; the sudden death-shriek breaking
+the stillness of some sylvan glade; the sight of blood on the grass
+.  .  .  The Admiral's face undergoes a change; there is a stir in the
+room; some one signs to the priest Gaspar, who brings forth his sacred
+wafer and holy oils and administers the last sacraments.  The wrinkled
+eyelids flutter open, the sea-worn voice feebly frames the responses;
+the dying eyes are fixed on the crucifix; and--"In manus tuas Domine
+commendo spiritum meum."  The Admiral is dead.
+
+He was in his fifty-sixth year, already an old man in body and mind; and
+his death went entirely unmarked except by his immediate circle of
+friends.  Even Peter Martyr, who was in Valladolid just before and just
+after it, and who was writing a series of letters to various
+correspondents giving all the news of his day, never thought it worth
+while to mention that Christopher Columbus was dead.  His life flickered
+out in the completest obscurity.  It is not even known where he was first
+buried; but probably it was in the Franciscan convent at Valladolid.
+This, however, was only a temporary resting-place; and a few years later
+his body was formally interred in the choir of the monastery of Las
+Cuevas at Seville, there to lie for thirty years surrounded by continual
+chauntings.  After that it was translated to the cathedral in San
+Domingo; rested there for 250 years, and then, on the cession of that
+part of the island to France, the body was removed to Cuba.  But the
+Admiral was by this time nothing but a box of bones and dust, as also
+were brother Bartholomew and son Diego, and Diego's son, all collected
+together in that place.  There were various examinations of the
+bone-boxes; one, supposed to be the Admiral's, was taken to Cuba and
+solemnly buried there; and lately, after the conquest of the island in
+the Spanish-American War, this box of bones was elaborately conveyed to
+Seville, where it now rests.
+
+But in the meanwhile the Chapter of the cathedral in San Domingo had made
+new discoveries and examinations; had found another box of bones, which
+bore to them authentic signs that the dust it contained was the Admiral's
+and not his grandson's; and in spite of the Academy of History at Madrid,
+it is indeed far from unlikely that the Admiral's dust does not lie in
+Spain or Cuba, but in San Domingo still.  Whole books have been written
+about these boxes of bones; learned societies have argued about them,
+experts have examined the bones and the boxes with microscopes; and
+meantime the dust of Columbus, if we take the view that an error was
+committed in the transference to Cuba, is not even collected all in one
+box.  A sacrilegious official acquired some of it when the boxes were
+opened, and distributed it among various curiosity-hunters, who have
+preserved it in caskets of crystal and silver.  Thus a bit of him is worn
+by an American lady in a crystal locket; a pinch of him lies
+in a glass vial in a New York mansion; other pinches in the Lennox
+Library, New York, in the Vatican, and in the University of Pavia.  In
+such places, if the Admiral should fail to appear at the first note of
+their trumpets, must the Angels of the Resurrection make search.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE MAN COLUMBUS
+
+It is not in any leaden box or crystal vase that we must search for the
+true remains of Christopher Columbus.  Through these pages we have
+traced, so far as has been possible, the course of his life, and followed
+him in what he did; all of which is but preparation for our search for
+the true man, and just estimate of what he was.  We have seen, dimly,
+what his youth was; that he came of poor people who were of no importance
+to the world at large; that he earned his living as a working man; that
+he became possessed of an Idea; that he fought manfully and diligently
+until he had realised it; and that then he found himself in a position
+beyond his powers to deal with, not being a strong enough swimmer to hold
+his own in the rapid tide of events which he himself had set flowing; and
+we have seen him sinking at last in that tide, weighed down by the very
+things for which he had bargained and stipulated.  If these pages had
+been devoted to a critical examination of the historical documents on
+which his life-story is based we should also have found that he
+continually told lies about himself, and misrepresented facts when the
+truth proved inconvenient to him; that he was vain and boastful to a
+degree that can only excite our compassion.  He was naturally and
+sincerely pious, and drew from his religion much strength and spiritual
+nourishment; but he was also capable of hypocrisy, and of using the
+self-same religion as a cloak for his greed and cruelty.  What is the
+final image that remains in our minds of such a man?  To answer this
+question we must examine his life in three dimensions.  There was its
+great outline of rise, zenith, and decline; there was its outward
+history in minute detail, and its conduct in varying circumstances; and
+there was the inner life of the man's soul, which was perhaps simpler
+than some of us think.  And first, as to his life as a single thing.  It
+rose in poverty, it reached a brief and dazzling zenith of glory, it set
+in clouds and darkness; the fame of it suffered a long night of eclipse,
+from which it was rescued and raised again to a height of glory which
+unfortunately was in sufficiently founded on fact; and as a reaction
+from this, it has been in danger of becoming entirely discredited, and
+the man himself denounced as a fraud.  The reason for these surprising
+changes is that in those fifty-five years granted to Columbus for the
+making of his life he did not consistently listen to that inner voice
+which alone can hold a man on any constructive path.  He listened to it
+at intervals, and he drew his inspiration from it; but he shut his ears
+when it had served him, when it had brought him what he wanted.  In his
+moments of success he guided himself by outward things; and thus he was
+at one moment a seer and ready to be a martyr, and at the next moment he
+was an opportunist, watching to see which way the wind would blow, and
+ready to trim his sails in the necessary direction.  Such conduct of a
+man's life does not make for single light or for true greatness; rather
+for dim, confused lights, and lofty heights obscured in cloud.
+
+If we examine his life in detail we find this alternating principle of
+conduct revealed throughout it.  He was by nature clever, kind-hearted,
+rather large-souled, affectionate, and not very honest; all the acts
+prompted by his nature bear the stamp of these qualities.  To them his
+early years had probably added little except piety, sharp practice, and
+that uncomfortable sense, often bred amid narrow and poor surroundings,
+that one must keep a sharp look-out for oneself if one is to get a share
+of the world's good things.  Something in his blood, moreover, craved for
+dignity and the splendour of high-sounding titles; craved for power also,
+and the fulfilment of an arrogant pride.  All these things were in his
+Ligurian blood, and he breathed them in with the very air of Genoa.  His
+mind was of the receptive rather than of the constructive kind, and it
+was probably through those long years spent between sea voyages and brief
+sojourns with his family in Genoa or Savona that he conceived that vague
+Idea which, as I have tried to show, formed the impulse of his life
+during its brief initiative period.  Having once received this Idea of
+discovery and like all other great ideas, it was in the air at the time
+and was bound to take shape in some human brain--he had all his native
+and personal qualities to bring to its support.  The patience to await
+its course he had learned from his humble and subordinate life.  The
+ambition to work for great rewards was in his blood and race; and to
+belief in himself, his curious vein of mystical piety was able to add the
+support of a ready belief in divine selection.  This very time of waiting
+and endurance of disappointments also helped to cultivate in his
+character two separate qualities--an endurance or ability to withstand
+infinite hardship and disappointment; and also a greedy pride that
+promised itself great rewards for whatever should be endured.
+
+In all active matters Columbus was what we call a lucky man.  It was luck
+that brought him to Guanahani; and throughout his life this element of
+good luck continually helped him.  He was lucky, that is to say, in his
+relation with inanimate things; but in his relations with men he was
+almost as consistently unlucky.  First of all he was probably a bad judge
+of men.  His humble origin and his lack of education naturally made him
+distrustful.  He trusted people whom he should have regarded with
+suspicion, and he was suspicious of those whom he ought to have known he
+could trust.  If people pleased him, he elevated them with absurd
+rapidity to stations far beyond their power to fill, and then wondered
+that they sometimes turned upon him; if they committed crimes against
+him, he either sought to regain their favour by forgiving them, or else
+dogged them with a nagging, sulky resentment, and expected every one else
+to punish them also.  He could manage men if he were in the midst of
+them; there was something winning as well as commanding about his actual
+presence, and those who were devoted to him would have served him to the
+death.  But when he was not on the spot all his machineries and affairs
+went to pieces; he had no true organising ability; no sooner did he take
+his hand off any affair for which he was responsible than it immediately
+came to confusion.  All these defects are to be attributed to his lack of
+education and knowledge of the world.  Mental discipline is absolutely
+necessary for a man who would discipline others; and knowledge of the
+world is essential for one who would successfully deal with men, and
+distinguish those whom he can from those whom he cannot trust.  Defects
+of this nature, which sometimes seem like flaws in the man's character,
+may be set down to this one disability--that he was not educated and was
+not by habit a man of the world.
+
+All his sins of misgovernment, then, may be condoned on the ground that
+governing is a science, and that Columbus had never learned it.  What we
+do find, however, is that the inner light that had led him across the
+seas never burned clearly for him again, and was never his guide in the
+later part of his life.  Its radiance was quenched by the gleam of gold;
+for there is no doubt that Columbus was a victim of that baleful
+influence which has caused so much misery in this world.  He was greedy
+of gold for himself undoubtedly; but he was still more greedy of it for
+Spain.  It was his ambition to be the means of filling the coffers of the
+Spanish Sovereigns and so acquiring immense dignity and glory for
+himself.  He believed that gold was in itself a very precious and
+estimable thing; he knew that masses and candles could be bought for it,
+and very real spiritual privileges; and as he made blunder after blunder,
+and saw evil after evil heaping itself on his record in the New World, he
+became the more eager and frantic to acquire such a treasure of gold that
+it would wipe out the other evils of his administration.  And once
+involved in that circle, there was no help for him.
+
+The man himself was a simple man; capable, when the whole of his various
+qualities were directed upon one single thing, of that greatness which is
+the crown of simplicity.  Ambition was the keynote of his life; not an
+unworthy keynote, by any means, if only the ambition be sound; but one
+serious defect of Columbus's ambition was that it was retrospective
+rather than perspective.  He may have had, before he sailed from Palos,
+an ambition to be the discoverer of a New World; but I do not think he
+had.  He believed there were islands or land to be discovered in the West
+if only he pushed on far enough; and he was ambitious to find them and
+vindicate his belief.  Afterwards, when he had read a little more, and
+when he conceived the plan of pretending that he had all along meant to
+discover the Indies and a new road to the East, he acted in accordance
+with that pretence; he tried to make his acts appear retrospectively as
+though they had been prompted by a design quite different from that by
+which they had really been prompted.  When he found that his discovery
+was regarded as a great scientific feat, he made haste to pretend that it
+had all along been meant as such, and was in fact the outcome of an
+elaborate scientific theory.  In all this there is nothing for praise or
+admiration.  It indicates the presence of moral disease; but fortunately
+it is functional rather than organic disease.  He was right and sound at
+heart; but he spread his sails too readily to the great winds of popular
+favour, and the result was instability to himself, and often danger of
+shipwreck to his soul.
+
+The ultimate test of a man's character is how he behaves in certain
+circumstances when there is no great audience to watch him, and when
+there is no sovereign close at hand with bounties and rewards to offer.
+In a word, what matters most is a man's behaviour, not as an admiral, or
+a discoverer, or a viceroy, or a courtier, but as a man.  In this respect
+Columbus's character rings true.  If he was little on little occasions,
+he was also great on great occasions.  The inner history of his fourth
+voyage, if we could but know it and could take all the circumstances into
+account, would probably reveal a degree of heroic endurance that has
+never been surpassed in the history of mankind.  Put him as a man face to
+face with a difficulty, with nothing but his wits to devise with and his
+two hands to act with, and he is never found wanting.  And that is the
+kind of man of whom discoverers are made.  The mere mathematician may
+work out the facts with the greatest accuracy and prove the existence of
+land at a certain point; but there is great danger that he may be knocked
+down by a club on his first landing on the beach, and never bring home
+any news of his discovery.  The great courtier may do well for himself
+and keep smooth and politic relations with kings; the great administrator
+may found a wonderful colony; but it is the man with the wits and the
+hands, and some bigness of heart to tide him over daunting passages, that
+wins through the first elementary risks of any great discovery.  Properly
+considered, Columbus's fame should rest simply on the answer to the
+single question, "Did he discover new lands as he said he would?"  That
+was the greatest thing he could do, and the fact that he failed to do a
+great many other things afterwards, failed the more conspicuously because
+his attempts were so conspicuous, should have no effect on our estimate
+of his achievement.  The fame of it could no more be destroyed by himself
+than it can be destroyed by us.
+
+True understanding of a man and estimate of his character can only be
+arrived at by methods at once more comprehensive and more subtle than
+those commonly employed among men.  Everything that he sees, does, and
+suffers has its influence on the moulding of his character; and he must
+be considered in relation to his physical environment, no less than to
+his race and ancestry.  Christopher Columbus spent a great part of his
+active life on the sea; it was sea-life which inspired him with his great
+Idea, it was by the conquest of the sea that he realised it; it was on
+the sea that all his real triumphs over circumstance and his own weaker
+self were won.  The influences at work upon a man whose life is spent on
+the sea are as different from those at work upon one who lives on the
+fields as the environment of a gannet is different from the environment
+of a skylark: and yet how often do we really attempt to make due
+allowance for this great factor and try to estimate the extent of its
+moulding influence?
+
+To live within sound or sight of the sea is to be conscious of a voice or
+countenance that holds you in unyielding bonds.  The voice, being
+continuous, creeps into the very pulses and becomes part of the pervading
+sound or silence of a man's environment; and the face, although it never
+regards him, holds him with its changes and occupies his mind with its
+everlasting riddle.  Its profound inattention to man is part of its power
+over his imagination; for although it is so absorbed and busy, and has
+regard for sun and stars and a melancholy frowning concentration upon the
+foot of cliffs, it is never face to face with man: he can never come
+within the focus of its great glancing vision.  It is somewhere beyond
+time and space that the mighty perspective of those focal rays comes to
+its point; and they are so wide and eternal in their sweep that we should
+find their end, could we but trace them, in a condition far different
+from that in which our finite views and ethics have place.  In the man
+who lives much on the sea we always find, if he be articulate, something
+of the dreamer and the mystic; that very condition of mind, indeed, which
+we have traced in Columbus, which sometimes led him to such heights, and
+sometimes brought him to such variance with the human code.
+
+A face that will not look upon you can never give up its secret to you;
+and the face of the sea is like the face of a picture or a statue round
+which you may circle, looking at it from this point and from that, but
+whose regard is fixed on something beyond and invisible to you; or it is
+like the face of a person well known to you in life, a face which you
+often see in various surroundings, from different angles, now
+unconscious, now in animated and smiling intercourse with some one else,
+but which never turns upon you the light of friendly knowledge and
+recognition; in a word, it is unconscious of you, like all elemental
+things.  In the legend of the Creation it is written that when God saw
+the gathering together of the waters which he called the Seas, he saw
+that it was good; and he perhaps had the right to say so.  But the man
+who uses the sea and whose life's pathway is laid on its unstable surface
+can hardly sum up his impressions of it so simply as to say that it is
+good.  It is indeed to him neither good nor bad; it is utterly beyond and
+outside all he knows or invents of good and bad, and can never have any
+concern with his good or his bad.  It remains the pathway and territory
+of powers and mysteries, thoughts and energies on a gigantic and
+elemental scale; and that is why the mind of man can never grapple with
+the unconsciousness of the sea or his eye meet its eye.  Yet it is the
+mariner's chief associate, whether as adversary or as ally; his attitude
+to things outside himself is beyond all doubt influenced by his attitude
+towards it; and a true comprehension of the man Columbus must include a
+recognition of this constant influence on him, and of whatever effect
+lifelong association with so profound and mysterious an element may have
+had on his conduct in the world of men.  Better than many documents as an
+aid to our understanding of him would be intimate association with the
+sea, and prolonged contemplation of that face with which he was so
+familiar.  We can never know the heart of it, but we can at least look
+upon the face, turned from us though it is, upon which he looked.  Cloud
+shadows following a shimmer of sunlit ripples; lines and runes traced on
+the surface of a blank calm; salt laughter of purple furrows with the
+foam whipping off them; tides and eddies, whirls, overfalls, ripples,
+breakers, seas mountains high-they are but movements and changing
+expressions on an eternal countenance that once held his gaze and wonder,
+as it will always hold the gaze and wonder of those who follow the sea.
+
+So much of the man Christopher Columbus, who once was and no longer is;
+perished, to the last bone and fibre of him, off the face of the earth,
+and living now only by virtue of such truth as there was in him; who once
+manfully, according to the light that he had, bore Christ on his
+shoulders across stormy seas, and found him often, in that dim light, a
+heavy and troublesome burden; who dropped light and burden together on
+the shores of his discovery, and set going in that place of peace such a
+conflagration as mankind is not likely to see again for many a
+generation, if indeed ever again, in this much-tortured world, such
+ancient peace find place.
+
+
+
+
+PG ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+A man standing on the sea-shore
+Absent for a little time, and his organisation went to pieces
+All days, however hard, have an evening, and all journeys an end
+Amerigo Vespucci
+And every one goes naked and unashamed
+At last extricate himself from the theological stupor
+Attempts that have been made to glorify him socially
+Bede, in the eighth century, established it finally (sphericity)
+Began to offer bargains to the Almighty
+Believed that the Spaniards came from heaven
+Biography which obscures the truth with legends and pretences
+Cannibal epicures did not care for the flesh of women and boys
+Christian era denied the theory of the roundness of the earth
+Columbus, calling for an egg, laid a wager
+Columbus never once mentions his wife
+Columbus's habit of being untruthful in regard to his own past
+Cooling off in his enthusiasm as the pastime became a task
+Desire to get a great deal of money without working for it
+Diminishing object to the wet eyes of his mother, sailed away
+Dogs wagged their tails, but that never barked
+Establishment of ten footmen and twenty other servants
+Exchanging the natives for cattle
+First known discovery of tobacco by Europeans
+First organised transaction of slavery on the part of Columbus
+Freed by force and with guns
+Having issued three Bulls in twenty-four hours, he desisted
+He had a way of rising above petty indignities
+He was a great stickler for the observances of religion
+Hearts quick to burn, quick to forget
+Heretics were being burned every year by the Grand Inquisitor
+High time, indeed, that they should be taught to wear clothing
+Idea of importing black African labour to the New World
+Ideas to him were of more value than facts
+If there were no results, there would be no rewards
+Inclined to be pompous
+Irving: so inaccurate, so untrue to life, and so profoundly dull
+Islands in that sea had their greatest length east and west
+Juan Ponce de Leon, the discoverer of Florida
+Learn the blessings of Christianity under the whip
+Lives happily in our dreams, as blank as sunshine
+Logic is irresistible if you only grant the first little step
+Loose way in which the term India was applied in the Middle Ages
+Man with a Grievance
+Man of single rather than manifold ideas
+More than a touch of crafty and elaborate dissimulation
+Nautical phrase "make it so."
+Never to deal with subordinates
+No more troubled by any wonder, sleeps at last
+No Spanish women accompanied it (2d expedition)
+Nothing so ludicrous as an Idea to those who do not share it
+Only confirmative evidence remained
+Patience which holds men back from theorising
+Presence of the owner makes the horse fat
+Professors of Christ brought not peace, but a sword
+Religion has in our days fallen into decay
+Saw potatoes also, although they did not know what they were
+Sea of Darkness
+Seeking to hire the protection of the Virgin
+She must either sin or be celibate
+Shifts and deceits that he practised
+Spaniards sometimes hanged thirteen of them in a row
+Spaniards undertook to teach the heathen the Christian religion
+St. Chrysostom opposed the theory of the earth's roundness
+Stayed till night to eat their sop for fear of seeing (weevils)
+Stuffed so full indeed that eyes and ears are closed
+Tasks that are the common heritage of all small boys
+Terror and amazement; they had never seen horses before
+The cross and the sword, the whip-lash and the Gospel
+The great thing in those days was to discover something
+The missionary walked beside the slave-driver
+The terrified seamen making vows to the Virgin
+Theologians, however, proved equal to the occasion
+There is deception and untruth somewhere
+They saw the past in the light of the present
+Took himself and the world very seriously
+Vague longing and unrest that is the life-force of the world
+When the pot boils the scum rises to the surface
+Who never could meet any trouble without grumbling
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Christopher Columbus, Complete, by Filson Young
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+
+                         CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS
+                   AND THE NEW WORLD OF HIS DISCOVERY
+
+                      A NARRATIVE BY FILSON YOUNG
+
+
+
+                                  TO
+                  THE RIGHT HON. SIR HORACE PLUNKETT,
+                        K.C.V.O., D.C.L., F.R.S.
+
+MY DEAR HORACE,
+
+Often while I have been studying the records of colonisation in the New
+World I have thought of you and your difficult work in Ireland; and I
+have said to myself, "What a time he would have had if be had been
+Viceroy of the Indies in 1493!"  There, if ever, was the chance for a
+Department such as yours; and there, if anywhere, was the place for the
+Economic Man.  Alas!  there war only one of him; William Ires or Eyre, by
+name, from the county Galway; and though he fertilised the soil he did it
+with his blood and bones.  A wonderful chance; and yet you see what came
+of it all.  It would perhaps be stretching truth too far to say that you
+are trying to undo some of Columbus's work, and to stop up the hole he
+made in Ireland when be found a channel into which so much of what was
+best in the Old Country war destined to flow; for you and be have each
+your places in the great circle of Time and Compensation, and though you
+may seem to oppose one another across the centuries you are really
+answering the same call and working in the same vineyard.  For we all set
+out to discover new worlds; and they are wise who realise early that
+human nature has roots that spread beneath the ocean bed, that neither
+latitude nor longitude nor time itself can change it to anything richer
+or stranger than what it is, and that furrows ploughed in it are furrows
+ploughed in the sea sand.  Columbus tried to pour the wine of
+civilisation into very old bottles; you, more wisely, are trying to pour
+the old wine of our country into new bottles.  Yet there is no great
+unlikeness between the two tasks: it is all a matter of bottling; the
+vintage is the same, infinite, inexhaustible, and as punctual as the sun
+and the seasons.  It was Columbus's weakness as an administrator that he
+thought the bottle was everything; it is your strength that you care for
+the vintage, and labour to preserve its flavour and soft fire.
+
+                                        Yours,
+                                             FILSON YOUNG.
+RUAN MINOR, September 1906.
+
+
+
+
+                                 PREFACE
+
+The writing of historical biography is properly a work of partnership, to
+which public credit is awarded too often in an inverse proportion to the
+labours expended.  One group of historians, labouring in the obscurest
+depths, dig and prepare the ground, searching and sifting the documentary
+soil with infinite labour and over an area immensely wide.  They are
+followed by those scholars and specialists in history who give their
+lives to the study of a single period, and who sow literature in the
+furrows of research prepared by those who have preceded them.  Last of
+all comes the essayist, or writer pure and simple, who reaps the harvest
+so laboriously prepared.  The material lies all before him; the documents
+have been arranged, the immense contemporary fields of record and
+knowledge examined and searched for stray seeds of significance that may
+have blown over into them; the perspective is cleared for him, the
+relation of his facts to time and space and the march of human
+civilisation duly established; he has nothing to do but reap the field of
+harvest where it suits him, grind it in the wheels of whatever machinery
+his art is equipped with, and come before the public with the finished
+product.  And invariably in this unequal partnership he reaps most richly
+who reaps latest.
+
+I am far from putting this narrative forward as the fine and ultimate
+product of all the immense labour and research of the historians of
+Columbus; but I am anxious to excuse myself for my apparent presumption
+in venturing into a field which might more properly be occupied by the
+expert historian.  It would appear that the double work of acquiring the
+facts of a piece of human history and of presenting them through the
+medium of literature can hardly ever be performed by one and the same
+man.  A lifetime must be devoted to the one, a year or two may suffice
+for the other; and an entirely different set of qualities must be
+employed in the two tasks.  I cannot make it too clear that I make no
+claim to have added one iota of information or one fragment of original
+research to the expert knowledge regarding the life of Christopher
+Columbus; and when I add that the chief collection of facts and documents
+relating to the subject, the 'Raccolta Columbiana,'--[Raccolta di
+Documenti e Studi Publicati dalla R. Commissione Colombiana, &c.  Auspice
+il Ministero della Publica Istruzione.  Rome, 1892-4.]--is a work
+consisting of more than thirty folio volumes, the general reader will be
+the more indulgent to me.  But when a purely human interest led me some
+time ago to look into the literature of Columbus, I was amazed to find
+what seemed to me a striking disproportion between the extent of the
+modern historians' work on that subject and the knowledge or interest in
+it displayed by what we call the general reading public.  I am surprised
+to find how many well-informed people there are whose knowledge of
+Columbus is comprised within two beliefs, one of them erroneous and the
+other doubtful: that he discovered America, and performed a trick with
+an egg.  Americans, I think, are a little better informed on the subject
+than the English; perhaps because the greater part of modern critical
+research on the subject of Columbus has been the work of Americans.
+It is to bridge the immense gap existing between the labours of the
+historians and the indifference of the modern reader, between the
+Raccolta Columbiana, in fact, and the story of the egg, that I have
+written my narrative.
+
+It is customary and proper to preface a work which is based entirely on
+the labours of other people with an acknowledgment of the sources whence
+it is drawn; and yet in the case of Columbus I do not know where to
+begin.  In one way I am indebted to every serious writer who has even
+remotely concerned himself with the subject, from Columbus himself and
+Las Casas down to the editors of the Raccolta.  The chain of historians
+has been so unbroken, the apostolic succession, so to speak, has passed
+with its heritage so intact from generation to generation, that the
+latest historian enshrines in his work the labours of all the rest.
+Yet there are necessarily some men whose work stands out as being more
+immediately seizable than that of others; in the period of whose care the
+lamp of inspiration has seemed to burn more brightly.  In a matter of
+this kind I cannot pretend to be a judge, but only to state my own
+experience and indebtedness; and in my work I have been chiefly helped by
+Las Casas, indirectly of course by Ferdinand Columbus, Herrera, Oviedo,
+Bernaldez, Navarrete, Asensio, Mr. Payne, Mr. Harrisse, Mr. Vignaud,
+Mr. Winsor, Mr. Thacher, Sir Clements Markham, Professor de Lollis,
+and S. Salvagnini.  It is thus not among the dusty archives of Seville,
+Genoa, or San Domingo that I have searched, but in the archive formed by
+the writings of modern workers.  To have myself gone back to original
+sources, even if I had been competent to do so, would have been in the
+case of Columbian research but a waste of time and a doing over again
+what has been done already with patience, diligence, and knowledge.  The
+historians have been committed to the austere task of finding out and
+examining every fact and document in connection with their subject; and
+many of these facts and documents are entirely without human interest
+except in so far as they help to establish a date, a name, or a sum of
+money.  It has been my agreeable and lighter task to test and assay the
+masses of bed-rock fact thus excavated by the historians for traces of
+the particular ore which I have been seeking.  In fact I have tried to
+discover, from a reverent examination of all these monographs, essays,
+histories, memoirs, and controversies concerning what Christopher
+Columbus did, what Christopher Columbus was; believing as I do that any
+labour by which he can be made to live again, and from the dust of more
+than four hundred years be brought visibly to the mind's eye, will not be
+entirely without use and interest.  Whether I have succeeded in doing so
+or not I cannot be the judge; I can only say that the labour of
+resuscitating a man so long buried beneath mountains of untruth and
+controversy has some times been so formidable as to have seemed hopeless.
+And yet one is always tempted back by the knowledge that Christopher
+Columbus is not only a name, but that the human being whom we so describe
+did actually once live and walk in the world; did actually sail and look
+upon seas where we may also sail and look; did stir with his feet the
+indestructible dust of this old Earth, and centre in himself, as we all
+do, the whole interest and meaning of the Universe.  Truly the most
+commonplace fact, yet none the less amazing; and often when in the dust
+of documents he has seemed most dead and unreal to me I have found
+courage from the entertainment of some deep or absurd reflection; such as
+that he did once undoubtedly, like other mortals, blink and cough and
+blow his nose.  And if my readers could realise that fact throughout
+every page of this book, I should say that I had succeeded in my task.
+
+To be more particular in my acknowledgments.  In common with every modern
+writer on Columbus--and modern research on the history of Columbus is
+only thirty years old--I owe to the labours of Mr. Henry Harrisse, the
+chief of modern Columbian historians, the indebtedness of the gold-miner
+to the gold-mine.  In the matters of the Toscanelli correspondence and
+the early years of Columbus I have followed more closely Mr. Henry
+Vignaud, whose work may be regarded as a continuation and reexamination--
+in some cases destructive--of that of Mr. Harrisse.  Mr. Vignaud's work
+is happily not yet completed; we all look forward eagerly to the
+completion of that part of his 'Etudes Critiques' dealing with the second
+half of the Admiral's life; and Mr. Vignaud seems to me to stand higher
+than all modern workers in this field in the patient and fearless
+discovery of the truth regarding certain very controversial matters,
+and also in ability to give a sound and reasonable interpretation to
+those obscurer facts or deductions in Columbus's life that seem doomed
+never to be settled by the aid of documents alone.  It may be unseemly in
+me not to acknowledge indebtedness to Washington Irving,  but I cannot
+conscientiously do so.  If I had been writing ten or fifteen years ago I
+might have taken his work seriously; but it is impossible that anything
+so one-sided, so inaccurate, so untrue to life, and so profoundly dull
+could continue to exist save in the absence of any critical knowledge or
+light on the subject.  All that can be said for him is that he kept the
+lamp of interest in Columbus alive for English readers during the period
+that preceded the advent of modern critical research.  Mr. Major's
+edition' of Columbus's letters has been freely consulted by me, as it
+must be by any one interested in the subject.  Professor Justin Winsor's
+work has provided an invaluable store of ripe scholarship in matters of
+cosmography and geographical detail; Sir Clements Markham's book, by far
+the most trustworthy of modern English works on the subject, and a
+valuable record of the established facts in Columbus's life, has proved a
+sound guide in nautical matters; while the monograph of Mr. Elton, which
+apparently did not promise much at first, since the author has followed
+some untrustworthy leaders as regards his facts, proved to be full of a
+fragrant charm produced by the writer's knowledge of and interest in sub-
+tropical vegetation; and it is delightfully filled with the names of gums
+and spices.  To Mr. Vignaud I owe special thanks, not only for the
+benefits of his research and of his admirable works on Columbus, but also
+for personal help and encouragement.  Equally cordial thanks are due to
+Mr. John Boyd Thacher,  whose work, giving as it does so large a
+selection of the Columbus documents both in facsimile, transliteration,
+and translation, is of the greatest service to every English writer on
+the subject of Columbus.  It is the more to be regretted, since the
+documentary part of Mr. Thacher's work is so excellent, that in his
+critical studies he should have seemed to ignore some of the more
+important results of modern research.  I am further particularly indebted
+to Mr. Thacher and to his publishers, Messrs.  Putnam's Sons, for
+permission to reproduce certain illustrations in his work, and to avail
+myself also of his copies and translations of original Spanish and
+Italian documents.  I have to thank Commendatore Guido Biagi, the keeper
+of the Laurentian Library in Florence, for his very kind help and letters
+of introduction to Italian librarians; Mr. Raymond Beazley, of Merton
+College, Oxford, for his most helpful correspondence; and Lord Dunraven
+for so kindly bringing, in the interests of my readers, his practical
+knowledge of navigation and seamanship to bear on the first voyage of
+Columbus.  Finally my work has been helped and made possible by many
+intimate and personal kindnesses which, although they are not specified,
+are not the less deeply acknowledged.
+
+September 1906.
+
+
+
+                                 CONTENTS
+
+
+THE INNER LIGHT
+
+BOOK I
+
+
+I         THE STREAM OF THE WORLD
+
+II        THE HOME IN GENOA
+
+III       YOUNG CHRISTOPHER
+
+IV        DOMENICO
+
+V         SEA THOUGHTS
+
+VI        IN PORTUGAL
+
+VII       ADVENTURES BODILY AND SPIRITUAL
+
+VIII      THE FIRE KINDLES
+
+
+
+BOOK 2.
+
+IX        WANDERINGS WITH AN IDEA
+
+X         OUR LADY OF LA RABIDA .
+
+XI        THE CONSENT OF SPAIN
+
+XII       THE PREPARATIONS AT PALOS
+
+XIII      EVENTS OF THE FIRST VOYAGE
+
+XIV       LANDFALL
+
+
+
+THE NEW WORLD
+
+BOOK 3.
+
+I         THE ENCHANTED ISLANDS
+
+II        THE EARTHLY PARADISE
+
+III       THE VOYAGE HOME
+
+
+
+BOOK 4.
+
+IV        THE HOUR OF TRIUMPH
+
+V         GREAT EXPECTATIONS
+
+VI        THE SECOND VOYAGE
+
+VII       THE EARTHLY PARADISE REVISITED
+
+
+
+DESPERATE REMEDIES
+
+BOOK 5.
+
+I         THE VOYAGE TO CUBA
+
+II        THE CONQUEST OF ESPANOLA
+
+III       UPS AND DOWNS
+
+IV        IN SPAIN AGAIN
+
+
+
+BOOK 6.
+
+V         THE THIRD VOYAGE
+
+VI        AN INTERLUDE
+
+VII       THE THIRD VOYAGE (continued)
+
+
+
+TOWARDS THE SUNSET
+
+BOOK 7.
+
+I         DEGRADATION
+
+II        CRISIS IN THE ADMIRAL'S LIFE
+
+III       THE LAST VOYAGE
+
+IV        HEROIC ADVENTURES BY LAND AND SEA
+
+V         THE ECLIPSE OF THE MOON
+
+
+
+BOOK 8.
+
+VI        RELIEF OF THE ADMIRAL
+
+VII       THE HERITAGE OF HATRED
+
+VIII      THE ADMIRAL COMES HOME
+
+IX        THE LAST DAYS
+
+X         THE MAN COLUMBUS
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                          THY WAY IS THE SEA,
+                   AND THY PATH IN THE GREAT WATERS,
+                    AND THY FOOTSTEPS ARE NOT KNOWN.
+
+
+
+
+THE INNER LIGHT
+
+BOOK I.
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE STREAM OF THE WORLD
+
+A man standing on the sea-shore is perhaps as ancient and as primitive a
+symbol of wonder as the mind can conceive.  Beneath his feet are the
+stones and grasses of an element that is his own, natural to him, in some
+degree belonging to him, at any rate accepted by him.  He has place and
+condition there.  Above him arches a world of immense void, fleecy
+sailing clouds, infinite clear blueness, shapes that change and dissolve;
+his day comes out of it, his source of light and warmth marches across
+it, night falls from it; showers and dews also, and the quiet influence
+of stars.  Strange that impalpable element must be, and for ever
+unattainable by him; yet with its gifts of sun and shower, its furniture
+of winged life that inhabits also on the friendly soil, it has links and
+partnerships with life as he knows it and is a complement of earthly
+conditions.  But at his feet there lies the fringe of another element,
+another condition, of a vaster and more simple unity than earth or air,
+which the primitive man of our picture knows to be not his at all.  It is
+fluent and unstable, yet to be touched and felt; it rises and falls,
+moves and frets about his very feet, as though it had a life and entity
+of its own, and was engaged upon some mysterious business.  Unlike the
+silent earth and the dreaming clouds it has a voice that fills his world
+and, now low, now loud, echoes throughout his waking and sleeping life.
+Earth with her sprouting fruits behind and beneath him; sky, and larks
+singing, above him; before him, an eternal alien, the sea: he stands
+there upon the shore, arrested, wondering.  He lives,--this man of our
+figure; he proceeds, as all must proceed, with the task and burden of
+life.  One by one its miracles are unfolded to him; miracles of fire and
+cold, and pain and pleasure; the seizure of love, the terrible magic of
+reproduction, the sad miracle of death.  He fights and lusts and endures;
+and, no more troubled by any wonder, sleeps at last.  But throughout the
+days of his life, in the very act of his rude existence, this great
+tumultuous presence of the sea troubles and overbears him.  Sometimes in
+its bellowing rage it terrifies him, sometimes in its tranquillity it
+allures him; but whatever he is doing, grubbing for roots, chipping
+experimentally with bones and stones, he has an eye upon it; and in his
+passage by the shore he pauses, looks, and wonders.  His eye is led from
+the crumbling snow at his feet, past the clear green of the shallows,
+beyond the furrows of the nearer waves, to the calm blue of the distance;
+and in his glance there shines again that wonder, as in his breast stirs
+the vague longing and unrest that is the life-force of the world.
+
+What is there beyond?  It is the eternal question asked by the finite of
+the infinite, by the mortal of the immortal; answer to it there is none
+save in the unending preoccupation of life and labour.  And if this old
+question was in truth first asked upon the sea-shore, it was asked most
+often and with the most painful wonder upon western shores, whence the
+journeying sun was seen to go down and quench himself in the sea.  The
+generations that followed our primitive man grew fast in knowledge, and
+perhaps for a time wondered the less as they knew the more; but we may be
+sure they never ceased to wonder at what might lie beyond the sea.  How
+much more must they have wondered if they looked west upon the waters,
+and saw the sun of each succeeding day sink upon a couch of glory where
+they could not follow?  All pain aspires to oblivion, all toil to rest,
+all troubled discontent with what is present to what is unfamiliar and
+far away; and no power of knowledge and scientific fact will ever prevent
+human unhappiness from reaching out towards some land of dreams of which
+the burning brightness of a sea sunset is an image.  Is it very hard to
+believe, then, that in that yearning towards the miracle of a sun
+quenched in sea distance, felt and felt again in human hearts through
+countless generations, the westward stream of human activity on this
+planet had its rise?  Is it unreasonable to picture, on an earth spinning
+eastward, a treadmill rush of feet to follow the sinking light?  The
+history of man's life in this world does not, at any rate, contradict us.
+Wisdom, discovery, art, commerce, science, civilisation have all moved
+west across our world; have all in their cycles followed the sun; have
+all, in their day of power, risen in the East and set in the West.
+
+
+This stream of life has grown in force and volume with the passage of
+ages.  It has always set from shore to sea in countless currents of
+adventure and speculation; but it has set most strongly from East to
+West.  On its broad bosom the seeds of life and knowledge have been
+carried throughout the world.  It brought the people of Tyre and Carthage
+to the coasts and oceans of distant worlds; it carried the English from
+Jutland across cold and stormy waters to the islands of their conquest;
+it carried the Romans across half the world; it bore the civilisation of
+the far East to new life and virgin western soils; it carried the new
+West to the old East, and is in our day bringing back again the new East
+to the old West.  Religions, arts, tradings, philosophies, vices and laws
+have been borne, a strange flotsam, upon its unchanging flood.  It has
+had its springs and neaps, its trembling high-water marks, its hour of
+affluence, when the world has been flooded with golden humanity; its ebb
+and effluence also, when it has seemed to shrink and desert the kingdoms
+set upon its shores.  The fifteenth century in Western Europe found it at
+a pause in its movements: it had brought the trade and the learning of
+the East to the verge of the Old World, filling the harbours of the
+Mediterranean with ships and the monasteries of Italy and Spain with
+wisdom; and in the subsequent and punctual decadence that followed this
+flood, there gathered in the returning tide a greater energy and volume
+which was to carry the Old World bodily across the ocean.  And yet, for
+all their wisdom and power, the Spanish and Portuguese were still in the
+attitude of our primitive man, standing on the sea-shore and looking out
+in wonder across the sea.
+
+The flood of the life-stream began to set again, and little by little to
+rise and inundate Western Europe, floating off the galleys and caravels
+of King Alphonso of Portugal, and sending them to feel their way along
+the coasts of Africa; a little later drawing the mind of Prince Henry the
+Navigator to devote his life to the conquest and possession of the
+unknown.  In his great castle on the promontory of Sagres, with the voice
+of the Atlantic thundering in his ears, and its mists and sprays bounding
+his vision, he felt the full force of the stream, and stretched his arms
+to the mysterious West.  But the inner light was not yet so brightly
+kindled that he dared to follow his heart; his ships went south and south
+again, to brave on each voyage the dangers and terrors that lay along the
+unknown African coast, until at length his captains saw the Cape of Good
+Hope.  South and West and East were in those days confusing terms; for it
+was the East that men were thinking of when they set their faces to the
+setting sun, and it was a new road to the East that they sought when they
+felt their way southward along the edge of the world.  But the rising
+tide of discovery was working in that moment, engaging the brains of
+innumerable sages, stirring the wonder of innumerable mariners; reaching
+also, little by little, to quarters less immediately concerned with the
+business of discovery.  Ships carried the strange tidings of new coasts
+and new islands from port to port throughout the Mediterranean; Venetians
+on the lagoons, Ligurians on the busy trading wharves of Genoa, were
+discussing the great subject; and as the tide rose and spread, it floated
+one ship of life after another that was destined for the great business
+of adventure.  Some it inspired to dream and speculate, and to do no more
+than that; many a heart also to brave efforts and determinations that
+were doomed to come to nothing and to end only in failure.  And among
+others who felt the force and was swayed and lifted by the prevailing
+influence, there lived, some four and a half centuries ago, a little boy
+playing about the wharves of Genoa, well known to his companions as
+Christoforo, son of Domenico the wool-weaver, who lived in the Vico
+Dritto di Ponticello.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE HOME IN GENOA
+
+It is often hard to know how far back we should go in the ancestry of a
+man whose life and character we are trying to reconstruct.  The life that
+is in him is not his own, but is mysteriously transmitted through the
+life of his parents; to the common stock of his family, flesh of their
+flesh, bone of their bone, character of their character, he has but added
+his own personality.  However far back we go in his ancestry, there is
+something of him to be traced, could we but trace it; and although it
+soon becomes so widely scattered that no separate fraction of it seems to
+be recognisable, we know that, generations back, we may come upon some
+sympathetic fact, some reservoir of the essence that was him, in which we
+can find the source of many of his actions, and the clue, perhaps, to his
+character.
+
+In the case of Columbus we are spared this dilemma.  The past is reticent
+enough about the man himself; and about his ancestors it is almost
+silent.  We know that he had a father and grandfather, as all grandsons
+of Adam have had; but we can be certain of very little more than that.
+He came of a race of Italian yeomen inhabiting the Apennine valleys; and
+in the vale of Fontanabuona, that runs up into the hills behind Genoa,
+the two streams of family from which he sprang were united.  His father
+from one hamlet, his mother from another; the towering hills behind, the
+Mediterranean shining in front; love and marriage in the valley; and a
+little boy to come of it whose doings were to shake the world.
+
+His family tree begins for us with his grandfather, Giovanni Colombo of
+Terra-Rossa, one of the hamlets in the valley--concerning whom many human
+facts may be inferred, but only three are certainly known; that he lived,
+begot children, and died.  Lived, first at Terra Rossa, and afterwards
+upon the sea-shore at Quinto; begot children in number three--Antonio,
+Battestina, and Domenico, the father of our Christopher; and died,
+because one of the two facts in his history is that in the year 1444 he
+was not alive, being referred to in a legal document as quondam, or, as
+we should say, "the late."  Of his wife, Christopher's grandmother, since
+she never bought or sold or witnessed anything requiring the record of
+legal document, history speaks no word; although doubtless some pleasant
+and picturesque old lady, or lady other than pleasant and picturesque,
+had place in the experience or imagination of young Christopher.  Of the
+pair, old Quondam Giovanni alone survives the obliterating drift of
+generations, which the shores and brown slopes of Quinto al Mare, where
+he sat in the sun and looked about him, have also survived.  Doubtless
+old Quondam could have told us many things about Domenico, and his over-
+sanguine buyings and sellings; have perhaps told us something about
+Christopher's environment, and cleared up our doubts concerning his first
+home; but he does not.  He will sit in the sun there at Quinto, and sip
+his wine, and say his Hail Marys, and watch the sails of the feluccas
+leaning over the blue floor of the Mediterranean as long as you please;
+but of information about son or family, not a word.  He is content to
+have survived, and triumphantly twinkles his two dates at us across the
+night of time.  1440, alive; 1444, not alive any longer: and so hail and
+farewell, Grandfather John.
+
+
+Of Antonio and Battestina, the uncle and aunt of Columbus, we know next
+to nothing.  Uncle Antonio inherited the estate of Terra-Rossa, Aunt
+Battestina was married in the valley; and so no more of either of them;
+except that Antonio, who also married, had sons, cousins of Columbus, who
+in after years, when he became famous, made themselves unpleasant, as
+poor relations will, by recalling themselves to his remembrance and
+suggesting that something might be done for them.  I have a belief,
+supported by no historical fact or document, that between the families of
+Domenico and Antonio there was a mild cousinly feud.  I believe they did
+not like each other.  Domenico, as we shall see presently, was sanguine
+and venturesome, a great buyer and seller, a maker of bargains in which
+he generally came off second best.  Antonio, who settled in Terra-Rossa,
+the paternal property, doubtless looked askance at these enterprises from
+his vantage-ground of a settled income; doubtless also, on the occasion
+of visits exchanged between the two families, he would comment upon the
+unfortunate enterprises of his brother; and as the children of both
+brothers grew up, they would inherit and exaggerate, as children will,
+this settled difference between their respective parents.  This, of
+course, may be entirely untrue, but I think it possible, and even likely;
+for Columbus in after life displayed a very tender regard for members of
+his family, but never to our knowledge makes any reference to these
+cousins of his, till they send emissaries to him in his hour of triumph.
+At any rate, among the influences that surrounded him at Genoa we may
+reckon this uncle and aunt and their children--dim ghosts to us, but to
+him real people, who walked and spoke, and blinked their eyes and moved
+their limbs, like the men and women of our own time.  Less of a ghost to
+us, though still a very shadowy and doubtful figure, is Domenico himself,
+Christopher's father.  He at least is a man in whom we can feel a warm
+interest, as the one who actually begat and reared the man of our story.
+We shall see him later, and chiefly in difficulties; executing deeds and
+leases, and striking a great variety of legal attitudes, to the
+witnessing of which various members of his family were called in.  Little
+enough good did they to him at the time, poor Domenico; but he was a
+benefactor to posterity without knowing it, and in these grave notarial
+documents preserved almost the only evidence that we have as to the early
+days of his illustrious son.  A kind, sanguine man, this Domenico, who,
+if he failed to make a good deal of money in his various enterprises,
+at least had some enjoyment of them, as the man who buys and sells and
+strikes legal attitudes in every age desires and has.  He was a wool-
+carder by trade, but that was not enough for him; he must buy little bits
+of estates here and there; must even keep a tavern, where he and his wife
+could entertain the foreign sailors and hear the news of the world; where
+also, although perhaps they did not guess it, a sharp pair of ears were
+also listening, and a pair of round eyes gazing, and an inquisitive face
+set in astonishment at the strange tales that went about.
+
+There is one fragment of fact about this Domenico that greatly enlarges
+our knowledge of him.  He was a wool-weaver, as we know; he also kept a
+tavern, and no doubt justified the adventure on the plea that it would
+bring him customers for his woollen cloth; for your buyer and seller
+never lacks a reason either for his selling or buying.  Presently he is
+buying again; this time, still with striking of legal attitudes, calling
+together of relations, and accompaniments of crabbed Latin notarial
+documents, a piece of ground in the suburbs of Genoa, consisting of scrub
+and undergrowth, which cannot have been of any earthly use to him.  But
+also, according to the documents, there went some old wine-vats with the
+land.  Domenico, taking a walk after Mass on some feast-day, sees the
+land and the wine-vats; thinks dimly but hopefully how old wine-vats, if
+of no use to any other human creature, should at least be of use to a
+tavern-keeper; hurries back, overpowers the perfunctory objections of his
+complaisant wife, and on the morrow of the feast is off to the notary's
+office.  We may be sure the wine-vats lay and rotted there, and furnished
+no monetary profit to the wool-weaving tavern-keeper; but doubtless they
+furnished him a rich profit of another kind when he walked about his
+newly-acquired property, and explained what he was going to do with the
+wine-vats.
+
+And besides the weaving of wool and pouring of wine and buying and
+selling of land, there were more human occupations, which Domenico was
+not the man to neglect.  He had married, about the year 1450, one
+Susanna, a daughter of Giacomo of Fontana-Rossa, a silk weaver who lived
+in the hamlet near to Terra-Rossa.  Domenico's father was of the more
+consequence of the two, for he had, as well as his home in the valley, a
+house at Quinto, where he probably kept a felucca for purposes of trade
+with Alexandria and the Islands.  Perhaps the young people were married
+at Quinto, but if so they did not live there long, moving soon into
+Genoa, where Domenico could more conveniently work at his trade.  The
+wool-weavers at that time lived in a quarter outside the old city walls,
+between them and the outer borders of the city, which is now occupied by
+the park and public gardens.  Here they had their dwellings and
+workshops, their schools and institutions, receiving every protection and
+encouragement from the Signoria, who recognised the importance of the
+wool trade and its allied industries to Genoa.  Cloth-weavers, blanket-
+makers, silk-weavers, and velvet-makers all lived in this quarter, and
+held their houses under the neighbouring abbey of San Stefano.  There are
+two houses mentioned in documents which seem to have been in the
+possession of Domenico at different times.  One was in the suburbs
+outside the Olive Gate; the other was farther in, by St. Andrew's Gate,
+and quite near to the sea.  The house outside the Olive Gate has
+disappeared; and it was probably here that our Christopher first saw the
+light, and pleased Domenico's heart with his little cries and struggles.
+Neither the day nor even the year is certainly known, but there is most
+reason to believe that it was in the year 1451.  They must have moved
+soon afterwards to the house in the Vico Dritto di Ponticello, No. 37,
+in which most of Christopher's childhood was certainly passed.  This is a
+house close to St. Andrew's Gate, which gate still stands in a beautiful
+and ruinous condition.
+
+From the new part of Genoa, and from the Via XX Settembre, you turn into
+the little Piazza di Ponticello just opposite the church of San Stefano.
+In a moment you are in old Genoa, which is to-day in appearance virtually
+the same as the place in which Christopher and his little brothers and
+sisters made the first steps of their pilgrimage through this world.  If
+the Italian, sun has been shining fiercely upon you, in the great modern
+thoroughfare, you will turn into this quarter of narrow streets and high
+houses with grateful relief.  The past seems to meet you there; and from
+the Piazza, gay with its little provision-shops and fruit stalls, you
+walk up the slope of the Vico Dritto di Ponticello, leaving the sunlight
+behind you, and entering the narrow street like a traveller entering a
+mountain gorge.
+
+It is a very curious street this; I suppose there is no street in the
+world that has more character.  Genoa invented sky-scrapers long before
+Columbus had discovered America, or America had invented steel frames for
+high building; but although many of the houses in the Vico Dritto di
+Ponticello are seven and eight storeys high, the width of the street from
+house-wall to house-wall does not average more than nine feet.  The
+street is not straight, moreover; it winds a little in its ascent to the
+old city wall and St. Andrew's Gate, so that you do not even see the sky
+much as you look forward and upwards.  The jutting cornices of the roofs,
+often beautifully decorated, come together in a medley of angles and
+corners that practically roof the street over; and only here and there do
+you see a triangle or a parallelogram of the vivid brilliant blue that is
+the sky.  Besides being seven or eight storeys high, the houses are the
+narrowest in the world; I should think that their average width on the
+street front is ten feet.  So as you walk up this street where young
+Christopher lived you must think of it in these three dimensions towering
+slices of houses, ten or twelve feet in width: a street often not more
+than eight and seldom more than fifteen feet in width; and the walls of
+the houses themselves, painted in every colour, green and pink and grey
+and white, and trellised with the inevitable green window-shutters of the
+South, standing like cliffs on each side of you seven or eight rooms
+high.  There being so little horizontal space for the people to live
+there, what little there is is most economically used; and all across the
+tops of the houses, high above your head, the cliffs are joined by wires
+and clothes-lines from which thousands of brightly-dyed garments are
+always hanging and fluttering; higher still, where the top storeys of the
+houses become merged in roof, there are little patches of garden and
+greenery, where geraniums and delicious tangling creepers uphold thus
+high above the ground the fertile tradition of earth.  You walk slowly up
+the paved street.  One of its characteristics, which it shares with the
+old streets of most Italian towns, is that it is only used by foot-
+passengers, being of course too narrow for wheels; and it is paved across
+with flagstones from door to door, so that the feet and the voices echo
+pleasantly in it, and make a music of their own.  Without exception the
+ground floor of every house is a shop--the gayest, busiest most
+industrious little shops in the world.  There are shops for provisions,
+where the delightful macaroni lies in its various bins, and all kinds of
+frugal and nourishing foods are offered for sale.  There are shops for
+clothes and dyed finery; there are shops for boots, where boots hang in
+festoons like onions outside the window--I have never seen so many boot-
+shops at once in my life as I saw in the streets surrounding the house of
+Columbus.  And every shop that is not a provision-shop or a clothes-shop
+or a boot-shop, is a wine-shop--or at least you would think so, until you
+remember, after you have walked through the street, what a lot of other
+kinds of shops you have seen on your way.  There are shops for newspapers
+and tobacco, for cheap jewellery, for brushes, for chairs and tables and
+articles of wood; there are shops with great stacks and piles of
+crockery; there are shops for cheese and butter and milk--indeed from
+this one little street in Genoa you could supply every necessary and
+every luxury of a humble life.
+
+As you still go up, the street takes a slight bend; and immediately
+before you, you see it spanned by the lofty crumbled arch of St.
+Andrew's Gate, with its two mighty towers one on each side.  Just as you
+see it you are at Columbus's house.  The number is thirty-seven; it is
+like any of the other houses, tall and narrow; and there is a slab built
+into the wall above the first storey, on which is written this
+inscription:--
+
+                      NVLLA DOMVS TITVLO DIGNIOR
+                                 HEIC
+                          PATERNIS IN AEDIBV
+                        CHRISTOPHORVS COLVMBVS
+                               PVERITIAM
+                      PRIMAMQVE IVVENTAM TRANSEGIT
+
+You stop and look at it; and presently you become conscious of a
+difference between it and all the other houses.  They are all alert,
+busy, noisy, crowded with life in every storey, oozing vitality from
+every window; but of all the narrow vertical strips that make up the
+houses of the street, this strip numbered thirty-seven is empty, silent,
+and dead.  The shutters veil its windows; within it is dark, empty of
+furniture, and inhabited only by a memory and a spirit.  It is a strange
+place in which to stand and to think of all that has happened since the
+man of our thoughts looked forth from these windows, a common little boy.
+The world is very much alive in the Vico Dritto di Ponticello; the little
+freshet of life that flows there flows loud and incessant; and yet into
+what oceans of death and silence has it not poured since it carried forth
+Christopher on its stream!  One thinks of the continent of that New World
+that he discovered, and all the teeming millions of human lives that have
+sprung up and died down, and sprung up again, and spread and increased
+there; all the ploughs that have driven into its soil, the harvests that
+have ripened, the waving acres and miles of grain that have answered the
+call of Spring and Autumn since first the bow of his boat grated on the
+shore of Guanahani.  And yet of the two scenes this narrow shuttered
+house in a bye-street of Genoa is at once the more wonderful and more
+credible; for it contains the elements of the other.  Walls and floors
+and a roof, a place to eat and sleep in, a place to work and found a
+family, and give tangible environment to a human soul--there is all human
+enterprise and discovery, effort, adventure, and life in that.
+
+
+If Christopher wanted to go down to the sea he would have to pass under
+the Gate of St. Andrew, with the old prison, now pulled down to make room
+for the modern buildings, on his right, and go down the Salita del
+Prione, which is a continuation of the Vico Dritto di Ponticello.  It
+slopes downwards from the Gate as the first street sloped upwards to it;
+and it contains the same assortment of shops and of houses, the same
+mixture of handicrafts and industries, as were seen in the Vico Dritto di
+Ponticello.  Presently he would come to the Piazza dell' Erbe, where
+there is no grass, but only a pleasant circle of little houses and shops,
+with already a smack of the sea in them, chiefly suggested by the shops
+of instrument-makers, where to-day there are compasses and sextants and
+chronometers.  Out of the Piazza you come down the Via di San Donato and
+into the Piazza of that name, where for over nine centuries the church of
+San Donato has faced the sun and the weather.  From there Christopher's
+young feet would follow the winding Via di San Bernato, a street also
+inhabited by craftsmen and workers in wood and metal; and at the last
+turn of it, a gash of blue between the two cliffwalls of houses, you see
+the Mediterranean.
+
+Here, then, between the narrow little house by the Gate and the clamour
+and business of the sea-front, our Christopher's feet carried him daily
+during some part of his childish life.  What else he did, what he thought
+and felt, what little reflections he had, are but matters of conjecture.
+Genoa will tell you nothing more.  You may walk over the very spot where
+he was born; you may unconsciously tread in the track of his vanished
+feet; you may wander about the wharves of the city, and see the ships
+loading and unloading--different ships, but still trafficking in
+commodities not greatly different from those of his day; you may climb
+the heights behind Genoa, and look out upon the great curving Gulf from
+Porto Fino to where the Cape of the western Riviera dips into the sea;
+you may walk along the coast to Savona, where Domenico had one of his
+many habitations, where he kept the tavern, and whither Christopher's
+young feet must also have walked; and you may come back and search again
+in the harbour, from the old Mole and the Bank of St. George to where the
+port and quays stretch away to the medley of sailing-ships and steamers;
+but you will not find any sign or trace of Christopher.  No echo of the
+little voice that shrilled in the narrow street sounds in the Vico
+Dritto; the houses stand gaunt and straight, with a brilliant strip of
+blue sky between their roofs and the cool street beneath; but they give
+you nothing of what you seek.  If you see a little figure running towards
+you in a blue smock, the head fair-haired, the face blue-eyed and a
+little freckled with the strong sunshine, it is not a real figure; it is
+a child of your dreams and a ghost of the past.  You may chase him while
+he runs about the wharves and stumbles over the ropes, but you will never
+catch him.  He runs before you, zigzagging over the cobbles, up the sunny
+street, into the narrow house; out again, running now towards the Duomo,
+hiding in the porch of San Stefano, where the weavers held their
+meetings; back again along the wharves; surely he is hiding behind that
+mooring-post!  But you look, and he is not there--nothing but the old
+harbour dust that the wind stirs into a little eddy while you look.  For
+he belongs not to you or me, this child; he is not yet enslaved to the
+great purpose, not yet caught up into the machinery of life.  His eye has
+not yet caught the fire of the sun setting on a western sea; he is still
+free and happy, and belongs only to those who love him.  Father and
+mother, brothers Bartolomeo and Giacomo, sister Biancinetta, aunts,
+uncles, and cousins possibly, and possibly for a little while an old
+grandmother at Quinto--these were the people to whom that child belonged.
+The little life of his first decade, unviolated by documents or history,
+lives happily in our dreams, as blank as sunshine.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+YOUNG CHRISTOPHER
+
+Christopher was fourteen years old when he first went to sea.  That
+is his own statement, and it is one of the few of his autobiographical
+utterances that we need not doubt.  From it, and from a knowledge of
+certain other dates, we are able to construct some vague picture of his
+doings before he left Italy and settled in Portugal.  Already in his
+young heart he was feeling the influence that was to direct and shape
+his destiny; already, towards his home in Genoa, long ripples from the
+commotion of maritime adventure in the West were beginning to spread.
+At the age of ten he was apprenticed to his father, who undertook,
+according to the indentures, to provide him with board and lodging, a
+blue gabardine and a pair of good shoes, and various other matters in
+return for his service.  But there is no reason to suppose that he ever
+occupied himself very much with wool-weaving.  He had a vocation quite
+other than that, and if he ever did make any cloth there must have been
+some strange thoughts and imaginings woven into it, as he plied the
+shuttle.  Most of his biographers, relying upon a doubtful statement in
+the life of him written by his son Ferdinand, would have us send him at
+the age of twelve to the distant University of Pavia, there, poor mite,
+to sit at the feet of learned professors studying Latin, mathematics, and
+cosmography; but fortunately it is not necessary to believe so improbable
+a statement.  What is much more likely about his education--for education
+he had, although not of the superior kind with which he has been
+credited--is that in the blank, sunny time of his childhood he was sent
+to one of the excellent schools established by the weavers in their own
+quarter, and that there or afterwards he came under some influence, both
+religious and learned, which stamped him the practical visionary that he
+remained throughout his life.  Thereafter, between his sea voyagings and
+expeditions about the Mediterranean coasts, he no doubt acquired
+knowledge in the only really practical way that it can be acquired; that
+is to say, he received it as and when he needed it.  What we know is that
+he had in later life some knowledge of the works of Aristotle, Julius
+Caesar, Seneca, Pliny, and Ptolemy; of Ahmet-Ben-Kothair the Arabic
+astronomer, Rochid the Arabian, and the Rabbi Samuel the Jew; of Isadore
+the Spaniard, and Bede and Scotus the Britons; of Strabo the German,
+Gerson the Frenchman, and Nicolaus de Lira the Italian.  These names
+cover a wide range, but they do not imply university education.  Some of
+them merely suggest acquaintance with the 'Imago Mundi'; others imply
+that selective faculty, the power of choosing what can help a man's
+purpose and of rejecting what is useless to it, that is one of the marks
+of genius, and an outward sign of the inner light.
+
+We must think of him, then, at school in Genoa, grinding out the tasks
+that are the common heritage of all small boys; working a little at the
+weaving, interestedly enough at first, no doubt, while the importance of
+having a loom appealed to him, but also no doubt rapidly cooling off in
+his enthusiasm as the pastime became a task, and the restriction of
+indoor life began to be felt.  For if ever there was a little boy who
+loved to idle about the wharves and docks, here was that little boy.
+It was here, while he wandered about the crowded quays and listened to
+the medley of talk among the foreign sailors, and looked beyond the masts
+of the ships into the blue distance of the sea, that the desire to wander
+and go abroad upon the face of the waters must first have stirred in his
+heart.  The wharves of Genoa in those days combined in themselves all the
+richness of romance and adventure, buccaneering, trading, and treasure-
+snatching, that has ever crowded the pages of romance.  There were
+galleys and caravels, barques and feluccas, pinnaces and caraccas.  There
+were slaves in the galleys, and bowmen to keep the slaves in subjection.
+There were dark-bearded Spaniards, fair-haired Englishmen; there were
+Greeks, and Indians, and Portuguese.  The bales of goods on the harbour-
+side were eloquent of distant lands, and furnished object lessons in the
+only geography that young Christopher was likely to be learning.  There
+was cotton from Egypt, and tin and lead from Southampton.  There were
+butts of Malmsey from Candia; aloes and cassia and spices from Socotra;
+rhubarb from Persia; silk from India; wool from Damascus, raw wool also
+from Calais and Norwich.  No wonder if the little house in the Vico
+Dritto di Ponticello became too narrow for the boy; and no wonder that at
+the age of fourteen he was able to have his way, and go to sea.  One can
+imagine him gradually acquiring an influence over his father, Domenico,
+as his will grew stronger and firmer--he with one grand object in life,
+Domenico with none; he with a single clear purpose, and Domenico with
+innumerable cloudy ones.  And so, on some day in the distant past, there
+were farewells and anxious hearts in the weaver's house, and Christopher,
+member of the crew of some trading caravel or felucca, a diminishing
+object to the wet eyes of his mother, sailed away, and faded into the
+blue distance.
+
+They had lost him, although perhaps they did not realise it; from the
+moment of his first voyage the sea claimed him as her own.  Widening
+horizons, slatting of cords and sails in the wind, storms and stars and
+strange landfalls and long idle calms, thunder of surges, tingle of
+spray, and eternal labouring and threshing and cleaving of infinite
+waters--these were to be his portion and true home hereafter.
+Attendances at Court, conferences with learned monks and bishops,
+sojourns on lonely islands, love under stars in the gay, sun-smitten
+Spanish towns, governings and parleyings in distant, undreamed-of lands
+--these were to be but incidents in his true life, which was to be
+fulfilled in the solitude of sea watches.
+
+When he left his home on this first voyage, he took with him one other
+thing besides the restless longing to escape beyond the line of sea and
+sky.  Let us mark well this possession of his, for it was his companion
+and guiding-star throughout a long and difficult life, his chart and
+compass, astrolabe and anchor, in one.  Religion has in our days fallen
+into decay among men of intellect and achievement.  The world has thrown
+it, like a worn garment or an old skin, from off its body, the thing
+itself being no longer real and alive, and in harmony with the life of
+an age that struggles towards a different kind of truth.  It is hard,
+therefore, for us to understand exactly how the religion of Columbus
+entered so deeply into his life and brooded so widely over his thoughts.
+
+Hardest of all is it for people whose only experience of religion is of
+Puritan inheritance to comprehend how, in the fifteenth century, the
+strong intellect was strengthened, and the stout heart fortified, by the
+thought of hosts of saints and angels hovering above a man's incomings
+and outgoings to guide and protect him.  Yet in an age that really had
+the gift of faith, in which religion was real and vital, and part of the
+business of every man's daily life; in which it stood honoured in the
+world, loaded with riches, crowned with learning, wielding government
+both temporal and spiritual, it was a very brave panoply for the soul of
+man.  The little boy in Genoa, with the fair hair and blue eyes and grave
+freckled face that made him remarkable among his dark companions, had no
+doubt early received and accepted the vast mysteries of the Christian
+faith; and as that other mystery began to grow in his mind, and that idea
+of worlds that might lie beyond the sea-line began to take shape in his
+thoughts, he found in the holy wisdom of the prophets, and the inspired
+writings of the fathers, a continual confirmation of his faith.  The full
+conviction of these things belongs to a later period of his life; but
+probably, during his first voyagings in the Mediterranean, there hung in
+his mind echoes of psalms and prophecies that had to do with things
+beyond the world of his vision and experience.  The sun, whose going
+forth is to the end of heaven, his circuit back to the end of it, and
+from whose heat there is nothing hid; the truth, holy and prevailing,
+that knows no speech nor language where its voice is not heard; the great
+and wide sea, with its creeping things innumerable, and beasts small and
+great--no wonder if these things impressed him, and if gradually, as his
+way fell clearer before him, and the inner light began to shine more
+steadily, he came to believe that he had a special mission to carry the
+torch of the faith across the Sea of Darkness, and be himself the bearer
+of a truth that was to go through all the earth, and of words that were
+to travel to the world's end.
+
+In this faith, then, and with this equipment, and about the year 1465,
+Christopher Columbus began his sea travels.  His voyages would be
+doubtless at first much along the coasts, and across to Alexandria and
+the Islands.  There would be returnings to Genoa, and glad welcomings by
+the little household in the narrow street; in 1472 and 1473 he was with
+his father at Savona, helping with the wool-weaving and tavern-keeping;
+possibly also there were interviews with Benincasa, who was at that time
+living in Genoa, and making his famous sea-charts.  Perhaps it was in his
+studio that Christopher first saw a chart, and first fell in love with
+the magic that can transfer the shapes of oceans and continents to a
+piece of paper.  Then he would be off again in another ship, to the
+Golden Horn perhaps, or the Black Sea, for the Genoese had a great
+Crimean trade.  This is all conjecture, but very reasonable conjecture;
+what we know for a fact is that he saw the white gum drawn from the
+lentiscus shrubs in Chio at the time of their flowering; that fragrant
+memory is preserved long afterwards in his own writings, evoked by some
+incident in the newly-discovered islands of the West.  There are vague
+rumours and stories of his having been engaged in various expeditions--
+among them one fitted out in Genoa by John of Anjou to recover the
+kingdom of Naples for King Rene of Provence; but there is no reason to
+believe these rumours: good reason to disbelieve them, rather.
+
+The lives that the sea absorbs are passed in a great variety of adventure
+and experience, but so far as the world is concerned they are passed in a
+profound obscurity; and we need not wonder that of all the mariners who
+used those seas, and passed up and down, and held their course by the
+stars, and reefed their sails before the sudden squalls that came down
+from the mountains, and shook them out again in the calm sunshine that
+followed, there is no record of the one among their number who was
+afterwards to reef and steer and hold his course to such mighty purpose.
+For this period, then, we must leave him to the sea, and to the vast
+anonymity of sea life.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+DOMENICO
+
+Christopher is gone, vanished over that blue horizon; and the tale of
+life in Genoa goes on without him very much as before, except that
+Domenico has one apprentice less, and, a matter becoming of some
+importance in the narrow condition of his finances, one boy less to feed
+and clothe.  For good Domenico, alas! is no economist.  Those hardy
+adventures of his in the buying and selling line do not prosper him; the
+tavern does not pay; perhaps the tavern-keeper is too hospitable; at any
+rate, things are not going well.  And yet Domenico had a good start; as
+his brother Antonio has doubtless often told him, he had the best of old
+Giovanni's inheritance; he had the property at Quinto, and other property
+at Ginestreto, and some ground rents at Pradella; a tavern at Savona, a
+shop there and at Genoa--really, Domenico has no excuse for his
+difficulties.  In 1445 he was selling land at Quinto, presumably with the
+consent of old Giovanni, if he was still alive; and if he was not living,
+then immediately after his death, in the first pride of possession.
+
+In 1450 he bought a pleasant house at Quarto, a village on the sea-shore
+about a mile to the west of Quinto and about five miles to the east of
+Genoa.  It was probably a pure speculation, as he immediately leased the
+house for two years, and never lived in it himself, although it was a
+pleasant place, with an orchard of olives and figs and various other
+trees--'arboratum olivis ficubus et aliis diversis arboribus'.  His next
+recorded transaction is in 1466, when he went security for a friend,
+doubtless with disastrous results.  In 1473 he sold the house at the
+Olive Gate, that suburban dwelling where probably Christopher was born,
+and in 1474 he invested the proceeds of that sale in a piece of land
+which I have referred to before, situated in the suburbs of Savona, with
+which were sold those agreeable and useless wine-vats.  Domenico was
+living at Savona then, and the property which he so fatuously acquired
+consisted of two large pieces of land on the Via Valcalda, containing a
+few vines, a plantation of fruit-trees, and a large area of shrub and
+underwood.  The price, however, was never paid in full, and was the cause
+of a lawsuit which dragged on for forty years, and was finally settled by
+Don Diego Columbus, Christopher's son, who sent a special authority from
+Hispaniola.
+
+Owing, no doubt, to the difficulties that this un fortunate purchase
+plunged him into, Domenico was obliged to mortgage his house at St.
+Andrew's Gate in the year 1477; and in 1489 he finally gave it up to
+Jacob Baverelus, the cheese-monger, his son-in-law.  Susanna, who had
+been the witness of his melancholy transactions for so many years, and
+possibly the mainstay of that declining household, died in 1494; but not,
+we may hope, before she had heard of the fame of her son Christopher.
+Domenico, in receipt of a pension from the famous Admiral of the Ocean,
+and no doubt talking with a deal of pride and inaccuracy about the
+discovery of the New World, lived on until 1498; when he died also, and
+vanished out of this world.  He had fulfilled a noble destiny in being
+the father of Christopher Columbus.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+SEA THOUGHTS
+
+The long years that Christopher Columbus spent at sea in making voyages
+to and from his home in Genoa, years so blank to us, but to him who lived
+them so full of life and active growth, were most certainly fruitful in
+training and equipping him for that future career of which as yet,
+perhaps, he did not dream.  The long undulating waves of the
+Mediterranean, with land appearing and dissolving away in the morning and
+evening mists, the business of ship life, harsh and rough in detail, but
+not too absorbing to the mind of a common mariner to prevent any thoughts
+he might have finding room to grow and take shape; sea breezes, sea
+storms, sea calms; these were the setting of his knowledge and experience
+as he fared from port to port and from sea to sea.  He is a very elusive
+figure in that environment of misty blue, very hard to hold and identify,
+very shy of our scrutiny, and inaccessible even to our speculation.  If
+we would come up with him, and place ourselves in some kind of sympathy
+with the thoughts that were forming in his brain, it is necessary that we
+should, for the moment, forget much of what we know of the world, and
+assume the imperfect knowledge of the globe that man possessed in those
+years when Columbus was sailing the Mediterranean.
+
+That the earth was a round globe of land and water was a fact that, after
+many contradictions and uncertainties, intelligent men had by this time
+accepted.  A conscious knowledge of the world as a whole had been a part
+of human thought for many hundreds of years; and the sphericity of the
+earth had been a theory in the sixth century before Christ.  In the
+fourth century Aristotle had watched the stars and eclipses; in the third
+century Eratosthenes had measured a degree of latitude, and measured it
+wrong;--[Not so very wrong.  D.W.]-- in the second century the
+philosopher Crates had constructed a rude sort of globe, on which were
+marked the known kingdoms of the earth, and some also unknown.  With the
+coming of the Christian era the theory of the roundness of the earth
+began to be denied; and as knowledge and learning became gathered into
+the hands of the Church they lost something of their clarity and
+singleness, and began to be used arbitrarily as evidence for or against
+other and less material theories.  St. Chrysostom opposed the theory of
+the earth's roundness; St. Isidore taught it; and so also did St.
+Augustine, as we might expect from a man of his wisdom who lived so long
+in a monastery that looked out to sea from a high point, and who wrote
+the words 'Ubi magnitudo, ibi veritas'.  In the sixth century of the
+Christian era Bishop Cosmas gave much thought to this matter of a round
+world, and found a new argument which to his mind (poor Cosmas!) disposed
+of it very clearly; for he argued that, if the world were round, the
+people dwelling at the antipodes could not see Christ at His coming, and
+that therefore the earth was not round.  But Bede, in the eighth century,
+established it finally as a part of human knowledge that the earth and
+all the heavenly bodies were spheres, and after that the fact was not
+again seriously disputed.
+
+What lay beyond the frontier of the known was a speculation inseparable
+from the spirit of exploration.  Children, and people who do not travel,
+are generally content, when their thoughts stray beyond the paths trodden
+by their feet, to believe that the greater world is but a continuation on
+every side of their own environment; indeed, without the help of sight or
+suggestion, it is almost impossible to believe anything else.  If you
+stand on an eminence in a great plain and think of the unseen country
+that lies beyond the horizon, trying to visualise it and imagine that you
+see it, the eye of imagination can only see the continuance or projection
+of what is seen by the bodily sight.  If you think, you can occupy the
+invisible space with a landscape made up from your own memory and
+knowledge: you may think of mountain chains and rivers, although there
+are none visible to your sight, or you may imagine vast seas and islands,
+oceans and continents.  This, however, is thought, not pure imagination;
+and even so, with every advantage of thought and knowledge, you will not
+be able to imagine beyond your horizon a space of sea so wide that the
+farther shore is invisible, and yet imagine the farther shore also.  You
+will see America across the Atlantic and Japan across the Pacific; but
+you cannot see, in one single effort of the imagination, an Atlantic of
+empty blue water stretching to an empty horizon, another beyond that
+equally vast and empty, another beyond that, and so on until you have
+spanned the thousand horizons that lie between England and America.  The
+mind, that is to say, works in steps and spans corresponding to the spans
+of physical sight; it cannot clear itself enough from the body, or rise
+high enough beyond experience, to comprehend spaces so much vaster than
+anything ever seen by the eye of man.  So also with the stretching of the
+horizon which bounded human knowledge of the earth.  It moved step by
+step; if one of Prince Henry's captains, creeping down the west coast of
+Africa, discovered a cape a hundred miles south of the known world, the
+most he could probably do was to imagine that there might lie, still
+another hundred miles farther south, another cape; to sail for it in
+faith and hope, to find it, and to imagine another possibility yet
+another hundred miles away.  So far as experience went back, faith could
+look forward.  It is thus with the common run of mankind; yesterday's
+march is the measure of to-morrow's; as much as they have done once, they
+may do again; they fear it will be not much more; they hope it may be not
+much less.
+
+The history of the exploration of the world up to the day when Columbus
+set sail from Palos is just such a history of steps.  The Phoenicians
+coasting from harbour to harbour through the Mediterranean; the Romans
+marching from camp to camp, from country to country; the Jutes venturing
+in their frail craft into the stormy northern seas, making voyages a
+little longer and more daring every time, until they reached England; the
+captains of Prince Henry of Portugal feeling their way from voyage to
+voyage down the coast of Africa--there are no bold flights into the
+incredible here, but patient and business-like progress from one
+stepping-stone to another.  Dangers and hardships there were, and brave
+followings of the faint will-o'-the-wisp of faith in what lay beyond; but
+there were no great launchings into space.  They but followed a line that
+was the continuance or projection of the line they had hitherto followed;
+what they did was brave and glorious, but it was reasonable.  What
+Columbus did, on the contrary, was, as we shall see later, against all
+reason and knowledge.  It was a leap in the dark towards some star
+invisible to all but him; for he who sets forth across the desert sand or
+sea must have a brighter sun to guide him than that which sets and rises
+on the day of the small man.
+
+
+Our familiarity with maps and atlases makes it difficult for us to think
+of the world in other terms than those of map and diagram; knowledge and
+science have focussed things for us, and our imagination has in
+consequence shrunk.  It is almost impossible, when thinking of the earth
+as a whole, to think about it except as a picture drawn, or as a small
+globe with maps traced upon it.  I am sure that our imagination has a far
+narrower angle--to borrow a term from the science of lenses--than the
+imagination of men who lived in the fifteenth century.  They thought of
+the world in its actual terms--seas, islands, continents, gulfs, rivers,
+oceans.  Columbus had seen maps and charts--among them the famous
+'portolani' of Benincasa at Genoa; but I think it unlikely that he was so
+familiar with them as to have adopted their terms in his thoughts about
+the earth.  He had seen the Mediterranean and sailed upon it before he
+had seen a chart of it; he knew a good deal of the world itself before he
+had seen a map of it.  He had more knowledge of the actual earth and sea
+than he had of pictures or drawings of them; and therefore, if we are to
+keep in sympathetic touch with him, we must not think too closely of
+maps, but of land and sea themselves.
+
+The world that Columbus had heard about as being within the knowledge of
+men extended on the north to Iceland and Scandinavia, on the south to a
+cape one hundred miles south of the Equator, and to the east as far as
+China and Japan.  North and South were not important to the spirit of
+that time; it was East and West that men thought of when they thought of
+the expansion and the discovery of the world.  And although they admitted
+that the earth was a sphere, I think it likely that they imagined
+(although the imagination was contrary to their knowledge) that the line
+of West and East was far longer, and full of vaster possibilities, than
+that of North and South.  North was familiar ground to them--one voyage
+to England, another to Iceland, another to Scandinavia; there was nothing
+impossible about that.  Southward was another matter; but even here there
+was no ambition to discover the limit of the world.  It is an error
+continually made by the biographers of Columbus that the purpose of
+Prince Henry's explorations down the coast of Africa was to find a sea
+road to the West Indies by way of the East.  It was nothing of the kind.
+There was no idea in the minds of the Portuguese of the land which
+Columbus discovered, and which we now know as the West Indies.  Mr.
+Vignaud contends that the confusion arose from the very loose way in
+which the term India was applied in the Middle Ages.  Several Indias were
+recognised.  There was an India beyond the Ganges; a Middle India between
+the Ganges and the Indus; and a Lesser India, in which were included
+Arabia, Abyssinia, and the countries about the Red Sea.  These divisions
+were, however, quite vague, and varied in different periods.  In the time
+of Columbus the word India meant the kingdom of Prester John, that
+fabulous monarch who had been the subject of persistent legends since the
+twelfth century; and it was this India to which the Portuguese sought a
+sea road.  They had no idea of a barrier cape far to the south, the
+doubling of which would open a road for them to the west; nor were they,
+as Mr. Vignaud believes, trying to open a route for the spice trade with
+the Orient.  They had no great spice trade, and did not seek more; what
+they did seek was an extension of their ordinary trade with Guinea and
+the African coast.  To the maritime world of the fifteenth century, then,
+the South as a geographical region and as a possible point of discovery
+had no attractions.
+
+To the west stretched what was known as the Sea of Darkness, about which
+even the cool knowledge of the geographers and astronomers could not
+think steadily.  Nothing was known about it, it did not lead anywhere,
+there were no people there, there was no trade in that direction.  The
+tides of history and of life avoided it; only now and then some terrified
+mariner, blown far out of his course, came back with tales of sea
+monsters and enchanted disappearing islands, and shores that receded, and
+coasts upon which no one could make a landfall.  The farthest land known
+to the west was the Azores; beyond that stretched a vague and impossible
+ocean of terror and darkness, of which the Arabian writer Xerif al
+Edrisi, whose countrymen were the sea-kings of the Middle Ages, wrote as
+follows:
+
+     "The ocean encircles the ultimate bounds of the inhabited earth, and
+     all beyond it is unknown.  No one has been able to verify anything
+     concerning it, on account of its difficult and perilous navigation,
+     its great obscurity, its profound depth, and frequent tempests;
+     through fear of its mighty fishes and its haughty winds; yet there
+     are many islands in it, some peopled, others uninhabited.  There is
+     no mariner who dares to enter into its deep waters; or if any have
+     done so, they have merely kept along its coasts, fearful of
+     departing from them.  The waves of this ocean, although they roll as
+     high as mountains, yet maintain themselves without breaking; for if
+     they broke it would be impossible for a ship to plough them."
+
+It is another illustration of the way in which discovery and imagination
+had hitherto gone by steps and not by flights, that geographical
+knowledge reached the islands of the Atlantic (none of which were at a
+very great distance from the coast of Europe or from each other) at a
+comparatively early date, and stopped there until in Columbus there was
+found a man with faith strong enough to make the long flight beyond them
+to the unknown West.  And yet the philosophers, and later the
+cartographers, true to their instinct for this pedestrian kind of
+imagination, put mythical lands and islands to the westward of the known
+islands as though they were really trying to make a way, to sink stepping
+stones into the deep sea that would lead their thoughts across the
+unknown space.  In the Catalan map of the world, which was the standard
+example of cosmography in the early days of Columbus, most of these
+mythical islands are marked.  There was the island of Antilia, which was
+placed in 25 deg. 35' W., and was said to have been discovered by Don
+Roderick, the last of the Gothic kings of Spain, who fled there after
+his defeat by the Moors.  There was the island of the Seven Cities,
+which is sometimes identified with this Antilia, and was the object of a
+persistent belief or superstition on the part of the inhabitants of the
+Canary Islands.  They saw, or thought they saw, about ninety leagues to
+the westward, an island with high peaks and deep valleys.  The vision was
+intermittent; it was only seen in very clear weather, on some of those
+pure, serene days of the tropics when in the clear atmosphere distant
+objects appear to be close at hand.  In cloudy, and often in clear
+weather also, it was not to be seen at all; but the inhabitants of the
+Canaries, who always saw it in the same place, were so convinced of its
+reality that they petitioned the King of Portugal to allow them to go and
+take possession of it; and several expeditions were in fact despatched,
+but none ever came up with that fairy land.  It was called the island of
+the Seven Cities from a legend of seven bishops who had fled from Spain
+at the time of the Moorish conquest, and, landing upon this island, had
+founded there seven splendid cities.  There was the island of St.
+Brandan, called after the Saint who set out from Ireland in the sixth
+century in search of an island which always receded before his ships;
+this island was placed several hundred miles to the west of the Canaries
+on maps and charts through out the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
+There was the island of Brazil, to the west of Cape St. Vincent; the
+islands of Royllo, San Giorgio, and Isola di Mam; but they were all
+islands of dreams, seen by the eyes of many mariners in that imaginative
+time, but never trodden by any foot of man.  To Columbus, however, and
+the mariners of his day, they were all real places, which a man might
+reach by special good fortune or heroism, but which, all things
+considered, it was not quite worth the while of any man to attempt to
+reach.  They have all disappeared from our charts, like the Atlantis of
+Plato, that was once charted to the westward of the Straits of Gibraltar,
+and of which the Canaries were believed to be the last peaks unsubmerged.
+
+Sea myths and legends are strange things, and do not as a rule persist in
+the minds of men unless they have had some ghostly foundation; so it is
+possible that these fabled islands of the West were lands that had
+actually been seen by living eyes, although their position could never be
+properly laid down nor their identity assured.  Of all the wandering
+seamen who talked in the wayside taverns of Atlantic seaports, some must
+have had strange tales to tell; tales which sometimes may have been true,
+but were never believed.  Vague rumours hung about those shores, like
+spray and mist about a headland, of lands seen and lost again in the
+unknown and uncharted ocean.  Doubtless the lamp of faith, the inner
+light, burned in some of these storm-tossed men; but all they had was a
+glimpse here and there, seen for a moment and lost again; not the clear
+sight of faith by which Columbus steered his westward course.
+
+
+The actual outposts of western occupation, then, were the Azores, which
+were discovered by Genoese sailors in the pay of Portugal early in the
+fourteenth century; the Canaries, which had been continuously discovered
+and rediscovered since the Phoenicians occupied them and Pliny chose them
+for his Hesperides; and Madeira, which is believed to have been
+discovered by an Englishman under the following very romantic and moving
+circumstances.
+
+In the reign of Edward the Third a young man named Robert Machin fell in
+love with a beautiful girl, his superior in rank, Anne Dorset or d'Urfey
+by name.  She loved him also, but her relations did not love him; and
+therefore they had Machin imprisoned upon some pretext or other, and
+forcibly married the young lady to a nobleman who had a castle on the
+shores of the Bristol Channel.
+
+The marriage being accomplished, and the girl carried away by her
+bridegroom to his seat in the West, it was thought safe to release
+Machin.  Whereupon he collected several friends, and they followed the
+newly-married couple to Bristol and laid their plans for an abduction.
+One of the friends got himself engaged as a groom in the service of the
+unhappy bride, and found her love unchanged, and if possible increased by
+the present misery she was in.  An escape was planned; and one day, when
+the girl and her groom were riding in the park, they set spurs to their
+horses, and galloped off to a place on the shores of the Bristol Channel
+where young Robert had a boat on the beach and a ship in the offing.
+They set sail immediately, intending to make for France, where the
+reunited lovers hoped to live happily; but it came on to blow when they
+were off the Lizard, and a southerly gale, which lasted for thirteen
+days, drove them far out of their course.
+
+The bride, from her joy and relief, fell into a state of the gloomiest
+despondency, believing that the hand of God was turned against her,
+and that their love would never be enjoyed.  The tempest fell on the
+fourteenth day, and at the break of morning the sea-worn company saw
+trees and land ahead of them.  In the sunrise they landed upon an island
+full of noble trees, about which flights of singing birds were hovering,
+and in which the sweetest fruits, the most lovely flowers, and the purest
+and most limpid waters abounded.  Machin and his bride and their friends
+made an encampment on a flowery meadow in a sheltered valley, where for
+three days they enjoyed the sweetness and rest of the shore and the
+companionship of all kinds of birds and beasts, which showed no signs of
+fear at their presence.  On the third day a storm arose, and raged for a
+night over the island; and in the morning the adventurers found that
+their ship was nowhere to be seen.  The despair of the little company was
+extreme, and was increased by the condition of poor Anne, upon whom
+terror and remorse again fell, and so preyed upon her mind that in three
+days she was dead.  Her lover, who had braved so much and won her so
+gallantly, was turned to stone by this misfortune.  Remorse and aching
+desolation oppressed him; from the moment of her death he scarcely ate
+nor spoke; and in five days he also was dead, surely of a broken heart.
+They buried him beside his mistress under a spreading tree, and put up a
+wooden cross there, with a prayer that any Christians who might come to
+the island would build a chapel to Jesus the Saviour.  The rest of the
+party then repaired their little boat and put to sea; were cast upon the
+coast of Morocco, captured by the Moors, and thrown into prison.  With
+them in prison was a Spanish pilot named Juan de Morales, who listened
+attentively to all they could tell him about the situation and condition
+of the island, and who after his release communicated what he knew to
+Prince Henry of Portugal.  The island of Madeira was thus rediscovered in
+1418, and in 1425 was colonised by Prince Henry, who appointed as
+Governor Bartolomeo de Perestrello, whose daughter was afterwards to
+become the wife of Columbus.
+
+So much for the outposts of the Old World.  Of the New World, about the
+possibility of which Columbus is beginning to dream as he sails the
+Mediterranean, there was no knowledge and hardly any thought.  Though new
+in the thoughts of Columbus, it was very old in itself; generations of
+men had lived and walked and spoken and toiled there, ever since men came
+upon the earth; sun and shower, the thrill of the seasons, birth and life
+and death, had been visiting it for centuries and centuries.  And it is
+quite possible that, long before even the civilisation that produced
+Columbus was in its dawn, men from the Old World had journeyed there.
+There are two very old fragments of knowledge which indicate at least the
+possibility of a Western World of which the ancients had knowledge.
+There is a fragment, preserved from the fourth century before Christ, of
+a conversation between Silenus and Midas, King of Phrygia, in which
+Silenus correctly describes the Old World--Europe, Asia, and Africa--as
+being surrounded by the sea, but also describes, far to the west of it, a
+huge island, which had its own civilisation and its own laws, where the
+animals and the men were of twice our stature, and lived for twice our
+years.  There is also the story told by Plato of the island of Atlantis,
+which was larger than Africa and Asia together, and which in an
+earthquake disappeared beneath the waves, producing such a slime upon the
+surface that no ship was able to navigate the sea in that place.  This is
+the story which the priests of Sais told to Solon, and which was embodied
+in the sacred inscriptions in their temples.  It is strange that any one
+should think of this theory of the slime who had not seen or heard of the
+Sargasso Sea--that great bank of floating seaweed that the ocean currents
+collect and retain in the middle of the basin of the North Atlantic.
+
+The Egyptians, the Tartars, the Canaanites, the Chinese, the Arabians,
+the Welsh, and the Scandinavians have all been credited with the
+colonisation of America; but the only race from the Old World which had
+almost certainly been there were the Scandinavians.  In the year 983 the
+coast of Greenland was visited by Eric the Red, the son of a Norwegian
+noble, who was banished for the crime of murder.  Some fifteen years
+later Eric's son Lief made an expedition with thirty-five men and a ship
+in the direction of the new land.  They came to a coast where there were
+nothing but ice mountains having the appearance of slate; this country
+they named Helluland--that is, Land of Slate.  This country is our
+Newfoundland.  Standing out to sea again, they reached a level wooded
+country with white sandy cliffs, which they called Markland, or Land of
+Wood, which is our Nova Scotia.  Next they reached an island east of
+Markland, where they passed the winter, and as one of their number who
+had wandered some distance inland had found vines and grapes, Lief named
+the country Vinland or Vine Land, which is the country we call New
+England.  The Scandinavians continued to make voyages to the West and
+South; and finally Thorfinn Karlsefne, an Icelander, made a great
+expedition in the spring of 1007 with ships and material for
+colonisation.  He made much progress to the southwards, and the Icelandic
+accounts of the climate and soil and characteristics of the country leave
+no doubt that Greenland and Nova Scotia were discovered and colonised at
+this time.
+
+It must be remembered, however, that then and in the lifetime of Columbus
+Greenland was supposed to--be a promontory of the coast of Europe, and
+was not connected in men's minds with a western continent.  Its early
+discovery has no bearing on the significance of Columbus's achievement,
+the greatness of which depends not on his having been the first man from
+the Old World to set foot upon the shores of the New, but on the fact
+that by pure faith and belief in his own purpose he did set out for and
+arrive in a world where no man of his era or civilisation had ever before
+set foot, or from which no wanderer who may have been blown there ever
+returned.  It is enough to claim for him the merit of discovery in the
+true sense of the word.  The New World was covered from the Old by a veil
+of distance, of time and space, of absence, invisibility, virtual non-
+existence; and he discovered it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+IN PORTUGAL
+
+There is no reason to believe that before his twenty-fifth year Columbus
+was anything more than a merchant or mariner, sailing before the mast,
+and joining one ship after another as opportunities for good voyages
+offered themselves.  A change took place later, probably after his
+marriage, when he began to adapt himself rapidly to a new set of
+surroundings, and to show his intrinsic qualities; but all the attempts
+that have been made to glorify him socially--attempts, it must be
+remembered, in which he himself and his sons were in after years the
+leaders--are entirely mistaken.  That strange instinct for consistency
+which makes people desire to see the outward man correspond, in terms of
+momentary and arbitrary credit, with the inner and hidden man of the
+heart, has in truth led to more biographical injustice than is fully
+realised.  If Columbus had been the man some of his biographers would
+like to make him out--the nephew or descendant of a famous French
+Admiral, educated at the University of Pavia, belonging to a family of
+noble birth and high social esteem in Genoa, chosen by King Rene to be
+the commander of naval expeditions, learned in scientific lore, in the
+classics, in astronomy and in cosmography, the friend and correspondent
+of Toscanelli and other learned scientists--we should find it hard indeed
+to forgive him the shifts and deceits that he practised.  It is far more
+interesting to think of him as a common craftsman, of a lowly condition
+and poor circumstances, who had to earn his living during the formative
+period of his life by the simplest and hardest labour of the hand.  The
+qualities that made him what he was were of a very simple kind, and his
+character owed its strength, not to any complexity or subtlety of
+training and education, but rather to that very bareness and simplicity
+of circumstance that made him a man of single rather than manifold ideas.
+He was not capable of seeing both sides of a question; he saw only one
+side.  But he came of a great race; and it was the qualities of his race,
+combined with this simplicity and even perhaps vacancy of mind, that gave
+to his idea, when once the seed of it had lodged in his mind, so much
+vigour in growth and room for expansion.  Think of him, then, at the age
+of twenty-five as a typical plebeian Genoese, bearing all the
+characteristic traits of his century and people--the spirit of adventure,
+the love of gold and of power, a spirit of mysticism, and more than a
+touch of crafty and elaborate dissimulation, when that should be
+necessary.
+
+He had been at sea for ten or eleven years, making voyages to and from
+Genoa, with an occasional spell ashore and plunge into the paternal
+affairs, when in the year 1476 he found himself on board a Genoese vessel
+which formed one of a convoy going, to Lisbon.  This convoy was attacked
+off Cape St. Vincent by Colombo, or Colomb, the famous French corsair, of
+whom Christopher himself has quite falsely been called a relative.  Only
+two of the Genoese vessels escaped, and one of these two was the ship
+which carried Columbus.  It arrived at Lisbon, where Columbus went ashore
+and took up his abode.
+
+This, so far as can be ascertained, is the truth about the arrival of
+Columbus in Portugal.  The early years of an obscure man who leaps into
+fame late in life are nearly always difficult to gather knowledge about,
+because not only are the annals of the poor short and simple and in most
+cases altogether unrecorded, but there is always that instinct, to which
+I have already referred, to make out that the circumstances of a man who
+late in life becomes great and remarkable were always, at every point in
+his career, remarkable also.  We love to trace the hand of destiny
+guiding her chosen people, protecting them from dangers, and preserving
+them for their great moment.  It is a pleasant study, and one to which
+the facts often lend themselves, but it leads to a vicious method of
+biography which obscures the truth with legends and pretences that have
+afterwards laboriously to be cleared away.  It was so in the case of
+Columbus.  Before his departure on his first voyage of discovery there is
+absolutely no temporary record of him except a few dates in notarial
+registers.  The circumstances of his life and his previous conditions
+were supplied afterwards by himself and his contemporaries; and both he
+and they saw the past in the light of the present, and did their best to
+make it fit a present so wonderful and miraculous.  The whole trend of
+recent research on the subject of Columbus has been unfortunately in the
+direction of proving the complete insincerity of his own speech and
+writings about his early life, and the inaccuracy of Las Casas writings
+his contemporary biographer, and the first historian of the West Indies.
+Those of my readers, then, who are inclined to be impatient with the
+meagreness of the facts with which I am presenting them, and the
+disproportionate amount of theory to fact with regard to these early
+years of Columbus, must remember three things.  First, that the only
+record of the early years of Columbus was written long after those years
+had passed away, and in circumstances which did not harmonise with them;
+second, that there is evidence, both substantive and presumptive, that
+much of those records, even though it came from the hands of Columbus and
+his friends, is false and must be discarded; and third, that the only way
+in which anything like the truth can be arrived at is by circumstantial
+and presumptive evidence with regard to dates, names, places, and events
+upon which the obscure life of Columbus impinged.  Columbus is known to
+have written much about himself, but very little of it exists or remains
+in his own handwriting.  It remains in the form of quotation by others,
+all of whom had their reasons for not representing quite accurately what
+was, it must be feared, not even itself a candid and accurate record.
+The evidence for these very serious statements is the subject of
+numberless volumes and monographs, which cannot be quoted here; for it is
+my privilege to reap the results, and not to reproduce the material, of
+the immense research and investigation to which in the last fifty years
+the life of Columbus has been subjected.
+
+
+We shall come to facts enough presently; in the meantime we have but the
+vaguest knowledge of what Columbus did in Lisbon.  The one technical
+possession which he obviously had was knowledge of the sea; he had also a
+head on his shoulders, and plenty of judgment and common sense; he had
+likely picked up some knowledge of cartography in his years at Genoa,
+since (having abandoned wool-weaving) he probably wished to make progress
+in the profession of the sea; and it is, therefore, believed that he
+picked up a living in Lisbon by drawing charts and maps.  Such a living
+would only be intermittent; a fact that is indicated by his periodic
+excursions to sea again, presumably when funds were exhausted.  There
+were other Genoese in Lisbon, and his own brother Bartholomew was with
+him there for a time.  He may actually have been there when Columbus
+arrived, but it was more probable that Columbus, the pioneer of the
+family, seeing a better field for his brother's talent in Lisbon than in
+Genoa, sent for him when he himself was established there.  This
+Bartholomew, of whom we shall see a good deal in the future, is merely an
+outline at this stage of the story; an outline that will later be filled
+up with human features and fitted with a human character; at present he
+is but a brother of Christopher, with a rather bookish taste, a better
+knowledge of cartography than Christopher possessed, and some little
+experience of the book-selling trade.  He too made charts in Lisbon, and
+sold books also, and no doubt between them the efforts of the brothers,
+supplemented by the occasional voyages of Christopher, obtained them a
+sufficient livelihood.  The social change, in the one case from the
+society of Genoese wool-weavers, and in the other from the company of
+merchant sailors, must have been very great; for there is evidence that
+they began to make friends and acquaintances among a rather different
+class than had been formerly accessible to them.  The change to a new
+country also and to a new language makes a deep impression at the age of
+twenty-five; and although Columbus in his sea-farings had been in many
+ports, and had probably picked up a knowledge both of Portuguese and of
+Spanish, his establishment in the Portuguese capital could not fail to
+enlarge his outlook upon life.
+
+There is absolutely no record of his circumstances in the first year of
+his life at Lisbon, so we may look once more into the glass of
+imagination and try to find a picture there.  It is very dim, very
+minute, very, very far away.  There is the little shop in a steep Lisbon
+street, somewhere near the harbour we may be sure, with the shadows of
+the houses lying sharp on the white sunlight of the street; the cool
+darkness of the shop, with its odour of vellum and parchment, its rolls
+of maps and charts; and somewhere near by the sounds and commotion of the
+wharves and the shipping.  Often, when there was a purchaser in the shop,
+there would be talk of the sea, of the best course from this place to
+that, of the entrance to this harbour and the other; talk of the western
+islands too, of the western ocean, of the new astrolabe which the German
+Muller of Konigsberg, or Regiomontanus, as they called him in Portugal,
+had modified and improved.  And if there was sometimes an evening walk,
+it would surely be towards the coast or on a hill above the harbour, with
+a view of the sun being quenched in the sea and travelling down into the
+unknown, uncharted West.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+ADVENTURES BODILY AND SPIRITUAL
+
+Columbus had not been long in Portugal before he was off again to sea,
+this time on a longer voyage than any he had yet undertaken.  Our
+knowledge of it depends on his own words as reported by Las Casas, and,
+like so much other knowledge similarly recorded, is not to be received
+with absolute certainty; but on the whole the balance of probability is
+in favour of its truth.  The words in which this voyage is recorded are
+given as a quotation from a letter of Columbus, and, stripped of certain
+obvious interpolations of the historian, are as follows:--
+
+     "In the month of February, and in the year 1477, I navigated as far
+     as the island of Tile [Thule], a hundred leagues; and to this
+     island, which is as large as England, the English, especially those
+     of Bristol, go with merchandise; and when I was there the sea was
+     not frozen over, although there were very high tides, so much so
+     that in some parts the sea rose twenty-five 'brazas', and went down
+     as much, twice during the day."
+
+The reasons for doubting that this voyage took place are due simply to
+Columbus's habit of being untruthful in regard to his own past doings,
+and his propensity for drawing the long bow; and the reason that has been
+accepted by most of his biographers who have denied the truth of this
+statement is that, in the year 1492, when Columbus was addressing the
+King and Queen of Spain on his qualifications as a navigator, and when he
+wished to set forth his experience in a formidable light, he said nothing
+about this voyage, but merely described his explorations as having
+extended from Guinea on the south to England on the north.  A shrewd
+estimate of Columbus's character makes it indeed seem incredible that,
+if he had really been in Iceland, he should not have mentioned the fact
+on this occasion; and yet there is just one reason, also quite
+characteristic of Columbus, that would account for the suppression.
+It is just possible that when he was at Thule, by which he meant Iceland,
+he may have heard of the explorations in the direction of Greenland and
+Newfoundland; and that, although by other navigators these lands were
+regarded as a part of the continent of Europe, he may have had some
+glimmerings of an idea that they were part of land and islands in the
+West; and he was much too jealous of his own reputation as the great and
+only originator of the project for voyaging to the West, to give away any
+hints that he was not the only person to whom such ideas had occurred.
+There is deception and untruth somewhere; and one must make one's choice
+between regarding the story in the first place as a lie, or accepting it
+as truth, and putting down Columbus's silence about it on a later
+occasion to a rare instinct of judicious suppression.  There are other
+facts in his life, to which, we shall come later, that are in accordance
+with this theory.  There is no doubt, moreover, that Columbus had a very
+great experience of the sea, and was one of the greatest practical
+seamen, if not the greatest, that has ever lived; and it would be foolish
+to deny, except for the greatest reasons, that he made a voyage to the
+far North, which was neither unusual at the time nor a very great
+achievement for a seaman of his experience.
+
+Christopher returned from these voyages, of which we know nothing except
+the facts that he has given us, towards the end of 1477; and it was
+probably in the next year that an event very important in his life and
+career took place.  Hitherto there has been no whisper of love in that
+arduous career of wool-weaving, sailoring, and map-making; and it is not
+unlikely that his marriage represents the first inspiration of love in
+his life, for he was, in spite of his southern birth, a cool-blooded man,
+for whom affairs of the heart had never a very serious interest.  But at
+Lisbon, where he began to find himself with some footing and place in the
+world, and where the prospect of at least a livelihood began to open out
+before him, his thoughts took that turn towards domesticity and family
+life which marks a moment in the development of almost every man.  And
+now, since he has at last to emerge from the misty environment of sea-
+spray that has veiled him so long from our intimate sight, we may take a
+close look at him as he was in this year 1478.
+
+Unlike the southern Italians, he was fair in colouring; a man rather
+above the middle height, large limbed, of a shapely breadth and
+proportion, and of a grave and dignified demeanour.  His face was ruddy,
+and inclined to be freckled under the exposure to the sun, his hair at
+this age still fair and reddish, although in a few years later it turned
+grey, and became white while he was still a young man.  His nose was
+slightly aquiline, his face long and rather full; his eyes of a clear
+blue, with sharply defined eyebrows--seamen's eyes, which get an
+unmistakable light in them from long staring into the sea distances.
+Altogether a handsome and distinguished-looking young man, noticeable
+anywhere, and especially among a crowd of swarthy Portuguese.  He was not
+a lively young man; on the contrary, his manner was rather heavy, and
+even at times inclined to be pompous; he had a very good opinion of
+himself, had the clear calculating head and tidy intellectual methods of
+the able mariner; was shrewd and cautious--in a word, took himself and
+the world very seriously.  A strictly conventional man, as the
+conventions of his time and race went; probably some of his gayer and
+lighter-hearted contemporaries thought him a dull enough dog, who would
+not join in a carouse or a gallant adventure, but would probably get the
+better of you if he could in any commercial deal.  He was a great
+stickler for the observances of religion; and never a Sunday or feast-day
+passed, when he was ashore, without finding him, like the dutiful son of
+the Church that he was, hearing Mass and attending at Benediction.  Not,
+indeed, a very attractive or inspiring figure of a man; not the man whose
+company one would likely have sought very much, or whose conversation one
+would have found very interesting.  A man rather whose character was cast
+in a large and plain mould, without those many facets which add so much
+to the brightness of human intercourse, and which attract and reflect the
+light from other minds; a man who must be tried in large circumstances,
+and placed in a big setting, if his qualities are to be seen to advantage
+.  .  .  .  I seem to see him walking up from the shop near the harbour
+at Lisbon towards the convent of Saints; walking gravely and firmly, with
+a dignified demeanour, with his best clothes on, and glad, for the
+moment, to be free of his sea acquaintances, and to be walking in the
+direction of that upper-class world after which he has a secret hankering
+in his heart.  There are a great many churches in Lisbon nearer his house
+where he might hear Mass on Sundays; but he prefers to walk up to the
+rich and fashionable convent of Saints, where everybody is well dressed,
+and where those kindling eyes of his may indulge a cool taste for
+feminine beauty.
+
+
+While the chapel bell is ringing other people are hurrying through the
+sunny Lisbon streets to Mass at the convent.  Among the fashionable
+throng are two ladies, one young, one middle-aged; they separate at the
+church door, and the younger one leaves her mother and takes her place in
+the convent choir.  This is Philippa Moniz, who lives alone with her
+mother in Lisbon, and amuses herself with her privileges as a cavaliera,
+or dame, in one of the knightly orders attached to the rich convent of
+Saints.  Perhaps she has noticed the tall figure of the young Genoese in
+the strangers' part of the convent, perhaps not; but his roving blue eye
+has noticed her, and much is to come of it.  The young Genoese continues
+his regular and exemplary attendance at the divine Office, the young lady
+is zealous in observing her duties in the choir; some kind friend
+introduces them; the audacious young man makes his proposals, and,
+in spite of the melancholy protests of the young lady's exceedingly
+respectable and highly-connected relatives, the young people are
+betrothed and actually married before the elders have time to recover
+breath from their first shock at the absurdity of the suggestion.
+
+There is a very curious fact in connection with his marriage that is
+worthy of our consideration.  In all his voluminous writings, letters,
+memoirs, and journals, Columbus never once mentions his wife.  His sole
+reference to her is in his will, made at Valladolid many years later,
+long after her death; and is contained in the two words "my wife."
+He ordains that a chapel shall be erected and masses said for the repose
+of the souls of his father, his mother, and his wife.  He who wrote so
+much, did not write of her; he who boasted so much, never boasted of her;
+he who bemoaned so much, never bemoaned her.  There is a blank silence
+on his part about everything connected with his marriage and his wife.
+I like to think that it was because this marriage, which incidentally
+furnished him with one of the great impulses of his career, was in itself
+placid and uneventful, and belongs to that mass of happy days that do not
+make history.  Columbus was not a passionate man.  I think that love had
+a very small place in his life, and that the fever of passion was with
+him brief and soon finished with; but I am sure he was affectionate, and
+grateful for any affection and tenderness that were bestowed upon him.
+He was much away too, at first on his voyages to Guinea and afterwards on
+the business of his petitions to the Portuguese and Spanish Courts; and
+one need not be a cynic to believe that these absences did nothing to
+lessen the affection between him and his wife.  Finally, their married
+life was a short one; she died within ten years, and I am sure did not
+outlive his affections; so that there may be something solemn, some
+secret memories of the aching joy and sorrow that her coming into his
+life and passing out of it brought him, in this silence of Columbus
+concerning his wife.
+
+
+This marriage was, in the vulgar idiom of to-day, a great thing for
+Columbus.  It not only brought him a wife; it brought him a home,
+society, recognition, and a connection with maritime knowledge and
+adventure that was of the greatest importance to him.  Philippa Moniz
+Perestrello was the daughter of Bartolomeo Perestrello, who had been
+appointed hereditary governor of the island of Porto Santo on its
+colonisation by Prince Henry in 1425 and who had died there in 1457.
+Her grandfather was Gil Ayres Moniz, who was secretary to the famous
+Constable Pereira in the reign of John I, and is chiefly interesting to
+us because he founded the chapel of the "Piedad" in the Carmelite
+Monastery at Lisbon, in which the Moniz family had the right of interment
+for ever, and in which the body of Philippa, after her brief pilgrimage
+in this world was over, duly rested; and whence her son ordered its
+disinterment and re-burial in the church of Santa Clara in San Domingo.
+Philippa's mother, Isabel Moniz, was the second or third wife of
+Perestrello; and after her husband's death she had come to live in
+Lisbon.  She had another daughter, Violante by name, who had married one
+Mulier, or Muliartes, in Huelva; and a son named Bartolomeo, who was the
+heir to the governorship of Porto Santo; but as he was only a little boy
+at the time of his father's death his mother ceded the governorship to
+Pedro Correa da Cunha, who had married Iseult, the daughter of old
+Bartolomeo by his first wife.  The governorship was thus kept in the
+family during the minority of Bartolomeo, who resumed it later when he
+came of age.
+
+This Isabel, mother of Philippa, was a very important acquaintance indeed
+for Columbus.  It must be noted that he left the shop and poor
+Bartholomew to take care of themselves or each other, and went to live in
+the house of his mother-in-law.  This was a great social step for the
+wool-weaver of Genoa; and it was probably the result of a kind of
+compromise with his wife's horrified relatives at the time of her
+marriage.  It was doubtless thought impossible for her to go and live
+over the chart-maker's shop; and as you can make charts in one house as
+well as another, it was decided that Columbus should live with his
+mother-in-law, and follow his trade under her roof.  Columbus, in fact,
+seems to have been fortunate in securing the favour of his female
+relatives-in-law, and it was probably owing to the championship of
+Philippa's mother that a marriage so much to his advantage ever took
+place at all.  His wife had many distinguished relatives in the
+neighbourhood of Lisbon; her cousin was archbishop at this very time;
+but I can neither find that their marriage was celebrated with the
+archiepiscopal blessing or that he ever got much help or countenance from
+the male members of the Moniz family.  Archbishops even today do not much
+like their pretty cousins marrying a man of Columbus's position, whether
+you call him a woolweaver, a sailor, a map-maker, or a bookseller.
+"Adventurer" is perhaps the truest description of him; and the word was
+as much distrusted in the best circles in Lisbon in the fifteenth century
+as it is to-day.
+
+Those of his new relatives, however, who did get to know him soon began
+to see that Philippa had not made such a bad bargain after all.  With the
+confidence and added belief in himself that the recognition and
+encouragement of those kind women brought him, Columbus's mind and
+imagination expanded; and I think it was probably now that he began to
+wonder if all his knowledge and seamanship, his quite useful smattering
+of cartography and cosmography, his real love of adventure, and all his
+dreams and speculations concerning the unknown and uncharted seas, could
+not be turned to some practical account.  His wife's step-sister Iseult
+and her husband had, moreover, only lately returned to Lisbon from their
+long residence in Porto Santo; young Bartolomeo Perestrello, her brother,
+was reigning there in their stead, and no doubt sending home interesting
+accounts of ships and navigators that put in at Madeira; and all the
+circumstances would tend to fan the spark of Columbus's desire to have
+some adventure and glory of his own on the high seas.  He would wish
+to show all these grandees, with whom his marriage had brought him
+acquainted, that you did not need to be born a Perestrello--
+or Pallastrelli, as the name was in its original Italian form--to make
+a name in the world.  Donna Isabel, moreover, was never tired of talking
+about Porto Santo and her dead husband, and of all the voyages and sea
+adventures that had filled his life.  She was obviously a good teller of
+tales, and had all the old history and traditions of Madeira at her
+fingers' ends; the story of Robert Machin and Anne Dorset; the story of
+the isle of Seven Cities; and the black cloud on the horizon that turned
+out in the end to be Madeira.  She told Christopher how her husband, when
+he had first gone to Porto Santo, had taken there a litter of rabbits,
+and how the rabbits had so increased that in two seasons they had eaten
+up everything on the island, and rendered it uninhabitable for some time.
+
+She brought out her husband's sea-charts, memoranda, and log-books,
+the sight of which still farther inflamed Christopher's curiosity and
+ambition.  The great thing in those days was to discover something, if it
+was only a cape down the African coast or a rock in the Atlantic.  The
+key to fame, which later took the form of mechanical invention, and later
+still of discovery in the region of science, took the form then of actual
+discovery of parts of the earth's surface.  The thing was in the air;
+news was coming in every day of something new seen, something new
+charted.  If others had done so much, and the field was still half
+unexplored, could not he do something also?  It was not an unlikely
+thought to occur to the mind of a student of sea charts and horizons.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE FIRE KINDLES
+
+The next step in Columbus's career was a move to Porto Santo, which
+probably took place very soon after his marriage--that is to say, in the
+year 1479.  It is likely that he had the chance of making a voyage there;
+perhaps even of commanding a ship, for his experience of the sea and
+skill as a navigator must by this time have raised him above the rank of
+an ordinary seaman; and in that case nothing would be more natural than
+that he should take his young wife with him to visit her brother
+Bartolomeo, and to see the family property.  It is one of the charms of
+the seaman's profession that he travels free all over the world; and if
+he has no house or other fixed possessions that need to be looked after
+he has the freedom of the world, and can go where he likes free of cost.
+Porto Santo and Madeira, lying in the track of the busiest trade on the
+Atlantic coast, would provide Columbus with an excellent base from which
+to make other voyages; so it was probably with a heart full of eager
+anticipation for the future, and sense of quiet happiness in the present,
+that in the year 1479 Signor Cristoforo Colombo (for he did not yet call
+himself Senor Cristoval Colon) set out for Porto Santo--a lonely rock
+some miles north of Madeira.  Its southern shore is a long sweeping bay
+of white sand, with a huddle of sand-hills beyond, and cliffs and peaks
+of basalt streaked with lava fringing the other shores.  When Columbus
+and his bride arrived there the place was almost as bare as it is to-day.
+There were the governor's house; the settlement of Portuguese who worked
+in the mills and sugar-fields; the mills themselves, with the cultivated
+sugar-fields behind them; and the vineyards, with the dwarf Malmsey vines
+pegged down to the ground, which Prince Henry had imported from Candia
+fifty years before.  The forest of dragon-trees that had once covered the
+island was nearly all gone.  The wood had all been used either for
+building, making boats, or for fuel; and on the fruit of the few trees
+that were left a herd of pigs was fattened.  There was frequent
+communication by boat with Madeira, which was the chief of all the
+Atlantic islands, and the headquarters of the sugar trade; and Porto
+Santo itself was a favourite place of call for passing ships.  So that it
+was by no means lonely for Christopher Columbus and his wife, even if
+they had not had the society of the governor and his settlement.
+
+
+We can allow him about three years in Porto Santo, although for a part of
+this time at least he must have been at sea.  I think it not unlikely
+that it was the happiest time of his life.  He was removed from the
+uncomfortable environment of people who looked down upon him because of
+his obscure birth; he was in an exquisite climate; and living by the sea-
+shore, as a sailor loves to do; he got on well with Bartolomeo, who was
+no doubt glad enough of the company of this grave sailor who had seen so
+much and had visited so many countries; above all he had his wife there,
+his beautiful, dear, proud Philippa, all to himself, and out of reach of
+those abominable Portuguese noblemen who paid so much attention to her
+and so little to him, and made him so jealous; and there was a whispered
+promise of some one who was coming to make him happier still.  It is a
+splendid setting, this, for the sea adventurer; a charming picture that
+one has of him there so long ago, walking on the white shores of the
+great sweeping bay, with the glorious purple Atlantic sparkling and
+thundering on the sands, as it sparkles and thunders to-day.  A place
+empty and vivid, swept by the mellow winds; silent, but for the
+continuous roar of the sea; still, but for the scuttling of the rabbits
+among the sand-hills and the occasional passage of a figure from the
+mills up to the sugar-fields; but brilliant with sunshine and colour and
+the bright environment of the sea.  It was upon such scenes that he
+looked during this happy pause in his life; they were the setting of
+Philippa's dreams and anxieties as the time of motherhood drew near;
+and it was upon them that their little son first opened his eyes, and
+with the boom of the Atlantic breakers that he first mingled his small.
+voice.
+
+It is but a moment of rest and happiness; for Christopher the scene is
+soon changed, and he must set forth upon a voyage again, while Philippa
+is left, with a new light in her eyes, to watch over the atom that wakes
+and weeps and twists and struggles and mews, and sleeps again, in her
+charge.  Sleep well, little son!  Yet a little while, and you too shall
+make voyages and conquests; new worlds lie waiting for you, who are so
+greatly astonished at this Old World; far journeys by land and sea, and
+the company of courtiers and kings; and much honour from the name and
+deeds of him who looked into your eyes with a laugh and, a sob, and was
+so very large and overshadowing!  But with her who quietly sings to you,
+whose hands soothe and caress you, in whose eyes shines that wonderful
+light of mother's love--only a little while longer.
+
+
+While Diego, as this son was christened, was yet only a baby in his
+cradle, Columbus made an important voyage to the, coast of Guinea as all
+the western part of the African continent was then called.  His solid and
+practical qualities were by this time beginning to be recognised even by
+Philippa's haughty family, and it was possibly through the interest of
+her uncle, Pedro Noronhas, a distinguished minister of the King of
+Portugal, that he got the command of a caravel in the expedition which
+set out for Guinea in December 1481.  A few miles from Cape Coast Castle,
+and on the borders of the Dutch colony, there are to-day the ruined
+remains of a fort; and it is this fort, the fortress of St. George, that
+the expedition was sent out to erect.  On the 11th of December the little
+fleet set sail for [from?  D.W.] Lisbon--ten caravels, and two barges or
+lighters laden with the necessary masonry and timber-work for the fort.
+Columbus was in command of one of the caravels, and the whole fleet was
+commanded by the Portuguese Admiral Azumbaga.  They would certainly see
+Porto Santo and Madeira on their way south, although they did not call
+there; and Philippa was no doubt looking out for them, and watching from
+the sand-hills the fleet of twelve ships going by in the offing.  They
+called at Cape Verde, where the Admiral was commissioned to present one
+of the negro kings with some horses and hawks, and incidentally to obtain
+his assent to a treaty.  On the 19th of January 1482, having made a very
+good voyage, they, landed just beyond the Cape of the Three Points, and
+immediately set about the business of the expedition.
+
+There was a state reception, with Admiral Azumbaga walking in front in
+scarlet and brocade, followed by his captains, Columbus among them,
+dressed in gorgeous tunics and cloaks with golden collars and, well
+hidden beneath their finery, good serviceable cuirasses.  The banner of
+Portugal was ceremoniously unfurled and dis played from the top of a tall
+tree.  An altar was erected and consecrated by the chaplain to the
+expedition, and a mass was sung for the repose of the soul of Prince
+Henry.  The Portugal contingent were then met by Caramansa, the king of
+the country, who came, surrounded by a great guard of blacks armed with
+assegais, their bodies scantily decorated with monkey fur and palm
+leaves.  The black monarch must have presented a handsome appearance,
+for his arms and legs were decked with gold bracelets and rings, he had
+a kind of dog-collar fitted with bells round his neck, and some pieces of
+gold were daintily twisted into his beard.  With these aids to diplomacy,
+and doubtless also with the help of a dram or two of spirits or of the
+wine of Oporto, the treaty was soon concluded, and a very shrewd stroke
+of business accomplished for the King of Portugal; for it gave him the
+sole right of exchanging gaudy rubbish from Portugal for the precious
+gold of Ethiopia.  When the contents of the two freight-ships had been
+unloaded they were beached and broken up by the orders of King John, who
+wished it to be thought that they had been destroyed in the whirlpools of
+that dangerous sea, and that the navigation of those rough waters was
+only safe for the caravels of the Navy.  The fort was built in twenty
+days, and the expedition returned, laden with gold and ivory; Admiral
+Azumbaga remained behind in command of the garrison.
+
+This voyage, which was a bold and adventurous one for the time, may be
+regarded as the first recognition of Columbus as a man of importance,
+for the expedition was manned and commanded by picked men; so it was for
+all reasons a very fortunate one for him, although the possession of the
+dangerous secret as to the whereabouts of this valuable territory might
+have proved to be not very convenient to him in the future.
+
+
+Columbus went back to Porto Santo with his ambitions thoroughly kindled.
+He had been given a definite command in the Portuguese Navy; he had been
+sailing with a fleet; he had been down to the mysterious coast of Africa;
+he had been trafficking with strange tribes; he had been engaged in a
+difficult piece of navigation such as he loved; and on the long dreamy
+days of the voyage home, the caravels furrowing the blue Atlantic before
+the steady trade-wind, he determined that he would find some way of
+putting his knowledge to use, and of earning distinction for himself.
+Living, as he had been lately, in Atlantic seaports overlooking the
+western ocean it is certain that the idea of discovering something in
+that direction occupied him more and more.  What it was that he was to
+discover was probably very vague in his mind, and was likely not
+designated by any name more exact than "lands."  In after years he tried
+to show that it was a logical and scientific deduction which led him to
+go and seek the eastern shore of the Indian continent by sailing west;
+but we may be almost certain that at this time he thought of no such
+thing.  He had no exact scientific knowledge at this date.  His map
+making had taught him something, and naturally he had kept his ears open,
+and knew all the gossip and hearsay about the islands of the West; and
+there gradually grew in his mind the intuition or conviction--I refuse to
+call it an opinion--that, over that blue verge of the West, there was
+land to be found.  How this seed of conviction first lodged in his mind
+it would be impossible to say; in any one of the steps through which we
+have followed him, it might have taken its root; but there it was,
+beginning to occupy his mind very seriously indeed; and he began to look
+out, as all men do who wish to act upon faith or conviction which they
+cannot demonstrate to another person, for some proofs that his conviction
+was a sound one.
+
+And now, just at the moment when he needs it most, comes an incident
+that, to a man of his religious and superstitious habit, seems like the
+pointing finger of Providence.  The story of the shipwrecked pilot has
+been discredited by nearly all the modern biographers of Columbus,
+chiefly because it does not fit in with their theory of his scientific
+studies and the alleged bearing of these on his great discovery; but it
+is given by Las Casas, who says that it was commonly believed by
+Columbus's entourage at Hispaniola.  Moreover, amid all the tangles of
+theory and argument in which the achievement of Columbus has been
+involved, this original story of shipwrecked mariners stands out with a
+strength and simplicity that cannot be entirely disregarded by the
+historian who permits himself some light of imagination by which to work.
+It is more true to life and to nature that Columbus should have received
+his last impulse, the little push that was to set his accumulated energy
+and determination in motion, from a thing of pure chance, than that he
+should have built his achievement up in a logical superstructure resting
+on a basis of profound and elaborate theory.
+
+In the year following Columbus's return from Guinea, then, he, and
+probably his family, had gone over to Madeira from Porto Santo, and were
+staying there.  While they were there a small ship put in to Madeira,
+much battered by storms and bad weather, and manned by a crew of five
+sick mariners.  Columbus, who was probably never far from the shore at
+Funchal when a ship came into the harbour, happened to see them.  Struck
+by their appearance, and finding them in a quite destitute and grievously
+invalid condition, he entertained them in his house until some other
+provision could be made for them.  But they were quite worn out.  One by
+one they succumbed to weakness and illness, until one only, a pilot from
+Huelva, was left.  He also was sinking, and when it was obvious that his
+end was near at hand, he beckoned his good host to his bedside, and, in
+gratitude for all his kindness, imparted to him some singular knowledge
+which he had acquired, and with which, if he had lived, he had hoped to
+win distinction for himself.
+
+The pilot's story, in so far as it has been preserved, and taking the
+mean of four contemporary accounts of it, was as follows.  This man,
+whose name is doubtful, but is given as Alonso Sanchez, was sailing on a
+voyage from one of the Spanish ports to England or Flanders.  He had a
+crew of seventeen men.  When they had got well out to sea a severe
+easterly gale sprung up, which drove the vessel before it to the
+westward.  Day after day and week after week, for twenty-eight days, this
+gale continued.  The islands were all left far behind, and the ship was
+carried into a region far beyond the limits of the ocean marked on the
+charts.  At last they sighted some islands, upon one of which they landed
+and took in wood and water.  The pilot took the bearings of the island,
+in so far as he was able, and made some observations, the only one of
+which that has remained being that the natives went naked; and, the wind
+having changed, set forth on his homeward voyage.  This voyage was long
+and painful.  The wind did not hold steady from the west; the pilot and
+his crew had a very hazy notion of where they were; their dead reckoning
+was confused; their provisions fell short; and one by one the crew
+sickened and died until they were reduced to five or six--the ones who,
+worn out by sickness and famine, and the labours of working the ship
+short-handed and in their enfeebled condition, at last made the island of
+Madeira, and cast anchor in the beautiful bay of Funchal, only to die
+there.  All these things we may imagine the dying man relating in
+snatches to his absorbed listener; who felt himself to be receiving a
+pearl of knowledge to be guarded and used, now that its finder must
+depart upon the last and longest voyage of human discovery.  Such
+observations as he had made--probably a few figures giving the bearings
+of stars, an account of dead reckoning, and a quite useless and
+inaccurate chart or map--the pilot gave to his host; then, having
+delivered his soul of its secret, he died.  This is the story; not an
+impossible or improbable one in its main outlines.  Whether the pilot
+really landed on one of the Antilles is extremely doubtful, although it
+is possible.  Superstitious and storm-tossed sailors in those days were
+only too ready to believe that they saw some of the fabled islands of the
+Atlantic; and it is quite possible that the pilot simply announced that
+he had seen land, and that the details as to his having actually set foot
+upon it were added later.  That does not seem to me important in so far
+as it concerns Columbus.  Whether it were true or not, the man obviously
+believed it; and to the mind of Columbus, possessed with an idea and a
+blind faith in something which could not be seen, the whole incident
+would appear in the light of a supernatural sign.  The bit of paper or
+parchment with the rude drawing on it, even although it were the drawing
+of a thing imagined and not of a thing seen, would still have for him a
+kind of authority that he would find it hard to ignore.  It seems
+unnecessary to disbelieve this story.  It is obviously absurd to regard
+it as the sole origin of Columbus's great idea; it probably belongs to
+that order of accidents, small and unimportant in themselves, which are
+so often associated with the beginnings of mighty events.  Walking on the
+shore at Madeira or Porto Santo, his mind brooding on the great and
+growing idea, Columbus would remember one or two other instances which,
+in the light of his growing conviction and know ledge, began to take on a
+significant hue.  He remembered that his wife's relative, Pedro Correa,
+who had come back from Porto Santo while Columbus was living in Lisbon,
+had told him about some strange flotsam that came in upon the shores of
+the island.  He had seen a piece of wood of a very dark colour curiously
+carved, but not with any tool of metal; and some great canes had also
+come ashore, so big that, every joint would hold a gallon of wine.  These
+canes, which were utterly unlike any thing known in Europe or the islands
+of the Atlantic, had been looked upon as such curiosities that they had
+been sent to the King at Lisbon, where they remained, and where Columbus
+himself afterwards saw them.  Two other stories, which he heard also at
+this time, went to strengthen his convictions.  One was the tale of
+Martin Vincenti, a pilot in the Portuguese Navy, who had found in the
+sea, four hundred and twenty leagues to the west of Cape St. Vincent,
+another piece of wood, curiously carved, that had evidently not been
+laboured with an iron instrument.  Columbus also remembered that the
+inhabitants of the Azores had more than once found upon their coasts the
+trunks of huge pine-trees, and strangely shaped canoes carved out of
+single logs; and, most significant of all, the people of Flares had taken
+from the water the bodies of two dead men, whose faces were of a strange
+broad shape, and whose features differed from those of any known race of
+mankind.  All these objects, it was supposed, were brought by westerly
+winds to the shores of Europe; it was not till long afterwards, when the
+currents of the Atlantic came to be studied, that the presence of such
+flotsam came to be attributed to the ocean currents, deflected by the
+Cape of Good Hope and gathered in the Gulf of Mexico, which are sprayed
+out across the Atlantic.
+
+The idea once fixed in his mind that there was land at a not impossible
+distance to the west, and perhaps a sea-road to the shores of Asia
+itself, the next thing to be done, was to go and discover it.  Rather a
+formidable task for a man without money, a foreigner in a strange
+land, among people who looked down upon him because of his obscure birth,
+and with no equipment except a knowledge of the sea, a great mastery of
+the art and craft of seamanship, a fearless spirit of adventure, and an
+inner light!  Some one else would have to be convinced before anything
+could be done; somebody who would provide ships and men and money and
+provisions.  Altogether rather a large order; for it was not an unusual
+thing in those days for master mariners, tired of the shore, to suggest
+to some grandee or other the desirability of fitting out a ship or two to
+go in search of the isle of St. Brandon, or to look up Antilia, or the
+island of the Seven Cities.  It was very hard to get an audience even for
+such a reasonable scheme as that; but to suggest taking a flotilla
+straight out to the west and into the Sea of Darkness, down that curving
+hill of the sea which it might be easy enough to slide down, but up which
+it was known that no ship could ever climb again, was a thing that hardly
+any serious or well-informed person would listen to.  A young man from
+Genoa, without a knowledge either of the classics or of the Fathers, and
+with no other argument except his own fixed belief and some vague talk
+about bits of wood and shipwrecked mariners, was not the person to
+inspire the capitalists of Portugal.  Yet the thing had to be done.
+Obviously it could not be done at Porto Santo, where there were no ships
+and no money.  Influence must be used; and Columbus knew that his
+proposals, if they were to have even a chance of being listened to, must
+be presented in some high-flown and elaborate form, giving reasons and
+offering inducements and quoting authorities.  He would have to get some
+one to help him in that; he would have to get up some scientific facts;
+his brother Bartholomew could help him, and some of those disagreeable
+relatives-in-law must also be pressed into the service of the Idea.
+Obviously the first thing was to go back to Lisbon; which accordingly
+Columbus did, about the year 1483.
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+A man standing on the sea-shore
+Attempts that have been made to glorify him socially
+Bede, in the eighth century, established it finally (sphericity)
+Biography which obscures the truth with legends and pretences
+Christian era denied the theory of the roundness of the earth
+Columbus never once mentions his wife
+Columbus's habit of being untruthful in regard to his own past
+Cooling off in his enthusiasm as the pastime became a task
+Diminishing object to the wet eyes of his mother, sailed away
+He was a great stickler for the observances of religion
+Inclined to be pompous
+Irving: so inaccurate, so untrue to life, and so profoundly dull
+Lives happily in our dreams, as blank as sunshine
+Loose way in which the term India was applied in the Middle Ages
+Man of single rather than manifold ideas
+More than a touch of crafty and elaborate dissimulation
+No more troubled by any wonder, sleeps at last
+Religion has in our days fallen into decay
+Sea of Darkness
+Shifts and deceits that he practised
+St. Chrysostom opposed the theory of the earth's roundness
+Tasks that are the common heritage of all small boys
+The great thing in those days was to discover something
+There is deception and untruth somewhere
+They saw the past in the light of the present
+Took himself and the world very seriously
+Vague longing and unrest that is the life-force of the world
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of Christopher Columbus, v1
+by Filson Young
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                         CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS
+                   AND THE NEW WORLD OF HIS DISCOVERY
+
+                      A NARRATIVE BY FILSON YOUNG
+
+
+
+BOOK 2.
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+WANDERINGS WITH AN IDEA
+
+The man to whom Columbus proposed to address his request for means with
+which to make a voyage of discovery was no less a person than the new
+King of Portugal.  Columbus was never a man of petty or small ideas; if
+he were going to do a thing at all, he went about it in a large and
+comprehensive way; and all his life he had a way of going to the
+fountainhead, and of making flights and leaps where other men would only
+climb or walk, that had much to do with his ultimate success.  King John,
+moreover, had shown himself thoroughly sympathetic to the spirit of
+discovery; Columbus, as we have seen, had already been employed in a
+trusted capacity in one of the royal expeditions; and he rightly thought
+that, since he had to ask the help of some one in his enterprise, he
+might as well try to enlist the Crown itself in the service of his great
+Idea.  He was not prepared, however, to go directly to the King and ask
+for ships; his proposal would have to be put in a way that would appeal
+to the royal ambition, and would also satisfy the King that there was
+really a destination in view for the expedition.  In other words Columbus
+had to propose to go somewhere; it would not do to say that he was going
+west into the Atlantic Ocean to look about him.  He therefore devoted all
+his energies to putting his proposal on what is called a business
+footing, and expressing his vague, sublime Idea in common and practical
+terms.
+
+The people who probably helped him most in this were his brother
+Bartholomew and Martin Behaim, the great authority on scientific
+navigation, who had been living in Lisbon for some time and with whom
+Columbus was acquainted.  Behaim, who was at this time about forty eight
+years of age, was born at Nuremberg, and was a pupil of Regiomontanus,
+the great German astronomer.  A very interesting man, this, if we could
+decipher his features and character; no mere star-gazing visionary, but a
+man of the world, whose scientific lore was combined with a wide and
+liberal experience of life.  He was not only learned in cosmography and
+astronomy, but he had a genius for mechanics and made beautiful
+instruments; he was a merchant also, and combined a little business with
+his scientific travels.  He had been employed at Lisbon in adapting the
+astrolabe of Regiomontanus for the use of sailors at sea; and in these
+labours he was assisted by two people who were destined to have a weighty
+influence on the career of Columbus--Doctors Rodrigo and Joseph,
+physicians or advisers to the King, and men of great academic reputation.
+There was nothing known about cosmography or astronomy that Behaim did
+not know; and he had just come back from an expedition on which he had
+been despatched, with Rodrigo and Joseph, to take the altitude of the sun
+in Guinea.
+
+Columbus was not the man to neglect his opportunities, and there can be
+no doubt that as soon as his purpose had established itself in his mind
+he made use of every opportunity that presented itself for improving his
+meagre scientific knowledge, in order that his proposal might be set
+forth in a plausible form.  In other words, he got up the subject.  The
+whole of his geographical reading with regard to the Indies up to this
+time had been in the travels of Marco Polo; the others--whose works he
+quoted from so freely in later years were then known to him only by name,
+if at all.  Behaim, however, could tell him a good deal about the
+supposed circumference of the earth, the extent of the Asiatic continent,
+and so on.  Every new fact that Columbus heard he seized and pressed into
+the service of his Idea; where there was a choice of facts, or a
+difference of opinion between scientists, he chose the facts that were
+most convenient, and the opinions that fitted best with his own beliefs.
+The very word "Indies" was synonymous with unbounded wealth; there
+certainly would be riches to tempt the King with; and Columbus, being a
+religious man, hit also on the happy idea of setting forth the spiritual
+glory of carrying the light of faith across the Sea of Darkness, and
+making of the heathen a heritage for the Christian Church.  So that, what
+with one thing and another, he soon had his proposals formally arranged.
+
+Imagine him, then, actually at Court, and having an audience of the King,
+who could scarcely believe his ears.  Here was a man, of whom he knew
+nothing but that his conduct of a caravel had been well spoken of in the
+recent expedition to Guinea, actually proposing to sail out west into the
+Atlantic and to cross the unknown part of the world.  Certainly his
+proposals seemed plausible, but still--.  The earth was round, said
+Columbus, and therefore there was a way from East to West and from West
+to East.  The prophet Esdras, a scientific authority that even His
+Majesty would hardly venture to doubt, had laid it down that only one-
+seventh of the earth was covered by waters.  From this fact Columbus
+deduced that the maritime space extending westward between the shores of
+Europe and eastern coast of Asia could not be large; and by sailing
+westward he proposed to reach certain lands of which he claimed to have
+knowledge.  The sailors' tales, the logs of driftwood, the dead bodies,
+were all brought into the proposals; in short, if His Majesty would grant
+some ships, and consent to making Columbus Admiral over all the islands
+that he might discover, with full viceregal state, authority, and profit,
+he would go and discover them.
+
+There are two different accounts of what the King said when this proposal
+was made to him.  According to some authorities, John was impressed by
+Columbus's proposals, and inclined to provide him with the necessary
+ships, but he could not assent to all the titles and rewards which
+Columbus demanded as a price for his services.  Barros, the Portuguese
+historian, on the other hand, represents that the whole idea was too
+fantastic to be seriously entertained by the King for a moment, and that
+although he at once made up his mind to refuse the request he preferred
+to delegate his refusal to a commission.  Whatever may be the truth as to
+King John's opinions, the commission was certainly appointed, and
+consisted of three persons, to wit: Master Rodrigo, Master Joseph the
+Jew, and the Right Reverend Cazadilla, Bishop of Ceuta.
+
+
+Before these three learned men must Columbus now appear, a little less
+happy in his mind, and wishing that he knew more Latin.  Master Rodrigo,
+Master Joseph the Jew, the Right Reverend Cazadilla: three pairs of cold
+eyes turned rather haughtily on the Genoese adventurer; three brains much
+steeped in learning, directed in judgment on the Idea of a man with no
+learning at all.  The Right Reverend Cazadilla, being the King's
+confessor, and a bishop into the bargain, could speak on that matter of
+converting the heathen; and he was of opinion that it could not be done.
+Joseph the Jew, having made voyages, and worked with Behaim at the
+astrolabe, was surely an authority on navigation; and he was of opinion
+that it could not be done.  Rodrigo, being also a very learned man, had
+read many books which Columbus had not read; and he was of opinion that
+it could not be done.  Three learned opinions against one Idea; the Idea
+is bound to go.  They would no doubt question Columbus on the scientific
+aspect of the matter, and would soon discover his grievous lack of
+academic knowledge.  They would quote fluently passages from writers that
+he had not heard of; if he had not heard of them, they seemed to imply,
+no wonder he made such foolish proposals.  Poor Columbus stands there
+puzzled, dissatisfied, tongue-tied.  He cannot answer these wiseacres in
+their own learned lingo; what they say, or what they quote, may be true
+or it may not; but it has nothing to do with his Idea.  If he opens his
+mouth to justify himself, they refute him with arguments that he does not
+understand; there is a wall between them.  More than a wall; there is a
+world between them!  It is his 'credo' against their 'ignoro'; it is, his
+'expecto' against their 'non video'.  Yet in his 'credo' there lies a
+power of which they do not dream; and it rings out in a trumpet note
+across the centuries, saluting the life force that opposes its
+irresistible "I will" to the feeble "Thou canst not" of the worldly-wise.
+Thus, in about the year 1483, did three learned men sit in judgment upon
+our ignorant Christopher.  Three learned men: Doctors Rodrigo, Joseph the
+Jew, and the Right Reverend Cazadilla, Bishop of Ceuta; three risen,
+stuffed to the eyes and ears with learning; stuffed so full indeed that
+eyes and ears are closed with it.  And three men, it would appear, wholly
+destitute of mother-wit.
+
+
+After all his preparations this rebuff must have been a serious blow to
+Columbus.  It was not his only trouble, moreover.  During the last year
+he had been earning nothing; he was already in imagination the Admiral of
+the Ocean Seas; and in the anticipation of the much higher duties to
+which he hoped to be devoted it is not likely that he would continue at
+his humble task of making maps and charts.  The result was that he got
+into debt, and it was absolutely necessary that something should be done.
+But a darker trouble had also almost certainly come to him about this
+time.  Neither the day nor the year of Philippa's death is known;
+but it is likely that it occurred soon after Columbus's failure at the
+Portuguese Court, and immediately before his departure into Spain.  That
+anonymous life, fulfilling itself so obscurely in companionship and
+motherhood, as softly as it floated upon the page of history, as softly
+fades from it again.  Those kind eyes, that encouraging voice, that
+helping hand and friendly human soul are with him no longer; and after
+the interval of peace and restful growth that they afforded Christopher
+must strike his tent and go forth upon another stage of his pilgrimage
+with a heavier and sterner heart.
+
+Two things are left to him: his son Diego, now an articulate little
+creature with character and personality of his own, and with strange,
+heart-breaking reminiscences of his mother in voice and countenance and
+manner--that is one possession; the other is his Idea.  Two things alive
+and satisfactory, amid the ruin and loss of other possessions; two
+reasons for living and prevailing.  And these two possessions Columbus
+took with him when he set out for Spain in the year 1485.
+
+His first care was to take little Diego to the town of Huelva, where
+there lived a sister of Philippa's who had married a Spaniard named
+Muliartes.  This done, he was able to devote himself solely to the
+furtherance of his Idea.  For this purpose he went to Seville, where he
+attached himself for a little while to a group of his countrymen who were
+settled there, among them Antonio and Alessandro Geraldini, and made such
+momentary living as was possible to him by his old trade.  But the Idea
+would not sleep.  He talked of nothing else; and as men do who talk of an
+idea that possesses them wholly, and springs from the inner light of
+faith, he interested and impressed many of his hearers.  Some of them
+suggested one thing, some another; but every one was agreed that it would
+be a good thing if he could enlist the services of the great Count
+(afterwards Duke) of Medini Celi, who had a palace at Rota, near Cadiz.
+
+This nobleman was one of the most famous of the grandees of Spain, and
+lived in mighty state upon his territory along the sea-shore, serving the
+Crown in its wars and expeditions with the power and dignity of an ally
+rather than of a subject.  His domestic establishment was on a princely
+scale, filled with chamberlains, gentlemen-at-arms, knights, retainers,
+and all the panoply of social dignity; and there was also place in his
+household for persons of merit and in need of protection.  To this great
+man came Columbus with his Idea.  It attracted the Count, who was a judge
+of men and perhaps of ideas also; and Columbus, finding some hope at last
+in his attitude, accepted the hospitality offered to him, and remained at
+Rota through the winter of 1485-86.  He had not been very hopeful when he
+arrived there, and had told the Count that he had thought of going to the
+King of France and asking for help from him; but the Count, who found
+something respectable and worthy of consideration in the Idea of a man
+who thought nothing of a journey in its service from one country to
+another and one sovereign to another, detained him, and played with the
+Idea himself.  Three or four caravels were nothing to the Count of Medina
+Eeli; but on the other hand the man was a grandee and a diplomat, with a
+nice sense of etiquette and of what was due to a reigning house.  Either
+there was nothing in this Idea, in which case his caravels would be
+employed to no purpose, or there was so much in it that it was an
+undertaking, not merely for the Count of Medina Celi, but for the Crown
+of Castile.  Lands across the ocean, and untold gold and riches of the
+Indies, suggested complications with foreign Powers, and transactions
+with the Pope himself, that would probably be a little too much even for
+the good Count; therefore with a curious mixture of far-sighted
+generosity and shrewd security he wrote to Queen Isabella, recommending
+Columbus to her, and asking her to consider his Idea; asking her also,
+in case anything should come of it, to remember him (the Count), and to
+let him have a finger in the pie.  Thus, with much literary circumstance
+and elaboration of politeness, the Count of Medina Celi to Queen
+Isabella.
+
+Follows an interval of suspense, the beginning of a long discipline of
+suspense to which Columbus was to be subjected; and presently comes a
+favourable reply from the Queen, commanding that Columbus should be sent
+to her.  Early in 1486 he set out for Cordova, where the Court was then
+established, bearing another letter from the Count in which his own
+private requests were repeated, and perhaps a little emphasised.
+Columbus was lodged in the house of Alonso de Quintanilla, Treasurer to
+the Crown of Castile, there to await an audience with Queen Isabella.
+
+
+While he is waiting, and getting accustomed to his new surroundings, let
+us consider these two monarchs in whose presence he is soon to appear,
+and upon whose decision hangs some part of the world's destiny.  Isabella
+first; for in that strange duet of government it is her womanly soprano
+that rings most clearly down the corridors of Time.  We discern in her a
+very busy woman, living a difficult life with much tact and judgment, and
+exercising to some purpose that amiable taste for "doing good" that marks
+the virtuous lady of station in every age.  This, however, was a woman
+who took risks with her eyes open, and steered herself cleverly in
+perilous situations, and guided others with a firm hand also, and in
+other ways made good her claim to be a ruler.  The consent and the will
+of her people were her great strength; by them she dethroned her niece
+and ascended the throne of Castile.  She had the misfortune to be at
+variance with her husband in almost every matter of policy dear to his
+heart; she opposed the expulsion of the Jews and the establishment of the
+Inquisition; but when she failed to get her way, she was still able to
+preserve her affectionate relations with her husband without disagreement
+and with happiness.  If she had a fault it was the common one of being
+too much under the influence of her confessors; but it was a fault that
+was rarely allowed to disturb the balance of her judgment.  She liked
+clever people also; surrounded herself with men of letters and of
+science, fostered all learned institutions, and delighted in the details
+of civil administration.  A very dignified and graceful figure, that
+could equally adorn a Court drawing-room or a field of battle; for she
+actually went into the field, and wore armour as becomingly as silk and
+ermine.  Firm, constant, clever, alert, a little given to fussiness
+perhaps, but sympathetic and charming, with some claims to genius and
+some approach to grandeur of soul: so much we may say truly of her inner
+self.  Outwardly she was a woman well formed, of medium height, a very
+dignified and graceful carriage, eyes of a clear summer blue, and the red
+and gold of autumn in her hair--these last inherited from her English
+grandmother.
+
+Ferdinand of Aragon appears not quite so favourably in our pages, for he
+never thought well of Columbus or of his proposals; and when he finally
+consented to the expedition he did so with only half a heart, and against
+his judgment.  He was an extremely enterprising, extremely subtle,
+extremely courageous, and according to our modern notions, an extremely
+dishonest man; that is to say, his standards of honour were not those
+which we can accept nowadays.  He thought nothing of going back on a
+promise, provided he got a priestly dispensation to do so; he juggled
+with his cabinets, and stopped at nothing in order to get his way; he had
+a craving ambition, and was lacking in magnanimity; he loved dominion,
+and cared very little for glory.  A very capable man; so capable that in
+spite of his defects he was regarded by his subjects as wise and prudent;
+so capable that he used his weaknesses of character to strengthen and
+further the purposes of his reign.  A very cold man also, quick and sure
+in his judgments, of wide understanding and grasp of affairs; simple and
+austere in dress and diet, as austerity was counted in that period of
+splendour; extremely industrious, and close in his observations and
+judgments of men.  To the bodily eye he appeared as a man of middle size,
+sturdy and athletic, face burned a brick red with exposure to the sun and
+open air; hair and eyebrows of a bright chestnut; a well-formed and not
+unkindly mouth; a voice sharp and unmelodious, issuing in quick fluent
+speech.  This was the man that earned from the Pope, for himself and his
+successors, the title of "Most Catholic Majesty."
+
+
+The Queen was very busy indeed with military preparations; but in the
+midst of her interviews with nobles and officers, contractors and state
+officials, she snatched a moment to receive the person Christopher
+Columbus.  With that extreme mental agility which is characteristic of
+busy sovereigns all the force of this clever woman's mind was turned for
+a moment on Christopher, whose Idea had by this time invested him with a
+dignity which no amount of regal state could abash.  There was very
+little time.  The Queen heard what Columbus had to say, cutting him
+short, it is likely, with kindly tact, and suppressing his tendency to
+launch out into long-winded speeches.  What she saw she liked; and, being
+too busy to give to this proposal the attention that it obviously
+merited, she told Columbus that the matter would be fully gone into and
+that in the meantime he must regard himself as the guest of the Court.
+And so, in the countenance of a smile and a promise, Columbus bows
+himself out.  For the present he must wait a little and his hot heart
+must contain itself while other affairs, looming infinitely larger than
+his Idea on the royal horizon, receive the attention of the Court.
+
+It was not the happiest moment, indeed, in which to talk of ships and
+charts, and lonely sea-roads, and faraway undiscovered shores.  Things at
+home were very real and lively in those spring days at Cordova.  The war
+against the Moors had reached a critical stage; King Ferdinand was away
+laying siege to the city of Loxa, and though the Queen was at Cordova she
+was entirely occupied with the business of collecting and forwarding
+troops and supplies to his aid.  The streets were full of soldiers;
+nobles and grandees from all over the country were arriving daily with
+their retinues; glitter and splendour, and the pomp of warlike
+preparation, filled the city.  Early in June the Queen herself went to
+the front and joined her husband in the siege of Moclin; and when this
+was victoriously ended, and they had returned in triumph to Cordova, they
+had to set out again for Gallicia to suppress a rebellion there.  When
+that was over they did not come back to Cordova at all, but repaired at
+once to Salamanca to spend the winter there.
+
+At the house of Alonso de Quintanilla, however, Columbus was not
+altogether wasting his time.  He met there some of the great persons of
+the Court, among them the celebrated Pedro Gonzalez de Mendoza,
+Archbishop of Toledo and Grand Cardinal of Spain.  This was far too great
+a man to be at this time anything like a friend of Columbus; but Columbus
+had been presented to him; the Cardinal would know his name, and what his
+business was; and that is always a step towards consideration.  Cabrero,
+the royal Chamberlain, was also often a fellow-guest at the Treasurer's
+table; and with him Columbus contracted something like a friendship.
+Every one who met him liked him; his dignity, his simplicity of thought
+and manner, his experience of the sea, and his calm certainty and
+conviction about the stupendous thing which.  he proposed to do, could
+not fail to attract the liking and admiration of those with whom he came
+in contact.  In the meantime a committee appointed by the Queen sat upon
+his proposals.  The committee met under the presidentship of Hernando de
+Talavera, the prior of the monastery of Santa Maria del Prado, near
+Valladolid, a pious ecclesiastic, who had the rare quality of honesty,
+and who was therefore a favourite with Queen Isabella; she afterwards
+created him Archbishop of Granada.  He was not, however, poor honest
+soul! quite the man to grasp and grapple with this wild scheme for a
+voyage across the ocean.  Once more Columbus, as in Portugal, set forth
+his views with eloquence and conviction; and once more, at the tribunal
+of learning, his unlearned proposals were examined and condemned.  Not
+only was Columbus's Idea regarded as scientifically impossible, but it
+was also held to come perilously near to heresy, in its assumption of a
+state of affairs that was clearly at variance with the writings of the
+Fathers and the sacred Scriptures themselves.
+
+This new disappointment, bitter though it was, did not find Columbus in
+such friendless and unhappy circumstances as those in which he left
+Portugal.  He had important friends now, who were willing and anxious to
+help him, and among them was one to whom he turned, in his profound
+depression, for religious and friendly consolation.  This was Diego de
+DEA, prior of the Dominican convent of San Estevan at Salamanca, who was
+also professor of theology in the university there and tutor to the young
+Prince Juan.  Of all those who came in contact with Columbus at this time
+this man seems to have understood him best, and to have realised where
+his difficulty lay.  Like many others who are consumed with a burning
+idea Columbus was very probably at this time in danger of becoming
+possessed with it like a monomaniac; and his new friends saw that if he
+were to make any impression upon the conservative learning of the time to
+which a decision in such matters was always referred he must have some
+opportunity for friendly discussion with learned men who were not
+inimical to him, and who were not in the position of judges examining a
+man arraigned before them and pleading for benefits.
+
+When the Court went to Salamanca at the end of 1486, DEA arranged that
+Columbus should go there too, and he lodged him in a country farm called
+Valcuebo, which belonged to his convent and was equi-distant from it and
+the city.  Here the good Dominican fathers came and visited him, bringing
+with them professors from the university, who discussed patiently with
+Columbus his theories and ambitions, and, himself all conscious,
+communicated new knowledge to him, and quietly put him right on many a
+scientific point.  There were professors of cosmography and astronomy in
+the university, familiar with the works of Alfraganus and Regiomontanus.
+It is likely that it was at this time that Columbus became possessed of
+d'Ailly's 'Imago Mundi', which little volume contained a popular resume
+of the scientific views of Strabo, Pliny, Ptolemy, and others, and was
+from this time forth Columbus's constant companion.
+
+Here at Valcuebo and later, when winter came, in the great hall of the
+Dominican convent at Salamanca, known as the "De Profundis" hall, where
+the monks received guests and held discussions, the Idea of Columbus was
+ventilated and examined.  He heard what friendly sceptics had to say
+about it; he saw the kind of argument that he would have to oppose to the
+existing scientific and philosophical knowledge on cosmography.  There is
+no doubt that he learnt a good deal at this time; and more important even
+than this, he got his project known and talked about; and he made
+powerful friends, who were afterwards to be of great use to him.  The
+Marquesa de Moya, wife of his friend Cabrera, took a great liking to him;
+and as she was one of the oldest and closest friends of the Queen, it is
+likely that she spoke many a good word for Columbus in Isabella's ear.
+
+By the time the Court moved to Cordova early in 1487, Columbus was once
+more hopeful of getting a favourable hearing.  He followed the Court to
+Cordova, where he received a gracious message from the Queen to the
+effect that she had not forgotten him, and that as soon as her military
+preoccupations permitted it, she would go once more, and more fully, into
+his proposals.  In the meantime he was attached to the Court, and
+received a quarterly payment of 3000 maravedis.  It seemed as though the
+unfavourable decision of Talavera's committee had been forgotten.
+
+In the meantime he was to have a change of scene.  Isabella followed
+Ferdinand to the siege of Malaga, where the Court was established; and as
+there were intervals in which other than military business might be
+transacted, Columbus was ordered to follow them in case his affairs
+should come up for consideration.  They did not; but the man himself had
+an experience that may have helped to keep his thoughts from brooding too
+much on his unfulfilled ambition.  Years afterwards, when far away on
+lonely seas, amid the squalor of a little ship and the staggering buffets
+of a gale, there would surely sometimes leap into his memory a brightly
+coloured picture of this scene in the fertile valley of Malaga: the
+silken pavilions of the Court, the great encampment of nobility with its
+arms and banners extending in a semicircle to the seashore, all
+glistening and moving in the bright sunshine.  There was added excitement
+at this time at an attempt to assassinate Ferdinand and Isabella, a
+fanatic Moor having crept up to one of the pavilions and aimed a blow at
+two people whom he mistook for the King and Queen.  They turned out to be
+Don Alvaro de Portugal, who was dangerously wounded, and Columbus's
+friend, the Marquesa de Moya, who was unhurt; but it was felt that the
+King and Queen had had a narrow escape.  The siege was raised on the 18th
+of August, and the sovereigns went to spend the winter at Zaragoza; and
+Columbus, once more condemned to wait, went back to Cordova.
+
+
+It was here that he contracted his second and, so far as we know, his
+last romantic attachment.  The long idle days of summer and autumn at
+Cordova, empty of all serious occupation, gave nature an opportunity for
+indulging her passion for life and continuity.  Among Christopher's
+friends at Cordova was the family of Arana, friendly hospitable souls,
+by some accounts noble and by others not noble, and certainly in somewhat
+poor circumstances, who had welcomed him to their house, listened to his
+plans with enthusiasm, and formed a life-long friendship with him.  Three
+members of this family are known to us--two brothers, Diego and Pedro,
+both of whom commanded ships in Columbus's expeditions, and a sister
+Beatriz.  Columbus was now a man of six-and-thirty, while she was little
+more than a girl; he was handsome and winning, distinguished by the
+daring and importance of his scheme, full of thrilling and romantic talk
+of distant lands; a very interesting companion, we may be sure.  No
+wonder she fell in love with Christopher; no wonder that he, feeling
+lonely and depressed by the many postponements of his suit at Court, and
+in need of sympathy and encouragement, fell in these blank summer days
+into an intimacy that flamed into a brief but happy passion.  Why
+Columbus never married Beatriz de Arana we cannot be sure, for it is
+almost certain that his first wife had died some time before.  Perhaps he
+feared to involve himself in any new or embarrassing ties; perhaps he
+loved unwillingly, and against his reason; perhaps--although the
+suggestion is not a happy one--he by this time did not think poor Beatriz
+good enough for the Admiral-elect of the Ocean Seas; perhaps (and more
+probably) Beatriz was already married and deserted, for she bore the
+surname of Enriquez; and in that case, there being no such thing as a
+divorce in the Catholic Church, she must either sin or be celibate.  But
+however that may be, there was an uncanonical alliance between them which
+evidently did not in the least scandalise her brothers and which resulted
+in the birth of Ferdinand Columbus in the following year.  Christopher,
+so communicative and discursive upon some of his affairs, is as reticent
+about Beatriz as he was about Philippa.  Beatriz shares with his
+legitimate wife the curious distinction of being spoken of by Columbus to
+posterity only in his will, which was executed at Valladolid the day
+before he died.  In the dry ink and vellum of that ancient legal document
+is his only record of these two passions.  The reference to Beatriz is as
+follows:
+
+     "And I direct him [Diego] to make provision for Beatriz Enriquez,
+     mother of D. Fernando, my son, that she may be able to live
+     honestly, being a person to whom I am under very great obligation.
+     And this shall be done for the satisfaction of my conscience,
+     because this matter weighs heavily upon my soul.  The reason for
+     which it is not fitting to write here."
+
+About the condition of Beatriz, temporal and spiritual, there has been
+much controversy; but where the facts are all so buried and inaccessible
+it is unseemly to agitate a veil which we cannot lift, and behind which
+Columbus himself sheltered this incident of his life.  "Acquainted with
+poverty" is one fragment of fact concerning her that has come down to us;
+acquainted also with love and with happiness, it would seem, as many poor
+persons undoubtedly are.  Enough for us to know that in the city of
+Cordova there lived a woman, rich or poor, gentle or humble, married or
+not married, who brought for a time love and friendly companionship into
+the life of Columbus; that she gave what she had for giving, without
+stint or reserve, and that she became the mother of a son who inherited
+much of what was best in his father, and but for whom the world would be
+in even greater darkness than it is on the subject of Christopher
+himself.  And so no more of Beatriz Enriquez de Arana, whom "God has in
+his keeping"--and has had now these many centuries of Time.
+
+
+Thus passed the summer and autumn of 1487; precious months, precious
+years slipping by, and the great purpose as yet unfulfilled and seemingly
+no nearer to fulfilment.  It is likely that Columbus kept up his
+applications to the Court, and received polite and delaying replies.
+The next year came, and the Court migrated from Zaragoza to Murcia, from
+Murcia to Valladolid, from Valladolid to Medina del Campo.  Columbus
+attended it in one or other of these places, but without result.  In
+August Beatriz gave birth to a son, who was christened Ferdinand, and who
+lived to be a great comfort to his father, if not to her also.  But the
+miracle of paternity was not now so new and wonderful as it had been; the
+battle of life, with its crosses and difficulties, was thick about him;
+and perhaps he looked into this new-comer's small face with conflicting
+thoughts, and memories of the long white beach and the crashing surf at
+Porto Santo, and regret for things lost--so strangely mingled and
+inconsistent are the threads of human thought.  At last he decided to
+turn his face elsewhere.  In September 1488 he went to Lisbon, for what
+purpose it is not certain; possibly in connection with the affairs of his
+dead wife; and probably also in the expectation of seeing his brother
+Bartholomew, to whom we may now turn our attention for a moment.
+
+
+After the failure of Columbus's proposals to the King of Portugal in
+1486, and the break-up of his home there, Bartholomew had also left
+Lisbon.  Bartholomew Diaz, a famous Portuguese navigator, was leaving for
+the African coast in August, and Bartholomew Columbus is said to have
+joined his small expedition of three caravels.  As they neared the
+latitude of the Cape which he was trying to make, he ran into a gale
+which drove him a long way out of his course, west and south.
+
+The wind veered round from north-east to north-west, and he did not
+strike the land again until May 1487.  When he did so his crew insisted
+upon his returning, as they declined to go any further south.  He
+therefore turned to the west, and then made the startling discovery that
+in the course of the tempest he had been blown round the Cape, and that
+the land he had made was to the eastward of it; and he therefore rounded
+it on his way home.  He arrived back in Lisbon in December 1488, when
+Columbus met his brother again, and was present at the reception of Diaz
+by the King of Portugal.  They had a great deal to tell each other, these
+two brothers; in the two years and a half that had gone since they had
+parted a great deal had happened to them; and they both knew a good deal
+more about the great question in which they, were interested than they
+had known when last they talked.
+
+It is to this period that I attribute the inception, if not the
+execution, of the forgery of the Toscanelli correspondence, if, as I
+believe, it was a forgery.  Christopher's unpleasant experiences before
+learned committees and commissions had convinced him that unless he were
+armed with some authoritative and documentary support for his theories
+they had little chance of acceptance by the learned.  The, Idea was
+right; he knew that; but before he could convince the academic mind, he
+felt that it must have the imprimatur of a mind whose learning could not
+be impugned.  Therefore it is not an unfair guess--and it can be nothing
+more than a guess--that Christopher and Bartholomew at this point laid
+their heads together, and decided that the next time Christopher had to
+appear before a commission he would, so to speak, have something "up his
+sleeve."  It was a risky thing to do, and must in any case be used only
+as a very last resource; which would account for the fact that the
+Toscanelli correspondence was never used at all, and is not mentioned in
+any document known to men written until long after Columbus's death.
+
+But these summers and winters of suspense are at last drawing to a close,
+and we must follow Christopher rapidly through them until the hour of his
+triumph.  He was back in Spain in the spring of 1489, his travelling
+expenses being defrayed out of the royal purse; and a little later he was
+once more amid scenes of war at the siege of Baza, and, if report is
+true, taking a hand himself, not without distinction.  It was there that
+he saw the two friars from the convent of the Holy Sepulchre at
+Jerusalem, who brought a message from the Grand Soldan of Egypt,
+threatening the destruction of the Sepulchre if the Spanish sovereigns
+did not desist from the war against Granada; and it was there that in his
+simple and pious mind he formed the resolve that if ever his efforts
+should be crowned with success, and he himself become rich and powerful,
+he would send a crusade for the rescue of the Holy Sepulchre.  And it was
+there that, on the 22nd of December, he saw Boabdil, the elder of the two
+rival Kings of Granada, surrender all his rights and claims to Spain.
+Surely now there will be a chance for him?  No; there is another
+interruption, this time occasioned by the royal preparations for the
+marriage of the Princess Isabella to the heir of Portugal.  Poor
+Columbus, sickened and disappointed by these continual delays, irritated
+by a sense of the waste of his precious time, follows the Court about
+from one place to another, raising a smile here and a scoff there, and
+pointed at by children in the street.  There, is nothing so ludicrous as
+an Idea to those who do not share it.
+
+Another summer, another winter, lost out of a life made up of a limited
+number of summers and winters; a few more winters and summers, thinks
+Christopher, and I shall be in a world where Ideas are not needed, and
+where there is nothing left to discover!  Something had to be done.  In
+the beginning of 1491 there was only one thing spoken of at Court--the
+preparations for the siege of Granada, which did not interest Columbus at
+all.  The camp of King Ferdinand was situated at Santa Fe, a few miles to
+the westward of Granada, and Columbus came here late in the year,
+determined to get a final answer one way or the other to his question.
+He made his application, and the busy monarchs once more adopted their
+usual polite tactics.  They appointed a junta, which was presided over by
+no less a person than the Cardinal of Spain, Gonzales de Mendoza: Once
+more the weary business was gone through, but Columbus must have had some
+hopes of success, since he did not produce his forged Toscanelli
+correspondence.  It was no scruple of conscience that held him back, we
+may be sure; the crafty Genoese knew nothing about such scruples in the
+attainment of a great object; he would not have hesitated to adopt any
+means to secure an end which he felt to be so desirable.  So it is
+probable that either he was not quite sure of his ground and his courage
+failed him, or that he had hopes, owing to his friendship with so many of
+the members of the junta, that a favourable decision would at last be
+arrived at.  In this he was mistaken.  The Spanish prelates again quoted
+the Fathers of the Church, and disposed of his proposals simply on the
+ground that they were heretical.  Much talk, and much wagging of learned
+heads; and still no mother-wit or gleam of light on this obscurity of
+learning.  The junta decided against the proposals, and reported its
+decision to the King and Queen.  The monarchs, true to their somewhat
+hedging methods when there was anything to be gained by hedging, informed
+Columbus that at present they were too much occupied with the war to
+grant his requests; but that, when the preoccupations and expenses of the
+campaign were a thing of the past, they might again turn their attention
+to his very interesting suggestion.
+
+It was at this point that the patience of Columbus broke down.  Too many
+promises had been made to him, and hope had been held out to him too
+often for him to believe any more in it.  Spain, he decided, was useless;
+he would try France; at least he would be no worse off there.  But he had
+first of all to settle his affairs as well as possible.  Diego, now a
+growing boy nearly eleven years old, had been staying with Beatriz at
+Cordova, and going to school there; Christopher would take him back to
+his aunt's at Huelva before he went away.  He set out with a heavy heart,
+but with purpose and determination unimpaired.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+OUR LADY OF LA RABIDA
+
+It is a long road from Santa Fe to Huelva, a long journey to make on
+foot, and the company of a sad heart and a little talking boy, prone to
+sudden weariness and the asking of innumerable difficult questions, would
+not make it very much shorter.  Every step that Christopher took carried
+him farther away from the glittering scene where his hopes had once been
+so bright, and were now fallen to the dust; and every step brought him
+nearer that unknown destiny as to which he was in great darkness of mind,
+and certain only that there was some small next thing constantly to be
+done: the putting down of one foot after another, the request for food
+and lodging at the end of each short day's march, the setting out again
+in the morning.  That walk from Santa Fe, so real and painful and
+wearisome and long a thing to Christopher and Diego, is utterly blank and
+obliterated for us.  What he thought and felt and suffered are things
+quite dead; what he did-namely, to go and do the immediate thing that it
+seemed possible and right for him to do--is a living fact to-day, for it
+brought him, as all brave and honest doing will, a little nearer to his
+destiny, a little nearer to the truthful realisation of what was in him.
+
+At about a day's journey from Huelva, where the general slope of the land
+begins to fall towards the sea, two small rivers, the Odiel and the
+Tinto, which have hitherto been making music each for itself through the
+pleasant valleys and vineyards of Andalusia, join forces, and run with a
+deeper stream towards the sea at Palos.  The town of Palos lay on the
+banks of the river; a little to the south of it, and on the brow of a
+rocky promontory dark with pine trees, there stood the convent of Our
+Lady of La Rabida.  Stood, on this November evening in the year 1491;
+had stood in some form or other, and used for varying purposes, for many
+years and centuries before that, even to the time of the Romans; and
+still stands, a silent and neglected place, yet to be visited and seen by
+such as are curious.  To the door of this place comes Christopher as
+darkness falls, urged thereto by the plight of Diego, who is tired and
+hungry.  Christopher rings the bell, and asks the porter for a little
+bread and water for the child, and a lodging for them both.  There is
+some talk at the door; the Franciscan lay brother being given, at all
+times in the history of his order, to the pleasant indulgence of
+gossiping conversation, when that is lawful; and the presence of a
+stranger, who speaks with a foreign accent, being at all times a incident
+of interest and even of excitement in the quiet life of a monastery.  The
+moment is one big with import to the human race; it marks a period in the
+history of our man; the scene is worth calling up.  Dark night, with sea
+breezes moaning in the pine trees, outside; raying light from within
+falling on the lay brother leaning in the doorway and on the two figures
+standing without: on Christopher, grave, subdued, weary, yet now as
+always of pleasant and impressive address, and on the small boy who
+stands beside him round-eyed and expectant, his fatigue for the moment
+forgotten in curiosity and anticipation.
+
+While they are talking comes no less a person than the Prior of the
+monastery, Friar Juan Perez, bustling round, good-natured busybody that
+he is, to see what is all this talk at the door.  The Prior, as is the
+habit of monks, begins by asking questions.  What is the stranger's name?
+Where does he come from?  Where is he going to?  What is his business?
+Is the little boy his son?  He has actually come from Santa Fe?  The
+Prior, loving talk after the manner of his kind, sees in this grave and
+smooth-spoken stranger rich possibilities of talk; possibilities that
+cannot possibly be exhausted to-night, it being now hard on the hour of
+Compline; the stranger must come in and rest for tonight at least, and
+possibly for several nights.  There is much bustle and preparation; the
+travellers are welcomed with monkish hospitality; Christopher, we may be
+sure, goes and hears the convent singing Compline, and offers up devout
+prayers for a quiet night and for safe conduct through this vale of
+tears; and goes thankfully to bed with the plainsong echoing in his ears,
+and some stoic sense that all days, however hard, have an evening, and
+all journeys an end.
+
+Next morning the talk begins in earnest, and Christopher, never a very
+reserved man, finds in the friendly curiosity of the monks abundant
+encouragement to talk; and before very long he is in full swing with his
+oft-told story.  The Prior is delighted with it; he has not heard
+anything so interesting for a long time.  Moreover, he has not always
+been in a convent; he was not so long ago confessor to Queen Isabella
+herself, and has much to communicate and ask concerning that lady.
+Columbus's proposal does not strike him as being unreasonable at all;
+but he has a friend in Palos, a very learned man indeed, Doctor Garcia
+Hernandez, who often comes and has a talk with him; he knows all about
+astronomy and cosmography; the Prior will send for him.  And meanwhile
+there must be no word of Columbus's departure for a few days at any rate.
+
+Presently Doctor Garcia Hernandez arrives, and the whole story is gone
+over again.  They go at it hammer and tongs, arguments and counter-
+arguments, reasons for and against, encouragements, and objections.  The
+result is that Doctor Garcia Hernandez, whose learning seems not yet
+quite to have blinded or deafened him, thinks well of the scheme; thinks
+so well of it that he protests it will be a thousand pities if the chance
+of carrying it out is lost to Spain.  The worthy Prior, who has been
+somewhat out of it while the talk about degrees and latitudes has been
+going on, here strikes in again; he will use his influence.  Perhaps the
+good man, living up here among the pine trees and the sea winds, and
+involved in the monotonous round of Prime, Lauds, Nones, Vespers, has a
+regretful thought or two of the time when he moved in the splendid
+intricacy of Court life; at any rate he is not sorry to have an
+opportunity of recalling himself to the attention of Her Majesty, for the
+spiritual safety of whose soul he was once responsible; perhaps, being
+(in spite of his Nones and Vespers) a human soul, he is glad of an
+opportunity of opposing the counsels of his successor, Talavera.  In a
+word, he will use his Influence.  Then follow much drafting of letters,
+and laying of heads together, and clatter of monkish tongues; the upshot
+of which is that a letter is written in which Perez urges his daughter in
+the Lord in the strongest possible terms not to let slip so glorious an
+opportunity, not only of fame and increment to her kingdom, but of
+service to the Church and the kingdom of Heaven itself.  He assures her
+that Columbus is indeed about to depart from the country, but that he
+(Perez) will detain him at La Rabida until he has an answer from the
+Queen.
+
+A messenger to carry the letter was found in the person of Sebastian
+Rodriguez, a pilot of the port, who immediately set off to Santa Fe.
+It is not likely that Columbus, after so many rebuffs, was very hopeful;
+but in the meantime, here he was amid the pious surroundings in which the
+religious part of him delighted, and in a haven of rest after all his
+turmoils and trials.  He could look out to sea over the flecked waters of
+that Atlantic whose secrets he longed to discover; or he could look down
+into the busy little port of Palos, and watch the ships sailing in and
+out across the bar of Saltes.  He could let his soul, much battered and
+torn of late by trials and disappointments, rest for a time on the rock
+of religion; he could snuff the incense in the chapel to his heart's
+content, and mingle his rough top-gallant voice with the harsh croak of
+the monks in the daily cycle of prayer and praise.  He could walk with
+Diego through the sandy roads beneath the pine trees, or through the
+fields and vineyards below; and above all he could talk to the company
+that good Perez invited to meet him--among them merchants and sailors
+from Palos, of whom the chief was Martin Alonso Pinzon, a wealthy
+landowner and navigator, whose family lived then at Palos, owning the
+vineyards round about, and whose descendants live there to this day.
+Pinzon was a listener after Columbus's own heart; he not only believed in
+his project, but offered to assist it with money, and even to accompany
+the expedition himself.  Altogether a happy and peaceful time, in which
+hopes revived, and the inner light that, although it had now and then
+flickered, had never gone out, burned up again in a bright and steady
+flame.
+
+At the end of a fortnight, and much sooner than had been expected, the
+worthy pilot returned with a letter from the Queen.  Eager hands seized
+it and opened it; delight beamed from the eyes of the good Prior.  The
+Queen was most cordial to him, thanked him for his intervention, was
+ready to listen to him and even to be convinced by him; and in the
+meantime commanded his immediate appearance at the Court, asking that
+Columbus would be so good as to wait at La Rabida until he should hear
+further from her.  Then followed such a fussing and fuming, such a
+running hither and thither, and giving and taking of instructions and
+clatter of tongues as even the convent of La Rabida had probably never
+known.  Nothing will serve the good old busybody, although it is now near
+midnight, but that he must depart at once.  He will not wait for
+daylight; he will not, the good honest soul! wait at all.  He must be off
+at once; he must have this, he must have that; he will take this, he
+will leave that behind; or no, he will take that, and leave this behind.
+He must have a mule, for his old feet will not bear him fast enough; ex-
+confessors of Her Majesty, moreover, do not travel on foot; and after
+more fussing and running hither and thither a mule is borrowed from one
+Juan Rodriguez Cabezudo of Moguer; and with a God-speed from the group
+standing round the lighted doorway, the old monk sets forth into the
+night.
+
+It is a strange thing to consider what unimportant flotsam sometimes
+floats visibly upon the stream of history, while the gravest events are
+sunk deep beneath its flood.  We would give a king's ransom to know
+events that must have taken place in any one of twenty years in the life
+of Columbus, but there is no sign of them on the surface of the stream,
+nor will any fishing bring them to light.  Yet here, bobbing up like a
+cork, comes the name of Juan Rodriguez Cabezudo of Moguer, doubtless a
+good worthy soul, but, since he has been dead these four centuries and
+more, of no interest or importance to any human being; yet of whose life
+one trivial act, surviving the flood of time which has engulfed all else
+that he thought important, falls here to be recorded: that he did,
+towards midnight of a day late in December 1491 lend a mule to Friar Juan
+Perez.
+
+
+Of that heroic mule journey we have no record; but it brought results
+enough to compensate the good Prior for all his aching bones and
+rheumatic joints.  He was welcomed by the Queen, who had never quite lost
+her belief in Columbus, but who had hitherto deferred to the apathy of
+Ferdinand and the disapproval--of her learned advisers.  Now, however,
+the matter was reopened.  She, who sometimes listened to priests with
+results other than good, heard this worthy priest to good purpose.  The
+feminine friends of Columbus who remembered him at Court also spoke up
+for him, among them the Marquesa de Moya, with whom he had always been a
+favourite; and it was decided that his request should be granted and
+three vessels equipped for the expedition, "that he might go and make
+discoveries and prove true the words he had spoken."--Moreover, the
+machinery that had been so hard to move before, turned swiftly now.
+Diego Prieto, one of the magistrates of Palos, was sent to Columbus at La
+Rabida, bearing 20,000 maravedis  with which he was to buy a mule and
+decent clothing for himself, and repair immediately to the Court at Santa
+Fe.  Old Perez was in high feather, and busy with his pen.  He wrote to
+Doctor Garcia Hernandez, and also to Columbus, in whose letter the
+following pleasant passage occurs:
+
+     "Our Lord has listened to the prayers of His servant.  The wise and
+     virtuous Isabella, touched by the grace of Heaven, gave a favourable
+     hearing to the words of this poor monk.  All has turned out well.
+     Far from despising your project, she has adopted it from this time,
+     and she has summoned you to Court to propose the means which seem
+     best to you for the execution of the designs of Providence.  My
+     heart swims in a sea of comfort, and my spirit leaps with joy in the
+     Lord.  Start at once, for the Queen waits for you, and I much more
+     than she.  Commend me to the prayers of my brethren, and of your
+     little Diego.  The grace of God be with you, and may Our Lady of La
+     Rabida accompany you."
+
+The news of that day must have come upon Columbus like a burst of
+sunshine after rain.  I like to think how bright must have seemed to him
+the broad view of land and sea, how deeply the solemn words of the last
+office which he attended must have sunk into his soul, how great and glad
+a thing life must have been to him, and how lightly the miles must have
+passed beneath the feet of his mule as he jogged out on the long road to
+Santa Fe.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+THE CONSENT OF SPAIN
+
+Once more; in the last days of the year 1491, Columbus rode into the
+brilliant camp which he had quitted a few weeks before with so heavy a
+heart.  Things were changed now.  Instead of being a suitor, making a
+nuisance of himself, and forcing his affairs on the attention of
+unwilling officials, he was now an invited and honoured guest; much more
+than that, he was in the position of one who believed that he had a great
+service to render to the Crown, and who was at last to be permitted to
+render it.
+
+Even now, at the eleventh hour, there was one more brief interruption.
+On the 1st of January 1492 the last of the Moorish kings sent in his
+surrender to King Ferdinand, whom he invited to come and take possession
+of the city of Granada; and on the next day the Spanish army marched into
+that city, where, in front of the Alhambra, King Ferdinand received the
+keys of the castle and the homage of the Moorish king.  The wars of eight
+centuries were at an end, and the Christian banner of Spain floated at
+last over the whole land.  Victory and success were in the air, and the
+humble Genoese adventurer was to have his share in them.  Negotiations of
+a practical nature were now begun; old friends--Talavera, Luis de
+Santangel, and the Grand Cardinal himself--were all brought into
+consultation with the result that matters soon got to the documentary
+stage.  Here, however, there was a slight hitch.  It was not simply a
+matter of granting two, or three ships.  The Genoese was making a
+bargain, and asking an impossible price.  Even the great grandees and
+Court officials, accustomed to the glitter and dignity of titles, rubbed
+their eyes with astonishment, when they saw what Columbus was demanding.
+He who had been suing for privileges was now making conditions.  And what
+conditions!  He must be created Admiral of all the Ocean Seas and of the
+new lands, with equal privileges and prerogatives as those appertaining
+to the High Admiral of Castile, the supreme naval officer of Spain.  Not
+content with sea dignities, he was also to be Viceroy and Governor-
+General in all islands or mainlands that he might acquire; he wanted a
+tenth part of the profits resulting from his discoveries, in perpetuity;
+and he must have the permanent right of contributing an eighth part of
+the cost of the equipment and have an additional eighth part of the
+profits; and all his heirs and descendants for ever were to have the same
+privileges.  These conditions were on such a scale as no sovereign could
+readily approve.  Columbus's lack of pedigree, and the fact also that he
+was a foreigner, made them seem the more preposterous; for although he
+might receive kindness and even friendship from some of the grand
+Spaniards with whom he associated, that friendship and kindness were
+given condescendingly and with a smile.  He was delightful when he was
+merely proposing as a mariner to confer additional grandeur and glory on
+the Crown; but when it came to demanding titles and privileges which
+would make him rank with the highest grandees in, the land, the matter
+took on quite a different colour.  It was nonsense; it could not be
+allowed; and many were the friendly hints that Columbus doubtless
+received at this time to relinquish his wild demands and not to overreach
+himself.
+
+But to the surprise and dismay of his friends, who really wished him to
+have a chance of distinguishing himself, and were shocked at the
+impediments he was now putting in his own way, the man from Genoa stood
+firm.  What he proposed to do, he said, was worthy of the rewards that he
+asked; they were due to the importance and grandeur of his scheme, and so
+on.  Nor did he fail to point out that the bestowal of them was a matter
+altogether contingent on results; if there were no results, there would
+be no rewards; if there were results, they would be worthy of the
+rewards.  This action of Columbus's deserves close study.  He had come to
+a turning-point in his life.  He had been asking, asking, asking, for six
+years; he had been put off and refused over and over again; people were
+beginning to laugh at him for a madman; and now, when a combination of
+lucky chances had brought him to the very door of success, he stood
+outside the threshold bargaining for a preposterous price before he would
+come in.  It seemed like the densest stupidity.  What is the explanation
+of it?
+
+The only explanation of it is to be found in the character of Columbus.
+We must try to see him as he is in this forty-second year of his life,
+bargaining with notaries, bishops, and treasurers; we must try to see
+where these forty years have brought him, and what they have made of him.
+Remember the little boy that played in the Vico Dritto di Ponticello,
+acquainted with poverty, but with a soul in him that could rise beyond it
+and acquire something of the dignity of that Genoa, arrogant, splendid
+and devout, which surrounded him during his early years.  Remember his
+long life of obscurity at sea, and the slow kindling of the light of
+faith in something beyond the familiar horizons; remember the social
+inequality of his marriage, his long struggle with poverty, his long
+familiarity with the position of one who asked and did not receive; the
+many rebuffs and indignities which his Ligurian pride must have received
+at the hands of all those Spanish dignitaries and grandees--remember all
+this, and then you will perhaps not wonder so much that Columbus, who was
+beginning to believe himself appointed by Heaven to this task of
+discovery, felt that he had much to pay himself back for.  One must
+recognise him frankly for what he was, and for no conventional hero of
+romance; a man who would reconcile his conscience with anything, and
+would stop at nothing in the furtherance of what he deemed a good object;
+and a man at the same time who had a conscience to reconcile, and would,
+whenever it was necessary, laboriously and elaborately perform the act of
+reconciliation.  When he made these huge demands in Granada he was
+gambling with his chances; but he was a calculating gambler, just about
+as cunning and crafty in the weighing of one chance against another as a
+gambler with a conscience can be; and he evidently realised that his own
+valuation of the services he proposed to render would not be without its
+influence on his sovereign's estimate of them.  At any rate he was
+justified by the results, for on the 17th of April 1492, after a deal of
+talk and bargaining, but apparently without any yielding on Columbus's
+part, articles of capitulation were drawn up in which the following
+provisions were made:--
+
+First, that Columbus and his heirs for ever should have the title and
+office of Admiral in all the islands and continents of the ocean that he
+or they might discover, with similar honours and prerogatives to those
+enjoyed by the High Admiral of Castile.
+
+Second, that he and his heirs should be Viceroys and Governors-General
+over all the said lands and continents, with the right of nominating
+three candidates for the governing of each island or province, one of
+whom should be appointed by the Crown.
+
+Third, that he end his heirs should be entitled to one-tenth of all
+precious stones, metals, spices, and other merchandises, however
+acquired, within his Admiralty, the cost of acquisition being first
+deducted.
+
+Fourth, that he or his lieutenants in their districts, and the High
+Admiral of Castile in his district, should be the sole judge in all
+disputes arising out of traffic between Spain and the new countries.
+
+Fifth, that he now, and he and his heirs at all times, should have the
+right to contribute the eighth part of the expense of fitting out
+expeditions, and receive the eighth part of the profits.
+
+In addition to these articles there was another document drawn up on the
+30th of April, which after an infinite preamble about the nature of the
+Holy Trinity, of the Apostle Saint James, and of the Saints of God
+generally in their relations to Princes, and with a splendid trailing of
+gorgeous Spanish names and titles across the page, confers upon our
+hitherto humble Christopher the right to call himself "Don," and finally
+raises him, in his own estimation at any rate, to a social level with his
+proud Spanish friends.  It is probably from this time that he adopted the
+Spanish form of his name, Christoval Colon; but in this narrative I shall
+retain the more universal form in which it has become familiar to the
+English-speaking world.
+
+He was now upon a Pisgah height, from which in imagination he could look
+forth and see his Land of Promise.  We also may climb up with him, and
+stand beside him as he looks westward.  We shall not see so clearly as he
+sees, for we have not his inner light; and it is probable that even he
+does not see the road at all, but only the goal, a single point of light
+shining across a gulf of darkness.  But from Pisgah there is a view
+backward as well as forward, and, we may look back for a moment on this
+last period of Christopher's life in Spain, inwardly to him so full of
+trouble and difficulty and disappointment, outwardly so brave and
+glittering, musical with high-sounding names and the clash of arms; gay
+with sun and shine and colour.  The brilliant Court moving from camp to
+camp with its gorgeous retinues and silken pavilions and uniforms and
+dresses and armours; the excitement of war, the intrigues of the
+antechamber--these are the bright fabric of the latter years; and against
+it, as against a background, stand out the beautiful names of the Spanish
+associates of Columbus at this time--Medina Celi, Alonso de Quintanilla,
+Cabrero, Arana, DEA, Hernando de Talavera, Gonzales de Mendoza, Alonso de
+Cardenas, Perez, Hernandez, Luis de Santangel, and Rodriguez de
+Maldonado--names that now, in his hour of triumph, are like banners
+streaming in the wind against a summer sky.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+THE PREPARATIONS AT PALOS
+
+The Palos that witnessed the fitting out of the ships of Columbus exists
+no longer.  The soul is gone from it; the trade that in those days made
+it great and busy has floated away from it into other channels; and it
+has dwindled and shrunk, until to-day it consists of nothing but a double
+street of poor white houses, such almost as you may see in any sea-coast
+village in Ireland.  The slow salt tides of the Atlantic come flooding in
+over the Manto bank, across the bar of Saltes, and, dividing at the
+tongue of land that separates the two rivers, creep up the mud banks of
+the Tinto and the Odiel until they lie deep beside the wharves of Huelva
+and Palos; but although Huelva still has a trade the tides bring nothing
+to Palos, and take nothing away with them again.  From La Rabida now you
+can no longer see, as Columbus saw, fleets of caravels lying-to and
+standing off and on outside the bar waiting for the flood tide; only a
+few poor boats fishing for tunny in the empty sunny waters, or the smoke
+of a steamer standing on her course for the Guadalquiver or Cadiz.
+
+But in those spring days of 1492 there was a great stir and bustle of
+preparation in Palos.  As soon as the legal documents had been signed
+Columbus returned there and, taking up his quarters at La Rabida, set
+about fitting out his expedition.  The reason Palos was chosen was an
+economical one.  The port, for some misdemeanour, had lately been
+condemned to provide two caravels for the service of the Crown for a
+period of twelve months; and in the impoverished state of the royal
+exchequer this free service came in very usefully in fitting out the
+expedition of discovery.  Columbus was quite satisfied, since he had such
+good friends at Palos; and he immediately set about choosing the ships.
+
+This, however, did not prove to be quite such a straightforward business
+as might have been expected.  The truth is that, whatever a few monks and
+physicians may have thought of it, the proposed expedition terrified the
+ordinary seafaring population of Palos.  It was thought to be the wildest
+and maddest scheme that any one had ever heard of.  All that was known
+about the Atlantic west of the Azores was that it was a sea of darkness,
+inhabited by monsters and furrowed by enormous waves, and that it fell
+down the slope of the world so steeply that no ship having once gone down
+could ever climb up it again.  And not only was there reluctance on the
+part of mariners to engage themselves for the expedition, but also a
+great shyness on the part of ship-owners to provide ships.  This
+reluctance proved so formidable an impediment that Columbus had to
+communicate with the King and Queen; with the result that on the 23rd of
+May the population was summoned to the church of Saint George, where the
+Notary Public read aloud to them the letter from the sovereigns
+commanding the port to furnish ships and men, and an additional order
+summoning the town to obey it immediately.  An inducement was provided in
+the offer of a free pardon to all criminals and persons under sentence
+who chose to enlist.
+
+Still the thing hung fire; and on June 20 a new and peremptory order was
+issued by the Crown authorising Columbus to impress the vessels and crew
+if necessary.  Time was slipping away; and in his difficulty Columbus
+turned to Martin Alonso Pinzon, upon whose influence and power in the
+town he could count.  There were three brothers then in this family-
+Martin Alonso, Vincenti Yanez, and Francisco Martin, all pilots
+themselves and owners of ships.  These three brothers saw some hope of
+profit out of the enterprise, and they exerted themselves on
+Christopher's behalf so thoroughly that, not only did they afford him
+help in the obtaining of ships, men, and supplies, but they all three
+decided to go with him.
+
+There was one more financial question to be settled--a question that
+remains for us in considerable obscurity, but was in all probability
+partly settled by the aid of these brothers.  The total cost of the
+expedition, consisting of three ships, wages of the crew, stores and
+provisions, was 1,167,542 maravedis, about L950(in 1900).  After all
+these years of pleading at Court, all the disappointments and deferred
+hopes and sacrifices made by Columbus, the smallness of this sum cannot
+but strike us with amazement.  Many a nobleman that Columbus must have
+rubbed shoulders with in his years at Court could have furnished the
+whole sum out of his pocket and never missed it; yet Columbus had to wait
+years and years before he could get it from the Crown.  Still more
+amazing, this sum was not all provided by the Crown; 167,000 maravedis
+were found by Columbus, and the Crown only contributed one million
+maravedis.  One can only assume that Columbus's pertinacity in
+petitioning the King and Queen to undertake the expedition, when he
+could with comparative ease have got the money from some of his noble
+acquaintance, was due to three things--his faith and belief in his Idea,
+his personal ambition, and his personal greed.  He believed in his Idea
+so thoroughly that he knew he was going to find something across the
+Atlantic.  Continents and islands cannot for long remain in the
+possession of private persons; they are the currency of crowns; and he
+did not want to be left in the lurch if the land he hoped to discover
+should be seized or captured by Spain or Portugal.  The result of his
+discoveries, he was convinced, was going to be far too large a thing to
+be retained and controlled by any machinery less powerful than that of a
+kingdom; therefore he was unwilling to accept either preliminary
+assistance or subsequent rewards from any but the same powerful hand.
+Admiralties, moreover, and Governor-Generalships and Viceroyships cannot
+be conferred by counts and dukes, however powerful; the very title Don
+could only be conferred by one power in Spain; and all the other titles
+and dignities that Columbus craved with all his Genoese soul were to be
+had from the hands of kings, and not from plutocrats.  It was
+characteristic of him all his life never to deal with subordinates, but
+always to go direct to the head man; and when the whole purpose and
+ambition of his life was to be put to the test it was only consistent in
+him, since he could not be independent, to go forth under the protection
+of the united Crown of Aragon and Castile.  Where or how he raised his
+share of the cost is not known; it is possible that his old friend the
+Duke of Medina Celi came to his help, or that the Pinzon family, who
+believed enough in the expedition to risk their lives in it, lent some of
+the necessary money.
+
+
+Ever since ships were in danger of going to sea short-handed methods of
+recruiting and manning them have been very much the same; and there must
+have been some hot work about the harbour of Palos in the summer of 1492.
+The place was in a panic.  It is highly probable that many of the
+volunteers were a ruffianly riff-raff from the prisons, to whom personal
+freedom meant nothing but a chance of plunder; and the recruiting office
+in Palos must have seen many a picturesque scoundrel coming and taking
+the oath and making his mark.  The presence of these adventurers, many of
+them entirely ignorant of the sea, would not be exactly an encouragement
+to the ordinary seaman.  It is here very likely that the influence of the
+Pinzon family was usefully applied.  I call it influence, since that is a
+polite term which covers the application of force in varying degrees;
+and it was an awkward thing for a Palos sailor to offend the Pinzons,
+who owned and controlled so much of the shipping in the port.  Little by
+little the preparations went on.  In the purchasing of provisions and
+stores the Pinzons were most helpful to Columbus and, it is not
+improbable, to themselves also.  They also procured the ships;
+altogether, in the whole history of the fitting out of expeditions,
+I know nothing since the voyage of the Ark which was so well kept within
+one family.  Moreover it is interesting to notice, since we know the
+names and places of residence of all the members of the expedition,
+that the Pinzons, who personally commanded two of the caravels, had them
+almost exclusively manned by sailors from Palos, while the Admiral's ship
+was manned by a miscellaneous crew from other places.  To be sure they
+gave the Admiral the biggest ship, but (in his own words) it proved "a
+dull sailer and unfit for discovery"; while they commanded the two
+caravels, small and open, but much faster and handier.  Clearly these
+Pinzons will take no harm from a little watching.  They may be honest
+souls enough, but their conduct is just a little suspicious, and we
+cannot be too careful.
+
+
+Three vessels were at last secured.  The first, named the Santa Maria,
+was the largest, and was chosen to be the flagship of Columbus.  She was
+of about one hundred tons burden, and would be about ninety feet in
+length by twenty feet beam.  She was decked over, and had a high poop
+astern and a high forecastle in the bows.  She had three masts, two of
+them square-rigged, with a latine sail on the mizzen mast; and she
+carried a crew of fifty-two persons.  Where and how they all stowed
+themselves away is a matter upon which we can only make wondering
+guesses; for this ship was about the size of an ordinary small coasting
+schooner, such as is worked about the coasts of these islands with a crew
+of six or eight men.  The next largest ship was the Pinta, which was
+commanded by Martin Alonso Pinzon, who took his brother Francisco with
+him as sailing-master.  The Pinta was of fifty tons burden, decked only
+at the bow and stern, and the fastest of the three ships; she also had
+three masts.  The third ship was a caravel of forty tons and called the
+Nina; she belonged to Juan Nino of Palos.  She was commanded by Vincenti
+Pinzon, and had a complement of eighteen men.  Among the crew of the
+flagship, whose names and places of residence are to be found in the
+Appendix, were an Englishman and an Irishman.  The Englishman is entered
+as Tallarte de Lajes (Ingles), who has been ingeniously identified with a
+possible Allard or AEthelwald of Winchelsea, there having been several
+generations of Allards who were sailors of Winchelsea in the fifteenth
+century.  Sir Clements Markham thinks that this Allard may have been
+trading to Coruna and have married and settled down at Lajes.  There is
+also Guillermo Ires, an Irishman from Galway.
+
+Allard and William, shuffling into the recruiting office in Palos,
+doubtless think that this is a strange place for them to meet, and rather
+a wild business that they are embarked upon, among all these bloody
+Spaniards.  Some how I feel more confidence in Allard than in William,
+knowing, as I do so well, this William of Galway, whether on his native
+heath or in the strange and distant parts of the world to which his
+sanguine temperament leads him.  Alas, William, you are but the first of
+a mighty stream that will leave the Old Country for the New World; the
+world destined to be good for the fortunes of many from the Old Country,
+but for the Old Country itself not good.  Little does he know, drunken
+William, willing to be on hand where there is adventure brewing, and to
+be after going with the boys and getting his health on the salt water,
+what a path of hope for those who go, and of heaviness for those who stay
+behind, he is opening up .  .  .  .  Farewell, William; I hope you were
+not one of those whom they let out of gaol.
+
+June slid into July, and still the preparations were not complete.  Down
+on the mud banks of the Tinto, where at low water the vessels were left
+high and dry, and where the caulking and refitting were in hand, there
+was trouble with the workmen.  Gomaz Rascon and Christoval Quintero, the
+owners of the Pinta, who had resented her being pressed into the service,
+were at the bottom of a good deal of it.  Things could not be found; gear
+mysteriously gave way after it had been set up; the caulking was found to
+have been carelessly and imperfectly done; and when the caulkers were
+commanded to do it over again they decamped.  Even the few volunteers,
+the picked hands upon whom Columbus was relying, gave trouble.  In those
+days of waiting there was too much opportunity for talk in the shore-side
+wine-shops; some of the volunteers repented and tried to cry off their
+bargains; others were dissuaded by their relatives, and deserted and hid
+themselves.  No mild measures were of any use; a reign of terror had to
+be established; and nothing short of the influence of the Pinzons was
+severe enough to hold the company together.  To these vigorous measures,
+however, all opposition gradually yielded.  By the end of July the
+provisions and stores were on board, the whole complement of eighty-seven
+persons collected and enlisted, and only the finishing touches left for
+Columbus.  It is a sign of the distrust and fear evinced with regard to
+this expedition, that no priest accompanied it--something of a sorrow to
+pious Christopher, who would have liked his chaplain.  There were two
+surgeons, or barbers, and a physician; there were an overseer, a
+secretary, a master-at-arms; there was an interpreter to speak to the
+natives of the new lands in Hebrew, Greek, German, Chaldean or Arabic;
+and there was an assayer and silversmith to test the quality of the
+precious metals that they were sure to find.  Up at La Rabida, with the
+busy and affectionate assistance of the old Prior, Columbus made his
+final preparations.  Ferdinand was to stay at Cordova with Beatriz, and
+to go to school there; while Diego was already embarked upon his life's
+voyage, having been appointed a page to the Queen's son, Prince Juan, and
+handed over to the care of some of the Court ladies.  The course to be
+sailed was talked over and over again; the bearings and notes of the
+pilot at Porto Santo consulted and discussed; and a chart was made by
+Columbus himself, and copied with his own hands for use on the three
+ships.
+
+On the 2nd of August everything was ready; the ships moored out in the
+stream, the last stragglers of the crew on board, the last sack of flour
+and barrel of beef stowed away.  Columbus confessed himself to the Prior
+of La Rabida--a solemn moment for him in the little chapel up on the
+pine-clad hill.  His last evening ashore would certainly be spent at the
+monastery, and his last counsels taken with Perez and Doctor Hernandez.
+We can hardly realise the feelings of Christopher on the eve of his
+departure from the land where all his roots were, to a land of mere faith
+and conjecture.  Even today, when the ocean is furrowed by crowded
+highways, and the earth is girdled with speaking wires, and distances are
+so divided and reduced that the traveller need never be very long out of
+touch with his home, few people can set out on a long voyage without some
+emotional disturbance, however slight it may be; and to Columbus on this
+night the little town upon which he looked down from the monastery, which
+had been the scene of so many delays and difficulties and vexations, must
+have seemed suddenly dear and familiar to him as he realised that after
+to-morrow its busy and well-known scenes might be for ever a thing of the
+past to him.  Behind him, living or dead, lay all he humanly loved and
+cared for; before him lay a voyage full of certain difficulties and
+dangers; dangers from the ships, dangers from the crews, dangers from
+the weather, dangers from the unknown path itself; and beyond them, a
+twinkling star on the horizon of his hopes, lay the land of his belief.
+That he meant to arrive there and to get back again was beyond all doubt
+his firm intention; and in the simple grandeur of that determination the
+weaknesses of character that were grouped about it seem unimportant.  In
+this starlit hour among the pine woods his life came to its meridian;
+everything that was him was at its best and greatest there.  Beneath him,
+on the talking tide of the river, lay the ships and equipment that
+represented years of steady effort and persistence; before him lay the
+pathless ocean which he meant to cross by the inner light of his faith.
+What he had suffered, he had suffered by himself; what he had won, he had
+won by himself; what he was to finish, he would finish by himself.
+
+But the time for meditations grows short.  Lights are moving about in the
+town beneath; there is an unwonted midnight stir and bustle; the whole
+population is up and about, running hither and thither with lamps and
+torches through the starlit night.  The tide is flowing; it will be high
+water before dawn; and with the first of the ebb the little fleet is to
+set sail.  The stream of hurrying sailors and townspeople sets towards
+the church of Saint George, where mass is to be said and the Sacrament
+administered to the voyagers.  The calls and shouts die away; the bell
+stops ringing; and the low muttering voice of the priest is heard
+beginning the Office.  The light of the candles shines upon the gaudy
+roof, and over the altar upon the wooden image of Saint George
+vanquishing the dragon, upon which the eyes of Christopher rested during
+some part of the service, and where to-day your eyes may rest also if you
+make that pilgrimage.  The moment approaches; the bread and the wine are
+consecrated; there is a shuffling of knees and feet; and then a pause.
+The clear notes of the bell ring out upon the warm dusky silence--once,
+twice, thrice; the living God and the cold presence of dawn enter the
+church together.  Every head is bowed; and for once at least every heart
+of that company beats in unison with the rest.  And then the Office goes
+on, and the dark-skinned congregation streams up to the sanctuary and
+receives the Communion, while the blue light of dawn increases and the
+candles pale before the coming day.  And then out again to the boats with
+shoutings and farewells, for the tide has now turned; hoisting of sails
+and tripping of anchors and breaking out of gorgeous ensigns; and the
+ships are moving!  The Maria leads, with the sign of the Redemption
+painted on her mainsail and the standard of Castile flying at her mizzen;
+and there is cheering from ships and from shore, and a faint sound of
+bells from the town of Huelva.
+
+Thus, the sea being--calm, and a fresh breeze blowing off the land, did
+Christopher Columbus set sail from Palos at sunrise on Friday the 3rd of
+August 1492.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+EVENTS OF THE FIRST VOYAGE
+
+     "In nomine D.N. Jesu Christi--Friday, August 3, 1492, at eight
+     o'clock we started from the bar of Saltes.  We went with a strong
+     sea breeze sixty miles,--[Columbus reckoned in Italian miles, of
+     which four = one league.]--which are fifteen leagues, towards the
+     south, until sunset: afterwards to the south-west and to the south,
+     quarter south-west, which was the way to the Canaries."
+
+With these rousing words the Journal
+
+     [The account of Columbus's first voyage is taken from a Journal
+     written by himself, but which in its original form does not exist.
+     Las Casas had it in his possession, but as he regarded it (no doubt
+     with justice) as too voluminous and discursive to be interesting, he
+     made an abridged edition, in which the exact words of Columbus were
+     sometimes quoted, but which for the most part is condensed into a
+     narrative in the third person.  This abridged Journal, consisting of
+     seventy-six closely written folios, was first published by
+     Navarrette in 1825.  When Las Casas wrote his 'Historie,' however,
+     he appears here and there to have restored sections of the original
+     Journal into the abridged one; and many of these restorations are of
+     importance.  If the whole account of his voyage written by Columbus
+     himself were available in its exact form I would print it here; but
+     as it is not, I think it better to continue my narrative, simply
+     using the Journal of Las Casas as a document.]
+
+of Columbus's voyage begins; and they sound a salt and mighty chord which
+contains the true diapason of the symphony of his voyages.  There could
+not have been a more fortunate beginning, with clear weather and a calm
+sea, and the wind in exactly the right quarter.  On Saturday and Sunday
+the same conditions held, so there was time and opportunity for the three
+very miscellaneous ships' companies to shake down into something like
+order, and for all the elaborate discipline of sea life to be arranged
+and established; and we may employ the interval by noting what aids to
+navigation Columbus had at his disposal.
+
+
+The chief instrument was the astrolabe, which was an improvement on the
+primitive quadrant then in use for taking the altitude of the sun.  The
+astrolabe, it will be remembered, had been greatly improved, by Martin
+Behaim and the Portuguese Commission in 1840--[1440  D.W.]; and it was
+this instrument, a simplification of the astrolabe used in astronomy
+ashore, that Columbus chiefly used in getting his solar altitudes.  As
+will be seen from the illustration, its broad principle was that of a
+metal circle with a graduated circumference and two arms pivoted in the
+centre.  It was made as heavy as possible; and in using it the observer
+sat on deck with his back against the mainmast and with his left hand
+held up the instrument by the ring at the top.  The long arm was moved
+round until the two sights fixed upon it were on with the sun.  The point
+where the other arm then cut the circle gave the altitude.  In
+conjunction with this instrument were used the tables of solar
+declination compiled by Regiomontanus, and covering the sun's declination
+between the years 1475 and 1566.
+
+The compass in Columbus's day existed, so far as all essentials are
+concerned, as it exists to-day.  Although it lacked the refinements
+introduced by Lord Kelvin it was swung in double-cradles, and had the
+thirty-two points painted upon a card.  The discovery of the compass, and
+even of the lodestone, are things wrapt in obscurity; but the lodestone
+had been known since at least the eleventh century, and the compass
+certainly since the thirteenth.  With the compass were used the sea
+charts, which were simply maps on a rather larger and more exact scale
+than the land maps of the period.  There were no soundings or currents
+marked on the old charts, which were drawn on a plane projection; and
+they can have been of little--practical use to navigators except in the
+case of coasts which were elaborately charted on a large scale.  The
+chart of Columbus, in so far as it was concerned with the ocean westward
+of the Azores, can of course have contained nothing except the
+conjectured islands or lands which he hoped to find; possibly the land
+seen by the shipwrecked pilot may have been marked on it, and his failure
+to find that land may have been the reason why, as we shall see, he
+changed his course to the southward on the 7th of October.  It must be
+remembered that Columbus's conception of the world was that of the
+Portuguese Mappemonde of 1490, a sketch of which is here reproduced.
+This conception of the world excluded the Pacific Ocean and the continent
+of North and South America, and made it reasonable to suppose that any
+one who sailed westward long enough from Spain would ultimately reach
+Cathay and the Indies.  Behaim's globe, which was completed in the year
+1492, represented the farthest point that geographical knowledge had
+reached previous to the discoveries of Columbus, and on it is shown the
+island of Cipango or Japan.
+
+By far the most important element in the navigation of Columbus, in so
+far as estimating his position was concerned, was what is known as "dead-
+reckoning" that is to say, the computation of the distance travelled by
+the ship through the water.  At present this distance is measured by a
+patent log, which in its commonest form is a propeller-shaped instrument
+trailed through the water at the end of a long wire or cord the inboard
+end of which is attached to a registering clock.  On being dragged
+through the water the propeller spins round and the twisting action is
+communicated by the cord to the clock-work machinery which counts the
+miles.  In the case of powerful steamers and in ordinary weather dead-
+reckoning is very accurately calculated by the number of revolutions of
+the propellers recorded in the engine-room; and a device not unlike this
+was known to the Romans in the time of the Republic.  They attached small
+wheels about four feet in diameter to the sides of their ships; the
+passage of the water turned the wheels, and a very simple gearing was
+arranged which threw a pebble into a tallypot at each revolution.  This
+device, however, seems to have been abandoned or forgotten in Columbus's
+day, when there was no more exact method of estimating dead-reckoning
+than the primitive one of spitting over the side in calm weather, or at
+other times throwing some object into the water and estimating the rate
+of progress by its speed in passing the ship's side.  The hour-glass,
+which was used to get the multiple for long distances, was of course the
+only portable time measurer available for Columbus.  These, with a rough
+knowledge of astronomy, and the taking of the altitude of the polar star,
+were the only known means for ascertaining the position of his ship at
+sea.
+
+
+The first mishap occurred on Monday, August 6th, when the Pinta carried
+away her rudder.  The Pinta, it will be remembered, was commanded by
+Martin Alonso Pinzon, and was owned by Gomaz Rascon and Christoval
+Quintero, who had been at the bottom of some of the troubles ashore; and
+it was thought highly probable that these two rascals had something to do
+with the mishap, which they had engineered in the hope that their vessel
+would be left behind at the Canaries.  Martin Alonso, however, proved a
+man of resource, and rigged up a sort of steering gear with ropes.  There
+was a choppy sea, and Columbus could not bring his own vessel near enough
+to render any assistance, though he doubtless bawled his directions to
+Pinzon, and looked with a troubled eye on the commotion going on on board
+the Pinta.  On the next day the jury-rigged rudder carried away again,
+and was again repaired, but it was decided to try and make the island of
+Lanzarote in the Canaries, and to get another caravel to replace the
+Pinta.  All through the next day the Santa Maria and the Nina had to
+shorten sail in order not to leave the damaged Pinta behind; the three
+captains had a discussion and difference of opinion as to where they
+were; but Columbus, who was a genius at dead-reckoning, proved to be
+right in his surmise, and they came in sight of the Canaries on Thursday
+morning, August 9th.
+
+Columbus left Pinzon on the Grand Canary with orders to try to obtain a
+caravel there, while he sailed on to Gomera, which he reached on Sunday
+night, with a similar purpose.  As he was unsuccessful he sent a message
+by a boat that was going back to tell Pinzon to beach the Pinta and
+repair her rudder; and having spent more days in fruitless search for a
+vessel, he started back to join Pinzon on August 23rd.  During the night
+he passed the Peak of Teneriffe, which was then in eruption.  The repairs
+to the Pinta, doubtless in no way expedited by Messrs. Rascon and
+Quintera, took longer than had been expected; it was found necessary to
+make an entirely new rudder for her; and advantage was taken of the delay
+to make some alterations in the rig of the Nina, which was changed from a
+latine rig to a square rig, so that she might be better able to keep up
+with the others.  September had come before these two jobs were
+completed; and on the 2nd of September the three ships sailed for Gomera,
+the most westerly of the islands, where they anchored in the north-east
+bay.  The Admiral was in a great hurry to get away from the islands and
+from the track of merchant ships, for he had none too much confidence in
+the integrity of his crews, which were already murmuring and finding
+every mishap a warning sign from God.  He therefore only stayed long
+enough at Gomera to take in wood and water and provisions, and set sail
+from that island on the 6th of September.
+
+The wind fell lighter and lighter, and on Friday the little fleet lay
+becalmed within sight of Ferro.  But on Saturday evening north-east airs
+sprang up again, and they were able to make nine leagues of westing.  On
+Sunday they had lost sight of land; and at thus finding their ships three
+lonely specks in the waste of ocean the crew lost heart and began to
+lament.  There was something like a panic, many of the sailors bursting
+into tears and imploring Columbus to take them home again.  To us it may
+seem a rather childish exhibition; but it must be remembered that these
+sailors were unwillingly embarked upon a voyage which they believed would
+only lead to death and disaster.  The bravest of us to-day, if he found
+himself press-ganged on board a balloon and embarked upon a journey, the
+object of which was to land upon Mars or the moon, might find it
+difficult to preserve his composure on losing sight of the earth; and the
+parallel is not too extreme to indicate the light in which their present
+enterprise must have appeared to many of the Admiral's crew.
+
+Columbus gave orders to the captains of the other two ships that, in case
+of separation, they were to sail westward for 700 leagues-that being the
+distance at which he evidently expected to find land--and there to lie-to
+from midnight until morning.  On this day also, seeing the temper of the
+sailors, he began one of the crafty stratagems upon which he prided
+himself, and which were often undoubtedly of great use to him; he kept
+two reckonings, one a true one, which he entered in his log, and one a
+false one, by means of which the distance run was made out to be less
+than what it actually was, so that in case he could not make land as soon
+as he hoped the crew would not be unduly discouraged.  In other words, he
+wished to have a margin at the other end, for he did not want a mutiny
+when he was perhaps within a few leagues of his destination.  On this day
+he notes that the raw and inexperienced seamen were giving trouble in
+other ways, and steering very badly, continually letting the ship's head-
+fall off to the north; and many must have been the angry remonstrances
+from the captain to the man at the wheel.  Altogether rather a trying day
+for Christopher, who surely has about as much on his hands as ever mortal
+had; but he knows how to handle ships and how to handle sailors, and so
+long as this ten-knot breeze lasts, he can walk the high poop of the
+Santa Maria with serenity, and snap his fingers at the dirty rabble
+below.
+
+
+On Monday they made sixty leagues, the Admiral duly announcing forty-
+eight; on Tuesday twenty leagues, published as sixteen; and on this day
+they saw a large piece of a mast which had evidently belonged to a ship
+of at least 120 tons burden.  This was not an altogether cheerful sight
+for the eighteen souls on board the little Nina, who wondered ruefully
+what was going to happen to them of forty tons when ships three times
+their size had evidently been unable to live in this abominable sea!
+
+On Thursday, September 13th, when Columbus took his observations, he made
+a great scientific discovery, although he did not know it at the time.
+He noticed that the needle of the compass was declining to the west of
+north instead of having a slight declination to the east of north, as all
+mariners knew it to have.  In other words, he had passed the line of true
+north and of no variation, and must therefore have been in latitude
+28 deg. N.  and longitude 29 deg. 37' W.  of Greenwich.  With his usual
+secrecy he said nothing about it; perhaps he was waiting to see if the
+pilots on the other ships had noticed it, but apparently they were not so
+exact in their observations as he was.  On the next day, Friday, the wind
+falling a little lighter, they, made only twenty leagues.  "Here the
+persons on the caravel Nina said they had seen a jay and a ringtail, and
+these birds never come more than twenty-five leagues from land at most."
+--Unhappy "persons on the Nina"!  Nineteen souls, including the captain,
+afloat in a very small boat, and arguing God knows what from the fact
+that a jay and a ringtail never went more than twenty-five leagues from
+land!--The next day also was not without its incident; for on Saturday
+evening they saw a meteor, or "marvellous branch of fire" falling from
+the serene violet of the sky into the sea.
+
+They were now well within the influence of the trade-wind, which in these
+months blows steadily from the east, and maintains an exquisite and balmy
+climate.  Even the Admiral, never very communicative about his
+sensations, deigns to mention them here, and is reported to have said
+that "it was a great pleasure to enjoy the morning; that nothing was
+lacking except to hear the nightingales, and that the weather was like
+April in Andalusia."  On this day they saw some green grasses, which the
+Admiral considered must have floated off from some island; "not the
+continent," says the Admiral, whose theories are not to be disturbed by a
+piece of grass, "because I make the continental land farther onward."
+The crew, ready to take the most depressing and pessimistic view of
+everything, considered that the lumps of grass belonged to rocks or
+submerged lands, and murmured disparaging things about the Admiral.
+As a matter of fact these grasses were masses of seaweed detached from
+the Sargasso Sea, which they were soon to enter.
+
+On Monday, September 17th, four days after Columbus had noted it, the
+other pilots noted the declination of the needle, which they had found on
+taking the position of the North star.  They did not like it; and
+Columbus, whose knowledge of astronomy came to his aid, ordered them to
+take the position of the North star at dawn again, which they did, and
+found that the needles were true.  He evidently thought it useless to
+communicate to them his scientific speculations, so he explained to them
+that it was the North star which was moving in its circle, and not the
+compass.  One is compelled to admit that in these little matters of
+deceit the Admiral always shone.  To-day, among the seaweed on the ship's
+side, he picked up a little crayfish, which he kept for several days,
+presumably in a bottle in his cabin; and perhaps afterwards ate.
+
+So for several days this calm and serene progress westward was
+maintained.  The trade-wind blew steady and true, balmy and warm also;
+the sky was cloudless, except at morning and evening dusk; and there were
+for scenery those dazzling expanses of sea and sky, and those gorgeous
+hues of dawn and sunset, which are only to be found in the happy
+latitudes.  The things that happened to them, the bits of seaweed and
+fishes that they saw in the water, the birds that flew around them, were
+observed with a wondering attention and wistful yearning after their
+meaning such as is known only to children and to sailors adventuring on
+uncharted seas.  The breezes were milder even than those of the Canaries,
+and the waters always less salt; and the men, forgetting their fears of
+the monsters of the Sea of Darkness, would bathe alongside in the limpid
+blue.  The little crayfish was a "sure indication of land"; a tunny fish,
+killed by the company on the Nina, was taken to be an indication from the
+west, "where I hope in that exalted God, in whose hands are all
+victories, that land will very soon appear"; they saw another ringtail,
+"which is not accustomed to sleep on the sea"; two pelicans came to the
+ship, "which was an indication that land was near"; a large dark cloud
+appeared to the north, "which is a sign that land is near"; they saw one
+day a great deal of grass, "although the previous day they had not seen
+any"; they took a bird with their hands which was like a jay; "it was a
+river bird and not a sea bird"; they saw a whale, "which is an indication
+that they are near land, because they always remain near it"; afterwards
+a pelican came from the west-north-west and went to the south-east,
+"which was an indication that it left land to the west-north-west,
+because these birds sleep on land and in the morning they come to the sea
+in search of food, and do not go twenty leagues from land."  And "at dawn
+two or three small land birds came singing to the ships; and afterwards
+disappeared before sunrise."
+
+Such beautiful signs, interpreted by the light of their wishes, were the
+events of this part of the voyage.  In the meantime, they have their
+little differences.  Martin Alonso Pinzon, on Tuesday, September 18th,
+speaks from the Pinta to the Santa Maria, and says that he will not wait
+for the others, but will go and make the land, since it is so near; but
+apparently he does not get very far out of the way, the wind which wafts
+him wafting also the Santa Maria and the Nina.
+
+
+On September the 19th there was a comparison of dead-reckonings.  The
+Nina's pilot made it 440 leagues from the Canaries, the Pinta's 420
+leagues, and the Admiral's pilot, doubtless instructed by the Admiral,
+made it 400.  On Sunday the 23rd they were getting into the seaweed and
+finding crayfish again; and there being no reasonable cause for complaint
+a scare was got up among the crew on an exceedingly ingenious point.  The
+wind having blown steadily from the east for a matter of three weeks,
+they said that it would never blow in any other direction, and that they
+would never be able to get back to Spain; but later in the afternoon the
+sea got up from the westward, as though in answer to their fears, and as
+if to prove that somewhere or other ahead of them there was a west wind
+blowing; and the Admiral remarks that "the high sea was very necessary to
+me, as it came to pass once before in the time when the Jews went out of
+Egypt with Moses, who took them from captivity."  And indeed there was
+something of Moses in this man, who thus led his little rabble from a
+Spanish seaport out across the salt wilderness of the ocean, and
+interpreted the signs for them, and stood between them and the powers of
+vengeance and terror that were set about their uncharted path.
+
+But it appears that the good Admiral had gone just a little too far in
+interpreting everything they saw as a sign that they were approaching
+land; for his miserable crew, instead of being comforted by this fact,
+now took the opportunity to be angry because the signs were not
+fulfilled.  The more the signs pointed to their nearness to land, the
+more they began to murmur and complain because they did not see it.  They
+began to form together in little groups--always an ominous sign at sea--
+and even at night those who were not on deck got together in murmuring
+companies.  Some, of the things that they said, indeed, were not very far
+from the truth; among others, that it was "a great madness on their part
+to venture their lives in following out the madness of a foreigner who to
+make himself a great lord had risked his life, and now saw himself and
+all of them in great exigency and was deceiving so many people."  They
+remembered that his proposition, or "dream" as they not inaptly call it,
+had been contradicted by many great and lettered men; and then followed
+some very ominous words indeed.  They held
+
+     [The substance of these murmurings is not in the abridged Journal,
+     but is given by Las Casas under the date of September 24.]
+
+that "it was enough to excuse them from whatever might be done in the
+matter that they had arrived where man had never dared to navigate, and
+that they were not obliged to go to the end of the world, especially as,
+if they delayed more, they would not be able to have provisions to
+return."  In short, the best thing would be to throw him into the sea
+some night, and make a story that he had fallen, into the water while
+taking the position of a star with his astrolabe; and no one would ask
+any questions, as he was a foreigner.  They carried this talk to the
+Pinzons, who listened to them; after all, we have not had to wait long
+for trouble with the Pinzons!  "Of these Pinzons Christopher Columbus
+complains greatly, and of the trouble they had given him."
+
+There is only one method of keeping down mutiny at sea, and of preserving
+discipline.  It is hard enough where the mutineers are all on one ship
+and the commander's officers are loyal to him; but when they are
+distributed over three ships, the captains of two of which are willing to
+listen to them, the problem becomes grave indeed.  We have no details of
+how Columbus quieted them; but it is probable that his strong personality
+awed them, while his clever and plausible words persuaded them.  He was
+the best sailor of them all and they knew it; and in a matter of this
+kind the best and strongest man always wins, and can only in a pass of
+this kind maintain his authority by proving his absolute right to it.
+So he talked and persuaded and bullied and encouraged and cheered them;
+"laughing with them," as Las Casas says, "while he was weeping at heart."
+
+
+Probably as a result of this unpleasantness there was on the following
+day, Tuesday, September 25th, a consultation between: Martin Alonso
+Pinzon and the Admiral.  The Santa Maria closed up with the Pinta, and a
+chart was passed over on a cord.  There were islands marked on the chart
+in this region, possibly the islands reported by the shipwrecked pilot,
+possibly the island of Antilla; and Pinzon said he thought that they were
+somewhere in the region of them, and the Admiral said that he thought so
+too.  There was a deal of talk and pricking of positions on charts; and
+then, just as the sun was setting, Martin Alonso, standing on the stern
+of the Pinta, raised a shout and said that he saw land; asking (business-
+like Martin) at the same time for the reward which had been promised to
+the first one who should see land: They all saw it, a low cloud to the
+southwest, apparently about twenty-five leagues distant; and honest
+Christopher, in the emotion of the moment, fell on his knees in gratitude
+to God.  The crimson sunset of that evening saw the rigging of the three
+ships black with eager figures, and on the quiet air were borne the
+sounds of the Gloria in Excelsis, which was repeated by each ship's
+company.
+
+The course was altered to the south-west, and they sailed in that
+direction seventeen leagues during the night; but in the morning there
+was no land to be seen.  The sunset clouds that had so often deceived the
+dwellers in the Canaries and the Azores, and that in some form or other
+hover at times upon all eagerly scanned horizons, had also deceived
+Columbus and every one of his people; but they created a diversion which
+was of help to the Admiral in getting things quiet again, for which in
+his devout soul he thanked the merciful providence of God.
+
+And so they sailed on again on a westward course.  They were still in the
+Sargasso Sea, and could watch the beautiful golden floating mass of the
+gulf-weed, covered with berries and showing, a little way under the clear
+water, bright green leaves.  The sea was as smooth as the river in
+Seville; there were frigate pelicans flying about, and John Dorys in the
+water; several gulls were seen; and a youth on board the Nina killed a
+pelican with a stone.  On Monday, October 1st, there was a heavy shower
+of rain; and Juan de la Cosa, Columbus's pilot, came up to him with the
+doleful information that they had run 578 leagues from the island of
+Ferro.  According to Christopher's doctored reckoning the distance
+published was 584 leagues; but his true reckoning, about which he said
+nothing to a soul, showed that they had gone 707 leagues.  The breeze
+still kept steady and the sea calm; and day after day, with the temper of
+the crews getting uglier and uglier, the three little vessels forged
+westward through the blue, weed-strewn waters, their tracks lying
+undisturbed far behind them.  On Saturday, October 6th, the Admiral was
+signalled by Alonso Pinzon, who wanted to change the course to the south-
+west.  It appears that, having failed to find the, islands of the
+shipwrecked pilot, they were now making for the island of Cipango, and
+that this request of Pinzon had something to do with some theory of his
+that they had better turn to the south to reach that island; while
+Columbus's idea now evidently was--to push straight on to the mainland of
+Cathay.  Columbus had his way; but the grumbling and murmuring in creased
+among the crew.
+
+On the next day, Sunday, and perhaps just in time to avert another
+outbreak, there was heard the sound of a gun, and the watchers on the
+Santa Maria and the Pinta saw a puff of smoke coming from the Nina, which
+was sailing ahead, and hoisting a flag on her masthead.  This was the
+signal agreed upon for the discovery of land, and it seemed as though
+their search was at last at an end.  But it was a mistake.  In the
+afternoon the land that the people of the Nina thought they had seen had
+disappeared, and the horizon was empty except for a great flight of birds
+that was seen passing from the north to the south-west.  The Admiral,
+remembering how often birds had guided the Portuguese in the islands in
+their possessions, argued that the birds were either going to sleep on
+land or were perhaps flying from winter, which he assumed to be
+approaching in the land from whence they came.  He therefore altered.
+his course from west to west-south-west.  This course was entered upon an
+hour before sunset and continued throughout the night and the next day.
+"The sea was like the river of Seville," says the Admiral; "the breezes
+as soft as at Seville in April, and very fragrant."  More birds were to
+be seen, and there were many signs of land; but the crew, so often
+disappointed in their hopeful interpretations of the phenomena
+surrounding them, kept on murmuring and complaining.  On Tuesday, October
+9th, the wind chopped round a little and the course was altered, first to
+south-west and then at evening to a point north of west; and the journal
+records that "all night they heard birds passing."  The next day Columbus
+resumed the west-southwesterly course and made a run of fifty-nine
+leagues; but the mariners broke out afresh in their discontent, and
+declined to go any farther.  They complained of the long voyage, and
+expressed their views strongly to the commander.  But they had to deal
+with a man who was determined to begin with, and who saw in the many
+signs of land that they had met with only an additional inducement to go
+on.  He told them firmly that with or without their consent he intended
+to go on until he had found the land he had come to seek.
+
+
+The next day, Thursday, October 11th, was destined to be for ever
+memorable in the history of the world.  It began ordinarily enough, with
+a west-south-west wind blowing fresh, and on a sea rather rougher than
+they had had lately.  The people on the Santa Maria saw some petrels and
+a green branch in the water; the Pinta saw a reed and two small sticks
+carved with iron, and one or two other pieces of reeds and grasses that
+had been grown on shore, as well as a small board.  Most wonderful of
+all, the people of the Nina saw "a little branch full of dog roses"; and
+it would be hard to estimate the sweet significance of this fragment of a
+wild plant from land to the senses of men who had been so long upon a sea
+from which they had thought never to land alive.  The day drew to its
+close; and after nightfall, according to their custom, the crew of the
+ships repeated the Salve Regina.  Afterwards the Admiral addressed the
+people and sailors of his ship, "very merry and pleasant," reminding them
+of the favours God had shown them with regard to the weather, and begging
+them, as they hoped to see land very soon, within an hour or so, to keep
+an extra good look-out that night from the forward forecastle; and adding
+to the reward of an annuity of 10,000 maravedis, offered by the Queen to
+whoever should sight land first, a gift on his own account of a silk
+doublet.
+
+The moon was in its third quarter, and did not rise until eleven o'clock.
+The first part of the night was dark, and there was only a faint
+starlight into which the anxious eyes of the look-out men peered from the
+forecastles of the three ships.  At ten o'clock Columbus was walking on
+the poop of his vessel, when he suddenly saw a light right ahead.  The
+light seemed to rise and fall as though it were a candle or a lantern
+held in some one's hand and waved up and down.  The Admiral called Pedro
+Gutierrez to him and asked him whether he saw anything; and he also saw
+the light.  Then he sent for Rodrigo Sanchez and asked him if he saw the
+light; but he did not, perhaps because from where he was standing it was
+occulted.  But the others were left in no doubt, for the light was seen
+once or twice more, and to the eyes of the anxious little group standing
+on the high stern deck of the Santa Maria it appeared unmistakably.  The
+Nina was not close at hand, and the Pinta had gone on in front hoping to
+make good her mistake; but there was no doubt on board the Santa Maria
+that the light which they had seen was a light like a candle or a torch
+waved slowly up and down.  They lost the light again; and as the hours in
+that night stole away and the moon rose slowly in the sky the seamen on
+the Santa Maria must have almost held their breath.
+
+At about two o'clock in the morning the sound of a gun was heard from the
+Pinta, who could be seen hoisting her flags; Rodrigo de Triana, the look-
+out on board of her, having reported land in sight; and there sure enough
+in the dim light lay the low shores of an island a few miles ahead of
+them.
+
+Immediately all sails were lowered, except a small trysail which enabled
+the ships to lie-to and stand slowly off and on, waiting for the
+daylight.  I suppose there was never a longer night than that; but dawn
+came at last, flooding the sky with lemon and saffron and scarlet and
+orange, until at last the pure gold of the sun glittered on the water.
+And when it rose it showed the sea-weary mariners an island lying in the
+blue sea ahead of them: the island of Guanahani; San Salvador, as it was
+christened by Columbus; or, to give it its modern name, Watling's Island.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+LANDFALL
+
+During the night the ships had drifted a little with the current, and
+before the north-east wind.  When the look-out man on the Pinta first
+reported land in sight it was probably the north-east corner of the
+island, where the land rises to a height of 120 feet, that he saw.  The
+actual anchorage of Columbus was most likely to the westward of the
+island; for there was a strong north-easterly breeze, and as the whole of
+the eastern coast is fringed by a barrier reef, he would not risk his
+ships on a lee shore.  Finding himself off the north end of the island at
+sunrise, the most natural thing for him to do, on making sail again,
+would be to stand southward along the west side of the island looking for
+an anchorage.  The first few miles of the shore have rocky exposed
+points, and the bank where there is shoal water only extends half a mile
+from the shore.  Immediately beyond that the bottom shelves rapidly down
+to a depth of 2000 fathoms, so that if Columbus was sounding as he came
+south he would find no bottom there.  Below what are called the Ridings
+Rocks, however, the land sweeps to the south and east in a long sheltered
+bay, and to the south of these rocks there is good anchorage and firm
+holding-ground in about eight fathoms of water.
+
+We may picture them, therefore, approaching this land in the bright
+sunshine of the early morning, their ears, that had so long heard nothing
+but the slat of canvas and the rush and bubble of water under the prows,
+filled at last with the great resounding roar of the breakers on the
+coral reef; their eyes, that had so long looked upon blue emptiness and
+the star-spangled violet arch of night, feasting upon the living green of
+the foliage ashore; and the easterly breeze carrying to their eager
+nostrils the perfumes of land.  Amid an excitement and joyful
+anticipation that it is exhilarating even to think about the cables were
+got up and served and coiled on deck, and the anchors, which some of them
+had thought would never grip the bottom again, unstopped and cleared.
+The leadsman of the Santa Maria, who has been finding no bottom with his
+forty-fathom line, suddenly gets a sounding; the water shoals rapidly
+until the nine-fathom mark is unwetted, and the lead comes up with its
+bottom covered with brown ooze.  Sail is shortened; one after another the
+great ungainly sheets of canvas are clewed up or lowered down on deck;
+one after another the three helms are starboarded, and the three ships
+brought up to the wind.  Then with three mighty splashes that send the
+sea birds whirling and screaming above the rocks the anchors go down; and
+the Admiral stands on his high poop-deck, and looks long and searchingly
+at the fragment of earth, rock-rimmed, surf-fringed, and tree-crowned, of
+which he is Viceroy and Governor-General.
+
+
+Watling's Island, as it is now called, or San Salvador, as Columbus named
+it, or Guanahani, as it was known to the aborigines, is situated in
+latitude 24 deg. 6' N., and longitude 74 deg 26' W., and is an
+irregularly shaped white sandstone islet in about the middle of the great
+Bahama Bank.  The space occupied by the whole group is shaped like an
+irregular triangle extending from the Navidad Bank in the Caribbean Sea
+at the south-east corner, to Bahama Island in Florida Strait on the
+north, about 200 miles.  The south side trends west by north for 600
+miles, and the north side north-west by north 720 miles.  Most of the
+islands and small rocks in this group, called Keys or Cays, are very low,
+and rise only a few feet above the sea; the highest is about 400 feet
+high.  They are generally situated on the edge of coral and sand banks,
+some of which are of a very dangerous character.  They are thinly wooded,
+except in the case of one or two of the larger islands which contain
+timber of moderate dimensions.  The climate of the Bahamas is mild and
+temperate, with refreshing sea breezes in the hottest months; and there
+is a mean temperature of 75 deg. from November to April.  Watling's
+Island is about twelve miles in length by six in breadth, with rocky
+shores slightly indented.  The greater part of its area is occupied by
+salt-water lagoons, separated from one another by small wooded hills from
+too to 140 feet high.  There is plenty of grass; indeed the island is now
+considered to be the most fertile in the Bahamas, and raises an excellent
+breed of cattle and sheep.  In common with the other islands of the group
+it was orginally settled by the Spaniards, and afterwards by the British,
+who were driven from the Bahamas again by the Spanish in the year 1641.
+After a great deal of changing hands they were ceded to Great Britain in
+1783, and have remained in her possession ever since.  In 1897 the
+population of the whole group was estimated at 52,000 the whites being in
+the proportion of one to six of the coloured population.  Watling's
+Island contains about 600 inhabitants scattered over the surface, with a
+small settlement called Cockburn Town on the west side, nearly opposite
+the landfall of Columbus.  The seat of the local government is in the
+island of New Providence, and the inhabitants of Watling's Island and of
+Rum Cay unite in sending one representative to the House of Assembly.  It
+is high water, full and change, at Watling's Island at 7 h. 40 m., as it
+was in the days of Columbus; and these facts form about the sum of the
+world's knowledge of and interest in Watling's Island to-day.
+
+
+But it was a different matter on Friday morning, October 12, 1492,
+
+     [This date is reckoned in the old style.  The true astronomical date
+     would be October 21st, which is the modern anniversary of the
+     discovery]
+
+when, all having been made snug on board the Santa Maria, the Admiral of
+the Ocean Seas put on his armour and his scarlet cloak over it and
+prepared to go ashore.  The boat was lowered and manned by a crew well
+armed, and Columbus took with him Rodrigo de Escovedo, the secretary to
+the expedition, and Rodrigo Sanchez his overseer; they also took on board
+Martin Alonso Pinzon and Vincenti Yanez Pinzon, the captains of the other
+two ships.  As they rowed towards the shore they saw a few naked
+inhabitants, who hid themselves at their approach.  Columbus carried with
+him the royal standard, and the two captains each had a banner of the
+expedition, which was a square flag with an "F" and a "Y" upon either
+side, each letter being surmounted by the crown of the sovereigns and a
+green cross covering the whole.  Columbus assembled his little band
+around him and called upon them to bear witness that in the presence of
+them all he was taking possession of the island for the King and Queen of
+Spain; duly making depositions in writing on the spot, and having them
+signed and witnessed.  Then he gave the name of San Salvador to the
+island and said a prayer; and while this solemn little ceremony was in
+progress, the astonished natives crept out of their hiding and surrounded
+the strange white men.  They gesticulated and grovelled and pointed
+upwards, as though this gang of armed and bearded Spaniards, with the
+tall white-bearded Italian in the midst of them, had fallen from the
+skies.
+
+The first interest of the voyagers was in the inhabitants of this
+delightful land.  They found them well built, athletic-looking men, most
+of them young, with handsome bodies and intelligent faces.  Columbus,
+eager to begin his missionary work, gave them some red caps and some
+glass beads, with which he found them so delighted that he had good hopes
+of making converts, and from which he argued that "they were a people who
+would better be freed and converted to our Holy Faith by love than by
+force," which sentence of his contains within itself the whole missionary
+spirit of the time.  These natives, who were the freest people in the
+world, were to be "freed"; freed or saved from the darkness of their
+happy innocence and brought to the light of a religion that had just
+evolved the Inquisition; freed by love if possible, and by red caps and
+glass beads; if not possible, then freed by force and with guns; but
+freed they were to be at all costs.  It is a tragic thought that, at the
+very first impact of the Old World upon this Eden of the West, this
+dismal error was set on foot and the first links in the chain of slavery
+forged.  But for the moment nothing of it was perceptible; nothing but
+red caps and glass beads, and trinkets and toys, and freeing by love.
+The sword that Columbus held out to them, in order to find out if they
+knew the use of weapons, they innocently grasped by the blade and so cut
+their fingers; and that sword, extended with knowledge and grasped with
+fearless ignorance, is surely an emblem of the spread of civilisation and
+of its doubtful blessings in the early stages.  Let us hear Columbus
+himself, as he recorded his first impression of Guanahani:
+
+     "Further, it appeared to me that they were a very poor people, in
+     everything.  They all go naked as their mothers gave them birth, and
+     the women also, although I only saw one of the latter who was very
+     young, and all those whom I saw were young men, none more than
+     thirty years of age.  They were very well built with very handsome
+     bodies, and very good faces.  Their hair was almost as coarse as
+     horses' tails, and short, and they wear it over the eyebrows, except
+     a small quantity behind, which they wear long and never cut.  Some
+     paint themselves blackish, and they are of the colour of the
+     inhabitants of the Canaries, neither black nor white, and some paint
+     themselves white, some red, some whatever colour they find: and some
+     paint their faces, some all the body, some only the eyes, and some
+     only the nose.  They do not carry arms nor know what they are,
+     because I showed them swords and they took them by the edge and
+     ignorantly cut themselves.  They have no iron: their spears are
+     sticks without iron, and some of them have a fish's tooth at the end
+     and others have other things.  They are all generally of good
+     height, of pleasing appearance and well built: I saw some who had
+     indications of wounds on their bodies, and I asked them by signs if
+     it was that, and they showed me that other people came there from
+     other islands near by and wished to capture them and they defended
+     themselves: and I believed and believe, that they come here from the
+     continental land to take them captive.  They must be good servants
+     and intelligent, as I see that they very quickly say all that is
+     said to them, and I believe that they would easily become
+     Christians, as it appeared to me that they had no sect.  If it
+     please our Lord, at the time of my departure, I will take six of
+     them from here to your Highnesses that they may learn to speak.
+     I saw no beast of any kind except parrots on this island."
+
+They very quickly say all that is said to them, and they will very easily
+become good slaves; good Christians also it appears, since the Admiral's
+research does not reveal the trace of any religious sect.  And finally
+"I will take six of them"; ostensibly that they may learn to speak the
+language, but really that they may form the vanguard of cargo after cargo
+of slaves ravished from their happy islands of dreams and sunshine and
+plenty to learn the blessings of Christianity under the whip and the
+sword.  It is all, alas, inevitable; was inevitable from the moment that
+the keel of Columbus's boat grated upon the shingle of Guanahani.  The
+greater must prey upon the less, the stronger must absorb and dominate
+the weaker; and the happy gardens of the Golden Cyclades must be spoiled
+and wasted for the pleasure and enrichment of a corrupting civilisation.
+But while we recognise the inevitable, and enter into the joy and pride
+of Columbus and his followers on this first happy morning of their
+landing, we may give a moment's remembrance to the other side of the
+picture, and admit that for this generation of innocents the discovery
+that was to be all gain for the Old World was to be all loss to them.
+In the meantime, decrees the Admiral, they are to be freed and converted;
+and "I will take six of them that they may learn to speak."
+
+
+There are no paths or footprints left in the sea, and the water furrowed
+on that morning more than four hundred years ago by the keels of
+Columbus's little fleet is as smooth and trackless as it was before they
+clove it.  Yet if you approach Guanahani from the east during the hours
+of darkness you also will see a light that waxes and wanes on the
+horizon.  What the light was that Columbus saw is not certain; it was
+probably the light from a torch held by some native woman from the door
+of her hut; but the light that you will see is from the lighthouse on
+Dixon Hill, where a tower of coral holds a lamp one hundred and sixty
+feet above the sea at the north-east point of the island.  It was erected
+in no sentimental spirit, but for very practical purposes, and at a date
+when Watling's Island had not been identified with the Guanahani of
+Columbus's landfall; and yet of all the monuments that have been raised
+to him I can think of nothing more appropriate than this lonely tower
+that stands by day amid the bright sunshine in the track of the trade
+wind, and by night throws its powerful double flash every half-minute
+across the dark lonely sea.  For it was by a light, although not of man's
+kindling, that Columbus was guided upon his lonely voyage and through his
+many difficulties; amid all his trials and disappointments, dimly as it
+must have burned sometimes, it never quite went out.  Darkness was the
+name of the sea across which he took his way; darkness, from his
+religious point of view, was the state of the lands to which he
+journeyed; and, whatever its subsequent worth may have been, it was a
+burning fragment from the living torch of the Christian religion that he
+carried across the world with him, and by which he sought to kindle the
+fire of faith in the lands of his discovery.  So that there is a profound
+symbolism in those raying beams that now, night after night, month by
+month, and year after year, shine out across the sea from Watling's
+Island in the direction of the Old World.
+
+
+In the preparations for this voyage, and in the conduct and
+accomplishment of it, the personality of the man Columbus stands clearly
+revealed.  He was seen at his best, as all men are who have a chance of
+doing the thing for which they are best fitted.  The singleness of aim
+that can accomplish so much is made manifest in his dogged search for
+means with which to make his voyage; and his Italian quality of
+unscrupulousness in the means employed to attain a good end was exercised
+to the full.  The, practical seaman in him carried him through the
+easiest part of his task, which was the actual sailing of his ships from
+Palos to Guanahani; Martin Alonso Pinzon could have done as much as that.
+But no Martin Alonso Pinzon or any other man of that time known to
+history had the necessary combination of defective and effective
+qualities that made Columbus, once he had conceived his glorious hazy
+idea, spend the best years of his life, first in acquiring the position
+that would make him listened to by people powerful enough to help him,
+and then in besieging them in the face of every rebuff and
+discouragement.  Another man, proposing to venture across the unknown
+ocean to unknown lands, would have required a fleet for his conveyance,
+and an army for his protection; but Columbus asked for what he thought he
+had some chance of getting, and for the barest equipment that would carry
+him across the water.  Another man would at least have had a bodyguard;
+but Columbus relied upon himself, and alone held his motley crew in the
+bonds of discipline.  A Pinzon could have navigated the fleet from Palos
+to Guanahani; but only a Columbus, only a man burning with belief is
+himself and in his quest, could have kept that superstitious crowd of
+loafers and malefactors and gaol-birds to their duties, and bent them to
+his will.  He was destined in after years for situations which were
+beyond his power to deal with, and for problems that were beyond his
+grasp; but here at least he was supreme, master of himself and of his
+material, and a ruler over circumstances.  The supreme thing that he had
+professed to be able to do and which he had guaranteed to do was, in the
+sublime simplicity of his own phrase, "to discover new lands," and luck
+or no luck, help or hindrance, he did it at the very first attempt and in
+the space of thirty-five days.  And although it was from the Pinta that
+the gun was fired, and the first loom of the actual land seen in the
+early morning, I am glad to think that, of all the number of eager
+watching men, it was Columbus who first saw the dim tossing light that
+told him his journey was at an end.
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+All days, however hard, have an evening, and all journeys an end
+Freed by force and with guns
+If there were no results, there would be no rewards
+Learn the blessings of Christianity under the whip
+Never to deal with subordinates
+Nothing so ludicrous as an Idea to those who do not share it
+She must either sin or be celibate
+Stuffed so full indeed that eyes and ears are closed
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of Christopher Columbus, v2
+by Filson Young
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                         CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS
+                   AND THE NEW WORLD OF HIS DISCOVERY
+
+                      A NARRATIVE BY FILSON YOUNG
+
+
+
+
+THE NEW WORLD
+
+BOOK 3
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE ENCHANTED ISLANDS
+
+Columbus did not intend to remain long at San Salvador.  His landfall
+there, although it signified the realisation of one part of his dream,
+was only the starting-point of his explorations in the New World.  Now
+that he had made good his undertaking to "discover new lands," he had to
+make good his assurance that they were full of wealth and would swell the
+revenues of the King and Queen of Spain.  A brief survey of this first
+island was all he could afford time for; and after the first exquisite
+impression of the white beach, and the blue curve of the bay sparkling in
+the sunshine, and the soft prismatic colours of the acanthus beneath the
+green wall of the woods had been savoured and enjoyed, he was anxious to
+push on to the rich lands of the Orient of which he believed this island
+to be only an outpost.
+
+On the morning after his arrival the natives came crowding down to the
+beach and got down their canoes, which were dug out of the trunk of a
+single tree, and some of which were large enough to contain forty or
+forty-five men: They came paddling out to the ship, sometimes, in the
+case of the smaller canoes which only held one man, being upset by the
+surf, and swimming gaily round and righting their canoes again and
+bailing them out with gourds.  They brought balls of spun cotton, and
+parrots and spears.  All their possessions, indeed, were represented in
+the offerings they made to the strangers.  Columbus, whose eye was now
+very steadily fixed on the main chance, tried to find out if they had any
+gold, for he noticed that some of them wore in their noses a ring that
+looked as though it were made of that metal; and by making signs he asked
+them if there was any more of it to be had.  He understood them to say
+that to the south of the island there dwelt a king who had large vessels
+of gold, and a great many of them; he tried to suggest that some of the
+natives should come and show him the way, but he "saw that they were not
+interested in going."
+
+The story of the Rheingold was to be enacted over again, and the whole of
+the evils that followed in its glittering train to be exemplified in this
+voyage of discovery.  To the natives of these islands, who guarded the
+yellow metal and loved it merely for its shining beauty, it was harmless
+and powerless; they could not buy anything with it, nor did they seek by
+its aid to secure any other enjoyments but the happiness of looking at it
+and admiring it.  As soon as the gold was ravished from their keeping,
+however, began the reign of lust and cruelty that always has attended and
+always will attend the knowledge that things can be bought with it.  In
+all its history, since first it was brought up from the dark bowels of
+the earth to glitter in the light of day, there is no more significant
+scene than this that took place on the bright sands of San Salvador so
+long ago--Columbus attentively examining the ring in the nose of a happy
+savage, and trying to persuade him to show him the place that it was
+brought from; and the savage "not interested in going."
+
+
+From his sign-conversation with the natives Columbus understood that
+there was land to the south or the south-west, and also to the north-
+west, and that the people from the north-west went to the south-west in
+search of gold and precious stones.  In the meantime he determined to
+spend the Sunday in making a survey of the island, while the rest of
+Saturday was passed in barterings with the natives, who were very happy
+and curious to see all the strange things belonging to the voyagers; and
+so innocent were their ideas of value that "they give all they have for
+whatever thing may be given them."  Columbus, however, who was busy
+making calculations, would not allow the members of the crew to take
+anything more on their own account, ordering that where any article of
+commerce existed in quantity it was to be acquired for the sovereigns and
+taken home to Spain.
+
+Early on Sunday morning a boat was prepared from each ship, and a little
+expedition began to row north about the island.  As they coasted the
+white rocky shores people came running to the beach and calling to them;
+"giving thanks to God," says Columbus, although this is probably a flight
+of fancy.  When they saw that the boats were not coming to land they
+threw themselves into the water and came swimming out to them, bringing
+food and drink.  Columbus noticed a tongue of land lying between the
+north-west arm of the internal lagoon and the sea, and saw that by
+cutting a canal through it entrance could be secured to a harbour that
+would float "as many ships as there are in Christendom."  He did not,
+apparently, make a complete circuit of the island, but returned in the
+afternoon to the ships, having first collected seven natives to take with
+him, and got under way again; and before night had fallen San Salvador
+had disappeared below the north-west horizon.
+
+About midday he reached another island to the southeast.  He sailed along
+the coast until evening, when he saw yet another island in the distance
+to the south-west; and he therefore lay-to for the night.  At dawn the
+next morning he landed on the island and took formal possession of it,
+naming it Santa Maria de la Concepcion, which is the Rum Cay of the
+modern charts.  As the wind chopped round and he found himself on a lee-
+shore he did not stay there, but sailed again before night.  Two of the
+unhappy prisoners from Guanahani at this point made good their escape by
+swimming to a large canoe which one of the natives of the new island had
+rowed out--a circumstance which worried Columbus not a little; since he
+feared it would give him a bad name with the natives.  He tried to
+counteract it by loading with presents another native who came to barter
+balls of cotton, and sending him away again.
+
+The effect of all that he was seeing, of the bridge of islands that
+seemed to be stretching towards the south-west and leading him to the
+region of untold wealth, was evidently very stimulating and exciting to
+Columbus.  His Journal is almost incoherent where he attempts to set down
+all he has got to say.  Let us listen to him for a moment:
+
+     "These islands are very green and fertile, and the breezes are very
+     soft, and there may be many things which I do not know, because I
+     did not wish to stop, in order to discover and search many islands
+     to find gold.  And since these people make signs thus, that they
+     wear gold on their arms and legs,--and it is gold, because I showed
+     them some pieces which I have,--I cannot fail, with the aid of our
+     Lord, in finding it where it is native.  And being in the middle of
+     the gulf between these two islands, that is to say, the island of
+     Santa Maria and this large one, which I named Fernandina, I found a
+     man alone in a canoe who was going from the island of Santa Maria to
+     Fernandina, and was carrying a little of his bread which might have
+     been about as large as the fist, and a gourd of water, and a piece
+     of reddish earth reduced to dust and afterwards kneaded, and some
+     dry leaves--[Tobacco]--which must be a thing very much appreciated
+     among them, because they had already brought me some of them as a
+     present at San Salvador: and he was carrying a small basket of their
+     kind, in which he had a string of small glass beads and two blancas,
+     by which I knew that he came from the island of San Salvador, and
+     had gone from there to Santa Maria and was going to Fernandina.  He
+     came to the ship: I caused him to enter it, as he asked to do so,
+     and I had his canoe placed on the ship and had everything which he
+     was carrying guarded and I ordered that bread and honey be given him
+     to eat and something to drink.  And I will go to Fernandina thus and
+     will give him everything, which belongs to him, that he may give
+     good reports of us.  So that, when your Highnesses send here, our
+     Lord pleasing, those who come may receive honour and the Indians
+     will give them of everything which they have."
+
+This hurried gabbling about gold and the aid of our Lord, interlarded
+with fragments of natural and geographical observation, sounds strangely
+across the gulf of time and impresses one with a disagreeable sense of
+bewildered greed--like that of a dog gulping at the delicacies in his
+platter and unwilling to do justice to one for fear the others should
+escape him; and yet it is a natural bewilderment, and one with which we
+must do our best to sympathise.
+
+Fernandina was the name which Columbus had already given to Long Island
+when he sighted it from Santa Maria; and he reached it in the evening of
+Tuesday, October 16th.  The man in the canoe had arrived before him; and
+the astute Admiral had the satisfaction of finding that once more his
+cleverness had been rewarded, and that the man in the canoe had given
+such glowing accounts of his generosity that there was no difficulty
+about his getting water and supplies.  While the barrels of water were
+being filled he landed and strolled about in the pleasant groves,
+observing the islanders and their customs, and finding them on the whole
+a little more sophisticated than those of San Salvador.  The women wore
+mantillas on their heads and "little pieces of cotton" round their loins-
+a sufficiently odd costume; and they appeared to Columbus to be a little
+more astute than the other islanders, for though they brought cotton in
+quantities to the ships they exacted payment of beads for it.  In the
+charm and wonder of his walk in this enchanted land he was able for a
+moment to forget his hunger for gold and to admire the great branching
+palm-trees, and the fish that
+
+     "are here so different from ours that it is wonderful.  There are
+     some formed like cocks of the finest colours in the world, blue,
+     yellow, red and of all colours, and others tinted in a thousand
+     manners: and the colours are so fine, that there is not a man who
+     does not wonder at them, and who does not take great pleasure in
+     seeing them.  Also, there are whales.  I saw no beasts on land of
+     any kind except parrots and lizards.  A boy told me that he saw a
+     large snake.  I did not see sheep nor goats, nor any other beast;
+     although I have been here a very short time, as it is midday, still
+     if there had been any, I could not have missed seeing some."
+
+Columbus was not a very good descriptive writer, and he has but two
+methods of comparison; either a thing is like Spain, or it is not like
+Spain.  The verdure was "in such condition as it is in the month of May
+in Andalusia; and the trees  were all as different from ours as day from
+night, and also the fruits and grasses and the stones and all the
+things."  The essay written by a cockney child after a day at the seaside
+or in the country, is not greatly different from some of the verbatim
+passages of this journal; and there is a charm in that fact too, for it
+gives us a picture of Columbus, in spite of his hunt for gold and
+precious stones, wandering, still a child at heart, in the wonders of the
+enchanted world to which he had come.
+
+There was trouble on this day, because some of the crew had found an
+Indian with a piece of gold in his nose, and they got a scolding from
+Columbus for not detaining him and bartering with him for it.  There was
+bad weather also, with heavy rain and a threatening of tempest; there was
+a difference of opinion with Martin Alonso Pinzon about which way they
+should go round the island: but the next day the weather cleared, and the
+wind settled the direction of their course for them.  Columbus, whose eye
+never missed anything of interest to the sailor and navigator, notes thus
+early a fact which appears in every book of sailing directions for the
+Bahama Islands--that the water is so clear and limpid that the bottom can
+be seen at a great depth; and that navigation is thus possible and even
+safe among the rockstrewn coasts of the islands, when thus performed by
+sight and with the sun behind the ship.  He was also keenly alive to
+natural charm and beauty in the new lands that he was visiting, and there
+are unmistakable fragments of himself in the journal that speak
+eloquently of his first impressions.  "The singing of the little birds is
+such that it appears a man would wish never to leave here, and the flocks
+of parrots obscure the sun."
+
+But life, even to the discoverer of a New World, does not consist of
+wandering in the groves, and listening to the singing birds, and smelling
+the flowers, and remembering the May nights of Andalusia.  There was gold
+to be found and the mainland of Cathay to be discovered, and a letter,
+written by the sovereigns at his earnest request, to be delivered to the
+Great Khan.  The natives had told him of an island called Samoete to the
+southward, which was said to contain a quantity of gold.  He sailed
+thither on the 19th, and called it Isabella; its modern name is Crooked
+Island.  He anchored here and found it to be but another step in the
+ascending scale of his delight; it was greener and more beautiful than
+any of the islands he had yet seen.  He spent some time looking for the
+gold, but could not find any; although he heard of the island of Cuba,
+which he took to be the veritable Cipango.  He weighed anchor on October
+24th and sailed south-west, encountering some bad weather on the way; but
+on Sunday the 28th he came up with the north coast of Cuba and entered
+the mouth of a river which is the modern Nuevitas.  To the island of Cuba
+he gave the name of Juana in honour of the young prince to whom his son
+Diego had been appointed a page.
+
+
+If the other islands had seemed beautiful to him, Cuba seemed like heaven
+itself.  The mountains grandly rising in the interior, the noble rivers
+and long sweeping plains, the headlands melting into the clear water, and
+the gorgeous colours and flowers and birds and insects on land acted like
+a charm on Columbus and his sailors.  As they entered the river they
+lowered a boat in order to go ahead and sound for an anchorage; and two
+native canoes put off from the shore, but, when they saw the boat
+approaching, fled again.  The Admiral landed and found two empty houses
+containing nets and hooks and fishing-lines, and one of the strange
+silent dogs, such as they had encountered on the other island--dogs that
+pricked their ears and wagged their tails, but that never barked.  The
+Admiral, in spite of his greed for gold and his anxiety to "free" the
+people of the island, was now acting much more discreetly, and with the
+genuine good sense which he always possessed and which was only sometimes
+obscured.  He would not allow anything in the empty houses to be
+disturbed or taken away, and whenever he saw the natives he tried to show
+them that he intended to do them no harm, and to win their good will by
+making them presents of beads and toys for which he would take no return.
+As he went on up the river the scenery became more and more enchanting,
+so that he felt quite unhappy at not being able to express all the
+wonders and beauties that he saw.  In the pure air and under the serene
+blue of the sky those matchless hues of blossom and foliage threw a
+rainbow-coloured garment on either bank of the river; the flamingoes, the
+parrots and woodpeckers and humming-birds calling to one another and
+flying among the tree-tops, made the upper air also seem alive and shot
+with all the colours of the rainbow.  Humble Christopher, walking amid
+these gorgeous scenes, awed and solemnised by the strangeness and
+magnificence of nature around him, tries to identify something that he
+knows; and thinks, that amid all these strange chorusings of unknown
+birds, he hears the familiar note of a nightingale.  Amid all his
+raptures, however, the main chance is not forgotten; everything that he
+sees he translates into some terms of practical utility.  Just as on the
+voyage out every seaweed or fish or flying bird that he saw was hailed by
+him as a sign that land was near, so amid the beauty of this virgin world
+everything that he sees is taken to indicate either that he is close upon
+the track of the gold, or that he must be in Cipango, or that the natives
+will be easy to convert to Christianity.  In the fragrance of the woods
+of Cuba, Columbus thought that he smelled Oriental spices, which Marco
+Polo had described as abounding in Cipango; when he walked by the shore
+and saw the shells of pearl oysters, he believed the island to be loaded
+with pearls and precious stones; when he saw a scrap of tinsel or bright
+metal adorning a native, he argued that there was a gold mine close at
+hand.  And so he went on in an increasing whirl of bewildering
+enchantment from anchorage to anchorage and from island to island, always
+being led on by that yellow will o'-the-wisp, gold, and always believing
+that the wealth of the Orient would be his on the morrow.  As he coasted
+along towards the west he entered the river which he called Rio de Mares.
+He found a large village here full of palm-branch houses furnished with
+chairs and hammocks and adorned with wooden masks and statues; but in
+spite of his gentleness and offer of gifts the inhabitants all fled to
+the mountains, while he and his men walked curiously through the deserted
+houses.
+
+On Tuesday, October 30th, Martin Alonso Pinzon, whose communications the
+Admiral was by this time beginning to dread, came with some exciting
+news.  It seemed that the Indians from San Salvador who were on board the
+Pinta had told him that beyond the promontory, named by Columbus the Cape
+of Palms, there was a river, four days' journey upon which would bring
+one to the city of Cuba, which was very rich and large and abounded with
+gold; and that the king of that country was at war with a monarch whom
+they called Cami, and whom Pinzon identified with the Great Khan.  More
+than this, these natives assured him that the land they were on at
+present was the mainland itself, and that they could not be very far from
+Cathay.  Columbus for once found himself in agreement with Martin Alonso.
+The well-thumbed copy of Marco Polo was doubtless brought out, and
+abundant evidence found in it; and it was decided to despatch a little
+embassy to this city in order to gain information about its position and
+wealth.  When they continued their course, however, and rounded the cape,
+no river appeared; they sailed on, and yet promontory after promontory
+was opened ahead of them; and as the wind turned against them and the
+weather was very threatening they decided to turn back and anchor again
+in the Rio de Mares.
+
+Columbus was now, as he thought, hot upon the track of the Great Khan
+himself; and on the first of November he sent boats ashore and told the
+sailors to get information from the houses; but the inhabitants fled
+shyly into the woods.  Having once postulated the existence of the Great
+Khan in this immediate territory Columbus, as his habit was, found that
+everything fitted with the theory; and he actually took the flight of the
+natives, although it had occurred on a dozen other occasions, as a proof
+that they mistook his bands of men for marauding expeditions despatched
+by the great monarch himself.  He therefore recalled them, and sent a
+boat ashore with an Indian interpreter who, standing in the boat at the
+edge of the water, called upon the natives to draw near, and harangued
+them.  He assured them of the peaceable intentions of the great Admiral,
+and that he had nothing whatever to do with the Great Khan; which cannot
+very greatly have thrilled the Cubans, who knew no more about the Great
+Khan than they did about Columbus.  The interpreter then swam ashore and
+was well received; so well, that in the evening some sixteen canoes came
+off to the ships bringing cotton yarn and spears for traffic.  Columbus,
+with great astuteness, forbade any trading in cotton or indeed in
+anything at all except gold, hoping by this means to make the natives
+produce their treasures; and he would no doubt have been successful if
+the natives had possessed any gold, but as the poor wretches had nothing
+but the naked skins they stood up in, and the few spears and pots and
+rolls of cotton that they were offering, the Admiral's astuteness was for
+once thrown away.  There was one man, however, with a silver ring in his
+nose, who was understood to say that the king lived four days' journey in
+the interior, and that messengers had been sent to him to tell him of the
+arrival of the strange ships; which messengers would doubtless soon
+return bringing merchants with them to trade with the ships.  If this
+native was lying he showed great ingenuity in inventing the kind of story
+that his questioners wanted; but it is more likely that his utterances
+were interpreted by Columbus in the light of his own ardent beliefs.  At
+any rate it was decided to send at once a couple of envoys to this great
+city, and not to wait for the arrival of the merchants.  Two Spaniards,
+Rodrigo de Jerez and Luis de Torres, the interpreter to the expedition--
+who had so far found little use for his Hebrew and Chaldean--were chosen;
+and with them were sent two Indians, one from San Salvador and the other
+a local native who went as guide.  Red caps and beads and hawks' bells
+were duly provided, and a message for the king was given to them telling
+him that Columbus was waiting with letters and presents from Spanish
+sovereigns, which he was to deliver personally.  After the envoys had
+departed, Columbus, whose ships were anchored in a large basin of deep
+water with a clean and steep beach, decided to take the opportunity of
+having the vessels careened.  Their hulls were covered with shell and
+weed; the caulking, which had been dishonestly done at Palos, had also
+to be attended to; so the ships were beached and hove down one at a time
+--an unnecessary precaution, as it turned out, for there was no sign of
+treachery on the part of the natives.  While the men were making fires to
+heat their tar they noticed that the burning wood sent forth a heavy
+odour which was like mastic; and the Admiral, now always busy with
+optimistic calculations, reckoned that there was enough in that vicinity
+to furnish a thousand quintals every year.  While the work on the ships
+was going forward he employed himself in his usual way, going ashore,
+examining the trees and vegetables and fruits, and holding such
+communication as he was able with the natives.  He was up every morning
+at dawn, at one time directing the work of his men, at another going
+ashore after some birds that he had seen; and as dawn comes early in
+those islands his day was probably a long one, and it is likely that he
+was in bed soon after dark.  On the day that he went shooting, Martin
+Alonso Pinzon was waiting for him on his return; this time not to make
+any difficulties or independent proposals, but to show him two pieces of
+cinnamon that one of his men had got from an Indian who was carrying a
+quantity of it.  "Why did the man not get it all from him?" says greedy
+Columbus.  "Because of the prohibition of the Admiral's that no one
+should do any trading," says Martin Alonso, and conceives himself to have
+scored; for truly these two men do not love one another.  The boatswain
+of the Pinta, adds Martin Alonso, has found whole trees of it.  "The
+Admiral then went there and found that it was not cinnamon."  The Admiral
+was omnipotent; if he had said that it was manna they would have had to
+make it so, and as he chose to say that it was not cinnamon, we must take
+his word for it, as Martin Alonso certainly had to do; so that it was the
+Admiral who scored this time.  Columbus, however, now on the track of
+spices, showed some cinnamon and pepper to the natives; and the obliging
+creatures "said by signs that there was a great deal of it towards the
+south-east."  Columbus then showed them some gold and pearls; and
+"certain old men" replied that in a place they called Bo-No there was any
+amount of gold; the people wore it in their ears and on their arms and
+legs, and there were pearls also, and large ships and merchandise--all to
+the south-east.  Finding this information, which was probably entirely
+untrue and merely a polite effort to do what was expected of them, well
+received, the natives added that "a long distance from there, there were
+men with one eye, and other men with dogs' snouts who ate men, and that
+when they caught a man they beheaded him and drank his blood" .  .  .
+Soon after this the Admiral went on board again and began to write up his
+Journal, solemnly entering all these facts in it.  It is the most
+childish nonsense; but after all, how interesting and credible it must
+have been!  To live thus smelling the most heavenly perfumes, breathing
+the most balmy air, viewing the most lovely scenes, and to be always hot
+upon the track of gold and pearls and spices and wealth and dog-nosed,
+blood-drinking monstrosities--what an adventure, what a vivid piece of
+living!
+
+
+After a few days--on Tuesday, November 6th--the two men who had been sent
+inland to the great and rich city came back again with their report.
+Alas for visions of the Great Khan!  The city turned out to be a village
+of fifty houses with twenty people in each house.  The envoys had been
+received with great solemnity; and all the men "as well as the women"
+came to see them, and lodged them in a fine house.  The chief people in
+the village came and kissed their hands and feet, hailing them as
+visitors from the skies, and seating them in two chairs, while they sat
+round on the floor.  The native interpreter, doubtless according to
+instructions, then told them "how the Christians lived and how they were
+good people"; and I would give a great deal to have heard that brief
+address.  Afterwards the men went out and the women came in, also kissing
+the hands and feet of the visitors, and "trying them to see if they were
+of flesh and of bone like themselves."  The results were evidently so
+satisfactory that the strangers were implored to remain at least five
+days.  The real business of the expedition was then broached.  Had they
+any gold or pearls?  Had they any cinnamon or spices?  Answer, as usual:
+"No, but they thought there was a great deal of it to the south-east."
+The interest of the visitors then evaporated, and they set out for the
+coast again; but they found that at least five hundred men and women
+wanted to come with them, since they believed that they were returning to
+heaven.  On their journey back the two Spaniards noticed many people
+smoking, as the Admiral himself had done a few days before; and this is
+the first known discovery of tobacco by Europeans.
+
+They saw a great many geese, and the strange dogs that did not bark, and
+they saw potatoes also, although they did not know what they were.
+Columbus, having heard this report, and contemplating these gentle
+amiable creatures, so willing to give all they had in return for a scrap
+of rubbish, feels his heart lifted in a pious aspiration that they might
+know the benefits of the Christian religion.  "I have to say, Most Serene
+Princes," he writes,
+
+     "that by means of devout religious persons knowing their language
+     well, all would soon become Christians: and thus I hope in our Lord
+     that Your Highnesses will appoint such persons with great diligence
+     in order to turn to the Church such great peoples, and that they
+     will convert them, even as they have destroyed those who would not
+     confess the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit: and after their
+     days, as we are all mortal, they will leave their realms--in a very
+     tranquil condition and freed from heresy and wickedness, and will be
+     well received before the Eternal Creator, Whom may it please to give
+     them a long life and a great increase of larger realms and
+     dominions, and the will and disposition to spread the holy Christian
+     religion, as they have done up to the present time, Amen.  To-day I
+     will launch the ship and make haste to start on Thursday, in the
+     name of God, to go to the southeast and seek gold and spices, and
+     discover land."
+                    Thus Christopher Columbus, in the Name of God,
+
+     November 11, 1492.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE EARTHLY PARADISE
+
+When Columbus weighed anchor on the 12th of November he took with him six
+captive Indians.  It was his intention to go in search of the island of
+Babeque, which the Indians alleged lay about thirty leagues to the east-
+south-east, and where, they said, the people gathered gold out of the
+sand with candles at night, and afterwards made bars of it with a hammer.
+They told him this by signs; and we have only one more instance of the
+Admiral's facility in interpreting signs in favour of his own beliefs.
+It is only a few days later that in the same Journal he says, "The people
+of these lands do not understand me, nor do I nor any other person I have
+with me understand them; and these Indians I am taking with me, many
+times understand things contrary to what they are."  It was a fault at
+any rate not exclusively possessed by the Indians, who were doubtless
+made the subject of many philological experiments on the part of the
+interpreter; all that they seemed to have learned at this time were
+certain religious gestures, such as making the Sign of the Cross, which
+they did continually, greatly to the edification of the crew.
+
+In order to keep these six natives in a good temper Columbus kidnapped
+"seven women, large and small, and three children," in order, he alleged,
+that the men might conduct themselves better in Spain because of having
+their "wives" with them; although whether these assorted women were
+indeed the wives of the kidnapped natives must at the best be a doubtful
+matter.  The three children, fortunately, had their father and mother
+with them; but that was only because the father, having seen his wife and
+children kidnapped, came and offered to go with them of his own accord.
+This taking of the women raises a question which must be in the mind of
+any one who studies this extraordinary voyage--the question of the
+treatment of native women by the Spaniards.  Columbus is entirely silent
+on the subject; but taking into account the nature of the Spanish rabble
+that formed his company, and his own views as to the right which he had
+to possess the persons and goods of the native inhabitants, I am afraid
+that there can be very little doubt that in this matter there is a good
+reason, for his silence.  So far as Columbus himself was concerned, it is
+probable that he was innocent enough; he was not a sensualist by nature,
+and he was far too much interested and absorbed in the principal objects
+of his expedition, and had too great a sense of his own personal dignity,
+to have indulged in excesses that would, thus sanctioned by him, have
+produced a very disastrous effect on the somewhat rickety discipline of
+his crew.  He was too wise a master, however, to forbid anything that it
+was not in his power to prevent; and it is probable that he shut his eyes
+to much that, if he did not tolerate it, he at any rate regarded as a
+matter of no very great importance.  His crew had by this time learned to
+know their commander well enough not to commit under his eyes offences
+for which he would have been sure to punish them.
+
+
+For two days they ran along the coast with a fair wind; but on the 14th a
+head wind and heavy sea drove them into the shelter of a deep harbour
+called by Columbus Puerto del Principe, which is the modern Tanamo.  The
+number of islands off this part of the coast of Cuba confirmed Columbus
+in his profound geographical error; he took them to be "those innumerable
+islands which in the maps of the world are placed at the end of the
+east."  He erected a great wooden cross on an eminence here, as he always
+did when he took possession of a new place, and made some boat excursions
+among the islands in the harbour.  On the 17th of November two of the six
+youths whom he had taken on board the week before swam ashore and
+escaped.  When he started again on his voyage he was greatly
+inconvenienced by the wind, which veered about between the north and
+south of east, and was generally a foul wind for him.  There is some
+difference of opinion as to what point of the wind the ships of
+Columbus's time would sail on; but there is no doubt that they were
+extremely unhandy in anything approaching a head wind, and that they were
+practically no good at all at beating to windward.  The shape of their
+hulls, the ungainly erections ahead and astern, and their comparatively
+light hold on the water, would cause them to drift to leeward faster than
+they could work to windward.  In this head wind, therefore, Columbus
+found that he was making very little headway, although he stood out for
+long distances to the northward.  On Wednesday, November 21st, occurred a
+most disagreeable incident, which might easily have resulted in the
+Admiral's never reaching Spain alive.  Some time in the afternoon he
+noticed the Pinta standing away ahead of him in a direction which was not
+the course which he was steering; and he signalled her to close up with
+him.  No answer, however, was made to his signal, which he repeated, but
+to which he failed to attract any response.  He was standing south at the
+time, the wind being well in the north-east; and Martin Alonso Pinzon,
+whose caravel pointed into the wind much better than the unhandy Santa
+Maria, was standing to the east.  When evening fell he was still in
+sight, at a distance of sixteen miles.  Columbus was really concerned,
+and fired lombards and flew more signals of invitation; but there was no
+reply.  In the evening he shortened sail and burned a torch all night,
+"because it appeared that Martin Alonso was returning to me; and the
+night was very clear, and there was a nice little breeze by which to come
+to me if he wished."  But he did not wish, and he did not come.
+
+Martin Alonso has in fact shown himself at last in his true colours.  He
+has got the fastest ship, he has got a picked company of his own men from
+Palos; he has got an Indian on board, moreover, who has guaranteed to
+take him straight to where the gold is; and he has a very agreeable plan
+of going and getting it, and returning to Spain with the first news and
+the first wealth.  It is open mutiny, and as such cannot but be a matter
+of serious regret and trouble to the Admiral, who sits writing up his
+Journal by the swinging lamp in his little cabin.  To that friend and
+confidant he pours out his troubles and his long list of grievances
+against Martin Alonso; adding, "He has done and said many other things
+to me."  Up on deck the torch is burning to light the wanderer back
+again, if only he will come; and there is "a nice little breeze" by which
+to come if he wishes; but Martin Alonso has wishes quite other than that.
+
+
+The Pinta was out of sight the next morning, and the little Nina was all
+that the Admiral had to rely upon for convoy.  They were now near the
+east end of the north coast of Cuba, and they stood in to a harbour which
+the Admiral called Santa Catalina, and which is now called Cayo de Moa.
+As the importance of the Nina to the expedition had been greatly
+increased by the defection of the Pinta, Columbus went on board and
+examined her.  He found that some of her spars were in danger of giving
+way; and as there was a forest of pine trees rising from the shore he was
+able to procure a new mizzen mast and latine yard in case it should be
+necessary to replace those of the Nina.  The next morning he weighed
+anchor at sunrise and continued east along the coast.  He had now arrived
+at the extreme end of Cuba, and was puzzled as to what course he should
+take.  Believing Cuba, as he did, to be the mainland of Cathay, he would
+have liked to follow the coast in its trend to the south-west, in the
+hope of coming upon the rich city of Quinsay; but on the other hand there
+was looming to the south-west some land which the natives with him
+assured him was Bohio, the place where all the gold was.  He therefore
+held on his course; but when the Indians found that he was really going
+to these islands they became very much alarmed, and made signs that the
+people would eat them if they went there; and, in order further to
+dissuade the Admiral, they added that the people there had only one eye,
+and the faces, of dogs.  As it did not suit Columbus to believe them he
+said that they were lying, and that he "felt" that the island must belong
+to the domain of the Great Khan.  He therefore continued his course,
+seeing many beautiful and enchanting bays opening before him, and longing
+to go into them, but heroically stifling his curiosity, "because he was
+detained more than he desired by the pleasure and delight he felt in
+seeing and gazing on the beauty and freshness of those countries wherever
+he entered, and because he did not wish to be delayed in prosecuting what
+he was engaged upon; and for these reasons he remained that night beating
+about and standing off and on until day."  He could not trust himself,
+that is to say, to anchor in these beautiful harbours, for he knew he
+would be tempted to go ashore and waste valuable time exploring the
+woods; and so he remained instead, beating about in the open sea.
+
+As it was, what with contrary winds and his own indecision as to which
+course he should pursue, it was December the 6th before he came up with
+the beautiful island of Hayti, and having sent the Nina in front to
+explore for a harbour, entered the Mole Saint Nicholas, which he called
+Puerto Maria.  Towards the east he saw an island shaped like a turtle,
+and this island he named Tortuga; and the harbour, which he entered that
+evening on the hour of Vespers, he called Saint Nicholas, as it was the
+feast of that saint.  Once more his description flounders among
+superlatives: he thought Cuba was perfect; but he finds the new island
+more perfect still.  The climate is like May in Cordova; the tracts of
+arable land and fertile valleys and high mountains are like those in
+Castile; he finds mullet like those of Castile; soles and other fish like
+those in Castile; nightingales and other small birds like those in
+Castile; myrtle and other trees and grasses like those in Castile!  In
+short, this new land is so like Spain, only more wonderful and beautiful,
+that he christens it Espanola.
+
+They stayed two days in the harbour of Saint Nicholas, and then began to
+coast eastwards along the shores of Espaniola.  Their best progress was
+made at dawn and sunset, when the land breeze blew off the island; and
+during the day they encountered a good deal of colder weather and
+easterly winds, which made their progress slow.  Every day they put in at
+one or other of the natural harbours in which that beautiful coast
+abounds; every day they saw natives on the shores who generally fled at
+their approach, but were often prevailed upon to return and to converse
+with the natives on board the Admiral's ship, and to receive presents and
+bring parrots and bits of gold in exchange.  On one day a party of men
+foraging ashore saw a beautiful young girl, who fled at their approach;
+and they chased her a long way through the woods, finally capturing her
+and bringing her on board.  Columbus "caused her to be clothed"--
+doubtless a diverting occupation for Rodrigo, Juan, Garcia, Pedro,
+William, and the rest of them, although for the poor, shy, trembling
+captive not diverting at all--and sent her ashore again loaded with beads
+and brass rings--to act as a decoy.  Having sown this good seed the
+Admiral waited for a night, and then sent a party of men ashore, "well
+prepared with arms and adapted for such an affair," to have some
+conversation with the people.  The innocent harvest was duly reaped; the
+natives met the Spaniards with gifts of food and drink, and understanding
+that the Admiral would like to have a parrot, they sent as many parrots
+as were wanted.  The husband of the girl who had been captured and
+clothed came back with her to the shore with a large body of natives,
+in order to thank the Admiral for his kindness and clemency; and their
+confidence was not misplaced, as the Admiral did not at that moment wish
+to do any more kidnapping.  The Spaniards were more and more amazed and
+impressed with the beauty and fertility of these islands.  The lands were
+more lovely than the finest land in Castile; the rivers were large and
+wide, the trees green and full of fruit, the grasses knee-deep and
+starred with flowers; the birds sang sweetly all night; there were mastic
+trees and aloes and plantations of cotton.  There was fishing in plenty;
+and if there were not any gold mines immediately at hand, they here sure
+to be round the next headland or, at the farthest, in the next island.
+The people, too, charmed and delighted the Admiral, who saw in them a
+future glorious army of souls converted to the Christian religion.  They
+were taller and handsomer than the inhabitants of the other islands, and
+the women much fairer; indeed, if they had not been so much exposed to
+the sun, and if they could only be clothed in the decent garments of
+civilisation, the Admiral thought that their skins would be as white as
+those of the women of Spain--which was only another argument for bringing
+them within the fold of the Holy Catholic Church.  The men were powerful
+and apparently harmless; they showed no truculent or suspicious spirit;
+they had no knowledge of arms; a thousand of them would not face three
+Christians; and
+
+     "so they are suitable to be governed and made to work and sow and do
+     everything else that shall be necessary, and to build villages and
+     be taught to wear clothing and observe our customs."
+
+At present, you see, they are but poor happy heathens, living in a
+paradise of their own, where the little birds sing all through the warm
+nights, and the rivers murmur through flowery meadows, and no one has any
+knowledge of arms or desire of such knowledge, and every one goes naked
+and unashamed.  High time, indeed, that they should be taught to wear
+clothing and observe our customs.
+
+
+The local chief came on a visit of state to the ship; and the Admiral
+paid him due honour, telling him that he came as an envoy from the
+greatest sovereigns in the world.  But this charming king, or cacique as
+they called him, would not believe this; he thought that Columbus was,
+for reasons of modesty, speaking less than the truth--a new charge to
+bring against our Christopher!  He believed that the Spaniards came from
+heaven, and that the realms of the sovereigns of Castile were in the
+heavens and not in this world.  He took some refreshment, as his
+councillors did also, little dreaming, poor wretches, what in after years
+was to come to them through all this palavering and exchanging of
+presents.  The immediate result of the interview, however, was to make
+intercourse with the natives much freer and pleasanter even than it had
+been before; and some of the sailors went fishing with the natives.
+It was then that they were shown some cane arrows with hardened points,
+which the natives said belonged to the people of 'Caniba', who, they
+alleged, came to the island to capture and eat the natives.  The Admiral
+did not believe it; his sublime habit of rejecting everything that did
+not fit in with his theory of the moment, and accepting everything that
+did, made him shake his head when this piece of news was brought to him.
+He could not get the Great Khan out of his head, and his present theory
+was that this island, being close to the mainland of Cathay, was visited
+by the armies of the Great Khan, and that it was his men who had used the
+arrows and made war upon the natives.  It was no good for the natives to
+show him some of their mutilated bodies, and to tell him that the
+cannibals ate them piecemeal; he had no use for such information.  His
+mind was like a sieve of which the size of the meshes could be adjusted
+at will; everything that was not germane to the idea of the moment fell
+through it, and only confirmative evidence remained; and at the moment he
+was not believing any stories which did not prove that the Great Khan
+was, so to speak, just round the corner.  If they talked about gold he
+would listen to them; and so the cacique brought him a piece of gold the
+size of his hand and, breaking it into pieces, gave it to him a bit at a
+time.  This the Admiral took to be sign of great intelligence.  They told
+him there was gold at Tortuga, but he preferred to believe that it came
+from Babeque, which may have been Jamaica and may have been nothing at
+all.
+
+But his theory was that it existed on Espanola only in small pieces
+because that country was so rich that the natives had no need for it;
+an economic theory which one grows dizzy in pondering.  At any rate
+"the Admiral believed that he was very near the fountainhead, and that
+Our Lord was about to show him where the gold originates."
+
+On Tuesday, December 18th, the ships were all dressed in honour of a
+religious anniversary, and the cacique, hearing the firing of the
+lombards with which the festival was greeted, came down to the shore to
+see what was the matter.  As Columbus was sitting at dinner on deck
+beneath the poop the cacique arrived with all his people; and the account
+of his visit is preserved in Columbus's own words.
+
+     "As he entered the ship he found that I was eating at the table
+     below the stern forecastle, and he came quickly to seat himself
+     beside me, and would not allow me to go to meet him or get up from
+     the table, but only that I should eat.  I thought that he would like
+     to eat some of our viands and I then ordered that things should be
+     brought him to eat.  And when he entered under the forecastle, he
+     signed with his hand that all his people should remain without, and
+     they did so with the greatest haste and respect in the world, and
+     all seated themselves on the deck, except two men of mature age whom
+     I took to be his counsellors and governors, and who came and seated
+     themselves at his feet: and of the viands which I placed before him
+     he took of each one as much as may be taken for a salutation, and
+     then he sent the rest to his people and they all ate some of it, and
+     he did the same with the drink, which he only touched to his mouth,
+     and then gave it to the others in the same way, and it was all done
+     in wonderful state and with very few words, and whatever he said,
+     according to what I was able to understand, was very formal and
+     prudent, and those two looked in his face and spoke for him and with
+     him, and with great respect.
+
+     "After eating, a page brought a belt which is like those of Castile
+     in shape, but of a different make, which he took and gave me, and
+     also two wrought pieces of gold, which were very thin, as I believe
+     they obtain very little of it here, although I consider they are
+     very near the place where it has its home, and that there is a great
+     deal of it.  I saw that a drapery that I had upon my bed pleased
+     him.  I gave it to him, and some very good amber beads which I wore
+     around my neck and some red shoes and a flask of orange-flower
+     water, with which he was so pleased it was wonderful; and he and his
+     governor and counsellors were very sorry that they did not
+     understand me, nor I them.  Nevertheless I understood that he told
+     me that if anything from here would satisfy me that all the island
+     was at my command.  I sent for some beads of mine, where as a sign I
+     have a 'excelente' of gold upon which the images of your Highnesses
+     are engraved, and showed it to him, and again told him the same as
+     yesterday, that your Highnesses command and rule over all the best
+     part of the world, and that there are no other such great Princes:
+     and I showed him the royal banners and the others with the cross,
+     which he held in great estimation: and he said to his counsellors
+     that your Highnesses must be great Lords, since you had sent me here
+     from so far without fear: and many other things happened which I did
+     not understand, except that I very well saw he considered everything
+     as very wonderful."
+
+Later in the day Columbus got into talk with an old man who told him that
+there was a great quantity of gold to be found on some island about a
+hundred leagues away; that there was one island that was all gold; and
+that in the others there was such a quantity that they natives gathered
+it and sifted it with sieves and made it into bars.  The old man pointed
+out vaguely the direction in which this wonderful country lay; and if he
+had not been one of the principal persons belonging to the King Columbus
+would have detained him and taken him with him; but he decided that he
+had paid the cacique too much respect to make it right that he should
+kidnap one of his retinue.  He determined, however, to go and look for
+the gold.  Before he left he had a great cross erected in the middle of
+the Indian village; and as he made sail out of the harbour that evening
+he could see the Indians kneeling round the cross and adoring it.  He
+sailed eastward, anchoring for a day in the Bay of Acul, which he called
+Cabo de Caribata, receiving something like an ovation from the natives,
+and making them presents and behaving very graciously and kindly to them.
+
+It was at this time that Columbus made the acquaintance of a man whose
+character shines like a jewel amid the dismal scenes that afterwards
+accompanied the first bursting of the wave of civilisation on these happy
+shores.  This was the king of that part of the island, a young man named
+Guacanagari.  This king sent out a large canoe full of people to the
+Admiral's ship, with a request that Columbus would land in his country,
+and a promise that the chief would give him whatever he had.  There
+must have been an Intelligence Department in the island, for the chief
+seemed to know what would be most likely to attract the Admiral; and with
+his messengers he sent out a belt with a large golden mask attached to
+it.  Unfortunately the natives on board the Admiral's ship could not
+understand Guacanagari's messengers, and nearly the whole of the day was
+passed in talking before the sense of their message was finally made out
+by means of signs.  In the evening some Spaniards were sent ashore to see
+if they could not get some gold; but Columbus, who had evidently had some
+recent experience of their avariciousness, and who was anxious to keep on
+good terms with the chiefs of the island, sent his secretary with them to
+see that they did nothing unjust or unreasonable.  He was scrupulous to
+see that the natives got their bits of glass and beads in exchange for
+the gold; and it is due to him to remember that now, as always, he was
+rigid in regulating his conduct with other men in accordance with his
+ideas of justice and honour, however elastic those ideas may seem to have
+been.  The ruffianly crew had in their minds only the immediate
+possession of what they could get from the Indians; the Admiral had in
+his mind the whole possession of the islands and the bodies and souls of
+its inhabitants.  If you take a piece of gold without giving a glass bead
+in exchange for it, it is called stealing; if you take a country and its
+inhabitants, and steal their peace from them, and give them blood and
+servitude in exchange for it, it is called colonisation and Empire-
+building.  Every one understands the distinction; but so few people see
+the difference that Columbus of all men may be excused for his
+unconsciousness of it.
+
+Indeed Columbus was seeing yellow at this point in his career.  The word
+"gold" is scattered throughout every page of his journal; he can
+understand nothing that the natives say to him except that there is a
+great quantity of gold somewhere about.  He is surrounded by natives
+pressing presents upon him, protesting their homage, and assuring him (so
+he thinks) that there are any amount of gold mines; and no wonder that
+the yellow light blinds his eyes and confounds his senses, and that
+sometimes, even when the sun has gone down and the natives have retired
+to their villages and he sits alone in the seclusion of his cabin, the
+glittering motes still dance before his eyes and he becomes mad, maudlin,
+ecstatic .  .  .  .  The light flickers in the lamp as the ship swings a
+little on the quiet tide and a night breeze steals through the cabin
+door; the sound of voices ashore sounds dimly across the water; the brain
+of the Admiral, overfilled with wonders and promises and hopes, sends its
+message to the trembling hand that holds the pen, and the incoherent
+words stream out on the ink.  "May our Lord in His mercy direct me until
+I find this gold, I say this Mine, because I have many people here who
+say that they know it."
+
+On Christmas Eve a serious misfortune befell Columbus.  What with looking
+for gold, and trying to understand the people who talked about it, and
+looking after his ships, and writing up his journal, he had had
+practically no sleep for two days and a night; and at eleven o'clock on
+the 24th of December, the night being fine and his ship sailing along the
+coast with a light land breeze, he decided to lie down to get some sleep.
+There were no difficulties in navigation to be feared, because the ship's
+boats had been rowed the day before a distance of about ten miles ahead
+on the course which they were then steering and had seen that there was
+open water all the way.  The wind fell calm; and the man at the helm,
+having nothing to do, and feeling sleepy, called a ship's boy to him,
+gave him the helm, and went off himself to lie down.  This of course was
+against all rules; but as the Admiral was in his cabin and there was no
+one to tell them otherwise the watch on deck thought it a very good
+opportunity to rest.  Suddenly the boy felt the rudder catch upon
+something, saw the ship swinging, and immediately afterwards heard the
+sound of tide ripples.  He cried out; and in a moment Columbus, who was
+sleeping the light sleep of an anxious shipmaster, came tumbling up to
+see what was the matter.  The current, which flows in that place at a
+speed of about two knots, had carried the ship on to a sand bank, but she
+touched so quietly that it was hardly felt.  Close on the heels of,
+Columbus came the master of the ship and the delinquent watch; and the
+Admiral immediately ordered them to launch the ship's boat--and lay out
+an anchor astern so that they could warp her off.  The wretches lowered
+the boat, but instead of getting the anchor on board rowed off in the
+direction of the Nina, which was lying a mile and a half to windward.
+As soon as Columbus saw what they were doing he ran to the side and,
+seeing that the tide was failing and that the ship had swung round across
+the bank, ordered the remainder of the crew to cut away the mainmast and
+throw the deck hamper overboard, in order to lighten the ship.  This took
+some time; the tide was falling, and the ship beginning to heel over on
+her beam; and by the time it was done the Admiral saw that it would be of
+no use, for the ship's seams had opened and she was filling.
+
+At this point the miserable crew in the ship's boat came back, the loyal
+people on the Nina having refused to receive them and sent them back to
+the assistance of the Admiral.  But it was now too late to do anything to
+save the ship; and as he did not know but that she might break up,
+Columbus decided to tranship the people to the Nina, who had by this time
+sent her own boat.  The whole company boarded the Nina, on which the
+Admiral beat about miserably till morning in the vicinity of his doomed
+ship.  Then he sent Diego de Arana, the brother of Beatriz and a trusty
+friend, ashore in a boat to beg the help of the King; and Guacanagari
+immediately sent his people with large canoes to unload the wrecked ship,
+which was done with great efficiency and despatch, and the whole of her
+cargo and fittings stored on shore under a guard.  And so farewell to the
+Santa Maria, whose bones were thenceforward to bleach upon the shores of
+Hayti, or incongruously adorn the dwellings of the natives.  She may have
+been "a bad sailer and unfit for discovery"; but no seaman looks without
+emotion upon the wreck of a ship whose stem has cut the waters of home,
+which has carried him safely over thousands of uncharted miles, and which
+has for so long been his shelter and sanctuary.
+
+
+At sunrise the kind-hearted cacique came down to the Nina, where Columbus
+had taken up his quarters, and with tears in his eyes begged the Admiral
+not to grieve at his losses, for that he, the cacique, would give him
+everything that he possessed; that he had already given two large houses
+to the Spaniards from the Santa Maria who had been obliged to encamp on
+shore, and that he would provide more accommodation and help if
+necessary.  In fact, the day which had been ushered in so disastrously
+turned into a very happy one; and before it was over Columbus had decided
+that, as he could not take the whole of his company home on the Nina, he
+would establish a settlement on shore so that the men who were left
+behind could collect gold and store it until more ships could be sent
+from Spain.  The natives came buzzing round anxious to barter whatever
+they had for hawks' bells, which apparently were the most popular of the
+toys that had been brought for bartering; "they shouted and showed the
+pieces of gold, saying chuq, chuq, for hawks' bells, as they are in a
+likely state to become crazy for them."  The cacique was delighted to see
+that the Admiral was pleased with the gold that was brought to him, and
+he cheered him up by telling him that there was any amount in Cibao,
+which Columbus of course took for Cipango.  The cacique entertained
+Columbus to a repast on shore, at which the monarch wore a shirt and a
+pair of gloves that Columbus had given him; "and he rejoiced more over
+the gloves than anything that had been given him."  Columbus was pleased
+with his clean and leisurely method of eating, and with his dainty
+rubbing of his hands with herbs after he had eaten.  After the repast
+Columbus gave a little demonstration of bow-and-arrow shooting and the
+firing of lombards and muskets, all of which astonished and impressed the
+natives.
+
+The afternoon was spent in deciding on a site for the fortress which was
+to be constructed; and Columbus had no difficulty in finding volunteers
+among the crews to remain in the settlement.  He promised to leave with
+them provisions of bread and wine for a year, a ship's boat, seeds for
+sowing crops, and a carpenter, a caulker, a gunner, and a cooper.  Before
+the day was out he was already figuring up the profit that would arise
+out of his misfortune of the day before; and he decided that it was the
+act of God which had cast his ship away in order that this settlement
+should be founded.  He hoped that the settlers would have a ton of gold
+ready for him when he came back from Castile, so that, as he had said in
+the glittering camp of Santa Fe, where perhaps no one paid very much heed
+to him, there might be such a profit as would provide for the conquest of
+Jerusalem and the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre.  After all, if he was
+greedy for gold, he had a pious purpose for its employment.
+
+
+The last days of the year were very busy ones for the members of the
+expedition.  Assisted by the natives they were building the fort which,
+in memory of the day on which it was founded, Columbus called La Villa-
+de la Navidad.  The Admiral spent much time with King Guacanagari, who
+"loved him so much that it was wonderful," and wished to cover him all
+over with gold before he went away, and begged him not to go before it
+was done.  On December 27th there was some good news; a caravel had been
+seen entering a harbour a little further along the coast; and as this
+could only mean that the Pinta had returned, Columbus borrowed a canoe
+from the king, and despatched a sailor in it to carry news of his
+whereabouts to the Pinta.  While it was away Guacanagari collected all
+the other kings and chiefs who were subject to him, and held a kind of
+durbar.  They all wore their crowns; and Guacanagari took off his crown
+and placed it on Columbus's head; and the Admiral, not to be outdone,
+took from his own neck "a collar of good bloodstones and very beautiful
+beads of fine colours; which appeared very good in all parts, and placed
+it upon the King; and he took off a cloak of fine scarlet cloth which he
+had put on that day, and clothed the King with it; and he sent for some
+coloured buskins which he made him put on, and placed upon his finger a
+large silver ring"--all of which gives us a picturesque glimpse into the
+contents of the Admiral's wardrobe, and a very agreeable picture of King
+Guacanagari, whom we must now figure as clothed, in addition to his shirt
+and gloves, in a pair of coloured buskins, a collar of bloodstones, a
+scarlet cloak and a silver ring.
+
+But the time was running short; the Admiral, hampered as he was by the
+possession of only one small ship, had now but one idea, which was to get
+back to Castile as quickly as possible, report the result of his
+discoveries, and come back again with a larger and more efficient
+equipment.  Before he departed he had an affectionate leave-taking with
+King Guacanagari; he gave him another shirt, and also provided a
+demonstration of the effect of lombards by having one loaded, and firing
+at the old Santa Maria where she lay hove down on the sandbank.  The shot
+went clean through her hull and fell into the sea beyond, and produced
+what might be called a very strong moral effect, although an unnecessary
+one, on the natives.  He then set about the very delicate business of
+organising the settlement.  In all, forty-two men were to remain behind,
+with Diego de Arana in the responsible position of chief lieutenant,
+assisted by Pedro Gutierrez and Rodrigo de Escovedo, the nephew of Friar
+Juan Perez of La Rabida.  To these three he delegated all his powers and
+authority as Admiral and Viceroy; and then, having collected the
+colonists, gave them a solemn address.  First, he reminded them of the
+goodness of God to them, and advised them to remain worthy of it by
+obeying the Divine command in all their actions.  Second, he ordered
+them, as a representative of the Sovereigns of Spain, to obey the captain
+whom he had appointed for them as they would have obeyed himself.  Third,
+he urged them to show respect and reverence towards King Guacanagari and
+his chiefs, and to the inferior chiefs, and to avoid annoying them or
+tormenting them, since they were to remain in a land that was as yet
+under native dominion; to "strive and watch by their soft and honest
+speech to gain their good-will and keep their friendship and love, so
+that he should find them as friendly and favourable and more so when he
+returned."  Fourth, he commanded them "and begged them earnestly" to do
+no injury and use no force against any natives; to take nothing from them
+against their will; and especially to be on their guard to avoid injury
+or violence to the women, "by which they would cause scandal and set a
+bad example to the Indians and show the infamy of the Christians."
+Fifth, he charged them not to scatter themselves or leave the place where
+they then were, but to remain together until he returned.  Sixth, he
+"animated" them to suffer their solitude and exile cheerfully and
+bravely, since they had willingly chosen it.  The seventh order was, that
+they should get help from the King to send boat expeditions in search of
+the gold mines; and lastly, he promised that he would petition the
+Sovereigns to honour them with special favours and rewards.  To this very
+manly, wise and humane address the people listened with some emotion,
+assuring Columbus that they placed their hopes in him, "begging him
+earnestly to remember them always, and that as quickly as he could he
+should give them the great joy which they anticipated from his coming
+again."
+
+All of which things being done, the ships [ship--there was only the Nina]
+loaded and provisioned, and the Admiral's final directions given, he
+makes his farewells and weighs anchor at sunrise on Friday, January 4.,
+1493.  Among the little crowd on the shore who watch the Nina growing
+smaller in the distance are our old friends Allard and William, tired of
+the crazy confinement of a ship and anxious for shore adventures.  They
+are to have their fill of them, as it happens; adventures that are to
+bring to the settlers a sudden cloud of blood and darkness, and for the
+islanders a brief return to their ancient peace.  But death waits for
+Allard and William in the sunshine and silence of Espanola.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE VOYAGE HOME
+
+Columbus did not stand out to sea on his homeward course immediately, but
+still coasted along the shores of the island as though he were loth to
+leave it, and as though he might still at some bend of a bay or beyond
+some verdant headland come upon the mines and jewels that he longed for.
+The mountain that he passed soon after starting he called Monte Christi,
+which name it bears to this day; and he saw many other mountains and
+capes and bays, to all of which he gave names.  And it was a fortunate
+chance which led him thus to stand along the coast of the island; for on
+January 6th the sailor who was at the masthead, looking into the clear
+water for shoals and rocks, reported that he saw the caravel Pinta right
+ahead.  When she came up with him, as they were in very shallow water not
+suitable for anchorage, Columbus returned to the bay of Monte Christi to
+anchor there.  Presently Martin Alonso Pinzon came on board to report
+himself--a somewhat crestfallen Martin, we may be sure, for he had failed
+to find the gold the hope of which had led him to break his honour as a
+seaman.  But the Martin Alonsos of this world, however sorry their
+position may be, will always find some kind of justification for it.  It
+must have been a trying moment for Martin Alonso as his boat from the
+Pinta drew near the Nina, and he saw the stalwart commanding figure of
+the white-haired Admiral walking the poop.  He knew very well that
+according to the law and custom of the sea Columbus would have been well
+within his right in shooting him or hanging him on the spot; but Martin
+puts on a bold face as, with a cold dread at his heart and (as likely as
+not) an ingratiating smile upon his face he comes up over the side.
+Perhaps, being in some ways a cleverer man than Christopher, he knew the
+Admiral's weak points; knew that he was kind-hearted, and would remember
+those days of preparation at Palos when Martin Alonso had been his
+principal stay and help.  Martin's story was that he had been separated
+from the Admiral against his will; that the crew insisted upon it, and
+that in any case they had only meant to go and find some gold and bring
+it back to the Admiral.  Columbus did not believe him for a moment, but
+either his wisdom or his weakness prevented him from saying so.  He
+reproached Martin Alonso for acting with pride and covetousness "that
+night when he went away and left him"; and Columbus could not think "from
+whence had come the haughty actions and dishonesty Martin had shown
+towards him on that voyage."  Martin had done a good trade and had got a
+certain amount of gold; and no doubt he knew well in what direction to
+turn the conversation when it was becoming unpleasant to himself.  He
+told Columbus of an island to the south of Juana--[Cuba]-- called
+Yamaye,--[Jamaica]-- where pieces of gold were taken from the mines as
+large as kernels of wheat, and of another island towards the east which
+was inhabited only by women.
+
+The unpleasantness was passed over as soon as possible, although the
+Admiral felt that the sooner he got home the better, since he was
+practically at the mercy of the Pinzon brothers and their following from
+Palos.  He therefore had the Pinta beached and recaulked and took in wood
+and water, and continued his voyage on Tuesday, January 8th.  He says
+that "this night in the name of our Lord he will start on his journey
+without delaying himself further for any matter, since he had found what
+he had sought, and he did not wish to have more trouble with that Martin
+Alonso until their Highnesses learned the news of the voyage and what he
+has done."  After that it will be another matter, and his turn will come;
+for then, he says, "I will not suffer the bad deeds of persons without
+virtue, who, with little respect, presume to carry out their own wills in
+opposition to those who did them honour."  Indeed, for several days, the
+name of "that Martin Alonso" takes the place of gold in Columbus's
+Journal.  There were all kinds of gossip about the ill deeds of Martin
+Alonso, who had taken four Indian men and two young girls by force; the
+Admiral releasing them immediately and sending them back to their homes.
+Martin Alonso, moreover, had made a rule that half the gold that was
+found was to be kept by himself; and he tried to get all the people of
+his ship to swear that he had been trading for only six days, but "his
+wickedness was so public that he could not hide it."  It was a good thing
+that Columbus had his journal to talk to, for he worked off a deal of
+bitterness in it.  On Sunday, January 13th, when he had sent a boat
+ashore to collect some "ajes" or potatoes, a party of natives with their
+faces painted and with the plumes of parrots in their hair came and
+attacked the party from the boat; but on getting a slash or two with a
+cutlass they took to flight and escaped from the anger of the Spaniards.
+Columbus thought that they were cannibals or caribs, and would like to
+have taken some of them, but they did not come back, although afterwards
+he collected four youths who came out to the caravel with cotton and
+arrows.
+
+Columbus was very curious about the island of Matinino,--[Martinique]--
+which was the one said to be inhabited only by women, and he wished very
+much to go there; but the caravels were leaking badly, the crews were
+complaining, and he was reluctantly compelled to shape his course for
+Spain.  He sailed to the north-east, being anxious apparently to get into
+the region of westerly winds which he correctly guessed would be found to
+the north of the course he had sailed on his outward voyage.  By the 17th
+of January he was in the vicinity of the Sargasso Sea again, which this
+time had no terrors for him.  From his journal the word "gold" suddenly
+disappears; the Viceroy and Governor-General steps off the stage; and in
+his place appears the sea captain, watching the frigate birds and
+pelicans, noting the golden gulf-weed in the sea, and smelling the
+breezes that are once more as sweet as the breezes of Seville in May.  He
+had a good deal of trouble with his dead-reckoning at this time, owing to
+the changing winds and currents; but he made always from fifty to seventy
+miles a day in a direction between north-by-east and north-north-east.
+The Pinta was not sailing well, and he often had to wait for her to come
+up with him; and he reflected in his journal that if Martin Alonso Pinzon
+had taken as much pains to provide himself with a good mast in the Indies
+as he had to separate himself from the Admiral, the Pinta would have
+sailed better.
+
+And so he went on for several days, with the wind veering always south
+and south-west, and pointing pretty steadily to the north-east.  On
+February 4th he changed his course, and went as near due east as he
+could.  They now began to find themselves in considerable doubt as to
+their position.  The Admiral said he was seventy-five leagues to the
+south of Flores; Vincenti Pinzon and the pilots thought that they had
+passed the Azores and were in the neighbourhood of Madeira.  In other
+words, there was a difference of 600 miles between their estimates,
+and the Admiral remarks that "the grace of God permitting, as soon as
+land is seen, it will be known who has calculated the surest."
+
+A great quantity of birds that began to fly about the ship made him think
+that they were near land, but they turned out to be the harbingers of a
+storm.  On Tuesday, February 12th, the sea and wind began to rise, and it
+continued to blow harder throughout that night and the next day.  The
+wind being aft he went under bare poles most of the night, and when day
+came hoisted a little sail; but the sea was terrible, and if he had not
+been so sure of the staunch little Nina he would have felt himself in
+danger of being lost.  The next day the sea, instead of going down,
+increased in roughness; there was a heavy cross sea which kept breaking
+right over the ship, and it became necessary to make a little sail in
+order to run before the wind, and to prevent the vessel falling back into
+the trough of the seas.  All through Thursday he ran thus under the half
+hoisted staysail, and he could see the Pinta running also before the
+wind, although since she presented more surface, and was able to carry a
+little more sail than the Nina, she was soon lost to sight.  The Admiral
+showed lights through the night, and this time there was no lack of
+response from Martin Alonso; and for some part of that dark and stormy
+night these two humanly freighted scraps of wood and cordage staggered
+through the gale showing lights to each other; until at last the light
+from the Pinta disappeared.  When morning came she was no longer to be
+seen; and the wind and the sea had if anything increased.  The Nina was
+now in the greatest danger.  Any one wave of the heavy cross sea, if it
+had broken fairly across her, would have sunk her; and she went swinging
+and staggering down into the great valleys and up into the hills, the
+steersman's heart in his mouth, and the whole crew in an extremity of
+fear.  Columbus, who generally relied upon his seamanship, here invoked
+external aid, and began to offer bargains to the Almighty.  He ordered
+that lots should be cast, and that he upon whom the lot fell should make
+a vow to go on pilgrimage to Santa Maria de Guadaloupe carrying a white
+candle of five pounds weight.  Same dried peas were brought, one for
+every member of the crew, and on one of them a cross was marked with a
+knife; the peas were well shaken and were put into a cap.  The first to
+draw was the Admiral; he drew the marked pea, and he made the vow.  Lots
+were again drawn, this time for a greater pilgrimage to Santa Maria de
+Loretto in Ancona; and the lot fell on a seaman named Pedro de Villa,--
+the expenses of whose pilgrimage Columbus promised to pay.  Again lots
+were drawn for a pilgrimage to the shrine of Santa Clara of Moguer, the
+pilgrim to watch and pray for one night there; and again the lot fell on
+Columbus.  In addition to these, every one, since they took themselves
+for lost, made some special and private vow or bargain with God; and
+finally they all made a vow together that at the first land they reached
+they would go in procession in their shirts to pray at an altar of Our
+Lady.
+
+The scene thus conjured up is one peculiar to the time and condition of
+these people, and is eloquent and pathetic enough: the little ship
+staggering and bounding along before the wind, and the frightened crew,
+who had gone through so many other dangers, huddled together under the
+forecastle, drawing peas out of a cap, crossing themselves, making vows
+upon their knees, and seeking to hire the protection of the Virgin by
+their offers of candles and pilgrimages.  Poor Christopher, standing in
+his drenched oilskins and clinging to a piece of rigging, had his own
+searching of heart and examining of conscience.  He was aware of the
+feverish anxiety and impatience that he felt, now that he had been
+successful in discovering a New World, to bring home the news and fruits
+of it; his desire to prove true what he had promised was so great that,
+in his own graphic phrase, "it seemed to him that every gnat could
+disturb and impede it"; and he attributed this anxiety to his lack of
+faith in God.  He comforted himself, like Robinson Crusoe in a similar
+extremity, by considering on the other hand what favours God had shown
+him, and by remembering that it was to the glory of God that the fruits
+of his discovery were to be dedicated.  But in the meantime here he was
+in a ship insufficiently ballasted (for she was now practically empty of
+provisions, and they had found it necessary to fill the wine and water
+casks with salt water in order to trim her) and flying before a tempest
+such as he had never experienced in his life.  As a last resource, and in
+order to give his wonderful news a chance of reaching Spain in case the
+ship were lost, he went into his cabin and somehow or other managed to
+write on a piece of parchment a brief account of his discoveries, begging
+any one who might find it to carry it to the Spanish Sovereigns.  He tied
+up the parchment in a waxed cloth, and put it into a large barrel without
+any one seeing him, and then ordered the barrel to be thrown into the
+sea, which the crew took to be some pious act of sacrifice or devotion.
+Then he went back on deck and watched the last of the daylight going and
+the green seas swelling and thundering about his little ship, and thought
+anxiously of his two little boys at school in Cordova, and wondered what
+would become of them if he were lost.  The next morning the wind had
+changed a little, though it was still very high; but he was able to hoist
+up the bonnet or topsail, and presently the sea began to go down a
+little.  When the sun rose they saw land to the east-north-east.  Some of
+them thought it was Madeira, others the rock of Cintra in Portugal; the
+pilots said it was the coast of Spain, the Admiral thought it was the
+Azores; but at any rate it was land of some kind.  The sun was shining
+upon it and upon the tumbling sea; and although the waves were still
+raging mast-high and the wind still blowing a hard gale, the miserable
+crew were able to hope that, having lived through the night, they could
+live through the day also.  They had to beat about to make the land,
+which was now ahead of them, now on the beam, and now astern; and
+although they had first sighted it at sunrise on Friday morning it was
+early on Monday morning, February 18th, before Columbus was able to cast
+anchor off the northern coast of an island which he discovered to be the
+island of Santa Maria in the Azores.  On this day Columbus found time to
+write a letter to Luis de Santangel, the royal Treasurer, giving a full
+account of his voyage and discoveries; which letter he kept and
+despatched on the 4th of March, after he had arrived in Lisbon.  Since it
+contained a postscript written at the last moment we shall read it at
+that stage of our narrative.  The inhabitants of Santa Maria received the
+voyagers with astonishment, for they believed that nothing could have
+lived through the tempest that had been raging for the last fortnight.
+They were greatly excited by the story of the discoveries; and the
+Admiral, who had now quite recovered command of himself, was able to
+pride himself on the truth of his dead-reckoning, which had proved to be
+so much more accurate than that of the pilots.
+
+On the Tuesday evening three men hailed them from the shore, and when
+they were brought off to the ship delivered a message from the Portuguese
+Governor of the island, Juan de Castaneda, to the effect that he knew the
+Admiral very well, and that he was delighted to hear of his wonderful
+voyage.  The next morning Columbus, remembering the vow that had been
+made in the storm, sent half the crew ashore in their shirts to a little
+hermitage, which was on the other side of a point a short distance away,
+and asked the Portuguese messenger to send a priest to say Mass for them.
+While the members of the crew were at their prayers, however, they
+received a rude surprise.  They were suddenly attacked by the islanders,
+who had come up on horses under the command of the treacherous Governor,
+and taken prisoners.  Columbus waited unsuspectingly for the boat to come
+back with them, in order that he and the other half of the crew could go
+and perform their vow.
+
+When the boat did not come back he began to fear that some accident must
+have happened to it, and getting his anchor up he set sail for the point
+beyond which the hermitage was situated.  No sooner had he rounded the
+point than he saw a band of horsemen, who dismounted, launched the boat
+which was drawn up on the beach, and began to row out, evidently with the
+intention of attacking the Admiral.  When they came up to the Nina the
+man in command of them rose and asked Columbus to assure him of personal
+safety; which assurance was wonderingly given; and the Admiral inquired
+how it was that none of his own people were in the boat?  Columbus
+suspected treachery and tried to meet it with treachery also,
+endeavouring with smooth words to get the captain to come on board so
+that he could seize him as a hostage.  But as the Portuguese would not
+come on board Columbus told them that they were acting very unwisely in
+affronting his people; that in the land of the Sovereigns of Castile the
+Portuguese were treated with great honour and security; that he held
+letters of recommendation from the Sovereigns addressed to every ruler in
+the world, and added that he was their Admiral of the Ocean Seas and
+Viceroy of the Indies, and could show the Portuguese his commission to
+that effect; and finally, that if his people were not returned to him, he
+would immediately make sail for Spain with the crew that was left to him
+and report this insult to the Spanish Sovereigns.  To all of which the
+Portuguese captain replied that he did not know any Sovereigns of
+Castile; that neither they nor their letters were of any account in that
+island; that they were not afraid of Columbus; and that they would have
+him know that he had Portugal to deal with--edging away in the boat at
+the same time to a convenient distance from the caravel.  When he thought
+he was out of gunshot he shouted to Columbus, ordering him to take his
+caravel back to the harbour by command of the Governor of the island.
+Columbus answered by calling his crew to witness that he pledged his word
+not to descend from or leave his caravel until he had taken a hundred
+Portuguese to Castile, and had depopulated all their islands.  After
+which explosion of words he returned to the harbour and anchored there,
+"as the weather and wind were very unfavourable for anything else."
+
+He was, however, in a very bad anchorage, with a rocky bottom which
+presently fouled his anchors; and on the Wednesday he had to make sail
+towards the island of San Miguel if order to try and find a better
+anchorage.
+
+But the wind and sea getting up again very badly he was obliged to beat
+about all night in a very unpleasant situation, with only three sailors
+who could be relied upon, and a rabble of gaol-birds and longshoremen who
+were of little use in a tempest but to draw lots and vow pilgrimages.
+Finding himself unable to make the island of San Miguel he decided to go
+back to Santa Maria and make an attempt to recover his boat and his crew
+and the anchor and cables he had lost there.
+
+In his Journal for this day, and amid all his anxieties, he found time to
+note down one of his curious visionary cosmographical reflections.  This
+return to a region of storms and heavy seas reminded him of the long
+months he had spent in the balmy weather and calm waters of his
+discovery; in which facts he found a confirmation of the theological idea
+that the Eden, or Paradise, of earth was "at the end of the Orient,
+because it is a most temperate place.  So that these lands which he had
+now discovered are at the end of the Orient."  Reflections such as these,
+which abound in his writings, ought in themselves to be a sufficient
+condemnation of those who have endeavoured to prove that Columbus was a
+man of profound cosmographical learning and of a scientific mind.  A man
+who would believe that he had discovered the Orient because in the place
+where he had been he had found calm weather, and because the theologians
+said that the Garden of Eden must be in the Orient since it is a
+temperate place, would believe anything.
+
+Late on Thursday night, when he anchored again in the harbour of San
+Lorenzo at Santa Maria, a man hailed them from the rocks, and asked them
+not to go away.  Presently a boat containing five sailors, two priests,
+and a notary put off from the beach; and they asked for a guarantee of
+security in order that they might treat with the Admiral.  They slept on
+board that night, and in the morning asked him to show them his authority
+from the Spanish Sovereigns, which the Admiral did, understanding that
+they had asked for this formality in order to save their dignity.  He
+showed them his general letter from the King and Queen of Spain,
+addressed to "Princes and Lords of High Degree"; and being satisfied with
+this they went ashore and released the Admiral's people, from whom he
+learned that what had been done had been done by command of the King of
+Portugal, and that he had issued an order to the Governors of all the
+Portuguese islands that if Columbus landed there on his way home he was
+to be taken prisoner.
+
+He sailed again on Sunday, February 24th, encountering heavy winds and
+seas, which troubled him greatly with fears lest some disaster should
+happen at the eleventh hour to interfere with his, triumph.  On Sunday,
+March 3rd, the wind rose to the force of a hurricane, and, on a sudden
+gust of violent wind splitting all the sails, the unhappy crew gathered
+together again and drew more lots and made more vows.  This time the
+pilgrimage was to be to the shrine of Santa Maria at Huelva, the pilgrim
+to go as before in his shirt; and the lot fell to the Admiral.  The rest
+of them made a vow to fast on the next Saturday on bread and water; but
+as they all thought it extremely unlikely that by that time they would be
+in need of any bodily sustenance the sacrifice could hardly have been a
+great one.  They scudded along under bare poles and in a heavy cross sea
+all that night; but at dawn on Monday they saw land ahead of them, which
+Columbus recognised as the rock of Cintra at Lisbon; and at Lisbon sure
+enough they landed some time during the morning.  As soon as they were
+inside the river the people came flocking down with stories of the gale
+and of all the wrecks that there had been on the coast.  Columbus hurried
+away from the excited crowds to write a letter to the King of Portugal,
+asking him for a safe conduct to Spain, and assuring him that he had come
+from the Indies, and not from any of the forbidden regions of Guinea.
+
+The next day brought a visit from no less a person than Bartholomew Diaz.
+Columbus had probably met him before in 1486, when Diaz had been a
+distinguished man and Columbus a man not distinguished; but now things
+were changed.  Diaz ordered Columbus to come on board his small vessel in
+order to go and report himself to the King's officers; but Columbus
+replied that he was the Admiral of the Sovereigns of Castile, "that he
+did not render such account to such persons," and that he declined to
+leave his ship.  Diaz then ordered him to send the captain of the Nina;
+but Columbus refused to send either the captain or any other person, and
+otherwise gave himself airs as the Admiral of the Ocean Seas.  Diaz then
+moderated his requests, and merely asked Columbus to show him his letter
+of authority, which Columbus did; and then Diaz went away and brought
+back with him the captain of the Portuguese royal yacht, who came in
+great state on board the shabby little Nina, with kettle-drums and
+trumpets and pipes, and placed himself at the disposal of Columbus.  It
+is a curious moment, this, in which the two great discoverers of their
+time, Diaz and Columbus, meet for an hour on the deck of a forty-ton
+caravel; a curious thing to consider that they who had performed such
+great feats of skill and bravery, one to discover the southernmost point
+of the old world and the other to voyage across an uncharted ocean to the
+discovery of an entirely new world, could find nothing better to talk
+about than their respective ranks and glories; and found no more
+interesting subject of discussion than the exact amount of state and
+privilege which should be accorded to each.
+
+
+During the day or two in which Columbus waited in the port crowds of
+people came down from Lisbon to see the little Nina, which was an object
+of much admiration and astonishment; to see the Indians also, at whom
+they greatly marvelled.  It was probably at this time that the letter
+addressed to Luis de Santangel, containing the first official account of
+the voyage, was despatched.
+
+                                   *
+                                 *****
+                                   *
+                                   *
+
+     "Sir: As I am sure you will be pleased at the great victory which
+     the Lord has given me in my voyage, I write this to inform you that
+     in twenty' days I arrived in the Indies with the squadron which
+     their Majesties had placed under my command.  There I discovered
+     many islands, inhabited by a numerous population, and took
+     possession of them for their Highnesses, with public ceremony and
+     the royal flag displayed, without molestation.
+
+     "The first that I discovered I named San Salvador, in remembrance of
+     that Almighty Power which had so miraculously bestowed them.  The
+     Indians call it Guanahani.  To the second I assigned the name of
+     Santa Marie de Conception; to the third that of Fernandina; to the
+     fourth that of Isabella; to the fifth Juana; and so on, to every one
+     a new name.
+
+     "When I arrived at Juana, I followed the coast to the westward, and
+     found it so extensive that I considered it must be a continent and a
+     province of Cathay.  And as I found no towns or villages by the
+     seaside, excepting some small settlements, with the people of which
+     I could not communicate because they all ran away, I continued my
+     course to the westward, thinking I should not fail to find some
+     large town and cities.  After having coasted many leagues without
+     finding any signs of them, and seeing that the coast took me to the
+     northward, where I did not wish to go, as the winter was already set
+     in, I considered it best to follow the coast to the south and the
+     wind being also scant, I determined to lose no more time, and
+     therefore returned to a certain port, from whence I sent two
+     messengers into the country to ascertain whether there was any king
+     there or any large city.
+
+     "They travelled for three days, finding an infinite number of small
+     settlements and an innumerable population, but nothing like a city:
+     on which account--they returned.  I had tolerably well ascertained
+     from some Indians whom I had taken that this land was only an
+     island, so I followed the coast of it to the east 107 leagues, to
+     its termination.  And about eighteen leagues from this cape, to the
+     east, there was another island, to which I shortly gave the name of
+     Espanola.  I went to it, and followed the north coast of it, as I
+     had done that of Juana, for 178--[should be 188]-- long leagues due
+     east.
+
+     "This island is very fertile, as well, indeed, as all the rest.  It
+     possesses numerous harbours, far superior to any I know in Europe,
+     and what is remarkable, plenty of large inlets.  The land is high,
+     and contains many lofty ridges and some very high mountains, without
+     comparison of the island of Centrefrey;--[Tenerife]-- all of them
+     very handsome and of different forms; all of them accessible and
+     abounding in trees of a thousand kinds, high, and appearing as if
+     they would reach the skies.  And I am assured that the latter never
+     lose their fresh foliage, as far as I can understand, for I saw them
+     as fresh and flourishing as those of Spain in the month of May.
+     Some were in blossom, some bearing fruit, and others in other
+     states, according to their nature.
+
+     "The nightingale and a thousand kinds of birds enliven the woods
+     with their song, in the month of November, wherever I went.  There
+     are seven or eight kinds of palms, of various elegant forms, besides
+     various other trees, fruits, and herbs.  The pines of this island .
+     are magnificent.  It has also extensive plains, honey, and a great
+     variety of birds and fruits.  It has many metal mines, and a
+     population innumerable.
+
+     "Espanola is a wonderful island, with mountains, groves, plains, and
+     the country generally beautiful and rich for planting and sowing,
+     for rearing sheep and cattle of all kinds, and ready for towns and
+     cities.  The harbours must be seen to be appreciated; rivers are
+     plentiful and large and of excellent water; the greater part of them
+     contain gold.  There is a great difference between the trees,
+     fruits, and herbs of this island and those of Juana.  In this island
+     there are many spices, and large mines of gold and other metals.
+
+     "The people of this island and of all the others which I have
+     discovered or heard of, both men and women, go naked as they were
+     born, although some of the women wear leaves of herbs or a cotton
+     covering made on purpose.  They have no iron or steel, nor any
+     weapons; not that they are not a well-disposed people and of fine
+     stature, but they are timid to a degree.  They have no other arms
+     excepting spears made of cane, to which they fix at the end a sharp
+     piece of wood, and then dare not use even these.  Frequently I had
+     occasion to send two or three of my men onshore to some settlement
+     for information, where there would be multitudes of them; and as
+     soon as they saw our people they would run away every soul, the
+     father leaving his child; and this was not because any one had done
+     them harm, for rather at every cape where I had landed and been able
+     to communicate with them I have made them presents of cloth and many
+     other things without receiving anything in return; but because they
+     are so timid.  Certainly, where they have confidence and forget
+     their fears, they are so open-hearted and liberal with all they
+     possess that it is scarcely to be believed without seeing it.  If
+     anything that they have is asked of them they never deny it; on the
+     contrary, they will offer it.  Their generosity is so great that
+     they would give anything, whether it is costly or not, for anything
+     of every kind that is offered them and be contented with it.  I was
+     obliged to prevent such worth less things being given them as pieces
+     of broken basins, broken glass, and bits of shoe-latchets, although
+     when they obtained them they esteemed them as if they had been the
+     greatest of treasures.  One of the seamen for a latchet received a
+     piece of gold weighing two dollars and a half, and others, for other
+     things of much less value, obtained more.  Again, for new silver
+     coin they would give everything they possessed, whether it was worth
+     two or three doubloons or one or two balls of cotton.  Even for
+     pieces of broken pipe-tubes they would take them and give anything
+     for them, until, when I thought it wrong, I prevented it.  And I
+     made them presents of thousands of things which I had, that I might
+     win their esteem, and also that they might be made good Christians
+     and be disposed to the service of Your Majesties and the whole
+     Spanish nation, and help us to obtain the things which we require
+     and of which there is abundance in their country.
+
+     "And these people appear to have neither religion nor idolatry,
+     except that they believe that good and evil come from the skies; and
+     they firmly believed that our ships and their crews, with myself,
+     came from the skies, and with this persuasion,--after having lost
+     their fears, they always received us.  And yet this does not proceed
+     from ignorance, for they are very ingenious, and some of them
+     navigate their seas in a wonderful manner and give good account of
+     things, but because they never saw people dressed or ships like
+     ours.
+
+     "And as soon as I arrived in the Indies, at the first island at
+     which I touched, I captured some of them, that we might learn from
+     them and obtain intelligence of what there was in those parts.  And
+     as soon as we understood each other they were of great service to
+     us; but yet, from frequent conversation which I had with them, they
+     still believe we came from the skies.  These were the first to
+     express that idea, and others ran from house to house, and to the
+     neighbouring villages, crying out, "Come and see the people from the
+     skies."  And thus all of them, men and women, after satisfying
+     themselves of their safety, came to us without reserve, great and
+     small, bringing us something to eat and drink, and which they gave
+     to us most affectionately.
+
+     "They have many canoes in those islands propelled by oars, some of
+     them large and others small, and many of them with eight or ten
+     paddles of a side, not very wide, but all of one trunk, and a boat
+     cannot keep way with them by oars, for they are incredibly fast; and
+     with these they navigate all the islands, which are innumerable, and
+     obtain their articles of traffic.  I have seen some of these canoes
+     with sixty or eighty men in them, and each with a paddle.
+
+     "Among the islands I did not find much diversity of formation in the
+     people, nor in their customs, nor their language.  They all
+     understand each other, which is remarkable; and I trust Your
+     Highnesses will determine on their being converted to our faith, for
+     which they are very well disposed.
+
+     "I have already said that I went 107 leagues along the coast of
+     Juana, from east to west.  Thus, according to my track, it is larger
+     than England and Scotland together, for, besides these 107 leagues,
+     there were further west two provinces to which I did not go, one of
+     which is called Cibau, the people of which are born with tails;
+     which provinces must be about fifty or sixty leagues long, according
+     to what I can make out from the Indians I have with me, who know all
+     the islands.  The other island (Espanola) is larger in circuit than
+     the whole of Spain, from the Straits of Gibralter (the Columns) to
+     Fuentarabia in Biscay, as I sailed 138 long leagues in a direct line
+     from west to east.  Once known it must be desired, and once seen one
+     desires never to leave it; and which, being taken possession of for
+     their Highnesses, and the people being at present in a condition
+     lower than I can possibly describe, the Sovereigns of Castile may
+     dispose of it in any manner they please in the most convenient
+     places.  In this Espanola, and in the best district, where are gold
+     mines, and, on the other side, from thence to terra firma, as well
+     as from thence to the Great Khan, where everything is on a splendid
+     scale--I have taken possession of a large town, to which I gave the
+     name of La Navidad, and have built a fort in it, in every respect
+     complete.  And I have left sufficient people in it to take care of
+     it, with artillery and provisions for more than a year; also a boat
+     and coxswain with the equipments, in complete friendship with the
+     King of the islands, to that degree that he delighted to call me and
+     look on me as his brother.  And should they fall out with these
+     people, neither he nor his subjects know anything of weapons, and go
+     naked, as I have said, and they are the most timorous people in the
+     world.  The few people left there are sufficient to conquer the
+     country, and the island would thus remain without danger to them,
+     they keeping order among themselves.
+
+     "In all these islands it appeared to me the men are contented with
+     one wife, but to their governor or king they allow twenty.  The
+     women seem to work more than the men.  I have not been able to
+     discover whether they respect personal property, for it appeared to
+     me things were common to all, especially in the particular of
+     provisions.  Hitherto I have not seen in any of these islands any
+     monsters, as there were supposed to be; the people, on the contrary,
+     are generally well formed, nor are they black like those of the
+     Guinea, saving their hair, and they do not reside in places exposed
+     to the sun's rays.  It is true that the sun is most powerful there,
+     and it is only twenty-six degrees from the equator.  In this last
+     winter those islands which were mountainous were cold, but they were
+     accustomed to it, with good food and plenty of spices and hot
+     nutriment.  Thus I have found no monsters nor heard of any, except
+     at an island which is the second in going to the Indies, and which
+     is inhabited by a people who are considered in all the islands as
+     ferocious, and who devour human flesh.  These people have many
+     canoes, which scour all the islands of India, and plunder all they
+     can.  They are not worse formed than the others, but they wear the
+     hair long like women, and use bows and arrows of the same kind of
+     cane, pointed with a piece of hard wood instead of iron, of which
+     they have none.  They are fierce compared with the other people, who
+     are in general but sad cowards; but I do not consider them in any
+     other way superior to them.  These are they who trade in women, who
+     inhabit the first island met with in going from Spain to the Indies,
+     in which there are no men whatever.  They have no effeminate
+     exercise, but bows and arrows, as before said, of cane, with which
+     they arm themselves, and use shields of copper, of which they have
+     plenty.
+
+     "There is another island, I am told, larger than Espanola, the
+     natives of which have no hair.  In this there is gold without limit,
+     and of this and the others I have Indians with me to witness.
+
+     "In conclusion, referring only to what has been effected by this
+     voyage, which was made with so much haste, Your Highnesses may see
+     that I shall find as much gold as desired with the very little
+     assistance afforded to me; there is as much spice and cotton as can
+     be wished for, and also gum, which hitherto has only been found in
+     Greece, in the island of Chios, and they may sell it as they please,
+     and the mastich, as much as may be desired, and slaves, also, who
+     will be idolators.  And I believe that I have rhubarb, and cinnamon,
+     and a thousand other things I shall find, which will be discovered
+     by those whom I have left behind, for I did not stop at any cape
+     when the wind enabled me to navigate, except at the town of Navidad,
+     where I was very safe and well taken care of.  And in truth much
+     more I should have done if the ships had served me as might have
+     been expected.  This is certain, that the Eternal God our Lord gives
+     all things to those who obey Him, and the victory when it seems
+     impossible, and this, evidently, is an instance of it, for although
+     people have talked of these lands, all was conjecture unless proved
+     by seeing them, for the greater part listened and judged more by
+     hearsay than by anything else.
+
+     "Since, then, our Redeemer has given this victory to our illustrious
+     King and Queen and celebrated their reigns by such a great thing,
+     all Christendom should rejoice and make great festivals, and give
+     solemn thanks to the Blessed Trinity, with solemn praises for the
+     exaltation of so much people to our holy faith; and next for the
+     temporal blessings which not only Spain but they will enjoy in
+     becoming Christians, and which last may shortly be accomplished.
+
+     "Written in the caravel off Santa Maria; on the eighteenth of
+     February, ninety-three."
+
+The following postscript was added to the letter before it was
+despatched:
+
+     "After writing the above, being in the Castilian Sea (off the coast
+     of Castile), I experienced so severe a wind from south and south-
+     east that I have been obliged to run to-day into this port of
+     Lisbon, and only by a miracle got safely in, from whence I intended
+     to write to Your Highnesses.  In all parts of the Indies I have
+     found the weather like that of May, where I went in ninety-three
+     days, and returned in seventy-eight, saving these thirteen days of
+     bad weather that I have been detained beating about in this sea.
+     Every seaman here says that never was so severe a winter, nor such
+     loss of ships."
+
+
+On the Friday a messenger came from the King in the person of Don Martin
+de Noronha, a relative of Columbus by marriage, and one who had perhaps
+looked down upon him in the days when he attended the convent chapel at
+Lisbon, but who was now the bearer of a royal invitation and in the
+position of a mere envoy.  Columbus repaired to Paraiso where the King
+was, and where he was received with great honour.
+
+King John might well have been excused if he had felt some mortification
+at this glorious and successful termination of a project which had been
+offered to him and which he had rejected; but he evidently behaved with
+dignity and a good grace, and did everything that he could to help
+Columbus.  It was extremely unlikely that he had anything to do with the
+insult offered to Columbus at the Azores, for though he was bitterly
+disappointed that the glory of this discovery belonged to Spain and not
+to Portugal, he was too much of a man to show it in this petty and
+revengeful manner.  He offered to convey Columbus by land into Spain; but
+the Admiral, with a fine dramatic sense, preferred to arrive by sea on
+board of all that was left of the fleet with which he had sailed.  He
+sailed for Seville on Wednesday, March 13th, but during the next day,
+when he was off Cape Saint Vincent, he evidently changed his mind and
+decided to make for Palos.  Sunrise on Friday saw him off the bar of
+Saltes, with the white walls of La Rabida shining on the promontory among
+the dark fir-trees.  During the hours in which he stood off and on
+waiting for the tide he was able to recognise again all the old landmarks
+and the scenes which had been so familiar to him in those busy days of
+preparation nine months before; and at midday he sailed in with the flood
+tide and dropped his anchor again in the mud of the river by Palos.
+
+The caravel had been sighted some time before, probably when she was
+standing off, the bar waiting for the tide; she was flying the Admiral's
+flag and there was no mistaking her identity; and we can imagine the news
+spreading throughout the town of Palos, and reaching Huelva, and one by
+one the bells beginning to ring, and the places of business to be closed,
+and the people to come pouring out into the streets to be ready to greet
+their friends.  Some more impatient than the others would sail out in
+fishing-boats to get the first news; and I should be surprised to know
+that a boat did not put off from the little pier beneath La Rabida, to
+row round the point and out to where the Nina was lying--to beyond the
+Manto Bank.  When the flood began to make over the bar and to cover the
+long sandbank that stretches from the island of Saltes, the Nina came
+gliding in, greeted by every joyful sound and signal that the inhabitants
+of the two seaports could make.  Every one hurried down to Palos as the
+caravel rounded the Convent Point.  Hernando, Marchena, and good old Juan
+Perez were all there, we may be sure.  Such excitements, such triumphs as
+the bronzed, white-bearded Admiral steps ashore at last, and is seized by
+dozens of eager hands!  Such excitements as all the wives and inamoratas
+of the Rodrigos and Juans and Franciscos rush to meet the swarthy
+voyagers and cover them with embraces; such disappointments also, when it
+is realised that some two score of the company are still on a sunbaked
+island infinitely far over the western horizon.
+
+Tears of joy and grief, shouts and feastings, firing of guns and flying
+of flags, processions and receptions with these the deathless day is
+filled; and the little Nina, her purpose staunchly fulfilled, swings
+deserted on the turning tide, the ripples of her native Tinto making a
+familiar music under her bowsprit.
+
+
+And in the evening, with the last of the flood, another ship comes
+gliding round the point and up the estuary.  The inhabitants of Palos
+have all left the shore and are absorbed in the business of welcoming the
+great man; and there is no one left to notice or welcome the Pinta.  For
+it is she that, by a strange coincidence, and after many dangers and
+distresses endured since she had parted company from the Nina in the
+storm, now has made her native port on the very same day as the Nina.
+Our old friend Martin Alonso Pinzon is on board, all the fight and
+treachery gone out of him, and anxious only to get home unobserved.  For
+(according to the story) he had made the port of Bayona on the north-west
+coast of Spain, and had written a letter from there to the Sovereigns
+announcing his arrival and the discoveries that he had made; and it is
+said that he had received an unpleasant letter in return, reproaching him
+for not waiting for his commander and forbidding him to come to Court.
+This story is possible if his letter reached the Sovereigns after the
+letter from the Admiral; for it is probable that Columbus may have
+reported some of Martin's doings to them.
+
+Be that as it may, there are no flags and guns for him as he comes
+creeping in up the river; his one anxiety is to avoid the Admiral and to
+get home as quickly and quietly as he can.  For he is ill, poor Martin
+Alonso; whether from a broken heart, as the early historians say, or from
+pure chagrin and disappointment, or, as is more likely, from some illness
+contracted on the voyage, it is impossible to say.  He has endured his
+troubles and hardships like all the rest of them; no less skilfully than
+Columbus has he won through that terrible tempest of February; and his
+foolish and dishonest conduct has deprived him not only of the rewards
+that he tried to steal, but of those which would otherwise have been his
+by right.  He creeps quietly ashore and to his home, where at any rate we
+may hope that there is some welcome for him; takes to his bed, turns his
+face to the wall; and dies in a few days.  So farewell to Martin Alonso,
+who has borne us company thus far.  He did not fail in the great matters
+of pluck and endurance and nautical judgment, but only in the small
+matters of honesty and decent manly conduct.  We will not weep for Martin
+Alonso; we will make our farewells in silence, and leave his deathbed
+undisturbed by any more accusations or reproaches.
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+And every one goes naked and unashamed
+Began to offer bargains to the Almighty
+Believed that the Spaniards came from heaven
+Dogs wagged their tails, but that never barked
+First known discovery of tobacco by Europeans
+High time, indeed, that they should be taught to wear clothing
+Only confirmative evidence remained
+Saw potatoes also, although they did not know what they were
+Seeking to hire the protection of the Virgin
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of Christopher Columbus, v3
+by Filson Young
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                         CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS
+                   AND THE NEW WORLD OF HIS DISCOVERY
+
+                      A NARRATIVE BY FILSON YOUNG
+
+
+
+
+BOOK 4.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE HOUR OF TRIUMPH
+
+From the moment when Columbus set foot on Spanish soil in the spring of
+1493 he was surrounded by a fame and glory which, although they were
+transient, were of a splendour such as few other men can have ever
+experienced.  He had not merely discovered a country, he had discovered a
+world.  He had not merely made a profitable expedition; he had brought
+the promise of untold wealth to the kingdom of Spain.  He had not merely
+made himself the master of savage tribes; he had conquered the
+supernatural, and overcome for ever those powers of darkness that had
+been thought to brood over the vast Atlantic.  He had sailed away in
+obscurity, he had returned in fame; he had departed under a cloud of
+scepticism and ridicule, he had come again in power and glory.  He had
+sailed from Palos as a seeker after hidden wealth, hidden knowledge; he
+returned as teacher, discoverer, benefactor.  The whole of Spain rang
+with his fame, and the echoes of it spread to Portugal, France, England,
+Germany, and Italy; and it reached the ears of his own family, who had
+now left the Vico Dritto di Ponticello in Genoa and were living at
+Savona.
+
+His life ashore in the first weeks following his return was a succession
+of triumphs and ceremonials.  His first care on landing had been to go
+with the whole of his crew to the church of Saint George, where a Te Deum
+was sung in honour of his return; and afterwards to perform those vows
+that he had made at sea in the hour of danger.  There was a certain
+amount of business to transact at Palos in connection with the paying of
+the ships' crews, writing of reports to the Sovereigns, and so forth; and
+it is likely that he stayed with his friends at the monastery of La
+Rabida while this was being done.  The Court was at Barcelona; and it was
+probably only a sense of his own great dignity and importance that
+prevented Christopher from setting off on the long journey immediately.
+But he who had made so many pilgrimages to Court as a suitor could revel
+in a position that made it possible for him to hang back, and to be
+pressed and invited; and so when his business at Palos was finished he
+sent a messenger with his letters and reports to Barcelona, and himself,
+with his crew and his Indians and all his trophies, departed for Seville,
+where he arrived on Palm Sunday.
+
+His entrance into that city was only a foretaste of the glory in which he
+was to move across the whole of Spain.  He was met at the gates of the
+city by a squadron of cavalry commanded by an envoy sent by Queen
+Isabella; and a procession was formed of members of the crew carrying
+parrots, alive and stuffed, fruits, vegetables, and various other
+products of the New World.
+
+In a prominent place came the Indians, or rather four of them, for one
+had died on the day they entered Palos and three were too ill to leave
+that town; but the ones that took part in the procession got all the more
+attention and admiration.  The streets of Seville were crowded; crowded
+also were the windows, balconies, and roofs.  The Admiral was entertained
+at the house of the Count of Cifuentes, where his little museum of dead
+and live curiosities was also accommodated, and where certain favoured
+visitors were admitted to view it.  His two sons, Diego and Ferdinand,
+were sent from Cordova to join him; and perhaps he found time to visit
+Beatriz, although there is no record of his having been to Cordova or of
+her having come to Seville.
+
+
+Meanwhile his letters and messengers to the King and Queen had produced
+their due effect.  The almost incredible had come to pass, and they saw
+themselves the monarchs not merely of Spain, but of a new Empire that
+might be as vast as Europe and Africa together.  On the 30th of March
+they despatched a special messenger with a letter to Columbus, whose eyes
+must have sparkled and heart expanded when he read the superscription:
+"From the King and Queen to Don Christoval Colon, their Admiral of the
+Ocean Seas and Viceroy and Governor of the Islands discovered in the
+Indies."  No lack of titles and dignities now!  Their Majesties express a
+profound sense of his ability and distinction, of the greatness of his
+services to them, to the Church, and to God Himself.  They hope that he
+will lose no time, but repair to Barcelona immediately, so that they can
+have the pleasure of hearing from his own lips an account of his
+wonderful expedition, and of discussing with him the preparations that
+must immediately be set on foot to fit out a new one.  On receiving this
+letter Christopher immediately drew up a list of what he thought
+necessary for the new expedition and, collecting all his retinue and his
+museum of specimens, started by road for Barcelona.
+
+Every one in Spain had by this time heard more or less exaggerated
+accounts of the discoveries, and the excitement in the towns and villages
+through which he passed was extreme.  Wherever he went he was greeted and
+feasted like a king returning from victorious wars; the people lined the
+streets of the towns and villages, and hung out banners, and gazed their
+fill at the Indians and at the strange sun-burned faces of the crew.  At
+Barcelona, where they arrived towards the end of April, the climax of
+these glittering dignities was reached.  When the King and Queen heard
+that Columbus was approaching the town they had their throne prepared
+under a magnificent pavilion, and in the hot sunshine of that April day
+they sat and waited the--coming of the great man.  A glittering troop of
+cavalry had been sent out to meet him, and at the gates of the town a
+procession was formed similar to that at Seville.  He had now six natives
+with him, who occupied an important place in the procession; sailors
+also, who carried baskets of fruit and vegetables from Espanola, with
+stuffed birds and animals, and a monstrous lizard held aloft on a stick.
+The Indians were duly decked out in all their paint and feathers; but if
+they were a wonder and marvel to the people of Spain, what must Spain
+have been to them with its great buildings and cities, its carriages and
+horses, its glittering dresses and armours, its splendour and luxury!
+We have no record of what the Indians thought, only of what the crowd
+thought who gaped upon them and upon the gaudy parrots that screeched and
+fluttered also in the procession.  Columbus came riding on horseback, as
+befitted a great Admiral and Viceroy, surrounded by his pilots and
+principal officers; and followed by men bearing golden belts, golden
+masks, nuggets of gold and dust of gold, and preceded by heralds,
+pursuivants, and mace-bearers.
+
+What a return for the man who three years before had been pointed at and
+laughed to scorn in this same brilliant society!  The crowds pressed so
+closely that the procession could hardly get through the streets; the
+whole population was there to witness it; and the windows and balconies
+and roofs of the houses, as well as the streets themselves, were thronged
+with a gaily dressed and wildly excited crowd.  At length the procession
+reaches the presence of the King and Queen and, crowning and
+unprecedented honour!  as the Admiral comes before them Ferdinand and
+Isabella rise to greet him.  Under their own royal canopy a seat is
+waiting for him; and when he has made his ceremonial greeting he is
+invited to sit in their presence and give an account of his voyage.
+
+He is fully equal to the situation; settles down to do himself and his
+subject justice; begins, we may be sure, with a preamble about the
+providence of God and its wisdom and consistency in preserving the
+narrator and preparing his life for this great deed; putting in a deal of
+scientific talk which had in truth nothing to do with the event, but was
+always applied to it in Columbus's writings from this date onwards; and
+going on to describe the voyage, the sea of weeds, the landfall, his
+intercourse with the natives, their aptitude for labour and Christianity,
+and the hopes he has of their early conversion to the Catholic Church.
+And then follows a long description of the wonderful climate, "like May
+in Andalusia," the noble rivers, and gorgeous scenery, the trees and
+fruits and flowers and singing birds; the spices and the cotton; and
+chief of all, the vast stores of gold and pearls of which the Admiral had
+brought home specimens.  At various stages in his narrative he produces
+illustrations; now a root of rhubarb or allspice; now a raw nugget of
+gold; now a piece of gold laboured into a mask or belt; now a native
+decorated with the barbaric ornaments that were the fashion in Espanola.
+These things, says Columbus, are mere first-fruits of the harvest that is
+to come; the things which he, like the dove that had flown across the sea
+from the Ark and brought back an olive leaf in its mouth, has brought
+back across the stormy seas to that Ark of civilisation from which he had
+flown forth.
+
+It was to Columbus an opportunity of stretching his visionary wings and
+creating with pompous words and images a great halo round himself of
+dignity and wonder and divine distinction,--an opportunity such as he
+loved, and such as he never failed to make use of.
+
+The Sovereigns were delighted and profoundly impressed.  Columbus wound
+up his address with an eloquent peroration concerning the glory to
+Christendom of these new discoveries; and there followed an impressive
+silence, during which the Sovereigns sank on their knees and raised hands
+and tearful eyes to heaven, an example in which they were followed by the
+whole of the assembly; and an appropriate gesture enough, seeing what was
+to come of it all.  The choir of the Chapel Royal sang a solemn Te Deum
+on the spot; and the Sovereigns and nobles, bishops, archbishops,
+grandees, hidalgos, chamberlains, treasurers, chancellors and other
+courtiers, being exhausted by these emotions, retired to dinner.
+
+
+During his stay at Barcelona Columbus was the guest of the Cardinal-
+Archbishop of Toledo, and moved thus in an atmosphere of combined
+temporal and spiritual dignity such as his soul loved.  Very agreeable
+indeed to him was the honour shown to him at this time.  Deep down in his
+heart there was a secret nerve of pride and vanity which throughout his
+life hitherto had been continually mortified and wounded; but he was able
+now to indulge his appetite for outward pomp and honour as much as he
+pleased.  When King Ferdinand went out to ride Columbus would be seen
+riding on one side of him, the young Prince John riding on the other
+side; and everywhere, when he moved among the respectful and admiring
+throng, his grave face was seen to be wreathed in complacent smiles.  His
+hair, which had turned white soon after he was thirty, gave him a
+dignified and almost venerable appearance, although he was only in his
+forty-third year; and combined with his handsome and commanding presence
+to excite immense enthusiasm among the Spaniards.  They forgot for the
+moment what they had formerly remembered and were to remember again--that
+he was a foreigner, an Italian, a man of no family and of poor origin.
+They saw in him the figure-head of a new empire and a new glory, an
+emblem of power and riches, of the dominion which their proud souls
+loved; and so there beamed upon him the brief fickle sunshine of their
+smiles and favour, which he in his delusion regarded as an earnest of
+their permanent honour and esteem.
+
+It is almost always thus with a man not born to such dignities, and who
+comes by them through his own efforts and labours.  No one would grudge
+him the short-lived happiness of these summer weeks; but although he
+believed himself to be as happy as a man can be, he appears to quietly
+contemplating eyes less happy and fortunate than when he stood alone on
+the deck of his ship, surrounded by an untrustworthy crew, prevailing by
+his own unaided efforts over the difficulties and dangers with which he
+was surrounded.  Court functions and processions, and the companionship
+of kings and cardinals, are indeed no suitable reward for the kind of
+work that he did.  Courtly dignities are suited to courtly services; but
+they are no suitable crown for rough labour and hardship at sea, or for
+the fulfilment of a man's self by lights within him; no suitable crown
+for any solitary labour whatsoever, which must always be its own and only
+reward.
+
+
+It is to this period of splendour that the story of the egg, which is to
+some people the only familiar incident in Columbian biography, is
+attributed.  The story is that at a banquet given by the Cardinal-Arch
+bishop the conversation ran, as it always did in those days when he was
+present, on the subject of the Admiral's discoveries; and that one of the
+guests remarked that it was all very well for Columbus to have done what
+he did, but that in a country like Spain, where there were so many men
+learned in science and cosmography, and many able mariners besides, some
+one else would certainly have been found who would have done the same
+thing.  Whereupon Columbus, calling for an egg, laid a wager that none of
+the company but him self could make it stand on its end without support.
+The egg was brought and passed round, and every one tried to make it
+stand on end, but without success.  When it came to Columbus he cracked
+the shell at one end, making a flat surface on which the egg stood
+upright; thus demonstrating that a thing might be wonderful, not because
+it was difficult or impossible, but merely because no one had ever
+thought of doing it before.  A sufficiently inane story, and by no means
+certainly true; but there is enough character in this little feat,
+ponderous, deliberate, pompous, ostentatious, and at bottom a trick and
+deceitful quibble, to make it accord with the grandiloquent public manner
+of Columbus, and to make it easily believable of one who chose to show
+himself in his speech and writings so much more meanly and pretentiously
+than he showed himself in the true acts and business of his life.
+
+
+But pomp and parade were not the only occupation of these Barcelona days.
+There were long consultations with Ferdinand and Isabella about the
+colonisation of the new lands; there were intrigues, and parrying of
+intrigues, between the Spanish and Portuguese Courts on the subject of
+the discoveries and of the representative rights of the two nations to be
+the religious saviours of the New World.  The Pope, to whose hands the
+heathen were entrusted by God to be handed for an inheritance to the
+highest and most religious bidder, had at that time innocently divided
+them into two portions, to wit: heathen to the south of Spain and
+Portugal, and heathen to the west of those places.  By the Bull of 1438,
+granted by Pope Martin V., the heathen to the west had been given to the
+Spanish, and the heathen to the south to the Portuguese, and the two
+crowns had in 1479 come to a working agreement.  Now, however, the
+existence of more heathen to the west of the Azores introduced a new
+complication, and Ferdinand sent a message to Pope Alexander VI. praying
+for a confirmation of the Spanish title to the new discoveries.
+
+This Pope, who was a native of Aragon and had been a subject of
+Ferdinand, was a stolid, perverse, and stubborn being; so much is
+advertised in his low forehead, impudent prominent nose, thick sensual
+lips, and stout bull neck.  This Pope considers the matter; considers,
+by such lights as he has, to whom he shall entrust the souls of these new
+heathen; considers which country, Spain or Portugal, is most likely to
+hold and use the same for the increase of the Christian faith in general,
+the furtherance of the Holy Catholic Church in special, and the
+aggrandisement of Popes in particular; and shrewdly decides that the
+country in which the.  Inquisition can flourish is the country to whom
+the heathen souls should be entrusted.  He therefore issues a Bull, dated
+May 3, 1493, granting to the Spanish the possession of all lands, not
+occupied by Christian powers, that lie west of a meridian drawn one
+hundred leagues to the westward of the Azores, and to the Portuguese
+possession of all similar lands lying to the eastward of that line.  He
+sleeps upon this Bull, and has inspiration; and on the morrow, May 4th,
+issues another Bull, drawing a line from the arctic to the antarctic
+pole, and granting to Spain all heathen inheritance to the westward of
+the same.  The Pope, having signed this Bull, considers it further-
+assisted, no doubt, by the Portuguese Ambassador at the Vatican, to whom
+it has been shown; realises that in the wording of the Bull an injustice
+has been done to Portugal, since Spain is allowed to fix very much at her
+own convenience the point at which the line drawn from pole to pole shall
+cut the equator; and also because, although Spain is given all the lands
+in existence within her territory, Portugal is only given the lands which
+she may actually have occupied.  Even the legal mind of the Pope,
+although much drowsed and blunted by brutish excesses, discerns
+faultiness in this document; and consequently on the same day issues a
+third Bull, in which the injustice to Portugal is redressed.  Nothing so
+easy, thinks the Pope, as to issue Bulls; if you make a mistake in one
+Bull, issue another; and, having issued three Bulls in twenty-four hours,
+he desists for the present, having divided the earthly globe.
+
+Thus easy it is for a Pope to draw lines from pole to pole, and across
+the deep of the sea.  Yet the poles sleep still in their icy virginal
+sanctity, and the blue waves through which that papal line passes shift
+and shimmer and roll in their free salt loneliness, unaffected by his
+demarcation; the heathen also, it appears, since that distant day, have
+had something to say to their disposition.  If he had slept upon it
+another night, poor Pope, it might have occurred to him that west and
+east might meet on a meridian situated elsewhere on the globe than one
+hundred miles west of the Azores; and that the Portuguese, who for the
+moment had nothing heathen except Africa left to them, might according to
+his demarcation strike a still richer vein of heathendom than that
+granted to Spain.  But the holy Pontiff, bull neck, low forehead,
+impudent prominent nose, and sensual lips notwithstanding, is exhausted
+by his cosmographical efforts, and he lets it rest at that.  Later, when
+Spain discovers that her privileges have been abated, he will have to
+issue another Bull; but not to-day.  Sufficient unto the day are the
+Bulls thereof.  For the moment King proposes and Pope disposes; but the
+matter lies ultimately in the hands of the two eternal protagonists, man
+and God.
+
+
+In the meantime here are six heathen alive and well, or at any rate well
+enough to support, willy-nilly, the rite of holy baptism.  They must have
+been sufficiently dazed and bewildered by all that had happened to them
+since they were taken on board the Admiral's ship, and God alone knows
+what they thought of it all, or whether they thought anything more than
+the parrots that screamed and fluttered and winked circular eyes in the
+procession with them.  Doubtless they were willing enough; and indeed,
+after all they had come through, a little cold water could not do them
+any harm.  So baptized they were in Barcelona; pompously baptized with
+infinite state and ceremony, the King and Queen and Prince Juan
+officiating as sponsors.  Queen Isabella, after the manner of queens,
+took a kindly feminine interest in these heathen, and in their brethren
+across the sea.  She had seen a good deal of conquest, and knew her
+Spaniard pretty intimately; and doubtless her maternal heart had some
+misgivings about the ultimate happiness of the gentle, handsome creatures
+who lived in the sunshine in that distant place.  She made their souls
+her especial care, and honestly believed that by providing for their
+spiritual conversion she was doing them the greatest service in her
+power.  She provided from her own private chapel vestments and altar
+furniture for the mission church in Espanola; she had the six exiles in
+Barcelona instructed under her eye; and she gave Columbus special orders
+to inflict severe punishments on any one who should offer the natives
+violence or injustice of any kind.  It must be remembered to her credit
+that in after days, when slavery and an intolerable bloody and brutish
+oppression had turned the paradise of Espanola into a shambles, she
+fought almost singlehanded, and with an ethical sense far in advance of
+her day, against the system of slavery practised by Spain upon the
+inhabitants of the New World.
+
+
+The dignities that had been provisionally granted to Columbus before his
+departure on the first voyage were now elaborately confirmed; and in
+addition he was given another title--that of Captain-General of the large
+fleet which was to be fitted out to sail to the new colonies.  He was
+entrusted with the royal seal, which gave him the right to grant letters
+patent, to issue commissions, and to Appoint deputies in the royal name.
+A coat-of-arms was also granted to him in which, in its original form,
+the lion and castle of Leon and Castile were quartered with islands of
+the sea or on a field azure, and five anchors or on a field azure.  This
+was changed from time to time, chiefly by Columbus himself, who
+afterwards added a continent to the islands, and modified the blazonry of
+the lion and castle to agree with those on the royal arms--a piece of
+ignorance and childish arrogance which was quite characteristic of him.
+
+
+
+     [A motto has since been associated with the coat-of-arms, although
+     it is not certain that Columbus adopted it in his lifetime.  In one
+     form it reads:
+                      "Por Castilla e por Leon
+                       Nueva Mundo hallo Colon."]
+
+           (For Castile and Leon Columbus found a New World.)
+
+And in the other:
+
+                       "A Castilla y a Leon
+                        Nuevo Mundo dio Colon."
+
+            (To Castile and Leon Columbus gave a New World.)
+
+
+Equally characteristic and less excusable was his acceptance of the
+pension of ten thousand maravedis which had been offered to the member of
+the expedition who should first sight land.  Columbus was granted a very
+large gratuity on his arrival in Barcelona, and even taking the product
+of the islands at a tenth part of their value as estimated by him, he
+still had every right to suppose himself one of the richest men in Spain.
+Yet he accepted this paltry pension of L8. 6s. 8d.  in our modern
+money(of 1900), which, taking the increase in the purchasing power of
+money at an extreme estimate, would not be more than the equivalent of
+$4000 now.  Now Columbus had not been the first person to see land; he
+saw the light, but it was Rodrigo de Triana, the look-out man on the
+Pinta, who first saw the actual land.  Columbus in his narrative to the
+King and Queen would be sure to make much of the seeing of the light, and
+not so much of the actual sighting of land; and he was on the spot, and
+the reward was granted to him.  Even if we assume that in strict equity
+Columbus was entitled to it, it was at least a matter capable of
+argument, if only Rodrigo de Triana had been there to argue it; and what
+are we to think of the Admiral of the Ocean Seas and Viceroy of the
+Indies who thus takes what can only be called a mean advantage of a poor
+seaman in his employ?  It would have been a competence and a snug little
+fortune to Rodrigo de Triana; it was a mere flea-bite to a man who was
+thinking in eighth parts of continents.  It may be true, as Oviedo
+alleges, that Columbus transferred it to Beatriz Enriquez; but he had no
+right to provide for her out of money that in all equity and decency
+ought to have gone to another and a poorer man.  His biographers, some of
+whom have vied with his canonisers in insisting upon seeing virtue in his
+every action, have gone to all kinds of ridiculous extremes in accounting
+for this piece of meanness.  Irving says that it was "a subject in which
+his whole ambition was involved"; but a plain person will regard it as an
+instance of greed and love of money.  We must not shirk facts like this
+if we wish to know the man as he really was.  That he was capable of
+kindness and generosity, and that he was in the main kind-hearted, we
+have fortunately no reason to doubt; and if I dwell on some of his less
+amiable characteristics it is with no desire to magnify them out of their
+due proportion.  They are part of that side of him that lay in shadow, as
+some side of each one of us lies; for not all by light nor all by shade,
+but by light and shade combined, is the image of a man made visible to
+us.
+
+
+It is quite of a piece with the character of Columbus that while he was
+writing a receipt for the look-out man's money and thinking what a pretty
+gift it would make for Beatriz Enriquez he was planning a splendid and
+spectacular thank-offering for all the dignities to which he had been
+raised; and, brooding upon the vast wealth that was now to be his, that
+he should register a vow to furnish within seven years an expedition of
+four thousand horse and fifty thousand foot for the rescue of the Holy
+Sepulchre, and a similar force within five years after the first if it
+should be necessary.  It was probable that the vow was a provisional one,
+and that its performance was to be contingent on his actual receipt and
+possession of the expected money; for as we know, there was no money and
+no expedition.  The vow was in effect a kind of religious flourish much
+beloved by Columbus, undertaken seriously and piously enough, but
+belonging rather to his public than to his private side.  A much more
+simple and truly pious act of his was, not the promising of visionary but
+the sending of actual money to his old father in Savona, which he did
+immediately after his arrival in Spain.  The letter which he wrote with
+that kindly remittance, not being couched in the pompous terms which he
+thought suitable for princes, and doubtless giving a brief homely account
+of what he had done, would, if we could come by it, be a document beyond
+all price; but like every other record of his family life it has utterly
+perished.
+
+He wrote also from Barcelona to his two brothers, Bartholomew and
+Giacomo, or James, since we may as well give him the English equivalent
+of his name.  Bartholomew was in France, whither he had gone some time
+after his return from his memorable voyage with Bartholomew Diaz; he was
+employed as a map-maker at the court of Anne de Beaujeu, who was reigning
+in the temporary absence of her brother Charles VIII.  Columbus's letter
+reached him, but much too late for him to be able to join in the second
+expedition; in fact he did not reach Seville until five months after it
+had sailed.  James, however, who was now twenty-five years old, was still
+at Savona; he, like Columbus, had been apprenticed to his father, but had
+apparently remained at home earning his living either as a wool-weaver or
+merchant.  He was a quiet, discreet young fellow, who never pushed
+himself forward very much, wore very plain clothes, and was apparently
+much overawed by the grandeur and dignity of his elder brother.  He was,
+however, given a responsible post in the new expedition, and soon had his
+fill of adventure.
+
+
+The business of preparing for the new expedition was now put in hand, and
+Columbus, having taken leave of Ferdinand and Isabella, went to Seville
+to superintend the preparations.  All the ports in Andalusia were ordered
+to supply such vessels as might be required at a reasonable cost, and the
+old order empowering the Admiral to press mariners into the service was
+renewed.  But this time it was unnecessary; the difficulty now was rather
+to keep down the number of applicants for berths in the expedition, and
+to select from among the crowd of adventurers who offered themselves
+those most suitable for the purposes of the new colony.  In this work
+Columbus was assisted by a commissioner whom the Sovereigns had appointed
+to superintend the fitting out of the expedition.  This man was a cleric,
+Juan Rodriguez de Fonseca, Archdeacon of Seville, a person of excellent
+family and doubtless of high piety, and of a surpassing shrewdness for
+this work.  He was of a type very commonly produced in Spain at this
+period; a very able organiser, crafty and competent, but not altogether
+trustworthy on a point of honour.  Like so many ecclesiastics of this
+stamp, he lived for as much power and influence as he could achieve; and
+though he was afterwards bishop of three sees successively, and became
+Patriarch of the Indies, he never let go his hold on temporal affairs.
+He began by being jealous of Columbus, and by objecting to the personal
+retinue demanded by the Admiral; and in this, if I know anything of the
+Admiral, he was probably justified.  The matter was referred to the
+Sovereigns, who ordered Fonseca to carry out the Admiral's wishes; and
+the two were immediately at loggerheads.  When the Council for the Indies
+was afterwards formed Fonseca became head, of it, and had much power to
+make things pleasant or otherwise for Columbus.
+
+It became necessary now to raise a considerable sum of money for the new
+expedition.  Two-thirds of the ecclesiastical tithes were appropriated,
+and a large proportion of the confiscated property of the Jews who had
+been banished from Spain the year before; but this was not enough; and
+five million maravedis were borrowed from the Duke of Medina Sidonia in
+order to complete the financial supplies necessary for this very costly
+expedition.  There was a treasurer, Francisco Pinelo, and an accountant,
+Juan de Soria, who had charge of all the financial arrangements; but the
+whole of the preparations were conducted on a ruinously expensive scale,
+owing to the haste which the diplomatic relations with Portugal made
+necessary.  The provisioning was done by a Florentine merchant named
+Juonato Beradi, who had an assistant named Amerigo Vespucci--who, by a
+strange accident, was afterwards to give his name to the continent of the
+New World.
+
+
+While these preparations were going on the game of diplomacy was being
+played between the Courts of Spain and Portugal.  King John of Portugal
+had the misfortune to be badly advised; and he was persuaded that,
+although he had lost the right to the New World through his rejection of
+Columbus's services when they were first offered to him, he might still
+discover it for himself, relying for protection on the vague wording of
+the papal Bulls.  He immediately began to prepare a fleet, nominally to
+go to the coast of Africa, but really to visit the newly discovered lands
+in the west.  Hearing of these preparations, King Ferdinand sent an
+Ambassador to the Portuguese Court; and King John agreed also to appoint
+an Ambassador to discuss the whole matter of the line of demarcation, and
+in the meantime not to allow any of his ships to sail to the west for a
+period of sixty days after his Ambassador had reached Barcelona.  There
+followed a good deal of diplomatic sharp practice; the Portuguese bribing
+the Spanish officials to give them information as to what was going on,
+and the Spaniards furnishing their envoys with double sets of letters and
+documents so that they could be prepared to counter any movement on the
+part of King John.  The idea of the Portuguese was that the line of
+demarcation should be a parallel rather than a meridian; and that
+everything north of the Canaries should belong to Spain and everything
+south to Portugal; but this would never do from the Spanish point of
+view.  The fact that a proposal had come from Portugal, however, gave
+Ferdinand an opportunity of delaying the diplomatic proceedings until his
+own expedition was actually ready to set sail; and he wrote to Columbus
+repeatedly, urging him to make all possible haste with his preparations.
+In the meantime he despatched a solemn embassy to Portugal, the purport
+of which, much beclouded and delayed by preliminary and impossible
+proposals, was to submit the whole question to the Pope for arbitration.
+And all the time he was busy petitioning the Pope to restore to Spain
+those concessions granted in the second Bull, but taken away again in the
+third.
+
+This, being much egged on to it, the Pope ultimately did; waking up on
+September 26th, the day after Columbus's departure, and issuing another
+Bull in which the Spanish Sovereigns were given all lands and islands,
+discovered or not discovered, which might be found by sailing west and
+south.  Four Bulls; and after puzzling over them for a year, the Kings of
+Spain and Portugal decided to make their own Bull, and abide by it,
+which, having appointed commissioners, they did on June 7, 1494., when by
+the Treaty of Tordecillas the line of demarcation was finally fixed to
+pass from north to south through a point 370 leagues west of the Cape
+Verde Islands.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+GREAT EXPECTATIONS
+
+July, August, and September in the year 1493 were busy months for
+Columbus, who had to superintend the buying or building and fitting of
+ships, the choice and collection of stores, and the selection of his
+company.  There were fourteen caravels, some of them of low tonnage and
+light draught, and suitable for the navigation of rivers; and three large
+carracks, or ships of three to four hundred tons.  The number of
+volunteers asked for was a thousand, but at least two thousand applied
+for permission to go with the expedition, and ultimately some fourteen or
+fifteen hundred did actually go, one hundred stowaways being included in
+the number.  Unfortunately these adventurers were of a class compared
+with whom even the cut-throats and gaol-birds of the humble little
+expedition that had sailed the year before from Palos were useful and
+efficient.  The universal impression about the new lands in the West was
+that they were places where fortunes could be picked up like dirt, and
+where the very shores were strewn with gold and precious stones; and
+every idle scamp in Spain who had a taste for adventure and a desire to
+get a great deal of money without working for it was anxious to visit the
+new territory.  The result was that instead of artisans, farmers,
+craftsmen, and colonists, Columbus took with him a company at least half
+of which consisted of exceedingly well-bred young gentlemen who had no
+intention of doing any work, but who looked forward to a free and lawless
+holiday and an early return crowned with wealth and fortune.  Although
+the expedition was primarily for the establishment of a colony, no
+Spanish women accompanied it; and this was but one of a succession of
+mistakes and stupidities.
+
+The Admiral, however, was not to be so lonely a person as he had been on
+his first voyage; friends of his own choice and of a rank that made
+intimacy possible even with the Captain-General were to accompany him.
+There was James his brother; there was Friar Bernardo Buil, a Benedictine
+monk chosen by the Pope to be his apostolic vicar in the New World; there
+was Alonso de Ojeda, a handsome young aristocrat, cousin to the
+Inquisitor of Spain, who was distinguished for his dash and strength and
+pluck; an ideal adventurer, the idol of his fellows, and one of whose
+daring any number of credible and incredible tales were told.  There was
+Pedro Margarite, a well-born Aragonese, who was destined afterwards to
+cause much trouble; there was Juan Ponce de Leon, the discoverer of
+Florida; there was Juan de La Cosa, Columbus's faithful pilot on the
+Santa Maria on his first voyage; there was Pedro de Las Casas, whose son,
+at this time a student in Seville, was afterwards to become the historian
+of the New World and the champion of decency and humanity there.  There
+was also Doctor Chanca, a Court physician who accompanied the expedition
+not only in his professional capacity but also because his knowledge of
+botany would enable him to make, a valuable report on the vegetables and
+fruits of the New World; there was Antonio de Marchena, one of Columbus's
+oldest friends, who went as astronomer to the expedition.  And there was
+one Coma, who would have remained unknown to this day but that he wrote
+an exceedingly elegant letter to his friend Nicolo Syllacio in Italy,
+describing in flowery language the events of the second voyage; which
+letter, and one written by Doctor Chanca, are the only records of the
+outward voyage that exist.  The journal kept by Columbus on this voyage
+has been lost, and no copy of it remains.
+
+
+Columbus settled at Cadiz during the time in which he was engaged upon
+the fitting out of the expedition.  It was no light matter to superintend
+the appointment of the crews and passengers, every one of whom was
+probably interviewed by Columbus himself, and at the same time to keep
+level with Archdeacon Fonseca.  This official, it will be remembered,
+had a disagreement with Columbus as to the number of personal attendants
+he was to be allowed; and on the matter being referred to the King and
+Queen they granted Columbus the ridiculous establishment of ten footmen
+and twenty other servants.
+
+Naturally Fonseca held up his hands and wondered where it would all end.
+It was no easy matter, moreover, on receipt of letters from the Queen
+about small matters which occurred to her from time to time, to answer
+them fully and satisfactorily, and at the same time to make out all the
+lists of things that would likely be required both for provisioning the
+voyage and establishing a colony.  The provisions carried in those days
+were not very different from the provisions carried on deep-sea vessels
+at the present time--except that canned meat, for which, with its horrors
+and conveniences, the world may hold Columbus responsible, had not then
+been invented.  Unmilled wheat, salted flour, and hard biscuit formed the
+bulk of the provisions; salted pork was the staple--of the meat supply,
+with an alternative of salted fish; while cheese, peas, lentils and
+beans, oil and vinegar, were also carried, and honey and almonds and
+raisins for the cabin table.  Besides water a large provision of rough
+wine in casks was taken, and the dietary scale would probably compare
+favourably with that of the British and American mercantile service sixty
+years ago.  In addition a great quantity of seeds of all kinds were taken
+for planting in Espanola; sugar cane, rice, and vines also, and an
+equipment of agricultural implements, as well as a selection of horses
+and other domestic animals for breeding purposes.  Twenty mounted
+soldiers were also carried, and the thousand and one impedimenta of
+naval, military, and domestic existence.
+
+In the middle of all these preparations news came that a Portuguese
+caravel had set sail from Madeira in the direction of the new lands.
+Columbus immediately reported this to the King and Queen, and suggested
+detaching part of his fleet to pursue her; but instead King John was
+communicated with, and he declared that if the vessel had sailed as
+alleged it was without his knowledge and permission, and that he would
+send three ships after her to recall her--an answer which had to be
+accepted, although it opened up rather alarming possibilities of four
+Portuguese vessels reaching the new islands instead of one.  Whether
+these ships ever really sailed or not, or whether the rumour was merely a
+rumour and an alarm, is not certain; but Columbus was ordered to push on
+his preparations with the greatest possible speed, to avoid Portuguese
+waters, but to capture any vessels which he might find in the part of the
+ocean allotted to Spain, and to inflict summary punishment on the crews.
+As it turned out he never saw any Portuguese vessels, and before he had
+returned to Spain again the two nations had come to an amicable agreement
+quite independently of the Pope and his Bulls.  Spain undertook to make
+no discoveries to the east of the line of demarcation, and Portugal none
+to the west of it; and so the matter remained until the inhabitants of
+the discovered lands began to have a voice in their own affairs.
+
+
+With all his occupations Columbus found time for some amenities, and he
+had his two sons, Diego and Ferdinand, staying with him at Cadiz.  Great
+days they must have been for these two boys; days filled with excitement
+and commotion, with the smell of tar and the loading of the innumerable
+and fascinating materials of life; and many a journey they must have made
+on the calm waters of Cadiz harbour from ship to ship, dreaming of the
+distant seas that these high, quaintly carven prows would soon be
+treading, and the wonderful bays and harbours far away across the world
+into the waters of which their anchors were to plunge.
+
+
+September 24th, the day before the fleet sailed, was observed as a
+festival; and in full ceremonial the blessing of God upon the enterprise
+was invoked.  The ships were hung with flags and with dyed silks and
+tapestries; every vessel flew the royal standard; and the waters of the
+harbour resounded with the music of trumpets and harps and pipes and the
+thunder of artillery.  Some Venetian galleys happened to enter the
+harbour as the fleet was preparing to weigh, and they joined in the
+salutes and demonstrations which signalled the departure.  The Admiral
+hoisted his flag on the 'Marigalante', one of the largest of the ships;
+and somewhere among the smaller caravels the little Nina, re-caulked and
+re-fitted, was also preparing to brave again the dangers over which she
+had so staunchly prevailed.  At sunrise on the 25th the fleet weighed
+anchor, with all the circumstance and bustle and apparent confusion that
+accompanies the business of sailing-ships getting under weigh.  Up to the
+last minute Columbus had his two sons on board with him, and it was not
+until the ripples were beginning to talk under the bow of the Marigalante
+that he said good-bye to them and saw them rowed ashore.  In bright
+weather, with a favourable breeze, in glory and dignity, and with high
+hopes in his heart, the Admiral set out once more on the long sea-road.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE SECOND VOYAGE
+
+The second voyage of Columbus, profoundly interesting as it must have
+been to him and to the numerous company to whom these waters were a
+strange and new region, has not the romantic interest for us that his
+first voyage had.  To the faith that guided him on his first venture
+knowledge and certainty had now been added; he was going by a familiar
+road; for to the mariner a road that he has once followed is a road that
+he knows.  As a matter of fact, however, this second voyage was a far
+greater test of Columbus's skill as a navigator than the first voyage had
+been.  If his navigation had been more haphazard he might never have
+found again the islands of his first discovery; and the fact that he made
+a landfall exactly where he wished to make it shows a high degree of
+exactness in his method of ascertaining latitude, and is another instance
+of his skill in estimating his dead-reckoning.  If he had been equipped
+with a modern quadrant and Greenwich chronometers he could not have made
+a quicker voyage nor a more exact landfall.
+
+It will be remembered that he had been obliged to hurry away from
+Espanola without visiting the islands of the Caribs as he had wished to
+do.  He knew that these islands lay to the south-east of Espanola, and on
+his second voyage he therefore took a course rather more southerly in
+order, to make them instead of Guanahani or Espanola.  From the day they
+left Spain his ships had pleasant light airs from the east and north-east
+which wafted them steadily but slowly on their course.  In a week they
+had reached the Grand Canary, where they paused to make some repairs to
+one of the ships which, was leaking.  Two days later they anchored at
+Gomera, and loaded up with such supplies as could be procured there
+better than in Spain.  Pigs, goats, sheep and cows were taken on board;
+domestic fowls also, and a variety of orchard plants and fruit seeds, as
+well as a provision of oranges, lemons, and melons.  They sailed from
+Gomera on the 7th of October, but the winds were so light that it was a
+week later before they had passed Ferro and were once more in the open
+Atlantic.
+
+On setting his course from Ferro Columbus issued sealed instructions to
+the captain of each ship which, in the event of the fleet becoming
+scattered, would guide them to the harbour of La Navidad in Espanola;
+but the captains had strict orders not to open these instructions unless
+their ships became separated from the fleet, as Columbus still wished to
+hold for himself the secret of this mysterious road to the west.  There
+were no disasters, however, and no separations.  The trade wind blew soft
+and steady, wafting them south and west; and because of the more
+southerly course steered on this voyage they did not even encounter the
+weed of the Sargasso Sea, which they left many leagues on their starboard
+hand.  The only incident of the voyage was a sudden severe hurricane, a
+brief summer tempest which raged throughout one night and terrified a
+good many of the voyagers, whose superstitious fears were only allayed
+when they saw the lambent flames of the light of Saint Elmo playing about
+the rigging of the Admiral's ship.  It was just the Admiral's luck that
+this phenomenon should be observed over his ship and over none of the
+others; it added to his prestige as a person peculiarly favoured by the
+divine protection, and confirmed his own belief that he held a heavenly
+as well as a royal commission.
+
+The water supply had been calculated a little too closely, and began to
+run low.  The hurried preparation of the ships had resulted as usual in
+bad work; most of them were leaking, and the crew were constantly at work
+at the pumps; and there was the usual discontent.  Columbus, however,
+knew by the signs as well as by his dead-reckoning that he was somewhere
+close to land; and with a fine demonstration of confidence he increased
+the ration of water, instead of lowering it, assuring the crews that they
+would be ashore in a day or two.  On Saturday evening, November 2nd,
+although no land was in sight, Columbus was so sure of his position that
+he ordered the fleet to take in sail and go on slowly until morning.  As
+the Sunday dawned and the sky to the west was cleared of the morning bank
+of clouds the look-out on the Marigalante reported land ahead; and sure
+enough the first sunlight of that day showed them a green and verdant
+island a few leagues away.
+
+As they approached it Columbus christened it Dominica in honour of the
+day on which it was discovered.  He sailed round it; but as there was no
+harbour, and as another island was in sight to the north, he sailed on in
+that direction.  This little island he christened Marigalante; and going
+ashore with his retinue he hoisted the royal banner, and formally took
+possession of the whole group of six islands which were visible from the
+high ground.  There were no inhabitants on the island, but the voyagers
+spent some hours wandering about its tangled woods and smelling the rich
+odours of spice, and tasting new and unfamiliar fruits.  They next sailed
+on to an island to the north which Columbus christened Guadaloupe as a
+memorial of the shrine in Estremadura to which he had made a pious
+pilgrimage.  They landed on this island and remained a week there, in the
+course of which they made some very remarkable discoveries.
+
+The villagers were not altogether unfriendly, although they were shy at
+first; but red caps and hawks' bells had their usual effect.  There were
+signs of warfare, in the shape of bone-tipped arrows; there were tame
+parrots much larger than those of the northern islands; they found
+pottery and rough wood carving, and the unmistakable stern timber of a .
+European vessel.  But they discovered stranger things than that.  They
+found human skulls used as household utensils, and gruesome fragments of
+human bodies, unmistakable remains of a feast; and they realised that at
+last they were in the presence of a man-eating tribe.  Later they came to
+know, something of the habits of the islanders; how they made raiding
+expeditions to the neighbouring islands, and carried off large numbers of
+prisoners, retaining the women as concubines and eating the men.  The
+boys were mutilated and fattened like capons, being employed as labourers
+until they had arrived at years of discretion, at which point they were
+killed and eaten, as these cannibal epicures did not care for the flesh
+of women and boys.  There were a great number of women on the island, and
+many of them were taken off to the ships--with their own consent,
+according to Doctor Chanca.  The men, however, eluded the Spaniards and
+would not come on board, having doubtless very clear views about the
+ultimate destination of men who were taken prisoners.  Some women from a
+neighbouring island, who had been captured by the cannibals, came to
+Columbus and begged to be taken on board his ship for protection; but
+instead of receiving them he decked them with ornaments and sent them
+ashore again.  The cannibals artfully stripped off their ornaments and
+sent them back to get some more.
+
+The peculiar habits of the islanders added an unusual excitement to shore
+leave, and there was as a rule no trouble in collecting the crews and
+bringing them off to the ships at nightfall.  But on one evening it was
+discovered that one of the captains and eight men had not returned.  An
+exploring party was sent of to search for them, but they came back
+without having found anything, except a village in the middle of the
+forest from which the inhabitants had fled at their approach, leaving
+behind them in the cooking pots a half-cooked meal of human remains--an
+incident which gave the explorers a distaste for further search.  Young
+Alonso de Ojeda, however, had no fear of the cannibals; this was just the
+kind of occasion in which he revelled; and he offered to take a party of
+forty men into the interior to search for the missing men.  He went right
+across the island, but was able to discover nothing except birds and
+fruits and unknown trees; and Columbus, in great distress of mind, had to
+give up his men for lost.  He took in wood and water, and was on the
+point of weighing anchor when the missing men appeared on the shore and
+signalled for a boat.  It appeared that they had got lost in a tangled
+forest in the interior, that they had tried to climb the trees in order
+to get their bearings by the stars, but without success; and that they
+had finally struck the sea-shore and followed it until they had arrived
+opposite the anchorage.
+
+They brought some women and boys with them, and the fleet must now have
+had a large number of these willing or unwilling captives.  This was the
+first organised transaction of slavery on the part of Columbus, whose
+design was to send slaves regularly back to Spain in exchange for the
+cattle and supplies necessary for the colonies.  There was not very much
+said now about religious conversion, but only about exchanging the
+natives for cattle.  The fine point of Christopher's philosophy on this
+subject had been rubbed off; he had taken the first step a year ago on
+the beach at Guanahani, and after that the road opened out broad before
+him.  Slaves for cattle, and cattle for the islands; and wealth from
+cattle and islands for Spain, and payment from Spain for Columbus, and
+money from Columbus for the redemption of the Holy Sepulchre--these were
+the links in the chain of hope that bound him to his pious idea.  He had
+seen the same thing done by the Portuguese on the Guinea coast, and it
+never occurred to him that there was anything the matter with it.  On the
+contrary, at this time his idea was only to take slaves from among the
+Caribs and man-eating islanders as a punishment for their misdeeds; but
+this, like his other fine ideas, soon had to give way before the tide of
+greed and conquest.
+
+The Admiral was now anxious to get back to La Navidad, and discover the
+condition of the colony which he had left behind him there.  He therefore
+sailed from Guadaloupe on November 20th and steered to the north-west.
+His captive islanders told him that the mainland lay to the south; and if
+he had listened to them and sailed south he would have probably landed on
+the coast of South America in a fortnight.  He shaped his course instead
+to the north-west, passing many islands, but not pausing until the 14th,
+when he reached the island named by him Santa Cruz.  He found more Caribs
+here, and his men had a brush with them, one of the crew being wounded by
+a poisoned arrow of which he died in a few days.  The Carib Chiefs were
+captured and put in irons.  They sailed again and passed a group of
+islets which Columbus named after Saint Ursula and the Eleven Thousand
+Virgins; discovered Porto Rico also, in one of the beautiful harbours of
+which they anchored and stayed for two days.  Sailing now to the west
+they made land again on the 22nd of November; and coasting along it they
+soon sighted the mountain of Monte Christi, and Columbus recognised that
+he was on the north coast of Espanola.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE EARTHLY PARADISE REVISITED
+
+On the 25th November 1493, Columbus once more dropped his anchor in the
+harbour of Monte Christi, and a party was sent ashore to prospect for a
+site suitable for the new town which he intended to build, for he was not
+satisfied with the situation of La Navidad.  There was a large river
+close by; and while the party was surveying the land they came suddenly
+upon two dead bodies lying by the river-side, one with a rope round its
+neck and the other with a rope round its feet.  The bodies were too much
+decomposed to be recognisable; nevertheless to the party rambling about
+in the sunshine and stillness of that green place the discovery was a
+very gruesome one.  They may have thought much, but they said little.
+They returned to the ship, and resumed their search on the next day, when
+they found two more corpses, one of which was seen to have a large
+quantity of beard.  As all the natives were beardless this was a very
+significant and unpleasant discovery, and the explorers returned at once
+and reported what they had seen to Columbus.  He thereupon set sail for
+La Navidad, but the navigation off that part of the coast was necessarily
+slow because of the number of the shoals and banks, on one of which the
+Admiral's ship had been lost the year before; and the short voyage
+occupied three days.
+
+They arrived at La Navidad late on the evening of the 27th--too late to
+make it advisable to land.  Some natives came out in a canoe, rowed round
+the Admiral's ship, stopped and looked at it, and then rowed away again.
+When the fleet had anchored Columbus ordered two guns to be fired; but
+there was no response except from the echoes that went rattling among the
+islands, and from the frightened birds that rose screaming and circling
+from the shore.  No guns and no signal fires; no sign of human habitation
+whatever; and no sound out of the weird darkness except the lap of the
+water and the call of the birds .  .  .  .  The night passed in anxiety
+and depression, and in a certain degree of nervous tension, which was
+relieved at two or three o'clock in the morning by the sound of paddles
+and the looming of a canoe through the dusky starlight.  Native voices
+were heard from the canoe asking in a loud voice for the Admiral; and
+when the visitors had been directed to the Marigalante they refused to go
+on board until Columbus himself had spoken to them, and they had seen by
+the light of a lantern that it was the Admiral himself.  The chief of
+them was a cousin of Guacanagari, who said that the King was ill of a
+wound in his leg, or that he would certainly have come himself to welcome
+the Admiral.  The Spaniards?  Yes, they were well, said the young chief;
+or rather, he added ominously, those that remained were well, but some
+had died of illness, and some had been killed in quarrels that had arisen
+among them.  He added that the province had been invaded by two
+neighbouring kings who had burned many of the native houses.  This news,
+although grave, was a relief from the dreadful uncertainty that had
+prevailed in the early part of the night, and the Admiral's company,
+somewhat consoled, took a little sleep.
+
+In the morning a party was sent ashore to La Navidad.  Not a boat was in
+sight, nor any native canoes; the harbour was silent and deserted.  When
+the party had landed and gone up to the place where the fort had been
+built they found no fort there; only the blackened and charred remains of
+a fort.  The whole thing had been burned level with the ground, and amid
+the blackened ruins they found pieces of rag and clothing.  The natives,
+instead of coming to greet them, lurked guiltily behind trees, and when
+they were seen fled away into the woods.  All this was very disquieting
+indeed, and in significant contrast to their behaviour of the year
+before.  The party from the ship threw buttons and beads and bells to the
+retiring natives in order to try and induce them to come forward, but
+only four approached, one of whom was a relation of Guacanagari.  These
+four consented to go into the boat and to be rowed out to the ship.
+Columbus then spoke to them through his interpreter; and they admitted
+what had been only too obvious to the party that went ashore--that the
+Spaniards were all dead, and that not one of the garrison remained.  It
+seemed that two neighbouring kings, Caonabo and Mayreni, had made an
+attack upon the fort, burned the buildings, and killed and wounded most
+of the defenders; and that Guacanagari, who had been fighting on their
+behalf, had also been wounded and been obliged to retire.  The natives
+offered to go and fetch Guacanagari himself, and departed with that
+object.
+
+In the greatest anxiety the Admiral and his company passed that day and
+night waiting for the King to come.  Early the next morning Columbus
+himself went ashore and visited the spot where the settlement had been.
+There he found destruction whole and complete, with nothing but a few
+rags of clothing as an evidence that the place had ever been inhabited by
+human beings.  As Guacanagari did not appear some of the Spaniards began
+to suspect that he had had a hand in the matter, and proposed immediate
+reprisal; but Columbus, believing still in the man who had "loved him so
+much that it was wonderful" did not take this view, and his belief in
+Guacanagari's loyalty was confirmed by the discovery that his own
+dwelling had also been burned down.
+
+Columbus set some of his party searching in the ditch of the fort in case
+any treasure should have been buried there, as he had ordered it should
+be in event of danger, and while this was going on he walked along the
+coast for a few miles to visit a spot which he thought might be suitable
+for the new settlement.  At a distance of a mile or two he found a
+village of seven or eight huts from which the inhabitants fled at his
+approach, carrying such of their goods as were portable, and leaving the
+rest hidden in the grass.  Here were found several things that had
+belonged to the Spaniards and which were not likely to have been
+bartered; new Moorish mantles, stockings, bolts of cloth, and one of the
+Admiral's lost anchors; other articles also, among them a dead man's head
+wrapped up with great care in a small basket.  Shaking their own living
+heads, golumbus and his party returned.  Suddenly they came on some
+suspicious-looking mounds of earth over which new grass was growing.  An
+examination of these showed them to be the graves of eleven of the
+Spaniards, the remains of the clothing being quite sufficient to identify
+them.  Doctor Chanca, who examined them, thought that they had not been
+dead two months.  Speculation came to an end in the face of this eloquent
+certainty; there were the dead bodies of some of the colonists; and the
+voyagers knelt round with bare heads while the bodies were replaced in
+the grave and the ceremony of Christian burial performed over them.
+
+Little by little the dismal story was elicited from the natives, who
+became less timid when they saw that the Spaniards meant them no harm.
+It seemed that Columbus had no sooner gone away than the colonists began
+to abandon themselves to every kind of excess.  While the echo of the
+Admiral's wise counsels was yet in their ears they began to disobey his
+orders.  Honest work they had no intention of doing, and although Diego
+Arana, their commander, did his best to keep order, and although one or
+two of the others were faithful to him and to Columbus, their authority
+was utterly insufficient to check the lawless folly of the rest.  Instead
+of searching for gold mines, they possessed themselves by force of every
+ounce of gold they could steal or seize from the natives, treating them
+with both cruelty and contempt.  More brutal excesses followed as a
+matter of course.  Guacanagari, in his kindly indulgence and generosity,
+had allowed them to take three native wives apiece, although he himself
+and his people were content with one.  But of course the Spaniards had
+thrown off all restraint, however mild, and ran amok among the native
+inhabitants, seizing their wives and seducing their daughters.  Upon this
+naturally followed dissensions among themselves, jealousy coming hot upon
+the heels of unlawful possession; and, in the words of Irving, "the
+natives beheld with astonishment the beings whom they had worshipped as
+descended from the skies abandoned to the grossest of earthly passions
+and raging against each other with worse than brutal ferocity."
+
+Upon their strifes and dissensions followed another breach of the
+Admiral's wise regulations; they no longer cared to remain together in
+the fort, but split up into groups and went off with their women into the
+woods, reverting to a savagery beside which the gentle existence of the
+natives was high civilisation.  There were squabbles and fights in which
+one or two of the Spaniards were killed; and Pedro Gutierrez and Rodrigo
+de Escovedo, whom Columbus had appointed as lieutenants to Arana, headed
+a faction of revolt against his authority, and took themselves off with
+nine other Spaniards and a great number of women.  They had heard a great
+deal about the mines of Cibao, and they decided to go in search of them
+and secure their treasures for themselves.  They went inland into a
+territory which was under the rule of King Caonabo, a very fierce Carib
+who was not a native of Espanola, but had come there as an adventurer and
+remained as a conqueror.  Although he resented the intrusion of the
+Spaniards into the island he would not have dared to come and attack them
+there if they had obeyed the Admiral's orders and remained in the
+territory of Guacanagari; but when they came into his own country he had
+them in a trap, and it was easy for him to fall upon those foolish
+swaggering Spaniards and put them to death.  He then decided to go and
+take the fort.
+
+He formed an alliance with the neighbouring king, Mayreni, whose province
+was in the west of the island.  Getting together a force of warriors
+these two kings marched rapidly and stealthily through the, forest for
+several days until they arrived at its northern border.  They came in the
+dead of night to the neighbourhood of La Navidad, where the inhabitants
+of the fortress, some ten in number, were fast asleep.  Fast asleep were
+the remaining dozen or so of the Spaniards who were living in houses or
+huts in the neighbourhood; fast asleep also the gentle natives, not
+dreaming of troubles from any quarter but that close at hand.  The sweet
+silence of the tropical night was suddenly broken by frightful yells as
+Caonabo and his warriors rushed the fortress and butchered the
+inhabitants, setting fire to it and to the houses round about.  As their
+flimsy huts burst into flames the surprised Spaniards rushed out, only to
+be fallen upon by the infuriated blacks.  Eight of the Spaniards rushed
+naked into the sea and were drowned; the rest were butchered.
+Guacanagari manfully came to their assistance and with his own followers
+fought throughout the night; but his were a gentle and unwarlike people,
+and they were easily routed.  The King himself was badly wounded in the
+thigh, but Caonabo's principal object seems to have been the destruction
+of the Spaniards, and when that was completed he and his warriors, laden
+with the spoils, retired.
+
+Thus Columbus, walking on the shore with his native interpreter, or
+sitting in his cabin listening with knitted brow to the accounts of the
+islanders, learns of the complete and utter failure of his first hopes.
+It has come to this.  These are the real first-fruits of his glorious
+conquest and discovery.  The New World has served but as a virgin field
+for the Old Adam.  He who had sought to bring light and life to these
+happy islanders had brought darkness and death; they had innocently
+clasped the sword he had extended to them and cut themselves.  The
+Christian occupation of the New World had opened with vice, cruelty, and
+destruction; the veil of innocence had been rent in twain, and could
+never be mended or joined again.  And the Earthly Paradise in which life
+had gone so happily, of which sun and shower had been the true rulers,
+and the green sprouting harvests the only riches, had been turned into a
+shambles by the introduction of human rule and civilised standards of
+wealth.  Gold first and then women, things beautiful and innocent in the
+happy native condition of the islands, had been the means of the
+disintegration and death of this first colony.  These are serious
+considerations for any coloniser; solemn considerations for a discoverer
+who is only on the verge and beginning of his empire-making; mournful
+considerations for Christopher as he surveys the blackened ruins of the
+fort, or stands bare-headed by the grass-covered graves.
+
+There seemed to be a certain hesitancy on the part of Guacanagari to
+present himself; for though he kept announcing his intention of coming to
+visit the Admiral he did not come.  A couple of days after the discovery
+of the remains, however, he sent a message to Columbus begging him to
+come and see him, which the Admiral accordingly did, accompanied by a
+formal retinue and carrying with him the usual presents.  Guacanagari was
+in bed sure enough complaining of a wounded leg, and he told the story of
+the settlement very much as Columbus had already heard it from the other
+natives.  He pointed to his own wounded leg as a sign that he had been
+loyal and faithful to his friendly promises; but when the leg was
+examined by the surgeon in order that it might be dressed no wound could
+be discovered, and it was obvious to Doctor Chanca that the skin had not
+been broken.  This seemed odd; Friar Buil was so convinced that the whole
+story was a deception that he wished the Admiral to execute Guacanagari
+on the spot.  Columbus, although he was puzzled, was by no means
+convinced that Guacanagari had been unfaithful to him, and decided to do
+nothing for the present.  He invited the cacique to come on board the
+flagship; which he did, being greatly interested by some of the Carib
+prisoners, notably a handsome woman, named by the Spaniards Dofia
+Catalina, with whom he held a long conversation.
+
+Relations between the Admiral and the cacique, although outwardly
+cordial, were altogether different from what they had been in, the happy
+days after their first meeting; the man seemed to shrink from all the
+evidence of Spanish power, and when they proposed to hang a cross round
+his neck the native king, much as he loved trinkets and toys, expressed a
+horror and fear of this jewel when he learned that it was an emblem of
+the Christian faith.  He had seen a little too much of the Christian
+religion; and Heaven only knows with what terror and depression the
+emblem of the cross inspired him.  He went ashore; and when a messenger
+was sent to search for him a few days afterwards, it was found that he
+had moved his whole establishment into the interior of the island.  The
+beautiful native woman Catalina escaped to shore and disappeared at the
+same time; and the two events were connected in the minds of some of the
+Spaniards, and held, wrongly as it turned out, to be significant of a
+deep plot of native treachery.
+
+The most urgent need was to build the new settlement and lay out a town.
+Several small parties were sent out to reconnoitre the coast in both
+directions, but none of them found a suitable place; and on December 7th
+the whole fleet sailed to the east in the hope of finding a better
+position.  They were driven by adverse winds into a harbour some thirty
+miles to the east of Monte Christi, and when they went ashore they
+decided that this was as good a site as any for the new town.  There was
+about a quarter of a mile of level sandy beach enclosed by headlands on
+either side; there was any amount of rock and stones for building, and
+there was a natural barrier of hills and mountains a mile or so inland
+that would protect a camp from that side.--The soil was very fertile,
+the vegetation luxuriant; and the mango swamps a little way inland
+drained into a basin or lake which provided an unlimited water supply.
+Columbus therefore set about establishing a little town, to which he gave
+the name of Isabella.  Streets and squares were laid out, and rows of
+temporary buildings made of wood and thatched with grass were hastily run
+up for the accommodation of the members of the expedition, while the
+foundations of three stone buildings were also marked out and the
+excavations put in hand.  These buildings were the church, the
+storehouse, and a residence for Columbus as Governor-General.  The stores
+were landed, the horses and cattle accommodated ashore, the provisions,
+ammunition, and agricultural implements also.  Labourers were set to
+digging out the foundations of the stone buildings, carpenters to cutting
+down trees and running up the light wooden houses that were to serve as
+barracks for the present; masons were employed in hewing stones and
+building landing-piers; and all the crowd of well-born adventurers were
+set to work with their hands, much to their disgust.  This was by no
+means the life they had imagined, and at the first sign of hard work they
+turned sulky and discontented.  There was, to be sure, some reason for
+their discontent.  Things had not quite turned out as Columbus had
+promised they should; there was no store of gold, nor any sign of great
+desire on the part of the natives to bring any; and to add to their other
+troubles, illness began to break out in the camp.  The freshly-turned
+rank soil had a bad effect on the health of the garrison; the lake, which
+had promised to be so pleasant a feature in the new town, gave off
+dangerous malarial vapours at night; and among the sufferers from this
+trouble was Columbus himself, who endured for some weeks all the pains
+and lassitude of the disagreeable fever.
+
+The ships were now empty and ready for the return voyage, and as soon as
+Columbus was better he set to work to face the situation.  After all his
+promises it would never do to send them home empty or in ballast; a cargo
+of stones from the new-found Indies would not be well received in Spain.
+The natives had told him that somewhere in the island existed the gold
+mines of Cibao, and he determined to make an attempt to find these, so
+that he could send his ships home laden with a cargo that would be some
+indemnity for the heavy cost of the expedition and some compensation for
+the bad news he must write with regard to his first settlement.  Young
+Ojeda was chosen to lead an expedition of fifteen picked men into the
+interior; and as the gold mines were said to be in a part of the island
+not under the command of Guacanagari, but in the territory of the dreaded
+Caonabo, there was no little anxiety felt about the expedition.
+
+Ojeda started in the beginning of January 1494, and marched southwards
+through dense forests until, having crossed a mountain range, he came
+down into a beautiful and fertile valley, where they were hospitably
+received by the natives.  They saw plenty of gold in the sand of the
+river that watered the valley, which sand the natives had a way of
+washing so that the gold was separated from it; and there seemed to be so
+much wealth there that Ojeda hurried back to the new city of Isabella to
+make his report to Columbus.  The effect upon the discontented colonists
+was remarkable.  Once more everything was right; wealth beyond the dreams
+of avarice was at their hand; and all they had to do was to stretch out
+their arms and take it.  Columbus felt that he need no longer delay the
+despatch of twelve of his ships on the homeward voyage.  If he had not
+got golden cargoes for them, at any rate he had got the next best thing,
+which was the certainty of gold; and it did not matter whether it was in
+the ships or in his storehouse.  He had news to send home at any rate,
+and a great variety of things to ask for in return, and he therefore set
+about writing his report to the Sovereigns.  Other people, as we know,
+were writing letters too; the reiterated promise of gold, and the
+marvellous anecdotes which these credulous settlers readily believed from
+the natives, such as that there was a rock close by out of which gold
+would burst if you struck it with a club, raised greed and expectation in
+Spain to a fever pitch, and prepared the reaction which followed.
+
+We may now read the account of the New World as Columbus sent it home to
+the King and Queen of Spain in the end of January 1494, and as they read
+it some weeks later.  Their comments, written in the margin of the
+original, are printed in italics at the end of each paragraph.  It was
+drawn up in the form of a memorandum, and entrusted to Antonio de Torres,
+who was commanding the return expedition.
+
+
+"What you, Antonio de Torres, captain of the ship Marigalante and Alcalde
+of the City of Isabella, are to say and supplicate on my part to the King
+and Queen, our Lords, is as follows:--
+
+     "First.  Having delivered the letters of credence which you carry
+     from me for their Highnesses, you will kiss for me their Royal feet
+     and hands and will recommend me to their Highnesses as to a King and
+     Queen, my natural Lords, in whose service I desire to end my days:
+     as you will be able to say this more fully to their Highnesses,
+     according to what you have seen and known of me.
+
+          ["Their Highnesses hold him in their favour.]
+
+     "Item.  Although by the letters I write to their Highnesses, and
+     also the father Friar Buil and the Treasurer, they will be able to
+     understand all that has been done here since our arrival, and this
+     very minutely and extensively: nevertheless, you will say to their
+     Highnesses on my part, that it has pleased God to give me such
+     favour in their service, that up to the present time.  I do not find
+     less, nor has less been found in anything than what I wrote and said
+     and affirmed to their Highnesses in the past: but rather, by the
+     Grace of God, I hope that it will appear, by works much more clearly
+     and very soon, because such signs and indications of spices have
+     been found on the shores of the sea alone, without having gone
+     inland, that there is reason that very much better results may be
+     hoped for: and this also may be hoped for in the mines of gold,
+     because by two persons only who went to investigate, each one on his
+     own part, without remaining there because there was not many people,
+     so many rivers have been discovered so filled with gold, that all
+     who saw it and gathered specimens of it with the hands alone, came
+     away so pleased and say such things in regard to its abundance, that
+     I am timid about telling it and writing it to their Highnesses: but
+     because Gorbalan, who was one of the discoverers, is going yonder,
+     he will tell what he saw, although another named Hojeda remains
+     here, a servant of the Duke of Medinaceli, a very discreet youth and
+     very prudent, who without doubt and without comparison even,
+     discovered much more according to the memorandum which he brought of
+     the rivers, saying that there is an incredible quantity in each one
+     of them for this their Highnesses may give thanks to God, since He
+     has been so favourable to them in all their affairs.
+
+          ["Their Highnesses give many thanks to God for this, and
+          consider as a very signal service all that the Admiral has done
+          in this matter and is doing: because they know that after God
+          they are indebted to him for all they have had, and will have
+          in this affair: and as they are writing him more fully about
+          this, they refer him to their letter.]
+
+     "Item. You will say to their Highnesses, although I already have
+     written it to them, that I desired greatly to be able to send them a
+     larger quantity of gold in this fleet, from that which it is hoped
+     may be gathered here, but the greater part of our people who are
+     here, have fallen suddenly ill: besides, this fleet cannot remain
+     here longer, both on account of the great expense it occasions and
+     because this time is suitable for those persons who are to bring the
+     things which are greatly needed here, to go and be able to return:
+     as, if they delay going away from here, those who are to return will
+     not be able to do so by May: and besides this, if I wished to
+     undertake to go to the mines or rivers now, with the well people who
+     are here, both on the sea and in the settlement on land, I would
+     have many difficulties and even dangers, because in order to go
+     twenty-three or twenty-four leagues from here where there are
+     harbours and rivers to cross, and in order to cover such a long
+     route and reach there at the time which would be necessary to gather
+     the gold, a large quantity of provisions would have to be carried,
+     which cannot be carried on the shoulders, nor are there beasts of
+     burden here which could be used for this purpose: nor are the roads
+     and passes sufficiently prepared, although I have commenced to get
+     them in readiness so as to be passable: and also it was very
+     inconvenient to leave the sick here in an open place, in huts, with
+     the provisions and supplies which are on land: for although these
+     Indians may have shown themselves to the discoverers and show
+     themselves every day, to be very simple and not malicious
+     nevertheless, as they come here among us each day, it did not appear
+     that it would be a good idea to risk losing these people and the
+     supplies.  This loss an Indian with a piece of burning wood would be
+     able to cause by setting fire to the huts, because they are always
+     going and coming by night and by day: on their account, we have
+     guards in the camp, while the settlement is open and defenceless.
+
+          ["That he did well.]
+
+     "Moreover, as we have seen among those who went by land to make
+     discoveries that the greater part fell sick after returning, and
+     some of them even were obliged to turn back on the road, it was also
+     reasonable to fear that the same thing would happen to those who are
+     well, who would now go, and as a consequence they would run the risk
+     of two dangers: the one, that of falling sick yonder, in the same
+     work, where there is no house nor any defence against that cacique
+     who is called Caonabb, who is a very bad man according to all
+     accounts, and much more audacious and who, seeing us there, sick and
+     in such disorder, would be able to undertake what he would not dare
+     if we were well: and with this difficulty there is another--that of
+     bringing here what gold we might obtain, because we must either
+     bring a small quantity and go and come each day and undergo the risk
+     of sickness, or it must be sent with some part of the people,
+     incurring the same danger of losing it.
+
+          ["He did well.]
+
+     "So that, you will say to their Highnesses, that these are the
+     causes why the fleet has not been at present detained, and why more
+     gold than the specimens has not been sent them: but confiding in the
+     mercy of God, who in everything and for everything has guided us as
+     far as here, these people will quickly become convalescent, as they
+     are already doing, because only certain places in the country suit
+     them and they then recover; and it is certain that if they had some
+     fresh meat in order to convalesce, all with the aid of God would
+     very quickly be on foot, and even the greater part would already be
+     convalescent at this time: nevertheless they will be re-established.
+     With the few healthy ones who remain here, each day work is done
+     toward enclosing the settlement and placing it in a state of some
+     defence and the supplies in safety, which will be accomplished in a
+     short time, because it is to be only a small dry wall.  For the
+     Indians are not a people to undertake anything unless they should
+     find us sleeping, even though they might have thought of it in the
+     manner in which they served the others who remained here.  Only on
+     account of their (the Spaniards') lack of caution--they being so
+     few--and the great opportunities they gave the Indians to have and
+     do what they did, they would never have dared to undertake to injure
+     them if they had seen that they were cautious.  And this work being
+     finished, I will then undertake to go to the said rivers, either
+     starting upon the road from here and seeking the best possible
+     expedients, or going around the island by sea as far as that place
+     from which it is said it cannot be more than six or seven leagues to
+     the said rivers.  In such a manner that the gold can be gathered and
+     placed in security in some fortress or tower which can then be
+     constructed there, in order to keep it securely until the time when
+     the two caravels return here, and in order that then, with the first
+     suitable weather for sailing this course, it may be sent to a place
+     of safety.
+
+          ["That this is well and must be done in this manner.]
+
+     "Item.  You will say to their Highnesses, as has been said, that the
+     cause of the general sicknesses common to all is the change of water
+     and air, because we see that it extends to all conditions and few
+     are in danger: consequently, for the preservation of health, after
+     God, it is necessary that these people be provided with the
+     provisions to which they are accustomed in Spain, because neither
+     they, nor others who may come anew, will be able to serve their
+     Highnesses if they are not well: and this provision must continue
+     until a supply is accumulated here from what shall be sowed and
+     planted here.  I say wheat and barley, and vines, of which little
+     has been done this year because a site for the town could not be
+     selected before, and then when it was selected the few labourers who
+     were here became sick, and they, even though they had been well, had
+     so few and such lean and meagre beasts of burden, that they were
+     able to do but little: nevertheless, they have sown something, more
+     in order to try the soil which appears very wonderful, so that from
+     it some relief may be hoped in our necessities.  We are very sure,
+     as the result makes it apparent to us, that in this country wheat as
+     well as the vine will grow very well: but the fruit must be waited
+     for, which, if it corresponds to the quickness with which the wheat
+     grows and of some few vine-shoots which were planted, certainly will
+     not cause regret here for the productions of Andalusia or Sicily:
+     neither is it different with the sugar-canes according to the manner
+     in which some few that were planted have grown.  For it is certain
+     that the sight of the land of these islands, as well of the
+     mountains and sierras and waters as of the plains where there are
+     rich rivers, is so beautiful, that no other land on which the sun
+     shines can appear better or as beautiful.
+
+          ["Since the land is such, it must be managed that the greatest
+          possible quantity of all things shall be sown, and Don Juan de
+          Fonseca is to be written to send continually all that is
+          necessary for this purpose.]
+
+     "Item.  You will say that, inasmuch as much of the wine which the
+     fleet brought was wasted on this journey, and this, according to
+     what the greater number say, was because of the bad workmanship
+     which the coopers did in Seville, the greatest necessity we feel
+     here at the present time is for wines, and it is what we desire most
+     to have and although we may have biscuit as well as wheat sufficient
+     for a longer time, nevertheless it is necessary that a reasonable
+     quantity should also be sent, because the journey is long and
+     provision cannot be made each day and in the same manner some salted
+     meat, I say bacon, and other salt meat better than that we brought
+     on this journey.  It is necessary that each time a caravel comes
+     here, fresh meat shall be sent, and even more than that, lambs and
+     little ewe lambs, more females than males, and some little yearling
+     calves, male and female, and some he-asses and she-asses and some
+     mares for labour and breeding, as there are none of these animals
+     here of any value or which can be made use of by man.  And because I
+     apprehend that their Highnesses may not be, in Seville, and that the
+     officials or ministers will not provide these things without their
+     express order, and as it is necessary they should come at the first
+     opportunity, and as in consultation and reply the time for the
+     departure of the vessels-which must be here during all of Maywill be
+     past: you will say to their Highnesses that I charged and commanded
+     you to pledge the gold you are carrying yonder and place it in
+     possession of some merchant in Seville, who will furnish therefor
+     the necessary maravedis to load two caravels with wine and wheat and
+     the other things of which you are taking a memorandum; which
+     merchant will carry or send the said gold to their Highnesses that
+     they may see it and receive it, and cause what shall have been
+     expended for fitting out and loading of the said two caravels to be
+     paid: and in order to comfort and strengthen these people remaining
+     here, the utmost efforts must be made for the return of these
+     caravels for all the month of May, that the people before commencing
+     the summer may see and have some refreshment from these things,
+     especially the invalids: the things of which we are already in great
+     need here are such as raisins, sugar, almonds, honey and rice, which
+     should have been sent in large quantities and very little was sent,
+     and that which came is already used and consumed, and even the
+     greater part of the medicines which were brought from there, on
+     account of the multitude of sick people.  You are carrying memoranda
+     signed by my hand, as has been said, of things for the people in
+     good health as well as for the sick.  You will provide these things
+     fully if the money is sufficient, or at least the things which it is
+     most necessary to send at once, in order that the said two vessels
+     can bring them, and you can arrange with their Highnesses, to have
+     the remaining things sent by other vessels as quickly as possible.
+
+          ["Their Highnesses sent an order to Don Juan de Fonseca to
+          obtain at once information about the persons who committed the
+          fraud of the casks, and to cause all the damage to the wine to
+          be recovered from them, with the costs: and he must see that
+          the canes which are sent are of good quality, and that the
+          other things mentioned here are provided at once.]
+
+     "Item.  You will say to their Highnesses that as there is no
+     language here by means of which these people can be made to
+     understand our Holy Faith, as your Highnesses and also we who are
+     here desire, although we will do all we can towards it--I am sending
+     some of the cannibals in the vessels, men and women and male and
+     female children, whom their Highnesses can order placed with persons
+     from whom they can better learn the language, making use of them in
+     service, and ordering that little by little more pains be taken with
+     them than with other slaves, that they may learn one from the other:
+     if they do not see or speak with each other until some time has
+     passed, they will learn more quickly there than here, and will be
+     better interpreters--although we will not cease to do as much as
+     possible here.  It is true that as there is little intercourse
+     between these people from one island to another, there is some
+     difference in their language, according to how far distant they are
+     from each other.  And as, of the other islands, those of the
+     cannibals are very large and very well populated, it would appear
+     best to take some of their men and women and send them yonder to
+     Castile, because by taking them away, it may cause them to abandon
+     at once that inhuman custom which they have of eating men: and by
+     learning the language there in Castile, they will receive baptism
+     much more quickly, and provide for the safety of their souls.  Even
+     among the peoples who are not cannibals we shall gain great credit,
+     by their seeing that we can seize and take captive those from whom
+     they are accustomed to receive injuries, and of whom they are in
+     such terror that they are frightened by one man alone.  You will
+     certify to their Highnesses that the arrival here and sight of such
+     a fine fleet all together has inspired very great authority here and
+     assured very great security for future things: because all the
+     people on this great island and in the other islands, seeing the
+     good treatment which those who well behave receive, and the bad
+     treatment given to those who behave ill, will very quickly render
+     obedience, so that they can be considered as vassals of their
+     Highnesses.  And as now they not only do willingly whatever is
+     required of them by our people, but further, they voluntarily
+     undertake everything which they understand may please us, their
+     Highnesses may also be certain that in many respects, as much for
+     the present as for the future, the coming of this fleet has given
+     them a great reputation, and not less yonder among the Christian
+     princes: which their Highnesses will be better able to consider and
+     understand than I can tell them.
+
+          ["That he is to be told what has befallen the cannibals who
+          came here.  That it is very well and must be done in this
+          manner, but that he must try there as much as possible to bring
+          them to our Holy Catholic faith and do the same with the
+          inhabitants of the islands where he is.]
+
+     "Item.  You will say to their Highnesses that the safety of the
+     souls of the said cannibals, and further of those here, has inspired
+     the thought that the more there are taken yonder, the better it will
+     be, and their Highnesses can be served by it in this manner: having
+     seen how necessary the flocks and beasts of burden are here, for the
+     sustenance of the people who must be here, and even of all these
+     islands, their Highnesses can give licence and permission to a
+     sufficient number of caravels to come here each year, and bring the
+     said flocks and other supplies and things to settle the country and
+     make use of the land: and this at reasonable prices at the expense
+     of those who bring them: and these things can be paid for in slaves
+     from among these cannibals, a very proud and comely people, well
+     proportioned and of good intelligence, who having been freed from
+     that inhumanity, we believe will be better than any other slaves.
+     They will be freed from this cruelty as soon as they are outside
+     their country, and many of them can be taken with the row-boats
+     which it is known how to build here: it being understood, however,
+     that a trustworthy person shall be placed on each one of the
+     caravels coming here, who shall forbid the said caravels to stop at
+     any other place or island than this place, where the loading and
+     unloading of all the merchandise must be done.  And further, their
+     Highnesses will be able to establish their rights over these slaves
+     which are taken from here yonder to Spain.  And you will bring or
+     send a reply to this, in order that the necessary preparations may
+     be made here with more confidence if it appears well to their
+     Highnesses.
+
+          ["This project must be held in abeyance for the present until
+          another method is suggested from there, and the Admiral may
+          write what he thinks in regard to it.]
+
+     "Item.  Also you will say to their Highnesses that it is more
+     profitable and costs less to hire the vessels as the merchants hire
+     them for Flanders, by tons, rather than in any other manner:
+     therefore I charged you to hire the two caravels which you are to
+     send here, in this manner: and all the others which their Highnesses
+     send here can be hired thus, if they consider it for their service
+     but I do not intend to say this of those vessels which are to come
+     here with their licence, for the slave trade.
+
+          ["Their Highnesses order Don Juan de Fonseca to hire the
+          caravels in this manner if it can be done.]
+
+     "Item.  You will say to their Highnesses, that to avoid any further
+     cost, I bought these caravels of which you are taking a memorandum
+     in order to retain them here with these two ships: that is to say
+     the Gallega and that other, the Capitana, of which I likewise
+     purchased the three-eighths from the master of it, for the price
+     given in the said memorandum which you are taking, signed by my
+     hand.  These ships not only will give authority and great security
+     to the people who are obliged to remain inland and make arrangements
+     with the Indians to gather the gold, but they will also be of
+     service in any other dangerous matter which may arise with a strange
+     people; besides the caravels are necessary for the discovery of the
+     mainland and the other islands which lie between here and there: and
+     you will entreat their Highnesses to order the maravedis which these
+     ships cost, paid at the times which they have been promised, because
+     without doubt they will soon receive what they cost, according to
+     what I believe and hope in the mercy of God.
+
+          ["The Admiral has done well, and to tell him that the sum has
+          been paid here to the one who sold the ship, and Don Juan de
+          Fonseca has been ordered to pay for the two caravels which the
+          Admiral bought.]
+
+     "Item.  You will say to their Highnesses, and will supplicate on my
+     part as humbly as possible, that it may please them to reflect on
+     what they will learn most fully from the letters and other writings
+     in regard to the peace and tranquillity and concord of those who are
+     here: and that for the service of their Highnesses such persons may
+     be selected as shall not be suspected, and who will give more
+     attention to the matters for which they are sent than to their own
+     interests: and since you saw and knew everything in regard to this
+     matter, you will speak and will tell their Highnesses the truth
+     about all the things as you understood them, and you will endeavour
+     that the provision which their Highnesses make in regard to it shall
+     come with the first ships if possible, in order that there may be no
+     scandals here in a matter of so much importance in the service of
+     their Highnesses.
+
+          ["Their Highnesses are well informed in regard to this matter,
+          and suitable provision will be made for everything.]
+
+     "Item.  You will tell their Highnesses of the situation of this
+     city, and the beauty of the surrounding province as you saw and
+     understood it, and how I made you its Alcade, by the powers which I
+     have for same from their Highnesses: whom I humbly entreat to hold
+     the said provision in part satisfaction of your services, as I hope
+     from their Highnesses.
+
+          ["It pleases their Highnesses that you shall be Alcade.]
+
+     "Item.  Because Mosen Pedro Margarite, servant of their Highnesses,
+     has done good service, and I hope he will do the same henceforward
+     in matters which are entrusted to him, I have been pleased to have
+     him remain here, and also Gaspar and Beltran, because they are
+     recognised servants of their Highnesses, in order to intrust them
+     with matters of confidence.  You will specialty entreat their
+     Highnesses in regard to the said Mosen Pedro, who is married and has
+     children, to provide him with some charge in the order of Santiago,
+     whose habit he wears, that his wife and children may have the
+     wherewith to live.  In the same manner you will relate how well and
+     diligently Juan Aguado, servant of their Highnesses, has rendered
+     service in everything which he has been ordered to do, and that I
+     supplicate their Highnesses to have him and the aforesaid persons in
+     their charge and to reward them.
+
+          ["Their Highnesses order 30,000 maravedis to be assigned to
+          Mosen Pedro each year, and to Gaspar and Beltran, to each one,
+          15,000 maravedis each year, from the present, August 15, 1494,
+          henceforward: and thus the Admiral shall cause to be paid to
+          them whatever must be paid yonder in the Indies, and Don Juan
+          de Fonseca whatever must be paid here: and in regard to Juan
+          Iguado, their Highnesses will hold him in remembrance.]
+
+     "Item.  You will tell their Highnesses of the labour performed by
+     Dr. Chanca, confronted with so many invalids, and still more because
+     of the lack of provisions and nevertheless, he acts with great
+     diligence and charity in everything pertaining to his office.  And
+     as their Highnesses referred to me the salary which he was to
+     receive here, because, being here, it is certain that he cannot take
+     or receive anything from any one, nor earn money by his office as he
+     earned it in Castile, or would be able to earn it being at his ease
+     and living in a different manner from the way he lives here;
+     therefore, notwithstanding he swears that he earned more there,
+     besides the salary which their Highnesses gave him, I did not wish
+     to allow more than 50,000 maravedis each year for the work he
+     performs here while he remains here.  This I entreat their
+     Highnesses to order allowed to him with the salary from here, and
+     that, because he says and affirms that all the physicians of their
+     Highnesses who are employed in Royal affairs or things similar to
+     this, are accustomed to have by right one day's wages in all the
+     year from all the people.  Nevertheless, I have been informed and
+     they tell me, that however this may be, the custom is to give them a
+     certain sum, fixed according to the will and command of their
+     Highnesses in compensation for that day's wages.  You will entreat
+     their Highnesses to order provision made as well in the matter of
+     the salary as of this custom, in such manner that the said Dr.
+     Chanca may have reason to be satisfied.
+
+          ["Their Highnesses are pleased in regard to this matter of Dr.
+          Chanca, and that he shall be paid what the Admiral has assigned
+          him, together with his salary.
+          "In regard to the day's wages of the physicians, they are not
+          accustomed to receive it, save where the King, our Lord, may be
+          in persona.]
+
+     "Item.  You will say to their Highnesses that Coronel is a man for
+     the service of their Highnesses in many things, and how much service
+     he has rendered up to the present in all the most necessary matters,
+     and the need we feel of him now that he is sick; and that rendering
+     service in such a manner, it is reasonable that he should receive
+     the fruit of his service, not only in future favours, but in his
+     present salary, so that he and those who are here may feel that
+     their service profits them; because, so great is the labour which
+     must be performed here in gathering the gold that the persons who
+     are so diligent are not to be held in small consideration; and as,
+     for his skill, he was provided here by me with the office of
+     Alguacil Mayor of these Indies; and since in the provision the
+     salary is left blank, you will say that I supplicate their
+     Highnesses to order it filled in with as large an amount as they may
+     think right, considering his services, confirming to him the
+     provision I have given him here, and assuring it to him annually.
+
+          ["Their Highnesses order that 15,000 maravedis more than his
+          salary shall be assigned him each year, and that it shall be
+          paid to him with his salary.]
+
+     "In the same manner you will tell their Highnesses how the lawyer
+     Gil Garcia came here for Alcalde Mayor and no salary has been named
+     or assigned to him; and he is a capable person, well educated and
+     diligent, and is very necessary here; that I entreat their
+     Highnesses to order his salary named and assigned, so that he can
+     sustain himself, and that it may be paid from the money allowed for
+     salaries here.
+
+          "[Their Highnesses order 20,000 maravedis besides his salary
+          assigned to him each year, as long as he remains yonder, and
+          that it shall be paid him when his salary is paid.]
+
+     "Item.  You will say to their Highnesses, although it is already
+     written in the letters, that I do not think it will be possible to
+     go to make discoveries this year, until these rivers in which gold
+     is found are placed in the most suitable condition for the service
+     of their Highnesses, as afterwards it can be done much better.
+     Because it is a thing which no one can do without my presence,
+     according to my will or for the service of their Highnesses, however
+     well it may be done, as it is doubtful what will be satisfactory to
+     a man unless he is present.
+
+          ["Let him endeavour that the amount of this gold may be known
+          as precisely as possible.]
+
+     "Item.  You will say to their Highnesses that the Squires who came
+     from Granada showed good horses in the review which took place at
+     Seville, and afterward at the embarkation I did not see them because
+     I was slightly unwell, and they replaced them with such horses that
+     the best of them do not appear to be worth 2000 maravedis, as they
+     sold the others and bought these; and this was done in the same way
+     to many people as I very well saw yonder, in the reviews at Seville.
+     It appears that Juan de Soria, after he had been given the money for
+     the wages, for some interest of his own substituted others in place
+     of those I expected to find here, and I found people whom I had
+     never seen.  In this matter he was guilty of great wickedness, so
+     that I do not know if I should complain of him alone.  On this
+     account, having seen that the expenses of these Squires have been
+     defrayed until now, besides their wages and also wages for their
+     horses, and it is now being done: and they are persons who, when
+     they are sick or when they do not desire to do so, will not allow
+     any use to be made of their horses save by themselves: and their,
+     Highnesses do not desire that these horses should be purchased of
+     them, but that they should be used in the service of their
+     Highnesses: and it does not appear to them that they should do
+     anything or render any service except on horseback, which at the
+     present time is not much to the purpose: on this account, it seems
+     that it would be better to buy the horses from them, since they are
+     of so little value, and not have these disagreements with them every
+     day.  Therefore their Highnesses may determine this as will best
+     serve them.
+
+          ["Their Highnesses order Don Juan de Fonseca to inform himself
+          in regard to this matter of the horses, and if it shall be
+          found true that this fraud was committed, those persons shall
+          be sent to their Highnesses to be punished: and also he is to
+          inform himself in regard to what is said of the other people,
+          and send the result in the examination to their Highnesses; and
+          in regard to these Squires, their Highnesses command that they
+          remain there and render service, since they belong to the
+          guards and servants of their Highnesses: and their Highnesses
+          order the Squires to give up the horses each time it is
+          necessary and the Admiral orders it, and if the horses receive
+          any injury through others using them, their Highnesses order
+          that the damage shall be paid to them by means of the Admiral.]
+
+     "Item.  You will say to their Highnesses that more than 200 persons
+     have come here without wages, and there are some of them who render
+     good service.  And as it is ordered that the others rendering
+     similar service should be paid: and as for these first three years
+     it would be of great benefit to have 1000 men here to settle, and
+     place this island and the rivers of gold in very great security, and
+     even though there were 100 horsemen nothing would be lost, but
+     rather it seems necessary, although their Highnesses will be able to
+     do without these horsemen until gold is sent: nevertheless, their
+     Highnesses must send to say whether wages shall be paid to these 200
+     persons, the same as to the others rendering good service, because
+     they are certainly necessary, as I have said in the beginning of
+     this memorandum.
+
+          ["In regard to these 200 persons, who are here said to have
+          gone without wages, their Highnesses order that they shall take
+          the places of those who went for wages, who have failed or
+          shall fail to fulfil their engagements, if they are skilful and
+          satisfactory to the Admiral.  And their Highnesses order the
+          Purser (Contador) to enrol them in place of those who fail to
+          fulfil their engagements, as the Admiral shall instruct him.]
+
+     "Item.  As the cost of these people can be in some degree lightened
+     and the better part of the expense could be avoided by the same
+     means employed by other Princes in other places: it appears, that it
+     would be well to order brought in the ships, besides the other
+     things which are for the common maintenance and the medicines, shoes
+     and the skins from which to order the shoes made, common shirts and
+     others, jackets, linen, sack-coats, trowsers and cloths suitable for
+     wearing apparel, at reasonable prices: and other things like
+     conserves which are not included in rations and are for the
+     preservation of health, which things all the people here would
+     willingly receive to apply on their wages and if these were
+     purchased yonder in Spain by faithful Ministers who would act for
+     the advantage of their Highnesses, something would be saved.
+     Therefore you will learn the will of their Highnesses about this
+     matter, and if it appears to them to be of benefit to them, then it
+     must be placed in operation.
+
+          ["This arrangement is to be in abeyance until the Admiral
+          writes more fully, and at another time they will send to order
+          Don Juan de Fonseca with Jimeno de Bribiesca to make provision
+          for the same.]
+
+     "Item.  You will say to their Highnesses that inasmuch as yesterday
+     in the review people were found who were without arms, which I think
+     happened in part by that exchange which took place yonder in
+     Seville, or in the harbour when those who presented themselves armed
+     were left, and others were taken who gave something to those who
+     made the exchange, it seems that it would be well to order 200
+     cuirasses sent, and 100 muskets and 100 crossbows, and a large
+     quantity of arsenal supplies, which is what we need most, and all
+     these arms can be given to those who are unarmed.
+
+          ["Already Don Juan de Fonseca has been written to make
+          provision for this.]
+
+     "Item.  Inasmuch as some artisans who came here, such as masons and
+     other workmen, are married and have wives yonder in Spain, and would
+     like to have what is owing them from their wages given to their
+     wives or to the persons to whom they will send their requirements in
+     order that they may buy for them the things which they need here I
+     supplicate their Highnesses to order it paid to them, because it is
+     for their benefit to have these persons provided for here.
+
+          ["Their Highnesses have already sent orders to Don Juan de
+          Fonseca to make provision for this matter.]
+
+     "Item.  Because, besides the other things which are asked for there
+     according to the memoranda which you are carrying signed by my hand,
+     for the maintenance of the persons in good health as well as for the
+     sick ones, it would be very well to have fifty casks of molasses
+     (miel de azucar) from the island of Madeira, as it is the best
+     sustenance in the world and the most healthful, and it does not
+     usually cost more than two ducats per cask, without the cask: and if
+     their Highnesses order some caravel to stop there in returning, it
+     can be purchased and also ten cases of sugar, which is very
+     necessary; as this is the best season of the year to obtain it, I
+     say between the present time and the month of April, and to obtain
+     it at a reasonable price.  If their Highnesses command it, the order
+     could be given, and it would not be known there for what place it is
+     wanted.
+
+          ["Let Don Juan de Fonseca make provision for this matter.]
+
+     "Item.  You will say to their Highnesses that although the rivers
+     contain gold in the quantity related by those who have seen it, yet
+     it is certain that the gold is not engendered in the rivers but
+     rather on the land, the waters of the rivers which flow by the mines
+     bringing it enveloped in the sands: and as among these rivers which
+     have been discovered there are some very large ones, there are
+     others so small that they are fountains rather than rivers, which
+     are not more than two fingers of water in depth, and then the source
+     from which they spring may be found: for this reason not only
+     labourers to gather it in the sand will be profitable, but others to
+     dig for it in the earth, which will be the most particular operation
+     and produce a great quantity.  And for this, it will be well for
+     their Highnesses to send labourers, and from among those who work
+     yonder in Spain in the mines of Almaden, that the work may be done
+     in both ways.  Although we will not await them here, as with the
+     labourers we have here we hope, with the aid of God, once the people
+     are in good health, to amass a good quantity of gold to be sent on
+     the first caravels which return.
+
+          ["This will be fully provided for in another manner.  In the
+          meantime their Highnesses order Don Yuan de Fonseca to send the
+          best miners he can obtain; and to write to Almaden to have the
+          greatest possible number taken from there and sent.]
+
+     "Item.  You will entreat their Highnesses very humbly on my part, to
+     consider Villacorta as speedily recommended to them, who, as their
+     Highnesses know, has rendered great service in this business, and
+     with a very good will, and as I know him, he is a diligent person
+     and very devoted to their service: it will be a favour to me if he
+     is given some confidential charge for which he is fitted, and where
+     he can show his desire to serve them and his diligence: and this you
+     will obtain in such a way that Villacorta may know by the result,
+     that what he has done for me when I needed him profits him in this
+     manner.
+
+          ["It will be done thus.]
+
+     "Item.  That the said Mosen Pedro and Gaspar and Beltran and others
+     who have remained here gave up the captainship of caravels, which
+     have now returned, and are not receiving wages: but because they are
+     persons who must be employed in important matters and of confidence,
+     their compensation, which must be different from the others, has not
+     been determined.  You will entreat their Highnesses on my part to
+     determine what is to be given them each year, or by the month,
+     according to their service.
+
+     "Done in the city of Isabella, January 30, 1494.
+
+          ["This has already been replied to above, but as it is stated
+          in the said item that they enjoy their salary, from the present
+          time their Highnesses order that their wages shall be paid to
+          all of them from the time they left their captainships."]
+
+
+This document is worth studying, written as it was in circumstances that
+at one moment looked desperate and at another were all hope.  Columbus
+was struggling manfully with difficulties that were already beginning to
+be too much for him.  The Man from Genoa, with his guiding star of faith
+in some shore beyond the mist and radiance of the West--see into what
+strange places and to what strange occupations this star has led him!
+The blue visionary eyes, given to seeing things immediately beyond the
+present horizon, must fix themselves on accounts and requisitions, on the
+needs of idle, aristocratic, grumbling Spaniards; must fix themselves
+also on that blank void in the bellies of his returning ships, where the
+gold ought to have been.  The letter has its practical side; the
+requisitions are made with good sense and a grasp of the economic
+situation; but they have a deeper significance than that.  All this talk
+about little ewe lambs, wine and bacon (better than the last lot, if it
+please your Highnesses), little yearling calves, and fifty casks of
+molasses that can be bought a ducat or two cheaper in Madeira in the
+months of April and May than at any other time or place, is only half
+real.  Columbus fills his Sovereigns' ears with this clamour so that he
+shall not hear those embarrassing questions that will inevitably be asked
+about the gold and the spices.  He boldly begins his letter with the old
+story about "indications of spices" and gold "in incredible quantities,"
+with a great deal of "moreover" and "besides," and a bold, pompous,
+pathetic "I will undertake"; and then he gets away from that subject by
+wordy deviations, so that to one reading his letter it really might seem
+as though the true business of the expedition was to provide Coronel,
+Mosen Pedro, Gaspar, Beltran, Gil Garcia, and the rest of them with work
+and wages.  Everything that occurs to him, great or little, that makes it
+seem as though things were humming in the new settlement, he stuffs into
+this document, shovelling words into the empty hulls of the ships, and
+trying to fill those bottomless pits with a stream of talk.  A system of
+slavery is boldly and bluntly sketched; the writer, in the hurry and
+stress of the moment, giving to its economic advantages rather greater
+prominence than to its religious glories.  The memorandum, for all its
+courageous attempt to be very cool and orderly and practical, gives us,
+if ever a human document did, a picture of a man struggling with an
+impossible situation which he will not squarely face, like one who should
+try to dig up the sea-shore and keep his eyes shut the while.
+
+In the royal comments written against the document one seems to trace the
+hand of Isabella rather than of Ferdinand.  Their tone is matter-of-fact,
+cool, and comforting, like the coolness of a woman's hand placed on a
+feverish brow.  Isabella believed in him; perhaps she read between the
+lines of this document, and saw, as we can see, how much anxiety and
+distress were written there; and her comments are steadying and
+encouraging.  He has done well; what he asks is being attended to; their
+Highnesses are well informed in regard to this and that matter; suitable
+provision will be made for everything; but let him endeavour that the
+amount of this gold may be known as precisely as possible.  There is no
+escaping from that.  The Admiral (no one knows it better than himself)
+must make good his dazzling promises, and coin every boastful word into a
+golden excelente of Spain.  Alas!  he must no longer write about the lush
+grasses, the shining rivers, the brightly coloured parrots, the gaudy
+flies and insects, the little singing birds, and the nights that are like
+May in Cordova.  He must find out about the gold; for it has come to grim
+business in the Earthly Paradise.
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+Amerigo Vespucci
+Cannibal epicures did not care for the flesh of women and boys
+Columbus, calling for an egg, laid a wager
+Desire to get a great deal of money without working for it
+Establishment of ten footmen and twenty other servants
+Exchanging the natives for cattle
+First organised transaction of slavery on the part of Columbus
+Having issued three Bulls in twenty-four hours, he desisted
+Juan Ponce de Leon, the discoverer of Florida
+No Spanish women accompanied it (2d expedition)
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of Christopher Columbus, v4
+by Filson Young
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                         CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS
+                   AND THE NEW WORLD OF HIS DISCOVERY
+
+                      A NARRATIVE BY FILSON YOUNG
+
+
+
+DESPERATE REMEDIES
+
+BOOK 5.
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE VOYAGE TO CUBA
+
+The sight of the greater part of their fleet disappearing in the
+direction of home threw back the unstable Spanish colony into doubt and
+despondency.  The brief encouragement afforded by Ojeda's report soon
+died away, and the actual discomforts of life in Isabella were more
+important than visionary luxuries that seemed to recede into the distance
+with the vanishing ships.  The food supply was the cause of much
+discomfort; the jobbery and dishonesty which seem inseparable from the
+fitting out of a large expedition had stored the ships with bad wine and
+imperfectly cured provisions; and these combined with the unhealthy
+climate to produce a good deal of sickness.  The feeling against
+Columbus, never far below the Spanish surface, began to express itself
+definitely in treacherous consultations and plots; and these were
+fomented by Bernal Diaz, the comptroller of the colony, who had access to
+Columbus's papers and had seen the letter sent by him to Spain.  Columbus
+was at this time prostrated by an attack of fever, and Diaz took the
+opportunity to work the growing discontent up to the point of action.  He
+told the colonists that Columbus had painted their condition in far too
+favourable terms; that he was deceiving them as well as the Sovereigns;
+and a plot was hatched to seize the ships that remained and sail for
+home, leaving Columbus behind to enjoy the riches that he had falsely
+boasted about.  They were ready to take alarm at anything, and to believe
+anything one way or the other; and as they had believed Ojeda when he
+came back with his report of riches, now they believed Cado, the assayer,
+who said that even such gold as had been found was of a very poor and
+worthless quality.  The mutiny developed fast; and a table of charges
+against Columbus, which was to be produced in Spain as a justification
+for it, had actually been drawn up when the Admiral, recovering from his
+illness, discovered what was on foot.  He dealt promptly and firmly with
+it in his quarterdeck manner, which was always far more effective than
+his viceregal manner.  Diaz was imprisoned and lodged in chains on board
+one of the ships, to be sent to Spain for trial; and the other
+ringleaders were punished also according to their deserts.  The guns and
+ammunition were all stored together on one ship under a safe guard, and
+the mutiny was stamped out.  But the Spaniards did not love Columbus any
+the better for it; did not any the more easily forgive him for being in
+command of them and for being a foreigner.
+
+
+But it would never do for the colony to stagnate in Isabella, and
+Columbus decided to make a serious attempt, not merely to discover the
+gold of Cibao, but to get it.  He therefore organised a military
+expedition of about 400 men, including artificers, miners, and carriers,
+with the little cavalry force that had been brought out from Spain.
+Every one who had armour wore it, flags and banners were carried, drums
+and trumpets were sounded; the horses were decked out in rich caparisons,
+and as glittering and formidable a show was made as possible.  Leaving
+his brother James in command of the settlement, Columbus set out on the
+12th of March to the interior of the island.  Through the forest and up
+the mountainside a road was cut by pioneers from among the aristocratic
+adventurers who had come with the party; which road, the first made in
+the New World, was called El Puerto de los Hidalgos.  The formidable,
+glittering cavalcade inspired the natives with terror and amazement; they
+had never seen horses before, and when one of the soldiers dismounted it
+seemed to them as though some terrifying two-headed, six-limbed beast had
+come asunder.  What with their fright of the horses and their desire to
+possess the trinkets that were carried they were very friendly and
+hospitable, and supplied the expedition with plenty of food.  At last,
+after passing mountain ranges that made their hearts faint, and rich
+valleys that made them hopeful again, the explorers came to the mountains
+of Cibao, and passing over the first range found themselves in a little
+valley at the foot of the hills where a river wound round a fertile plain
+and there was ample accommodation for an encampment.  There were the
+usual signs of gold, and Columbus saw in the brightly coloured stones of
+the river-bed evidence of unbounded wealth in precious stones.  At last
+he had come to the place!  He who had doubted so much, and whose faith
+had wavered, had now been led to a place where he could touch and handle
+the gold and jewels of his desire; and he therefore called the place
+Saint Thomas.  He built a fort here, leaving a garrison of fifty-six men
+under the command of Pedro Margarite to collect gold from the natives,
+and himself returned to Isabella, which he reached at the end of March.
+
+
+Enforced absence from the thing he has organised is a great test of
+efficiency in any man.  The world is full of men who can do things
+themselves; but those who can organise from the industry of their men a
+machine which will steadily perform the work whether the organiser is
+absent or present are rare indeed.  Columbus was one of the first class.
+His own power and personality generally gave him some kind of mastery
+over any circumstances in which he was immediately concerned; but let him
+be absent for a little time, and his organisation went to pieces.  No one
+was better than he at conducting a one-man concern; and his conduct of
+the first voyage, so long as he had his company under his immediate
+command, was a model of efficiency.  But when the material under his
+command began to grow and to be divided into groups his life became a
+succession of ups and downs.  While he was settling and disciplining one
+group mutiny and disorder would attack the other; and when he went to
+attend to them, the first one immediately fell into confusion again.  He
+dealt with the discontent in Isabella, organising the better disposed
+part of it in productive labour, and himself marching the malcontents
+into something like discipline and order, leaving them at Saint Thomas,
+as we have seen, usefully collecting gold.  But while he was away the
+people at Isabella had got themselves into trouble again, and when he
+arrived there on the morning of March 29th he found the town in a
+deplorable condition.  The lake beside which the city had been built, and
+which seemed so attractive and healthy a spot, turned out to be nothing
+better than a fever trap.  Drained from the malarial marshes, its sickly
+exhalations soon produced an epidemic that incapacitated more than half
+the colony and interrupted the building operations.  The time of those
+who were well was entirely occupied with the care of those who were sick,
+and all productive work was at a standstill.  The reeking virgin soil had
+produced crops in an incredibly short time, and the sowings of January
+were ready for reaping in the beginning of April.  But there was no one
+to reap them, and the further cultivation of the ground had necessarily
+been neglected.
+
+The faint-hearted Spaniards, who never could meet any trouble without
+grumbling, were now in the depths of despair and angry discontent;
+and it had not pleased them to be put on a short allowance of even the
+unwholesome provisions that remained from the original store.  A couple
+of rude hand-mills had been erected for the making of flour, and as food
+was the first necessity Columbus immediately put all the able-bodied men
+in the colony, whatever their rank, to the elementary manual work of
+grinding.  Friar Buil and the twelve Benedictine brothers who were with
+him thought this a wise order, assuming of course that as clerics they
+would not be asked to work.  But great was their astonishment, and loud
+and angry their criticism of the Admiral, when they found that they also
+were obliged to labour with their hands.  But Columbus was firm; there
+were absolutely no exceptions made; hidalgo and priest had to work
+alongside of sailor and labourer; and the curses of the living mingled
+with those of the dying on the man whose boastful words had brought them
+to such a place and such a condition.
+
+It was only in the nature of things that news should now arrive of
+trouble at Saint Thomas.  Gold and women again; instead of bartering or
+digging, the Spaniards had been stealing; and discipline had been
+relaxed, with the usual disastrous results with regard to the women of
+the adjacent native tribes.  Pedro Margarite sent a nervous message to
+Columbus expressing his fear that Caonabo, the native king, should be
+exasperated to the point of attacking them again.  Columbus therefore
+despatched Ojeda in command of a force of 350 armed men to Saint Thomas
+with instructions that he was to take over the command of that post,
+while Margarite was to take out an expedition in search of Caonabo whom,
+with his brothers, Margarite was instructed to capture at all costs.
+
+Having thus set things going in the interior, and once more restored
+Isabella to something like order, he decided to take three ships and
+attempt to discover the coast of Cathay.  The old Nina, the San Juan, and
+the Cordera, three small caravels, were provisioned for six months and
+manned by a company of fifty-two men.  Francisco Nino went once more with
+the Admiral as pilot, and the faithful Juan de la Cosa was taken to draw
+charts; one of the monks also, to act as chaplain.  The Admiral had a
+steward, a secretary, ten seamen and six boys to complete the company on
+the Nina.  The San Juan was commanded by Alonso Perez Roldan and the
+Cordera by Christoval Nino.  Diego was again left in command of the
+colony, with four counsellors, Friar Buil, Fernandez Coronel, Alonso
+Sanchez Carvajal, and Juan de Luxan, to assist his authority.
+
+The Admiral sailed on April 24th, steering to the westward and touching
+at La Navidad before he bore away to the island of Cuba, the southern
+shore of which it was now his intention to explore.  At one of his first
+anchorages he discovered a native feast going on, and when the boats from
+his ships pulled ashore the feasters fled in terror--the hungry Spaniards
+finishing their meal for them.  Presently, however, the feasters were
+induced to come back, and Columbus with soft speeches made them a
+compensation for the food that had been taken, and produced a favourable
+impression, as his habit was; with the result that all along the coast he
+was kindly received by the natives, who supplied him with food and fresh
+fruit in return for trinkets.  At the harbour now known as Santiago de
+Cuba, where he anchored on May 2nd, he had what seemed like authentic
+information of a great island to the southward which was alleged to be
+the source of all the gold.  The very compasses of Columbus's ships seem
+by this time to have become demagnetised, and to have pointed only to
+gold; for no sooner had he heard this report than he bore away to the
+south in pursuit of that faint yellow glitter that had now quite taken
+the place of the original inner light of faith.
+
+
+The low coast of Jamaica, hazy and blue at first, but afterwards warming
+into a golden belt crowned by the paler and deeper greens of the foliage,
+was sighted first by Columbus on Sunday, May 4th; and he anchored the
+next day in the beautiful harbour of Saint Anne, to which he gave the
+name of Santa Gloria.  To the island itself he gave the name of Santiago,
+which however has never displaced its native name of Jamaica.  The dim
+blue mountains and clumps of lofty trees about the bay were wonderful
+even to Columbus, whose eyes must by this time have been growing
+accustomed to the beauty of the West Indies, and he lost his heart to
+Jamaica from the first moment that his eyes rested on its green and
+golden shores.  Perhaps he was by this time a little out of conceit with
+Hayti; but be that as it may he retracted all the superlatives he had
+ever used for the other lands of his discovery, and bestowed them in his
+heart upon Jamaica.
+
+He was not humanly so well received as he had been on the other islands,
+for when he cast anchor the natives came out in canoes threatening
+hostilities and had to be appeased with red caps and hawks' bells.  Next
+day, however, Columbus wished to careen his ships, and sailed a little to
+the west until he found a suitable beach at Puerto Bueno; and as he
+approached the shore some large canoes filled with painted and feathered
+warriors came out and attacked his ships, showering arrows and javelins,
+and whooping and screaming at the Spaniards.  The guns were discharged,
+and an armed party sent ashore in a boat, and the natives were soon put
+to flight.  There was no renewal of hostilities; the next day the local
+cacique came down offering provisions and help; presents were exchanged,
+and cordial relations established.  Columbus noticed that the Jamaicans
+seemed to be a much more virile community than either the Cubans or the
+people of Espanola.  They had enormous canoes hollowed out of single
+mahogany trees, some of them 96 feet long and 8 feet broad, which they
+handled with the greatest ease and dexterity; they had a merry way with
+them too, were quick of apprehension and clever at expressing their
+meaning, and in their domestic utensils and implements they showed an
+advance in civilisation on the other islanders of the group.  Columbus
+did some trade with the islanders as he sailed along the coast, but he
+does not seem to have believed much in the gold story, for after sailing
+to the western point of the island he bore away to the north again and
+sighted the coast of Cuba on the 18th of May.
+
+
+The reason why Columbus kept returning to the coast of Cuba was that he
+believed it to be the mainland of Asia.  The unlettered natives, who had
+never read Marco Polo, told him that it was an island, although no man
+had ever seen the end of it; but Columbus did not believe them, and
+sailed westward in the belief that he would presently come upon the
+country and city of Cathay.  Soon he found himself in the wonderful
+labyrinth of islets and sandbanks off the south coast; and because of the
+wonderful colours of their flowers and climbing plants he called them
+Jardin de la Reina or Queen's Garden.  Dangerous as the navigation
+through these islands was, he preferred to risk the shoals and sandbanks
+rather than round them out at sea to the southward, for he believed them
+to be the islands which, according to Marco Polo, lay in masses along the
+coast of Cathay.  In this adventure he had a very hard time of it; the
+lead had to be used all the time, the ships often had to be towed, the
+wind veered round from every quarter of the compass, and there were
+squalls and tempests, and currents that threatened to set them ashore.
+By great good fortune, however, they managed to get through the
+Archipelago without mishap.  By June 3rd they were sailing along the
+coast again, and Columbus had some conversation with an old cacique who
+told him of a province called Mangon (or so Columbus understood him) that
+lay to the west.  Sir John Mandeville had described the province of Mangi
+as being the richest in Cathay; and of course, thought the Admiral, this
+must be the place.  He went westward past the Gulf of Xagua and got into
+the shallow sandy waters, now known as the Jardinillos Bank, where the
+sea was whitened with particles of sand.  When he had got clear of this
+shoal water he stood across a broad bay towards a native settlement where
+he was able to take in yams, fruit, fish, and fresh water.
+
+But this excitement and hard work were telling on the Admiral, and when a
+native told him that there was a tribe close by with long tails, he
+believed him; and later, when one of his men, coming back from a shore
+expedition, reported that he had seen some figures in a forest wearing
+white robes, Columbus believed that they were the people with the tails,
+who wore a long garment to conceal them.
+
+
+He was moving in a world of enchantment; the weather was like no weather
+in any known part of the world; there were fogs, black and thick, which
+blew down suddenly from the low marshy land, and blew away again as
+suddenly; the sea was sometimes white as milk, sometimes black as pitch,
+sometimes purple, sometimes green; scarlet cranes stood looking at them
+as they slid past the low sandbanks; the warm foggy air smelt of roses;
+shoals of turtles covered the waters, black butterflies circled in the
+mist; and the fever that was beginning to work in the Admiral's blood
+mounted to his brain, so that in this land of bad dreams his fixed ideas
+began to dominate all his other faculties, and he decided that he must
+certainly be on the coast of Cathay, in the magic land described by Marco
+Polo.
+
+
+There is nothing which illustrates the arbitrary and despotic government
+of sea life so well as the nautical phrase "make it so."  The very hours
+of the day, slipping westward under the keel of an east-going ship, are
+"made" by rigid decree; the captain takes his observation of sun or
+stars, and announces the position of the ship to be at a certain spot on
+the surface of the globe; any errors of judgment or deficiencies of
+method are covered by the words "make it so."  And in all the elusive
+phenomena surrounding him the fevered brain of the Admiral discerned
+evidence that he was really upon the coast of Asia, although there was no
+method by which he could place the matter beyond a doubt.  The word Asia
+was not printed upon the sands of Cuba, as it might be upon a map; the
+lines of longitude did not lie visibly across the surface of the sea;
+there was nothing but sea and land, the Admiral's charts, and his own
+conviction.  Therefore Columbus decided to "make it so."  If there was no
+other way of being sure that this was the coast of Cathay, he would
+decree it to be the coast of Cathay by a legal document and by oaths and
+affidavits.  He would force upon the members of his expedition a
+conviction at least equal to his own; and instead of pursuing any further
+the coast that stretched interminably west and south-west, he decided to
+say, in effect, and once and for all, "Let this be the mainland of Asia."
+
+He called his secretary to him and made him draw up a form of oath or
+testament, to which every member of the expedition was required to
+subscribe, affirming that the land off which they were then lying (12th
+June 1494), was the mainland of the Indies and that it was possible to
+return to Spain by land from that place; and every officer who should
+ever deny it in the future was laid under a penalty of ten thousand
+maravedis, and every ship's boy or seaman under a penalty of one hundred
+lashes; and in addition, any member of the expedition denying it in the
+future was to have his tongue cut out.
+
+No one will pretend that this was the action of a sane man; neither will
+any one wonder that Columbus was something less than sane after all he
+had gone through, and with the beginnings of a serious illness already in
+his blood.  His achievement was slipping from his grasp; the gold had not
+been found, the wonders of the East had not been discovered; and it was
+his instinct to secure something from the general wreck that seemed to be
+falling about him, and to force his own dreams to come true, that caused
+him to cut this grim and fantastic legal caper off the coast of Cuba.  He
+thought it at the time unlikely, seeing the difficulties of navigation
+that he had gone through, which he might be pardoned for regarding as
+insuperable to a less skilful mariner, that any one should ever come that
+way again; even he himself said that he would never risk his life again
+in such a place.  He wished his journey, therefore, not to have been made
+in vain; and as he himself believed that he had stood on the mainland of
+Asia he took care to take back with him the only kind of evidence that
+was possible namely, the sworn affidavits of the ships' crews.
+
+
+Perhaps in his madness he would really have gone on and tried to reach
+the Golden Chersonesus of Ptolemy, which according to Marco Polo lay just
+beyond, and so to steer homeward round Ceylon and the Cape of Good Hope;
+in which case he would either have been lost or would have discovered
+Mexico.  The crews, however, would not hear of the voyage being continued
+westward.  The ships were leaking and the salt water was spoiling the
+already doubtful provisions and he was forced to turn back.  He stood to
+the south-east, and reached the Isle of Pines, to which he gave the name
+of Evangelista, where the water-casks were filled, and from there he
+tried to sail back to the east.  But he found himself surrounded by
+islands and banks in every direction, which made any straight course
+impossible.  He sailed south and east and west and north, and found
+himself always back again in the middle of this charmed group of islands.
+He spent almost a month trying to escape from them, and once his ship
+went ashore on a sandbank and was only warped off with the greatest
+difficulty.  On July 7th he was back again in the region of the "Queen's
+Gardens," from which he stood across to the coast of Cuba.
+
+He anchored and landed there, and being in great distress and difficulty
+he had a large cross erected on the mainland, and had mass said.  When
+the Spaniards rose from their knees they saw an old native man observing
+them; and the old man came and sat down beside Columbus and talked to him
+through the interpreter.  He told him that he had been in Jamaica and
+Espanola as well as in Cuba, and that the coming of the Spaniards had
+caused great distress to the people of the islands.
+
+He then spoke to Columbus about religion, and the gist of what he said
+was something like this: "The performance of your worship seems good to
+me.  You believe that this life is not everything; so do we; and I know
+that when this life is over there are two places reserved for me, to one
+of which I shall certainly go; one happy and beautiful, one dreadful and
+miserable.  Joy and kindness reign in the one place, which is good enough
+for the best of men; and they will go there who while they have lived on
+the earth have loved peace and goodness, and who have never robbed or
+killed or been unkind.  The other place is evil and full of shadows, and
+is reserved for those who disturb and hurt the sons of men; how important
+it is, therefore, that one should do no evil or injury in this world!"
+
+Columbus replied with a brief statement of his own theological views, and
+added that he had been sent to find out if there were any persons in
+those islands who did evil to others, such as the Caribs or cannibals,
+and that if so he had come to punish them.  The effect of this ingenuous
+speech was heightened by a gift of hawks' bells and pieces of broken
+glass; upon receiving which the good old man fell down on his knees, and
+said that the Spaniards must surely have come from heaven.
+
+
+A few days later the voyage to the, south-east was resumed, and some
+progress was made along the coast.  But contrary winds arose which made
+it impossible for the ships to round Cape Cruz, and Columbus decided to
+employ the time of waiting in completing his explorations in Jamaica.
+He therefore sailed due south until he once more sighted the beautiful
+northern coast of that island, following it to the west and landing, as
+his custom was, whenever he saw a good harbour or anchorage.  The wind
+was still from the east, and he spent a month beating to the eastward
+along the south coast of the island, fascinated by its beauty, and
+willing to stay and explore it, but prevented by the discontent of his
+crews, who were only anxious to get back to Espanola.  He had friendly
+interviews with many of the natives of Jamaica, and at almost the last
+harbour at which he touched a cacique with his wife and family and
+complete retinue came off in canoes to the ship, begging Columbus to take
+him and his household back to Spain.
+
+Columbus considers this family, and thinks wistfully how well they would
+look in Barcelona.  Father dressed in a cap of gold and green jewels,
+necklace and earrings of the same; mother decked out in similar regalia,
+with the addition of a small cotton apron; two sons and five brothers
+dressed principally in a feather or two; two daughters mother-naked,
+except that the elder, a handsome girl of eighteen, wears a jewelled
+girdle from which depends a tablet as big as an ivy leaf, made of various
+coloured stones embroidered on cotton.  What an exhibit for one of the
+triumphal processions: "Native royal family, complete"!  But Columbus
+thinks also of the scarcity of provisions on board his ships, and wonders
+how all these royalties would like to live on a pint of sour wine and a
+rotten biscuit each per day.  Alas! there is not sour wine and rotten
+biscuit enough for his own people; it is still a long way to Espanola;
+and he is obliged to make polite excuses, and to say that he will come
+back for his majesty another time.
+
+
+It was on the 20th of August that Columbus, having the day before seen
+the last of the dim blue hills of Jamaica, sighted again the long
+peninsula of Hayti, called by him Cape San Miguel, but known to us as
+Cape Tiburon; although it was not until he was hailed by a cacique who
+called out to him "Almirante, Almirante," that the seaworn mariners
+realised with joy that the island must be Espanola.  But they were a long
+way from Isabella yet.  They sailed along the south coast, meeting
+contrary winds, and at one point landing nine men who were to cross the
+island, and try to reach Isabella by land.  Week followed week, and they
+made very poor progress.  In the beginning of September they were caught
+in a severe tempest, which separated the ships for a time, and held the
+Admiral weather-bound for eight days.  There was an eclipse of the moon
+during this period, and he took advantage of it to make an observation
+for longitude, by which he found himself to be 5 hrs. 23 min., or 80 deg.
+40', west of Cadiz.  In this observation there is an error of eighteen
+degrees, the true longitude of the island of Saona, where the observation
+was taken, being 62 deg. 20' west of Cadiz; and the error is accounted
+for partly by the inaccuracy of the tables of Regiomontanus and partly by
+the crudity and inexactness of the Admiral's methods.  On the 24th of
+September they at last reached the easternmost point of Espanola, named
+by Columbus San Rafael.  They stood to the east a little longer, and
+discovered the little island of Mona, which lies between Espanola and
+Puerto Rico; and from thence shaped their course west-by-north for
+Isabella.  And no sooner had the course been set for home than the
+Admiral suddenly and completely collapsed; was carried unconscious to his
+cabin; and lay there in such extremity that his companions gave him up
+for lost.
+
+It is no ordinary strain to which poor Christopher has succumbed.  He has
+been five months at sea, sharing with the common sailors their bad food
+and weary vigils, but bearing alone on his own shoulders a weight of
+anxiety of which they knew nothing.  Watch has relieved watch on his
+ships, but there has been no one to relieve him, or to lift the burden
+from his mind.  The eyes of a nation are upon him, watchful and jealous
+eyes that will not forgive him any failure; and to earn their approval he
+has taken this voyage of five months, during which he has only been able
+to forget his troubles in the brief hours of slumber.  Strange uncharted
+seas, treacherous winds and currents, drenching surges have all done
+their part in bringing him to this pass; and his body, now starved on
+rotten biscuits, now glutted with unfamiliar fruits, has been preyed upon
+by the tortured mind as the mind itself has been shaken and loosened by
+the weakness of the body.  He lies there in his cabin in a deep stupor;
+memory, sight, and all sensation completely gone from him; dead but for
+the heart that beats on faintly, and the breath that comes and goes
+through the parted lips.  Nino, de la Cosa, and the others come and look
+at him, shake their heads, and go away again.  There is nothing to be
+done; perhaps they will get him back to Isabella in time to bury him
+there; perhaps not.
+
+And meanwhile they are back again in calm and safe waters, and coasting a
+familiar shore; and the faithful little Nina, shaking out her wings in
+the sunny breezes, trips under the guidance of unfamiliar hands towards
+her moorings in the Bay of Isabella.  It is a sad company that she
+carries; for in the cabin, deaf and blind and unconscious, there lies the
+heart and guiding spirit of the New World.  He does not hear the talking
+of the waters past the Nina's timbers, does not hear the stamping on the
+deck and shortening of sail and unstopping of cables and getting out of
+gear; does not hear the splash of the anchor, nor the screams of birds
+that rise circling from the shore.  Does not hear the greetings and the
+news; does not see bending over him a kind, helpful, and well-beloved
+face.  He sees and hears and knows nothing; and in that state of rest and
+absence from the body they carry him, still living and breathing, ashore.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE CONQUEST OF ESPANOLA
+
+We must now go back to the time when Columbus, having made what
+arrangements he could for the safety of Espanola, left it under the
+charge of his brother James.  Ojeda had duly marched into the interior
+and taken over the command of Fort St. Thomas, thus setting free
+Margarite, according to his instructions, to lead an expedition for
+purposes of reconnoitre and demonstration through the island.  These, at
+any rate, were Margarite's orders, duly communicated to him by Ojeda; but
+Margarite will have none of them.  Well born, well educated, well bred,
+he ought at least to have the spirit to carry out orders so agreeable to
+a gentleman of adventure; but unfortunately, although Margarite is a
+gentleman by birth, he is a low and dishonest dog by nature.  He cannot
+take the decent course, cannot even play the man, and take his share in
+the military work of the colony.  Instead of cutting paths through the
+forest, and exhibiting his military strength in an orderly and proper way
+as the Admiral intended he should, he marches forth from St. Thomas, on
+hearing that Columbus has sailed away, and encamps no further off than
+the Vega Real, that pleasant place of green valleys and groves and
+murmuring rivers.  He encamps there, takes up his quarters there, will
+not budge from there for any Admiral; and as for James Columbus and his
+counsellors, they may go to the devil for all Margarite cares.  One of
+them at least, he knows--Friar Buil--is not such a fool as to sit down
+under the command of that solemn-faced, uncouth young snip from Genoa;
+and doubtless when he is tired of the Vega Real he and Buil can arrange
+something between them.  In the meantime, here is a very beautiful
+sunshiny place, abounding in all kinds of provisions; food for more than
+one kind of appetite, as he has noticed when he has thrust his rude way
+into the native houses and seen the shapely daughters of the islanders.
+He has a little army of soldiers to forage for him; they can get him food
+and gold, and they are useful also in those other marauding expeditions
+designed to replenish the seraglio that he has established in his camp;
+and if they like to do a little marauding and woman-stealing on their own
+account, it is no affair of his, and may keep the devils in a good
+temper.  Thus Don Pedro Margarite to himself.
+
+The peaceable and gentle natives soon began to resent these gross doings.
+To robbery succeeded outrage, and to outrage murder--all three committed
+in the very houses of the natives; and they began to murmur, to withhold
+that goodwill which the Spaniards had so sorely tried, and to develop a
+threatening attitude that was soon communicated to the natives in the
+vicinity of Isabella, and came under the notice of James Columbus and his
+council.  Grave, bookish, wool-weaving young James, not used to military
+affairs, and not at all comfortable in his command, can think of no other
+expedient than--to write a letter to Margarite remonstrating with him for
+his licentious excesses and reminding him of the Admiral's instructions,
+which were being neglected.
+
+Margarite receives the letter and reads it with a contemptuous laugh.  He
+is not going to be ordered about by a family of Italian wool-weavers, and
+the only change in his conduct is that he becomes more and more careless
+and impudent, extending the area of his lawless operations, and making
+frequent visits to Isabella itself, swaggering under the very nose of
+solemn James, and soon deep in consultation with Friar Buil.
+
+At this moment, that is to say very soon after the departure of
+Christopher on his voyage to Cuba and Jamaica, three ships dropped anchor
+in the Bay of Isabella.  They were laden with the much-needed supplies
+from Spain, and had been sent out under the command of Bartholomew
+Columbus.  It will be remembered that when Christopher reached Spain
+after his first voyage one of his first cares had been to write to
+Bartholomew, asking him to join him.  The letter, doubtless after many
+wanderings, had found Bartholomew in France at the court of Charles
+VIII., by whom he was held in some esteem; in fact it was Charles who
+provided him with the necessary money for his journey to Spain, for
+Bartholomew had not greatly prospered, in spite of his voyage with Diaz
+to the Cape of Good Hope and of his having been in England making
+exploration proposals at the court of Henry VII.  He had arrived in Spain
+after Columbus had sailed again, and had presented himself at court with
+his two nephews, Ferdinand and Diego, both of whom were now in the
+service of Prince Juan as pages.  Ferdinand and Isabella seem to have
+received Bartholomew kindly.  They liked this capable navigator, who had
+much of Christopher's charm of manner, and was more a man of the world
+than he.  Much more practical also; Ferdinand would be sure to like him
+better than he liked Christopher, whose pompous manner and long-winded
+speeches bored him.  Bartholomew was quick, alert, decisive and
+practical; he was an accomplished navigator--almost as accomplished as
+Columbus, as it appeared.  He was offered the command of the three ships
+which were being prepared to go to Espanola with supplies; and he duly
+arrived there after a prosperous voyage.  It will be remembered that
+Christopher had, so far as we know, kept the secret of the road to the
+new islands; and Bartholomew can have had nothing more to guide him than
+a rough chart showing the islands in a certain latitude, and the distance
+to be run towards them by dead-reckoning.  That he should have made an
+exact landfall and sailed into the Bay of Isabella, never having been
+there before, was a certificate of the highest skill in navigation.
+
+Unfortunately it was James who was in charge of the colony; Bartholomew
+had no authority, for once his ships had arrived in port his mission was
+accomplished until Christopher should return and find him employment.
+He was therefore forced to sit still and watch his young brother
+struggling with the unruly Spaniards.  His presence, however, was no
+doubt a further exasperation to the malcontents.  There existed in
+Isabella a little faction of some of the aristocrats who had never,
+forgiven Columbus for employing them in degrading manual labour; who had
+never forgiven him in fact for being there at all, and in command over
+them.  And now here was another woolweaver, or son of a wool-weaver, come
+to put his finger in the pie that Christopher has apparently provided so
+carefully for himself and his family.
+
+Margarite and Buil and some others, treacherous scoundrels all of them,
+but clannish to their own race and class, decide that they will put up
+with it no longer; they are tired of Espanola in any case, and Margarite,
+from too free indulgence among the native women, has contracted an
+unpleasant disease, and thinks that a sea voyage and the attentions of a
+Spanish doctor will be good for him.  It is easy for them to put their
+plot into execution.  There are the ships; there is nothing, for them to
+do but take a couple of them, provision them, and set sail for Spain,
+where they trust to their own influence, and the story they will be able
+to tell of the falseness of the Admiral's promises, to excuse their
+breach of discipline.  And sail they do, snapping their fingers at the
+wool-weavers.
+
+James and Bartholomew were perhaps glad to be rid of them, but their
+relief was tempered with anxiety as to the result on Christopher's
+reputation and favour when the malcontents should have made their false
+representations at Court.  The brothers were powerless to do anything in
+that matter, however, and the state of affairs in Espanola demanded their
+close attention.  Margarite's little army, finding itself without even
+the uncertain restraint of its commander, now openly mutinied and
+abandoned itself to the wildest excesses.  It became scattered and
+disbanded, and little groups of soldiers went wandering about the
+country, robbing and outraging and carrying cruelty and oppression among
+the natives.  Long-suffering as these were, and patiently as they bore
+with the unspeakable barbarities of the Spanish soldiers, there came a
+point beyond which their forbearance would not go.  An aching spirit of
+unforgiveness and revenge took the place of their former gentleness and
+compliance; and here and there, when the Spaniards were more brutal and
+less cautious than was their brutal and incautious habit, the natives
+fell upon them and took swift and bloody revenge.  Small parties found
+themselves besieged and put to death whole villages, whose hospitality
+had been abused, cut off wandering groups of the marauders and burned the
+houses where they lodged.  The disaffection spread; and Caonabo, who had
+never abated his resentment at the Spanish intrusion into the island,
+thought the time had come to make another demonstration of native power.
+
+Fortunately for the Spaniards his object was the fort of St. Thomas,
+commanded by the alert Ojeda; and this young man, who was not easily to
+be caught napping, had timely intelligence of his intention.  When
+Caonabo, mustering ten thousand men, suddenly surrounded the fort and
+prepared to attack it, he found the fifty Spaniards of the garrison more
+than ready for him, and his naked savages dared not advance within the
+range of the crossbows and arquebuses.  Caonabo tried to besiege the
+station, watching every gorge and road through which supplies could reach
+it, but Ojeda made sallies and raids upon the native force, under which
+it became thinned and discouraged; and Caonabo had finally to withdraw to
+his own territory.
+
+But he was not yet beaten.  He decided upon another and much larger
+enterprise, which was to induce the other caciques of the island to co-
+operate with him in an attack upon Isabella, the population of which he
+knew would have been much thinned and weakened by disease.  The island
+was divided into five native provinces.  The northeastern part, named
+Marien, was under the rule of Guacanagari, whose headquarters were near
+the abandoned La Navidad.  The remaining eastern part of the island,
+called Higuay, was under a chief named Cotabanama.  The western province
+was Xaragua, governed by one Behechio, whose sister, Anacaona, was the
+wife of Caonabo.  The middle of the island was divided into two
+provinces-that which extended from the northern coast to the Cibao
+mountains and included the Vega Real being governed by Guarionex, and
+that which extended from the Cibao mountains to the south being governed
+by Caonabo.  All these rulers were more or less embittered by the
+outrages and cruelties of the Spaniards, and all agreed to join with
+Caonabo except Guacanagari.  That loyal soul, so faithful to what he knew
+of good, shocked and distressed as he was by outrages from which his own
+people had suffered no less than the others, could not bring himself to
+commit what he regarded as a breach of the laws of hospitality.  It was
+upon his shores that Columbus had first landed; and although it was his
+own country and his own people whose wrongs were to be avenged, he could
+not bring himself to turn traitor to the grave Admiral with whom, in
+those happy days of the past, he had enjoyed so much pleasant
+intercourse.  His refusal to co-operate delayed the plan of Caonabo, who
+directed the island coalition against Guacanagari himself in order to
+bring him to reason.  He was attacked by the neighbouring chiefs; one of
+his wives was killed and another captured; but still he would not swerve
+from his ideal of conduct.
+
+
+The first thing that Columbus recognised when he opened his eyes after
+his long period of lethargy and insensibility was the face of his brother
+Bartholomew bend-over him where he lay in bed in his own house at
+Espanola.  Nothing could have been more welcome to him, sick, lonely and
+discouraged as he was, than the presence of that strong, helpful brother;
+and from the time when Bartholomew's friendly face first greeted him he
+began to get better.  His first act, as soon as he was strong enough to
+sign a paper, was to appoint Bartholomew to the office of Adelantado, or
+Lieutenant-Governor--an indiscreet and rather tactless proceeding which,
+although it was not outside his power as a bearer of the royal seal, was
+afterwards resented by King Ferdinand as a piece of impudent encroachment
+upon the royal prerogative.  But Columbus was unable to transact business
+himself, and James was manifestly of little use; the action was natural
+enough.
+
+In the early days of his convalescence he had another pleasant
+experience, in the shape of a visit from Guacanagari, who came to express
+his concern at the Admiral's illness, and to tell him the story of what
+had been going on in his absence.  The gentle creature referred again
+with tears to the massacre at La Navidad, and again asserted that
+innocence of any hand in it which Columbus had happily never doubted; and
+he told him also of the secret league against Isabella, of his own
+refusal to join it, and of the attacks to which he had consequently been
+subjected.  It must have been an affecting meeting for these two, who
+represented the first friendship formed between the Old World and the
+New, who were both of them destined to suffer in the impact of
+civilisation and savagery, and whose names and characters were happily
+destined to survive that impact, and to triumph over the oblivion of
+centuries.
+
+
+So long as the native population remained hostile and unconquered by
+kindness or force, it was impossible to work securely at the development
+of the colony; and Columbus, however regretfully, had come to feel that
+circumstances more or less obliged him to use force.  At first he did not
+quite realise the gravity of the position, and attempted to conquer or
+reconcile the natives in little groups.  Guarionex, the cacique of the
+Vega Real, was by gifts and smooth words soothed back into a friendship
+which was consolidated by the marriage of his daughter with Columbus's
+native interpreter.  It was useless, how ever, to try and make friends
+with Caonabo, that fierce irreconcilable; and it was felt that only by
+stratagem could he be secured.  No sooner was this suggested than Ojeda
+volunteered for the service.  Amid the somewhat slow-moving figures of
+our story this man appears as lively as a flea; and he dances across our
+pages in a sensation of intrepid feats of arms that make his great
+popularity among the Spaniards easily credible to us.  He did not know
+what fear was; he was always ready for a fight of any kind; a quarrel in
+the streets of Madrid, a duel, a fight with a man or a wild beast,
+a brawl in a tavern or a military expedition, were all the same to him,
+if only they gave him an opportunity for fighting.  He had a little
+picture of the Virgin hung round his neck, by which he swore, and to
+which he prayed; he had never been so much as scratched in all his
+affrays, and he believed that he led a charmed life.  Who would go out
+against Caonabo, the Goliath of the island?  He, little David Ojeda, he
+would go out and undertake to fetch the giant back with him; and all he
+wanted was ten men, a pair of handcuffs, a handful of trinkets, horses
+for the whole of his company, and his little image or picture of the
+Virgin.
+
+Columbus may have smiled at this proposal, but he knew his man; and Ojeda
+duly departed with his horses and his ten men.  Plunging into the forest,
+he made his way through sixty leagues of dense undergrowth until he
+arrived in the very heart of Caonabo's territory and presented himself at
+the chiefs house.  The chief was at home, and, not unimpressed by the
+valour of Ojeda, who represented himself as coming on a friendly mission,
+received him under conditions of truce.  He had an eye for military
+prowess, this Caonabo, and something of the lion's heart in him; he
+recognised in Ojeda the little man who kept him so long at bay outside
+Fort St. Thomas; and, after the manner of lion-hearted people, liked him
+none the worse for that.
+
+Ojeda proposes that the King should accompany him to Isabella to make
+peace.  No, says Caonabo.  Then Ojeda tries another way.  There is a
+poetical side to this big fighting savage, and often in more friendly
+days, when the bell in the little chapel of Isabella has been ringing for
+Vespers, the cacique has been observed sitting alone on some hill
+listening, enchanted by the strange silver voice that floated to him
+across the sunset.  The bell has indeed become something of a personality
+in the island: all the neighbouring savages listen to its voice with awe
+and fascination, pausing with inclined heads whenever it begins to speak
+from its turret.
+
+Ojeda talks to Caonabo about the bell, and tells him what a wonderful
+thing it is; tells him also that if he will come with him to Isabella he
+shall have the bell for a present.  Poetry and public policy struggle
+together in Caonabo's heart, but poetry wins; the great powerful savage,
+urged thereto by his childish lion-heart, will come to Isabella if they
+will give him the bell.  He sets forth, accompanied by a native retinue,
+and by Ojeda and his ten horsemen.  Presently they come to a river and
+Ojeda produces his bright manacles; tells the King that they are royal
+ornaments and that he has been instructed to bestow them upon Caonabo as
+a sign of honour.  But first he must come alone to the river and bathe,
+which he does.  Then he must sit with Ojeda upon his horse; which he
+does.  Then he must have fitted on to him the shining silver trinkets;
+which he does, the great grinning giant, pleased with his toys.  Then, to
+show him what it is like to be on a horse, Ojeda canters gently round in
+widening and ever widening circles; a turn of his spurred heels, and the
+canter becomes a gallop, the circle becomes a straight line, and Caonabo
+is on the road to Isabella.  When they are well beyond reach of the
+natives they pause and tie Caonabo securely into his place; and by this
+treachery bring him into Isabella, where he is imprisoned in the
+Admiral's house.
+
+The sulky giant, brought thus into captivity, refuses to bend his proud,
+stubborn heart into even a form of submission.  He takes no notice of
+Columbus, and pays him no honour, although honour is paid to himself as
+a captive king.  He sits there behind his bars gnawing his fingers,
+listening to the voice of the bell that has lured him into captivity,
+and thinking of the free open life which he is to know no more.  Though
+he will pay no deference to the Admiral, will not even rise when he
+enters his presence, there is one person he holds in honour, and that is
+Ojeda.  He will not rise when the Admiral comes; but when Ojeda comes,
+small as he is, and without external state, the chief makes his obeisance
+to him.  The Admiral he sets at defiance, and boasts of his destruction
+of La Navidad, and of his plan to destroy Isabella; Ojeda he respects and
+holds in honour, as being the only man in the island brave enough to come
+into his house and carry him off a captive.  There is a good deal of the
+sportsman in Caonabo.
+
+The immediate result of the capture of Caonabo was to rouse the islanders
+to further hostilities, and one of the brothers of the captive king led a
+force of seven thousand men to the vicinity of St. Thomas, to which
+Ojeda, however, had in the meantime returned.  His small force was
+augmented by some men despatched by Bartholomew Columbus on receipt of an
+urgent message; and in command of this force Ojeda sallied forth against
+the natives and attacked them furiously on horse and on foot, killing a
+great part of them, taking others prisoner, and putting the rest to
+flight.  This was the beginning of the end of the island resistance.  A
+month or two later, when Columbus was better, he and Bartholomew together
+mustered the whole of their available army and marched out in search of
+the native force, which he knew had been rallied and greatly augmented.
+
+The two forces met near the present town of Santiago, in the plain known
+as the Savanna of Matanza.  The Spanish force was divided into three main
+divisions, under the command of Christopher and Bartholomew Columbus and
+Ojeda respectively.  These three divisions attacked the Indians
+simultaneously from different points, Ojeda throwing his cavalry upon
+them, riding them down, and cutting them to pieces.  Drums were beaten
+and trumpets blown; the guns were fired from the cover of the trees; and
+a pack of bloodhounds, which had been sent out from Spain with
+Bartholomew, were let loose upon the natives and tore their bodies to
+pieces.  It was an easy and horrible victory.  The native force was
+estimated by Columbus at one hundred thousand men, although we shall
+probably be nearer the mark if we reduce that estimate by one half.
+
+The powers of hell were let loose that day into the Earthly Paradise.
+The guns mowed red lines of blood through the solid ranks of the natives;
+the great Spanish horses trod upon and crushed their writhing bodies, in
+which arrows and lances continually stuck and quivered; and the ferocious
+dogs, barking and growling, seized the naked Indians by the throat,
+dragged them to the ground, and tore out their very entrails .  .  .  .
+Well for us that the horrible noises of that day are silent now; well for
+the world that that place of bloodshed and horror has grown green again;
+better for us and for the world if those cries had never been heard, and
+that quiet place had never received a stain that centuries of green
+succeeding springtides can never wash away.
+
+
+It was some time before this final battle that the convalescence of the
+Admiral was further assisted by the arrival of four ships commanded by
+Antonio Torres, who must have passed, out of sight and somewhere on the
+high seas, the ships bearing Buil and Margarite back to Spain.  He
+brought with him a large supply of fresh provisions for the colony, and a
+number of genuine colonists, such as fishermen, carpenters, farmers,
+mechanics, and millers.  And better still he brought a letter from the
+Sovereigns, dated the 16th of August 1494, which did much to cheer the
+shaken spirits of Columbus.  The words with which he had freighted his
+empty ships had not been in vain; and in this reply to them he was warmly
+commended for his diligence, and reminded that he enjoyed the unshaken
+confidence of the Sovereigns.  They proposed that a caravel should sail
+every month from Spain and from Isabella, bearing intelligence of the
+colony and also, it was hoped, some of its products.  In a general letter
+addressed to the colony the settlers were reminded of the obedience they
+owed to the Admiral, and were instructed to obey him in all things under
+the penalty of heavy fines.  They invited Columbus to come back if he
+could in order to be present at the convention which was to establish the
+line of demarcation between Spanish and Portuguese possessions; or if he
+could not come himself to send his brother Bartholomew.  There were
+reasons, however, which made this difficult.  Columbus wished to despatch
+the ships back again as speedily as possible, in order that news of him
+might help to counteract the evil rumours that he knew Buil and Margarite
+would be spreading.  He himself was as yet (February 1494) too ill to
+travel; and during his illness Bartholomew could not easily be spared.
+It was therefore decided to send home James, who could most easily be
+spared, and whose testimony as a member of the governing body during the
+absence of the Admiral on his voyage to Cuba might be relied upon to
+counteract the jealous accusations of Margarite and Buil.
+
+Unfortunately there was no golden cargo to send back with him.  As much
+gold as possible was scraped together, but it was very little.  The usual
+assortment of samples of various island products was also sent; but still
+the vessels were practically empty.  Columbus must have been painfully
+conscious that the time for sending samples had more than expired, and
+that the people in Spain might reasonably expect some of the actual
+riches of which there had been so many specimens and promises.  In
+something approaching desperation, he decided to fill the empty holds of
+the ships with something which, if it was not actual money, could at
+least be made to realise money.  From their sunny dreaming life on the
+island five hundred natives were taken and lodged in the dark holds of
+the caravels, to be sent to Spain and sold there for what they would
+fetch.  Of course they were to be "freed" and converted to Christianity
+in the process; that was always part of the programme, but it did not
+interfere with business.  They were not man-eating Caribs or fierce
+marauding savages from neighbouring islands, but were of the mild and
+peaceable race that peopled Espanola.  The wheels of civilisation were
+beginning to turn in the New World.
+
+After the capture of Caonabo and the massacre of April 25th Columbus
+marched through the island, receiving the surrender and submission of the
+terrified natives.  At the approach of his force the caciques came out
+and sued for peace; and if here and there there was a momentary
+resistance, a charge of cavalry soon put an end to it.  One by one the
+kings surrendered and laid down their arms, until all the island rulers
+had capitulated with the exception of Behechio, into whose territory
+Columbus did not march, and who sullenly retired to the south-western
+corner of the island.  The terms of peace were harsh enough, and were
+suggested by the dilemma of Columbus in his frantic desire to get
+together some gold at any cost.  A tribute of gold-dust was laid upon
+every adult native in the island.  Every three months a hawk's bell full
+of gold was to be brought to the treasury at Isabella, and in the case 39
+of caciques the measure was a calabash.  A receipt in the form of a brass
+medal was fastened to the neck of every Indian when he paid his tribute,
+and those who could not show the medal with the necessary number of marks
+were to be further fined and punished.  In the districts where there was
+no gold, 25 lbs. of cotton was accepted instead.
+
+This levy was made in ignorance of the real conditions under which the
+natives possessed themselves of the gold.  What they had in many cases
+represented the store of years, and in all but one or two favoured
+districts it was quite impossible for them to keep up the amount of the
+tribute.  Yet the hawks' bells, which once had been so eagerly coveted
+and were now becoming hated symbols of oppression, had to be filled
+somehow; and as the day of payment drew near the wretched natives, who
+had formerly only sought for gold when a little of it was wanted for a
+pretty ornament, had now to work with frantic energy in the river sands;
+or in other cases, to toil through the heat of the day in the cotton
+fields which they had formerly only cultivated enough to furnish their
+very scant requirements of use and adornment.  One or two caciques,
+knowing that their people could not possibly furnish the required amount
+of gold, begged that its value in grain might be accepted instead; but
+that was not the kind of wealth that Columbus was seeking.  It must be
+gold or nothing; and rather than receive any other article from the gold-
+bearing districts, he consented to take half the amount.
+
+
+Thus step by step, and under the banner of the Holy Catholic religion,
+did dark and cruel misery march through the groves and glades of the
+island and banish for ever its ancient peace.  This long-vanished race
+that was native to the island of Espanola seems to have had some of the
+happiest and most lovable qualities known to dwellers on this planet.
+They had none of the brutalities of the African, the paralysing wisdom of
+the Asian, nor the tragic potentialities of the European peoples.  Their
+life was from day to day, and from season to season, like the life of
+flowers and birds.  They lived in such order and peaceable community as
+the common sense of their own simple needs suggested; they craved no
+pleasures except those that came free from nature, and sought no wealth
+but what the sun gave them.  In their verdant island, near to the heart
+and source of light, surrounded by the murmur of the sea, and so enriched
+by nature that the idea, of any other kind of riches never occurred to
+them, their existence went to a happy dancing measure like that of the
+fauns and nymphs in whose charmed existence they believed.  The sun and
+moon were to them creatures of their island who had escaped from a cavern
+by the shore and now wandered free in the upper air, peopling it with
+happy stars; and man himself they believed to have sprung from crevices
+in the rocks, like the plants that grew tall and beautiful wherever there
+was a handful of soil for their roots.  Poor happy children!  You are all
+dead a long while ago now, and have long been hushed in the great humming
+sleep and silence of Time; the modern world has no time nor room for
+people like you, with so much kindness and so little ambition .  .  .  .
+Yet their free pagan souls were given a chance to be penned within the
+Christian fold; the priest accompanied the gunner and the bloodhound, the
+missionary walked beside the slave-driver; and upon the bewildered sun-
+bright surface of their minds the shadow of the cross was for a moment
+thrown.  Verily to them the professors of Christ brought not peace, but a
+sword.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+UPS AND DOWNS
+
+While Columbus was toiling under the tropical sun to make good his
+promises to the Crown, Margarite and Buil, having safely come home to
+Spain from across the seas, were busy setting forth their view of the
+value of his discoveries.  It was a view entirely different from any that
+Ferdinand and Isabella had heard before, and coming as it did from two
+men of position and importance who had actually been in Espanola, and
+were loyal and religious subjects of the Crown, it could not fail to
+receive, if not immediate and complete credence, at any rate grave
+attention.  Hitherto the Sovereigns had only heard one side of the
+matter; an occasional jealous voice may have been raised from the
+neighbourhood of the Pinzons or some one else not entirely satisfied with
+his own position in the affair; but such small cries of dissent had
+naturally had little chance against the dignified eloquence of the
+Admiral.
+
+Now, however, the matter was different.  People who were at least the
+equals of Columbus in intelligence, and his superiors by birth and
+education, had seen with their own eyes the things of which he had
+spoken, and their account differed widely from his.  They represented
+things in Espanola as being in a very bad way indeed, which was true
+enough; drew a dismal picture of an overcrowded colony ravaged with
+disease and suffering from lack of provisions; and held forth at length
+upon the very doubtful quality of the gold with which the New World was
+supposed to abound.  More than this, they brought grave charges against
+Columbus himself, representing him as unfit to govern a colony, given to
+favouritism, and, worst of all, guilty of having deliberately
+misrepresented for his own ends the resources of the colony.  This as we
+know was not true.  It was not for his own ends, or for any ends at all
+within the comprehension of men like Margarite and Buil, that poor
+Christopher had spoken so glowingly out of a heart full of faith in what
+he had seen and done.  Purposes, dim perhaps, but far greater and loftier
+than any of which these two mean souls had understanding, animated him
+alike in his discoveries and in his account of them; although that does
+not alter the unpleasant fact that at the stage matters had now reached
+it seemed as though there might have been serious misrepresentation.
+
+Ferdinand and Isabella, thus confronted with a rather difficult
+situation, acted with great wisdom and good sense.  How much or how
+little they believed we do not know, but it was obviously their duty,
+having heard such an account from responsible officers, to investigate
+matters for themselves without assuming either that the report was true
+or untrue.  They immediately had four caravels furnished with supplies,
+and decided to appoint an agent to accompany the expedition, investigate
+the affairs of the colony, and make a report to them.  If the Admiral was
+still absent when their agent reached the colony he was to be entrusted
+with the distribution of the supplies which were being sent out; for
+Columbus's long absence from Espanola had given rise to some fears for
+his safety.
+
+The Sovereigns had just come to this decision (April 1495) when a letter
+arrived from the Admiral himself, announcing his return to Espanola after
+discovering the veritable mainland of Asia, as the notarial document
+enclosed with the letter attested.  Torres and James Columbus had arrived
+in Spain, bearing the memorandum which some time ago we saw the Admiral
+writing; and they were able to do something towards allaying the fears of
+the Sovereigns as to the condition of the colony.  The King and Queen,
+nevertheless, wisely decided to carry out their original intention, and
+in appointing an agent they very handsomely chose one of the men whom
+Columbus had recommended to them in his letter--Juan Aguado.  This action
+shows a friendliness to Columbus and confidence in him that lead one to
+suspect that the tales of Margarite and Buil had been taken with a grain
+of salt.
+
+At the same time the Sovereigns made one or two orders which could not
+but be unwelcome to Columbus.  A decree was issued making it lawful for
+all native-born Spaniards to make voyages of discovery, and to settle in
+Espanola itself if they liked.  This was an infringement of the original
+privileges granted to the Admiral--privileges which were really absurd,
+and which can only have been granted in complete disbelief that anything
+much would come of his discovery.  It took Columbus two years to get this
+order modified, and in the meantime a great many Spanish adventurers, our
+old friends the Pinzons among them, did actually make voyages and added
+to the area explored by the Spaniards in Columbus's lifetime.  Columbus
+was bitterly jealous that any one should be admitted to the western
+ocean, which he regarded as his special preserve, except under his
+supreme authority; and he is reported to have said that once the way to
+the West had been pointed out "even the very tailors turned explorers."
+There, surely, spoke the long dormant woolweaver in him.
+
+The commission given to Aguado was very brief, and so vaguely worded
+that it might mean much or little, according to the discretion of the
+commissioner and the necessities of the case as viewed by him.  "We send
+to you Juan Aguada, our Groom of the Chambers, who will speak to you on
+our part.  We command you to give him faith and credit."  A letter was
+also sent to Columbus in which he was instructed to reduce the number of
+people dependent on the colony to five hundred instead of a thousand; and
+the control of the mines was entrusted to one Pablo Belvis, who was sent
+out as chief metallurgist.  As for the slaves that Columbus had sent
+home, Isabella forbade their sale until inquiry could be made into the
+condition of their capture, and the fine moral point involved was
+entrusted to the ecclesiastical authorities for examination and solution.
+Poor Christopher, knowing as he did that five hundred heretics were being
+burned every year by the Grand Inquisitor, had not expected this hair-
+splitting over the fate of heathens who had rebelled against Spanish
+authority; and it caused him some distress when he heard of it.  The
+theologians, however, proved equal to the occasion, and the slaves were
+duly sold in Seville market.
+
+
+Aguado sailed from Cadiz at the end of August 1495, and reached Espanola
+in October.  James Columbus (who does not as yet seem to be in very great
+demand anywhere, and who doubtless conceals behind his grave visage much
+honest amazement at the amount of life that he is seeing) returned with
+him.  Aguado, on arriving at Isabella, found that Columbus was absent
+establishing forts in the interior of the island, Bartholomew being left
+in charge at Isabella.
+
+Aguado, who had apparently been found faithful in small matters, was
+found wanting in his use of the authority that had been entrusted to him.
+It seems to have turned his head; for instead of beginning quietly to
+investigate the affairs of the colony as he had been commanded to do he
+took over from Bartholomew the actual government, and interpreted his
+commission as giving him the right to supersede the Admiral himself.  The
+unhappy colony, which had no doubt been enjoying some brief period of
+peace under the wise direction of Bartholomew, was again thrown into
+confusion by the doings of Aguado.  He arrested this person, imprisoned
+that; ordered that things should be done this way, which had formerly
+been done that way; and if they had formerly been done that way, then he
+ordered that they should be done this way--in short he committed every
+mistake possible for a man in his situation armed with a little brief
+authority.  He did not hesitate to let it be known that he was there to
+examine the conduct of the Admiral himself; and we may be quite sure that
+every one in the colony who had a grievance or an ill tale to carry,
+carried it to Aguado.  His whole attitude was one of enmity and
+disloyalty to the Admiral who had so handsomely recommended him to the
+notice of the Sovereigns; and so undisguised was his attitude that even
+the Indians began to lodge their complaints and to see a chance by which
+they might escape from the intolerable burden of the gold tribute.
+
+It was at this point that Columbus returned and found Aguado ruling in
+the place of Bartholomew, who had wisely made no protest against his own
+deposition, but was quietly waiting for the Admiral to return.  Columbus
+might surely have been forgiven if he had betrayed extreme anger and
+annoyance at the doings of Aguado; and it is entirely to his credit that
+he concealed such natural wrath as he may have felt, and greeted Aguado
+with extreme courtesy and ceremony as a representative of the Sovereigns.
+He made no protest, but decided to return himself to Spain and confront
+the jealousy and ill-fame that were accumulating against him.
+
+Just as the ships were all ready to sail, one of the hurricanes which
+occur periodically in the West Indies burst upon the island, lashing the
+sea into a wall of advancing foam that destroyed everything before it.
+Among other things it destroyed three out of the four ships, dashing them
+on the beach and reducing them to complete wreckage.  The only one that
+held to her anchor and, although much battered and damaged, rode out the
+gale, was the Nina, that staunch little friend that had remained faithful
+to the Admiral through so many dangers and trials.  There was nothing for
+it but to build a new ship out of the fragments of the wrecks, and to
+make the journey home with two ships instead of with four.
+
+
+At this moment, while he was waiting for the ship to be completed,
+Columbus heard a piece of news of a kind that never failed to rouse his
+interest.  There was a young Spaniard named Miguel Diaz who had got into
+disgrace in Isabella some time before on account of a duel, and had
+wandered into the island until he had come out on the south coast at the
+mouth of the river Ozama, near the site of the present town of Santo
+Domingo.  There he had fallen in love with a female cacique and had made
+his home with her.  She, knowing the Spanish taste, and anxious to please
+her lover and to retain him in her territory, told him of some rich gold-
+mines that there were in the neighbourhood, and suggested that he should
+inform the Admiral, who would perhaps remove the settlement from Isabella
+to the south coast.  She provided him with guides and sent him off to
+Isabella, where, hearing that his antagonist had recovered, and that he
+himself was therefore in no danger of punishment, he presented himself
+with his story.
+
+Columbus immediately despatched Bartholomew with a party to examine the
+mines; and sure enough they found in the river Hayna undoubted evidence
+of a wealth far in excess of that contained in the Cibao gold-mines.
+Moreover, they had noticed two ancient excavations about which the
+natives could tell them nothing, but which made them think that the mines
+had once been worked.
+
+Columbus was never backward in fitting a story and a theory to whatever
+phenomena surrounded him; and in this case he was certain that the
+excavations were the work of Solomon, and that he had discovered the gold
+of Ophir.  "Sure enough," thinks the Admiral, "I have hit it this time;
+and the ships came eastward from the Persian Gulf round the Golden
+Chersonesus, which I discovered this very last winter."  Immediately, as
+his habit was, Columbus began to build castles in Spain.  Here was a fine
+answer to Buil and Margarite!  Without waiting a week or two to get any
+of the gold this extraordinary man decided to hurry off at once to Spain
+with the news, not dreaming that Spain might, by this time, have had a
+surfeit of news, and might be in serious need of some simple, honest
+facts.  But he thought his two caravels sufficiently freighted with this
+new belief--the belief that he had discovered the Ophir of Solomon.
+
+The Admiral sailed on March 10th, 1496, carrying with him in chains the
+vanquished Caonabo and other natives.  He touched at Marigalante and at
+Guadaloupe, where his people had an engagement with the natives, taking
+several prisoners, but releasing them all again with the exception of one
+woman, a handsome creature who had fallen in love with Caonabo and
+refused to go.  But for Caonabo the joys of life and love were at an end;
+his heart and spirit were broken.  He was not destined to be paraded as a
+captive through the streets of Spain, and it was somewhere in the deep
+Atlantic that he paid the last tribute to the power that had captured and
+broken him.  He died on the voyage, which was longer and much more full
+of hardships than usual.  For some reason or other Columbus did not take
+the northerly route going home, but sailed east from Gaudaloupe,
+encountering the easterly trade winds, which delayed him so much that the
+voyage occupied three months instead of six weeks.
+
+Once more he exhibited his easy mastery of the art of navigation and his
+extraordinary gift for estimating dead-reckoning.  After having been out
+of sight of land for eight weeks, and while some of the sailors thought
+they might be in the Bay of Biscay, and others that they were in the
+English Channel, the Admiral suddenly announced that they were close to
+Cape Saint Vincent.
+
+No land was in sight, but he ordered that sail should be shortened that
+evening; and sure enough the next morning they sighted the land close by
+Cape Saint Vincent.  Columbus managed his landfalls with a fine dramatic
+sense as though they were conjuring tricks; and indeed they must have
+seemed like conjuring tricks, except that they were almost always
+successful.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+IN SPAIN AGAIN
+
+The loiterers about the harbour of Cadiz saw a curious sight on June
+11th, 1496, when the two battered ships, bearing back the voyagers from
+the Eldorado of the West, disembarked their passengers.  There were some
+220 souls on board, including thirty Indians: and instead of leaping
+ashore, flushed with health, and bringing the fortunes which they had
+gone out to seek, they crawled miserably from the boats or were carried
+ashore, emaciated by starvation, yellow with disease, ragged and unkempt
+from poverty, and with practically no possessions other than the clothes
+they stood up in.  Even the Admiral, now in his forty-sixth year, hardly
+had the appearance that one would expect in a Viceroy of the Indies.  His
+white hair and beard were rough and matted, his handsome face furrowed by
+care and sunken by illness and exhaustion, and instead of the glittering
+armour and uniform of his office he wore the plain robe and girdle of the
+Franciscan order--this last probably in consequence of some vow or other
+he had made in an hour of peril on the voyage.
+
+One lucky coincidence marked his arrival.  In the harbour, preparing to
+weigh anchor, was a fleet of three little caravels, commanded by Pedro
+Nino, about to set out for Espanola with supplies and despatches.
+Columbus hurried on board Nino's ship, and there read the letters from
+the Sovereigns which it had been designed he should receive in Espanola.
+The letters are not preserved, but one can make a fair guess at their
+contents.  Some searching questions would certainly be asked, kind
+assurances of continued confidence would doubtless be given, with many
+suggestions for the betterment of affairs in the distant colony.  Only
+their result upon the Admiral is known to us.  He sat down there and then
+and wrote to Bartholomew, urging him to secure peace in the island by
+every means in his power, to send home any caciques or natives who were
+likely to give trouble, and most of all to push on with the building of a
+settlement on the south coast where the new mines were, and to have a
+cargo of gold ready to send back with the next expedition.  Having
+written this letter, the Admiral saw the little fleet sail away on June
+17th, and himself prepared with mingled feelings to present himself
+before his Sovereigns.
+
+While he was waiting for their summons at Los Palacios, a small town near
+Seville, he was the guest of the curate of that place, Andrez Bernaldez,
+who had been chaplain to Christopher's old friend DEA, the Archbishop of
+Seville.  This good priest evidently proved a staunch friend to Columbus
+at this anxious period of his life, for the Admiral left many important
+papers in his charge when he again left Spain, and no small part of the
+scant contemporary information about Columbus that has come down to us is
+contained in the 'Historia de los Reyes Catolicos', which Bernaldez wrote
+after the death of Columbus.
+
+
+Fickle Spain had already forgotten its first sentimental enthusiasm over
+the Admiral's discoveries, and now was only interested in their financial
+results.  People cannot be continually excited about a thing which they
+have not seen, and there were events much nearer home that absorbed the
+public interest.  There was the trouble with France, the contemplated
+alliance of the Crown Prince with Margaret of Austria, and of the Spanish
+Princess Juana with Philip of Austria; and there were the designs of
+Ferdinand upon the kingdom of Naples, which was in his eyes a much more
+desirable and valuable prize than any group of unknown islands beyond the
+ocean.
+
+Columbus did his very best to work up enthusiasm again.  He repeated the
+performance that had been such a success after his first voyage--the kind
+of circus procession in which the natives were marched in column
+surrounded by specimens of the wealth of the Indies.  But somehow it did
+not work so well this time.  Where there had formerly been acclamations
+and crowds pressing forward to view the savages and their ornaments,
+there were now apathy and a dearth of spectators.  And although Columbus
+did his very best, and was careful to exhibit every scrap of gold that he
+had brought, and to hang golden collars and ornaments about the necks of
+the marching Indians, his exhibition was received either in ominous
+silence or, in some quarters, with something like derision.  As I have
+said before, there comes a time when the best-disposed debtors do not
+regard themselves as being repaid by promises, and when the most
+enthusiastic optimist desires to see something more than samples.
+It was only old Colon going round with his show again--flamingoes,
+macaws, seashells, dye-woods, gums and spices; some people laughed,
+and some were angry; but all were united in thinking that the New World
+was not a very profitable speculation.
+
+Things were a little better, however, at Court.  Isabella certainly
+believed still in Columbus; Ferdinand, although he had never been
+enthusiastic, knew the Admiral too well to make the vulgar mistake of
+believing him an impostor; and both were too polite and considerate to
+add to his obvious mortification and distress by any discouraging
+comments.  Moreover, the man himself had lost neither his belief in the
+value of his discoveries nor his eloquence in talking of them; and when
+he told his story to the Sovereigns they could not help being impressed,
+not only with his sincerity but with his ability and single-heartedness
+also.  It was almost the same old story, of illimitable wealth that was
+just about to be acquired, and perhaps no one but Columbus could have
+made it go down once more with success; but talking about his exploits
+was never any trouble to him, and his astonishing conviction, the lofty
+and dignified manner in which he described both good and bad fortune, and
+the impressive way in which he spoke of the wealth of the gold of Ophir
+and of the far-reaching importance of his supposed discovery of the
+Golden Chersonesus and the mainland of Asia, had their due effect on his
+hearers.
+
+It was always his way, plausible Christopher, to pass lightly over the
+premises and to dwell with elaborate detail on the deductions.  It was by
+no means proved that he had discovered the mines of King Solomon; he had
+never even seen the place which he identified with them; it was in fact
+nothing more than an idea in his own head; but we may be sure that he
+took it as an established fact that he had actually discovered the mines
+of Ophir, and confined his discussion to estimates of the wealth which
+they were likely to yield, and of what was to be done with the wealth
+when the mere details of conveying it from the mines to the ships had
+been disposed of.  So also with the Golden Chersonesus.  The very name
+was enough to stop the mouths of doubters; and here was the man himself
+who had actually been there, and here was a sworn affidavit from every
+member of his crew to say that they had been there too.  This kind of
+logic is irresistible if you only grant the first little step; and
+Columbus had the art of making it seem an act of imbecility in any of his
+hearers to doubt the strength of the little link by which his great
+golden chains of argument were fastened to fact and truth.
+
+For Columbus everything depended upon his reception by the Sovereigns at
+this time.  Unless he could re-establish his hold upon them and move to a
+still more secure position in their confidence he was a ruined man and
+his career was finished; and one cannot but sympathise with him as he
+sits there searching his mind for tempting and convincing arguments, and
+speaking so calmly and gravely and confidently in spite of all the doubts
+and flutterings in his heart.  Like a tradesman setting out his wares,
+he brought forth every inducement he could think of to convince the
+Sovereigns that the only way to make a success of what they had already
+done was to do more; that the only way to make profitable the money that
+had already been spent was to spend more; that the only way to prove the
+wisdom of their trust in him was to trust him more.  One of his
+transcendent merits in a situation of this kind was that he always had
+something new and interesting to propose.  He did not spread out his
+hands and say, "This is what I have done: it is the best I can do; how
+are you going to treat me?"  He said in effect, "This is what I have
+done; you will see that it will all come right in time; do not worry
+about it; but meanwhile I have something else to propose which I think
+your Majesties will consider a good plan."
+
+His new demand was for a fleet of six ships, two of which were to convey
+supplies to Espanola, and the other four to be entrusted to him for the
+purpose of a voyage of discovery towards the mainland to the south of
+Espanola, of which he had heard consistent rumours; which was said to be
+rich in gold, and (a clever touch) to which the King of Portugal was
+thinking of sending a fleet, as he thought that it might lie within the
+limits of his domain of heathendom.  And so well did he manage, and so
+deeply did he impress the Sovereigns with his assurance that this time
+the thing amounted to what is vulgarly called "a dead certainty," that
+they promised him he should have his ships.
+
+But promise and performance, as no one knew better than Columbus, are
+different things; and it was a long while before he got his ships.  There
+was the usual scarcity of money, and the extensive military and
+diplomatic operations in which the Crown was then engaged absorbed every
+maravedi that Ferdinand could lay his hands on.  There was an army to be
+maintained under the Pyrenees to keep watch over France; fleets had to be
+kept patrolling both the Mediterranean and Atlantic seaboards; and there
+was a whole armada required to convey the princesses of Spain and Austria
+to their respective husbands in connection with the double matrimonial
+alliance arranged between the two countries.  And when at last, in
+October 1496, six million maravedis were provided wherewith Columbus
+might equip his fleet, they were withdrawn again under very mortifying
+circumstances.  The appropriation had just been made when a letter
+arrived from Pedro Nino, who had been to Espanola and come back again,
+and now wrote from Cadiz to the Sovereigns, saying that his ships were
+full of gold.  He did not present himself at Court, but went to visit his
+family at Huelva; but the good news of his letter was accepted as an
+excuse for this oversight.
+
+No one was better pleased than the Admiral.  "What did I tell you?"  he
+says; "you see the mines of Hayna are paying already."  King Ferdinand,
+equally pleased, and having an urgent need of money in connection with
+his operations against France, took the opportunity to cancel the
+appropriation of the six million maravedis, giving Columbus instead an
+order for the amount to be paid out of the treasure brought home by Nino.
+Alas, the mariner's boast of gold had been a figure of speech.  There was
+no gold; there was only a cargo of slaves, which Nino deemed the
+equivalent of gold; and when Bartholomew's despatches came to be read he
+described the affairs of Espanola as being in very much the same
+condition as before.  This incident produced a most unfortunate
+impression.  Even Columbus was obliged to keep quiet for a little while;
+and it is likely that the mention of six million maravedis was not
+welcomed by him for some time afterwards.
+
+After the wedding of Prince Juan in March 1497, when Queen Isabella had
+more time to give to external affairs, the promise to Columbus was again
+remembered, and his position was considered in detail.  An order was made
+(April 23rd, 1497), restoring to the Admiral the original privileges
+bestowed upon him at Santa Fe.  He was offered a large tract of land in
+Espanola, with the title of Duke; but much as he hankered after titular
+honours, he was for once prudent enough to refuse this gift.  His reason
+was that it would only further damage his influence, and give apparent
+justification to those enemies who said that the whole enterprise had
+been undertaken merely in his own interests; and it is possible also that
+his many painful associations with Espanola, and the bloodshed and
+horrors that he had witnessed there, had aroused in his superstitious
+mind a distaste for possessions and titles in that devastated Paradise.
+Instead, he accepted a measure of relief from the obligations incurred by
+his eighth share in the many unprofitable expeditions that had been sent
+out during the last three years, agreeing for the next three years to
+receive an eighth share of the gross income, and a tenth of the net
+profits, without contributing anything to the cost.  His appointment of
+Bartholomew to the office of Adelantado, which had annoyed Ferdinand, was
+now confirmed; the universal license which had been granted to Spanish
+subjects to settle in the new lands was revoked in so far as it infringed
+the Admiral's privileges; and he was granted a force of 330 officers,
+soldiers, and artificers to be at his personal disposal in the
+prosecution of his next voyage.
+
+The death of Prince Juan in October 1497 once more distracted the
+attention of the Court from all but personal matters; and Columbus
+employed the time of waiting in drafting a testamentary document in which
+he was permitted to create an entail on his title and estates in favour
+of his two sons and their heirs for ever.  This did not represent his
+complete or final testament, for he added codicils at various times,
+the latest being executed the day before his death.  The document is
+worth studying; it reveals something of the laborious, painstaking mind
+reaching out down the rivers and streams of the future that were to flow
+from the fountain of his own greatness; it reveals also his triple
+conception of the obligations of human life in this world--the
+cultivation and retention of temporal dignity, the performance of pious
+and charitable acts, and the recognition of duty to one's family.  It was
+in this document that Columbus formulated the curious cipher which he
+always now used in signing his name, and of which various readings are
+given in the Appendix.  He also enjoined upon his heir the duty of using
+the simple title which he himself loved and used most--"The Admiral."
+
+After the death of Prince Juan, Queen Isabella honoured Columbus by
+attaching his two sons to her own person as pages; and her friendship
+must at this time have gone far to compensate him for the coolness shown
+towards him by the public at large.  He might talk as much as he pleased,
+but he had nothing to show for all his talk except a few trinkets, a
+collection of interesting but valueless botanical specimens, and a
+handful of miserable slaves.  Lives and fortunes had been wrecked on the
+enterprise, which had so far brought nothing to Spain but the promise of
+luxurious adventure that was not fulfilled and of a wealth and glory that
+had not been realised.  It must have been a very humiliating circumstance
+to Columbus that in the preparations which he was now (February 1498)
+making for the equipment of his new expedition a great difficulty was
+found in procuring ships and men.  Not even before the first voyage had
+so much reluctance been shown to risk life and property in the
+enterprise.  Merchants and sailors had then been frightened of dangers
+which they did not know; now, it seemed, the evils of which they did know
+proved a still greater deterrent.  The Admiral was at this time the guest
+of his friend Bernaldez, who has told us something of his difficulties;
+and the humiliating expedient of seizing ships under a royal order had
+finally to be adopted.  But it would never have done to impress the
+colonists also; that would have been too open a confession of failure for
+the proud Admiral to tolerate.
+
+Instead he had recourse to the miserable plan of which he had made use in
+Palos; the prisons were opened, and criminals under sentence invited to
+come forth and enjoy the blessings of colonial life.  Even then there was
+not that rush from the prison doors that might have been expected, and
+some desperate characters apparently preferred the mercies of a Spanish
+prison to what they had heard of the joys of the Earthly Paradise.  Still
+a number of criminals did doubtfully crawl forth and furnish a retinue
+for the great Admiral and Viceroy.  Trembling, suspicious, and with more
+than half a mind to go back to their bonds, some part of the human vermin
+of Spain was eventually cajoled and chivied on board the ships.
+
+The needs of the colony being urgent, and recruiting being slow, two
+caravels laden with provisions were sent off in advance; but even for
+this purpose there was a difficulty about money, and good Isabella
+furnished the expense, at much inconvenience, from her private purse.
+
+Columbus had to supervise everything himself; and no wonder that by the
+end of May, when he was ready to sail, his patience and temper were
+exhausted and his much-tried endurance broke down under the petty
+gnatlike irritations of Fonseca and his myrmidons.  It was on the deck of
+his own ship, in the harbour of San Lucar, that he knocked down and
+soundly kicked Ximeno de Breviesca, Fonseca's accountant, whose nagging
+requisitions had driven the Admiral to fury.
+
+After all these years of gravity and restraint and endurance, this
+momentary outbreak of the old Adam in our hero is like a breath of wind
+through an open window.
+
+To the portraits of Columbus hanging in the gallery of one's imagination
+this must surely be added; in which Christopher, on the deck of his ship,
+with the royal standard and the Admiral's flag flying from his masthead,
+is observed to be soundly kicking a prostrate accountant.  The incident
+is worthy of a date, which is accordingly here given, as near as may be--
+May 29, 1498.
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+Absent for a little time, and his organisation went to pieces
+Heretics were being burned every year by the Grand Inquisitor
+Logic is irresistible if you only grant the first little step
+Nautical phrase "make it so."
+Professors of Christ brought not peace, but a sword
+Terror and amazement; they had never seen horses before
+The missionary walked beside the slave-driver
+Theologians, however, proved equal to the occasion
+Who never could meet any trouble without grumbling
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of Christopher Columbus, v5
+by Filson Young
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                         CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS
+                   AND THE NEW WORLD OF HIS DISCOVERY
+
+                      A NARRATIVE BY FILSON YOUNG
+
+
+
+BOOK 6.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE THIRD VOYAGE
+
+Columbus was at sea again; firm ground to him, although so treacherous
+and unstable to most of us; and as he saw the Spanish coast sinking down
+on the horizon he could shake himself free from his troubles, and feel
+that once more he was in a situation of which he was master.  He first
+touched at Porto Santo, where, if the story of his residence there be
+true, there must have been potent memories for him in the sight of the
+long white beach and the plantations, with the Governor's house beyond.
+He stayed there only a few hours and then crossed over to Madeira,
+anchoring in the Bay of Funchal, where he took in wood and water.  As it
+was really unnecessary for him to make a port so soon after leaving,
+there was probably some other reason for his visit to these islands;
+perhaps a family reason; perhaps nothing more historically important than
+the desire to look once more on scenes of bygone happiness, for even on
+the page of history every event is not necessarily big with significance.
+From Madeira he took a southerly course to the Canary Islands, and on
+June 16th anchored at Gomera, where he found a French warship with two
+Spanish prizes, all of which put to sea as the Admiral's fleet
+approached.  On June 21st, when he sailed from Gomera, he divided his
+fleet of six vessels into two squadrons.  Three ships were despatched
+direct to Espanola, for the supplies which they carried were urgently
+needed there.  These three ships were commanded by trustworthy men: Pedro
+de Arana, a brother of Beatriz, Alonso Sanchez de Carvajal, and Juan
+Antonio Colombo--this last no other than a cousin of Christopher's from
+Genoa.  The sons of Domenico's provident younger brother had not
+prospered, while the sons of improvident Domenico were now all in high
+places; and these three poor cousins, hearing of Christopher's greatness,
+and deciding that use should be made of him, scraped together enough
+money to send one of their number to Spain.  The Admiral always had a
+sound family feeling, and finding that cousin Antonio had sea experience
+and knew how to handle a ship he gave him command of one of the caravels
+on this voyage--a command of which he proved capable and worthy.  From
+these three captains, after giving them full sailing directions for
+reaching Espanola, Columbus parted company off the island of Ferro.  He
+himself stood on a southerly course towards the Cape Verde Islands.
+
+His plan on this voyage was to find the mainland to the southward, of
+which he had heard rumours in Espanola.  Before leaving Spain he had
+received a letter from an eminent lapidary named Ferrer who had travelled
+much in the east, and who assured him that if he sought gold and precious
+stones he must go to hot lands, and that the hotter the lands were, and
+the blacker the inhabitants, the more likely he was to find riches there.
+This was just the kind of theory to suit Columbus, and as he sailed
+towards the Cape Verde Islands he was already in imagination gathering
+gold and pearls on the shores of the equatorial continent.
+
+He stayed for about a week at the Cape Verde Islands, getting in
+provisions and cattle, and curiously observing the life of the Portuguese
+lepers who came in numbers to the island of Buenavista to be cured there
+by eating the flesh and bathing in the blood of turtles.  It was not an
+inspiriting week which he spent in that dreary place and enervating
+climate, with nothing to see but the goats feeding among the scrub, the
+turtles crawling about the sand, and the lepers following the turtles.
+It began to tell on the health of the crew, so he weighed anchor on July
+5th and stood on a southwesterly course.
+
+This third voyage, which was destined to be the most important of all,
+and the material for which had cost him so much time and labour, was
+undertaken in a very solemn and determined spirit.  His health, which he
+had hoped to recover in Spain, had been if anything damaged by his
+worryings with officialdom there; and although he was only forty-seven
+years of age he was in some respects already an old man.  He had entered,
+although happily he did not know it, on the last decade of his life; and
+was already beginning to suffer from the two diseases, gout and
+ophthalmia, which were soon to undermine his strength and endurance.
+Religion of a mystical fifteenth-century sort was deepening in him;
+he had undertaken this voyage in the name of the Holy Trinity; and to
+that theological entity he had resolved to dedicate the first new land
+that he should sight.
+
+For ten days light baffling winds impeded his progress; but at the end of
+that time the winds fell away altogether, and the voyagers found
+themselves in that flat equatorial calm known to mariners as the
+Doldrums.  The vertical rays of the sun shone blisteringly down upon
+them, making the seams of the ships gape and causing the unhappy crews
+mental as well as bodily distress, for they began to fear that they had
+reached that zone of fire which had always been said to exist in the
+southern ocean.
+
+Day after day the three ships lay motionless on the glassy water, with
+wood-work so hot as to burn the hands that touched it, with the meat
+putrefying in the casks below, and the water running from the loosened
+casks, and no one with courage and endurance enough to venture into the
+stifling hold even to save the provisions.  And through all this the
+Admiral, racked with gout, had to keep a cheerful face and assure his
+prostrate crew that they would soon be out of it.
+
+There were showers of rain sometimes, but the moisture in that baking
+atmosphere only added to its stifling and enervating effects.  All the
+while, however, the great slow current of the Atlantic was moving
+westward, and there came a day when a heavenly breeze, stirred in the
+torrid air and the musical talk of ripples began to rise again from the
+weedy stems of the ships.  They sailed due west, always into a cooler and
+fresher atmosphere; but still no land was sighted, although pelicans and
+smaller birds were continually seen passing from south-west to north-
+east.  As provisions were beginning to run low, Columbus decided on the
+31st July to alter his course to north-by-east, in the hope of reaching
+the island of Dominica.  But at mid-day his servant Alonso Perez,
+happening to go to the masthead, cried out that there was land in sight;
+and sure enough to the westward there rose three peaks of land united at
+the base.  Here was the kind of coincidence which staggers even the
+unbeliever.  Columbus had promised to dedicate the first land he saw to
+the Trinity; and here was the land, miraculously provided when he needed
+it most, three peaks in one peak, in due conformity with the requirements
+of the blessed Saint Athanasius.  The Admiral was deeply affected; the
+God of his belief was indeed a good friend to him; and he wrote down his
+pious conviction that the event was a miracle, and summoned all hands to
+sing the Salve Regina, with other hymns in praise of God and the Virgin
+Mary.  The island was duly christened La Trinidad.  By the hour of
+Compline (9 o'clock in the evening) they had come up with the south coast
+of the island, but it was the next day before the Admiral found a harbour
+where he could take in water.  No natives were to be seen, although there
+were footprints on the shore and other signs of human habitation.
+
+He continued all day to sail slowly along the shore of the island, the
+green luxuriance of which astonished him; and sometimes he stood out from
+the coast to the southward as he made a long board to round this or that
+point.  It must have been while reaching out in this way to the southward
+that he saw a low shore on his port hand some sixty miles to the south of
+Trinidad, and that his sight, although he did not know it, rested for the
+first time on the mainland of South America.  The land seen was the low
+coast to the west of the Orinoco, and thinking that it was an island he
+gave it the name of Isla Sancta.
+
+On the 2nd of August they were off the south-west of Trinidad, and saw
+the first inhabitants in the shape of a canoe full of armed natives, who
+approached the ships with threatening gestures.  Columbus had brought out
+some musicians with him, possibly for the purpose of impressing the
+natives, and perhaps with the idea of making things a little more
+cheerful in Espanola; and the musicians were now duly called upon to give
+a performance, a tambourine-player standing on the forecastle and beating
+the rhythm for the ships' boys to dance to.  The effect was other than
+was anticipated, for the natives immediately discharged a thick flight of
+arrows at the musicians, and the music and dancing abruptly ceased.
+Eventually the Indians were prevailed upon to come on board the two
+smaller ships and to receive gifts, after which they departed and were
+seen no more.  Columbus landed and made some observations of the
+vegetation and climate of Trinidad, noticing that the fruits and-trees
+were similar to those of Espanola, and that oysters abounded, as well as
+"very large, infinite fish, and parrots as large as hens."
+
+He saw another peak of the mainland to the northwest, which was the
+peninsula of Paria, and to which Columbus, taking it to be another
+island, gave the name of Isla de Gracia.  Between him and this land lay a
+narrow channel through which a mighty current was flowing--that press of
+waters which, sweeping across the Atlantic from Africa, enters the
+Caribbean Sea, sprays round the Gulf of Mexico, and turns north again in
+the current known as the Gulf Stream.  While his ships were anchored at
+the entrance to this channel and Columbus was wondering how he should
+cross it, a mighty flood of water suddenly came down with a roar, sending
+a great surging wave in front of it.  The vessels were lifted up as
+though by magic; two of them dragged their anchors from the bottom, and
+the other one broke her cable.  This flood was probably caused by a
+sudden flush of fresh water from one of the many mouths of the Orinoco;
+but to Columbus, who had no thought of rivers in his mind, it was very
+alarming.  Apparently, however, there was nothing for it but to get
+through the channel, and having sent boats on in front to take soundings
+and see that there was clear water he eventually piloted his little
+squadron through, with his heart in his mouth and his eyes fixed on the
+swinging eddies and surging circles of the channel.  Once beyond it he
+was in the smooth water of the Gulf of Paria.  He followed the westerly
+coast of Trinidad to the north until he came to a second channel narrower
+than the first, through which the current boiled with still greater
+violence, and to which he gave the name of Dragon's Mouth.  This is the
+channel between the northwesterly point of Trinidad and the eastern
+promontory of Paria.  Columbus now began to be bewildered, for he
+discovered that the water over the ship's side was fresh water, and he
+could not make out where it came from.  Thinking that the peninsula of
+Paria was an island, and not wishing to attempt the dangerous passage of
+the Dragon's Mouth, he decided to coast along the southern shore of the
+land opposite, hoping to be able to turn north round its western
+extremity.
+
+
+Sweeter blew the breezes, fresher grew the water, milder and more balmy
+the air, greener and deeper the vegetation of this beautiful region.  The
+Admiral was ill with the gout, and suffering such pain from his eyes that
+he was sometimes blinded by it; but the excitement of the strange
+phenomena surrounding him kept him up, and his powers of observation,
+always acute, suffered no diminution.  There were no inhabitants to be
+seen as they sailed along the coast, but monkeys climbed and chattered in
+the trees by the shore, and oysters were found clinging to the branches
+that dipped into the water.  At last, in a bay where they anchored to
+take in water, a native canoe containing three, men was seen cautiously
+approaching; and the men, who were shy, were captured by the device of a
+sailor jumping on to the gunwale of the canoe and overturning it, the
+natives being easily caught in the water, and afterwards soothed and
+captivated by the unfailing attraction of hawks' bells.  They were tall
+men with long hair, and they told Columbus that the name of their country
+was Paria; and when they were asked about other inhabitants they pointed
+to the west and signified that there was a great population in that
+direction.
+
+On the 10th of August 1498 a party landed on this coast and formally took
+possession of it in the name of the Sovereigns of Spain.  By an unlucky
+chance Columbus himself did not land.  His eyes were troubling him so
+much that he was obliged to lie down in his cabin, and the formal act of
+possession was performed by a deputy.  If he had only known!  If he could
+but have guessed that this was indeed the mainland of a New World that
+did not exist even in his dreams, what agonies he would have suffered
+rather than permit any one else to pronounce the words of annexation!
+But he lay there in pain and suffering, his curious mystical mind
+occupied with a conception very remote indeed from the truth.
+
+
+For in that fertile hotbed of imagination, the Admiral's brain, a new and
+staggering theory had gradually been taking shape.  As his ships had been
+wafted into this delicious region, as the airs had become sweeter, the
+vegetation more luxuriant, and the water of the sea fresher,--he had
+solemnly arrived at the conclusion that he was approaching the region of
+the true terrestrial Paradise: the Garden of Eden that some of the
+Fathers had declared to be situated in the extreme east of the Old World,
+and in a region so high that the flood had not overwhelmed it.  Columbus,
+thinking hard in his cabin, blood and brain a little fevered, comes to
+the conclusion that the world is not round but pear-shaped.  He knows
+that all this fresh water in the sea must come from a great distance and
+from no ordinary river; and he decides that its volume and direction have
+been acquired in its fall from the apex of the pear, from the very top of
+the world, from the Garden of Eden itself.  It was a most beautiful
+conception; a theory worthy to be fitted to all the sweet sights and
+sounds in the world about him; but it led him farther and farther away
+from the truth, and blinded him to knowledge and understanding of what he
+had actually accomplished.
+
+He had thought the coast of Cuba the mainland, and he now began to
+consider it at least possible that the peninsula of Paria was mainland
+also--another part of the same continent.  That was the truth--Paria was
+the mainland--and if he had not been so bemused by his dreams and
+theories he might have had some inkling of the real wonder and
+significance of his discovery.  But no; in his profoundly unscientific
+mind there was little of that patience which holds men back from
+theorising and keeps them ready to receive the truth.  He was patient
+enough in doing, but in thinking he was not patient at all.  No sooner
+had he observed a fact than he must find a theory which would bring it
+into relation with the whole of his knowledge; and if the facts would not
+harmonise of themselves he invented a scheme of things by which they were
+forced into harmony.  He was indeed a Darwinian before his time, an adept
+in the art of inventing causes to fit facts, and then proving that the
+facts sprang from the causes; but his origins were tangible, immovable
+things of rock and soil that could be seen and visited by other men, and
+their true relation to the terrestrial phenomena accurately established;
+so that his very proofs were monumental, and became themselves the
+advertisements of his profound misjudgment.  But meanwhile he is the
+Admiral of the Ocean Seas, and can "make it so"; and accordingly, in a
+state of mental instability, he makes the Gulf of Paria to be a slope of
+earth immediately below the Garden of Eden, although fortunately he does
+not this time provide a sworn affidavit of trembling ships' boys to
+confirm his discovery.
+
+Meanwhile also here were pearls; the native women wore ropes of them all
+over their bodies, and a fair store of them were bartered for pieces of
+broken crockery.  Asked as usual about the pearls the natives, also as
+usual, pointed vaguely to the west and south-west, and explained that
+there were more pearls in that direction.  But the Admiral would not
+tarry.  Although he believed that he was within reach of Eden and pearls,
+he was more anxious to get back to Espanola and send the thrilling news
+to Spain than he was to push on a little farther and really assure
+himself of the truth.  How like Christopher that was!  Ideas to him were
+of more value than facts, as indeed they are to the world at large; but
+one is sometimes led to wonder whether he did not sometimes hesitate to
+turn his ideas into facts for very fear that they should turn out to be
+only ideas.  Was he, in his relations with Spain and the world, a trader
+in the names rather than the substance of things?  We have seen him going
+home to Spain and announcing the discovery of the Golden Chersonesus,
+although he had only discovered what he erroneously supposed to be an
+indication of it; proclaiming the discovery of the Ophir of Solomon
+without taking the trouble to test for himself so tremendous an
+assumption; and we now see him hurrying away to dazzle Spain with the
+story that he has discovered the Garden of Eden, without even trying to
+push on for a few days more to secure so much as a cutting from the Tree
+of Life.
+
+These are grave considerations; for although happily the Tree of Life is
+now of no importance to any human being, the doings of Admiral
+Christopher were of great importance to himself and to his fellow-men at
+that time, and are still to-day, through the infinite channels in which
+human thought and action run and continue thoughout the world, of grave
+importance to us.  Perhaps this is not quite the moment, now that the
+poor Admiral is lying in pain and weakness and not quite master of his
+own mind, to consider fully how he stands in this matter of honesty; we
+will leave it for the present until he is well again, or better still,
+until his tale of life and action is complete, and comes as a whole
+before the bar of human judgment.
+
+
+On August 11th Columbus turned east again after having given up the
+attempt to find a passage to the north round Paria.  There were practical
+considerations that brought him to this action.  As the water was growing
+shoaler and shoaler he had sent a caravel of light draft some way further
+to the westward, and she reported that there lay ahead of her a great
+inner bay or gulf consisting of almost entirely fresh water.  Provisions,
+moreover, were running short, and were, as usual, turning bad; the
+Admiral's health made vigorous action of any kind impossible for him; he
+was anxious about the condition of Espanola--anxious also, as we have
+seen, to send this great news home; and he therefore turned back and
+decided to risk the passage of the Dragon's Mouth.  He anchored in the
+neighbouring harbour until the wind was in the right quarter, and with
+some trepidation put his ships into the boiling tideway.  When they were
+in the middle of the passage the wind fell to a dead calm, and the ships,
+with their sails hanging loose, were borne on the dizzy surface of
+eddies, overfalls, and whirls of the tide.  Fortunately there was deep
+water in the passage, and the strength of the current carried them safely
+through.  Once outside they bore away to the northward, sighting the
+islands of Tobago and Grenada and, turning westward again, came to the
+islands of Cubagua and Margarita, where three pounds of pearls were
+bartered from the natives.  A week after the passage of the Dragon's
+Mouth Columbus sighted the south coast of Espanola, which coast he made
+at a point a long way to the east of the new settlement that he had
+instructed Bartholomew to found; and as the winds were contrary, and he
+feared it might take him a long time to beat up against them, he sent a
+boat ashore with a letter which was to be delivered by a native messenger
+to the Adelantado.  The letter was delivered; a few days later a caravel
+was sighted which contained Bartholomew himself; and once more, after a
+long separation, these two friends and brothers were united.
+
+
+The see-saw motion of all affairs with which Columbus had to do was in
+full swing.  We have seen him patching up matters in Espanola; hurrying
+to Spain just in time to rescue his damaged reputation and do something
+to restore it; and now when he had come back it was but a sorry tale that
+Bartholomew had to tell him.  A fortress had been built at the Hayna
+gold-mines, but provisions had been so scarce that there had been
+something like a famine among the workmen there; no digging had been
+done, no planting, no making of the place fit for human occupation and
+industry.  Bartholomew had been kept busy in collecting the native
+tribute, and in planning out the beginnings of the settlement at the
+mouth of the river Ozema, which was at first called the New Isabella, but
+was afterwards named San Domingo in honour of old Domenico at Savona.
+The cacique Behechio had been giving trouble; had indeed marched out with
+an army against Bartholomew, but had been more or less reconciled by the
+intervention of his sister Anacaona, widow of the late Caonabo, who had
+apparently transferred her affections to Governor Bartholomew.  The
+battle was turned into a friendly pagan festival--one of the last ever
+held on that once happy island--in which native girls danced in a green
+grove, with the beautiful Anacaona, dressed only in garlands, carried on
+a litter in their midst.
+
+But in the Vega Real, where a chapel had been built by the priests of the
+neighbouring settlement who were beginning to make converts, trouble had
+arisen in consequence of an outrage on the wife of the cacique Guarionex.
+The chapel was raided, the shrine destroyed, and the sacred vessels
+carried off.  The Spaniards seized a number of Indians whom they
+suspected of having had a hand in the desecration, and burned them at the
+stake in the most approved manner of the Inquisition--a hideous
+punishment that fanned the remaining embers of the native spirit into
+flame, and produced a hostile combination of Guarionex and several other
+caciques, whose rebellion it took the Adelantado some trouble and display
+of arms to quench.
+
+But the worst news of all was the treacherous revolt of Francisco Roldan,
+a Spaniard who had once been a servant of the Admiral's, and who had been
+raised by him to the office of judge in the island--an able creature,
+but, like too many recipients of Christopher's favour, a treacherous
+rascal at bottom.  As soon as the Admiral's back was turned Roldan had
+begun to make mischief, stirring up the discontent that was never far
+below the surface of life in the colony, and getting together a large
+band of rebellious ruffians.  He had a plan to murder Bartholomew
+Columbus and place himself at the head of the colony, but this fell
+through.  Then, in Bartholomew's absence, he had a passage with James
+Columbus, who had now returned to the island and had resumed his.
+official duties at Isabella.  Bartholomew, who was at another part of the
+coast collecting tribute, had sent a caravel laden with cotton to
+Isabella, and well-meaning James had her drawn up on the beach.  Roldan
+took the opportunity to represent this innocent action as a sign of the
+intolerable autocracy of the Columbus family, who did not even wish a
+vessel to be in a condition to sail for Spain with news of their
+misdeeds.  Insolent Roldan formally asks James to send the caravel to
+Spain with supplies; poor James refuses and, perhaps being at bottom
+afraid of Roldan and his insolences, despatches him to the Vega Real with
+a force to bring to order some caciques who had been giving trouble.
+Possibly to his surprise, although not to ours, Roldan departs with
+alacrity at the head of seventy armed men.  Honest, zealous James, no
+doubt; but also, we begin to fear, stupid James.
+
+
+The Vega Real was the most attractive part of the colony, and the scene
+of infinite idleness and debauchery in the early days of the Spanish
+settlement.  As Margarite and other mutineers had acted, so did Roldan
+and his soldiers now act, making sallies against several of the chain of
+forts that stretched across the island, and even upon Isabella itself;
+and returning to the Vega to the enjoyment of primitive wild pleasures.
+Roldan and Bartholomew Columbus stalked each other about the island with
+armed forces for several months, Roldan besieging Bartholomew in the
+fortress at the Vega, which he had occupied in Roldan's absence, and
+trying to starve him out there.  The arrival in February 1498 of the two
+ships which had been sent out from Spain in advance, and which brought
+also the news of the Admiral's undamaged favour at Court, and of the
+royal confirmation of Bartholomew's title, produced for the moment a good
+moral effect; Roldan went and sulked in the mountains, refusing to have
+any parley or communication with the Adelantado, declining indeed to
+treat with any one until the Admiral himself should return.  In the
+meantime his influence with the natives was strong enough to produce a
+native revolt, which Bartholomew had only just succeeded in suppressing
+when Christopher arrived on August 30th.
+
+The Admiral was not a little distressed to find that the three ships from
+which he had parted company at Ferro had not yet arrived.  His own voyage
+ought to have taken far longer than theirs; they had now been nine weeks
+at sea, and there was nothing to account for their long delay.  When at
+last they did appear, however they brought with them only a new
+complication.  They had lost their way among the islands and had been
+searching about for Espanola, finally making a landfall there on the
+coast of Xaragua, the south-western province of the island, where Roldan
+and his followers were established.  Roldan had received them and,
+concealing the fact of his treachery, procured a large store of
+provisions from them, his followers being meanwhile busy among the crews
+of the ships inciting them to mutiny and telling them of the oppression
+of the Admiral's rule and the joys of a lawless life.  The gaol-birds
+were nothing loth; after eight weeks at sea a spell ashore in this
+pleasant land, with all kinds of indulgences which did not come within
+the ordinary regimen of convicts and sailors, greatly appealing to them.
+The result was that more than half of the crews mutinied and joined
+Roldan, and the captains were obliged to put to sea with their small
+loyal remnant.  Carvajal remained behind in order to try to persuade
+Roldan to give himself up; but Roldan had no such idea, and Carvajal had
+to make his way by land to San Domingo, where he made his report to the
+Admiral.  Roldan has in fact delivered a kind of ultimatum.  He will
+surrender to no one but the Admiral, and that only on condition that he
+gets a free pardon.  If negotiations are opened, Roldan will treat with
+no one but Carvajal.  The Admiral, whose grip of the situation is getting
+weaker and weaker, finds himself in a difficulty.  His loyal army is only
+some seventy strong, while Roldan has, of disloyal settlers, gaol-birds,
+and sailors, much more than that.  The Admiral, since he cannot reduce
+his enemy's force by capturing them, seeks to do it by bribing them; and
+the greatest bribe that he can think of to offer to these malcontents is
+that any who like may have a free passage home in the five caravels which
+are now waiting to return to Spain.  To such a pass have things come in
+the paradise of Espanola!  But the rabble finds life pleasant enough in
+Xaragua, where they are busy with indescribable pleasures; and for the
+moment there is no great response to this invitation to be gone.
+Columbus therefore despatches his ships, with such rabble of colonists,
+gaol-birds, and mariners as have already had their fill both of pain and
+pleasure, and writes his usual letter to the Sovereigns--half full of the
+glories of the new discoveries he has made, the other half setting forth
+the evil doings of Roldan, and begging that he may be summoned to Spain
+for trial there.  Incidentally, also, he requests a further licence for
+two years for the capture and despatch of slaves to Spain.  So the
+vessels sail back on October 18, 1498, and the Admiral turns wearily to
+the task of disentangling the web of difficulty that has woven itself
+about him.
+
+Carvajal and Ballester--another loyal captain--were sent with a letter to
+Roldan urging him to come to terms, and Carvajal and Ballester added
+their own honest persuasions.  But Roldan was firm; he wished to be quit
+of the Admiral and his rule, and to live independently in the island; and
+of his followers, although some here and there showed signs of
+submission, the greater number were so much in love with anarchy that
+they could not be counted upon.  For two months negotiations of a sort
+were continued, Roldan even presenting himself under a guarantee of
+safety at San Domingo, where he had a fruitless conference with the
+Admiral; where also he had an opportunity of observing what a sorry state
+affairs in the capital were in, and what a mess Columbus was making of it
+all.  Roldan, being a simple man, though a rascal, had only to remain
+firm in order to get his way against a mind like the Admiral's, and get
+his way he ultimately did.  The Admiral made terms of a kind most
+humiliating to him, and utterly subversive of his influence and
+authority.  The mutineers were not only to receive a pardon but a
+certificate (good Heavens!) of good conduct.  Caravels were to be sent to
+convey them to Spain; and they were to be permitted to carry with them
+all the slaves that they had collected and all the native young women
+whom they had ravished from their homes.
+
+Columbus signs this document on the 21st of November, and promises that
+the ships shall be ready in fifty days; and then, at his wits' end, and
+hearing of irregularities in the interior of the island, sets off with
+Bartholomew to inspect the posts and restore them to order.  In his
+absence the see-saw, in due obedience to the laws that govern all see-
+saws, gives a lurch to the other side, and things go all wrong again in
+San Domingo.  The preparations for the despatch of the caravels are
+neglected as soon as his back is turned; not fifty days, but nearly one
+hundred days elapse before they are ready to sail from San Domingo to
+Xaragua.  Even then they are delayed by storms and head-winds; and when
+they do arrive Roldan and his company will not embark in them.  The
+agreement has been broken; a new one must be made.  Columbus, returning
+to San Domingo after long and harassing struggles on the other end of the
+see-saw, gets news of this deadlock, and at the same time has news from
+Fonseca in Spain of a far from agreeable character.  His complaints
+against the people under him have been received by the Sovereigns and
+will be duly considered, but their Majesties have not time at the moment
+to go into them.  That is the gist of it, and very cold cheer it is for
+the Admiral, balancing himself on this turbulent see-saw with anxious
+eyes turned to Spain for encouragement and approval.
+
+
+In the depression that followed the receipt of this letter he was no
+match for Roldan.  He even himself took a caravel and sailed towards
+Xaragua, where he was met by Roldan, who boarded his ship and made his
+new proposals.  Their impudence is astounding; and when we consider that
+the Admiral had in theory absolute powers in the island, the fact that
+such proposals could be made, not to say accepted, shows how far out of
+relation were his actual with his nominal powers.  Roldan proposed that
+he should be allowed to give a number of his friends a free passage to
+Spain; that to all who should remain free grants of land should be given;
+and (a free pardon and certificate of good conduct contenting him no
+longer) that a proclamation should be made throughout the island
+admitting that all the charges of disloyalty and mutiny which had been
+brought against him and his followers were without foundation; and,
+finally, that he should be restored to his office of Alcalde Mayor or
+chief magistrate.
+
+Here was a bolus for Christopher to swallow; a bolus compounded of his
+own words, his own acts, his hope, dignity, supremacy.  In dismal
+humiliation he accepted the terms, with the addition of a clause more
+scandalous still--to the effect that the mutineers reserved the right,
+in case the Admiral should fail in the exact performance of any of his
+promises, to enforce them by compulsion of arms or any other method they
+might think fit.  This precious document was signed on September 28, 1499
+just twelve months after the agreement which it was intended to replace;
+and the Admiral, sailing dismally back to San Domingo, ruefully pondered
+on the fruits of a year's delay.  Even then he was trying to make excuses
+for himself, such as he made afterwards to the Sovereigns when he tried
+to explain that this shameful capitulation was invalid.  That he signed
+under compulsion; that he was on board a ship, and so was not on his
+viceregal territory; that the rebels had already been tried, and that he
+had not the power to revoke a sentence which bore the authority of the
+Crown; that he had not the power to dispose of the Crown property--
+desperate, agonised shuffling of pride and self-esteem in the coils of
+trial and difficulty.  Enough of it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+AN INTERLUDE
+
+A breath of salt air again will do us no harm as a relief from these
+perilous balancings of Columbus on the see-saw at Espanola.  His true
+work in this world had indeed already been accomplished.  When he smote
+the rock of western discovery many springs flowed from it, and some were
+destined to run in mightier channels than that which he himself followed.
+Among other men stirred by the news of Columbus's first voyage there was
+one walking the streets of Bristol in 1496 who was fired to a similar
+enterprise--a man of Venice, in boyhood named Zuan Caboto, but now known
+in England, where he has some time been settled, as Captain John Cabot.
+A sailor and trader who has travelled much through the known sea-roads
+of this world, and has a desire to travel upon others not so well known.
+He has been in the East, has seen the caravans of Mecca and the goods
+they carried, and, like Columbus, has conceived in his mind the roundness
+of the world as a practical fact rather than a mere mathematical theory.
+Hearing of Columbus's success Cabot sets what machinery in England he has
+access to in motion to secure for him patents from King Henry VII.; which
+patents he receives on March 5, 1496.  After spending a long time in
+preparation, and being perhaps a little delayed by diplomatic protests
+from the Spanish Ambassador in London, he sails from Bristol in May 1497.
+
+After sailing west two thousand leagues Cabot found land in the
+neighbourhood of Cape Breton, and was thus in all probability the first
+discoverer, since the Icelanders, of the mainland of the New World.  He
+turned northward, sailed through the strait of Belle Isle, and came home
+again, having accomplished his task in three months.  Cabot, like
+Columbus, believed he had seen the territory of the Great Khan, of whom
+he told the interested population of Bristol some strange things.  He
+further told them of the probable riches of this new land if it were
+followed in a southerly direction; told them some lies also, it appears,
+since he said that the waters there were so dense with fish that his
+vessels could hardly move in them.  He received a gratuity of L10 and a
+pension, and made a great sensation in Bristol by walking about the city
+dressed in fine silk garments.  He took other voyages also with his son
+Sebastian, who followed with him the rapid widening stream of discovery
+and became Pilot Major of Spain, and President of the Congress appointed
+in 1524 to settle the conflicting pretensions of various discoverers; but
+so far as our narrative is concerned, having sailed across from Bristol
+and discovered the mainland of the New World some years before Columbus
+discovered it, John Cabot sails into oblivion.
+
+
+Another great conquest of the salt unknown taken place a few days before
+Columbus sailed on his third voyage.  The accidental discovery of the
+Cape by Bartholomew Diaz in 1486 had not been neglected by Portugal; and
+the achievements of Columbus, while they cut off Portuguese enterprise
+from the western ocean, had only stimulated it to greater activity within
+its own spheres.  Vasco da Gama sailed from Lisbon in July 1497; by the
+end of November he had rounded the Cape of Good Hope; and in May 1498,
+after a long voyage full of interest, peril, and hardship he had landed
+at Calicut on the shores of the true India.  He came back in 1499 with a
+battered remnant, his crew disabled by sickness and exhaustion, and half
+his ships lost; but he had in fact discovered a road for trade and
+adventure to the East that was not paved with promises, dreams, or mad
+affidavits, but was a real and tangible achievement, bringing its reward
+in commerce and wealth for Portugal.  At that very moment Columbus was
+groping round the mainland of South America, thinking it to be the coast
+of Cathay, and the Garden of Eden, and God knows what other
+cosmographical--theological abstractions; and Portugal, busy with her
+arrangements for making money, could afford for the moment to look on
+undismayed at the development of the mine of promises discovered by the
+Spanish Admiral.
+
+
+The anxiety of Columbus to communicate the names of things before he had
+made sure of their substance received another rude chastisement in the
+events that followed the receipt in Spain of his letter announcing the
+discovery of the Garden of Eden and the land of pearls.  People in Spain
+were not greatly interested in his theories of the terrestrial Paradise;
+but more than one adventurer pricked up his ears at the name of pearls,
+and among the first was our old friend Alonso de Ojeda, who had returned
+some time before from Espanola and was living in Spain.  His position as
+a member of Columbus's force on the second voyage and the distinction he
+had gained there gave him special opportunities of access to the letters
+and papers sent home by Columbus; and he found no difficulty in getting
+Fonseca to show him the maps and charts of the coast of Paria sent back
+by the Admiral, the veritable pearls which had been gathered, and the
+enthusiastic descriptions of the wealth of this new coast.  Knowing
+something of Espanola, and of the Admiral also, and reading in the
+despatches of the turbulent condition of the colony, he had a shrewd idea
+that Columbus's hands would be kept pretty full in Espanola itself, and
+that he would have no opportunity for some time to make any more voyages
+of discovery.  He therefore represented to Fonseca what a pity it would
+be if all this revenue should remain untapped just because one man had
+not time to attend to it, and he proposed that he should take out an
+expedition at his own cost and share the profits with the Crown.
+
+This proposal was too tempting to be refused; unlike the expeditions of
+Columbus, which were all expenditure and no revenue, it promised a chance
+of revenue without any expenditure at all.  The Paria coast, having been
+discovered subsequent to the agreement made with Columbus, was considered
+by Fonseca to be open to private enterprise; and he therefore granted
+Ojeda a licence to go and explore it.  Among those who went with him were
+Amerigo Vespucci and Columbus's old pilot, Juan de la Cosa, as well as
+some of the sailors who had been with the Admiral on the coast of Paria
+and had returned in the caravels which had brought his account of it back
+to Spain.  Ojeda sailed on May 20, 1499; made a landfall some hundreds of
+miles to the eastward of the Orinoco, coasted thence as far as the island
+of Trinidad, and sailed along the northern coast of the peninsula of
+Paria until he came to a country where the natives built their hots on
+piles in the water, and to which he gave the name of Venezuela.  It was
+by his accidental presence on this voyage that Vespucci, the meat-
+contractor, came to give his name to America--a curious story of
+international jealousies, intrigues, lawsuits, and lies which we have not
+the space to deal with here.  After collecting a considerable quantity of
+pearls Ojeda, who was beginning to run short of provisions, turned
+eastward again and sought the coast of Espanola, where we shall presently
+meet with him again.
+
+
+And Ojeda was not the only person in Spain who was enticed by Columbus's
+glowing descriptions to go and look for the pearls of Paria.  There was
+in fact quite a reunion of old friends of his and ours in the western
+ocean, though they went thither in a spirit far different from that of
+ancient friendship.  Pedro Alonso Nino, who had also been on the Paria
+coast with Columbus, who had come home with the returning ships, and
+whose patience (for he was an exceedingly practical man) had perhaps been
+tried by the strange doings of the Admiral in the Gulf of Paria, decided
+that he as well as any one else might go and find some pearls.  Nino is a
+poor man, having worked hard in all his voyagings backwards and forwards
+across the Atlantic; but he has a friend with money, one Luis Guerra, who
+provides him with the funds necessary for fitting out a small caravel
+about the size of his old ship the Nifta.  Guerra, who has the money,
+also has a brother Christoval; and his conditions are that Christoval
+shall be given the command of the caravel.  Practical Niflo does not care
+so long as he reaches the place where the pearls are.  He also applies to
+Fonseca for licence to make discoveries; and, duly receiving it, sails
+from Palos in the beginning of June 1499, hot upon the track of Ojeda.
+
+They did a little quiet discovery, principally in the domain of human
+nature, caroused with the friendly natives, but attended to business all
+the time; with the result that in the following April they were back in
+Spain with a treasure of pearls out of which, after Nifio had been made
+independent for life and Guerra, Christoval, and the rest of them had
+their shares, there remained a handsome sum for the Crown.  An extremely
+practical, businesslike voyage this; full of lessons for our poor
+Christopher, could he but have known and learned them.
+
+
+Yet another of our old friends profited by the Admiral's discovery.  What
+Vincenti Yafiez Pinzon has been doing all these years we have no record;
+living at Palos, perhaps, doing a little of his ordinary coasting
+business, administering the estates of his brother Martin Alonso, and,
+almost for a certainty, talking pretty big about who it was that really
+did all the work in the discovery of the New World.  Out of the obscurity
+of conjecture he emerges into fact in December 1499, when he is found at
+Palos fitting out four caravels for the purpose of exploring farther
+along the coast of the southern mainland.  That he also was after pearls
+is pretty certain; but on the other hand he was more of a sailor than an
+adventurer, was a discoverer at heart, and had no small share of the
+family taste for sea travel.  He took a more southerly course than any of
+the others and struck the coast of America south of the equator on
+January 20, 1500.  He sailed north past the mouths of the Amazon and
+Orinoco through the Gulf of Paria, and reached Espanola in June 1500.
+He only paused there to take in provisions, and sailed to the west in
+search of further discoveries; but he lost two of his caravels in a gale
+and had to put back to Espanola.
+
+He sailed thence for Palos, and reached home in September 1500, having
+added no inconsiderable share to the mass of new geographical knowledge
+that was being accumulated.  In later years he took a high place in the
+maritime world of Spain.
+
+
+And finally, to complete the account of the chief minor discoveries of
+these two busy years, we must mention Pedro Alvarez Cabral of Portugal,
+who was despatched in March 1, 1500 from Lisbon to verify the discoveries
+of Da Gama.  He reached Calicut six months later, losing on the voyage
+four of his caravels and most of his company.  Among the lost was
+Bartholomew Diaz, the first discoverer of the Cape of Good Hope, who was
+on this voyage in a subordinate capacity, and whose bones were left to
+dissolve in the stormy waters that beat round the Cape whose barrier he
+was the first to pass.  The chief event of this voyage, however, was not
+the reaching of Calicut nor the drowning of Diaz (which was chiefly of
+importance to himself, poor soul!) but the discovery of Brazil, which
+Cabral made in following the southerly course too far to the west.
+He landed there, in the Bay of Porto Seguro, on May 1, 1500, and took
+formal possession of the land for the Crown of Portugal, naming it Vera
+Cruz, or the Land of the True Cross.
+
+In the assumption of Columbus and his contemporaries all these doings
+were held to detract from the glory of his own achievements, and were the
+subject of endless affidavits, depositions, quarrels, arguments, proofs
+and claims in the great lawsuit that was in after years carried on
+between the Crown of Spain and the heirs of Columbus concerning his
+titles and revenues.  We, however, may take a different view.  With the
+exception of the discoveries of the Cape of Good Hope and the coast of
+Brazil all these enterprises were directly traceable to Columbus's own
+achievements and were inspired by his example.  The things that a man can
+do in his own person are limited by the laws of time and space; it is
+only example and influence that are infinite and illimitable, and in
+which the spirit of any achievement can find true immortality.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE THIRD VOYAGE-(continued)
+
+It may perhaps be wearisome to the reader to return to the tangled and
+depressing situation in Espanola, but it cannot be half so wearisome as
+it was for Columbus, whom we left enveloped in that dark cloud of error
+and surrender in which he sacrificed his dignity and good faith to the
+impudent demands of a mutinous servant.  To his other troubles in San
+Domingo the presence of this Roldan was now added; and the reinstated
+Alcalde was not long in making use of the victory he had gained.  He bore
+himself with intolerable arrogance and insolence, discharging one of
+Columbus's personal bodyguard on the ground that no one should hold any
+office on the island except with his consent.  He demanded grants of land
+for himself and his followers, which Columbus held himself obliged to
+concede; and the Admiral, further to pacify him, invented a very
+disastrous system of repartimientos, under which certain chiefs were
+relieved from paying tribute on condition of furnishing feudal service to
+the settlers--a system which rapidly developed into the most cruel and
+oppressive kind of slavery.  The Admiral at this time also, in despair of
+keeping things quiet by his old methods of peace and conciliation,
+created a kind of police force which roamed about the island, exacting
+tribute and meting out summary punishment to all defaulters.  Among other
+concessions weakly made to Roldan at this time was the gift of the Crown
+estate of Esperanza, situated in the Vega Real, whither he betook himself
+and embarked on what was nothing more nor less than a despotic reign,
+entirely ignoring the regulations and prerogatives of the Admiral, and
+taking prisoners and administering punishment just as he pleased.  The
+Admiral was helpless, and thought of going back to Spain, but the
+condition of the island was such that he did not dare to leave it.
+Instead, he wrote a long letter to the Sovereigns, full of complaints
+against other people and justifications of himself, in the course of
+which he set forth those quibbling excuses for his capitulation to Roldan
+which we have already heard.  And there was a pathetic request at the end
+of the letter that his son Diego might be sent out to him.  As I have
+said, Columbus was by this time a prematurely old man, and feeling the
+clouds gathering about him, and the loneliness and friendlessness of his
+position at Espanola, he instinctively looked to the next generation for
+help, and to the presence of his own son for sympathy and comfort.
+
+
+It was at this moment (September 5, 1499) that a diversion arose in the
+rumour that four caravels had been seen off the western end of Espanola
+and duly reported to the Admiral; and this announcement was soon followed
+by the news that they were commanded by Ojeda, who was collecting dye-
+wood in the island forests.  Columbus, although he had so far as we know
+had no previous difficulties with Ojeda, had little cause now to credit
+any adventurer with kindness towards himself; and Ojeda's secrecy in not
+reporting himself at San Domingo, and, in fact, his presence on the
+island at all without the knowledge of the Admiral, were sufficient
+evidence that he was there to serve his own ends.  Some gleam of
+Christopher's old cleverness in handling men was--now shown by his
+instructing Roldan to sally forth and bring Ojeda to order.  It was a
+case of setting a thief to catch a thief and, as it turned out, was not a
+bad stroke.  Roldan, nothing loth, sailed round to that part of the coast
+where Ojeda's ships were anchored, and asked to see his licence; which
+was duly shown to him and rather took the wind out of his sails.  He
+heard a little gossip from Ojeda, moreover, which had its own
+significance for him.  The Queen was ill; Columbus was in disgrace; there
+was talk of superseding him.  Ojeda promised to sail round to San Domingo
+and report himself; but instead, he sailed to the east along the coast of
+Xaragua, where he got into communication with some discontented Spanish
+settlers and concocted a scheme for leading them to San Domingo to demand
+redress for their imagined grievances.  Roldan, however, who had come to
+look for Ojeda, discovered him at this point; and there ensued some very
+pretty play between the two rascals, chiefly in trickery and treachery,
+such as capturing each other's boats and emissaries, laying traps for one
+another, and taking prisoner one another's crews.  The end of it was that
+Ojeda left the island without having reported himself to Columbus, but
+not before he had completed his business--which was that of provisioning
+his ships and collecting dye-wood and slaves.
+
+And so exit Ojeda from the Columbian drama.  Of his own drama only one
+more act remained to be played; which, for the sake of our past interest
+in him, we will mention here.  Chiefly on account of his intimacy with
+Fonseca he was some years later given a governorship in the neighbourhood
+of the Gulf of Darien; Juan de la Cosa accompanying him as unofficial
+partner.  Ojeda has no sooner landed there than he is fighting the
+natives; natives too many for him this time; Ojeda forced to hide in the
+forest, where he finds the body of de la Cosa, who has come by a shocking
+death.  Ojeda afterwards tries to govern his colony, but is no good at
+that; cannot govern his own temper, poor fellow.  Quarrels with his crew,
+is put in irons, carried to Espanola, and dies there (1515) in great
+poverty and eclipse.  One of the many, evidently, who need a strong
+guiding hand, and perish without it.
+
+It really began to seem as though Roldan, having had his fling and
+secured the excessive privileges that he coveted, had decided that
+loyalty to Christopher was for the present the most profitable policy;
+but the mutinous spirit that he had cultivated in his followers for his
+own ends could not be so readily converted into this cheap loyalty.  More
+trouble was yet to come of this rebellion.  There was in the island a
+young Spanish aristocrat, Fernando de Guevara by name, one of the many
+who had come out in the hope of enjoying himself and making a fortune
+quickly, whose more than outrageously dissolute life in San Domingo had
+caused Columbus to banish him thence; and he was now living near Xaragua
+with a cousin of his, Adrian de Moxeca, who had been one of the
+ringleaders in Roldan's conspiracy.  Within this pleasant province of
+Xaragua lived, as we have seen, Anacaona, the sister of Caonabo, the Lord
+of the House of Gold.  She herself was a beautiful woman, called by her
+subjects Bloom of the Gold; and she had a still more beautiful daughter,
+Higuamota, who appears in history, like so many other women, on account
+of her charms and what came of them.
+
+Of pretty Higuamota, who once lived like a dryad among the groves of
+Espanola and has been dead now for so long, we know nothing except that
+she was beautiful, which, although she doubtless did not think so while
+she lived, turns out to have been the most important thing about her.
+Young Guevara, coming to stay with his cousin Adrian, becomes a visitor
+at the house of Anacaona; sees the pretty daughter and falls in love with
+her.  Other people also, it appears, have been in a similar state, but
+Higuamota is not very accessible; a fact which of course adds to the
+interest of the chase, and turns dissolute Fernando's idle preference
+into something like a passion.  Roldan, who has also had an eye upon her,
+and apparently no more than an eye, discovers that Fernando, in order to
+gratify his passion, is proposing to go the absurd length of marrying the
+young woman, and has sent for a priest for that purpose.  Roldan,
+instigated thereto by primitive forces, thinks it would be impolitic for
+a Spanish grandee to marry with a heathen; very well, then, Fernando will
+have her baptized--nothing simpler when water and a priest are handy.
+Roldan, seeing that the young man is serious, becomes peremptory, and
+orders him to leave Xaragua.  Fernando ostentatiously departs, but is
+discovered a little later actually living in the house of Anacaona, who
+apparently is sympathetic to Love's young dream.  Once more ordered away,
+this time with anger and threats, Guevara changes his tune and implores
+Roldan to let him stay, promising that he will give up the marriage
+project and also, no doubt, the no-marriage project.  But Guevara has
+sympathisers.  The mutineers have not forgiven Roldan for deserting them
+and becoming a lawful instead of an unlawful ruler.  They are all on the
+side of Guevara, who accordingly moves to the next stage of island
+procedure, and sets on foot some kind of plot to kill Roldan and the
+Admiral.  Fortunately where there is treachery it generally works both
+ways; this plot came to the ears of the authorities; the conspirators
+were arrested and sent to San Domingo.
+
+This action came near to bringing the whole island about Columbus's ears.
+Adrian de Moxeca was furious at what he conceived to be the treachery of
+Roldan, for Roldan was in such a pass that the barest act of duty was
+necessarily one of treachery to his friends.  Moxeca took the place of
+chief rebel that Roldan had vacated; rallied the mutineers round him, and
+was on the point of starting for Concepcion, one of the chain of forts
+across the island where Columbus was at present staying, when the Admiral
+discovered his plan.  All that was strongest and bravest in him rose up
+at this menace.  His weakness and cowardice were forgotten; and with the
+spirit of an old sea-lion he sallied forth against the mutineers.  He had
+only a dozen men on whom he could rely, but he armed them well and
+marched secretly and swiftly under cloud of night to the place where
+Moxeca and his followers were encamped in fond security, and there
+suddenly fell upon them, capturing Moxeca and the chief ringleaders.  The
+rest scattered in terror and escaped.  Moxeca was hurried off to the
+battlements of San Domingo and there, in the very midst of a longdrawn
+trembling confession to the priest in attendance, was swung off the
+ramparts and hanged.  The others, although also condemned to death, were
+kept in irons in the fortress, while Christopher and Bartholomew, roused
+at last to vigorous action, scoured the island hunting down the
+remainder, killing some who resisted, hanging others on the spot, and
+imprisoning the remainder at San Domingo.
+
+After these prompt measures peace reigned for a time in the island, and
+Columbus was perhaps surprised to see what wholesome effects could be
+produced by a little exemplary severity.  The natives, who under the
+weakness of his former rule had been discontented and troublesome, now
+settled down submissively to their yoke; the Spaniards began to work in
+earnest on their farms; and there descended upon island affairs a brief
+St. Martin's Summer of peace before the final winter of blight and death
+set in.  The Admiral, however, was obviously in precarious health; his
+ophthalmia became worse, and the stability of his mind suffered.  He had
+dreams and visions of divine help and comfort, much needed by him, poor
+soul, in all his tribulations and adversities.  Even yet the cup was not
+full.
+
+
+We must now turn back to Spain and try to form some idea of the way in
+which the doings of Columbus were being regarded there if we are to
+understand the extraordinary calamity that was soon to befall him.  It
+must be remembered first of all that his enterprise had never really been
+popular from the first.  It was carried out entirely by the energy and
+confidence of Queen Isabella, who almost alone of those in power believed
+in it as a thing which was certain to bring ultimate glory, as well as
+riches and dominion, to Spain and the Catholic faith.  As we have seen,
+there had been a brief ebullition of popular favour when Columbus
+returned from his first voyage, but it was a popularity excited solely by
+the promises of great wealth that Columbus was continually holding forth.
+When those promises were not immediately fulfilled popular favour
+subsided; and when the adventurers who had gone out to the new islands on
+the strength of those promises had returned with shattered health and
+empty pockets there was less chance than ever of the matter being
+regarded in its proper light by the people of Spain.  Columbus had either
+found a gold mine or he had found nothing--that was the way in which the
+matter was popularly regarded.  Those who really understood the
+significance of his discoveries and appreciated their scientific
+importance did not merely stay at home in Spain and raise a clamour; they
+went out in the Admiral's footsteps and continued the work that he had
+begun.  Even King Ferdinand, for all his cleverness, had never understood
+the real lines on which the colony should have been developed.  His eyes
+were fixed upon Europe; he saw in the discoveries of Columbus a means
+rather than an end; and looked to them simply as a source of revenue with
+the help of which he could carry on his ambitious schemes.  And when, as
+other captains made voyages confirming and extending the work of
+Columbus, he did begin to understand the significance of what had been
+done, he realised too late that the Admiral had been given powers far in
+excess of what was prudent or sensible.
+
+During all the time that Columbus and his brothers were struggling with
+the impossible situation at Espanola there was but one influence at work
+in Spain, and that was entirely destructive to the Admiral.  Every
+caravel that came from the New World brought two things.  It brought a
+crowd of discontented colonists, many of whom had grave reasons for their
+discontent; and it brought letters from the Admiral in which more and
+more promises were held out, but in which also querulous complaints
+against this and that person, and against the Spanish settlers generally,
+were set forth at wearisome length.  It is not remarkable that the people
+of Spain, even those who were well disposed towards Columbus, began to
+wonder if these two things were not cause and effect.  The settlers may
+have been a poor lot, but they were the material with which Columbus had
+to deal; he had powers enough, Heaven knew, powers of life and death; and
+the problem began to resolve itself in the minds of those at the head of
+affairs in Spain in the following terms.  Given an island, rich and
+luxuriant beyond the dreams of man; given a native population easily
+subdued; given settlers of one kind or another; and given a Viceroy with
+unlimited powers--could he or could he not govern the island?  It was a
+by no means unfair way of putting the case, and there is little justice
+in the wild abuse that has been hurled at Ferdinand and Isabella on this
+ground.  Columbus may have been the greatest genius in the world; very
+possibly they admitted it; but in the meanwhile Spain was resounding with
+the cries of the impoverished colonists who had returned from his ocean
+Paradise.  No doubt the Sovereigns ignored them as much as they possibly
+could; but when it came to ragged emaciated beggars coming in batches of
+fifty at a time and sitting in the very courts of the Alhambra,
+exhibiting bunches of grapes and saying that that was all they could
+afford to live upon since they had come back from the New World, some
+notice had to be taken of it.  Even young Diego and Ferdinand, the
+Admiral's sons, came in for the obloquy with which his name was
+associated; the colonial vagabonds hung round the portals of the palace
+and cried out upon them as they passed so that they began to dislike
+going out.  Columbus, as we know, had plenty of enemies who had access to
+the King and Queen; and never had enemies an easier case to urge.  Money
+was continually being spent on ships and supplies; where was the return
+for it?  What about the Ophir of Solomon?  What about the Land of Spices?
+What about the pearls?  And if you want to add a touch of absurdity, what
+about the Garden of Eden and the Great Khan?
+
+To the most impartial eyes it began to appear as though Columbus were
+either an impostor or a fool.  There is no evidence that Ferdinand and
+Isabella thought that he was an impostor or that he had wilfully deceived
+them; but there is some evidence that they began to have an inkling as to
+what kind of a man he really was, and as to his unfitness for governing a
+colony.  Once more something had to be done.  The sending out of a
+commissioner had not been a great success before, but in the difficulties
+of the situation it seemed the only thing.  Still there was a good deal
+of hesitation, and it is probable that Isabella was not yet fully
+convinced of the necessity for this grave step.  This hesitation was
+brought to an end by the arrival from Espanola of the ships bearing the
+followers of Roldan, who had been sent back under the terms of Columbus's
+feeble capitulation.  The same ships brought a great quantity of slaves,
+which the colonists were able to show had been brought by the permission
+of the Admiral; they carried native girls also, many of them pregnant,
+many with new-born babies; and these also came with the permission of the
+Admiral.  The ships further carried the Admira'l's letter complaining of
+the conspiracy of Roldan and containing the unfortunate request for a
+further licence to extend the slave trade.  These circumstances were
+probably enough to turn the scale of Isabella's opinion against the
+Admiral's administration.  The presence of the slaves particularly
+angered her kind womanly heart.  "What right has he to give away my
+vassals?"  she exclaimed, and ordered that they should all be sent back,
+and that in addition all the other slaves who had come home should be
+traced and sent back; although of course it was impossible to carry out
+this last order.
+
+At any rate there was no longer any hesitation about sending out a
+commissioner, and the Sovereigns chose one Francisco de Bobadilla, an
+official of the royal household, for the performance of this difficult
+mission.  As far as we can decipher him he was a very ordinary official
+personage; prejudiced, it is possible, against an administration that had
+produced such disastrous results and which offended his orderly official
+susceptibilities; otherwise to be regarded as a man exactly honest in the
+performance of what he conceived to be his duties, and entirely
+indisposed to allow sentiment or any other extraneous matter to interfere
+with such due performance.  We shall have need to remember, when we see
+him at work in Espanola, that he was not sent out to judge between
+Columbus and his Sovereigns or between Columbus and the world, but to
+investigate the condition of the colony and to take what action he
+thought necessary.  The commission which he bore to the Admiral was in
+the following terms:
+
+     "The King and the Queen: Don Christopher Columbus, our Admiral of
+     the Ocean-sea.  We have directed Francisco de Bobadilla, the bearer
+     of this, to speak to you for us of certain things which he will
+     mention: we request you to give him faith and credence and to obey
+     him.  From Madrid, May 26, '99.  I THE KING.  I THE QUEEN.  By their
+     command.  Miguel Perez de Almazan."
+
+In addition Bobadilla bore with him papers and authorities giving him
+complete control and possession of all the forts, arms, and royal
+property in the island, in case it should be necessary for him to use
+them; and he also had a number of blank warrants which were signed, but
+the substance of which was not filled in.  This may seem very dreadful to
+us, with our friendship for the poor Admiral; but considering the grave
+state of affairs as represented to the King and Queen, who had their
+duties to their colonial subjects as well as to Columbus, there was
+nothing excessive in it.  If they were to send out a commissioner at all,
+and if they were satisfied, as presumably they were, that the man they
+had chosen was trustworthy, it was only right to make his authority
+absolute.  Thus equipped Francisco de Bobadilla sailed from Spain in July
+1500.
+
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+Ideas to him were of more value than facts
+Patience which holds men back from theorising
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of Christopher Columbus, v6
+by Filson Young
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                         CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS
+                   AND THE NEW WORLD OF HIS DISCOVERY
+
+                      A NARRATIVE BY FILSON YOUNG
+
+
+
+TOWARDS THE SUNSET
+
+BOOK 7.
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+DEGRADATION
+
+The first things seen by Francisco de Bobadilla when he entered the
+harbour of San Domingo on the morning of the 23rd of August 1500 were the
+bodies of several Spaniards, hanging from a gibbet near the water-side--
+a grim confirmation of what he had heard about the troubled state of the
+island.  While he was waiting for the tide so that he might enter the
+harbour a boat put off from shore to ascertain who was on board the
+caravels; and it was thus informally that Bobadilla first announced that
+he had come to examine into the state of the island.  Columbus was not at
+San Domingo, but was occupied in settling the affairs of the Vega Real;
+Bartholomew also was absent, stamping out the last smouldering embers of
+rebellion in Xaragua; and only James was in command to deal with this
+awkward situation.
+
+Bobadilla did not go ashore the first day, but remained on board his ship
+receiving the visits of various discontented colonists who, getting early
+wind of the purpose of his visit, lost no time in currying favour with
+him, Probably he heard enough that first day to have damned the
+administration of a dozen islands; but also we must allow him some
+interest in the wonderful and strange sights that he was seeing; for
+Espanola, which has perhaps grown wearisome to us, was new to him.  He
+had brought with him an armed body-guard of twenty-five men, and in the
+other caravel were the returned slaves, babies and all, under the charge
+of six friars.  On the day following his arrival Bobadilla landed and
+heard mass in state, afterwards reading out his commission to the
+assembled people.  Evidently he had received a shocking impression of the
+state of affairs in the island; that is the only explanation of the
+action suddenly taken by him, for his first public act was to demand from
+James the release of all the prisoners in the fortress, in order that
+they and their accusers should appear before him.
+
+James is in a difficulty; and, mule-like, since he does not know which
+way to turn, stands stock still.  He can do nothing, he says, without the
+Admiral's consent.  The next day Bobadilla, again hearing mass in state,
+causes further documents to be read showing that a still greater degree
+of power had been entrusted to his hands.  Mule-like, James still stands
+stock still; the greatest power on earth known to him is his eldest
+brother, and he will not, positively dare not, be moved by anything less
+than that.  He refuses to give up the prisoners on any grounds
+whatsoever, and Bobadilla has to take the fortress by assault--an easy
+enough matter since the resistance is but formal.
+
+The next act of Bobadilla's is not quite so easy to understand.  He
+quartered himself in Columbus's house; that perhaps was reasonable enough
+since there may not have been another house in the settlement fit to
+receive him; but he also, we are told, took possession of all his papers,
+public and private, and also seized the Admiral's store of money and
+began to pay his debts with it for him, greatly to the satisfaction of
+San Domingo.  There is an element of the comic in this interpretation of
+a commissioner's powers; and it seemed as though he meant to wind up the
+whole Columbus business, lock, stock, and barrel.  It would not be in
+accordance with our modern ideas of honour that a man's private papers
+should be seized unless he were suspected of treachery or some criminal
+act; but apparently Bobadilla regarded it as necessary.  We must remember
+that although he had only heard one side of the case it was evidently so
+positive, and the fruits of misgovernment were there so visibly before
+his eyes, that no amount of evidence in favour of Columbus would make him
+change his mind as to his fitness to govern.  Poor James, witnessing
+these things and unable to do anything to prevent them, finds himself
+suddenly relieved from the tension of the situation.  Since inaction is
+his note, he shall be indulged in it; and he is clapped in irons and cast
+into prison.  James can hardly believe the evidence of his senses.  He
+has been studying theology lately, it appears, with a view to entering
+the Church and perhaps being some day made Bishop of Espanola, but this
+new turn of affairs looks as though there were to be an end of all
+careers for him, military and ecclesiastical alike.
+
+Christopher at Fort Concepcion had early news of the arrival of
+Bobadilla, but in the hazy state of his mind he did not regard it as an
+event of sufficient importance to make his immediate presence at San
+Domingo advisable.  The name of Bobadilla conveyed nothing to him; and
+when he heard that he had come to investigate, he thought that he came
+to set right some disputed questions between the Admiral and other
+navigators as to the right of visiting Espanola and the Paria coast.
+As the days went on, however, he heard more disquieting rumours; grew at
+last uneasy, and moved to a fort nearer San Domingo in case it should be
+necessary for him to go there.  An officer met him on the road bearing
+the proclamations issued by Bobadilla, but not the message from the
+Sovereigns requiring the Admiral's obedience to the commissioner.
+Columbus wrote to the commissioner a curious letter, which is not
+preserved, in which he sought to gain time; excusing himself from
+responsibility for the condition of the island, and assuring Bobadilla
+that, as he intended to return to Spain almost immediately, he
+(Bobadilla) would have ample opportunity for exercising his command in
+his absence.  He also wrote to the Franciscan friars who had accompanied
+Bobadilla asking them to use their influence--the Admiral having some
+vague connection with the Franciscan order since his days at La Rabida.
+
+No reply came to any of these letters, and Columbus sent word that he
+still regarded his authority as paramount in the island.  For reply to
+this he received the Sovereigns' message to him which we have seen,
+commanding him to put himself under the direction of Bobadilla.  There
+was no mistaking this; there was the order in plain words; and with I
+know not what sinkings of heart Columbus at last set out for San Domingo.
+Bobadilla had expected resistance, but the Admiral, whatever his faults,
+knew how to behave with, dignity in a humiliating position; and he came
+into the city unattended on August 23, 1500.  On the outskirts of the
+town he was met by Bobadilla's guards, arrested, put in chains, and
+lodged in the fortress, the tower of which exists to this day.  He seemed
+to himself to be the victim of a particularly petty and galling kind of
+treachery, for it was his own cook, a man called Espinoza, who riveted
+his gyves upon him.
+
+There remained Bartholomew to be dealt with, and he, being at large and
+in command of the army, might not have proved such an easy conquest, but
+that Christopher, at Bobadilla's request, wrote and advised him to submit
+to arrest without any resistance.  Whether Bartholomew acquiesced or not
+is uncertain; what is certain is that he also was captured and placed in
+irons, and imprisoned on one of the caravels.  James in one caravel,
+Bartholomew in another, and Christopher in the fortress, and all in
+chains--this is what it has come to with the three sons of old Domenico.
+
+The trial was now begun, if trial that can be called which takes place in
+the absence of the culprit or his representative.  It was rather the
+hearing of charges against Christopher and his brothers; and we may be
+sure that every discontented feeling in the island found voice and was
+formulated into some incriminating charge.  Columbus was accused of
+oppressing the Spanish settlers by making them work at harsh and
+unnecessary labour; of cutting down their allowance of food, and
+restricting their liberty; of punishing them cruelly and unduly; of
+waging wars unjustly with the natives; of interfering with the conversion
+of the natives by hastily collecting them and sending them home as
+slaves; of having secreted treasures which should have been delivered to
+the Sovereigns--this last charge, like some of the others, true.  He had
+an accumulation of pearls of which he had given no account to Fonseca,
+and the possession of which he excused by the queer statement that he was
+waiting to announce it until he could match it with an equal amount of
+gold!  He was accused of hating the Spaniards, who were represented as
+having risen in the late rebellion in order to protect the natives and
+avenge their own wrongs--, and generally of having abused his office in
+order to enrich his own family and gratify his own feelings.  Bobadilla
+appeared to believe all these charges; or perhaps he recognised their
+nature, and yet saw that there was a sufficient degree of truth in them
+to disqualify the Admiral in his position as Viceroy.  In all these
+affairs his right-hand man was Roldan, whose loyalty to Columbus, as we
+foresaw, had been short-lived.  Roldan collects evidence; Roldan knows
+where he can lay his hands on this witness; Roldan produces this and that
+proof; Roldan is here, there, and everywhere--never had Bobadilla found
+such a useful, obliging man as Roldan.  With his help Bobadilla soon
+collected a sufficient weight of evidence to justify in his own mind his
+sending Columbus home to Spain, and remaining himself in command of the
+island.
+
+The caravels having been made ready, and all the evidence drawn up and
+documented, it only remained to embark the prisoners and despatch them to
+Spain.  Columbus, sitting in his dungeon, suffering from gout and
+ophthalmic as well as from misery and humiliation, had heard no news;
+but he had heard the shouting of the people in the streets, the beating
+of drums and blowing of horns, and his own name and that of his brothers
+uttered in derision; and he made sure that he was going to be executed.
+Alonso de Villegio, a nephew of Bishop Fonseca's, had been appointed to
+take charge of the ships returning to Spain; and when he came into the
+prison the Admiral thought his last hour had come.
+
+"Villegio," he asked sadly, "where are you taking me?"
+
+"I am taking you to the ship, your Excellency, to embark," replied the
+other.
+
+"To embark?" repeated the Admiral incredulously.  "Villegio! are you
+speaking the truth?"
+
+"By the life of your Excellency what I say is true," was the reply, and
+the news came with a wave of relief to the panic-stricken heart of the
+Admiral.
+
+In the middle of October the caravels sailed from San Domingo, and the
+last sounds heard by Columbus from the land of his discovery were the
+hoots and jeers and curses hurled after him by the treacherous,
+triumphant rabble on the shore.  Villegio treated him and his brothers
+with as much kindness as possible, and offered, when they had got well
+clear of Espanola, to take off the Admiral's chains.  But Columbus, with
+a fine counterstroke of picturesque dignity, refused to have them
+removed.  Already, perhaps, he had realised that his subjection to this
+cruel and quite unnecessary indignity would be one of the strongest
+things in his favour when he got to Spain, and he decided to suffer as
+much of it as he could.  "My Sovereigns commanded me to submit to what
+Bobadilla should order.  By his authority I wear these chains, and I
+shall continue to wear them until they are removed by order of the
+Sovereigns; and I will keep them afterwards as reminders of the reward I
+have received for my services."  Thus the Admiral, beginning to pick up
+his spirits again, and to feel the better for the sea air.
+
+The voyage home was a favourable one and in the course of it Columbus
+wrote the following letter to a friend of his at Court, Dona Juana de la
+Torre, who had been nurse to Prince Juan and was known by him to be a
+favourite of the Queen:
+
+     "MOST VIRTUOUS LADY,--Though my complaint of the world is new, its
+     habit of ill-using is very ancient.  I have had a thousand struggles
+     with it, and have thus far withstood them all, but now neither arms
+     nor counsels avail me, and it cruelly keeps me under water.  Hope in
+     the Creator of all men sustains me: His help was always very ready;
+     on another occasion, and not long ago, when I was still more
+     overwhelmed, He raised me with His right arm, saying, 'O man of
+     little faith, arise: it is I; be not afraid.'
+
+     "I came with so much cordial affection to serve these Princes, and
+     have served them with such service, as has never been heard of or
+     seen.
+
+     "Of the new heaven and earth which our Lord made, when Saint John
+     was writing the Apocalypse, after what was spoken by the mouth of
+     Isaiah, He made me the messenger, and showed me where it lay.  In
+     all men there was disbelief, but to the Queen, my Lady, He gave the
+     spirit of understanding, and great courage, and made her heiress of
+     all, as a dear and much loved daughter.  I went to take possession
+     of all this in her royal name.  They sought to make amends to her
+     for the ignorance they had all shown by passing over their little
+     knowledge and talking of obstacles and expenses.  Her Highness, on
+     the other hand, approved of it, and supported it as far as she was
+     able.
+
+     "Seven years passed in discussion and nine in execution.  During
+     this time very remarkable and noteworthy things occurred whereof no
+     idea at all had been formed.  I have arrived at, and am in, such a
+     condition that there is no person so vile but thinks he may insult
+     me: he shall be reckoned in the world as valour itself who is
+     courageous enough not to consent to it.
+
+     "If I were to steal the Indies or the land which lies towards them,
+     of which I am now speaking, from the altar of Saint Peter, and give
+     them to the Moors, they could not show greater enmity towards me in
+     Spain.  Who would believe such a thing where there was always so
+     much magnanimity?
+
+     "I should have much desired to free myself from this affair had it
+     been honourable towards my Queen to do so.  The support of our Lord
+     and of her Highness made me persevere: and to alleviate in some
+     measure the sorrows which death had caused her, I undertook a fresh
+     voyage to the new heaven and earth which up to that time had
+     remained hidden; and if it is not held there in esteem like the
+     other voyages to the Indies, that is no wonder, because it came to
+     be looked upon as my work.
+
+     "The Holy Spirit inflamed Saint Peter and twelve others with him,
+     and they all contended here below, and their toils and hardships
+     were many, but last of all they gained the victory.
+
+     "This voyage to Paria I thought would somewhat appease them on
+     account of the pearls, and of the discovery of gold in Espanola.
+     I ordered the pearls to be collected and fished for by people with
+     whom an arrangement was made that I should return for them, and, as
+     I understood, they were to be measured by the bushel.  If I did not
+     write about this to their Highnesses, it was because I wished to
+     have first of all done the same thing with the gold.
+
+     "The result to me in this has been the same as in many other things;
+     I should not have lost them nor my honour, if I had sought my own
+     advantage, and had allowed Espanola to be ruined, or if my
+     privileges and contracts had been observed.  And I say just the same
+     about the gold which I had then collected, and [for] which with such
+     great afflictions and toils I have, by divine power, almost
+     perfected [the arrangements].
+
+     "When I went from Paria I found almost half the people from Espanola
+     in revolt, and they have waged war against me until now, as against
+     a Moor; and the Indians on the other side grievously [harassed me].
+     At this time Hojeda arrived and tried to put the finishing stroke:
+     he said that their Highnesses had sent him with promises of gifts,
+     franchises and pay: he gathered together a great band, for in the
+     whole of Espanola there are very few save vagabonds, and not one
+     with wife and children.  This Hojeda gave me great trouble; he was
+     obliged to depart, and left word that he would soon return with more
+     ships and people, and that he had left the Royal person of the
+     Queen, our Lady, at the point of death.  Then Vincente Yanez arrived
+     with four caravels; there was disturbance and mistrust but no
+     mischief: the Indians talked of many others at the Cannibals
+     [Caribbee Islands] and in Paria; and afterwards spread the news of
+     six other caravels, which were brought by a brother of the Alcalde,
+     but it was with malicious intent.  This occurred at the very last,
+     when the hope that their Highnesses would ever send any ships to the
+     Indies was almost abandoned, nor did we expect them; and it was
+     commonly reported that her Highness was dead.
+
+     "A certain Adrian about this time endeavoured to rise in rebellion
+     again, as he had done previously, but our Lord did not permit his
+     evil purpose to succeed.  I had purposed in myself never to touch a
+     hair of anybody's head, but I lament to say that with this man,
+     owing to his ingratitude, it was not possible to keep that resolve
+     as I had intended: I should not have done less to my brother, if he
+     had sought to kill me, and steal the dominion which my King and
+     Queen had given me in trust.
+
+     "This Adrian, as it appears, had sent Don Ferdinand to Xaragua to
+     collect some of his followers, and there a dispute arose with the
+     Alcalde from which a deadly contest ensued, and he [Adrian] did not
+     effect his purpose.  The Alcalde seized him and a part of his band,
+     and the fact was that he would have executed them if I had not
+     prevented it; they were kept prisoners awaiting a caravel in which
+     they might depart.  The news of Hojeda which I told them made them
+     lose the hope that he would now come again.
+
+     "For six months I had been prepared to return to their Highnesses
+     with the good news of the gold, and to escape from governing a
+     dissolute people Who fear neither God nor their King and Queen,
+     being full of vices and wickedness.
+
+     "I could have paid the people in full with six hundred thousand, and
+     for this purpose I had four millions of tenths and somewhat more,
+     besides the third of the gold.
+
+     "Before my departure I many times begged their Highnesses to send
+     there, at my expense, some one to take charge of the administration
+     of justice; and after finding the Alcalde in arms I renewed my
+     supplications to have either some troops or at least some servant of
+     theirs with letters patent; for my reputation is such that even if I
+     build churches and hospitals, they will always be called dens of
+     thieves.
+
+     "They did indeed make provision at last, but it was the very
+     contrary of what the matter demanded: it may be successful, since it
+     was according to their good pleasure.
+
+     "I was there for two years without being able to gain a decree of
+     favour for myself or for those who went there, yet this man brought
+     a coffer full: whether they will all redound to their [Highnesses]
+     service, God knows.  Indeed, to begin with, there are exemptions for
+     twenty years, which is a man's lifetime; and gold is collected to
+     such an extent that there was one person who became worth five marks
+     in four hours; whereof I will speak more fully later on.
+
+     "If it would please their Highnesses to remove the grounds of a
+     common saying of those who know my labours, that the calumny of the
+     people has done me more harm than much service and the maintenance
+     of their [Highnesses] property and dominion has done me good, it
+     would be a charity, and I should be re-established in my honour, and
+     it would be talked about all over the world: for the undertaking is
+     of such a nature that it must daily become more famous and in higher
+     esteem.
+
+     "When the Commander Bobadilla came to Santo Domingo, I was at La
+     Vega, and the Adelantado at Xaragua, where that Adrian had made a
+     stand, but then all was quiet, and the land rich and all men at
+     peace.  On the second day after his arrival, he created himself
+     Governor, and appointed officers and made executions, and proclaimed
+     immunities of gold and tenths and in general of everything else for
+     twenty years, which is a man's lifetime, and that he came to pay
+     everybody in full up to that day, even though they had not rendered
+     service; and he publicly gave notice that, as for me, he had charge
+     to send me in irons, and my brothers likewise, as he has done, and
+     that I should nevermore return thither, nor any other of my family:
+     alleging a thousand disgraceful and discourteous things about me.
+     All this took place on the second day after his arrival, as I have
+     said, and while I was absent at a distance, without my knowing
+     either of him or of his arrival.
+
+     "Some letters of their Highnesses signed in blank, of which he
+     brought a number, he filled up and sent to the Alcalde and to his
+     company with favours and commendations: to me he never sent either
+     letter or messenger, nor has he done so to this day.  Imagine what
+     any one holding my office would think when one who endeavoured to
+     rob their Highnesses, and who has done so much evil and mischief, is
+     honoured and favoured, while he who maintained it at such risks is
+     degraded.
+
+     "When I heard this I thought that this affair would be like that of
+     Hojeda or one of the others, but I restrained myself when I learnt
+     for certain from the friars that their Highnesses had sent him.  I
+     wrote to him that his arrival was welcome, and that I was prepared
+     to go to the Court and had sold all I possessed by auction; and that
+     with respect to the immunities he should not be hasty, for both that
+     matter and the government I would hand over to him immediately as
+     smooth as my palm.  And I wrote to the same effect to the friars,
+     but neither he nor they gave me any answer.  On the contrary, he put
+     himself in a warlike attitude, and compelled all who went there to
+     take an oath to him as Governor; and they told me that it was for
+     twenty years.
+
+     "Directly I knew of those immunities, I thought that I would repair
+     such a great error and that he would be pleased, for he gave them
+     without the need or occasion necessary in so vast a matter: and he
+     gave to vagabond people what would have been excessive for a man who
+     had brought wife and children.  So I announced by word and letters
+     that he could not use his patents because mine were those in force;
+     and I showed them the immunities which John Aguado brought.
+
+     "All this was done by me in order to gain time, so that their
+     Highnesses might be informed of the condition of the country, and
+     that they might have an opportunity of issuing fresh commands as to
+     what would best promote their service in that respect.
+
+     "It is useless to publish such immunities in the Indies: to the
+     settlers who have taken up residence it is a pure gain, for the best
+     lands are given to them, and at a low valuation they will be worth
+     two-hundred thousand at the end of the four years when the period of
+     residence is ended, without their digging a spadeful in them.  I
+     would not speak thus if the settlers were married, but there are not
+     six among them all who are not on the look-out to gather what they
+     can and depart speedily.  It would be a good thing if they should go
+     from Castile, and also if it were known who and what they are, and
+     if the country could be settled with honest people.
+
+     "I had agreed with those settlers that they should pay the third of
+     the gold, and the tenths, and this at their own request; and they
+     received it as a great favour from their Highnesses.  I reproved
+     them when I heard that they ceased to do this, and hoped that the
+     Commander would do likewise, and he did the contrary.
+
+     "He incensed them against me by saying that I wanted to deprive them
+     of what their Highnesses had given them; and he endeavoured to set
+     them at variance with me, and did so; and he induced them to write
+     to their Highnesses that they should never again send me back to the
+     government, and I likewise make the same supplication to them for
+     myself and for my whole family, as long as there are not different
+     inhabitants.  And he together with them ordered inquisitions
+     concerning me for wickednesses the like whereof were never known in
+     hell.  Our Lord, who rescued Daniel and the three children, is
+     present with the same wisdom and power as He had then, and with the
+     same means, if it should please Him and be in accordance with His
+     will.
+
+     "I should know how to remedy all this, and the rest of what has been
+     said and has taken place since I have been in the Indies, if my
+     disposition would allow me to seek my own advantage, and if it
+     seemed honourable to me to do so, but the maintenance of justice and
+     the extension of the dominion of her Highness has hitherto kept me
+     down.  Now that so much gold is found, a dispute arises as to which
+     brings more profit, whether to go about robbing or to go to the
+     mines.  A hundred castellanos are as easily obtained for a woman as
+     for a farm, and it is very general, and there are plenty of dealers
+     who go about looking for girls: those from nine to ten are now in
+     demand, and for all ages a good price must be paid.
+
+     "I assert that the violence of the calumny of turbulent persons has
+     injured me more than my services have profited me; which is a bad
+     example for the present and for the future.  I take my oath that a
+     number of men have gone to the Indies who did not deserve water in
+     the sight of God and of the world; and now they are returning
+     thither, and leave is granted them.
+
+     "I assert that when I declared that the Commander could not grant
+     immunities, I did what he desired, although I told him that it was
+     to cause delay until their Highnesses should, receive information
+     from the country, and should command anew what might be for their
+     service.
+
+     "He excited their enmity against me, and he seems, from what took
+     place and from his behaviour, to have come as my enemy and as a very
+     vehement one; or else the report is true that he has spent much to
+     obtain this employment.  I do not know more about it than what I
+     hear.  I never heard of an inquisitor gathering rebels together and
+     accepting them, and others devoid of credit and unworthy of it, as
+     witnesses against their Governor.
+
+     "If their Highnesses were to make a general inquisition there, I
+     assure you that they would look upon it as a great wonder that the
+     island does not founder.
+
+     "I think your Ladyship will remember that when, after losing my
+     sails, I was driven into Lisbon by a tempest, I was falsely accused
+     of having gone there to the King in order to give him the Indies.
+     Their Highnesses afterwards learned the contrary, and that it was
+     entirely malicious.
+
+     "Although I may know but little, I do not think any one considers me
+     so stupid as not to know that even if the Indies were mine I could
+     not uphold myself without the help of some Prince.
+
+     "If this be so, where could I find better support and security than
+     in the King and Queen, our Lords, who have raised me from nothing to
+     such great honour, and are the most exalted Princes of the world on
+     sea and on land, and who consider that I have rendered them service,
+     and who preserve to me my privileges and rewards: and if any one
+     infringes them, their Highnesses increase them still more, as was
+     seen in the case of John Aguado; and they order great honour to be
+     conferred upon me, and, as I have already said, their Highnesses
+     have received service from me, and keep my sons in their household;
+     all which could by no means happen with another prince, for where
+     there is no affection, everything else fails.
+
+     "I have now spoken thus in reply to a malicious slander, but against
+     my will, as it is a thing which should not recur to memory even in
+     dreams; for the Commander Bobadilla maliciously seeks in this way to
+     set his own conduct and actions in a brighter light; but I shall
+     easily show him that his small knowledge and great cowardice,
+     together with his inordinate cupidity, have caused him to fail
+     therein.
+
+     "I have already said that I wrote to him and to the friars, and
+     immediately set out, as I told him, almost alone, because all the
+     people were with the Adelantado, and likewise in order to prevent
+     suspicion on his part.  When he heard this, he seized Don Diego and
+     sent him on board a caravel loaded with irons, and did the same to
+     me upon my arrival, and afterwards to the Adelantado when he came;
+     nor did I speak to him any more, nor to this day has he allowed any
+     one to speak to me; and I take my oath that I cannot understand why
+     I am made a prisoner.
+
+     "He made it his first business to seize the gold, which he did
+     without measuring or weighing it and in my absence; he said that he
+     wanted it to pay the people, and according to what I hear he
+     assigned the chief part to himself and sent fresh exchangers for the
+     exchanges.  Of this gold I had put aside certain specimens, very big
+     lumps, like the eggs of geese, hens, and pullets, and of many other
+     shapes, which some persons had collected in a short space of time,
+     in order that their Highnesses might be gladdened, and might
+     comprehend the business upon seeing a quantity of large stones full
+     of gold.  This collection was the first to be given away, with
+     malicious intent, so that their Highnesses should not hold the
+     matter in any account until he has feathered his nest, which he is
+     in great haste to do.  Gold which is for melting diminishes at the
+     fire: some chains which would weigh about twenty marks have never
+     been seen again.
+
+     "I have been more distressed about this matter of the gold than even
+     about the pearls, because I have not brought it to her Highness.
+
+     "The Commander at once set to work upon anything which he thought
+     would injure me.  I have already said that with six hundred thousand
+     I could pay every one without defrauding anybody, and that I had
+     more than four millions of tenths and constabulary [dues] without
+     touching the gold.  He made some free gifts which are ridiculous,
+     though I believe that he began by assigning the chief part to
+     himself.  Their Highnesses will find it out when they order an
+     account to be obtained from him, especially if I should be present
+     thereat.  He does nothing but reiterate that a large sum is owing,
+     and it is what I have said, and even less.  I have been much
+     distressed that there should be sent concerning me an inquisitor who
+     is aware that if the inquisition which he returns is very grave he
+     will remain in possession of the government.
+
+     "Would that it had pleased our Lord that their Highnesses had sent
+     him or some one else two years ago, for I know that I should now be
+     free from scandal and infamy, and that my honour would not be taken
+     from me, nor should I lose it.  God is just, and will make known the
+     why and the wherefore.
+
+     "They judge me over there as they would a governor who had gone to
+     Sicily, or to a city or town placed under regular government, and
+     where the laws can be observed in their entirety without fear of
+     ruining everything; and I am greatly injured thereby.
+
+     "I ought to be judged as a captain who went from Spain to the Indies
+     to conquer a numerous and warlike people, whose customs and religion
+     are very contrary to ours; who live in rocks and mountains, without
+     fixed settlements, and not like ourselves: and where, by the Divine
+     Will, I have placed under the dominion of the King and Queen, our
+     Sovereigns, a second world, through which Spain, which was reckoned
+     a poor country, has become the richest.
+
+     "I ought to be judged as a captain who for such a long time up to
+     this day has borne arms without laying them aside for an hour, and
+     by gentlemen adventurers and by custom, and not by letters, unless
+     they were from Greeks or Romans or others of modern times of whom
+     there are so many and such noble examples in Spain; or otherwise I
+     receive great injury, because in the Indies there is neither town
+     nor settlement.
+
+     "The gate to the gold and pearls is now open, and plenty of
+     everything--precious stones, spices and a thousand other things--may
+     be surely expected, and never could a worse misfortune befall me:
+     for by the name of our Lord the first voyage would yield them just
+     as much as would the traffic of Arabia Felix as far as Mecca, as I
+     wrote to their Highnesses by Antonio de Tomes in my reply respecting
+     the repartition of the sea and land with the Portuguese; and
+     afterwards it would equal that of Calicut, as I told them and put in
+     writing at the monastery of the Mejorada.
+
+     "The news of the gold that I said I would give is, that on the day
+     of the Nativity, while I was much tormented, being harassed by
+     wicked Christians and by Indians, and when I was on the point of
+     giving up everything, and if possible escaping from life, our Lord
+     miraculously comforted me and said, 'Fear not violence, I will
+     provide for all things: the seven years of the term of the gold have
+     not elapsed, and in that and in everything else I will afford thee a
+     remedy.'
+
+     "On that day I learned that there were eighty leagues of land with
+     mines at every point thereof.  The opinion now is that it is all
+     one.  Some have collected a hundred and twenty castellanos in one
+     day, and others ninety, and even the number of two hundred and fifty
+     has been reached.  From fifty to seventy, and in many more cases
+     from fifteen to fifty, is considered a good day's work, and many
+     carry it on.  The usual quantity is from six to twelve, and any one
+     obtaining less than this is not satisfied. It seems to me that these
+     mines are like others, and do not yield equally every day.  The
+     mines are new, and so are the workers: it is the opinion of
+     everybody that even if all Castile were to go there, every
+     individual, however inexpert he might be, would not obtain less than
+     one or two castellanos daily, and now it is only commencing.  It is
+     true that they keep Indians, but the business is in the hands of the
+     Christians.  Behold what discernment Bobadilla had, when he gave up
+     everything for nothing, and four millions of tenths, without any
+     reason or even being requested, and without first notifying it to
+     their Highnesses.  And this is not the only loss.
+
+     "I know that my errors have not been committed with the intention of
+     doing evil, and I believe that their Highnesses regard the matter
+     just as I state it: and I know and see that they deal mercifully
+     even with those who maliciously act to their disservice.  I believe
+     and consider it very certain that their clemency will be both
+     greater and more abundant towards me, for I fell therein through
+     ignorance and the force of circumstances, as they will know fully
+     hereafter; and I indeed am their creature, and they will look upon
+     my services, and will acknowledge day by day that they are much
+     profited.  They will place everything in the balance, even as Holy
+     Scripture tells us good and evil will be at the day of judgment.
+
+     "If, however, they command that another person do judge me, which I
+     cannot believe, and that it be by inquisition in the Indies, I very
+     humbly beseech them to send thither two conscientious and honourable
+     persons at my expense, who I believe will easily, now that gold is
+     discovered, find five marks in four hours.  In either case it is
+     needful for them to provide for this matter.
+
+     "The Commander on his arrival at San Domingo took up his abode in my
+     house, and just as he found it so he appropriated everything to
+     himself.  Well and good; perhaps he was in want of it.  A pirate
+     never acted thus towards a merchant.  About my papers I have a
+     greater grievance, for he has so completely deprived me of them that
+     I have never been able to obtain a single one from him; and those
+     that would have been most useful in my exculpation are precisely
+     those which he has kept most concealed.  Behold the just and honest
+     inquisitor!  Whatever he may have done, they tell me that there has
+     been an end to justice, except in an arbitrary form.  God, our Lord,
+     is present with His strength and wisdom, as of old, and always
+     punishes in the end, especially ingratitude and injuries."
+
+We must keep in mind the circumstances in which this letter was written
+if we are to judge it and the writer wisely.  It is a sad example of
+querulous complaint, in which everything but the writer's personal point
+of view is ignored.  No one indeed is more terrible in this world than
+the Man with a Grievance.  How rarely will human nature in such
+circumstances retire into the stronghold of silence!  Columbus is asking
+for pity; but as we read his letter we incline to pity him on grounds
+quite different from those which he represented.  He complains that the
+people he was sent to govern have waged war against him as against a
+Moor; he complains of Ojeda and of Vincenti Yanez Pinzon; of Adrian de
+Moxeca, and of every other person whom it was his business to govern and
+hold in restraint.  He complains of the colonists--the very people, some
+of them, whom he himself took and impressed from the gaols and purlieus
+of Cadiz; and then he mingles pious talk about Saint Peter and Daniel in
+the den of lions with notes on the current price of little girls and big
+lumps of gold like the eggs of geese, hens, and pullets.  He complains
+that he is judged as a man would be judged who had been sent out to
+govern a ready-made colony, and represents instead that he went out to
+conquer a numerous and warlike people "whose custom and religion are very
+contrary to ours, and who lived in rocks and mountains"; forgetting that
+when it suited him for different purposes he described the natives as so
+peaceable and unwarlike that a thousand of them would not stand against
+one Christian, and that in any case he was sent out to create a
+constitution and not merely to administer one.  Very sore indeed is
+Christopher as he reveals himself in this letter, appealing now to his
+correspondent, now to the King and Queen, now to that God who is always
+on the side of the complainant.  "God our Lord is present with His
+strength and wisdom, as of old, and always punishes in the end,
+especially ingratitude and injuries."  Not boastfulness and weakness, let
+us hope, or our poor Admiral will come off badly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+CRISIS IN THE ADMIRAL'S LIFE
+
+Columbus was not far wrong in his estimate of the effect likely to be
+produced by his manacles, and when the ships of Villegio arrived at Cadiz
+in October, the spectacle of an Admiral in chains produced a degree of
+commiseration which must have exceeded his highest hopes.  He was now in
+his fiftieth year and of an extremely venerable appearance, his kindling
+eye looking forth from under brows of white, his hair and beard snow-
+white, his face lined and spiritualised with suffering and sorrow.  It
+must be remembered that before the Spanish people he had always appeared
+in more or less state.  They had not that intimacy with him,
+an intimacy which perhaps brought contempt, which the people in Espanola
+enjoyed; and in Spain, therefore, the contrast between his former
+grandeur and this condition of shame and degradation was the more
+striking.  It was a fact that the people of Spain could not neglect.
+It touched their sense of the dramatic and picturesque, touched their
+hearts also perhaps--hearts quick to burn, quick to forget.  They had
+forgotten him before, now they burned with indignation at the picture of
+this venerable and much-suffering man arriving in disgrace.
+
+His letter to Dofia Juana, hastily despatched by him, probably through
+the office of some friendly soul on board, immediately on his arrival at
+Cadiz, was the first news from the ship received by the King and Queen,
+and naturally it caused them a shock of surprise.  It was followed by the
+despatches from Bobadilla and by a letter from the Alcalde of Cadiz
+announcing that Columbus and his brothers were in his custody awaiting
+the royal orders.  Perhaps Ferdinand and Isabella had already repented
+their drastic action and had entertained some misgivings as to its
+results; but it is more probable that they had put it out of their heads
+altogether, and that their hasty action now was prompted as much by the
+shock of being recalled to a consciousness of the troubled state of
+affairs in the New World as by any real regret for what they had done.
+Moreover they had sent out Bobadilla to quiet things down; and the first
+result of it was that Spain was ringing with the scandal of the Admiral's
+treatment.  In that Spanish world, unsteadfast and unstable, when one end
+of the see-saw was up the other must be down; and it was Columbus who now
+found himself high up in the heavens of favour, and Bobadilla who was
+seated in the dust.  Equipoise any kind was apparently a thing
+impossible; if one man was right the other man must be wrong; no excuses
+for Bobadilla; every excuse for the Admiral.
+
+The first official act, therefore, was an order for the immediate release
+of the Admiral and his brothers, followed by an invitation for him to
+proceed without delay to the Court at Granada, and an order for the
+immediate payment to him of the sum of 2000 ducats [perhaps $250,000 in
+the year 2000  D.W.] this last no ungenerous gift to a Viceroy whose
+pearl accounts were in something less than order.  Perhaps Columbus had
+cherished the idea of appearing dramatically before the very Court in his
+rags and chains; but the cordiality of their letter as well as the gift
+of money made this impossible.  Instead, not being a man to do things by
+halves, he equipped himself in his richest and most splendid garments,
+got together the requisite number of squires and pages, and duly
+presented himself at Granada in his full dignity.  The meeting was an
+affecting one, touched with a humanity which has survived the intervening
+centuries, as a touch of true humanity will when details of mere parade
+and etiquette have long perished.  Perhaps the Admiral, inspired with a
+deep sense of his wrongs, meant to preserve a very stiff and cold
+demeanour at the beginning of this interview; but when he looked into the
+kind eyes of Isabella and saw them suffused with tears at the thought of
+his sorrows all his dignity broke down; the tears came to his own eyes,
+and he wept there naturally like a child.  Ferdinand looking on kind but
+uncomfortable; Isabella unaffectedly touched and weeping; the Admiral, in
+spite of his scarlet cloak and golden collar and jewelled sword, in spite
+of equerries, squires, pages and attendants, sobbing on his knees like a
+child or an old man-these were the scenes and kindly emotions of this
+historic moment.
+
+
+The tears were staunched by kindly royal words and handkerchiefs supplied
+by attendant pages; sobbings breaking out again, but on the whole soon
+quieted; King and Queen raising the gouty Christopher from his knees,
+filling the air with kind words of sympathy, praise, and encouragement;
+the lonely worn heart, somewhat arid of late, and parched from want of
+human sympathy, much refreshed by this dew of kindness.  The Admiral was
+soon himself again, and he would not have been himself if upon recovering
+he had not launched out into what some historians call a "lofty and
+dignified vindication of his loyalty and zeal."  No one, indeed, is
+better than the Admiral at such lofty and dignified vindications.  He
+goes into the whole matter and sets forth an account of affairs at
+Espanola from his own point of view; and can even (so high is the
+thermometer of favour) safely indulge in a little judicious self-
+depreciation, saying that if he has erred it has not been from want of
+zeal but from want of experience in dealing with the kind of material
+he has been set to govern.  All this is very human, natural, and
+understandable; product of that warm emotional atmosphere, bedewed with
+tears, in which the Admiral finds himself; and it is not long before the
+King and Queen, also moved to it by the emotional temperature, are
+expressing their unbroken and unbounded confidence in him and repudiating
+the acts of Bobadilla, which they declare to have been contrary to their
+instructions; undertaking also that he shall be immediately dismissed
+from his post.  Poor Bobadilla is not here in the warm emotional
+atmosphere; he had his turn of it six months ago, when no powers were too
+high or too delicate to be entrusted to him; he is out in the cold at the
+other end of the see-saw, which has let him down to the ground with a
+somewhat sudden thump.
+
+
+Columbus, relying on the influence of these emotions, made bold to ask
+that his property in the island should be restored to him, which was
+immediately granted; and also to request that he should be reinstated in
+his office of Viceroy and allowed to return at once in triumph to
+Espanola.  But emotions are unstable things; they present a yielding
+surface which will give to any extent, but which, when it has hardened
+again after the tears have evaporated, is often found to be in much the
+same condition as before.  At first promises were made that the whole
+matter should be fully gone into; but when it came to cold fact,
+Ferdinand was obliged to recognise that this whole business of discovery
+and colonisation had become a very different thing to what it had been
+when Columbus was the only discoverer; and he was obviously of opinion
+that, as Columbus's office had once been conveniently withdrawn from him,
+it would only be disastrous to reinstate him in it.  Of course he did not
+say so at once; but reasons were given for judicious delay in the
+Admiral's reappointment.  It was represented to him that the colony,
+being in an extremely unsettled state, should be given a short period of
+rest, and also that it would be as well for him to wait until the people
+who had given him so much trouble in the island could be quietly and
+gradually removed.  Two years was the time mentioned as suitable for an
+interregnum, and it is probable that it was the intention of Isabella,
+although not of Ferdinand, to restore Columbus to his office at the end
+of that time.
+
+
+In the meantime it became necessary to appoint some one to supersede
+Bobadilla; for the news that arrived periodically from Espanola during
+the year showed that he had entirely failed in his task of reducing the
+island to order.  For the wholesome if unequal rigours of Columbus
+Bobadilla had substituted laxness and indulgence, with the result that
+the whole colony was rapidly reduced to a state of the wildest disorder.
+Vice and cruelty were rampant; in fact the barbarities practised upon the
+natives were so scandalous that even Spanish opinion, which was never
+very sympathetic to heathen suffering, was thoroughly shocked and
+alarmed.  The Sovereigns therefore appointed Nicholas de Ovando to go out
+and take over the command, with instructions to use very drastic means
+for bringing the colony to order.  How he did it we shall presently see;
+in the meantime all that was known of him (the man not having been tried
+yet) was that he was a poor knight of Calatrava, a man respected in royal
+circles for the performance of minor official duties, but no very popular
+favourite; honest according to his lights--lights turned rather low and
+dim, as was often the case in those days.  A narrow-minded man also,
+without sympathy or imagination, capable of cruelty; a tough, stiff-
+necked stock of a man, fit to deal with Bobadilla perhaps, but hardly fit
+to deal with the colony.  Spain in those days was not a nursery of
+administration.  Of all the people who were sent out successively to
+govern Espanola and supersede one another, the only one who really seems
+to have had the necessary natural ability, had he but been given the
+power, was Bartholomew Columbus; but unfortunately things were in such a
+state that the very name of Columbus was enough to bar a man from
+acceptance as a governor of Espanola.
+
+It was not for any lack of powers and equipment that this procession of
+governors failed in their duties.  We have seen with what authority
+Bobadilia had been entrusted; and Ovando had even greater advantages.
+The instructions he received showed that the needs of the new colonies
+were understood by Ferdinand and Isabella, if by no one else.  Ovando was
+not merely appointed Governor of Espanola but of the whole of the new
+territory discovered in the west, his seat of government being San
+Domingo.  He was given the necessary free hand in the matters of
+punishment, confiscation, and allotment of lands.  He was to revoke the
+orders which had been made by Bobadilla reducing the proportion of gold
+payable to the Crown, and was empowered to take over one-third of the.
+gold that was stored on the island, and one-half of what might be found
+in the future.  The Crown was to have a monopoly of all trade, and
+ordinary supplies were only to be procured through the Crown agent.
+On the other hand, the natives were to be released from slavery, and
+although forced to work in the mines, were to be paid for their labour--
+a distinction which in the working out did not produce much difference.
+A body of Franciscan monks accompanied Ovando for the purpose of tackling
+the religious question with the necessary energy; and every regulation
+that the kind heart of Isabella could think of was made for the happiness
+and contentment of the Indians.
+
+Unhappily the real mischief had already been done.  The natives, who had
+never been accustomed to hard and regular work under the conditions of
+commerce and greed, but had only toiled for the satisfaction of their own
+simple wants, were suffering cruelly under the hard labour in the mines,
+and the severe driving of their Spanish masters.  Under these unnatural .
+conditions the native population was rapidly dying off, and there was
+some likelihood that there would soon be a scarcity of native labour.
+These were the circumstances in which the idea of importing black African
+labour to the New World was first conceived--a plan which was destined to
+have results so tremendous that we have probably not yet seen their full
+and ghastly development.  There were a great number of African negro
+slaves at that time in Spain; a whole generation of them had been born in
+slavery in Spain itself; and this generation was bodily imported to
+Espanola to relieve and assist the native labour.
+
+
+These preparations were not made all at once; and it was more than a year
+after the return of Columbus before Ovando was ready to sail.  In the
+meantime Columbus was living in Granada, and looking on with no very
+satisfied eye at the plans which were being made to supersede him, and
+about which he was probably not very much consulted; feeling very sore
+indeed, and dividing his attention between the nursing of his grievances
+and other even less wholesome occupations.  There was any amount of
+smiling kindness for him at Court, but very little of the satisfaction
+that his vanity and ambition craved; and in the absence of practical
+employment he fell back on visionary speculations.  He made great friends
+at this time with a monk named Gaspar Gorricio, with whose assistance he
+began to make some kind of a study of such utterances of the Prophets and
+the Fathers as he conceived to have a bearing on his own career.
+
+Columbus was in fact in a very queer way at this time; and what with his
+readings and his meditatings and his grievances, and his visits to his
+monkish friend in the convent of Las Cuevas, he fell into a kind of
+intellectual stupor, of which the work called 'Libro de las Profecias,'
+or Book of the Prophecies, in which he wrote down such considerations as
+occurred to him in his stupor, was the result.  The manuscript of this
+work is in existence, although no human being has ever ventured to
+reprint the whole of it; and we would willingly abstain from mentioning
+it here if it were not an undeniable act of Columbus's life.  The
+Admiral, fallen into theological stupor, puts down certain figures upon
+paper; discovers that St. Augustine said that the world would only last
+for 7000 years; finds that some other genius had calculated that before
+the birth of Christ it had existed for 5343 years and 318 days; adds 1501
+years from the birth of Christ to his own time; adds up, and finds that
+the total is 6844 years; subtracts, and discovers that this earthly globe
+can only last 155 years longer.  He remembers also that, still according
+to the Prophets, certain things must happen before the end of the world;
+Holy Sepulchre restored to Christianity, heathen converted, second coming
+of Christ; and decides that he himself is the man appointed by God and
+promised by the Prophets to perform these works.  Good Heavens! in what
+an entirely dark and sordid stupor is our Christopher now sunk--a
+veritable slough and quag of stupor out of which, if he does not manage
+to flounder himself, no human hand can pull him.
+
+
+But amid his wallowings in this slough of stupor, when all else, in him
+had been well-nigh submerged by it, two dim lights were preserved towards
+which, although foundered up to the chin, he began to struggle; and by
+superhuman efforts did at last extricate himself from the theological
+stupor and get himself blown clean again by the salt winds before he
+died.  One light was his religion; not to be confounded with theological
+stupor, but quite separate from it in my belief; a certain steadfast and
+consuming faith in a Power that could see and understand and guide him to
+the accomplishment of his purpose.  This faith had been too often a good
+friend and help to Christopher for him to forget it very long, even while
+he was staggering in the quag with Isaiah, Jeremiah, and the Fathers; and
+gradually, as I say, he worked himself out into the region of activity
+again.  First, thinking it a pity that his flounderings in the slough
+should be entirely wasted, he had a copy of his precious theological work
+made and presented it to the Sovereigns, with a letter urging them (since
+he himself was unable to do it) to undertake a crusade for the recovery
+of the Holy Sepulchre--not an altogether wild proposal in those days.
+But Ferdinand had other uses for his men and his money, and contented
+himself with despatching Peter Martyr on a pacific mission to the Grand
+Soldan of Egypt.
+
+The other light left unquenched in Columbus led him back to the firm
+ground of maritime enterprise; he began to long for the sea again, and
+for a chance of doing something to restore his reputation.  An infinitely
+better and more wholesome frame of mind this; by all means let him mend
+his reputation by achievement, instead of by writing books in a
+theological trance or stupor, and attempting to prove that he was chosen
+by the Almighty.  He now addressed himself to the better task of getting
+himself chosen by men to do something which should raise him again in
+their esteem.
+
+
+His maritime ambition was no doubt stimulated at this time by witnessing
+the departure of Ovando, in February 1502, with a fleet of thirty-five
+ships and a company of 2500 people.  It was not in the Admiral's nature
+to look on without envy at an equipment the like of which he himself had
+never been provided with, and he did not restrain his sarcasms at its
+pomp and grandeur, nor at the ease with which men could follow a road
+which had once been pointed out to them.  Ovando had a great body-guard
+such as Columbus had never had; and he also carried with him a great
+number of picked married men with their families, all with knowledge of
+some trade or craft, whose presence in the colony would be a guarantee
+of permanence and steadiness.  He perhaps remembered his own crowd of
+ruffians and gaol-birds, and realised the bitterness of his own mistakes.
+It was a very painful moment for him, and he was only partially
+reconciled to it by the issue of a royal order to Ovando under which he
+was required to see to the restoration of the Admiral's property.  If it
+had been devoted to public purposes it was to be repaid him from the
+royal funds; but if it had been merely distributed among the colonists
+Bobadilla was to be made responsible for it.  The Admiral was also
+allowed to send out an agent to represent him and look after his
+interests; and he appointed Alonso de Carvajal to this office.
+
+
+Ovando once gone, the Admiral could turn again to his own affairs.
+It is true there were rumours that the whole fleet had perished, for it
+encountered a gale very soon after leaving Cadiz, and a great quantity of
+the deck hamper was thrown overboard and was washed on the shores of
+Spain; and the Sovereigns were so bitterly distressed that, as it is
+said, they shut them selves up for eight days.  News eventually came,
+however, that only one ship had been lost and that the rest had proceeded
+safely to San Domingo.  Columbus, much recovered in body and mind, now
+began to apply for a fleet for himself.  He had heard of the discovery by
+the Portuguese of the southern route to India; no doubt he had heard also
+much gossip of the results of the many private voyages of discovery that
+were sailing from Spain at this time; and he began to think seriously
+about his own discoveries and the way in which they might best be
+extended.  He thought much of his voyage to the west of Trinidad and of
+the strange pent-up seas and currents that he had discovered there.  He
+remembered the continual westward trend of the current, and how all the
+islands in that sea had their greatest length east and west, as though
+their shores had been worn into that shape by the constant flowing of the
+current; and it was not an unnatural conclusion for him to suppose that
+there was a channel far to the west through which these seas poured and
+which would lead him to the Golden Chersonesus.  He put away from him
+that nightmare madness that he transacted on the coast of Cuba.  He knew
+very well that he had not yet found the Golden Chersonesus and the road
+to India; but he became convinced that the western current would lead him
+there if only he followed it long enough.  There was nothing insane about
+this theory; it was in fact a very well-observed and well-reasoned
+argument; and the fact that it happened to be entirely wrong is no
+reflection on the Admiral's judgment.  The great Atlantic currents at
+that time had not been studied; and how could he know that the western
+stream of water was the northern half of a great ocean current which
+sweeps through the Caribbean Sea, into and round the Gulf of Mexico, and
+flows out northward past Florida in the Gulf Stream?
+
+His applications for a fleet were favourably received by the King and
+Queen, but much frowned upon by certain high officials of the Court.
+They were beginning to regard Columbus as a dangerous adventurer who,
+although he happened to have discovered the western islands, had brought
+the Spanish colony there to a dreadful state of disorder; and had also,
+they alleged, proved himself rather less than trustworthy in matters of
+treasure.  Still in the summer days of 1501 he was making himself very
+troublesome at Court with constant petitions and letters about his rights
+and privileges; and Ferdinand was far from unwilling to adopt a plan by
+which they would at least get rid of him and keep him safely occupied at
+the other side of the world at the cost of a few caravels.  There was,
+besides, always an element of uncertainty.  His voyage might come to
+nothing, but on the other hand the Admiral was no novice at this game of
+discovery, and one could not tell but that something big might come of
+it.  After some consideration permission was given to him to fit out a
+fleet of four ships, and he proceeded to Seville in the autumn of 1501
+to get his little fleet ready.  Bartholomew was to come with him, and his
+son Ferdinand also, who seems to have much endeared himself to the
+Admiral in these dark days, and who would surely be a great comfort to
+him on the voyage.  Beatriz Enriquez seems to have passed out of his
+life; certainly he was not living with her either now or on his last
+visit to Spain; one way or another, that business is at an end for him.
+Perhaps poor Beatriz, seeing her son in such a high place at Court, has
+effaced herself for his sake; perhaps the appointment was given on
+condition of such effacement; we do not know.
+
+
+Columbus was in no hurry over his preparations.  In the midst of them he
+found time to collect a whole series of documents relating to his titles
+and dignities, which he had copied and made into a great book which he
+called his "Book of Privileges," and the copies of which were duly
+attested before a notary at Seville on January 5, 1502.  He wrote many
+letters to various friends of his, chiefly in relation to these
+privileges; not interesting or illuminating letters to us, although very
+important to busy Christopher when he wrote them.  Here is one written to
+Nicolo Oderigo, a Genoese Ambassador who came to Spain on a brief mission
+in the spring of 1502, and who, with certain other residents in Spain, is
+said to have helped Columbus in his preparations for his fourth voyage:
+
+     "Sir,--The loneliness in which you have left us cannot be described.
+     I gave the book containing my writings to Francisco de Rivarol that
+     he may send it to you with another copy of letters containing
+     instructions.  I beg you to be so kind as to write Don Diego in
+     regard to the place of security in which you put them.  Duplicates
+     of everything will be completed and sent to you in the same manner
+     and by the same Francisco.  Among them you will find a new document.
+     Their Highnesses promised to give all that belongs to me and to
+     place Don Diego in possession of everything, as you will see.  I
+     wrote to Senor Juan Luis and to Sefora Catalina.  The letter
+     accompanies this one.  I am ready to start in the name of the Holy
+     Trinity as soon as the weather is good.  I am well provided with
+     everything.  If Jeronimo de Santi Esteban is coming, he must await
+     me and not embarrass himself with anything, for they will take away
+     from him all they can and silently leave him.  Let him come here and
+     the King and the Queen will receive him until I come.  May our Lord
+     have you in His holy keeping.
+
+               "Done at Seville, March 21, 1502.
+               "At your command.
+
+                                                    .S.
+                                                  .S.A.S.
+                                                  Xpo FERENS."
+
+
+His delays were not pleasing to Ferdinand, who wanted to get rid of him,
+and he was invited to hurry his departure; but he still continued to go
+deliberately about his affairs, which he tried to put in order as far as
+he was able, since he thought it not unlikely that he might never see
+Spain again.  Thinking thus of his worldly duties, and his thoughts
+turning to his native Genoa, it occurred to him to make some benefaction
+out of the riches that were coming to him by which his name might be
+remembered and held in honour there.  This was a piece of practical
+kindness the record of which is most precious to us; for it shows the
+Admiral in a truer and more human light than he often allowed to shine
+upon him.  The tone of the letter is nothing; he could not forbear
+letting the people of Genoa see how great he was.  The devotion of his
+legacy to the reduction of the tax on simple provisions was a genuine
+charity, much to be appreciated by the dwellers in the Vico Dritto di
+Ponticello, where wine and provision shops were so very necessary to
+life.  The letter was written to the Directors of the famous Bank of
+Saint George at Genoa.
+
+     "VERY NOBLE LORDS,--Although my body is here, my heart is
+     continually yonder.  Our Lord has granted me the greatest favour he
+     has granted any one since the time of David.  The results of my
+     undertaking already shine, and they would make a great light if the
+     obscurity of the Government did not conceal them.  I shall go again
+     to the Indies in the name of the Holy Trinity, to return
+     immediately.  And as I am mortal, I desire my son Don Diego to give
+     to you each year, for ever, the tenth part of all the income
+     received, in payment of the tax on wheat, wine, and other
+     provisions.  If this tenth amounts to anything, receive it, and if
+     not, receive my will for the deed.  I beg you as a favour to have
+     this son of mine in your charge.  Nicolo de Oderigo knows more about
+     my affairs than I myself.  I have sent him the copy of my privileges
+     and letters, that he may place them in safe keeping.  I would be
+     glad if you could see them.  The King and the Queen, my Lords, now
+     wish to honour me more than ever.  May the Holy Trinity guard your
+     noble persons, and increase the importance of your very magnificent
+     office.
+               "Done in Seville, April a, 1502.
+
+     "The High-Admiral of the Ocean-Sea and Viceroy and Governor-General
+     of the islands and mainland of Asia and the Indies, belonging to the
+     King and Queen, my Lords, and the Captain-General of the Sea, and a
+     Member of their Council.
+
+                                               .S.
+                                             .S.A.S.
+                                              X M Y
+                                            Xpo FERENS."
+
+
+Columbus was anxious to touch at Espanola on his voyage to the West; but
+he was expressly forbidden to do so, as it was known that his presence
+there could not make for anything but confusion; he was to be permitted,
+however, to touch there on his return journey.  The Great Khan was not
+out of his mind yet; much in it apparently, for he took an Arabian
+interpreter with him so that he could converse with that monarch.  In
+fact he did not hesitate to announce that very big results indeed were to
+come of this voyage of his; among other things he expected to
+circumnavigate the globe, and made no secret of his expectation.  In the
+meantime he was expected to find some pearls in order to pay for the
+equipment of his fleet; and in consideration of what had happened to the
+last lot of pearls collected by him, an agent named Diego de Porras was
+sent along with him to keep an account of the gold and precious stones
+which might be discovered.  Special instructions were issued to Columbus
+about the disposal of these commodities.  He does not seem to have minded
+these somewhat humiliating precautions; he had a way of rising above
+petty indignities and refusing to recognise them which must have been of
+great assistance to his self-respect in certain troubled moments in his
+life.
+
+His delays, however, were so many that in March 1502 the Sovereigns were
+obliged to order him to depart without any more waiting.  Poor
+Christopher, who once had to sue for the means with which to go, whose
+departures were once the occasion of so much state and ceremony, has now
+to be hustled forth and asked to go away.  Still he does not seem to
+mind; once more, as of old, his gaze is fixed beyond the horizon and his
+mind is filled with one idea.  They may not think much of him in Spain
+now, but they will when he comes back; and he can afford to wait.
+Completing his preparations without undignified haste he despatched
+Bartholomew with his four little vessels from Seville to Cadiz, where the
+Admiral was to join them.  He took farewell of his son Diego and of his
+brother James; good friendly James, who had done his best in a difficult
+position, but had seen quite enough of the wild life of the seas and was
+now settled in Seville studying hard for the Church.  It had always been
+his ambition, poor James; and, studying hard in Seville, he did in time
+duly enter the sacred pale and become a priest--by which we may see that
+if our ambitions are only modest enough we may in time encompass them.
+Sometimes I think that James, enveloped in priestly vestments, nodding in
+the sanctuary, lulled by the muttering murmur of the psalms or dozing
+through a long credo, may have thought himself back amid the brilliant
+sunshine and strange perfumes of Espanola; and from a dream of some nymph
+hiding in the sweet groves of the Vega may have awakened with a sigh to
+the strident Alleluias of his brother priests.  At any rate, farewell to
+James, safely seated beneath the Gospel light, and continuing to sit
+there until, in the year 1515, death interrupts him.  We are not any more
+concerned with James in his priestly shelter, but with those elder
+brothers of his who are making ready again to face the sun and the
+surges.
+
+Columbus's ships were on the point of sailing when word came that the
+Moors were besieging a Portuguese post on the coast of Morocco, and, as
+civility was now the order of the day between Spain and Portugal, the
+Admiral was instructed to call on his way there and afford some relief.
+This he did, sailing from Cadiz on the 9th or 10th of May to Ercilla on
+the Morocco coast, where he anchored on the 13th.  But the Moors had all
+departed and the siege was over; so Columbus, having sent Bartholomew and
+some of his officers ashore on a civil visit, which was duly returned,
+set out the same day on his last voyage.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE LAST VOYAGE
+
+The four ships that made up the Admiral's fleet on his fourth and last
+voyage were all small caravels, the largest only of seventy tons and the
+smallest only of fifty.  Columbus chose for his flagship the Capitana,
+seventy tons, appointing Diego Tristan to be his captain.  The next best
+ship was the Santiago de Palos under the command of Francisco Porras;
+Porras and his brother Diego having been more or less foisted on to
+Columbus by Morales, the Royal Treasurer, who wished to find berths for
+these two brothers-in-law of his.  We shall hear more of the Porras
+brothers.  The third ship was the Gallega, sixty tons, a very bad sailer
+indeed, and on that account entrusted to Bartholomew Columbus, whose
+skill in navigation, it was hoped, might make up for her bad sailing
+qualities.  Bartholomew had, to tell the truth, had quite enough of the
+New World, but he was too loyal to Christopher to let him go alone,
+knowing as he did his precarious state of health and his tendency to
+despondency.  The captain of the Gallega was Pedro de Terreros, who had
+sailed with the Admiral as steward on all his other voyages and was now
+promoted to a command.  The fourth ship was called the Vizcaina, fifty
+tons, and was commanded by Bartolome Fieschi, a friend of Columbus's from
+Genoa, and a very sound, honourable man.  There were altogether 143 souls
+on board the four caravels.
+
+The fleet as usual made the Canary Islands, where they arrived on the
+20th of May, and stopped for five days taking in wood and water and fresh
+provisions.  Columbus was himself again--always more himself at sea than
+anywhere else; he was following a now familiar road that had no
+difficulties or dangers for him; and there is no record of the voyage out
+except that it was quick and prosperous, with the trade wind blowing so
+steadily that from the time they left the Canaries until they made land
+twenty days later they had hardly to touch a sheet or a halliard.  The
+first land they made was the island of Martinique, where wood and water
+were taken in and the men sent ashore to wash their linen.  To young
+Ferdinand, but fourteen years old, this voyage was like a fairy tale come
+true, and his delight in everything that he saw must have added greatly
+to Christopher's pleasure and interest in the voyage.  They only stayed a
+few days at Martinique and then sailed westward along the chain of
+islands until they came to Porto Rico, where they put in to the sunny
+harbour which they had discovered on a former voyage.
+
+It was at this point that Columbus determined, contrary to his precise
+orders, to stand across to Espanola.  The place attracted him like a
+magnet; he could not keep away from it; and although he had a good enough
+excuse for touching there, it is probable that his real reason was a very
+natural curiosity to see how things were faring with his old enemy
+Bobadilla.  The excuse was that the Gallega, Bartholomew's ship, was so
+unseaworthy as to be a drag on the progress of the rest of the fleet and
+a danger to her own crew.  In the slightest sea-way she rolled almost
+gunwale under, and would not carry her sail; and Columbus's plan was to
+exchange her for a vessel out of the great fleet which he knew had by
+this time reached Espanola and discharged its passengers.
+
+
+He arrived off the harbour of San Domingo on the 29th of June in very
+threatening weather, and immediately sent Pedro de Terreros ashore with a
+message to Ovando, asking to be allowed to purchase or exchange one of
+the vessels that were riding in the harbour, and also leave to shelter
+his own vessels there during the hurricane which he believed to be
+approaching.  A message came back that he was neither permitted to buy a
+ship nor to enter the harbour; warning him off from San Domingo, in fact.
+
+With this unfavourable message Terreros also brought back the news of the
+island.  Ovando had been in San Domingo since the 15th of April, and had
+found the island in a shocking state, the Spanish population having to a
+man devoted itself to idleness, profligacy, and slave-driving.  The only
+thing that had prospered was the gold-mining; for owing to the licence
+that Bobadilla had given to the Spaniards to employ native labour to an
+unlimited extent there had been an immense amount of gold taken from the
+mines.  But in no other respect had island affairs prospered, and Ovando
+immediately began the usual investigation.  The fickle Spaniards, always
+unfaithful to whoever was in authority over them, were by this time tired
+of Bobadilla, in spite of his leniency, and they hailed the coming of
+Ovando and his numerous equipment with enthusiasm.  Bobadilla had also by
+this time, we may suppose, had enough of the joys of office; at any rate
+he showed no resentment at the coming of the new Governor, and handed
+over the island with due ceremony.  The result of the investigation of
+Ovando, however, was to discover a state of things requiring exemplary
+treatment; friend Roldan was arrested, with several of his allies, and
+put on board one of the ships to be sent back to Spain for trial.  The
+cacique Guarionex, who had been languishing in San Domingo in chains for
+a long time, was also embarked on one of the returning ships; and about
+eighteen hundred-weights of gold which had been collected were also
+stowed into cases and embarked.  Among this gold there was a nugget
+weighing 35 lbs. which had been found by a native woman in a river, and
+which Ovando was sending home as a personal offering to his Sovereigns;
+and some further 40 lbs. of gold belonging to Columbus, which Carvajal
+had recovered and placed in a caravel to be taken to Spain for the
+Admiral.  The ships were all ready to sail, and were anchored off the
+mouth of the river when Columbus arrived in San Domingo.
+
+When he found that he was not to be allowed to enter the harbour himself
+Columbus sent a message to Ovando warning him that a hurricane was coming
+on, and begging him to take measures for the safety of his large fleet.
+This, however, was not done, and the fleet put to sea that evening.  It
+had only got so far as the eastern end of Espanola when the hurricane, as
+predicted by Columbus, duly came down in the manner of West Indian
+hurricanes, a solid wall of wind and an advancing wave of the sea which
+submerged everything in its path.  Columbus's little fleet, finding
+shelter denied them, had moved a little way along the coast, the Admiral
+standing close in shore, the others working to the south for sea-room;
+and although they survived the hurricane they were scattered, and only
+met several days later, in an extremely battered condition, at the
+westerly end of the island.  But the large home-going fleet had not
+survived.  The hurricane, which was probably from the north-east, struck
+them just as they lost the lee of the island, and many of them, including
+the ships with the treasure of gold and the caravels bearing Roldan,
+Bobadilla, and Guarionex, all went down at once and were never seen or
+heard of again.  Other ships survived for a little while only to founder
+in the end; a few, much shattered, crept back to the shelter of San
+Domingo; but only one, it is said, survived the hurricane so well as to
+be able to proceed to Spain; and that was the one which carried Carvajal
+and Columbus's little property of gold.  The Admiral's luck again; or the
+intervention of the Holy Trinity--whichever you like.
+
+After the shattering experience of the storm, Columbus, although he did
+not return to San Domingo, remained for some time on the coast of
+Espanola repairing his ships and resting his exhausted crews.  There were
+threatenings of another storm which delayed them still further, and it
+was not until the middle of July that the Admiral was able to depart on
+the real purpose of his voyage.  His object was to strike the mainland
+far to the westward of the Gulf of Paria, and so by following it back
+eastward to find the passage which he believed to exist.  But the winds
+and currents were very baffling; he was four days out of sight of land
+after touching at an island north of Jamaica; and finally, in some
+bewilderment, he altered his course more and more northerly until he
+found his whereabouts by coming in sight of the archipelago off the
+south-western end of Cuba which he had called the Gardens.  From here he
+took a departure south-west, and on the 30th of July came in sight of a
+small island off the northern coast of Honduras which he called Isla de
+Pinos, and from which he could see the hills of the mainland.  At this
+island he found a canoe of immense size with a sort of house or caboose
+built amidships, in which was established a cacique with his family and
+dependents; and the people in the canoe showed signs of more advanced
+civilisation than any seen by Columbus before in these waters.  They wore
+clothing, they had copper hatchets, and bells, and palm-wood swords in
+the edges of which were set sharp blades of flint.  They had a fermented
+liquor, a kind of maize beer which looked like English ale; they had some
+kind of money or medium of exchange also, and they told the Admiral that
+there was land to the west where all these things existed and many more.
+It is strange and almost inexplicable that he did not follow this trail
+to the westward; if he had done so he would have discovered Mexico.  But
+one thing at a time always occupied him to the exclusion of everything
+else; his thoughts were now turned to the eastward, where he supposed the
+Straits were; and the significance of this canoe full of natives was lost
+upon him.
+
+They crossed over to the mainland of Honduras on August 15th, Bartholomew
+landing and attending mass on the beach as the Admiral himself was too
+ill to go ashore.  Three days later the cross and banner of Castile were
+duly erected on the shores of the Rio Tinto and the country was formally
+annexed.  The natives were friendly, and supplied the ships with
+provisions; but they were very black and ugly, and Columbus readily
+believed the assertion of his native guide that they were cannibals.
+They continued their course to the eastward, but as the gulf narrowed the
+force of the west-going current was felt more severely.  Columbus,
+believing that the strait which he sought lay to the eastward, laboured
+against the current, and his difficulties were increased by the bad
+weather which he now encountered.  There were squalls and hurricanes,
+tempests and cross-currents that knocked his frail ships about and almost
+swamped them.  Anchors and gear were lost, the sails were torn out of the
+bolt-ropes, timbers were strained; and for six weeks this state of
+affairs went on to an accompaniment of thunder and lightning which added
+to the terror and discomfort of the mariners.
+
+This was in August and the first half of September--six weeks of the
+worst weather that Columbus had ever experienced.  It was the more
+unfortunate that his illness made it impossible for him to get actively
+about the ship; and he had to have a small cabin or tent rigged up on
+deck, in which he could lie and direct the navigation.  It is bad enough
+to be as ill as he was in a comfortable bed ashore; it is a thousand
+times worse amid the discomforts of a small boat at sea; but what must it
+have been thus to have one's sick-bed on the deck of a cockle-shell which
+was being buffeted and smashed in unknown seas, and to have to think and
+act not for oneself alone but for the whole of a suffering little fleet!
+No wonder the Admiral's distress of mind was great; but oddly enough his
+anxieties, as he recorded them in a letter, were not so much on his own
+account as on behalf of others.  The terrified seamen making vows to the
+Virgin and promises of pilgrimages between their mad rushes to the sheets
+and furious clinging and hauling; his son Ferdinand, who was only
+fourteen, but who had to endure the same pain and fatigue as the rest of
+them, and who was enduring it with such pluck that "it was as if he had
+been at sea eighty years"; the dangers of Bartholomew, who had not wanted
+to come on this voyage at all, but was now in the thick of it in the
+worst ship of the squadron, and fighting for his life amid tempests and
+treacherous seas; Diego at home, likely to be left an orphan and at the
+mercy of fickle and doubtful friends--these were the chief causes of the
+Admiral's anxiety.  All he said about himself was that "by my misfortune
+the twenty years of service which I gave with so much fatigue and danger
+have profited me so little that to-day I have in Castile no roof, and if
+I wished to dine or sup or sleep I have only the tavern for my last
+refuge, and for that, most of the time, I would be unable to pay the
+score."  Not cheerful reflections, these, to add to the pangs of acute
+gout and the consuming anxieties of seamanship under such circumstances.
+Dreadful to him, these things, but not dreadful to us; for they show us
+an Admiral restored to his true temper and vocation, something of the old
+sea hero breaking out in him at last through all these misfortunes, like
+the sun through the hurrying clouds of a stormy afternoon.
+
+
+Forty days of passage through this wilderness of water were endured
+before the sea-worn mariners, rounding a cape on September 12th, saw
+stretching before them to the southward a long coast of plain and
+mountain which they were able to follow with a fair wind.  Gradually the
+sea went down; the current which had opposed them here aided them, and
+they were able to recover a little from the terrible strain of the last
+six weeks.  The cape was called by Columbus 'Gracios de Dios'; and on the
+16th of September they landed at the entrance to a river to take in
+water.  The boat which was sent ashore, however, capsized on the sandy
+bar of the entrance, two men being drowned, and the river was given the
+name of Rio de Desastre.  They found a better anchorage, where they
+rested for ten days, overhauled their stores, and had some intercourse
+with the natives and exploration on shore.  Some incidents occurred which
+can best be described in the Admiral's own language as he recorded them
+in his letter to the Sovereigns.
+
+     " .  .  When I reached there, they immediately sent me two young
+     girls dressed in rich garments.  The older one might not have been
+     more than eleven years of age and the other seven; both with so much
+     experience, so much manner, and so much appearance as would have
+     been sufficient if they had been public women for twenty years.
+     They bore with them magic powder and other things belonging to their
+     art.  When they arrived I gave orders that they should be adorned
+     with our things and sent them immediately ashore.  There I saw a
+     tomb within the mountain as large as a house and finely worked with
+     great artifice, and a corpse stood thereon uncovered, and, looking
+     within it, it seemed as if he stood upright.  Of the other arts they
+     told me that there was excellence.  Great and little animals are
+     there in quantities, and very different from ours; among which I saw
+     boars of frightful form so that a dog of the Irish breed dared not
+     face them.  With a cross-bow I had wounded an animal which exactly
+     resembles a baboon only that it was much larger and has a face like
+     a human being.  I had pierced it with an arrow from one side to the
+     other, entering in the breast and going out near the tail, and
+     because it was very ferocious I cut off one of the fore feet which
+     rather seemed to be a hand, and one of the hind feet.  The boars
+     seeing this commenced to set up their bristles and fled with great
+     fear, seeing the blood of the other animal.  When I saw this I
+     caused to be thrown them the 'uegare,'--[Peccary]--certain animals
+     they call so, where it stood, and approaching him, near as he was to
+     death, and the arrow still sticking in his body, he wound his tail
+     around his snout and held it fast, and with the other hand which
+     remained free, seized him by the neck as an enemy.  This act, so
+     magnificent and novel, together with the fine country and hunting of
+     wild beasts, made me write this to your Majesties."
+
+
+The natives at this anchorage of Cariari were rather suspicious, but
+Columbus seized two of them to act as guides in his journey further down
+the coast.  Weighing anchor on October 5th he worked along the Costa Rica
+shore, which here turns to the eastward again, and soon found a tribe of
+natives who wore large ornaments of gold.  They were reluctant to part
+with the gold, but as usual pointed down the coast and said that there
+was much more gold there; they even gave a name to the place where the
+gold could be found--Veragua; and for once this country was found to have
+a real existence.  The fleet anchored there on October 17th, being
+greeted by defiant blasts of conch shells and splashing of water from the
+indignant natives.  Business was done, however: seventeen gold discs in
+exchange for three hawks' bells.
+
+Still Columbus went on in pursuit of his geographical chimera; even gold
+had no power to detain him from the earnest search for this imaginary
+strait.  Here and there along the coast he saw increasing signs of
+civilisation--once a wall built of mud and stone, which made him think of
+Cathay again.  He now got it into his head that the region he was in was
+ten days' journey from the Ganges, and that it was surrounded by water;
+which if it means anything means that he thought he was on a large island
+ten days' sail to the eastward of the coast of India.  Altogether at sea
+as to the facts, poor Admiral, but with heart and purpose steadfast and
+right enough.
+
+They sailed a little farther along the coast, now between narrow islands
+that were like the streets of Genoa, where the boughs of trees on either
+hand brushed the shrouds of the ships; now past harbours where there were
+native fairs and markets, and where natives were to be seen mounted on
+horses and armed with swords; now by long, lonely stretches of the coast
+where there was nothing to be seen but the low green shore with the
+mountains behind and the alligators basking at the river mouths.  At last
+(November 2nd) they arrived at the cape known as Nombre de Dios, which
+Ojeda had reached some time before in his voyage to the West.
+
+The coast of the mainland had thus been explored from the Bay of Honduras
+to Brazil, and Columbus was obliged to admit that there was no strait.
+Having satisfied himself of that he decided to turn back to Veragua,
+where he had seen the natives smelting gold, in order to make some
+arrangement for establishing a colony there.  The wind, however, which
+had headed him almost all the way on his easterly voyage, headed him
+again now and began to blow steadily from the west.  He started on his
+return journey on the 5th of December, and immediately fell into almost
+worse troubles than he had been in before.  The wood of the ships had
+been bored through and through by seaworms, so that they leaked very
+badly; the crews were sick, provisions were spoilt, biscuits rotten.
+Young Ferdinand Columbus, if he did not actually make notes of this
+voyage at the time, preserved a very lively recollection of it, and it is
+to his Historie, which in its earlier passages is of doubtful
+authenticity, that we owe some of the most human touches of description
+relating to this voyage.  Any passage in his work relating to food or
+animals at this time has the true ring of boyish interest and
+observation, and is in sharp contrast to the second-hand and artificial
+tone of the earlier chapters of his book.  About the incident of the
+howling monkey, which the Admiral's Irish hound would not face, Ferdinand
+remarks that it "frighted a good dog that we had, but frighted one of our
+wild boars a great deal more"; and as to the condition of the biscuits
+when they turned westward again, he says that they were "so full of
+weevils that, as God shall help me, I saw many that stayed till night to
+eat their sop for fear of seeing them."
+
+After experiencing some terrible weather, in the course of which they had
+been obliged to catch sharks for food and had once been nearly
+overwhelmed by a waterspout, they entered a harbour where, in the words
+of young Ferdinand, "we saw the people living like birds in the tops of
+the trees, laying sticks across from bough to bough and building their
+huts upon them; and though we knew not the reason of the custom we
+guessed that it was done for fear of their enemies, or of the griffins
+that are in this island."  After further experiences of bad weather they
+made what looked like a suitable harbour on the coast of Veragua, which
+harbour, as they entered it on the day of the Epiphany (January 9, 1503),
+they named Belem or Bethlehem.  The river in the mouth of which they were
+anchored, however, was subject to sudden spouts and gushes of water from
+the hills, one of which occurred on January 24th and nearly swamped the
+caravels.  This spout of water was caused by the rainy season, which had
+begun in the mountains and presently came down to the coast, where it
+rained continuously until the 14th of February.  They had made friends
+with the Quibian or chief of the country, and he had offered to conduct
+them to the place where the gold mines were; so Bartholomew was sent off
+in the rain with a boat party to find this territory.  It turned out
+afterwards that the cunning Quibian had taken them out of his own country
+and showed them the gold mined of a neighbouring chief, which were not so
+rich as his own.
+
+Columbus, left idle in the absence of Bartholomew, listening to the
+continuous drip and patter of the rain on the leaves and the water,
+begins to dream again--to dream of gold and geography.  Remembers that
+David left three thousand quintals of gold from the Indies to Solomon for
+the decoration of the Temple; remembers that Josephus said it came from
+the Golden Chersonesus; decides that enough gold could never have been
+got from the mines of Hayna in Espanola; and concludes that the Ophir of
+Solomon must be here in Veragua and not there in Espanola.  It was always
+here and now with Columbus; and as he moved on his weary sea pilgrimages
+these mythical lands with their glittering promise moved about with him,
+like a pillar of fire leading him through the dark night of his quest.
+
+
+The rain came to an end, however, the sun shone out again, and activity
+took the place of dreams with Columbus and with his crew.  He decided to
+found a settlement in this place, and to make preparations for seizing
+and working the gold mines.  It was decided to leave a garrison of eighty
+men, and the business of unloading the necessary arms and provisions and
+building houses ashore was immediately begun.  Hawks' bells and other
+trifles were widely distributed among the natives, with special toys and
+delicacies for the Quibian, in order that friendly relations might be
+established from the beginning; and special regulations were framed to
+prevent the possibility of any recurrence of the disasters that overtook
+the settlers of Isabella.
+
+Such are the orderly plans of Columbus; but the Quibian has his plans
+too, which are found to be of quite a different nature.  The Quibian does
+not like intruders, though he likes their hawks' bells well enough; he is
+not quite so innocent as poor Guacanagari and the rest of them were; he
+knows that gold is a thing coveted by people to whom it does not belong,
+and that trouble follows in its train.  Quibian therefore decides that
+Columbus and his followers shall be exterminated--news of which intention
+fortunately came to the ears of Columbus in time, Diego Mendez and
+Rodrigo de Escobar having boldly advanced into the Quibian's village and
+seen the warlike preparations.  Bartholomew, returning from his visit to
+the gold mines, was informed of this state of affairs.  Always quick to
+strike, Bartholomew immediately started with an armed force, and advanced
+upon the village so rapidly that the savages were taken by surprise,
+their headquarters surrounded, and the Quibian and fifty of his warriors
+captured.  Bartholomew triumphantly marched the prisoners back, the
+Quibian being entrusted to the charge of Juan Sanchez, who was rowing him
+in a little boat.  The Quibian complained that his bonds were hurting
+him, and foolish Sanchez eased them a little; Quibian, with a quick
+movement, wriggled overboard and dived to the bottom; came up again
+somewhere and reached home alive.  No one saw him come up, however, and
+they thought had had been drowned.
+
+Columbus now made ready to depart, and the caravels having been got over
+the shallow bar, their loading was completed and they were ready to sail.
+On April 6th Diego Tristan was sent in charge of a boat with a message to
+Bartholomew, who was to be left in command of the settlement; but when
+Tristan had rounded the point at the entrance to the river and come in
+sight of the shore he had an unpleasant surprise; the settlement was
+being savagely attacked by the resurrected Quibian and his followers.
+The fight had lasted for three hours, and had been going badly against
+the Spaniards, when Bartholomew and Diego Mendes rallied a little force
+round them and, calling to Columbus's Irish dog which had been left with
+them, made a rush upon the savages and so terrified them that they
+scattered.  Bartholomew with eight of the other Spaniards was wounded,
+and one was killed; and it was at this point that Tristan's boat arrived
+at the settlement.  Having seen the fight safely over, he went on up the
+river to get water, although he was warned that it was not safe; and sure
+enough, at a point a little farther up the river, beyond some low green
+arm of the shore, he met with a sudden and bloody death.  A cloud of
+yelling savages surrounded his boat hurling javelins and arrows, and only
+one seaman, who managed to dive into the water and crawl ashore, escaped
+to bring the evil tidings.
+
+The Spaniards under Bartholomew's command broke into a panic, and taking
+advantage of his wounded condition they tried to make sail on their
+caravel and join the ships of Columbus outside; but since the time of the
+rains the river had so much gone down that she was stuck fast in the
+sand.  They could not even get a boat over the bar, for there was a heavy
+cross sea breaking on it; and in the meantime here they were, trapped
+inside this river, the air resounding with dismal blasts of the natives'
+conch-shells, and the natives themselves dancing round and threatening to
+rush their position; while the bodies of Tristan and his little crew were
+to be seen floating down the stream, feasted upon by a screaming cloud of
+birds.  The position of the shore party was desperate, and it was only by
+the greatest efforts that the wounded Adelantado managed to rally his
+crew and get them to remove their little camp to an open place on the
+shore, where a kind of stockade was made of chests, casks, spars, and the
+caravel's boat.  With this for cover, the Spanish fire-arms, so long as
+there was ammunition for them, were enough to keep the natives at bay.
+
+
+Outside the bar, in his anchorage beyond the green wooded point, the
+Admiral meanwhile was having an anxious time.  One supposes the entrance
+to the river to have been complicated by shoals and patches of broken
+water extending some considerable distance, so that the Admiral's
+anchorage would be ten or twelve miles away from the camp ashore, and of
+course entirely hidden from it.  As day after day passed and Diego
+Tristan did not return, the Admiral's anxiety increased.  Among the three
+caravels that now formed his little squadron there was only one boat
+remaining, the others, not counting one taken by Tristan and one left
+with Bartholomew, having all been smashed in the late hurricanes.  In the
+heavy sea that was running on the bar the Admiral dared not risk his last
+remaining boat; but in the mean time he was cut off from all news of the
+shore party and deprived of any means of finding out what had happened to
+Tristan.  And presently to these anxieties was added a further disaster.
+It will be remembered that when the Quibian had been captured fifty
+natives had been taken with him; and these were confined in the
+forecastle of the Capitana and covered by a large hatch, on which most of
+the crew slept at night.  But one night the natives collected a heap of
+big stones from the ballast of the ship, and piled them up to a kind of
+platform beneath the hatch; some of the strongest of them got upon the
+platform and set their backs horizontally against the hatch, gave a great
+heave and, lifted it off.  In the confusion that followed, a great many
+of the prisoners escaped into the sea, and swam ashore; the rest were
+captured and thrust back under the hatch, which was chained down; but
+when on the following morning the Spaniards went to attend to this
+remnant it was found that they had all hanged themselves.
+
+This was a great disaster, since it increased the danger of the garrison
+ashore, and destroyed all hope of friendship with the natives.  There was
+something terrible and powerful, too, in the spirit of people who could
+thus to a man make up their minds either to escape or die; and the
+Admiral must have felt that he was in the presence of strange, powerful
+elements that were far beyond his control.  At any moment, moreover, the
+wind might change and put him on a lee shore, or force him to seek safety
+in sea-room; in which case the position of Bartholomew would be a very
+critical one.  It was while things were at this apparent deadlock that a
+brave fellow, Pedro Ledesma, offered to attempt to swim through the surf
+if the boat would take him to the edge of it.  Brave Pedro, his offer
+accepted, makes the attempt; plunges into the boiling surf, and with
+mighty efforts succeeds in reaching the shore; and after an interval is
+seen by his comrades, who are waiting with their boat swinging on the
+edge of the surf, to be returning to them; plunges into the sea, comes
+safely through the surf again, and is safely hauled on board, having
+accomplished a very real and satisfactory bit of service.
+
+The story he had to tell the Admiral was as we know not a pleasant one--
+Tristan and his men dead, several of Bartholomew's force, including the
+Adelantado himself, wounded, and all in a state of panic and fear at the
+hostile natives.  The Spaniards would do nothing to make the little
+fortress safer, and were bent only on escaping from the place of horror.
+Some of them were preparing canoes in which to come out to the ships when
+the sea should go down, as their one small boat was insufficient; and
+they swore that if the Admiral would not take them they would seize their
+own caravel and sail out themselves into the unknown sea as soon as they
+could get her floated over the bar, rather than remain in such a dreadful
+situation.  Columbus was in a very bad way.  He could not desert
+Bartholomew, as that would expose him to the treachery of his own men
+and the hostility of the savages.  He could not reinforce him, except by
+remaining himself with the whole of his company; and in that case there
+would be no means of sending the news of his rich discovery to Spain.
+There was nothing for it, therefore, but to break up the settlement and
+return some other time with a stronger force sufficient to occupy the
+country.  And even this course had its difficulties; for the weather
+continued bad, the wind was blowing on to the shore, the sea was--so
+rough as to make the passage of the bar impossible, and any change for
+the worse in the weather would probably drive his own crazy ships ashore
+and cut off all hope of escape.
+
+The Admiral, whose health was now permanently broken, and who only had
+respite from his sufferings in fine weather and when he was relieved from
+a burden of anxieties such as had been continually pressing on him now
+for three months, fell into his old state of sleeplessness, feverishness,
+and consequent depression; and it, these circumstances it is not
+wonderful that the firm ground of fact began to give a little beneath him
+and that his feet began to sink again into the mire or quag of stupor.
+Of these further flounderings in the quag he himself wrote an account to
+the King and Queen, so we may as well have it in his own words.
+
+     "I mounted to the top of the ship crying out with a weak voice,
+     weeping bitterly, to the commanders of your Majesties' army, and
+     calling again to the four winds to help; but they did not answer me.
+     Tired out, I fell asleep and sighing I heard a voice very full of
+     pity which spoke these words:  O fool!  and slow to believe and to
+     serve Him, thy God and the God of all.  What did He more for Moses?
+     and for David His servant?  Since thou wast born He had always so
+     great care for thee.  When He saw thee in an age with which He was
+     content He made thy name sound marvellously through the world.  The
+     Indies, which are so rich apart of the world, He has given to thee
+     as thine.  Thou hast distributed them wherever it has pleased thee;
+     He gave thee power so to do.  Of the bonds of the ocean which were
+     locked with so strong chains He gave thee the keys, and thou wast
+     obeyed in all the land, and among the Christians thou hast acquired
+     a good and honourable reputation.  What did He more for the people
+     of Israel when He brought them out of Egypt?  or yet for David, whom
+     from being a shepherd He made King of Judea?  Turn to Him and
+     recognise thine error, for His mercy is infinite.  Thine old age
+     will be no hindrance to all great things.  Many very great
+     inheritances are in His power.  Abraham was more than one hundred
+     years old when he begat Isaac and also Sarah was not young.  Thou
+     art calling for uncertain aid.  Answer me, who has afflicted thee so
+     much and so many times--God or the world?  The privileges and
+     promises which God makes He never breaks to any one; nor does He say
+     after having received the service that His intention was not so and
+     it is to be understood in another manner: nor imposes martyrdom to
+     give proof of His power.  He abides by the letter of His word.  All
+     that He promises He abundantly accomplishes.  This is His way.  I
+     have told thee what the Creator hath done for thee and does for all.
+     Now He shows me the reward and payment of thy suffering and which
+     thou hast passed in the service of others.  And thus half dead, I
+     heard everything; but I could never find an answer to make to words
+     so certain, and only I wept for my errors.  He, who ever he might
+     be, finished speaking, saying: Trust and fear not, for thy
+     tribulations are written in marble and not without reason."
+
+
+Mere darkness of stupor; not much to be deciphered from it, nor any
+profitable comment to be made on it, except that it was our poor
+Christopher's way of crying out his great suffering and misery.  We must
+not notice it, much as we should like to hold out a hand of sympathy and
+comfort to him; must not pay much attention to this dark eloquent
+nonsense--merely words, in which the Admiral never does himself justice.
+Acts are his true conversation; and when he speaks in that language all
+men must listen.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+HEROIC ADVENTURES BY LAND AND SEA
+
+No man ever had a better excuse for his superstitions than the Admiral;
+no sooner had he got done with his Vision than the wind dropped, the sun
+came out, the sea fell, and communication with the land was restored.
+While he had been sick and dreaming one of his crew, Diego Mendez, had
+been busy with practical efforts in preparation for this day of fine
+weather; he had made a great raft out of Indian canoes lashed together,
+with mighty sacks of sail cloth into which the provisions might be
+bundled; and as soon as the sea had become calm enough he took this raft
+in over the bar to the settlement ashore, and began the business of
+embarking the whole of the stores and ammunition of Bartholomew's
+garrison.  By this practical method the whole establishment was
+transferred from the shore to the ships in the space of two days, and
+nothing was left but the caravel, which it was found impossible to float
+again.  It was heavy work towing the raft constantly backwards and
+forwards from the ships to the shore, but Diego Mendez had the
+satisfaction of being the last man to embark from the deserted
+settlement, and to see that not an ounce of stores or ammunition had been
+lost.
+
+Columbus, always quick to reward the services of a good man, kissed Diego
+Mendez publicly--on both cheeks, and (what doubtless pleased him much
+better) gave him command of the caravel of which poor Tristan had been
+the captain.
+
+With a favourable wind they sailed from this accursed shore at the end of
+April 1503.  It is strange, as Winsor points out, that in the name of
+this coast should be preserved the only territorial remembrance of
+Columbus, and that his descendant the Duke of Veragua should in his title
+commemorate one of the most unfortunate of the Admiral's adventures.  And
+if any one should desire a proof of the utterly misleading nature of most
+of Columbus's writings about himself, let him know that a few months
+later he solemnly wrote to the Sovereigns concerning this very place that
+"there is not in the world a country whose inhabitants are more timid;
+and the whole place is capable of being easily put into a state of
+defence.  Your people that may come here, if they should wish to become
+masters of the products of other lands, will have to take them by force
+or retire empty-handed.  In this country they will simply have to trust
+their persons in the hands of the savages."  The facts being that the
+inhabitants were extremely fierce and warlike and irreconcilably hostile;
+that the river was a trap out of which in the dry season there was no
+escape, and the harbour outside a mere shelterless lee shore; that it
+would require an army and an armada to hold the place against the
+natives, and that any one who trusted himself in their hands would
+share the fate of the unhappy Diego Tristan.  One may choose between
+believing that the Admiral's memory had entirely failed him (although he
+had not been backward in making a minute record, of all his sufferings)
+or that he was craftily attempting to deceive the Sovereigns.  My own
+belief is that he was neither trying to deceive anybody nor that he had
+forgotten anything, but that he was simply incapable of uttering the bare
+truth when he had a pen in his hand.
+
+
+From their position on the coast of Veragua Espanola bore almost due
+north; but Columbus was too good a seaman to attempt to make the island
+by sailing straight for it.  He knew that the steady west-going current
+would set him far down on his course, and he therefore decided to work up
+the coast a long way to the eastward before standing across for Espanola.
+The crew grumbled very much at this proceeding, which they did not
+understand; in fact they argued from it that the Admiral was making
+straight for Spain, and this, in the crazy condition of the vessels,
+naturally alarmed them.  But in his old high-handed, secret way the
+Admiral told them nothing; he even took away from the other captains all
+the charts that they had made of this coast, so that no one but himself
+would be able to find the way back to it; and he took a kind of pleasure
+in the complete mystification thus produced on his fellow-voyagers.
+"None of them could explain whither I went nor whence I came; they did
+not know the way to return thither," he writes, somewhat childishly.
+
+But he was not back in Espanola yet, and his means for getting there were
+crumbling away beneath his feet.  One of the three remaining caravels was
+entirely riddled by seaworms and had to be abandoned at the harbour
+called Puerto Bello; and the company was crowded on to two ships.  The
+men now became more than ever discontented at the easterly course, and on
+May 1st, when he had come as far east as the Gulf of Darien, Columbus
+felt obliged to bear away to the north, although as it turned out he had
+not nearly made enough easting.  He stood on this course, for nine days,
+the west-going current setting him down all the time; and the first land
+that he made, on May loth, was the group of islands off the western end
+of Cuba which he had called the Queen's Gardens.
+
+He anchored for six days here, as the crews were completely exhausted;
+the ships' stores were reduced to biscuits, oil, and vinegar; the vessels
+leaked like sieves, and the pumps had to be kept going continually.  And
+no sooner had they anchored than a hurricane came on, and brought up a
+sea so heavy that the Admiral was convinced that his ships could not live
+within it.  We have got so accustomed to reading of storms and tempests
+that it seems useless to try and drive home the horror and terror of
+them; but here were these two rotten ships alone at the end of the world,
+far beyond the help of man, the great seas roaring up under them in the
+black night, parting their worn cables, snatching away their anchors from
+them, and finally driving them one upon the other to grind and strain and
+prey upon each other, as though the external conspiracy of the elements
+against them both were not sufficient!  One writes or reads the words,
+but what does it mean to us? and can we by any conceivable effort of
+imagination realise what it meant to this group of human beings who lived
+through that night so many hundred years ago--men like ourselves with
+hearts to sink and faint, capable of fear and hunger, capable of misery,
+pain, and endurance?  Bruised and battered, wet by the terrifying surges,
+and entirely uncomforted by food or drink, they did somehow endure these
+miseries; and were to endure worse too before they were done with it.
+
+Their six days' sojourn amid the Queen's Gardens, then, was not a great
+success; and as soon as they were able they set sail again, standing
+eastward when the wind permitted them.  But wind and current were against
+them and all through the month of May and the early part of June they
+struggled along the south coast of Cuba, their ships as full of holes as
+a honeycomb, pumps going incessantly, and in addition the worn-out seamen
+doing heroic labour at baling with buckets and kettles.  Lee helm!  Down
+go the buckets and kettles and out run the wretched scarecrows of seamen
+to the weary business of tacking ship, letting go, brailing up, hauling
+in, and making fast for the thousandth time; and then back to the pumps
+and kettles again.  No human being could endure this for an indefinite
+time; and though their diet of worms represented by the rotten biscuit
+was varied with cassava bread supplied by friendly natives, the Admiral
+could not make his way eastward further than Cape Cruz.  Round that cape
+his leaking, strained vessels could not be made to look against the wind
+and the tide.  Could hardly indeed be made to float or swim upon the
+water at all; and the Admiral had now to consider, not whether he could
+sail on a particular point of the compass, but whether he could by any
+means avoid another course which the fates now proposed to him--namely, a
+perpendicular course to the bottom of the sea.  It was a race between the
+water and the ships, and the only thing the Admiral could think of was to
+turn southward across to Jamaica, which he did on June 23rd, putting into
+Puerto Bueno, now called Dry Harbour.  But there was no food there, and
+as his ships were settling deeper and deeper in the water he had to make
+sail again and drive eastwards as far as Puerto Santa Gloria, now called
+Don Christopher's Cove.  He was just in time.  The ships were run ashore
+side by side on a sandy beach, the pumps were abandoned, and in one tide
+the ships were full of water.  The remaining anchor cables were used to
+lash the two ships together so that they would not move; although there
+was little fear of that, seeing the weight of water that was in them.
+Everything that could be saved was brought up on deck, and a kind of
+cabin or platform which could be fortified was rigged on the highest part
+of the ships.  And so no doubt for some days, although their food was
+almost finished, the wretched and exhausted voyagers could stretch their
+cramped limbs, and rest in the warm sun, and listen, from their safe
+haven on the firm sands, to the hated voice of the sea.
+
+
+Thanks to careful regulations made by the Admiral, governing the
+intercourse between the Spaniards and the natives ashore, friendly
+relations were soon established, and the crews were supplied with cassava
+bread and fruit in abundance.  Two officials superintended every purchase
+of provisions to avoid the possibility of any dispute, for in the event
+of even a momentary hostility the thatched-roof structures on the ships
+could easily have been set on fire, and the position of the Spaniards,
+without shelter amid a hostile population, would have been a desperate
+one.  This disaster, however, was avoided; but the Admiral soon began to
+be anxious about the supply of provisions from the immediate
+neighbourhood, which after the first few days began to be irregular.
+There were a large number of Spaniards to be fed, the natives never kept
+any great store of provisions for themselves, and the Spaniards were
+entirely at their mercy for, provisions from day to day.  Diego Mendez,
+always ready for active and practical service, now offered to take three
+men and make a journey through the island to arrange for the purchase of
+provisions from different villages, so that the men on the ships would
+not be dependent upon any one source.  This offer was gratefully
+accepted; and Mendez, with his lieutenants well supplied with toys and
+trinkets, started eastward along the north coast of Jamaica.  He made no
+mistakes; he was quick and clever at ingratiating himself with the
+caciques, and he succeeded in arranging with three separate potentates to
+send regular supplies of provisions to the men on the ships.  At each
+place where he made this arrangement he detached one of his assistants
+and sent him back with the first load of provisions, so that the regular
+line of carriage might be the more quickly established; and when they had
+all gone he borrowed a couple of natives and pushed on by himself until
+he reached the eastern end of the island.  He made friends here with a
+powerful cacique named Amerro, from whom he bought a large canoe, and
+paid for it with some of the clothing off his back.  With the canoe were
+furnished six Indians to row it, and Mendez made a triumphant journey
+back by sea, touching at the places where his depots had been established
+and seeing that his commissariat arrangements were working properly.  He
+was warmly received on his return to the ships, and the result of his
+efforts was soon visible in the daily supplies of food that now regularly
+arrived.
+
+Thus was one difficulty overcome; but it was not likely that either
+Columbus himself or any of his people would be content to remain for ever
+on the beach of Jamaica.  It was necessary to establish communication
+with Espanola, and thence with Spain; but how to do it in the absence of
+ships or even boats?  Columbus, pondering much upon this matter, one day
+calls Diego Mendez aside; walks him off, most likely, under the great
+rustling trees beyond the beach, and there tells him his difficulty.
+"My son," says he, "you and I understand the difficulties and dangers of
+our position here better than any one else.  We are few; the Indians are
+many; we know how fickle and easily irritated they are, and how a fire-
+brand thrown into our thatched cabins would set the whole thing ablaze.
+It is quite true that you have very cleverly established a provision
+supply, but it is dependent entirely upon the good nature of the natives
+and it might cease to-morrow.  Here is my plan: you have a good canoe;
+why should some one not go over to Espanola in it and send back a ship
+for us?"
+
+Diego Mendez, knowing very well what is meant, looks down upon the
+ground.  His spoken opinion is that such a journey is not merely
+difficult but impossible journey in a frail native canoe across one
+hundred and fifty miles of open and rough sea; although his private
+opinion is other than that.  No, he cannot imagine such a thing being
+done; cannot think who would be able to do it.
+
+Long silence from the Admiral; eloquent silence, accompanied by looks no
+less eloquent.
+
+"Admiral," says Mendez again, "you know very well that I have risked my
+life for you and the people before and would do it again.  But there are
+others who have at least as good a right to this great honour and peril
+as I have; let me beg of you, therefore, to summon all the company
+together, make this proposal to them, and see if any one will undertake
+it.  If not, I will once more risk my life."
+
+The proposal being duly made to the assembled crews, every one, as
+cunning Mendez had thought, declares it impossible; every one hangs back.
+Upon which Diego Mendez with a fine gesture comes forward and volunteers;
+makes his little dramatic effect and has his little ovation.  Thoroughly
+Spanish this, significant of that mixture of vanity and bravery, of
+swagger and fearlessness, which is characteristic of the best in Spain.
+It was a desperately brave thing to venture upon, this voyage from
+Jamaica to Espanola in a native canoe and across a sea visited by
+dreadful hurricanes; and the volunteer was entitled to his little piece
+of heroic drama.
+
+While Mendez was making his preparations, putting a false keel on the
+canoe and fixing weather boards along its gunwales to prevent its
+shipping seas, fitting a mast and sail and giving it a coat of tar, the
+Admiral retired into his cabin and busied himself with his pen.  He wrote
+one letter to Ovando briefly describing his circumstances and requesting
+that a ship should be sent for his relief; and another to the Sovereigns,
+in which a long rambling account was given of the events of the voyage,
+and much other matter besides, dismally eloquent of his floundering in
+the quag.  Much in it--about Solomon and Josephus, of the Abbot Joachim,
+of Saint Jerome and the Great Khan; more about the Holy Sepulchre and the
+intentions of the Almighty in that matter; with some serious practical
+concern for the rich land of Veragua which he had discovered, lest it
+should share the fate of his other discoveries and be eaten up by idle
+adventurers.  "Veragua," he says, "is not a little son which may be given
+to a stepmother to nurse.  Of Espanola and Paria and all the other lands
+I never think without the tears falling from my eyes; I believe that the
+example of these ought to serve for the others."  And then this passage:
+
+     "The good and sound purpose which I always had to serve your
+     Majesties, and the dishonour and unmerited ingratitude, will not
+     suffer the soul to be silent although I wished it, therefore I ask
+     pardon of your Majesties.  I have been so lost and undone; until now
+     I have wept for others that your Majesties might have compassion on
+     them; and now may the heavens weep for me and the earth weep for me
+     in temporal affairs; I have not a farthing to make as an offering in
+     spiritual affairs.  I have remained here on the Indian islands in
+     the manner I have before said in great pain and infirmity, expecting
+     every day death, surrounded by innumerable savages full of cruelty
+     and by our enemies, and so far from the sacraments of the Holy
+     Mother Church that I believe the soul will be forgotten when it
+     leaves the body.  Let them weep for me who have charity, truth and
+     justice.  I did not undertake this voyage of navigation to gain
+     honour or material things, that is certain, because the hope already
+     was entirely lost; but I did come to serve your Majesties with
+     honest intention and with good charitable zeal, and I do not lie."
+
+Poor old heart, older than its years, thus wailing out its sorrows to
+ears none too sympathetic; sad old voice, uplifted from the bright shores
+of that lonely island in the midst of strange seas!  It will not come
+clear to the head alone; the echoes of this cry must reverberate in the
+heart if they are to reach and animate the understanding.
+
+
+At this time also the Admiral wrote to his friend Gaspar Gorricio.  For
+the benefit of those who may be interested I give the letter in English.
+
+
+     REVEREND AND VERY DEVOUT FATHER:
+
+     "If my voyage should be as conducive to my personal health and the
+     repose of my house as it seems likely to be conducive to the
+     aggrandisement of the royal Crown of the King and Queen, my Lords,
+     I might hope to live more than a hundred years.  I have not time to
+     write more at length.  I hope that the bearer of this letter may be
+     a person of my house who will tell you verbally more than can be
+     told in a thousand papers, and also Don Diego will supply
+     information.  I beg as a favour of the Father Prior and all the
+     members of your religious house, that they remember me in all their
+     prayers.
+
+     "Done on the island of Jamaica, July 7, 1503.
+     "I am at the command of your Reverence.
+
+                                               .S.
+                                             .S.A.S.  XMY
+                                              Xpo FERENS."
+
+
+Diego Mendez found some one among the Spaniards to accompany him, but his
+name is not recorded.  The six Indians were taken to row the canoe.  They
+had to make their way at first against the strong currents along the
+northern coast of Jamaica, so as to reach its eastern extremity before
+striking across to Espanola.  At one point they met a flotilla of Indian
+canoes, which chased them and captured them, but they escaped.  When they
+arrived at the end of the easterly point of Jamaica, now known as Morant
+Point, they had to wait two or three days for calm weather and a
+favourable wind to waft them across to Espanola, and while thus waiting
+they were suddenly surrounded and captured by a tribe of hostile natives,
+who carried them off some nine or ten miles into the island, and
+signified their intention of killing them.
+
+But they began to quarrel among themselves as to how they should divide
+the spoils which they had captured with the canoe, and decided that the
+only way of settling the dispute was by some elaborate trial of hazard
+which they used.  While they were busy with their trial Diego Mendez
+managed to escape, got back to the canoe, and worked his way back in it
+alone to the harbour where the Spaniards were encamped.  The other
+Spaniard who was with him probably perished, for there is no record of
+what became of him--an obscure life lost in a brave enterprise.
+
+One would have thought that Mendez now had enough of canoe voyages, but
+he had no sooner got back than he offered to set out again, only
+stipulating that an armed force should march along the coast by land to
+secure his safety until he could stand across to Espanola.  Bartholomew
+Columbus immediately put himself at the head of a large and well-armed
+party for this purpose, and Bartolomeo Fieschi, the Genoese captain of
+one of the lost caravels, volunteered to accompany Mendez in a second
+canoe.  Each canoe was now manned by six Spanish volunteers and ten
+Indians to row; Fieschi, as soon as they had reached the coast of
+Espanola, was to bring the good news to the Admiral; while Mendez must go
+on to San Domingo, procure a ship, and himself proceed to Spain with the
+Admiral's letters.  The canoes were provisioned with water, cassava
+bread, and fish; and they departed on this enterprise some time in August
+1503.
+
+Their passage along the coast was protected by Bartholomew Columbus, who
+marched along with them on the shore.  They waited a few days at the end
+of the island for favourable weather, and finally said farewell to the
+good Adelantado, who we may be sure stood watching them until they were
+well out of sight.
+
+
+There was not a cloud in the sky when the canoes stood out to sea; the
+water was calm, and reflected the blistering heat of the sun.  It was not
+a pleasant situation for people in an open boat; and Mendez and Fieschi
+were kept busy, as Irving says, "animating the Indians who navigated
+their canoes, and who frequently paused at their labour."  The poor
+Indians, evidently much in need of such animation, would often jump into
+the water to escape the intolerable heat, and after a short immersion
+there would return to their task.  Things were better when the sun went
+down, and the cool night came on; half the Indians then slept and half
+rowed, while half of the Spaniards also slept and the other half, I
+suppose, "animated."  Irving also says that the animating half "kept
+guard with their weapons in hand, ready to defend themselves in the case
+of any perfidy on the part of their savage companions"; such perfidy
+being far enough from the thoughts of the savage companions, we may
+imagine, whose energies were entirely occupied with the oars.
+
+The next day was the same: savage companions rowing, Spaniards animating;
+Spaniards and savage companions alike drinking water copiously without
+regard for the smallness of their store.  The second night was very hot,
+and the savage companions finished the water, with the result that on the
+third day the thirst became a torment, and at mid-day the poor companions
+struck work.  Artful Mendez, however, had concealed two small kegs of
+water in his canoe, the contents of which he now administered in small
+doses, so that the poor Indians were enabled to take to their oars again,
+though with vigour much abated.  Presumably the Spaniards had put up
+their weapons by this time, for the only perfidy shown on the part of the
+savage companions was that one of them died in the following night and
+had to be thrown overboard, while others lay panting on the bottom of the
+canoes; and the Spaniards had to take their turn at the oars, although
+they were if anything in a worse case than the Indians.
+
+Late in the night, however, the moon rose, and Mendez had the joy of
+seeing its lower disc cut by a jagged line which proved to be the little
+islet or rock of Navassa, which lies off the westerly end of Espanola.
+New hope now animated the sufferers, and they pushed on until they were
+able to land on this rock, which proved to be without any vegetation
+whatsoever, but on the surface of which there were found some precious
+pools of rain-water.  Mendez was able to restrain the frantic appetites
+of his fellow-countrymen, but the savage companions were less wise, and
+drank their fill; so that some of them died in torment on the spot, and
+others became seriously ill.  The Spaniards were able to make a fire of
+driftwood, and boil some shell-fish, which they found on shore, and they
+wisely spent the heat of the day crouching in the shade of the rocks, and
+put off their departure until the evening.  It was then a comparatively
+easy journey for them to cross the dozen miles that separated them from
+Espanola, and they landed the next day in a pleasant harbour near Cape
+Tiburon.  Fieschi, true to his promise, was then ready to start back for
+Jamaica with news of the safe accomplishment of the voyage; but the
+remnant of the crews, Spaniards and savage companions alike, had had
+enough of it, and no threats or persuasions would induce them to embark
+again.  Mendez, therefore, left his friends to enjoy some little repose
+before continuing their journey to San Domingo, and, taking six natives
+of Espanola to row his canoe; set off along the coast towards the
+capital.  He had not gone half-way when he learned that Ovando was not
+there, but was in Xaragua, so he left his canoe and struck northward
+through the forest until he arrived at the Governor's camp.
+
+
+Ovando welcomed Mendez cordially, praised him for his plucky voyage, and
+expressed the greatest concern at the plight of the Admiral; but he was
+very busy at the moment, and was on the point of transacting a piece of
+business that furnished a dismal proof of the deterioration which had
+taken place in him.  Anacaona--the lady with the daughter whom we
+remember--was now ruling over the province of Xaragua, her brother having
+died; and as perhaps her native subjects had been giving a little trouble
+to the Governor, he had come to exert his authority.  The narrow official
+mind, brought into contact with native life, never develops in the
+direction of humanity; and Ovando had now for some time made the great
+discovery that it was less trouble to kill people than to try to rule
+over them wisely.  There had evidently always been a streak of Spanish
+cruelty in him, which had been much developed by his residence in
+Espanola; and to cruelty and narrow officialdom he now added treachery of
+a very monstrous and horrible kind.
+
+He announced his intention of paying a state visit to Anacaona, who
+thereupon summoned all her tributary chiefs to a kind of levee held in
+his honour.  In the midst of the levee, at a given signal, Ovando's
+soldiers rushed in, seized the caciques, fastened them to the wooden
+pillars of the house, and set the whole thing on fire; the caciques being
+thus miserably roasted alive.  While this was going on the atrocious work
+was completed by the soldiers massacring every native they could see--
+children, women, and old men included--and Anacaona herself was taken and
+hanged.
+
+All these things Diego Mendez had to witness; and when they were over,
+Ovando still had excuses for not hurrying to the relief of the Admiral.
+He had embarked on a campaign of extermination against the natives, and
+he followed up his atrocities at Xaragua by an expedition to the eastern
+end of Espanola, where very much the same kind of business was
+transacted.  Weeks and months passed in this bloody cruelty, and there
+was always an excuse for putting off Mendez.  Now it was because of the
+operations which he dignified by the name of wars, and now because he had
+no ship suitable for sending to Jamaica; but the truth was that Ovando,
+the springs of whose humanity had been entirely dried up during his
+disastrous reign in Espanola, did not want Columbus to see with his own
+eyes the terrible state of the island, and was callous enough to leave
+him either to perish or to find his own way back to the world.  It was
+only when news came that a fleet of caravels was expected from Spain that
+Ovando could no longer prevent Mendez from going to San Domingo and,
+purchasing one of them.
+
+Ovando had indeed lost all but the outer semblance of a man; the soul or
+animating part of him had entirely gone to corruption.  He had no
+interest in rescuing the Admiral; he had, on the contrary, great interest
+in leaving him unrescued; but curiosity as to his fate, and fear as to
+his actions in case he should return to Espanola, induced the Governor to
+make some effort towards spying cut his condition.  He had a number of
+trained rascals under his command--among them Diego de Escobar, one of
+Roldan's bright brigade; and Ovando had no sooner seen Mendez depart on
+his journey to San Domingo than he sent this Escobar to embark in a small
+caravel on a visit to Jamaica in order to see if the Admiral was still
+alive.  The caravel had to be small, so that there could be no chance of
+bringing off the 130 men who had been left to perish there; and various
+astute instructions were given to Escobar in order to prevent his arrival
+being of any comfort or assistance to the shipwrecked ones.  And so
+Escobar sailed; and so, in the month of March 1504, eight months after
+the vanishing of Mendez below the eastern horizon, the miserable company
+encamped on the two decaying ships on the sands at Puerto Santa Gloria
+descried with joyful excitement the sails of a Spanish caravel standing
+in to the shore.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE ECLIPSE OF THE MOON
+
+We must now return to the little settlement on the coast of Jamaica--
+those two wornout caravels, lashed together with ropes and bridged by an
+erection of wood and thatch, in which the forlorn little company was
+established.  In all communities of men so situated there are alternate
+periods of action and reaction, and after the excitement incidental to
+the departure of Mendez, and the return of Bartholomew with the news that
+he had got safely away, there followed a time of reaction, in which the
+Spaniards looked dismally out across the empty sea and wondered when, if
+ever, their salvation would come.  Columbus himself was now a confirmed
+invalid, and could hardly ever leave his bed under the thatch; and in his
+own condition of pain and depression his influence on the rest of the
+crew must inevitably have been less inspiriting than it had formerly
+been.  The men themselves, moreover, began to grow sickly, chiefly on
+account of the soft vegetable food, to which they were not accustomed,
+and partly because of their cramped quarters and the moist, unhealthy
+climate, which was the very opposite of what they needed after their long
+period of suffering and hardship at sea.
+
+As the days and weeks passed, with no occupation save the daily business
+of collecting food that gradually became more and more nauseous to them,
+and of straining their eyes across the empty blue of the sea in an
+anxious search for the returning canoes of Fieschi, the spirits of the
+castaways sank lower and lower.  Inevitably their discontent became
+articulate and broke out into murmurings.  The usual remedy for this
+state of affairs is to keep the men employed at some hard work; but there
+was no work for them to do, and the spirit of dissatisfaction had ample
+opportunity to spread.  As usual it soon took the form of hostility to
+the Admiral.  They seem to have borne him no love or gratitude for his
+masterly guiding of them through so many dangers; and now when he lay ill
+and in suffering his treacherous followers must needs fasten upon him the
+responsibility for their condition.  After a month or two had passed, and
+it became certain that Fieschi was not coming back, the castaways could
+only suppose that he and Mendez had either been captured by natives or
+had perished at sea, and that their fellow-countrymen must still be
+without news of the Admiral's predicament.  They began to say also that
+the Admiral was banished from Spain; that there was no desire or
+intention on the part of the Sovereigns to send an expedition to his
+relief; even if they had known of his condition; and that in any case
+they must long ago have given him up for lost.
+
+When the pot boils the scum rises to the surface, and the first result of
+these disloyal murmurings and agitations was to bring into prominence the
+two brothers, Francisco and Diego de Porras, who, it will be remembered,
+owed their presence with the expedition entirely to the Admiral's good
+nature in complying with the request of their brother-in-law Morales, who
+had apparently wished to find some distant occupation for them.  They had
+been given honourable posts as officers, in which they had not proved
+competent; but the Admiral had always treated them with kindness and
+courtesy, regarding them more as guests than as servants.  Who or what
+these Porras brothers were, where they came from, who were their father
+and mother, or what was their training, I do not know; it is enough for
+us to know that the result of it all had been the production of a couple
+of very mean scoundrels, who now found an opportunity to exercise their
+scoundrelism.
+
+When they discovered the nature of the murmuring and discontent among the
+crew they immediately set them to work it up into open mutiny.  They
+represented that, as Mendez had undoubtedly perished, there was no hope
+of relief from Espanola; that the Admiral did not even expect such
+relief, knowing that the island was forbidden ground to him.  They
+insinuated that he was as well content to remain in Jamaica as anywhere
+else, since he had to undergo a period of banishment until his friends at
+Court could procure his forgiveness.  They were all, said the Porras
+brothers, being made tools for the Admiral's convenience; as he did not
+wish to leave Jamaica himself, he was keeping them all there, to perish
+as likely as not, and in the meantime to form a bodyguard, and establish
+a service for himself.  The Porras brothers suggested that, under these
+circumstances, it would be as well to take a fleet of native canoes from
+the Indians and make their own way to Espanola; the Admiral would never
+undertake the voyage himself, being too helpless from the gout; but it
+would be absurd if the whole company were to be allowed to perish because
+of the infirmities of one man.  They reminded the murmurers that they
+would not be the first people who had rebelled with success against the
+despotic rule of Columbus, and that the conduct of the Sovereigns on a
+former occasion afforded them some promise that those who rebelled again
+would receive something quite different from punishment.
+
+Christmas passed, the old year went out in this strange, unhomelike
+place, and the new year came in.  The Admiral, as we have seen, was now
+almost entirely crippled and confined to his bed; and he was lying alone
+in his cabin on the second day of the year when Francisco de Porras
+abruptly entered.  Something very odd and flurried about Porras; he jerks
+and stammers, and suddenly breaks out into a flood of agitated speech, in
+which the Admiral distinguishes a stream of bitter reproach and
+impertinence.  The thing forms itself into nothing more or less than a
+hurried, gabbling complaint; the people are dissatisfied at being kept
+here week after week with no hope of relief; they accuse the Admiral of
+neglecting their interests; and so on.  Columbus, raising himself in his
+bed, tries to pacify Porras; gives him reasons why it is impossible for
+them to depart in canoes; makes every endeavour, in short, to bring this
+miserable fellow back to his duties.  He is watching Porras's eye all the
+time; sees that he is too excited to be pacified by reason, and suspects
+that he has considerable support behind him; and suggests that the crew
+had better all be assembled and a consultation held as to the best course
+to pursue.
+
+It is no good to reason with mutineers; and the Admiral has no sooner
+made this suggestion than he sees that it was a mistake.  Porras scoffs
+at it; action, not consultation, is what he demands; in short he presents
+an ultimatum to the Admiral--either to embark with the whole company at
+once, or stay behind in Jamaica at his own pleasure.  And then, turning
+his back on Columbus and raising his voice, he calls out, "I am for
+Castile; those who choose may follow me!"
+
+The shout was a signal, and immediately from every part of the vessel
+resounded the voices of the Spaniards, crying out that they would follow
+Porras.  In the midst of the confusion Columbus hobbled out of his bed
+and staggered on to the deck; Bartholomew seized his weapons and prepared
+for action; but the whole of the crew was not mutinous, and there was a
+large enough loyal remnant to make it unwise for the chicken-hearted
+mutineers to do more for the moment than shout: Some of them, it is true,
+were heard threatening the life of the Admiral, but he was hurried back
+to his bed by a few of the faithful ones, and others of them rushed up to
+the fierce Bartholomew, and with great difficulty persuaded him to drop
+his lance and retire to Christopher's cabin with him while they dealt
+with the offenders.  They begged Columbus to let the scoundrels go if
+they wished to, as the condition of those who remained would be improved
+rather than hurt by their absence, and they would be a good riddance.
+They then went back to the deck and told Porras and his followers that
+the sooner they went the better, and that nobody would interfere with
+their going as long as they offered no one any violence.
+
+The Admiral had some time before purchased some good canoes from the
+natives, and the mutineers seized ten of these and loaded them with
+native provisions.  Every effort was made to add to the number of the
+disloyal ones; and when they saw their friends making ready to depart
+several of these did actually join.  There were forty-eight who finally
+embarked with the brothers Porras; and there would have been more, but
+that so many of them were sick and unable to face the exposure of the
+voyage.  As it was, those who remained witnessed with no very cheerful
+emotions the departure of their companions, and even in some cases fell
+to tears and lamentations.  The poor old Admiral struggled out of his bed
+again, went round among the sick and the loyal, cheering them and
+comforting them, and promising to use every effort of the power left to
+him to secure an adequate reward for their loyalty when he should return
+to Spain.
+
+We need only follow the career of Porras and his deserters for the
+present far enough to see them safely off the premises and out of the way
+of the Admiral and our narrative.  They coasted along the shore of
+Jamaica to the eastward as Mendez had done, landing whenever they had a
+mind to, and robbing and outraging the natives; and they took a
+particularly mean and dirty revenge on the Admiral by committing all
+their robbings and outragings as though under his authority, assuring the
+offended Indians that what they did they did by his command and that what
+they took he would pay for; so that as they went along they sowed seeds
+of grievance and hostility against the Admiral.  They told the natives,
+moreover, that Columbus was an enemy of all Indians, and that they would
+be very well advised to kill him and get him out of the way.
+
+They had not managed very well with the navigation of the canoes; and
+while they were waiting for fine weather at the eastern end of the island
+they collected a number of natives to act as oarsmen.  When they thought
+the weather suitable they put to sea in the direction of Espanola.  They
+were only about fifteen miles from the shore, however, when the wind
+began to head them and to send up something of a sea; not rough, but
+enough to make the crank and overloaded canoes roll heavily, for they had
+not been prepared, as those of Mendez were, with false keels and weather-
+boards.  The Spaniards got frightened and turned back to Jamaica; but the
+sea became rougher, the canoes rolled more and more, they often shipped a
+quantity of water, and the situation began to look serious.  All their
+belongings except arms and provisions were thrown overboard; but still,
+as the wind rose and the sea with it, it became obvious that unless the
+canoes were further lightened they would not reach the shore in safety.
+Under these circumstances the Spaniards forced the natives to leap into
+the water, where they swam about like rats as well as they could, and
+then came back to the canoes in order to hold on and rest themselves.
+When they did this the Spaniards slashed at them with their swords or cut
+off their hands, so that one by one they fell back and, still swimming
+about feebly as well as they could with their bleeding hands or stumps of
+arms, the miserable wretches perished and sank at last.
+
+By this dreadful expedient the Spaniards managed to reach Jamaica again,
+and when they landed they immediately fell to quarrelling as to what they
+should do next.  Some were for trying to make the island of Cuba, the
+wind being favourable for that direction; others were for returning and
+making their submission to the Admiral; others for going back and seizing
+the remainder of his arms and stores; others for staying where they were
+for the present, and making another attempt to reach Espanola when the
+weather should be more favourable.  This last plan, being the counsel of
+present inaction, was adopted by the majority of the rabble; so they
+settled themselves at a neighbouring Indian village, behaving in: the
+manner with which we are familiar.  A little later, when the weather was
+calm, they made another attempt at the voyage, but were driven back in
+the same way; and being by this time sick of canoe voyages, they
+abandoned the attempt, and began to wander back westward through the
+island, maltreating the natives as before, and sowing seeds of bitter
+rancour and hostility against the Admiral; in whose neighbourhood we
+shall unfortunately hear of them again.
+
+In the meantime their departure had somewhat relieved the condition of
+affairs on board the hulks.  There were more provisions and there was
+more peace; the Admiral, rising above his own infirmities to the
+necessities of the occasion, moved unweariedly among the sick, cheering
+them and nursing them back into health and good humour, so that gradually
+the condition of the little colony was brought into better order and
+health than it had enjoyed since its establishment.
+
+But now unfortunately the evil harvest sown by the Porras gang in their
+journey to the east of the island began to ripen.  The supplies of
+provisions, which had hitherto been regularly brought by the natives,
+began to appear with less punctuality, and to fall off both in quantity
+and quality.  The trinkets with which they were purchased had now been
+distributed in such quantities that they began to lose their novelty and
+value; sometimes the natives demanded a much higher price for the
+provisions they brought, and (having by this time acquired the art of
+bargaining) would take their stores away again if they did not get the
+price they asked.
+
+But even of this device they soon grew weary; from being irregular, the
+supplies of provisions from some quarters ceased altogether, and the
+possibilities of famine began to stare the unhappy castaways in the face.
+It must be remembered that they were in a very weak physical condition,
+and that among the so-called loyal remnant there were very few who were
+not invalids; and they were unable to get out into the island and forage
+for themselves.  If the able-bodied handful were to sally forth in search
+of provisions, the hulks would be left defenceless and at the mercy of
+the natives, of whose growing hostility the Admiral had by this time
+discovered abundant evidence.  Thus little by little the food supply
+diminished until there was practically nothing left, and the miserable
+company of invalids were confronted with the alternative of either dying
+of starvation or desperately attempting a canoe voyage.
+
+
+It was from this critical situation that the spirit and resource of
+Columbus once more furnished a way of escape, and in these circumstances
+that he invented and worked a device that has since become famous--the
+great Eclipse Trick.  Among his small library in the cabin of the ship
+was the book containing the astronomical tables of Regiomontanus; and
+from his study of this work he was aware that an eclipse of the moon was
+due on a certain date near at hand.  He sent his Indian interpreter to
+visit the neighbouring caciques, summoning them to a great conference to
+be held on the evening of the eclipse, as the Admiral had matters of
+great importance to reveal to them.  They duly arrived on the evening
+appointed; not the caciques alone, but large numbers of the native
+population, well prepared for whatever might take place.  Columbus then
+addressed them through his interpreter, informing him that he was under
+the protection of a God who dwelt in the skies and who rewarded all who
+assisted him and punished all his enemies.  He made an effective use of
+the adventures of Mendez and Porras, pointing out that Mendez, who took
+his voyage by the Admiral's orders, had got away in safety, but that
+Porras and his followers, who had departed in disobedience and mutiny,
+had been prevented by the heavenly power from achieving their object.  He
+told them that his God was angry with them for their hostility and for
+their neglect to supply him with provisions; and that in token of his
+anger he was going to send them a dreadful punishment, as a sign of which
+they would presently see the moon change colour and lose its light, and
+the earth become dark.
+
+This address was spun out as long as possible; but even so it was
+followed by an interval in which, we may be sure, Columbus anxiously eyed
+the serene orb of night, and doubtless prayed that Regiomontanus might
+not have made a mistake in his calculations.  Some of the Indians were
+alarmed, some of them contemptuous; but it was pretty clearly realised on
+both sides that matters between them had come to a head; and probably if
+Regiomontanus, who had worked out these tables of figures and
+calculations so many years ago in his German home, had done his work
+carelessly or made a mistake, Columbus and his followers would have been
+massacred on the spot.  But Regiomontanus, God bless him!  had made no
+mistake.  Sure enough, and punctually to the appointed time, the dark
+shadow began to steal over the moon's disc; its light gradually faded,
+and a ghostly darkness crept over the face of the world.  Columbus,
+having seen that all was right with the celestial machinery, had retired
+to his cabin; and presently he found himself besieged there in the dark
+night by crowds of natives frantically bringing what provisions they had
+and protesting their intention of continuing to bring them for the rest
+of their lives.  If only the Admiral would ask his God to forgive them,
+there was no limit to the amount of provisions that he might have!  The
+Admiral, piously thankful, and perhaps beginning to enjoy the situation a
+little, kept himself shut up in his cabin as though communing with the
+implacable deity, while the darkness deepened over the land and the shore
+resounded with the howling and sobbing of the terrified natives.  He kept
+a look-out on the sky; and when he saw that the eclipse was about to pass
+away, he came out and informed the natives that God had decided to pardon
+them on condition of their remaining faithful in the matter of
+provisions, and that as a sign of His mercy He would restore the light.
+The beautiful miracle went on through its changing phases; and, watching
+in the darkness, the terrified natives saw the silver edge of the moon
+appearing again, the curtain that had obscured it gradually rolling away,
+and land and sea lying visible to them and once more steeped in the
+serene light which they worshipped.  It is likely that Christopher slept
+more soundly that night than he had slept for many nights before.
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+At last extricate himself from the theological stupor
+He had a way of rising above petty indignities
+Hearts quick to burn, quick to forget
+Idea of importing black African labour to the New World
+Islands in that sea had their greatest length east and west
+Man with a Grievance
+Stayed till night to eat their sop for fear of seeing (weevils)
+The terrified seamen making vows to the Virgin
+When the pot boils the scum rises to the surface
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of Christopher Columbus, v7
+by Filson Young
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                         CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS
+                   AND THE NEW WORLD OF HIS DISCOVERY
+
+                      A NARRATIVE BY FILSON YOUNG
+
+
+
+BOOK 8.
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+RELIEF OF THE ADMIRAL
+
+There was no further difficulty about provisions, which were punctually
+brought by the natives on the old terms; but the familiar, spirit of
+sedition began to work again among the unhappy Spaniards, and once more a
+mutiny, led this time by the apothecary Bernardo, took form--the
+intention being to seize the remaining canoes and attempt to reach
+Espanola.  This was the point at which matters had arrived, in March
+1504, when as the twilight was falling one evening a cry was raised that
+there was a ship in sight; and presently a small caravel was seen
+standing in towards the shore.  All ideas of mutiny were forgotten, and
+the crew assembled in joyful anticipation to await, as they thought, the
+coming of their deliverers.  The caravel came on with the evening breeze;
+but while it was yet a long way off the shore it was seen to be lying to;
+a boat was lowered and rowed towards the harbour.
+
+As the boat drew near Columbus could recognise in it Diego de Escobar,
+whom he remembered having condemned to death for his share in the
+rebellion of Roldan.  He was not the man whom Columbus would have most
+wished to see at that moment.  The boat came alongside the hulks, and a
+barrel of wine and a side of bacon, the sea-compliment customary on such
+occasions, was handed up.  Greatly to the Admiral's surprise, however,
+Escobar did not come on board, but pushed his boat off and began to speak
+to Columbus from a little distance.  He told him that Ovando was greatly
+distressed at the Admiral's misfortunes; that he had been much occupied
+by wars in Espanola, and had not been able to send a message to him
+before; that he greatly regretted he had no ship at present large enough
+to bring off the Admiral and his people, but that he would send one as
+soon as he had it.  In the meantime the Admiral was to be assured that
+all his affairs in Espanola were being attended to faithfully, and that
+Escobar was instructed to bring back at once any letters which the
+Admiral might wish to write.
+
+The coolness and unexpectedness of this message completely took away the
+breath of the unhappy Spaniards, who doubtless stood looking in
+bewilderment from Escobar to Columbus, unable to believe that the caravel
+had not been sent for their relief.  Columbus, however, with a self-
+restraint which cannot be too highly praised, realised that Escobar meant
+what he said, and that by protesting against his action or trying to
+interfere with it he would only be putting himself in the wrong.  He
+therefore retired immediately to his cabin and wrote a letter to Ovando,
+in which he drew a vivid picture of the distress of his people, reported
+the rebellion of the Porras brothers, and reminded Ovando that he relied
+upon the fulfilment of his promise to send relief.  The letter was handed
+over to Escobar, who rowed back with it to his caravel and immediately
+sailed away with it into the night.
+
+
+Before he could retire to commune with his own thoughts or to talk with
+his faithful brother, Columbus had the painful duty of speaking to his
+people, whose puzzled and disappointed faces must have cost him some
+extra pangs.  He told them that he was quite satisfied with the message
+from Ovando, that it was a sign of kindness on his part thus to send them
+news in advance that relief was coming, that their situation was now
+known in San Domingo, and that vessels would soon be here to take them
+away.  He added that he himself was so sure of these things that he had
+refused to go back with Escobar, but had preferred to remain with them
+and share their lot until relief should come.  This had the desired
+effect of cheering the Spaniards; but it was far from representing the
+real sentiments of Columbus on the subject.  The fact that Escobar had
+been chosen to convey this strange empty message of sympathy seemed to
+him suspicious, and with his profound distrust of Ovando Columbus began
+to wonder whether some further scheme might not be on foot to damage him
+in the eyes of the Sovereigns.  He was convinced that Ovando had meant to
+let him starve on the island, and that the real purpose of Escobar's
+visit had been to find out what condition the Admiral was in, so that
+Ovando might know how to act.  It is very hard to get at the truth of
+what these two men thought of each other.  They were both suspicious,
+each was playing for his own hand, and Ovando was only a little more
+unscrupulous than Columbus; but there can be no doubt that whatever his
+motives may have been Ovando acted with abominable treachery and cruelty
+in leaving the Admiral unrelieved for nearly nine months.
+
+
+Columbus now tried to make use of the visit of Escobar to restore to
+allegiance the band of rebels that were wandering about in the
+neighbourhood under the leadership of the Porras brothers.  Why he should
+have wished to bring them back to the ships is not clear, for by all
+accounts he was very well rid of them; but probably his pride as a
+commander was hurt by the thought that half of his company had defied his
+authority and were in a state of mutiny.  At any rate he sent out an
+ambassador to Porras, offering to receive the mutineers back without any
+punishment, and to give them a free passage to Espanola in the vessels
+which were shortly expected, if they would return to their allegiance
+with him.
+
+The folly of this overture was made manifest by the treatment which it
+received.  It was bad enough to make advances to the Porras brothers, but
+it was still worse to have those advances repulsed, and that is what
+happened.  The Porras brothers, being themselves incapable of any single-
+mindedness, affected not to believe in the sincerity of the Admiral's
+offer; they feared that he was laying some kind of trap for them;
+moreover, they were doing very well in their lawless way, and living very
+comfortably on the natives; so they told Columbus's ambassadors that his
+offer was declined.  At the same time they undertook to conduct
+themselves in an amicable and orderly manner on condition that, when the
+vessels arrived, one of them should be apportioned to the exclusive use
+of the mutineers; and that in the meantime the Admiral should share with
+them his store of provisions and trinkets, as theirs were exhausted.
+
+This was the impertinent decision of the Porras brothers; but it did not
+quite commend itself to their followers, who were fearful of the possible
+results if they should persist in their mutinous conduct.  They were very
+much afraid of being left behind in the island, and in any case, having
+attempted and failed in the main object of their mutiny, they saw no
+reason why they should refuse a free pardon.  But the Porras brothers
+lied busily.  They said that the Admiral was merely laying a trap in
+order to get them into his power, and that he would send them home to
+Spain in chains; and they even went so far as to assure their fellow-
+rebels that the story of a caravel having arrived was not really true;
+but that Columbus, who was an adept in the arts of necromancy, had really
+made his people believe that they had seen a caravel in the dusk; and
+that if one had really arrived it would not have gone away so suddenly,
+nor would the Admiral and his brother and son have failed to take their
+passage in it.
+
+To consolidate the effect of these remarkable statements on the still
+wavering mutineers, the Porras brothers decided to commit them to an open
+act of violence which would successfully alienate them from the Admiral.
+They formed them, therefore, into an armed expedition, with the idea of
+seizing the stores remaining on the wreck and taking the Admiral
+personally.  Columbus fortunately got news of this, as he nearly always
+did when there was treachery in the wind; and he sent Bartholomew to try
+to persuade them once more to return to their duty--a vain and foolish
+mission, the vanity and folly of which were fully apparent to
+Bartholomew.  He duly set out upon it; but instead of mild words he took
+with him fifty armed men--the whole available able-bodied force, in fact-
+and drew near to the position occupied by the rebels.
+
+
+The exhortation of the Porras brothers had meanwhile produced its effect,
+and it was decided that six of the strongest men among the mutineers
+should make for Bartholomew himself and try to capture or kill him.  The
+fierce Adelantado, finding himself surrounded by six assailants, who
+seemed to be directing their whole effort against his life, swung his
+sword in a berserk rage and slashed about him, to such good purpose that
+four or five of his assailants soon lay round him killed or wounded.  At
+this point Francisco de Porras rushed in and cleft the shield held by
+Bartholomew, severely wounding the hand that held it; but the sword.
+stuck in the shield, and while Porras was endeavouring to draw it out
+Bartholomew and some others closed upon him, and after a sharp struggle
+took him prisoner.  The battle, which was a short one, had been meanwhile
+raging fiercely among the rest of the forces; but when the mutineers saw
+their leader taken prisoner, and many of their number lying dead or
+wounded, they scattered and fled, but not before Bartholomew's force had
+taken several prisoners.  It was then found that, although the rebels had
+suffered heavily, none of Bartholomew's men were killed, and only one
+other besides himself was wounded.  The next day the mutineers all came
+in to surrender, submitting an abject oath of allegiance; and Columbus,
+always strangely magnanimous to rebels and insurgents, pardoned them all
+with the exception of Francisco de Porras, who, one is glad to know, was
+confined in irons to be sent to Spain for trial.
+
+
+This submission, which was due to the prompt action of Bartholomew rather
+than to the somewhat feeble diplomacy of the Admiral, took place on March
+20th, and proved somewhat embarrassing to Columbus.  He could put no
+faith in the oaths and protestations of the mutineers; and he was very
+doubtful about the wisdom of establishing them once more on the wrecks
+with the hitherto orderly remnant.  He therefore divided them up into
+several bands, and placing each under the command of an officer whom he
+could trust, he supplied them with trinkets and despatched them to
+different parts of the island, for the purpose of collecting provisions
+and carrying on barter with the natives.  By this means the last month or
+two of this most trying and exciting sojourn on the island of Jamaica
+were passed in some measure of peace; and towards the end of June it was
+brought to an end by the arrival of two caravels.  One of them was the
+ship purchased by Diego Mendez out of the three which had arrived from
+Spain; and the other had been despatched by Ovando in deference, it is
+said, to public feeling in San Domingo, which had been so influenced by
+Mendez's account of the Admiral's heroic adventures that Ovando dared not
+neglect him any longer.  Moreover, if it had ever been his hope that the
+Admiral would perish on the island of Jamaica, that hope was now doomed
+to frustration, and, as he was to be rescued in spite of all, Ovando no
+doubt thought that he might as well, for the sake of appearances, have a
+hand in the rescue.
+
+The two caravels, laden with what was worth saving from the two abandoned
+hulks, and carrying what was left of the Admiral's company, sailed from
+Jamaica on June 28, 1504.  Columbus's joy, as we may imagine, was deep
+and heartfelt.  He said afterwards to Mendez that it was the happiest day
+of his life, for that he had never hoped to leave the place alive.
+
+The mission of Mendez, then, had been successful, although he had had to
+wait for eight months to fulfil it.  He himself, in accordance with
+Columbus's instructions, had gone to Spain in another caravel of the
+fleet out of which he had purchased the relieving ship; and as he passes
+out of our narrative we may now take our farewell of him.  Among the many
+men employed in the Admiral's service no figure stands out so brightly as
+that of Diego Mendez; and his record, almost alone of those whose service
+of the Admiral earned them office and distinction, is unblotted by any
+stain of crime or treachery.  He was as brave as a lion and as faithful
+as a dog, and throughout his life remained true to his ideal of service
+to the Admiral and his descendants.  He was rewarded by King Ferdinand
+for his distinguished services, and allowed to bear a canoe on his coat-
+of-arms; he was with the Admiral at his death-bed at Valladolid, and when
+he himself came to die thirty years afterwards in the same place he made
+a will in which he incorporated a brief record of the events of the
+adventurous voyage in which he had borne the principal part, and also
+enshrined his devotion to the name and family of Columbus.  His demands
+for himself were very modest, although there is reason to fear that they
+were never properly fulfilled.  He was curiously anxious to be remembered
+chiefly by his plucky canoe voyage; and in giving directions for his
+tomb, and ordering that a stone should be placed over his remains, he
+wrote: "In the centre of the said stone 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 three hundred leagues, and let some letters be placed
+above it saying: Canoa."  The epitaph that he chose for himself was in
+the following sense:
+
+                   Here lies the Honourable Gentleman
+
+                              DIEGO MENDEZ
+
+             He greatly served the royal crown of Spain in
+             the discovery and conquest of the Indies with
+                the Admiral Don Christopher Columbus of
+               glorious memory who discovered them, and
+              afterwards by himself, with his own ships,
+                         at his own expense.
+                            He died, etc.
+                  He begs from charity a PATERNOSTER
+                           and an AVE MARIA.
+
+
+Surely he deserves them, if ever an honourable gentleman did.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE HERITAGE OF HATRED
+
+Although the journey from Jamaica to Espanola had been accomplished in
+four days by Mendez in his canoe, the caravels conveying the party
+rescued from Puerto Santa Gloria were seven weary weeks on this short
+voyage; a strong north-west wind combining with the west-going current to
+make their progress to the north-west impossible for weeks at a time.  It
+was not until the 13th of August 1503 that they anchored in the harbour
+of San Domingo, and Columbus once more set foot, after an absence of more
+than two years, on the territory from the governorship of which he had
+been deposed.
+
+He was well enough received by Ovando, who came down in state to meet
+him, lodged him in his own house, and saw that he was treated with the
+distinction suitable to his high station.  The Spanish colony, moreover,
+seemed to have made something of a hero of Columbus during his long
+absence, and they received him with enthusiasm.  But his satisfaction in
+being in San Domingo ended with that.  He was constantly made to feel
+that it was Ovando and not he who was the ruler there;--and Ovando
+emphasised the difference between them by numerous acts of highhanded
+authority, some of them of a kind calculated to be extremely mortifying
+to the Admiral.  Among these things he insisted upon releasing Porras,
+whom Columbus had confined in chains; and he talked of punishing those
+faithful followers of Columbus who had taken part in the battle between
+Bartholomew and the rebels, because in this fight some of the followers
+of Porras had been killed.  Acts like these produced weary bickerings and
+arguments between Ovando and Columbus, unprofitable to them, unprofitable
+to us.  The Admiral seems now to have relapsed into a condition in which
+he cared only for two things, his honours and his emoluments.  Over every
+authoritative act of Ovando's there was a weary squabble between him and
+the Admiral, Ovando claiming his right of jurisdiction over the whole
+territory of the New World, including Jamaica, and Columbus insisting
+that by his commission and letters of authority he had been placed in
+sole charge of the members of his own expedition.
+
+And then, as regards his emoluments, the Admiral considered himself (and
+not without justice) to have been treated most unfairly.  By the
+extravagant terms of his original agreement he was, as we know, entitled
+to a share of all rents and dues, as well as of the gold collected; but
+it had been no one's business to collect these for him, and every one's
+business to neglect them.  No one had cared; no one had kept any accounts
+of what was due to the Admiral; he could not find out what had been paid
+and what had not been paid.  He accused Ovando of having impeded his
+agent Carvajal in his duty of collecting the Admiral's revenues, and of
+disobeying the express orders of Queen Isabella in that matter; and so
+on-a state of affairs the most wearisome, sordid, and unprofitable in
+which any man could be involved.
+
+And if Columbus turned his eyes from the office in San Domingo inland to
+that Paradise which he had entered twelve years before, what change and
+ruin, dreary, horrible and complete, did he not discover!  The birds
+still sang, and the nights were still like May in Cordova; but upon that
+happy harmony the sound of piteous cries and shrieks had long since
+broken, and along and black December night of misery had spread its pall
+over the island.  Wherever he went, Columbus found the same evidence of
+ruin and desolation.  Where once innumerable handsome natives had
+thronged the forests and the villages, there were now silence and smoking
+ruin, and the few natives that he met were emaciated, terrified, dying.
+Did he reflect, I wonder, that some part of the responsibility of all
+this horror rested on him?  That many a system of island government, the
+machinery of which was now fed by a steady stream of human lives, had
+been set going by him in ignorance, or greed of quick commercial returns?
+It is probable that he did not; for he now permanently regarded himself
+as a much-injured man, and was far too much occupied with his own wrongs
+to realise that they were as nothing compared with the monstrous stream
+of wrong and suffering that he had unwittingly sent flowing into the
+world.
+
+In the island under Ovando's rule Columbus saw the logical results of his
+own original principles of government, which had recognised the right of
+the Christians to possess the persons and labours of the heathen natives.
+Las Casas, who was living in Espanola as a young priest at this time, and
+was destined by long residence there and in the West Indies to qualify
+himself as their first historian, saw what Columbus saw, and saw also the
+even worse things that happened in after years in Cuba and Jamaica; and
+it is to him that we owe our knowledge of the condition of island affairs
+at this time.  The colonists whom Ovando had brought out had come very
+much in the spirit that in our own day characterised the rush to the
+north-western goldfields of America.  They brought only the slightest
+equipment, and were no sooner landed at San Domingo than they set out
+into the island like so many picnic parties, being more careful to carry
+vessels in which to bring back the gold they were to find than proper
+provisions and equipment to support them in the labour of finding it.
+The roads, says Las Casas, swarmed like ant-hills with these adventurers
+rushing forth to the mines, which were about twenty-five miles distant
+from San Domingo; they were in the highest spirits, and they made it a
+kind of race as to who should get there first.  They thought they had
+nothing to do but to pick up shining lumps of gold; and when they found
+that they had to dig and delve in the hard earth, and to dig
+systematically and continuously, with a great deal of digging for very
+little gold, their spirits fell.  They were not used to dig; and it
+happened that most of them began in an unprofitable spot, where they
+digged for eight days without finding any gold.  Their provisions were
+soon exhausted; and in a week they were back again in San Domingo, tired,
+famished, and bitterly disappointed.  They had no genius for steady
+labour; most of them were virtually without means; and although they
+lived in San Domingo, on what they had as long as possible, they were
+soon starving there, and selling the clothes off their backs to procure
+food.  Some of them took situations with the other settlers, more fell
+victims to the climate of the island and their own imprudences and
+distresses; and a thousand of them had died within two years.
+
+Ovando had revived the enthusiasm for mining by two enactments.  He
+reduced the share of discovered gold payable to the Crown, and he
+developed Columbus's system of forced labour to such an extent that the
+mines were entirely worked by it.  To each Spaniard, whether mining or
+farming, so many natives were allotted.  It was not called slavery; the
+natives were supposed to be paid a minute sum, and their employers were
+also expected to teach them the Christian religion.  That was the plan.
+The way in which it worked was that, a body of native men being allotted
+to a Spanish settler for a period, say, of six or eight months--for the
+enactment was precise in putting a period to the term of slavery--the
+natives would be marched off, probably many days' journey from their
+homes and families, and set to work under a Spanish foreman.  The work,
+as we have already seen, was infinitely harder than that to which they
+were accustomed; and most serious of all, it was done under conditions
+that took all the heart out of the labour.  A man will toil in his own
+garden or in tilling his own land with interest and happiness, not
+counting the hours which he spends there; knowing in fact that his work
+is worth doing, because he is doing it for a good reason.  But put the
+same man to work in a gang merely for the aggrandisement of some other
+over-man; and the heart and cheerfulness will soon die out of him.
+
+It was so with these children of the sun.  They were put to work ten
+times harder than any they had ever done before, and they were put to it
+under the lash.  The light diet of their habit had been sufficient to
+support them in their former existence of happy idleness and dalliance,
+and they had not wanted anything more than their cassava bread and a
+little fish and fruit; now, however, they were put to work at a pressure
+which made a very different kind of feeding necessary to them, and this
+they did not get.  Now and then a handful of pork would be divided among
+a dozen of them, but they were literally starved, and were accustomed to
+scramble like dogs for the bones that were thrown from the tables of the
+Spaniards, which bones they ground up and mixed with their, bread so that
+no portion of them might be lost.  They died in numbers under these hard
+conditions, and, compared with their lives, their deaths must often have
+been happy.  When the time came for them to go home they were generally
+utterly worn out and crippled, and had to face a long journey of many
+days with no food to support them but what they could get on the journey;
+and the roads were strewn with the dead bodies of those who fell by the
+way.
+
+And far worse things happened to them than labour and exhaustion.  It
+became the custom among the Spaniards to regard the lives of the natives
+as of far less value than those of the dogs that were sometimes set upon
+them in sport.  A Spaniard riding along would make a wager with his
+fellow that he would cut the head off a native with one stroke of his
+sword; and many attempts would be laughingly made, and many living bodies
+hideously mutilated and destroyed, before the feat would be accomplished.
+Another sport was one similar to pigsticking as it is practised in India,
+except that instead of pigs native women and children were stuck with the
+lances.  There was no kind of mutilation and monstrous cruelty that was
+not practised.  If there be any powers of hell, they stalked at large
+through the forests and valleys of Espanola.  Lust and bloody cruelty, of
+a kind not merely indescribable but unrealisable by sane men and women,
+drenched the once happy island with anguish and terror.  And in payment
+for it the Spaniards undertook to teach the heathen the Christian
+religion.
+
+
+The five chiefs who had ruled with justice and wisdom over the island of
+Espanola in the early days of Columbus were all dead, wiped out by the
+wave of wild death and cruelty that had swept over the island.  The
+gentle Guacanagari, when he saw the desolation that was beginning to
+overwhelm human existence, had fled into the mountains, hiding his face
+in shame from the sons of men, and had miserably died there.  Caonabo,
+Lord of the House of Gold, fiercest and bravest of them all, who first
+realised that the Spaniards were enemies to the native peace, after
+languishing in prison in the house of Columbus at Isabella for some time,
+had died in captivity during the voyage to Spain.  Anacaona his wife, the
+Bloom of the Gold, that brave and beautiful woman, whose admiration of
+the Spaniards had by their bloody cruelties been turned into detestation,
+had been shamefully betrayed and ignominiously hanged.  Behechio, her
+brother, the only cacique who did not sue for peace after the first
+conquest of the island by Christopher and Bartholomew Columbus, was dead
+long ago of wounds and sorrow.  Guarionex, the Lord of the Vega Real, who
+had once been friendly enough, who had danced to the Spanish pipe and
+learned the Paternoster and Ave Maria, and whose progress in conversion
+to Christianity the seduction of his wives by those who were converting
+him had interrupted, after wandering in the mountains of Ciguay had been
+imprisoned in chains, and drowned in the hurricane of June 30, 1502.
+
+The fifth chief, Cotabanama, Lord of the province of Higua, made the last
+stand against Ovando in defence of the native right to existence, and was
+only defeated after severe battles and dreadful slaughters.  His
+territory was among the mountains, and his last insurrection was caused,
+as so many others had been, by the intolerable conduct of the Spaniards
+towards the wives and daughters of the Indians.  Collecting all his
+warriors, Cotabanama attacked the Spanish posts in his neighbourhood.
+At every engagement his troops were defeated and dispersed, but only to
+collect again, fight again with even greater fury, be defeated and
+dispersed again, and rally again against the Spaniards.  They literally
+fought to the death.  After every battle the Spaniards made a massacre of
+all the natives they could find, old men, children, and pregnant women
+being alike put to the sword or burned in their houses.  When their
+companions fell beside them, instead of being frightened they became more
+furious; and when they were wounded they would pluck the arrows out of
+their bodies and hurl them back at the Spaniards, falling dead in the
+very act.  After one such severe defeat and massacre the natives
+scattered for many months, hiding among the mountains and trying to
+collect and succour their decimated families; but the Spaniards, who with
+their dogs grew skilful at tracking the Indians and found it pleasant
+sport, came upon them in the places of refuge where little groups of them
+were sheltering their women and children, and there slowly and cruelly
+slaughtered them, often with the addition of tortures and torments in
+order to induce them to reveal the whereabouts of other bands.  When it
+was possible the Spaniards sometimes hanged thirteen of them in a row in
+commemoration of their Blessed Saviour and the Twelve Apostles; and while
+they were hanging, and before they had quite died, they would hack at
+them with their swords in order to test the edge of the steel.  At the
+last stand, when the fierceness and bitterness of the contest rose to a
+height on both sides, Cotabanama was captured and a plan made to broil
+him slowly to death; but for some reason this plan was not carried out,
+and the brave chief was taken to San Domingo and publicly hanged like a
+thief.
+
+
+After that there was never any more resistance; it was simply a case of
+extermination, which the Spaniards easily accomplished by cutting of the
+heads of women as they passed by, and impaling infants and little
+children on their lances as they rode through the villages.  Thus, in the
+twelve years since the discovery of Columbus, between half a million and
+a million natives, perished; and as the Spanish colonisation spread
+afterwards from island to island, and the banner of civilisation and
+Christianity was borne farther abroad throughout the Indies, the same
+hideous process was continued.  In Cuba, in Jamaica, throughout the
+Antilles, the cross and the sword, the whip-lash and the Gospel advanced
+together; wherever the Host was consecrated, hideous cries of agony and
+suffering broke forth; until happily, in the fulness of time, the dire
+business was complete, and the whole of the people who had inhabited this
+garden of the world were exterminated and their blood and race wiped from
+the face of the earth .  .  .  .  Unless, indeed, blood and race and hatred
+be imperishable things; unless the faithful Earth that bred and reared
+the race still keeps in her soil, and in the waving branches of the trees
+and the green grasses, the sacred essences of its blood and hatred;
+unless in the full cycle of Time, when that suffering flesh and blood
+shall have gone through all the changes of substance and condition, from
+corruption and dust through flowers and grasses and trees and animals
+back into the living body of mankind again, it shall one day rise up
+terribly to avenge that horror of the past.  Unless Earth and Time
+remember, O Children of the Sun!  for men have forgotten, and on the soil
+of your Paradise the African negro, learned in the vices of Europe,
+erects his monstrous effigy of civilisation and his grotesque mockery of
+freedom; unless it be through his brutish body, into which the blood and
+hatred with which the soil of Espanola was soaked have now passed, that
+they shall dreadfully strike at the world again.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE ADMIRAL COMES HOME
+
+On September 12, 1504., Christopher Columbus did many things for the last
+time.  He who had so often occupied himself in ports and harbours with
+the fitting out of ships and preparations for a voyage now completed at
+San Domingo the simple preparations for the last voyage he was to take.
+The ship he had come in from Jamaica had been refitted and placed under
+the command of Bartholomew, and he had bought another small caravel in
+which he and his son were to sail.  For the last time he superintended
+those details of fitting out and provisioning which were now so familiar
+to him; for the last time he walked in the streets of San Domingo and
+mingled with the direful activities of his colony; he looked his last
+upon the place where the vital scenes of his life had been set, for the
+last time weighed anchor, and took his last farewell of the seas and
+islands of his discovery.  A little steadfast looking, a little straining
+of the eyes, a little heart-aching no doubt, and Espanola has sunk down
+into the sea behind the white wake of the ships; and with its fading away
+the span of active life allotted to this man shuts down, and his powerful
+opportunities for good or evil are withdrawn.
+
+There was something great and heroic about the Admiral's last voyage.
+Wind and sea rose up as though to make a last bitter attack upon the man
+who had disclosed their mysteries and betrayed their secrets.  He had
+hardly cleared the island before the first gale came down upon him and
+dismasted his ship, so that he was obliged to transfer himself and his
+son to Bartholomew's caravel and send the disabled vessel back to
+Espanola.  The shouting sea, as though encouraged by this triumph, hurled
+tempest after tempest upon the one lonely small ship that was staggering
+on its way to Spain; and the duel between this great seaman and the vast
+elemental power that he had so often outwitted began in earnest.  One
+little ship, one enfeebled man to be destroyed by the power of the sea:
+that was the problem, and there were thousands of miles of sea-room, and
+two months of time to solve it in!  Tempest after tempest rose and drove
+unceasingly against the ship.  A mast was sprung and had to be cut away;
+another, and the woodwork from the forecastles and high stern works had
+to be stripped and lashed round the crazy mainmast to preserve it from
+wholesale destruction.  Another gale, and the mast had to be shortened,
+for even reinforced as it was it would not bear the strain; and so
+crippled, so buffeted, this very small ship leapt and staggered on her
+way across the Atlantic, keeping her bowsprit pointed to that region of
+the foamy emptiness where Spain was.
+
+The Admiral lay crippled in his cabin listening to the rush and bubble of
+the water, feeling the blows and recoils of the unending battle,
+hearkening anxiously to the straining of the timbers and the vessel's
+agonised complainings under the pounding of the seas.  We do not know
+what his thoughts were; but we may guess that they looked backward rather
+than forward, and that often they must have been prayers that the present
+misery would come somehow or other to an end.  Up on deck brother
+Bartholomew, who has developed some grievous complaint of the jaws and
+teeth--complaint not known to us more particularly, but dreadful enough
+from that description--does his duty also, with that heroic manfulness
+that has marked his whole career; and somewhere in the ship young
+Ferdinand is sheltering from the sprays and breaking seas, finding his
+world of adventure grown somewhat gloomy and sordid of late, and feeling
+that he has now had his fill of the sea .  .  .  .  Shut your eyes and
+let the illusions of time and place fade from you; be with them for a
+moment on this last voyage; hear that eternal foaming and crashing of
+great waves, the shrieking of wind in cordage, the cracking and slatting
+of the sails, the mad lashing of loose ropes; the painful swinging, and
+climbing up and diving down, and sinking and staggering and helpless
+strivings of the small ship in the waste of water.  The sea is as empty
+as chaos, nothing for days and weeks but that infinite tumbling surface
+and heaven of grey storm-clouds; a world of salt surges encircled by
+horizons of dim foam.  Time and place are nothing; the agony and pain of
+such moments are eternal.
+
+But the two brothers, grim and gigantic in their sea power, subtle as the
+wind itself in their sea wit, win the battle.  Over the thousands of
+miles of angry surges they urge that small ship towards calm and safety;
+until one day the sea begins to abate a little, and through the spray and
+tumult of waters the dim loom of land is seen.  The sea falls back
+disappointed and finally conquered by Christopher Columbus, whose ship,
+battered, crippled, and strained, comes back out of the wilderness of
+waters and glides quietly into the smooth harbour of San Lucar, November
+7, 1504.  There were no guns or bells to greet the Admiral; his only
+salute was in the thunder of the conquered seas; and he was carried
+ashore to San Lucar, and thence to Seville, a sick and broken man.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+THE LAST DAYS
+
+Columbus, for whom rest and quiet were the first essentials, remained in
+Seville from November 1504 to May 1505, when he joined the Court at
+Segovia and afterwards at Salamanca and Valladolid, where he remained
+till his death in May 1506.  During this last period, when all other
+activities were practically impossible to him, he fell into a state of
+letter-writing--for the most part long, wearisome complainings and
+explainings in which he poured out a copious flood of tears and self-pity
+for the loss of his gold.
+
+It has generally been claimed that Columbus was in bitter penury and want
+of money, but a close examination of the letters and other documents
+relating to this time show that in his last days he was not poor in any
+true sense of the word.  He was probably a hundred times richer than any
+of his ancestors had ever been; he had, money to give and money to spend;
+the banks honoured his drafts; his credit was apparently indisputable.
+But compared with the fabulous wealth to which he would by this time have
+been entitled if his original agreement with the Crown of Spain had been
+faithfully carried out he was no doubt poor.  There is no evidence that
+he lacked any comfort or alleviation that money could buy; indeed he
+never had any great craving for the things that money can buy--only for
+money itself.  There must have been many rich people in Spain who would
+gladly have entertained him in luxury and dignity; but he was not the
+kind of man to set much store by such things except in so far as they
+were a decoration and advertisement of his position as a great man.  He
+had set himself to the single task of securing what he called his rights;
+and in these days of sunset he seems to have been illumined by some
+glimmer of the early glory of his first inspiration.  He wanted the
+payment of his dues now, not so much for his own enrichment, but as a
+sign to the world that his great position as Admiral and Viceroy was
+recognised, so that his dignities and estates might be established and
+consolidated in a form which he would be able to transmit to his remote
+posterity.
+
+Since he wrote so copiously and so constantly in these last days, the
+best picture of his mood and condition is afforded in his letters to his
+son Diego; letters which, in spite of their infinitely wearisome
+recapitulation and querulous complaint, should be carefully read by those
+who wish to keep in touch with the Admiral to the end.
+
+     Letter written by CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS to DON DIEGO, his Son,
+     November 21, 1504.
+
+     "VERY DEAR SON,--I received your letter by the courier.  You did
+     well in remaining yonder to remedy our affairs somewhat and to
+     employ yourself now in our business.  Ever since I came to Castile,
+     the Lord Bishop of Palencia has shown me favour and has desired that
+     I should be honoured.  Now he must be entreated that it may please
+     him to occupy himself in remedying my many grievances and in
+     ordering that the agreement and letters of concession which their
+     Highnesses gave me be fulfilled, and that I be indemnified for so
+     many damages.  And he may be certain that if their Highnesses do
+     this, their estate and greatness will be multiplied to them in an
+     incredible degree.  And it must not appear to him that forty
+     thousand pesos in gold is more than a representation of it; because
+     they might have had a much greater quantity if Satan had not
+     hindered it by impeding my design; for, when I was taken away from
+     the Indies, I was prepared to give them a sum of gold incomparable
+     to forty thousand pesos.  I make oath, and this may be for thee
+     alone, that the damage to me in the matter of the concessions their
+     Highnesses have made to me, amounts to ten millions each year, and
+     never can be made good.  You see what will be, or is, the injury to
+     their Highnesses in what belongs to them, and they do not perceive
+     it.  I write at their disposal and will strive to start yonder.  My
+     arrival and the rest is in the hands of our Lord.  His mercy is
+     infinite.  What is done and is to be done, St. Augustine says is
+     already done before the creation of the world.  I write also to
+     these other Lords named in the letter of Diego Mendez.  Commend me
+     to their mercy and tell them of my going as I have said above.  For
+     certainly I feel great fear, as the cold is so inimical to this, my
+     infirmity, that I may have to remain on the road.
+
+     "I was very much pleased to hear the contents of your letter and
+     what the King our Lord said, for which you kissed his royal hands.
+     It is certain that I have served their Highnesses with as much
+     diligence and love as though it had been to gain Paradise, and more,
+     and if I have been at fault in anything it has been because it was
+     impossible or because my knowledge and strength were not sufficient.
+     God, our Lord, in such a case, does not require more from persons
+     than the will.
+
+     "At the request of the Treasurer Morales, I left two brothers in the
+     Indies, who are called Porras.  The one was captain and the other
+     auditor.  Both were without capacity for these positions: and I was
+     confident that they could fill them, because of love for the person
+     who sent them to me.  They both became more vain than they had been.
+     I forgave them many incivilities, more than I would do with a
+     relation, and their offences were such that they merited another
+     punishment than a verbal reprimand.  Finally they reached such a
+     point that even had I desired, I could not have avoided doing what I
+     did.  The records of the case will prove whether I lie or not.  They
+     rebelled on the island of Jamaica, at which I was as much astonished
+     as I would be if the sun's rays should cast darkness.  I was at the
+     point of death, and they martyrised me with extreme cruelty during
+     five months and without cause.  Finally I took them all prisoners,
+     and immediately set them free, except the captain, whom I was
+     bringing as a prisoner to their Highnesses.  A petition which they
+     made to me under oath, and which I send you with this letter, will
+     inform you at length in regard to this matter, although the records
+     of the case explain it fully.  These records and the Notary are
+     coming on another vessel, which I am expecting from day to day.  The
+     Governor in Santo Domingo took this prisoner.--His courtesy
+     constrained him to do this.  I had a chapter in my instructions in
+     which their Highnesses ordered all to obey me, and that I should
+     exercise civil and criminal justice over all those who were with me:
+     but this was of no avail with the Governor, who said that it was not
+     understood as applying in his territory.  He sent the prisoner to
+     these Lords who have charge of the Indies without inquiry or record
+     or writing.  They did not receive him, and both brothers go free.
+     It is not wonderful to me that our Lord punishes.  They went there
+     with shameless faces.  Such wickedness or such cruel treason were
+     never heard of.  I wrote to their Highnesses about this matter in
+     the other letter, and said that it was not right for them to consent
+     to this offence.  I also wrote to the Lord Treasurer that I begged
+     him as a favour not to pass sentence on the testimony given by these
+     men until he heard me.  Now it will be well for you to remind him of
+     it anew.  I do, not know how they dare to go before him with such an
+     undertaking.  I have written to him about it again and have sent him
+     the copy of the oath, the same as I send to you and likewise to
+     Doctor Angulo and the Licentiate Zapata.  I commend myself to the
+     mercy of all, with the information that my departure yonder will
+     take place in a short time.
+
+     "I would be glad to receive a letter from their Highnesses and to
+     know what they order.  You must procure such a letter if you see the
+     means of so doing.  I also commend myself to the Lord Bishop and to
+     Juan Lopez, with the reminder of illness and of the reward for my
+     services.
+
+     "You must read the letters which go with this one in order to act in
+     conformity with what they say.  Acknowledge the receipt of his
+     letter to Diego Mendez.  I do not write him as he will learn
+     everything from you, and also because my illness prevents it.
+
+     "It would be well for Carbajal and Jeronimo --[Jeronimo de Aguero, a
+     landowner in Espanola and a friend of Columbus]-- to be at the-Court
+     at this time, and talk of our affairs with these Lords and with the
+     Secretary.
+
+     "Done in Seville, November 21.
+
+     "Your father who loves you more than himself.
+
+                                                    .S.
+                                                  .S.A.S.
+                                                    XMY
+                                                 Xpo FERENS."
+
+     "I wrote again to their Highnesses entreating them to order that
+     these people who went with me should be paid, because they are poor
+     and it is three years since they left their homes.  The news which
+     they bring is more than extraordinary.  They have endured infinite
+     dangers and hardships.  I did not wish to rob the country, so as not
+     to cause scandal, because reason advises its being populated, and
+     then gold will be obtained freely without scandal.  Speak of this to
+     the Secretary and to the Lord Bishop and to Juan Lopez and to
+     whomever you think it advisable to do so."
+
+
+The Bishop of Palencia referred to in this letter is probably Bishop
+Fonseca--probably, because it is known that he did become Bishop of
+Palencia, although there is a difference of opinion among historians as
+to whether the date of his translation to that see was before or after
+this letter.  No matter, except that one is glad to think that an old
+enemy--for Fonseca and Columbus had bitter disagreements over the fitting
+out of various expeditions--had shown himself friendly at last.
+
+
+     Letter written by CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS to DON DIEGO, November 28,
+     1504.
+
+     "VERY DEAR SON,--I received your letters of the 15th of this month.
+     It is eight days since I wrote you and sent the letter by a courier.
+     I enclosed unsealed letters to many other persons, in order that you
+     might see them, and having read them, seal and deliver them.
+     Although this illness of mine troubles me greatly, I am preparing
+     for my departure in every way.  I would very much like to receive
+     the reply from their Highnesses and wish you might procure it: and
+     also I wish that their Highnesses would provide for the payment of
+     these poor people, who have passed through incredible hardships and
+     have brought them such great news that infinite thanks should be
+     given to God, our Lord, and they should rejoice greatly over it.
+     If I [lie ?] the 'Paralipomenon'--[ The Book of Chronicles]-- and
+     the Book of Kings and the Antiquities of Josephus, with very many
+     others, will tell what they know of this.  I hope in our Lord to
+     depart this coming week, but you must not write less often on that
+     account.  I have not heard from Carbajal and Jeronimo.  If they are
+     there, commend me to them.  The time is such that both Carbajals
+     ought to be at Court, if illness does not prevent them.  My regards
+     to Diego Mendez.
+
+     "I believe that his truth and efforts will be worth as much as the
+     lies of the Porras brothers.  The bearer of this letter is Martin de
+     Gamboa.  I am sending by him a letter to Juan Lopez and a letter of
+     credit.  Read the letter to Lopez and then give it to him.  If you
+     write me, send the letters to Luis de Soria that he may send them
+     wherever I am, because if I go in a litter, I believe it will be by
+     La Plata.--[The old Roman road from Merida to Salamanca.]--  May our
+     Lord have you in His holy keeping.  Your uncle has been very sick
+     and is now, from trouble with his jaws and his teeth.
+
+     "Done in Seville, November 28.
+
+     "Your father who loves you more than himself.
+
+                                                    .S.
+                                                  .S.A.S.
+                                                    XMY
+                                                 Xpo FERENS."
+
+
+Bartholomew Columbus and Ferdinand were remaining with Christopher at
+Seville; Bartholomew probably very nearly as ill as the Admiral, although
+we do not hear so many complaints about it.  At any rate Diego, being ay
+Court, was the great mainstay of his father; and you can see the sick man
+sitting there alone with his grievances, and looking to the next
+generation for help in getting them redressed.  Diego, it is to be
+feared, did not receive these letters with so much patience and attention
+as he might have shown, nor did he write back to his invalid father with
+the fulness and regularity which the old man craved.  It is a fault
+common to sons.  Those who are sons will know that it does not
+necessarily imply lack of affection on Diego's part; those who are
+fathers will realise how much Christopher longed for verbal assurance of
+interest and affection, even though he did not doubt their reality.  News
+of the serious illness of Queen Isabella had evidently reached Columbus,
+and was the chief topic of public interest.
+
+
+     Letter written by CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS to DON DIEGO, his Son,
+     December 1, 1504.
+
+     "VERY DEAR SON,--Since I received your letter of November 15 I have
+     heard nothing from you.  I wish that you would write me more
+     frequently.  I would like to receive a letter from you each hour.
+     Reason must tell you that now I have no other repose.  Many couriers
+     come each day, and the news is of such a nature and so abundant that
+     on hearing it all my hair stands on end; it is so contrary to what
+     my soul desires.  May it please the Holy Trinity to give health to
+     the Queen, our Lady, that she may settle what has already been
+     placed under discussion.  I wrote you by another courier Thursday,
+     eight days ago.  The courier must already be on his way back here.
+     I told you in that letter that my departure was certain, but that
+     the hope of my arrival there, according to experience, was very
+     uncertain, because my sickness is so bad, and the cold is so well
+     suited to aggravate it, that I could not well avoid remaining in
+     some inn on the road.  The litter and everything were ready.  The
+     weather became so violent that it appeared impossible to every one
+     to start when it was getting so bad, and that it was better for so
+     well-known a person as myself to take care of myself and try to
+     regain my health rather than place myself in danger.  I told you in
+     those letters what I now say, that you decided well in remaining
+     there (at such a time), and that it was right to commence occupying
+     yourself with our affairs; and reason strongly urges this.  It
+     appears to me that a good copy should be made of the chapter of that
+     letter which their Highnesses wrote me where they say they will
+     fulfil their promises to me and will place you in possession of
+     everything: and that this copy should be given to them with another
+     writing telling of my sickness, and that it is now impossible for me
+     to go and kiss their Royal feet and hands, and that the Indies are
+     being lost, and are on fire in a thousand places, and that I have
+     received nothing, and am receiving nothing, from the revenues
+     derived from them, and that no one dares to accept or demand
+     anything there for me, and I am living upon borrowed funds.  I spent
+     the money which I got there in bringing those people who went with
+     me back to their homes, for it would be a great burden upon my
+     conscience to have left them there and to have abandoned them.  This
+     must be made known to the Lord Bishop of Palencia, in whose favour
+     I have so much confidence, and also to the Lord Chamberlain.
+     I believed that Carbajal and Jeronimo would be there at such a time.
+     Our Lord is there, and He will order everything as He knows it to be
+     best for us.
+
+     "Carbajal reached here yesterday.  I wished to send him immediately
+     with this same order, but he excused himself profusely, saying that
+     his wife was at the point of death.  I shall see that he goes,
+     because he knows a great deal about these affairs.  I will also
+     endeavour to have your brother and your uncle go to kiss the hands
+     of Their Highnesses, and give them an account of the voyage if my
+     letters are not sufficient.  Take good care of your brother.  He has
+     a good disposition, and is no longer a boy.  Ten brothers would not
+     be too many for you.  I never found better friends to right or to
+     left than my brothers.  We must strive to obtain the government of
+     the Indies and then the adjustment of the revenues.  I gave you a
+     memorandum which told you what part of them belongs to me.  What
+     they gave to Carbajal was nothing and has turned to nothing.
+     Whoever desires to do so takes merchandise there, and so the eighth
+     is nothing, because, without contributing the eighth, I could send
+     to trade there without rendering account or going in company with
+     any one.  I said a great many times in the past that the
+     contribution of the eighth would come to nothing.  The eighth and
+     the rest belongs to me by reason of the concession which their
+     Highnesses made to me, as set forth in the book of my Privileges,
+     and also the third and the tenth.  Of the tenth I received nothing,
+     except the tenth of what their Highnesses receive; and it must be
+     the tenth of all the gold and other things which are found and
+     obtained, in whatever manner it may be, within this Admiralship, and
+     the tenth of all the merchandise which goes and comes from there,
+     after the expenses are deducted.  I have already said that in the
+     Book of Privileges the reason for this and for the rest which is
+     before the Tribunal of the Indies here in Seville, is clearly set
+     forth.
+
+     "We must strive to obtain a reply to my letter from their
+     Highnesses, and to have them order that these people be paid.  I
+     wrote in regard to this subject four days ago, and sent the letter
+     by Martin de Gamboa, and you must have seen the letter of Juan Lopez
+     with your own.
+
+     "It is said here that it has been ordered that three or four Bishops
+     of the Indies shall be sent or created, and that this matter is
+     referred to the Lord Bishop of Palencia.  After having commended me
+     to his Worship, tell him that I believe it will best serve their
+     Highnesses for me to talk with him before this matter is settled.
+
+     "Commend me to Diego Mendez, and show him this letter.  My illness
+     permits me to write only at night, because in the daytime my hands
+     are deprived of strength.  I believe that a son of Francisco Pinelo
+     will carry this letter.  Entertain him well, because he does
+     everything for me that he can, with much love and a cheerful
+     goodwill.  The caravel which broke her mast in starting from Santo
+     Domingo has arrived in the Algarves.  She brings the records of the
+     case of the Porras brothers.  Such ugly things and such grievous
+     cruelty as appear in this matter never were seen.  If their
+     Highnesses do not punish it, I do not know who will dare to go out
+     in their service with people.
+
+     "To-day is Monday.  I will endeavour to have your uncle and brother
+     start to-morrow.  Remember to write me very often, and tell Diego
+     Mendez to write at length.  Each day messengers go from here yonder.
+     May our Lord have you in His Holy keeping.
+
+     "Done in Seville, December 1.
+
+     "Your father who loves you as himself.
+
+                                                    .S.
+                                                  .S.A.S.
+                                                    XMY
+                                                 Xpo FERENS."
+
+
+The gout from which the Admiral suffered made riding impossible to him,
+and he had arranged to have himself carried to Court on a litter when he
+was able to move.  There is a grim and dismal significance in the
+particular litter that had been chosen: it was no other than the funeral
+bier which belonged to the Cathedral of Seville and had been built for
+Cardinal Mendoza.  A minute of the Cathedral Chapter records the granting
+to Columbus of the use of this strange conveyance; but one is glad to
+think that he ultimately made his journey in a less grim though more
+humble method.  But what are we to think of the taste of a man who would
+rather travel in a bier, so long as it had been associated with the
+splendid obsequies of a cardinal, than in the ordinary litter of every-
+day use?  It is but the old passion for state and splendour thus dismally
+breaking out again.
+
+He speaks of living on borrowed funds and of having devoted all his
+resources to the payment of his crew;, but that may be taken as an
+exaggeration.  He may have borrowed, but the man who can borrow easily
+from banks cannot be regarded as a poor man.  One is nevertheless
+grateful for these references, since they commemorate the Admiral's
+unfailing loyalty to those who shared his hardships, and his unwearied
+efforts to see that they received what was due to them.  Pleasant also
+are the evidences of warm family affection in those simple words of
+brotherly love, and the affecting advice to Diego that he should love his
+brother Ferdinand as Christopher loved Bartholomew.  It is a pleasant
+oasis in this dreary, sordid wailing after thirds and tenths and eighths.
+Good Diego Mendez, that honourable gentleman, was evidently also at Court
+at this time, honestly striving, we may be sure, to say a good word for
+the Admiral.
+
+Some time after this letter was written, and before the writing of the
+next, news reached Seville of the death of Queen Isabella.  For ten years
+her kind heart had been wrung by many sorrows.  Her mother had died in
+1496; the next year her only son and heir to the crown had followed; and
+within yet another year had died her favourite daughter, the Queen of
+Portugal.  Her other children were all scattered with the exception of
+Juana, whose semi-imbecile condition caused her parents an anxiety
+greater even than that caused by death.  As Isabella's life thus closed
+sombrely in, she applied herself more closely and more narrowly to such
+pious consolations as were available.  News from Flanders of the
+scandalous scenes between Philip and Juana in the summer of 1504 brought
+on an illness from which she really never recovered, a kind of feverish
+distress of mind and body in which her only alleviation was the
+transaction of such business as was possible for her in the direction of
+humanity and enlightenment.  She still received men of intellect and
+renown, especially travellers.  But she knew that her end was near, and
+as early as October she had made her will, in which her wishes as to the
+succession and government of Castile were clearly laid down.  There was
+no mention of Columbus in this will, which afterwards greatly mortified
+him; but it is possible that the poor Queen had by this time, even
+against her wish, come to share the opinions of her advisers that the
+rule of Columbus in the West Indies had not brought the most humane and
+happy results possible to the people there.
+
+During October and November her life thus beat itself away in a
+succession of duties faithfully performed, tasks duly finished,
+preparations for the great change duly made.  She died, as she would have
+wished to die, surrounded by friends who loved and admired her, and
+fortified by the last rites of the Church for her journey into the
+unknown.  Date, November 26, 1504, in the fifty-fourth year of her age.
+
+Columbus had evidently received the news from a public source, and felt
+mortified that Diego should not have written him a special letter.
+
+
+     Letter written by CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS to DON DIEGO, his Son,
+     December 3, 1504.
+
+     "VERY DEAR SON,--I wrote you at length day before yesterday and sent
+     it by Francisco Pinelo, and with this letter I send you a very full
+     memorandum.  I am very much astonished not to receive a letter from
+     you or from any one else, and this astonishment is shared by all who
+     know me.  Every one here has letters, and I, who have more reason to
+     expect them, have none.  Great care should be taken about this
+     matter.  The memorandum of which I have spoken above says enough,
+     and on this account I do not speak more at length here.  Your
+     brother and your uncle and Carbajal are going yonder.  You will
+     learn from them what is not said here.  May our Lord have you in His
+     Holy keeping.
+
+     "Done in Seville, December 3.
+
+     "Your father who loves you more than himself.
+
+                                                    .S.
+                                                  .S.A.S.
+                                                    XMY
+                                                 Xpo FERENS."
+
+
+     Document of COLUMBUS addressed to his Son, DIEGO, and intended to
+     accompany the preceding letter.
+
+     "A memorandum for you, my very dear son, Don Diego, of what occurs
+     to me at the present time which must be done:--The principal thing
+     is, affectionately and with great devotion to commend the soul of
+     the Queen, our Lady, to God.  Her life was always Catholic and Holy
+     and ready for all the things of His holy service, and for this
+     reason it must be believed that she is in His holy glory and beyond
+     the desires of this rough and wearisome world.  Then the next thing
+     is to be watchful and exert one's self in the service of the King,
+     our Lord, and to strive to keep him from being troubled.  His
+     Highness is the head of Christendom.  See the proverb which says
+     that when the head aches, all the members ache.  So that all good
+     Christians should entreat that he may have long life and health: and
+     those of us who are obliged to serve him more than others must join
+     in this supplication with great earnestness and diligence.  This
+     reason prompts me now with my severe illness to write you what I am
+     writing here, that his Highness may dispose matters for his service:
+     and for the better fulfilment I am sending your brother there, who,
+     although he is a child in days, is not a child in understanding; and
+     I am sending your uncle and Carbajal, so that if this, my writing,
+     is not sufficient, they, together with yourself, can furnish verbal
+     evidence.  In my opinion there is nothing so necessary for the
+     service of his Highness as the disposition and remedying of the
+     affair of the Indies.
+
+     "His Highness must now have there more than 40,000 or 50,000 gold
+     pieces.  I learned when I was there that the Governor had no desire
+     to send it to him.  It is believed among the other people as well
+     that there will be 150,000 pesos more, and the mines are very rich
+     and productive.  Most of the people there are common and ignorant,
+     and care very little for the circumstances.  The Governor is very
+     much hated by all of them, and it is to be feared that they may at
+     some time rebel.  If this should occur, which God forbid, the remedy
+     for the matter would then be difficult: and so it would be if
+     injustice were used toward them, either here or in other places,
+     with the great fame of the gold.  My opinion is that his Highness
+     should investigate this affair quickly and by means of a person who
+     is interested and who can go there with 150 or 200 people well
+     equipped, and remain there until it is well settled and without
+     suspicion, which cannot be done in less than three months: and that
+     an endeavour be made to raise two or three forces there.  The gold
+     there is exposed to great risk, as there are very few people to
+     protect it.  I say that there is a proverb here which says that the
+     presence of the owner makes the horse fat.  Here and wherever I may
+     be, I shall serve their Highnesses with joy, until my soul leaves
+     this body.
+
+     "Above I said that his Highness is the head of the Christians, and
+     that it is necessary for him to occupy himself in preserving them
+     and their lands.  For this reason people say that he cannot thus
+     provide a good government for all these Indies, and that they are
+     being lost and do not yield a profit, neither are they being handled
+     in a reasonable manner.  In my opinion it would serve him to intrust
+     this matter to some one who is distressed over the bad treatment of
+     his subjects.
+
+     "I wrote a very long letter to his Highness as soon as I arrived
+     here, fully stating the evils which require a prompt and efficient
+     remedy at once.  I have received no reply, nor have I seen any
+     provision made in the matter.  Some vessels are detained in San
+     Lucar by the weather.  I have told these gentlemen of the Board of
+     Trade that they must order them held until the King, our Lord, makes
+     provision in the matter, either by some person with other people,
+     or by writing.  This is very necessary and I know what I say.  It is
+     necessary that the authorities should order all the ports searched
+     diligently, to see that no one goes yonder to the Indies without
+     licence.  I have already said that there is a great deal of gold
+     collected in straw houses without any means of defence, and there
+     are many disorderly people in the country, and that the Governor is
+     hated, and that little punishment is inflicted and has been
+     inflicted upon those who have committed crimes and have come out
+     with their treasonable conduct approved.
+
+     "If his Highness decides to make some provision, it must be done at
+     once, so that these vessels may not be injured.
+
+     "I have heard that three Bishops are to be elected and sent to
+     Espanola.  If it pleases his Highness to hear me before concluding
+     this matter, I will tell in what manner God our Lord may be well
+     served and his Highness served and satisfied.
+
+     "I have given lengthy consideration to the provision for Espanola:"
+
+
+Yes, the Queen is in His Holy Glory, and beyond the desires of this rough
+and wearisome world; but we are not; we are still in a world where fifty
+thousand gold pieces can be of use to us, and where a word spoken in
+season, even in such a season of darkness, may have its effect with the
+King.  A strange time to talk to the King about gold; and perhaps Diego
+was wiser and kinder than his father thought in not immediately taking
+this strange document to King Ferdinand.
+
+
+     Letter written by CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS to DON DIEGO, his Son,
+     December 13, 1504
+
+     "VERY DEAR SON,--It is now eight days since your uncle and your
+     brother and Carbajal left here together, to kiss the royal hands of
+     his Highness, and to give an account of the voyage, and also to aid
+     you in the negotiation of whatever may prove to be necessary there.
+
+     "Don Ferdinand took from here 150 ducats to be expended at his
+     discretion.  He will have to spend some of it, but he will give you
+     what he has remaining.  He also carries a letter of credit for these
+     merchants.  You will see that it is very necessary to be careful in
+     dealing with them, because I had trouble there with the Governor, as
+     every one told me that I had there 11,000 or 12,000 castellanos, and
+     I had only 4000.  He wished to charge me with things for which I am
+     not indebted, and I, confiding in the promise of their Highnesses,
+     who ordered everything restored to me, decided to leave these
+     charges in the hope of calling him to account for them.  If any one
+     has money there, they do not dare ask for it, on account of his
+     haughtiness.  I very well know that after my departure he must have
+     received more than 5000 castellanos.  If it were possible for you to
+     obtain from his Highness an authoritative letter to the Governor,
+     ordering him to send the money without delay and a full account of
+     what belongs to me, by the person I might send there with my power
+     of attorney, it would be well; because he will not give it in any
+     other manner, neither to my friend Diaz or Velasquez, and they dare
+     not even speak of it to him.  Carbajal will very well know how this
+     must be done.  Let him see this letter.  The 150 ducats which Luis
+     de Soria sent you when I came are paid according to his desire.
+
+     "I wrote you at length and sent the letter by Don Ferdinand, also a
+     memorandum.  Now that I have thought over the matter further, I say
+     that, since at the time of my departure their Highnesses said over
+     their signature and verbally, that they would give me all that
+     belongs to me, according to my privileges--that the claim for the
+     third or the tenth and eighth mentioned in the memorandum must be
+     relinquished, and instead the chapter of their letter must be shown
+     where they write what I have said, and all that belongs to me must
+     be required, as you have it in writing in the Book of Privileges, in
+     which is also set forth the reason for my receiving the third,
+     eighth, and tenth; as there is always an opportunity to reduce the
+     sum desired by a person, although his Highness says in his letter
+     that he wishes to give me all that belongs to me.  Carbajal will
+     understand me very well if he sees this letter, and every one else
+     as well, as it is very clear.  I also wrote to his Highness and
+     finally reminded him that he must provide at once for this affair of
+     the Indies, that the people there may not be disturbed, and also
+     reminding him of the promise stated above.  You ought to see the
+     letter.
+
+     "With this letter I send you another letter of credit for the said
+     merchants.  I have already explained to you the reasons why expenses
+     should be moderated.  Show your uncle due respect, and treat your
+     brother as an elder brother should treat a younger.  You have no
+     other brother, and praised be our Lord, he is such a one as you need
+     very much.  He has proved and proves to be very intelligent.  Honour
+     Carbajal and Jeronimo and Diego Mendez.  Commend me to them all.  I
+     do not write them as there is nothing to write and this messenger is
+     in haste.  It is frequently rumoured here that the Queen, whom God
+     has, has left an order that I be restored to the possession of the
+     Indies.  On arrival, the notary of the fleet will send you the
+     records and the original of the case of the Porras brothers.  I have
+     received no news from your uncle and brother since they left.  The
+     water has been so high here that the river entered the city.
+
+     "If Agostin Italian and Francisco de Grimaldo do not wish to give
+     you the money you need, look for others there who are willing to
+     give it to you.  On the arrival here of your signature I will at
+     once pay them all that you have received: for at present there is
+     not a person here by whom I can send you money.
+
+     "Done to-day, Friday, December 13, 1504
+
+     "Your father who loves you more than himself.
+
+                                                    .S.
+                                                  .S.A.S.
+                                                    XMY
+                                                 Xpo FERENS."
+
+
+     Letter written by CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS to his Son, DON DIEGO,
+     December 21, 1504.
+
+     "VERY DEAR SON, The Lord Adelantado and your brother and Carbajal
+     left here sixteen days ago to go to the Court.  They have not
+     written me since.  Don Ferdinand carried 150 ducats.  He must spend
+     what is necessary, and he carries a letter, that the merchants may
+     furnish you with money.  I have sent you another letter since, with
+     the endorsement of Francisco de Ribarol, by Zamora, the courier, and
+     told you that if you had made provision for yourself by means of my
+     letter, not to use that of Francisco de Ribarol.  I say the same now
+     in regard to another letter which I send you with this one, for
+     Francisco Doria, which letter I send you for greater security that
+     you may not fail to be provided with money.  I have already told you
+     how necessary it is to be careful in the expenditure of the money,
+     until their Highnesses give us law and justice.  I also told you
+     that I had spent 1200 castellanos in bringing these people to
+     Castile, of which his Highness owes me the greater part, and I wrote
+     him in regard to it asking him to order the account settled.
+
+     "If possible I should like to receive letters here each day.  I
+     complain of Diego Mendez and of Jeronimo, as they do not write me:
+     and then of the others who do not write when they arrive there.  We
+     must strive to learn whether the Queen, whom God has in His keeping,
+     said anything about me in her will, and we must hurry the Lord
+     Bishop of Palencia, who caused the possession of the Indies by their
+     Highnesses and my remaining in Castile, for I was already on my way
+     to leave it.  And the Lord Chamberlain of his Highness must also be
+     hurried.  If by chance the affair comes to discussion, you must
+     strive to have them see the writing which is in the Book of
+     Privileges, which shows the reason why the third, eighth, and tenth
+     are owing me, as I told you in another letter.
+
+     "I have written to the Holy Father in regard to my voyage, as he
+     complained of me because I did not write him.  I send you a copy of
+     the letter.  I would like to have the King, our Lord, or the Lord
+     Bishop of Palencia see it before I send the letter, in order to
+     avoid false representations.
+
+     "Camacho has told a thousand falsehoods about me.  To my regret I
+     ordered him arrested.  He is in the church.  He says that after the
+     Holidays are past, he will go there if he is able.  If I owe him, he
+     must show by what reason; for I make oath that I do not know it, nor
+     is it true.
+
+     "If without importunity a licence can be procured for me to go on
+     mule-back, I will try to leave for the Court after January, and I
+     will even go without this licence.  But haste must be made that the
+     loss of the Indies, which is now imminent, may not take place.  May
+     our Lord have you in His keeping.
+
+     "Done to-day, December 21.
+
+     "Your father who loves you more than himself.
+
+                                                    .S.
+                                                  .S.A.S.
+                                                    XMY
+                                                 Xpo FERENS."
+
+
+     "This tenth which they give me is not the tenth which was promised
+     me.  The Privileges tell what it is, and there is also due me the
+     tenth of the profit derived from merchandise and from all other
+     things, of which I have received nothing.  Carbajal understands me
+     well.  Also remind Carbajal to obtain a letter from his Highness for
+     the Governor, directing him to send his accounts and the money I
+     have there, at once.  And it would be well that a Repostero of his
+     Highness should go there to receive this money, as there must be a
+     large amount due me.  I will strive to have these gentlemen of the
+     Board of Trade send also to say to the Governor that he must send my
+     share together with the gold belonging to their Highnesses.  But the
+     remedy for the other matter must not be neglected there on this
+     account.  I say that 7000 or 8000 pesos must have passed to my
+     credit there, which sum has been received since I left, besides the
+     other money which was not given to me.
+
+     "To my very dear son Don Diego at the Court."
+
+
+All this struggling for the due payment of eighths and tenths makes
+wearisome reading, and we need not follow the Admiral into his
+distinctions between one kind of tenth and another.  There is something
+to be said on his side, it must be remembered; the man had not received
+what was due to him; and although he was not in actual poverty, his only
+property in this world consisted of these very thirds and eighths and
+tenths.  But if we are inclined to think poorly of the Admiral for his
+dismal pertinacity, what are we to think of the people who took advantage
+of their high position to ignore consistently the just claims made upon
+them?
+
+There is no end to the Admiral's letter-writing at this time.
+Fortunately for us his letter to the Pope has been lost, or else we
+should have to insert it here; and we have had quite enough of his
+theological stupors.  As for the Queen's will, there was no mention of
+the Admiral in it; and her only reference to the Indies showed that she
+had begun to realise some of the disasters following his rule there, for
+the provisions that are concerned with the New World refer exclusively to
+the treatment of the natives, to whose succour, long after they were past
+succour, the hand of Isabella was stretched out from the grave.  The
+licence to travel on mule-back which the Admiral asked for was made
+necessary by a law which had been passed forbidding the use of mules for
+this purpose throughout Spain.  There had been a scarcity of horses for
+mounting the royal cavalry, and it was thought that the breeding of
+horses had been neglected on account of the greater cheapness and utility
+of mules.  It was to encourage the use and breeding of horses that an
+interdict was laid on the use of mules, and only the very highest persons
+in the land were allowed to employ them.
+
+
+Letter written by CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS to his Son, DON DIEGO,
+December 29, 1504.
+
+     "VERY DEAR SON,--I wrote you at length and sent it by Don Ferdinand,
+     who left to go yonder twenty-three days ago to-day, with the Lord
+     Adelantado and Carbajal, from whom I have since heard nothing.
+     Sixteen days ago to-day I wrote you and sent it by Zamora, the
+     courier, and I sent you a letter of credit for these merchants
+     endorsed by Francisco de Ribarol, telling them to give you the money
+     you might ask for.  And then, about eight days ago, I sent you by
+     another courier a letter endorsed by Francisco Soria, and these
+     letters are directed to Pantaleon and Agostin Italian, that they may
+     give it to you.  And with these letters goes a copy of a letter
+     which I wrote to the Holy Father in regard to the affairs of the
+     Indies, that he might not complain of me any more.  I sent this copy
+     for his Highness to see, or the Lord Bishop of Palencia, so as to
+     avoid false representations.  The payment of the people who went
+     with me has been delayed.  I have provided for them here what I have
+     been able.  They are poor and obliged to go in order to earn a
+     living.  They decided to go yonder.  They have been told here that
+     they will be dealt with as favourably as possible, and this is
+     right, although among them there are some who merit punishment more
+     than favours.  This is said of the rebels.  I gave these people a
+     letter for the Lord Bishop of Palencia.  Read it, and if it is
+     necessary for them to go and petition his Highness, urge your uncle
+     and brother and Carbajal to read it also, so that you can all help
+     them as much as possible.  It is right and a work of mercy, for no
+     one ever earned money with so many dangers and hardships and no one
+     has ever rendered such great service as these people.  It is said
+     that Camacho and Master Bernal wish to go there--two creatures for
+     whom God works few miracles: but if they go, it will be to do harm
+     rather than good.  They can do little because the truth always
+     prevails, as it did in Espanola, from which wicked people by means
+     of falsehoods have prevented any profit being received up to the
+     present time.  It is said that this Master Bernal was the beginning
+     of the treason.  He was taken and accused of many misdemeanours,
+     for each one of which he deserved to be quartered.  At the request
+     of your uncle and of others he was pardoned, on condition that if he
+     ever said the least word against me and my state the pardon should
+     be revoked and he should be under condemnation.  I send you a copy
+     of the case in this letter.  I send you a legal document about
+     Camacho.  For more than eight days he has not left the church on
+     account of his rash statements and falsehoods.  He has a will made
+     by Terreros, and other relatives of the latter have another will of
+     more recent date, which renders the first will null, as far as the
+     inheritance is concerned: and I am entreated to enforce the latter
+     will, so that Camacho will be obliged to restore what he has
+     received.  I shall order a legal document drawn up and served upon
+     him, because I believe it is a work of mercy to punish him, as he is
+     so unbridled in his speech that some one must punish him without the
+     rod: and it will not be so much against the conscience of the
+     chastiser, and will injure him more.  Diego Mendez knows Master
+     Bernal and his works very well.  The Governor wished to imprison him
+     at Espanola and left him to my consideration.  It is said that he
+     killed two men there with medicines in revenge for something of less
+     account than three beans.  I would be glad of the licence to travel
+     on muleback and of a good mule, if they can be obtained without
+     difficulty.  Consult all about our affairs, and tell them that I do
+     not write them in particular on account of the great pain I feel
+     when writing.  I do not say that they must do the same, but that
+     each one must write me and very often, for I feel great sorrow that
+     all the world should have letters from there each day, and I have
+     nothing, when I have so many people there.  Commend me to the Lord
+     Adelantado in his favour, and give my regards to your brother and to
+     all the others.
+
+     "Done at Seville, December 29.
+
+     "Your father who loves you more than himself.
+
+                                                    .S.
+                                                  .S.A.S.
+                                                    XMY
+                                                 Xpo FERENS."
+
+
+"I say further that if our affairs are to be settled according to
+conscience, that the chapter of the letter which their Highnesses wrote
+me when I departed, in which they say they will order you placed in
+possession, must be shown; and the writing must also be shown which is in
+the Book of Privileges, which shows how in reason and in justice the
+third and eighth and the tenth are mine.  There will always be
+opportunity to make reductions from this amount."
+
+Columbus's requests were not all for himself; nothing could be more
+sincere or generous than the spirit in which he always strove to secure
+the just payment of his mariners.
+
+Otherwise he is still concerned with the favour shown to those who were
+treasonable to him.  Camacho was still hiding in a church, probably from
+the wrath of Bartholomew Columbus; but Christopher has more subtle ways
+of punishment.  A legal document, he considers, will be better than a
+rod; "it will not be so much against the conscience of the chastiser, and
+will injure him (the chastised) more."
+
+
+     Letter written by CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS to DON DIEGO, his Son,
+     January 18, 1505.
+
+     "VERY DEAR SON,--I wrote you at length by the courier who will
+     arrive there to-day, and sent you a letter for the Lord Chamberlain.
+     I intended to inclose in it a copy of that chapter of the letter
+     from their Highnesses in which they say they will order you placed
+     in possession; but I forgot to do it here.  Zamora, the courier,
+     came.  I read your letter and also those of your uncle and brother
+     and Carbajal, and felt great pleasure in learning that they had
+     arrived well, as I had been very anxious about them.  Diego Mendez
+     will leave here in three or four days with the order of payment
+     prepared.  He will take a long statement of everything and I will
+     write to Juan Velasquez.  I desire his friendship and service.  I
+     believe that he is a very honourable gentleman.  If the Lord Bishop
+     of Palencia has come, or comes, tell him how much pleased I have
+     been with his prosperity, and that if I go there I must stop with
+     his Worship even if he does not wish it, and that we must return to
+     our first fraternal love.  And that he could not refuse it because
+     my service will force him to have it thus.  I said that the letter
+     for the Holy Father was sent that his Worship might see it if he was
+     there, and also the Lord Archbishop of Seville, as the King might
+     not have opportunity to read it.  I have already told you that the
+     petition to their Highnesses must be for the fulfilment of what they
+     wrote me about the possession and of the rest which was promised me.
+     I said that this chapter of the letter must be shown them and said
+     that it must not be delayed, and that this is advisable for an
+     infinite number of reasons.  His Highness may believe that, however
+     much he gives me, the increase of his exalted dominions and revenue
+     will be in the proportion of 100 to 1, and that there is no
+     comparison between what has been done and what is to be done.  The
+     sending of a Bishop to Espanola must be delayed until I speak to his
+     Highness.  It must not be as in the other cases when it was thought
+     to mend matters and they were spoiled.  There have been some cold
+     days here and they have caused me great fatigue and fatigue me now.
+     Commend me to the favour of the Lord Adelantado.  May our Lord guard
+     and bless you and your brother.  Give my regards to Carbajal and
+     Jeronimo.  Diego Mendez will carry a full pouch there.  I believe
+     that the affair of which you wrote can be very easily managed.  The
+     vessels from the Indies have not arrived from Lisbon.  They brought
+     a great deal of gold, and none for me.  So great a mockery was never
+     seen, for I left there 60,000 pesos smelted.  His Highness should
+     not allow so great an affair to be ruined, as is now taking place.
+     He now sends to the Governor a new provision.  I do not know what it
+     is about.  I expect letters each day.  Be very careful about
+     expenditures, for it is necessary.
+
+     "Done January 18.
+     "Your father who loves you more than himself.
+
+
+There is playful reference here to Fonseca, with whom Columbus was
+evidently now reconciled; and he was to be buttonholed and made to read
+the Admiral's letter to the Pope.  Diego Mendez is about to start, and is
+to make a "long statement"; and in the meantime the Admiral will write as
+many long letters as he has time for.  Was there no friend at hand, I
+wonder, with wit enough to tell the Admiral that every word he wrote
+about his grievances was sealing his doom, so far as the King was
+concerned.?  No human being could have endured with patience this
+continuous heavy firing at long range to which the Admiral subjected his
+friends at Court; every post that arrived was loaded with a shrapnel of
+grievances, the dull echo of which must have made the ears of those who
+heard it echo with weariness.  Things were evidently humming in Espanola;
+large cargoes of negroes had been sent out to take the place of the dead
+natives, and under the harsh driving of Ovando the mines were producing
+heavily.  The vessels that arrived from the Indies brought a great deal
+of gold; "but none for me."
+
+
+     Letter written by CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS to his Son, DON DIEGO,
+     February 5, 1505.
+
+     "VERY DEAR SON,--Diego Mendez left here Monday, the 3rd of this
+     month.  After his departure I talked with Amerigo Vespucci, the
+     bearer of this letter, who is going yonder, where he is called in
+     regard to matters of navigation.  He was always desirous of pleasing
+     me.  He is a very honourable man.  Fortune has been adverse to him
+     as it has been to many others.  His labours have not profited him as
+     much as reason demands.  He goes for me, and is very desirous of
+     doing something to benefit me if it is in his power.  I do not know
+     of anything in which I can instruct him to my benefit, because I do
+     not know what is wanted of him there.  He is going with the
+     determination to do everything for me in his power.  See what he can
+     do to profit me there, and strive to have him do it; for he will do
+     everything, and will speak and will place it in operation: and it
+     must all be done secretly so that there may be no suspicion.
+
+     "I have told him all that could be told regarding this matter, and
+     have informed him of the payment which has been made to me and is
+     being made.  This letter is for the Lord Adelantado also, that he
+     may see how Amerigo Vespucci can be useful, and advise him about it.
+     His Highness may believe that his ships went to the best and richest
+     of the Indies, and if anything remains to be learned more than has
+     been told, I will give the information yonder verbally, because it
+     is impossible to give it in writing.  May our Lord have you in his
+     Holy keeping.
+
+     "Done in Seville, February 5.
+
+     "Your father who loves you more than himself.
+
+
+This letter has a significance which raises it out of the ruck of this
+complaining correspondence.  Amerigo Vespucci had just returned from his
+long voyage in the West, when he had navigated along an immense stretch
+of the coast of America, both north and south, and had laid the
+foundations of a fame which was, for a time at least, to eclipse that of
+Columbus.  Probably neither of the two men realised it at this interview,
+or Columbus would hardly have felt so cordially towards the man who was
+destined to rob him of so much glory.  As a matter of fact the practical
+Spaniards were now judging entirely by results; and a year or two later,
+when the fame of Columbus had sunk to insignificance, he was merely
+referred to as the discoverer of certain islands, while Vespucci, who
+after all had only followed in his lead, was hailed as the discoverer of
+a great continent.  Vespucci has been unjustly blamed for this state of
+affairs, although he could no more control the public estimate of his
+services than Columbus could.  He was a more practical man than Columbus,
+and he made a much better impression on really wise and intelligent men;
+and his discoveries were immediately associated with trade and colonial
+development, while Columbus had little to show for his discoveries during
+his lifetime but a handful of gold dust and a few cargoes of slaves.  At
+any rate it was a graceful act on the part of Vespucci, whose star was in
+the ascendant, to go and seek out the Admiral, whose day was fast verging
+to night; it was one of those disinterested actions that live and have a
+value of their own, and that shine out happily amid the surrounding murk
+and confusion.
+
+
+     Letter signed by CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS to DON DIEGO, his Son,
+     February 25, 1505.
+
+     "VERY DEAR SON,--The Licientiate de Zea is a person whom I desire to
+     honour.  He has in his charge two men who are under prosecution at
+     the hands of justice, as shown by the information which is inclosed
+     in this letter.  See that Diego Mendez places the said petition with
+     the others, that they may be given to his Highness during Holy Week
+     for pardon.  If the pardon is granted, it is well, and if not, look
+     for some other manner of obtaining it.  May our Lord have you in His
+     Holy keeping.  Done in Seville, February 25, 1505.  I wrote you and
+     sent it by Amerigo Vespucci.  See that he sends you the letter
+     unless you have already received it.
+
+     "Your father.
+                    Xpo FERENS.//"
+
+
+This is the last letter of Columbus known to us otherwise an entirely
+unimportant document, dealing with the most transient affairs.  With it
+we gladly bring to an end this exposure of a greedy and querulous period,
+which speaks so eloquently for itself that the less we say and comment on
+it the better.
+
+In the month of May the Admiral was well enough at last to undertake the
+journey to Segovia.  He travelled on a mule, and was accompanied by his
+brother Bartholomew and his son Ferdinand.  When he reached the Court he
+found the King civil and outwardly attentive to his recitals, but
+apparently content with a show of civility and outward attention.
+Columbus was becoming really a nuisance; that is the melancholy truth.
+The King had his own affairs to attend to; he was already meditating a
+second marriage, and thinking of the young bride he was to bring home to
+the vacant place of Isabella; and the very iteration of Columbus's
+complaints and demands had made them lose all significance for the King.
+He waved them aside with polite and empty promises, as people do the
+demands of importunate children; and finally, to appease the Admiral and
+to get rid of the intolerable nuisance of his applications, he referred
+the whole question, first to Archbishop DEA, and then to the body of
+councillors which had been appointed to interpret Queen Isabella's will.
+The whole question at issue was whether or not the original agreement
+with Columbus, which had been made before his discoveries, should be
+carried out.  The King, who had foolishly subscribed to it simply as a
+matter of form, never believing that anything much could come of it, was
+determined that it should not be carried out, as it would give Columbus a
+wealth and power to which no mere subject of a crown was entitled.  The
+Admiral held fast to his privileges; the only thing that he would consent
+to submit to arbitration was the question of his revenues; but his titles
+and territorial authorities he absolutely stuck to.  Of course the
+council did exactly what the King had done.  They talked about the thing
+a great deal, but they did nothing.  Columbus was an invalid and broken
+man, who might die any day, and it was obviously to their interest to
+gain time by discussion and delay--a cruel game for our Christopher, who
+knew his days on earth to be numbered, and who struggled in that web of
+time in which mortals try to hurry the events of the present and delay
+the events of the future.  Meanwhile Philip of Austria and his wife
+Juana, Isabella's daughter, had arrived from Flanders to assume the crown
+of Castile, which Isabella had bequeathed to them.  Columbus saw a chance
+for himself in this coming change, and he sent Bartholomew as an envoy to
+greet the new Sovereigns, and to enlist their services on the Admiral's
+behalf.  Bartholomew was very well received, but he was too late to be of
+use to the Admiral, whom he never saw again; and this is our farewell to
+Bartholomew, who passes out of our narrative here.  He went to Rome after
+Christopher's death on a mission to the Pope concerning some fresh
+voyages of discovery; and in 1508 he made, so far as we know, his one
+excursion into romance, when he assisted at the production of an
+illegitimate little girl--his only descendant.  He returned to Espanola
+under the governorship of his nephew Diego, and died there in 1514--
+stern, valiant, brotherly soul, whose devotion to Christopher must be for
+ever remembered and honoured with the name of the Admiral.
+
+
+From Segovia Columbus followed the Court to Salamanca and thence to
+Valladolid, where his increasing illness kept him a prisoner after the
+Court had left to greet Philip and Juana.  He had been in attendance upon
+it for nearly a year, and without any results: and now, as his infirmity
+increased, he turned to the settling of his own affairs, and drawing up
+of wills and codicils--all very elaborate and precise.  In these
+occupations his worldly affairs were duly rounded off; and on May 19,
+1506, having finally ratified a will which he had made in Segovia a year
+before, in which the descent of his honours was entailed upon Diego and
+his heirs, or failing him Ferdinand and his heirs, or failing him
+Bartholomew and his heirs, he turned to the settlement of his soul.
+
+His illness had increased gradually but surely, and he must have known
+that he was dying.  He was not without friends, among them the faithful
+Diego Mendez, his son Ferdinand, and a few others.  His lodging was in a
+small house in an unimportant street of Valladolid, now called the "Calle
+de Colon"; the house, .No. 7, still standing, and to be seen by curious
+eyes.  As the end approached, the Admiral, who was being attended by
+Franciscan monks, had himself clothed in a Franciscan habit; and so, on
+the 20th May 1506, he lay upon his bed, breathing out his life.
+
+               .  .  .  And as strange thoughts
+               Grow with a certain humming in my ears,
+               About the life before I lived this life,
+               And this life too, Popes, Cardinals, and priests,
+               Your tall pale mother with her talking eyes
+               And new-found agate urns fresh as day .  .  .
+
+.  .  .  we do not know what his thoughts were, as the shadows grew
+deeper about him, as the sounds of the world, the noises from the sunny
+street, grew fainter, and the images and sounds of memory clearer and
+louder.  Perhaps as he lay there with closed eyes he remembered things
+long forgotten, as dying people do; sounds and smells of the Vico Dritto
+di Ponticelli, and the feel of the hot paving-stones down which his
+childish feet used to run to the sea; noises of the sea also, the
+drowning swish of waters and sudden roar of breakers sounding to
+anxiously strained ears in the still night; bright sunlit pictures of
+faraway tropical shores, with handsome olive figures glistening in the
+sun; the sight of strange faces, the sound of strange speech, the smell
+of a strange land; the glitter of gold; the sudden death-shriek breaking
+the stillness of some sylvan glade; the sight of blood on the grass .  .
+.  .  The Admiral's face undergoes a change; there is a stir in the room;
+some one signs to the priest Gaspar, who brings forth his sacred wafer
+and holy oils and administers the last sacraments.  The wrinkled eyelids
+flutter open, the sea-worn voice feebly frames the responses; the dying
+eyes are fixed on the crucifix; and--"In manus tuas Domine commendo
+spiritum meum."  The Admiral is dead.
+
+He was in his fifty-sixth year, already an old man in body and mind; and
+his death went entirely unmarked except by his immediate circle of
+friends.  Even Peter Martyr, who was in Valladolid just before and just
+after it, and who was writing a series of letters to various
+correspondents giving all the news of his day, never thought it worth
+while to mention that Christopher Columbus was dead.  His life flickered
+out in the completest obscurity.  It is not even known where he was first
+buried; but probably it was in the Franciscan convent at Valladolid.
+This, however, was only a temporary resting-place; and a few years later
+his body was formally interred in the choir of the monastery of Las
+Cuevas at Seville, there to lie for thirty years surrounded by continual
+chauntings.  After that it was translated to the cathedral in San
+Domingo; rested there for 250 years, and then, on the cession of that
+part of the island to France, the body was removed to Cuba.  But the
+Admiral was by this time nothing but a box of bones and dust, as also
+were brother Bartholomew and son Diego, and Diego's son, all collected
+together in that place.  There were various examinations of the bone-
+boxes; one, supposed to be the Admiral's, was taken to Cuba and solemnly
+buried there; and lately, after the conquest of the island in the
+Spanish-American War, this box of bones was elaborately conveyed to
+Seville, where it now rests.
+
+But in the meanwhile the Chapter of the cathedral in San Domingo had made
+new discoveries and examinations; had found another box of bones, which
+bore to them authentic signs that the dust it contained was the Admiral's
+and not his grandson's; and in spite of the Academy of History at Madrid,
+it is indeed far from unlikely that the Admiral's dust does not lie in
+Spain or Cuba, but in San Domingo still.  Whole books have been written
+about these boxes of bones; learned societies have argued about them,
+experts have examined the bones and the boxes with microscopes; and
+meantime the dust of Columbus, if we take the view that an error was
+committed in the transference to Cuba, is not even collected all in one
+box.  A sacrilegious official acquired some of it when the boxes were
+opened, and distributed it among various curiosity-hunters, who have
+preserved it in caskets of crystal and silver.  Thus a bit of him is worn
+by an American lady in a crystal locket; a pinch of him lies
+in a glass vial in a New York mansion; other pinches in the Lennox
+Library, New York, in the Vatican, and in the University of Pavia.  In
+such places, if the Admiral should fail to appear at the first note of
+their trumpets, must the Angels of the Resurrection make search.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE MAN COLUMBUS
+
+It is not in any leaden box or crystal vase that we must search for the
+true remains of Christopher Columbus.  Through these pages we have
+traced, so far as has been possible, the course of his life, and followed
+him in what he did; all of which is but preparation for our search for
+the true man, and just estimate of what he was.  We have seen, dimly,
+what his youth was; that he came of poor people who were of no importance
+to the world at large; that he earned his living as a working man; that
+he became possessed of an Idea; that he fought manfully and diligently
+until he had realised it; and that then he found himself in a position
+beyond his powers to deal with, not being a strong enough swimmer to hold
+his own in the rapid tide of events which he himself had set flowing; and
+we have seen him sinking at last in that tide, weighed down by the very
+things for which he had bargained and stipulated.  If these pages had
+been devoted to a critical examination of the historical documents on
+which his life-story is based we should also have found that he
+continually told lies about himself, and misrepresented facts when the
+truth proved inconvenient to him; that he was vain and boastful to a
+degree that can only excite our compassion.  He was naturally and
+sincerely pious, and drew from his religion much strength and spiritual
+nourishment; but he was also capable of hypocrisy, and of using the self-
+same religion as a cloak for his greed and cruelty.  What is the final
+image that remains in our minds of such a man?  To answer this question
+we must examine his life in three dimensions.  There was its great
+outline of rise, zenith, and decline; there was its outward history in
+minute detail, and its conduct in varying circumstances; and there was
+the inner life of the man's soul, which was perhaps simpler than some of
+us think.  And first, as to his life as a single thing.  It rose in
+poverty, it reached a brief and dazzling zenith of glory, it set in
+clouds and darkness; the fame of it suffered a long night of eclipse,
+from which it was rescued and raised again to a height of glory which
+unfortunately was in sufficiently founded on fact; and as a reaction from
+this, it has been in danger of becoming entirely discredited, and the man
+himself denounced as a fraud.  The reason for these surprising changes is
+that in those fifty-five years granted to Columbus for the making of his
+life he did not consistently listen to that inner voice which alone can
+hold a man on any constructive path.  He listened to it at intervals, and
+he drew his inspiration from it; but he shut his ears when it had served
+him, when it had brought him what he wanted.  In his moments of success
+he guided himself by outward things; and thus he was at one moment a seer
+and ready to be a martyr, and at the next moment he was an opportunist,
+watching to see which way the wind would blow, and ready to trim his
+sails in the necessary direction.  Such conduct of a man's life does not
+make for single light or for true greatness; rather for dim, confused
+lights, and lofty heights obscured in cloud.
+
+If we examine his life in detail we find this alternating principle of
+conduct revealed throughout it.  He was by nature clever, kind-hearted,
+rather large-souled, affectionate, and not very honest; all the acts
+prompted by his nature bear the stamp of these qualities.  To them his
+early years had probably added little except piety, sharp practice, and
+that uncomfortable sense, often bred amid narrow and poor surroundings,
+that one must keep a sharp look-out for oneself if one is to get a share
+of the world's good things.  Something in his blood, moreover, craved for
+dignity and the splendour of high-sounding titles; craved for power also,
+and the fulfilment of an arrogant pride.  All these things were in his
+Ligurian blood, and he breathed them in with the very air of Genoa.  His
+mind was of the receptive rather than of the constructive kind, and it
+was probably through those long years spent between sea voyages and brief
+sojourns with his family in Genoa or Savona that he conceived that vague
+Idea which, as I have tried to show, formed the impulse of his life
+during its brief initiative period.  Having once received this Idea of
+discovery and like all other great ideas, it was in the air at the time
+and was bound to take shape in some human brain--he had all his native
+and personal qualities to bring to its support.  The patience to await
+its course he had learned from his humble and subordinate life.  The
+ambition to work for great rewards was in his blood and race; and to
+belief in himself, his curious vein of mystical piety was able to add the
+support of a ready belief in divine selection.  This very time of waiting
+and endurance of disappointments also helped to cultivate in his
+character two separate qualities--an endurance or ability to withstand
+infinite hardship and disappointment; and also a greedy pride that
+promised itself great rewards for whatever should be endured.
+
+In all active matters Columbus was what we call a lucky man.  It was luck
+that brought him to Guanahani; and throughout his life this element of
+good luck continually helped him.  He was lucky, that is to say, in his
+relation with inanimate things; but in his relations with men he was
+almost as consistently unlucky.  First of all he was probably a bad judge
+of men.  His humble origin and his lack of education naturally made him
+distrustful.  He trusted people whom he should have regarded with
+suspicion, and he was suspicious of those whom he ought to have known he
+could trust.  If people pleased him, he elevated them with absurd
+rapidity to stations far beyond their power to fill, and then wondered
+that they sometimes turned upon him; if they committed crimes against
+him, he either sought to regain their favour by forgiving them, or else
+dogged them with a nagging, sulky resentment, and expected every one else
+to punish them also.  He could manage men if he were in the midst of
+them; there was something winning as well as commanding about his actual
+presence, and those who were devoted to him would have served him to the
+death.  But when he was not on the spot all his machineries and affairs
+went to pieces; he had no true organising ability; no sooner did he take
+his hand off any affair for which he was responsible than it immediately
+came to confusion.  All these defects are to be attributed to his lack of
+education and knowledge of the world.  Mental discipline is absolutely
+necessary for a man who would discipline others; and knowledge of the
+world is essential for one who would successfully deal with men, and
+distinguish those whom he can from those whom he cannot trust.  Defects
+of this nature, which sometimes seem like flaws in the man's character,
+may be set down to this one disability--that he was not educated and was
+not by habit a man of the world.
+
+All his sins of misgovernment, then, may be condoned on the ground that
+governing is a science, and that Columbus had never learned it.  What we
+do find, however, is that the inner light that had led him across the
+seas never burned clearly for him again, and was never his guide in the
+later part of his life.  Its radiance was quenched by the gleam of gold;
+for there is no doubt that Columbus was a victim of that baleful
+influence which has caused so much misery in this world.  He was greedy
+of gold for himself undoubtedly; but he was still more greedy of it for
+Spain.  It was his ambition to be the means of filling the coffers of the
+Spanish Sovereigns and so acquiring immense dignity and glory for
+himself.  He believed that gold was in itself a very precious and
+estimable thing; he knew that masses and candles could be bought for it,
+and very real spiritual privileges; and as he made blunder after blunder,
+and saw evil after evil heaping itself on his record in the New World, he
+became the more eager and frantic to acquire such a treasure of gold that
+it would wipe out the other evils of his administration.  And once
+involved in that circle, there was no help for him.
+
+The man himself was a simple man; capable, when the whole of his various
+qualities were directed upon one single thing, of that greatness which is
+the crown of simplicity.  Ambition was the keynote of his life; not an
+unworthy keynote, by any means, if only the ambition be sound; but one
+serious defect of Columbus's ambition was that it was retrospective
+rather than perspective.  He may have had, before he sailed from Palos,
+an ambition to be the discoverer of a New World; but I do not think he
+had.  He believed there were islands or land to be discovered in the West
+if only he pushed on far enough; and he was ambitious to find them and
+vindicate his belief.  Afterwards, when he had read a little more, and
+when he conceived the plan of pretending that he had all along meant to
+discover the Indies and a new road to the East, he acted in accordance
+with that pretence; he tried to make his acts appear retrospectively as
+though they had been prompted by a design quite different from that by
+which they had really been prompted.  When he found that his discovery
+was regarded as a great scientific feat, he made haste to pretend that it
+had all along been meant as such, and was in fact the outcome of an
+elaborate scientific theory.  In all this there is nothing for praise or
+admiration.  It indicates the presence of moral disease; but fortunately
+it is functional rather than organic disease.  He was right and sound at
+heart; but he spread his sails too readily to the great winds of popular
+favour, and the result was instability to himself, and often danger of
+shipwreck to his soul.
+
+The ultimate test of a man's character is how he behaves in certain
+circumstances when there is no great audience to watch him, and when
+there is no sovereign close at hand with bounties and rewards to offer.
+In a word, what matters most is a man's behaviour, not as an admiral, or
+a discoverer, or a viceroy, or a courtier, but as a man.  In this respect
+Columbus's character rings true.  If he was little on little occasions,
+he was also great on great occasions.  The inner history of his fourth
+voyage, if we could but know it and could take all the circumstances into
+account, would probably reveal a degree of heroic endurance that has
+never been surpassed in the history of mankind.  Put him as a man face to
+face with a difficulty, with nothing but his wits to devise with and his
+two hands to act with, and he is never found wanting.  And that is the
+kind of man of whom discoverers are made.  The mere mathematician may
+work out the facts with the greatest accuracy and prove the existence of
+land at a certain point; but there is great danger that he may be knocked
+down by a club on his first landing on the beach, and never bring home
+any news of his discovery.  The great courtier may do well for himself
+and keep smooth and politic relations with kings; the great administrator
+may found a wonderful colony; but it is the man with the wits and the
+hands, and some bigness of heart to tide him over daunting passages, that
+wins through the first elementary risks of any great discovery.  Properly
+considered, Columbus's fame should rest simply on the answer to the
+single question, "Did he discover new lands as he said he would?"  That
+was the greatest thing he could do, and the fact that he failed to do a
+great many other things afterwards, failed the more conspicuously because
+his attempts were so conspicuous, should have no effect on our estimate
+of his achievement.  The fame of it could no more be destroyed by himself
+than it can be destroyed by us.
+
+True understanding of a man and estimate of his character can only be
+arrived at by methods at once more comprehensive and more subtle than
+those commonly employed among men.  Everything that he sees, does, and
+suffers has its influence on the moulding of his character; and he must
+be considered in relation to his physical environment, no less than to
+his race and ancestry.  Christopher Columbus spent a great part of his
+active life on the sea; it was sea-life which inspired him with his great
+Idea, it was by the conquest of the sea that he realised it; it was on
+the sea that all his real triumphs over circumstance and his own weaker
+self were won.  The influences at work upon a man whose life is spent on
+the sea are as different from those at work upon one who lives on the
+fields as the environment of a gannet is different from the environment
+of a skylark: and yet how often do we really attempt to make due
+allowance for this great factor and try to estimate the extent of its
+moulding influence?
+
+To live within sound or sight of the sea is to be conscious of a voice or
+countenance that holds you in unyielding bonds.  The voice, being
+continuous, creeps into the very pulses and becomes part of the pervading
+sound or silence of a man's environment; and the face, although it never
+regards him, holds him with its changes and occupies his mind with its
+everlasting riddle.  Its profound inattention to man is part of its power
+over his imagination; for although it is so absorbed and busy, and has
+regard for sun and stars and a melancholy frowning concentration upon the
+foot of cliffs, it is never face to face with man: he can never come
+within the focus of its great glancing vision.  It is somewhere beyond
+time and space that the mighty perspective of those focal rays comes to
+its point; and they are so wide and eternal in their sweep that we should
+find their end, could we but trace them, in a condition far different
+from that in which our finite views and ethics have place.  In the man
+who lives much on the sea we always find, if he be articulate, something
+of the dreamer and the mystic; that very condition of mind, indeed, which
+we have traced in Columbus, which sometimes led him to such heights, and
+sometimes brought him to such variance with the human code.
+
+A face that will not look upon you can never give up its secret to you;
+and the face of the sea is like the face of a picture or a statue round
+which you may circle, looking at it from this point and from that, but
+whose regard is fixed on something beyond and invisible to you; or it is
+like the face of a person well known to you in life, a face which you
+often see in various surroundings, from different angles, now
+unconscious, now in animated and smiling intercourse with some one else,
+but which never turns upon you the light of friendly knowledge and
+recognition; in a word, it is unconscious of you, like all elemental
+things.  In the legend of the Creation it is written that when God saw
+the gathering together of the waters which he called the Seas, he saw
+that it was good; and he perhaps had the right to say so.  But the man
+who uses the sea and whose life's pathway is laid on its unstable surface
+can hardly sum up his impressions of it so simply as to say that it is
+good.  It is indeed to him neither good nor bad; it is utterly beyond and
+outside all he knows or invents of good and bad, and can never have any
+concern with his good or his bad.  It remains the pathway and territory
+of powers and mysteries, thoughts and energies on a gigantic and
+elemental scale; and that is why the mind of man can never grapple with
+the unconsciousness of the sea or his eye meet its eye.  Yet it is the
+mariner's chief associate, whether as adversary or as ally; his attitude
+to things outside himself is beyond all doubt influenced by his attitude
+towards it; and a true comprehension of the man Columbus must include a
+recognition of this constant influence on him, and of whatever effect
+lifelong association with so profound and mysterious an element may have
+had on his conduct in the world of men.  Better than many documents as an
+aid to our understanding of him would be intimate association with the
+sea, and prolonged contemplation of that face with which he was so
+familiar.  We can never know the heart of it, but we can at least look
+upon the face, turned from us though it is, upon which he looked.  Cloud
+shadows following a shimmer of sunlit ripples; lines and runes traced on
+the surface of a blank calm; salt laughter of purple furrows with the
+foam whipping off them; tides and eddies, whirls, overfalls, ripples,
+breakers, seas mountains high-they are but movements and changing
+expressions on an eternal countenance that once held his gaze and wonder,
+as it will always hold the gaze and wonder of those who follow the sea.
+
+So much of the man Christopher Columbus, who once was and no longer is;
+perished, to the last bone and fibre of him, off the face of the earth,
+and living now only by virtue of such truth as there was in him; who once
+manfully, according to the light that he had, bore Christ on his
+shoulders across stormy seas, and found him often, in that dim light, a
+heavy and troublesome burden; who dropped light and burden together on
+the shores of his discovery, and set going in that place of peace such a
+conflagration as mankind is not likely to see again for many a
+generation, if indeed ever again, in this much-tortured world, such
+ancient peace find place.
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+Presence of the owner makes the horse fat
+Spaniards sometimes hanged thirteen of them in a row
+Spaniards undertook to teach the heathen the Christian religion
+The cross and the sword, the whip-lash and the Gospel
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of Christopher Columbus, v8
+by Filson Young
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS FOR THE ENTIRE CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS:
+
+A man standing on the sea-shore
+Absent for a little time, and his organisation went to pieces
+All days, however hard, have an evening, and all journeys an end
+Amerigo Vespucci
+And every one goes naked and unashamed
+At last extricate himself from the theological stupor
+Attempts that have been made to glorify him socially
+Bede, in the eighth century, established it finally (sphericity)
+Began to offer bargains to the Almighty
+Believed that the Spaniards came from heaven
+Biography which obscures the truth with legends and pretences
+Cannibal epicures did not care for the flesh of women and boys
+Christian era denied the theory of the roundness of the earth
+Columbus, calling for an egg, laid a wager
+Columbus never once mentions his wife
+Columbus's habit of being untruthful in regard to his own past
+Cooling off in his enthusiasm as the pastime became a task
+Desire to get a great deal of money without working for it
+Diminishing object to the wet eyes of his mother, sailed away
+Dogs wagged their tails, but that never barked
+Establishment of ten footmen and twenty other servants
+Exchanging the natives for cattle
+First known discovery of tobacco by Europeans
+First organised transaction of slavery on the part of Columbus
+Freed by force and with guns
+Having issued three Bulls in twenty-four hours, he desisted
+He had a way of rising above petty indignities
+He was a great stickler for the observances of religion
+Hearts quick to burn, quick to forget
+Heretics were being burned every year by the Grand Inquisitor
+High time, indeed, that they should be taught to wear clothing
+Idea of importing black African labour to the New World
+Ideas to him were of more value than facts
+If there were no results, there would be no rewards
+Inclined to be pompous
+Irving: so inaccurate, so untrue to life, and so profoundly dull
+Islands in that sea had their greatest length east and west
+Juan Ponce de Leon, the discoverer of Florida
+Learn the blessings of Christianity under the whip
+Lives happily in our dreams, as blank as sunshine
+Logic is irresistible if you only grant the first little step
+Loose way in which the term India was applied in the Middle Ages
+Man with a Grievance
+Man of single rather than manifold ideas
+More than a touch of crafty and elaborate dissimulation
+Nautical phrase "make it so."
+Never to deal with subordinates
+No more troubled by any wonder, sleeps at last
+No Spanish women accompanied it (2d expedition)
+Nothing so ludicrous as an Idea to those who do not share it
+Only confirmative evidence remained
+Patience which holds men back from theorising
+Presence of the owner makes the horse fat
+Professors of Christ brought not peace, but a sword
+Religion has in our days fallen into decay
+Saw potatoes also, although they did not know what they were
+Sea of Darkness
+Seeking to hire the protection of the Virgin
+She must either sin or be celibate
+Shifts and deceits that he practised
+Spaniards sometimes hanged thirteen of them in a row
+Spaniards undertook to teach the heathen the Christian religion
+St. Chrysostom opposed the theory of the earth's roundness
+Stayed till night to eat their sop for fear of seeing (weevils)
+Stuffed so full indeed that eyes and ears are closed
+Tasks that are the common heritage of all small boys
+Terror and amazement; they had never seen horses before
+The cross and the sword, the whip-lash and the Gospel
+The great thing in those days was to discover something
+The missionary walked beside the slave-driver
+The terrified seamen making vows to the Virgin
+Theologians, however, proved equal to the occasion
+There is deception and untruth somewhere
+They saw the past in the light of the present
+Took himself and the world very seriously
+Vague longing and unrest that is the life-force of the world
+When the pot boils the scum rises to the surface
+Who never could meet any trouble without grumbling
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of Christopher Columbus, Entire
+by Filson Young
+
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+  <head>
+    <title>
+      CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS, Complete
+    </title>
+
+<style type="text/css">
+    <!--
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+    <h2>
+      CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS, Complete
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+Project Gutenberg's Christopher Columbus, Complete, by Filson Young
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
+
+
+Title: Christopher Columbus, Complete
+
+Author: Filson Young
+
+Release Date: October 7, 2006 [EBook #4116]
+Last Updated: November 10, 2012
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS, COMPLETE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS
+    </h1>
+    <h1>
+      AND THE NEW WORLD OF HIS DISCOVERY
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      A NARRATIVE BY FILSON YOUNG
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
+      <img alt="bookcover.jpg (150K)" src="images/bookcover.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p> <a name="frontpiece" id="frontpiece"></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
+      <img alt="frontpiece.jpg (42K)" src="images/frontpiece.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
+      <img alt="titlepage.jpg (38K)" src="images/titlepage.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      TO
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+      THE RIGHT HON. SIR HORACE PLUNKETT,
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+      K.C.V.O., D.C.L., F.R.S.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MY DEAR HORACE,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Often while I have been studying the records of colonisation in the New
+      World I have thought of you and your difficult work in Ireland; and I have
+      said to myself, "What a time he would have had if he had been Viceroy of
+      the Indies in 1493!" There, if ever, was the chance for a Department such
+      as yours; and there, if anywhere, was the place for the Economic Man.
+      Alas! there war only one of him; William Ires or Eyre, by name, from the
+      county Galway; and though he fertilised the soil he did it with his blood
+      and bones. A wonderful chance; and yet you see what came of it all. It
+      would perhaps be stretching truth too far to say that you are trying to
+      undo some of Columbus's work, and to stop up the hole he made in Ireland
+      when he found a channel into which so much of what was best in the Old
+      Country war destined to flow; for you and he have each your places in the
+      great circle of Time and Compensation, and though you may seem to oppose
+      one another across the centuries you are really answering the same call
+      and working in the same vineyard. For we all set out to discover new
+      worlds; and they are wise who realise early that human nature has roots
+      that spread beneath the ocean bed, that neither latitude nor longitude nor
+      time itself can change it to anything richer or stranger than what it is,
+      and that furrows ploughed in it are furrows ploughed in the sea sand.
+      Columbus tried to pour the wine of civilisation into very old bottles;
+      you, more wisely, are trying to pour the old wine of our country into new
+      bottles. Yet there is no great unlikeness between the two tasks: it is all
+      a matter of bottling; the vintage is the same, infinite, inexhaustible,
+      and as punctual as the sun and the seasons. It was Columbus's weakness as
+      an administrator that he thought the bottle was everything; it is your
+      strength that you care for the vintage, and labour to preserve its flavour
+      and soft fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yours, <br /><br />FILSON YOUNG. <br /><br />RUAN MINOR, September 1906.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      PREFACE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The writing of historical biography is properly a work of partnership, to
+      which public credit is awarded too often in an inverse proportion to the
+      labours expended. One group of historians, labouring in the obscurest
+      depths, dig and prepare the ground, searching and sifting the documentary
+      soil with infinite labour and over an area immensely wide. They are
+      followed by those scholars and specialists in history who give their lives
+      to the study of a single period, and who sow literature in the furrows of
+      research prepared by those who have preceded them. Last of all comes the
+      essayist, or writer pure and simple, who reaps the harvest so laboriously
+      prepared. The material lies all before him; the documents have been
+      arranged, the immense contemporary fields of record and knowledge examined
+      and searched for stray seeds of significance that may have blown over into
+      them; the perspective is cleared for him, the relation of his facts to
+      time and space and the march of human civilisation duly established; he
+      has nothing to do but reap the field of harvest where it suits him, grind
+      it in the wheels of whatever machinery his art is equipped with, and come
+      before the public with the finished product. And invariably in this
+      unequal partnership he reaps most richly who reaps latest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I am far from putting this narrative forward as the fine and ultimate
+      product of all the immense labour and research of the historians of
+      Columbus; but I am anxious to excuse myself for my apparent presumption in
+      venturing into a field which might more properly be occupied by the expert
+      historian. It would appear that the double work of acquiring the facts of
+      a piece of human history and of presenting them through the medium of
+      literature can hardly ever be performed by one and the same man. A
+      lifetime must be devoted to the one, a year or two may suffice for the
+      other; and an entirely different set of qualities must be employed in the
+      two tasks. I cannot make it too clear that I make no claim to have added
+      one iota of information or one fragment of original research to the expert
+      knowledge regarding the life of Christopher Columbus; and when I add that
+      the chief collection of facts and documents relating to the subject, the
+      'Raccolta Columbiana,'&mdash;[Raccolta di Documenti e Studi Publicati
+      dalla R. Commissione Colombiana, etc. Auspice il Ministero della Publica
+      Istruzione. Rome, 1892-4.]&mdash;is a work consisting of more than thirty
+      folio volumes, the general reader will be the more indulgent to me. But
+      when a purely human interest led me some time ago to look into the
+      literature of Columbus, I was amazed to find what seemed to me a striking
+      disproportion between the extent of the modern historians' work on that
+      subject and the knowledge or interest in it displayed by what we call the
+      general reading public. I am surprised to find how many well-informed
+      people there are whose knowledge of Columbus is comprised within two
+      beliefs, one of them erroneous and the other doubtful: that he discovered
+      America, and performed a trick with an egg. Americans, I think, are a
+      little better informed on the subject than the English; perhaps because
+      the greater part of modern critical research on the subject of Columbus
+      has been the work of Americans. It is to bridge the immense gap existing
+      between the labours of the historians and the indifference of the modern
+      reader, between the Raccolta Columbiana, in fact, and the story of the
+      egg, that I have written my narrative.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is customary and proper to preface a work which is based entirely on
+      the labours of other people with an acknowledgment of the sources whence
+      it is drawn; and yet in the case of Columbus I do not know where to begin.
+      In one way I am indebted to every serious writer who has even remotely
+      concerned himself with the subject, from Columbus himself and Las Casas
+      down to the editors of the Raccolta. The chain of historians has been so
+      unbroken, the apostolic succession, so to speak, has passed with its
+      heritage so intact from generation to generation, that the latest
+      historian enshrines in his work the labours of all the rest. Yet there are
+      necessarily some men whose work stands out as being more immediately
+      seizable than that of others; in the period of whose care the lamp of
+      inspiration has seemed to burn more brightly. In a matter of this kind I
+      cannot pretend to be a judge, but only to state my own experience and
+      indebtedness; and in my work I have been chiefly helped by Las Casas,
+      indirectly of course by Ferdinand Columbus, Herrera, Oviedo, Bernaldez,
+      Navarrete, Asensio, Mr. Payne, Mr. Harrisse, Mr. Vignaud, Mr. Winsor, Mr.
+      Thacher, Sir Clements Markham, Professor de Lollis, and S. Salvagnini. It
+      is thus not among the dusty archives of Seville, Genoa, or San Domingo
+      that I have searched, but in the archive formed by the writings of modern
+      workers. To have myself gone back to original sources, even if I had been
+      competent to do so, would have been in the case of Columbian research but
+      a waste of time and a doing over again what has been done already with
+      patience, diligence, and knowledge. The historians have been committed to
+      the austere task of finding out and examining every fact and document in
+      connection with their subject; and many of these facts and documents are
+      entirely without human interest except in so far as they help to establish
+      a date, a name, or a sum of money. It has been my agreeable and lighter
+      task to test and assay the masses of bed-rock fact thus excavated by the
+      historians for traces of the particular ore which I have been seeking. In
+      fact I have tried to discover, from a reverent examination of all these
+      monographs, essays, histories, memoirs, and controversies concerning what
+      Christopher Columbus did, what Christopher Columbus was; believing as I do
+      that any labour by which he can be made to live again, and from the dust
+      of more than four hundred years be brought visibly to the mind's eye, will
+      not be entirely without use and interest. Whether I have succeeded in
+      doing so or not I cannot be the judge; I can only say that the labour of
+      resuscitating a man so long buried beneath mountains of untruth and
+      controversy has some times been so formidable as to have seemed hopeless.
+      And yet one is always tempted back by the knowledge that Christopher
+      Columbus is not only a name, but that the human being whom we so describe
+      did actually once live and walk in the world; did actually sail and look
+      upon seas where we may also sail and look; did stir with his feet the
+      indestructible dust of this old Earth, and centre in himself, as we all
+      do, the whole interest and meaning of the Universe. Truly the most
+      commonplace fact, yet none the less amazing; and often when in the dust of
+      documents he has seemed most dead and unreal to me I have found courage
+      from the entertainment of some deep or absurd reflection; such as that he
+      did once undoubtedly, like other mortals, blink and cough and blow his
+      nose. And if my readers could realise that fact throughout every page of
+      this book, I should say that I had succeeded in my task.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To be more particular in my acknowledgments. In common with every modern
+      writer on Columbus&mdash;and modern research on the history of Columbus is
+      only thirty years old&mdash;I owe to the labours of Mr. Henry Harrisse,
+      the chief of modern Columbian historians, the indebtedness of the
+      gold-miner to the gold-mine. In the matters of the Toscanelli
+      correspondence and the early years of Columbus I have followed more
+      closely Mr. Henry Vignaud, whose work may be regarded as a continuation
+      and reexamination&mdash;in some cases destructive&mdash;of that of Mr.
+      Harrisse. Mr. Vignaud's work is happily not yet completed; we all look
+      forward eagerly to the completion of that part of his 'Etudes Critiques'
+      dealing with the second half of the Admiral's life; and Mr. Vignaud seems
+      to me to stand higher than all modern workers in this field in the patient
+      and fearless discovery of the truth regarding certain very controversial
+      matters, and also in ability to give a sound and reasonable interpretation
+      to those obscurer facts or deductions in Columbus's life that seem doomed
+      never to be settled by the aid of documents alone. It may be unseemly in
+      me not to acknowledge indebtedness to Washington Irving, but I cannot
+      conscientiously do so. If I had been writing ten or fifteen years ago I
+      might have taken his work seriously; but it is impossible that anything so
+      one-sided, so inaccurate, so untrue to life, and so profoundly dull could
+      continue to exist save in the absence of any critical knowledge or light
+      on the subject. All that can be said for him is that he kept the lamp of
+      interest in Columbus alive for English readers during the period that
+      preceded the advent of modern critical research. Mr. Major's edition' of
+      Columbus's letters has been freely consulted by me, as it must be by any
+      one interested in the subject. Professor Justin Winsor's work has provided
+      an invaluable store of ripe scholarship in matters of cosmography and
+      geographical detail; Sir Clements Markham's book, by far the most
+      trustworthy of modern English works on the subject, and a valuable record
+      of the established facts in Columbus's life, has proved a sound guide in
+      nautical matters; while the monograph of Mr. Elton, which apparently did
+      not promise much at first, since the author has followed some
+      untrustworthy leaders as regards his facts, proved to be full of a
+      fragrant charm produced by the writer's knowledge of and interest in
+      sub-tropical vegetation; and it is delightfully filled with the names of
+      gums and spices. To Mr. Vignaud I owe special thanks, not only for the
+      benefits of his research and of his admirable works on Columbus, but also
+      for personal help and encouragement. Equally cordial thanks are due to Mr.
+      John Boyd Thacher, whose work, giving as it does so large a selection of
+      the Columbus documents both in facsimile, transliteration, and
+      translation, is of the greatest service to every English writer on the
+      subject of Columbus. It is the more to be regretted, since the documentary
+      part of Mr. Thacher's work is so excellent, that in his critical studies
+      he should have seemed to ignore some of the more important results of
+      modern research. I am further particularly indebted to Mr. Thacher and to
+      his publishers, Messrs. Putnam's Sons, for permission to reproduce certain
+      illustrations in his work, and to avail myself also of his copies and
+      translations of original Spanish and Italian documents. I have to thank
+      Commendatore Guido Biagi, the keeper of the Laurentian Library in
+      Florence, for his very kind help and letters of introduction to Italian
+      librarians; Mr. Raymond Beazley, of Merton College, Oxford, for his most
+      helpful correspondence; and Lord Dunraven for so kindly bringing, in the
+      interests of my readers, his practical knowledge of navigation and
+      seamanship to bear on the first voyage of Columbus. Finally my work has
+      been helped and made possible by many intimate and personal kindnesses
+      which, although they are not specified, are not the less deeply
+      acknowledged.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      September 1906.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+<a href="#frontpiece">"LES CONQUERANTS"</a>  Frontpiece By NORMAN WILKINSON
+<a href="#genoastreet">SAINT ANDREW'S GATE</a>
+<a href="#genoastreet2">STREET IN GENOA</a>
+<a href="#p113">LA RABIDA</a>
+<a href="#p127">PALOS HARBOUR</a>
+<a href="#p141">THE SEA ASTROLABE</a>
+<a href="#p143">PORTUGUESE MAPPEMONDE</a>
+<a href="#behaimglobe">BEHAIM'S GLOBE</a>
+<a href="#p163">WATLING'S ISLAND</a>
+<a href="#p227">CARAVEL. (FIFTEENTH CENTURY</a>
+<a href="#espanola">MAP OF ESPANOLA</a>
+<a href="#fourvoyages">THE FOUR VOYAGES OF COLUMBUS</a>
+
+<a href="#portrait">CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS</a>&mdash;Frontispiece Volume II.
+<a href="#crudemap">MAP OF THE NORTHERN COAST OF ESPANOLA</a>&mdash;Drawn by COLUMBUS
+<a href="#veragua">VERAGUA</a>
+<a href="#facsimile">FACSIMILE LETTER OF COLUMBUS</a>
+<a href="#westindies">THE WEST INDIES</a>
+<a href="#isabella">ISABELLA OF CASTILE</a>
+<a href="#ferdinand">FERDINAND OF ARRAGON</a>
+<a href="#deathplace">HOUSE AT VALLADOLID WHERE COLUMBUS DIED</a>
+</pre>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      CONTENTS
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a href="#bk1">BOOK I.</a>
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      THE INNER LIGHT
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I &nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#ch1">THE STREAM OF THE WORLD</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      II &nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#ch2">THE HOME IN GENOA</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      III &nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#ch3">YOUNG CHRISTOPHER</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      IV &nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#ch4">DOMENICO</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      V &nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#ch5">SEA THOUGHTS</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      VI &nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#ch6">IN PORTUGAL</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      VII &nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#ch7">ADVENTURES BODILY AND SPIRITUAL</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      VIII &nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#ch8">THE FIRE KINDLES</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      IX &nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#ch9">WANDERINGS WITH AN IDEA</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      X &nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#ch10">OUR LADY OF LA RABIDA</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      XI &nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#ch11">THE CONSENT OF SPAIN</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      XII &nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#ch12">THE PREPARATIONS AT PALOS</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      XIII &nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#ch13">EVENTS OF THE FIRST VOYAGE</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      XIV &nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#ch14">LANDFALL</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a href="#bk2">BOOK II.</a>
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      THE NEW WORLD
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I &nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#ch1b">THE ENCHANTED ISLANDS</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      II &nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#ch2b">THE EARTHLY PARADISE</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      III &nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#ch3b">THE VOYAGE HOME</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      IV &nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#ch4b">THE HOUR OF TRIUMPH</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      V &nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#ch5b">GREAT EXPECTATIONS</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      VI &nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#ch6b">THE SECOND VOYAGE</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      VII &nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#ch7b">THE EARTHLY PARADISE REVISITED</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a href="#bk3">BOOK III.</a>
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      DESPERATE REMEDIES
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I &nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#ch1c">THE VOYAGE TO CUBA</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      II &nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#ch2c">THE CONQUEST OF ESPANOLA</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      III &nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#ch3c">UPS AND DOWNS</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      IV &nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#ch4c">IN SPAIN AGAIN</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      V &nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#ch5c">THE THIRD VOYAGE</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      VI &nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#ch6c">AN INTERLUDE</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      VII &nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#ch7c">THE THIRD VOYAGE</a> (continued)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a href="#bk4">BOOK IV.</a>
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      TOWARDS THE SUNSET
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I &nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#ch1d">DEGRADATION</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      II &nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#ch2d">CRISIS IN THE ADMIRAL'S LIFE</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      III &nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#ch3d">THE LAST VOYAGE</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      IV &nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#ch4d">HEROIC ADVENTURES BY LAND AND SEA</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      V &nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#ch5d">THE ECLIPSE OF THE MOON</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      VI &nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#ch6d">RELIEF OF THE ADMIRAL</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      VII &nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#ch7d">THE HERITAGE OF HATRED</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      VIII &nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#ch8d">THE ADMIRAL COMES HOME</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      IX &nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#ch9d">THE LAST DAYS</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      X &nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#ch10d">THE MAN COLUMBUS</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      THY WAY IS THE SEA,<br /><br /> AND THY PATH IN THE GREAT WATERS,<br /><br />
+      AND THY FOOTSTEPS ARE NOT KNOWN.<br /><br />
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="bk1" id="bk1"></a>BOOK I.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE INNER LIGHT
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="ch1" id="ch1"></a>CHAPTER I
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE STREAM OF THE WORLD
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A man standing on the sea-shore is perhaps as ancient and as primitive a
+      symbol of wonder as the mind can conceive. Beneath his feet are the stones
+      and grasses of an element that is his own, natural to him, in some degree
+      belonging to him, at any rate accepted by him. He has place and condition
+      there. Above him arches a world of immense void, fleecy sailing clouds,
+      infinite clear blueness, shapes that change and dissolve; his day comes
+      out of it, his source of light and warmth marches across it, night falls
+      from it; showers and dews also, and the quiet influence of stars. Strange
+      that impalpable element must be, and for ever unattainable by him; yet
+      with its gifts of sun and shower, its furniture of winged life that
+      inhabits also on the friendly soil, it has links and partnerships with
+      life as he knows it and is a complement of earthly conditions. But at his
+      feet there lies the fringe of another element, another condition, of a
+      vaster and more simple unity than earth or air, which the primitive man of
+      our picture knows to be not his at all. It is fluent and unstable, yet to
+      be touched and felt; it rises and falls, moves and frets about his very
+      feet, as though it had a life and entity of its own, and was engaged upon
+      some mysterious business. Unlike the silent earth and the dreaming clouds
+      it has a voice that fills his world and, now low, now loud, echoes
+      throughout his waking and sleeping life. Earth with her sprouting fruits
+      behind and beneath him; sky, and larks singing, above him; before him, an
+      eternal alien, the sea: he stands there upon the shore, arrested,
+      wondering. He lives,&mdash;this man of our figure; he proceeds, as all
+      must proceed, with the task and burden of life. One by one its miracles
+      are unfolded to him; miracles of fire and cold, and pain and pleasure; the
+      seizure of love, the terrible magic of reproduction, the sad miracle of
+      death. He fights and lusts and endures; and, no more troubled by any
+      wonder, sleeps at last. But throughout the days of his life, in the very
+      act of his rude existence, this great tumultuous presence of the sea
+      troubles and overbears him. Sometimes in its bellowing rage it terrifies
+      him, sometimes in its tranquillity it allures him; but whatever he is
+      doing, grubbing for roots, chipping experimentally with bones and stones,
+      he has an eye upon it; and in his passage by the shore he pauses, looks,
+      and wonders. His eye is led from the crumbling snow at his feet, past the
+      clear green of the shallows, beyond the furrows of the nearer waves, to
+      the calm blue of the distance; and in his glance there shines again that
+      wonder, as in his breast stirs the vague longing and unrest that is the
+      life-force of the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What is there beyond? It is the eternal question asked by the finite of
+      the infinite, by the mortal of the immortal; answer to it there is none
+      save in the unending preoccupation of life and labour. And if this old
+      question was in truth first asked upon the sea-shore, it was asked most
+      often and with the most painful wonder upon western shores, whence the
+      journeying sun was seen to go down and quench himself in the sea. The
+      generations that followed our primitive man grew fast in knowledge, and
+      perhaps for a time wondered the less as they knew the more; but we may be
+      sure they never ceased to wonder at what might lie beyond the sea. How
+      much more must they have wondered if they looked west upon the waters, and
+      saw the sun of each succeeding day sink upon a couch of glory where they
+      could not follow? All pain aspires to oblivion, all toil to rest, all
+      troubled discontent with what is present to what is unfamiliar and far
+      away; and no power of knowledge and scientific fact will ever prevent
+      human unhappiness from reaching out towards some land of dreams of which
+      the burning brightness of a sea sunset is an image. Is it very hard to
+      believe, then, that in that yearning towards the miracle of a sun quenched
+      in sea distance, felt and felt again in human hearts through countless
+      generations, the westward stream of human activity on this planet had its
+      rise? Is it unreasonable to picture, on an earth spinning eastward, a
+      treadmill rush of feet to follow the sinking light? The history of man's
+      life in this world does not, at any rate, contradict us. Wisdom,
+      discovery, art, commerce, science, civilisation have all moved west across
+      our world; have all in their cycles followed the sun; have all, in their
+      day of power, risen in the East and set in the West.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This stream of life has grown in force and volume with the passage of
+      ages. It has always set from shore to sea in countless currents of
+      adventure and speculation; but it has set most strongly from East to West.
+      On its broad bosom the seeds of life and knowledge have been carried
+      throughout the world. It brought the people of Tyre and Carthage to the
+      coasts and oceans of distant worlds; it carried the English from Jutland
+      across cold and stormy waters to the islands of their conquest; it carried
+      the Romans across half the world; it bore the civilisation of the far East
+      to new life and virgin western soils; it carried the new West to the old
+      East, and is in our day bringing back again the new East to the old West.
+      Religions, arts, tradings, philosophies, vices and laws have been borne, a
+      strange flotsam, upon its unchanging flood. It has had its springs and
+      neaps, its trembling high-water marks, its hour of affluence, when the
+      world has been flooded with golden humanity; its ebb and effluence also,
+      when it has seemed to shrink and desert the kingdoms set upon its shores.
+      The fifteenth century in Western Europe found it at a pause in its
+      movements: it had brought the trade and the learning of the East to the
+      verge of the Old World, filling the harbours of the Mediterranean with
+      ships and the monasteries of Italy and Spain with wisdom; and in the
+      subsequent and punctual decadence that followed this flood, there gathered
+      in the returning tide a greater energy and volume which was to carry the
+      Old World bodily across the ocean. And yet, for all their wisdom and
+      power, the Spanish and Portuguese were still in the attitude of our
+      primitive man, standing on the sea-shore and looking out in wonder across
+      the sea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The flood of the life-stream began to set again, and little by little to
+      rise and inundate Western Europe, floating off the galleys and caravels of
+      King Alphonso of Portugal, and sending them to feel their way along the
+      coasts of Africa; a little later drawing the mind of Prince Henry the
+      Navigator to devote his life to the conquest and possession of the
+      unknown. In his great castle on the promontory of Sagres, with the voice
+      of the Atlantic thundering in his ears, and its mists and sprays bounding
+      his vision, he felt the full force of the stream, and stretched his arms
+      to the mysterious West. But the inner light was not yet so brightly
+      kindled that he dared to follow his heart; his ships went south and south
+      again, to brave on each voyage the dangers and terrors that lay along the
+      unknown African coast, until at length his captains saw the Cape of Good
+      Hope. South and West and East were in those days confusing terms; for it
+      was the East that men were thinking of when they set their faces to the
+      setting sun, and it was a new road to the East that they sought when they
+      felt their way southward along the edge of the world. But the rising tide
+      of discovery was working in that moment, engaging the brains of
+      innumerable sages, stirring the wonder of innumerable mariners; reaching
+      also, little by little, to quarters less immediately concerned with the
+      business of discovery. Ships carried the strange tidings of new coasts and
+      new islands from port to port throughout the Mediterranean; Venetians on
+      the lagoons, Ligurians on the busy trading wharves of Genoa, were
+      discussing the great subject; and as the tide rose and spread, it floated
+      one ship of life after another that was destined for the great business of
+      adventure. Some it inspired to dream and speculate, and to do no more than
+      that; many a heart also to brave efforts and determinations that were
+      doomed to come to nothing and to end only in failure. And among others who
+      felt the force and was swayed and lifted by the prevailing influence,
+      there lived, some four and a half centuries ago, a little boy playing
+      about the wharves of Genoa, well known to his companions as Christoforo,
+      son of Domenico the wool-weaver, who lived in the Vico Dritto di
+      Ponticello.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="ch2" id="ch2"></a>CHAPTER II.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE HOME IN GENOA
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is often hard to know how far back we should go in the ancestry of a
+      man whose life and character we are trying to reconstruct. The life that
+      is in him is not his own, but is mysteriously transmitted through the life
+      of his parents; to the common stock of his family, flesh of their flesh,
+      bone of their bone, character of their character, he has but added his own
+      personality. However far back we go in his ancestry, there is something of
+      him to be traced, could we but trace it; and although it soon becomes so
+      widely scattered that no separate fraction of it seems to be recognisable,
+      we know that, generations back, we may come upon some sympathetic fact,
+      some reservoir of the essence that was him, in which we can find the
+      source of many of his actions, and the clue, perhaps, to his character.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the case of Columbus we are spared this dilemma. The past is reticent
+      enough about the man himself; and about his ancestors it is almost silent.
+      We know that he had a father and grandfather, as all grandsons of Adam
+      have had; but we can be certain of very little more than that. He came of
+      a race of Italian yeomen inhabiting the Apennine valleys; and in the vale
+      of Fontanabuona, that runs up into the hills behind Genoa, the two streams
+      of family from which he sprang were united. His father from one hamlet,
+      his mother from another; the towering hills behind, the Mediterranean
+      shining in front; love and marriage in the valley; and a little boy to
+      come of it whose doings were to shake the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His family tree begins for us with his grandfather, Giovanni Colombo of
+      Terra-Rossa, one of the hamlets in the valley&mdash;concerning whom many
+      human facts may be inferred, but only three are certainly known; that he
+      lived, begot children, and died. Lived, first at Terra Rossa, and
+      afterwards upon the sea-shore at Quinto; begot children in number three&mdash;Antonio,
+      Battestina, and Domenico, the father of our Christopher; and died, because
+      one of the two facts in his history is that in the year 1444 he was not
+      alive, being referred to in a legal document as quondam, or, as we should
+      say, "the late." Of his wife, Christopher's grandmother, since she never
+      bought or sold or witnessed anything requiring the record of legal
+      document, history speaks no word; although doubtless some pleasant and
+      picturesque old lady, or lady other than pleasant and picturesque, had
+      place in the experience or imagination of young Christopher. Of the pair,
+      old Quondam Giovanni alone survives the obliterating drift of generations,
+      which the shores and brown slopes of Quinto al Mare, where he sat in the
+      sun and looked about him, have also survived. Doubtless old Quondam could
+      have told us many things about Domenico, and his over-sanguine buyings and
+      sellings; have perhaps told us something about Christopher's environment,
+      and cleared up our doubts concerning his first home; but he does not. He
+      will sit in the sun there at Quinto, and sip his wine, and say his Hail
+      Marys, and watch the sails of the feluccas leaning over the blue floor of
+      the Mediterranean as long as you please; but of information about son or
+      family, not a word. He is content to have survived, and triumphantly
+      twinkles his two dates at us across the night of time. 1440, alive; 1444,
+      not alive any longer: and so hail and farewell, Grandfather John.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of Antonio and Battestina, the uncle and aunt of Columbus, we know next to
+      nothing. Uncle Antonio inherited the estate of Terra-Rossa, Aunt
+      Battestina was married in the valley; and so no more of either of them;
+      except that Antonio, who also married, had sons, cousins of Columbus, who
+      in after years, when he became famous, made themselves unpleasant, as poor
+      relations will, by recalling themselves to his remembrance and suggesting
+      that something might be done for them. I have a belief, supported by no
+      historical fact or document, that between the families of Domenico and
+      Antonio there was a mild cousinly feud. I believe they did not like each
+      other. Domenico, as we shall see presently, was sanguine and venturesome,
+      a great buyer and seller, a maker of bargains in which he generally came
+      off second best. Antonio, who settled in Terra-Rossa, the paternal
+      property, doubtless looked askance at these enterprises from his
+      vantage-ground of a settled income; doubtless also, on the occasion of
+      visits exchanged between the two families, he would comment upon the
+      unfortunate enterprises of his brother; and as the children of both
+      brothers grew up, they would inherit and exaggerate, as children will,
+      this settled difference between their respective parents. This, of course,
+      may be entirely untrue, but I think it possible, and even likely; for
+      Columbus in after life displayed a very tender regard for members of his
+      family, but never to our knowledge makes any reference to these cousins of
+      his, till they send emissaries to him in his hour of triumph. At any rate,
+      among the influences that surrounded him at Genoa we may reckon this uncle
+      and aunt and their children&mdash;dim ghosts to us, but to him real
+      people, who walked and spoke, and blinked their eyes and moved their
+      limbs, like the men and women of our own time. Less of a ghost to us,
+      though still a very shadowy and doubtful figure, is Domenico himself,
+      Christopher's father. He at least is a man in whom we can feel a warm
+      interest, as the one who actually begat and reared the man of our story.
+      We shall see him later, and chiefly in difficulties; executing deeds and
+      leases, and striking a great variety of legal attitudes, to the witnessing
+      of which various members of his family were called in. Little enough good
+      did they to him at the time, poor Domenico; but he was a benefactor to
+      posterity without knowing it, and in these grave notarial documents
+      preserved almost the only evidence that we have as to the early days of
+      his illustrious son. A kind, sanguine man, this Domenico, who, if he
+      failed to make a good deal of money in his various enterprises, at least
+      had some enjoyment of them, as the man who buys and sells and strikes
+      legal attitudes in every age desires and has. He was a wool-carder by
+      trade, but that was not enough for him; he must buy little bits of estates
+      here and there; must even keep a tavern, where he and his wife could
+      entertain the foreign sailors and hear the news of the world; where also,
+      although perhaps they did not guess it, a sharp pair of ears were also
+      listening, and a pair of round eyes gazing, and an inquisitive face set in
+      astonishment at the strange tales that went about.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is one fragment of fact about this Domenico that greatly enlarges
+      our knowledge of him. He was a wool-weaver, as we know; he also kept a
+      tavern, and no doubt justified the adventure on the plea that it would
+      bring him customers for his woollen cloth; for your buyer and seller never
+      lacks a reason either for his selling or buying. Presently he is buying
+      again; this time, still with striking of legal attitudes, calling together
+      of relations, and accompaniments of crabbed Latin notarial documents, a
+      piece of ground in the suburbs of Genoa, consisting of scrub and
+      undergrowth, which cannot have been of any earthly use to him. But also,
+      according to the documents, there went some old wine-vats with the land.
+      Domenico, taking a walk after Mass on some feast-day, sees the land and
+      the wine-vats; thinks dimly but hopefully how old wine-vats, if of no use
+      to any other human creature, should at least be of use to a tavern-keeper;
+      hurries back, overpowers the perfunctory objections of his complaisant
+      wife, and on the morrow of the feast is off to the notary's office. We may
+      be sure the wine-vats lay and rotted there, and furnished no monetary
+      profit to the wool-weaving tavern-keeper; but doubtless they furnished him
+      a rich profit of another kind when he walked about his newly-acquired
+      property, and explained what he was going to do with the wine-vats.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And besides the weaving of wool and pouring of wine and buying and selling
+      of land, there were more human occupations, which Domenico was not the man
+      to neglect. He had married, about the year 1450, one Susanna, a daughter
+      of Giacomo of Fontana-Rossa, a silk weaver who lived in the hamlet near to
+      Terra-Rossa. Domenico's father was of the more consequence of the two, for
+      he had, as well as his home in the valley, a house at Quinto, where he
+      probably kept a felucca for purposes of trade with Alexandria and the
+      Islands. Perhaps the young people were married at Quinto, but if so they
+      did not live there long, moving soon into Genoa, where Domenico could more
+      conveniently work at his trade. The wool-weavers at that time lived in a
+      quarter outside the old city walls, between them and the outer borders of
+      the city, which is now occupied by the park and public gardens. Here they
+      had their dwellings and workshops, their schools and institutions,
+      receiving every protection and encouragement from the Signoria, who
+      recognised the importance of the wool trade and its allied industries to
+      Genoa. Cloth-weavers, blanket-makers, silk-weavers, and velvet-makers all
+      lived in this quarter, and held their houses under the neighbouring abbey
+      of San Stefano. There are two houses mentioned in documents which seem to
+      have been in the possession of Domenico at different times. One was in the
+      suburbs outside the Olive Gate; the other was farther in, by St. Andrew's
+      Gate, and quite near to the sea. The house outside the Olive Gate has
+      disappeared; and it was probably here that our Christopher first saw the
+      light, and pleased Domenico's heart with his little cries and struggles.
+      Neither the day nor even the year is certainly known, but there is most
+      reason to believe that it was in the year 1451. They must have moved soon
+      afterwards to the house in the Vico Dritto di Ponticello, No. 37, in which
+      most of Christopher's childhood was certainly passed. This is a house
+      close to St. Andrew's Gate, which gate still stands in a beautiful and
+      ruinous condition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From the new part of Genoa, and from the Via XX Settembre, you turn into
+      the little Piazza di Ponticello just opposite the church of San Stefano.
+      In a moment you are in old Genoa, which is to-day in appearance virtually
+      the same as the place in which Christopher and his little brothers and
+      sisters made the first steps of their pilgrimage through this world. If
+      the Italian, sun has been shining fiercely upon you, in the great modern
+      thoroughfare, you will turn into this quarter of narrow streets and high
+      houses with grateful relief. The past seems to meet you there; and from
+      the Piazza, gay with its little provision-shops and fruit stalls, you walk
+      up the slope of the Vico Dritto di Ponticello, leaving the sunlight behind
+      you, and entering the narrow street like a traveller entering a mountain
+      gorge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /> <a name="genoastreet" id="genoastreet"></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
+      <img alt="genoastreet.jpg (54K)" src="images/genoastreet.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is a very curious street this; I suppose there is no street in the
+      world that has more character. Genoa invented sky-scrapers long before
+      Columbus had discovered America, or America had invented steel frames for
+      high building; but although many of the houses in the Vico Dritto di
+      Ponticello are seven and eight storeys high, the width of the street from
+      house-wall to house-wall does not average more than nine feet. The street
+      is not straight, moreover; it winds a little in its ascent to the old city
+      wall and St. Andrew's Gate, so that you do not even see the sky much as
+      you look forward and upwards. The jutting cornices of the roofs, often
+      beautifully decorated, come together in a medley of angles and corners
+      that practically roof the street over; and only here and there do you see
+      a triangle or a parallelogram of the vivid brilliant blue that is the sky.
+      Besides being seven or eight storeys high, the houses are the narrowest in
+      the world; I should think that their average width on the street front is
+      ten feet. So as you walk up this street where young Christopher lived you
+      must think of it in these three dimensions towering slices of houses, ten
+      or twelve feet in width: a street often not more than eight and seldom
+      more than fifteen feet in width; and the walls of the houses themselves,
+      painted in every colour, green and pink and grey and white, and trellised
+      with the inevitable green window-shutters of the South, standing like
+      cliffs on each side of you seven or eight rooms high. There being so
+      little horizontal space for the people to live there, what little there is
+      is most economically used; and all across the tops of the houses, high
+      above your head, the cliffs are joined by wires and clothes-lines from
+      which thousands of brightly-dyed garments are always hanging and
+      fluttering; higher still, where the top storeys of the houses become
+      merged in roof, there are little patches of garden and greenery, where
+      geraniums and delicious tangling creepers uphold thus high above the
+      ground the fertile tradition of earth. You walk slowly up the paved
+      street. One of its characteristics, which it shares with the old streets
+      of most Italian towns, is that it is only used by foot-passengers, being
+      of course too narrow for wheels; and it is paved across with flagstones
+      from door to door, so that the feet and the voices echo pleasantly in it,
+      and make a music of their own. Without exception the ground floor of every
+      house is a shop&mdash;the gayest, busiest most industrious little shops in
+      the world. There are shops for provisions, where the delightful macaroni
+      lies in its various bins, and all kinds of frugal and nourishing foods are
+      offered for sale. There are shops for clothes and dyed finery; there are
+      shops for boots, where boots hang in festoons like onions outside the
+      window&mdash;I have never seen so many boot-shops at once in my life as I
+      saw in the streets surrounding the house of Columbus. And every shop that
+      is not a provision-shop or a clothes-shop or a boot-shop, is a wine-shop&mdash;or
+      at least you would think so, until you remember, after you have walked
+      through the street, what a lot of other kinds of shops you have seen on
+      your way. There are shops for newspapers and tobacco, for cheap jewellery,
+      for brushes, for chairs and tables and articles of wood; there are shops
+      with great stacks and piles of crockery; there are shops for cheese and
+      butter and milk&mdash;indeed from this one little street in Genoa you
+      could supply every necessary and every luxury of a humble life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /> <a name="genoastreet2" id="genoastreet2"></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
+      <img alt="genoastreet2.jpg (71K)" src="images/genoastreet2.jpg"
+      width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As you still go up, the street takes a slight bend; and immediately before
+      you, you see it spanned by the lofty crumbled arch of St. Andrew's Gate,
+      with its two mighty towers one on each side. Just as you see it you are at
+      Columbus's house. The number is thirty-seven; it is like any of the other
+      houses, tall and narrow; and there is a slab built into the wall above the
+      first storey, on which is written this inscription:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      NVLLA DOMVS TITVLO DIGNIOR<br /> HEIC<br /> PATERNIS IN AEDIBV<br />
+      CHRISTOPHORVS COLVMBVS<br /> PVERITIAM<br /> PRIMAMQVE IVVENTAM TRANSEGIT
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You stop and look at it; and presently you become conscious of a
+      difference between it and all the other houses. They are all alert, busy,
+      noisy, crowded with life in every storey, oozing vitality from every
+      window; but of all the narrow vertical strips that make up the houses of
+      the street, this strip numbered thirty-seven is empty, silent, and dead.
+      The shutters veil its windows; within it is dark, empty of furniture, and
+      inhabited only by a memory and a spirit. It is a strange place in which to
+      stand and to think of all that has happened since the man of our thoughts
+      looked forth from these windows, a common little boy. The world is very
+      much alive in the Vico Dritto di Ponticello; the little freshet of life
+      that flows there flows loud and incessant; and yet into what oceans of
+      death and silence has it not poured since it carried forth Christopher on
+      its stream! One thinks of the continent of that New World that he
+      discovered, and all the teeming millions of human lives that have sprung
+      up and died down, and sprung up again, and spread and increased there; all
+      the ploughs that have driven into its soil, the harvests that have
+      ripened, the waving acres and miles of grain that have answered the call
+      of Spring and Autumn since first the bow of his boat grated on the shore
+      of Guanahani. And yet of the two scenes this narrow shuttered house in a
+      bye-street of Genoa is at once the more wonderful and more credible; for
+      it contains the elements of the other. Walls and floors and a roof, a
+      place to eat and sleep in, a place to work and found a family, and give
+      tangible environment to a human soul&mdash;there is all human enterprise
+      and discovery, effort, adventure, and life in that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If Christopher wanted to go down to the sea he would have to pass under
+      the Gate of St. Andrew, with the old prison, now pulled down to make room
+      for the modern buildings, on his right, and go down the Salita del Prione,
+      which is a continuation of the Vico Dritto di Ponticello. It slopes
+      downwards from the Gate as the first street sloped upwards to it; and it
+      contains the same assortment of shops and of houses, the same mixture of
+      handicrafts and industries, as were seen in the Vico Dritto di Ponticello.
+      Presently he would come to the Piazza dell' Erbe, where there is no grass,
+      but only a pleasant circle of little houses and shops, with already a
+      smack of the sea in them, chiefly suggested by the shops of
+      instrument-makers, where to-day there are compasses and sextants and
+      chronometers. Out of the Piazza you come down the Via di San Donato and
+      into the Piazza of that name, where for over nine centuries the church of
+      San Donato has faced the sun and the weather. From there Christopher's
+      young feet would follow the winding Via di San Bernato, a street also
+      inhabited by craftsmen and workers in wood and metal; and at the last turn
+      of it, a gash of blue between the two cliffwalls of houses, you see the
+      Mediterranean.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here, then, between the narrow little house by the Gate and the clamour
+      and business of the sea-front, our Christopher's feet carried him daily
+      during some part of his childish life. What else he did, what he thought
+      and felt, what little reflections he had, are but matters of conjecture.
+      Genoa will tell you nothing more. You may walk over the very spot where he
+      was born; you may unconsciously tread in the track of his vanished feet;
+      you may wander about the wharves of the city, and see the ships loading
+      and unloading&mdash;different ships, but still trafficking in commodities
+      not greatly different from those of his day; you may climb the heights
+      behind Genoa, and look out upon the great curving Gulf from Porto Fino to
+      where the Cape of the western Riviera dips into the sea; you may walk
+      along the coast to Savona, where Domenico had one of his many habitations,
+      where he kept the tavern, and whither Christopher's young feet must also
+      have walked; and you may come back and search again in the harbour, from
+      the old Mole and the Bank of St. George to where the port and quays
+      stretch away to the medley of sailing-ships and steamers; but you will not
+      find any sign or trace of Christopher. No echo of the little voice that
+      shrilled in the narrow street sounds in the Vico Dritto; the houses stand
+      gaunt and straight, with a brilliant strip of blue sky between their roofs
+      and the cool street beneath; but they give you nothing of what you seek.
+      If you see a little figure running towards you in a blue smock, the head
+      fair-haired, the face blue-eyed and a little freckled with the strong
+      sunshine, it is not a real figure; it is a child of your dreams and a
+      ghost of the past. You may chase him while he runs about the wharves and
+      stumbles over the ropes, but you will never catch him. He runs before you,
+      zigzagging over the cobbles, up the sunny street, into the narrow house;
+      out again, running now towards the Duomo, hiding in the porch of San
+      Stefano, where the weavers held their meetings; back again along the
+      wharves; surely he is hiding behind that mooring-post! But you look, and
+      he is not there&mdash;nothing but the old harbour dust that the wind stirs
+      into a little eddy while you look. For he belongs not to you or me, this
+      child; he is not yet enslaved to the great purpose, not yet caught up into
+      the machinery of life. His eye has not yet caught the fire of the sun
+      setting on a western sea; he is still free and happy, and belongs only to
+      those who love him. Father and mother, brothers Bartolomeo and Giacomo,
+      sister Biancinetta, aunts, uncles, and cousins possibly, and possibly for
+      a little while an old grandmother at Quinto&mdash;these were the people to
+      whom that child belonged. The little life of his first decade, unviolated
+      by documents or history, lives happily in our dreams, as blank as
+      sunshine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="ch3" id="ch3"></a>CHAPTER III.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      YOUNG CHRISTOPHER
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Christopher was fourteen years old when he first went to sea. That is his
+      own statement, and it is one of the few of his autobiographical utterances
+      that we need not doubt. From it, and from a knowledge of certain other
+      dates, we are able to construct some vague picture of his doings before he
+      left Italy and settled in Portugal. Already in his young heart he was
+      feeling the influence that was to direct and shape his destiny; already,
+      towards his home in Genoa, long ripples from the commotion of maritime
+      adventure in the West were beginning to spread. At the age of ten he was
+      apprenticed to his father, who undertook, according to the indentures, to
+      provide him with board and lodging, a blue gabardine and a pair of good
+      shoes, and various other matters in return for his service. But there is
+      no reason to suppose that he ever occupied himself very much with
+      wool-weaving. He had a vocation quite other than that, and if he ever did
+      make any cloth there must have been some strange thoughts and imaginings
+      woven into it, as he plied the shuttle. Most of his biographers, relying
+      upon a doubtful statement in the life of him written by his son Ferdinand,
+      would have us send him at the age of twelve to the distant University of
+      Pavia, there, poor mite, to sit at the feet of learned professors studying
+      Latin, mathematics, and cosmography; but fortunately it is not necessary
+      to believe so improbable a statement. What is much more likely about his
+      education&mdash;for education he had, although not of the superior kind
+      with which he has been credited&mdash;is that in the blank, sunny time of
+      his childhood he was sent to one of the excellent schools established by
+      the weavers in their own quarter, and that there or afterwards he came
+      under some influence, both religious and learned, which stamped him the
+      practical visionary that he remained throughout his life. Thereafter,
+      between his sea voyagings and expeditions about the Mediterranean coasts,
+      he no doubt acquired knowledge in the only really practical way that it
+      can be acquired; that is to say, he received it as and when he needed it.
+      What we know is that he had in later life some knowledge of the works of
+      Aristotle, Julius Caesar, Seneca, Pliny, and Ptolemy; of Ahmet-Ben-Kothair
+      the Arabic astronomer, Rochid the Arabian, and the Rabbi Samuel the Jew;
+      of Isadore the Spaniard, and Bede and Scotus the Britons; of Strabo the
+      German, Gerson the Frenchman, and Nicolaus de Lira the Italian. These
+      names cover a wide range, but they do not imply university education. Some
+      of them merely suggest acquaintance with the 'Imago Mundi'; others imply
+      that selective faculty, the power of choosing what can help a man's
+      purpose and of rejecting what is useless to it, that is one of the marks
+      of genius, and an outward sign of the inner light.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We must think of him, then, at school in Genoa, grinding out the tasks
+      that are the common heritage of all small boys; working a little at the
+      weaving, interestedly enough at first, no doubt, while the importance of
+      having a loom appealed to him, but also no doubt rapidly cooling off in
+      his enthusiasm as the pastime became a task, and the restriction of indoor
+      life began to be felt. For if ever there was a little boy who loved to
+      idle about the wharves and docks, here was that little boy. It was here,
+      while he wandered about the crowded quays and listened to the medley of
+      talk among the foreign sailors, and looked beyond the masts of the ships
+      into the blue distance of the sea, that the desire to wander and go abroad
+      upon the face of the waters must first have stirred in his heart. The
+      wharves of Genoa in those days combined in themselves all the richness of
+      romance and adventure, buccaneering, trading, and treasure-snatching, that
+      has ever crowded the pages of romance. There were galleys and caravels,
+      barques and feluccas, pinnaces and caraccas. There were slaves in the
+      galleys, and bowmen to keep the slaves in subjection. There were
+      dark-bearded Spaniards, fair-haired Englishmen; there were Greeks, and
+      Indians, and Portuguese. The bales of goods on the harbour-side were
+      eloquent of distant lands, and furnished object lessons in the only
+      geography that young Christopher was likely to be learning. There was
+      cotton from Egypt, and tin and lead from Southampton. There were butts of
+      Malmsey from Candia; aloes and cassia and spices from Socotra; rhubarb
+      from Persia; silk from India; wool from Damascus, raw wool also from
+      Calais and Norwich. No wonder if the little house in the Vico Dritto di
+      Ponticello became too narrow for the boy; and no wonder that at the age of
+      fourteen he was able to have his way, and go to sea. One can imagine him
+      gradually acquiring an influence over his father, Domenico, as his will
+      grew stronger and firmer&mdash;he with one grand object in life, Domenico
+      with none; he with a single clear purpose, and Domenico with innumerable
+      cloudy ones. And so, on some day in the distant past, there were farewells
+      and anxious hearts in the weaver's house, and Christopher, member of the
+      crew of some trading caravel or felucca, a diminishing object to the wet
+      eyes of his mother, sailed away, and faded into the blue distance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They had lost him, although perhaps they did not realise it; from the
+      moment of his first voyage the sea claimed him as her own. Widening
+      horizons, slatting of cords and sails in the wind, storms and stars and
+      strange landfalls and long idle calms, thunder of surges, tingle of spray,
+      and eternal labouring and threshing and cleaving of infinite waters&mdash;these
+      were to be his portion and true home hereafter. Attendances at Court,
+      conferences with learned monks and bishops, sojourns on lonely islands,
+      love under stars in the gay, sun-smitten Spanish towns, governings and
+      parleyings in distant, undreamed-of lands&mdash;these were to be but
+      incidents in his true life, which was to be fulfilled in the solitude of
+      sea watches.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he left his home on this first voyage, he took with him one other
+      thing besides the restless longing to escape beyond the line of sea and
+      sky. Let us mark well this possession of his, for it was his companion and
+      guiding-star throughout a long and difficult life, his chart and compass,
+      astrolabe and anchor, in one. Religion has in our days fallen into decay
+      among men of intellect and achievement. The world has thrown it, like a
+      worn garment or an old skin, from off its body, the thing itself being no
+      longer real and alive, and in harmony with the life of an age that
+      struggles towards a different kind of truth. It is hard, therefore, for us
+      to understand exactly how the religion of Columbus entered so deeply into
+      his life and brooded so widely over his thoughts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hardest of all is it for people whose only experience of religion is of
+      Puritan inheritance to comprehend how, in the fifteenth century, the
+      strong intellect was strengthened, and the stout heart fortified, by the
+      thought of hosts of saints and angels hovering above a man's incomings and
+      outgoings to guide and protect him. Yet in an age that really had the gift
+      of faith, in which religion was real and vital, and part of the business
+      of every man's daily life; in which it stood honoured in the world, loaded
+      with riches, crowned with learning, wielding government both temporal and
+      spiritual, it was a very brave panoply for the soul of man. The little boy
+      in Genoa, with the fair hair and blue eyes and grave freckled face that
+      made him remarkable among his dark companions, had no doubt early received
+      and accepted the vast mysteries of the Christian faith; and as that other
+      mystery began to grow in his mind, and that idea of worlds that might lie
+      beyond the sea-line began to take shape in his thoughts, he found in the
+      holy wisdom of the prophets, and the inspired writings of the fathers, a
+      continual confirmation of his faith. The full conviction of these things
+      belongs to a later period of his life; but probably, during his first
+      voyagings in the Mediterranean, there hung in his mind echoes of psalms
+      and prophecies that had to do with things beyond the world of his vision
+      and experience. The sun, whose going forth is to the end of heaven, his
+      circuit back to the end of it, and from whose heat there is nothing hid;
+      the truth, holy and prevailing, that knows no speech nor language where
+      its voice is not heard; the great and wide sea, with its creeping things
+      innumerable, and beasts small and great&mdash;no wonder if these things
+      impressed him, and if gradually, as his way fell clearer before him, and
+      the inner light began to shine more steadily, he came to believe that he
+      had a special mission to carry the torch of the faith across the Sea of
+      Darkness, and be himself the bearer of a truth that was to go through all
+      the earth, and of words that were to travel to the world's end.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In this faith, then, and with this equipment, and about the year 1465,
+      Christopher Columbus began his sea travels. His voyages would be doubtless
+      at first much along the coasts, and across to Alexandria and the Islands.
+      There would be returnings to Genoa, and glad welcomings by the little
+      household in the narrow street; in 1472 and 1473 he was with his father at
+      Savona, helping with the wool-weaving and tavern-keeping; possibly also
+      there were interviews with Benincasa, who was at that time living in
+      Genoa, and making his famous sea-charts. Perhaps it was in his studio that
+      Christopher first saw a chart, and first fell in love with the magic that
+      can transfer the shapes of oceans and continents to a piece of paper. Then
+      he would be off again in another ship, to the Golden Horn perhaps, or the
+      Black Sea, for the Genoese had a great Crimean trade. This is all
+      conjecture, but very reasonable conjecture; what we know for a fact is
+      that he saw the white gum drawn from the lentiscus shrubs in Chio at the
+      time of their flowering; that fragrant memory is preserved long afterwards
+      in his own writings, evoked by some incident in the newly-discovered
+      islands of the West. There are vague rumours and stories of his having
+      been engaged in various expeditions&mdash;among them one fitted out in
+      Genoa by John of Anjou to recover the kingdom of Naples for King Rene of
+      Provence; but there is no reason to believe these rumours: good reason to
+      disbelieve them, rather.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The lives that the sea absorbs are passed in a great variety of adventure
+      and experience, but so far as the world is concerned they are passed in a
+      profound obscurity; and we need not wonder that of all the mariners who
+      used those seas, and passed up and down, and held their course by the
+      stars, and reefed their sails before the sudden squalls that came down
+      from the mountains, and shook them out again in the calm sunshine that
+      followed, there is no record of the one among their number who was
+      afterwards to reef and steer and hold his course to such mighty purpose.
+      For this period, then, we must leave him to the sea, and to the vast
+      anonymity of sea life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="ch4" id="ch4"></a>CHAPTER IV.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      DOMENICO
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Christopher is gone, vanished over that blue horizon; and the tale of life
+      in Genoa goes on without him very much as before, except that Domenico has
+      one apprentice less, and, a matter becoming of some importance in the
+      narrow condition of his finances, one boy less to feed and clothe. For
+      good Domenico, alas! is no economist. Those hardy adventures of his in the
+      buying and selling line do not prosper him; the tavern does not pay;
+      perhaps the tavern-keeper is too hospitable; at any rate, things are not
+      going well. And yet Domenico had a good start; as his brother Antonio has
+      doubtless often told him, he had the best of old Giovanni's inheritance;
+      he had the property at Quinto, and other property at Ginestreto, and some
+      ground rents at Pradella; a tavern at Savona, a shop there and at Genoa&mdash;really,
+      Domenico has no excuse for his difficulties. In 1445 he was selling land
+      at Quinto, presumably with the consent of old Giovanni, if he was still
+      alive; and if he was not living, then immediately after his death, in the
+      first pride of possession.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In 1450 he bought a pleasant house at Quarto, a village on the sea-shore
+      about a mile to the west of Quinto and about five miles to the east of
+      Genoa. It was probably a pure speculation, as he immediately leased the
+      house for two years, and never lived in it himself, although it was a
+      pleasant place, with an orchard of olives and figs and various other trees&mdash;'arboratum
+      olivis ficubus et aliis diversis arboribus'. His next recorded transaction
+      is in 1466, when he went security for a friend, doubtless with disastrous
+      results. In 1473 he sold the house at the Olive Gate, that suburban
+      dwelling where probably Christopher was born, and in 1474 he invested the
+      proceeds of that sale in a piece of land which I have referred to before,
+      situated in the suburbs of Savona, with which were sold those agreeable
+      and useless wine-vats. Domenico was living at Savona then, and the
+      property which he so fatuously acquired consisted of two large pieces of
+      land on the Via Valcalda, containing a few vines, a plantation of
+      fruit-trees, and a large area of shrub and underwood. The price, however,
+      was never paid in full, and was the cause of a lawsuit which dragged on
+      for forty years, and was finally settled by Don Diego Columbus,
+      Christopher's son, who sent a special authority from Hispaniola.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Owing, no doubt, to the difficulties that this un fortunate purchase
+      plunged him into, Domenico was obliged to mortgage his house at St.
+      Andrew's Gate in the year 1477; and in 1489 he finally gave it up to Jacob
+      Baverelus, the cheese-monger, his son-in-law. Susanna, who had been the
+      witness of his melancholy transactions for so many years, and possibly the
+      mainstay of that declining household, died in 1494; but not, we may hope,
+      before she had heard of the fame of her son Christopher. Domenico, in
+      receipt of a pension from the famous Admiral of the Ocean, and no doubt
+      talking with a deal of pride and inaccuracy about the discovery of the New
+      World, lived on until 1498; when he died also, and vanished out of this
+      world. He had fulfilled a noble destiny in being the father of Christopher
+      Columbus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="ch5" id="ch5"></a>CHAPTER V.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      SEA THOUGHTS
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The long years that Christopher Columbus spent at sea in making voyages to
+      and from his home in Genoa, years so blank to us, but to him who lived
+      them so full of life and active growth, were most certainly fruitful in
+      training and equipping him for that future career of which as yet,
+      perhaps, he did not dream. The long undulating waves of the Mediterranean,
+      with land appearing and dissolving away in the morning and evening mists,
+      the business of ship life, harsh and rough in detail, but not too
+      absorbing to the mind of a common mariner to prevent any thoughts he might
+      have finding room to grow and take shape; sea breezes, sea storms, sea
+      calms; these were the setting of his knowledge and experience as he fared
+      from port to port and from sea to sea. He is a very elusive figure in that
+      environment of misty blue, very hard to hold and identify, very shy of our
+      scrutiny, and inaccessible even to our speculation. If we would come up
+      with him, and place ourselves in some kind of sympathy with the thoughts
+      that were forming in his brain, it is necessary that we should, for the
+      moment, forget much of what we know of the world, and assume the imperfect
+      knowledge of the globe that man possessed in those years when Columbus was
+      sailing the Mediterranean.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That the earth was a round globe of land and water was a fact that, after
+      many contradictions and uncertainties, intelligent men had by this time
+      accepted. A conscious knowledge of the world as a whole had been a part of
+      human thought for many hundreds of years; and the sphericity of the earth
+      had been a theory in the sixth century before Christ. In the fourth
+      century Aristotle had watched the stars and eclipses; in the third century
+      Eratosthenes had measured a degree of latitude, and measured it wrong;&mdash;[Not
+      so very wrong. D.W.]&mdash;in the second century the philosopher Crates
+      had constructed a rude sort of globe, on which were marked the known
+      kingdoms of the earth, and some also unknown. With the coming of the
+      Christian era the theory of the roundness of the earth began to be denied;
+      and as knowledge and learning became gathered into the hands of the Church
+      they lost something of their clarity and singleness, and began to be used
+      arbitrarily as evidence for or against other and less material theories.
+      St. Chrysostom opposed the theory of the earth's roundness; St. Isidore
+      taught it; and so also did St. Augustine, as we might expect from a man of
+      his wisdom who lived so long in a monastery that looked out to sea from a
+      high point, and who wrote the words 'Ubi magnitudo, ibi veritas'. In the
+      sixth century of the Christian era Bishop Cosmas gave much thought to this
+      matter of a round world, and found a new argument which to his mind (poor
+      Cosmas!) disposed of it very clearly; for he argued that, if the world
+      were round, the people dwelling at the antipodes could not see Christ at
+      His coming, and that therefore the earth was not round. But Bede, in the
+      eighth century, established it finally as a part of human knowledge that
+      the earth and all the heavenly bodies were spheres, and after that the
+      fact was not again seriously disputed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What lay beyond the frontier of the known was a speculation inseparable
+      from the spirit of exploration. Children, and people who do not travel,
+      are generally content, when their thoughts stray beyond the paths trodden
+      by their feet, to believe that the greater world is but a continuation on
+      every side of their own environment; indeed, without the help of sight or
+      suggestion, it is almost impossible to believe anything else. If you stand
+      on an eminence in a great plain and think of the unseen country that lies
+      beyond the horizon, trying to visualise it and imagine that you see it,
+      the eye of imagination can only see the continuance or projection of what
+      is seen by the bodily sight. If you think, you can occupy the invisible
+      space with a landscape made up from your own memory and knowledge: you may
+      think of mountain chains and rivers, although there are none visible to
+      your sight, or you may imagine vast seas and islands, oceans and
+      continents. This, however, is thought, not pure imagination; and even so,
+      with every advantage of thought and knowledge, you will not be able to
+      imagine beyond your horizon a space of sea so wide that the farther shore
+      is invisible, and yet imagine the farther shore also. You will see America
+      across the Atlantic and Japan across the Pacific; but you cannot see, in
+      one single effort of the imagination, an Atlantic of empty blue water
+      stretching to an empty horizon, another beyond that equally vast and
+      empty, another beyond that, and so on until you have spanned the thousand
+      horizons that lie between England and America. The mind, that is to say,
+      works in steps and spans corresponding to the spans of physical sight; it
+      cannot clear itself enough from the body, or rise high enough beyond
+      experience, to comprehend spaces so much vaster than anything ever seen by
+      the eye of man. So also with the stretching of the horizon which bounded
+      human knowledge of the earth. It moved step by step; if one of Prince
+      Henry's captains, creeping down the west coast of Africa, discovered a
+      cape a hundred miles south of the known world, the most he could probably
+      do was to imagine that there might lie, still another hundred miles
+      farther south, another cape; to sail for it in faith and hope, to find it,
+      and to imagine another possibility yet another hundred miles away. So far
+      as experience went back, faith could look forward. It is thus with the
+      common run of mankind; yesterday's march is the measure of to-morrow's; as
+      much as they have done once, they may do again; they fear it will be not
+      much more; they hope it may be not much less.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The history of the exploration of the world up to the day when Columbus
+      set sail from Palos is just such a history of steps. The Phoenicians
+      coasting from harbour to harbour through the Mediterranean; the Romans
+      marching from camp to camp, from country to country; the Jutes venturing
+      in their frail craft into the stormy northern seas, making voyages a
+      little longer and more daring every time, until they reached England; the
+      captains of Prince Henry of Portugal feeling their way from voyage to
+      voyage down the coast of Africa&mdash;there are no bold flights into the
+      incredible here, but patient and business-like progress from one
+      stepping-stone to another. Dangers and hardships there were, and brave
+      followings of the faint will-o'-the-wisp of faith in what lay beyond; but
+      there were no great launchings into space. They but followed a line that
+      was the continuance or projection of the line they had hitherto followed;
+      what they did was brave and glorious, but it was reasonable. What Columbus
+      did, on the contrary, was, as we shall see later, against all reason and
+      knowledge. It was a leap in the dark towards some star invisible to all
+      but him; for he who sets forth across the desert sand or sea must have a
+      brighter sun to guide him than that which sets and rises on the day of the
+      small man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Our familiarity with maps and atlases makes it difficult for us to think
+      of the world in other terms than those of map and diagram; knowledge and
+      science have focussed things for us, and our imagination has in
+      consequence shrunk. It is almost impossible, when thinking of the earth as
+      a whole, to think about it except as a picture drawn, or as a small globe
+      with maps traced upon it. I am sure that our imagination has a far
+      narrower angle&mdash;to borrow a term from the science of lenses&mdash;than
+      the imagination of men who lived in the fifteenth century. They thought of
+      the world in its actual terms&mdash;seas, islands, continents, gulfs,
+      rivers, oceans. Columbus had seen maps and charts&mdash;among them the
+      famous 'portolani' of Benincasa at Genoa; but I think it unlikely that he
+      was so familiar with them as to have adopted their terms in his thoughts
+      about the earth. He had seen the Mediterranean and sailed upon it before
+      he had seen a chart of it; he knew a good deal of the world itself before
+      he had seen a map of it. He had more knowledge of the actual earth and sea
+      than he had of pictures or drawings of them; and therefore, if we are to
+      keep in sympathetic touch with him, we must not think too closely of maps,
+      but of land and sea themselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The world that Columbus had heard about as being within the knowledge of
+      men extended on the north to Iceland and Scandinavia, on the south to a
+      cape one hundred miles south of the Equator, and to the east as far as
+      China and Japan. North and South were not important to the spirit of that
+      time; it was East and West that men thought of when they thought of the
+      expansion and the discovery of the world. And although they admitted that
+      the earth was a sphere, I think it likely that they imagined (although the
+      imagination was contrary to their knowledge) that the line of West and
+      East was far longer, and full of vaster possibilities, than that of North
+      and South. North was familiar ground to them&mdash;one voyage to England,
+      another to Iceland, another to Scandinavia; there was nothing impossible
+      about that. Southward was another matter; but even here there was no
+      ambition to discover the limit of the world. It is an error continually
+      made by the biographers of Columbus that the purpose of Prince Henry's
+      explorations down the coast of Africa was to find a sea road to the West
+      Indies by way of the East. It was nothing of the kind. There was no idea
+      in the minds of the Portuguese of the land which Columbus discovered, and
+      which we now know as the West Indies. Mr. Vignaud contends that the
+      confusion arose from the very loose way in which the term India was
+      applied in the Middle Ages. Several Indias were recognised. There was an
+      India beyond the Ganges; a Middle India between the Ganges and the Indus;
+      and a Lesser India, in which were included Arabia, Abyssinia, and the
+      countries about the Red Sea. These divisions were, however, quite vague,
+      and varied in different periods. In the time of Columbus the word India
+      meant the kingdom of Prester John, that fabulous monarch who had been the
+      subject of persistent legends since the twelfth century; and it was this
+      India to which the Portuguese sought a sea road. They had no idea of a
+      barrier cape far to the south, the doubling of which would open a road for
+      them to the west; nor were they, as Mr. Vignaud believes, trying to open a
+      route for the spice trade with the Orient. They had no great spice trade,
+      and did not seek more; what they did seek was an extension of their
+      ordinary trade with Guinea and the African coast. To the maritime world of
+      the fifteenth century, then, the South as a geographical region and as a
+      possible point of discovery had no attractions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To the west stretched what was known as the Sea of Darkness, about which
+      even the cool knowledge of the geographers and astronomers could not think
+      steadily. Nothing was known about it, it did not lead anywhere, there were
+      no people there, there was no trade in that direction. The tides of
+      history and of life avoided it; only now and then some terrified mariner,
+      blown far out of his course, came back with tales of sea monsters and
+      enchanted disappearing islands, and shores that receded, and coasts upon
+      which no one could make a landfall. The farthest land known to the west
+      was the Azores; beyond that stretched a vague and impossible ocean of
+      terror and darkness, of which the Arabian writer Xerif al Edrisi, whose
+      countrymen were the sea-kings of the Middle Ages, wrote as follows:
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "The ocean encircles the ultimate bounds of the inhabited earth, and all
+        beyond it is unknown. No one has been able to verify anything concerning
+        it, on account of its difficult and perilous navigation, its great
+        obscurity, its profound depth, and frequent tempests; through fear of
+        its mighty fishes and its haughty winds; yet there are many islands in
+        it, some peopled, others uninhabited. There is no mariner who dares to
+        enter into its deep waters; or if any have done so, they have merely
+        kept along its coasts, fearful of departing from them. The waves of this
+        ocean, although they roll as high as mountains, yet maintain themselves
+        without breaking; for if they broke it would be impossible for a ship to
+        plough them."
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      It is another illustration of the way in which discovery and imagination
+      had hitherto gone by steps and not by flights, that geographical knowledge
+      reached the islands of the Atlantic (none of which were at a very great
+      distance from the coast of Europe or from each other) at a comparatively
+      early date, and stopped there until in Columbus there was found a man with
+      faith strong enough to make the long flight beyond them to the unknown
+      West. And yet the philosophers, and later the cartographers, true to their
+      instinct for this pedestrian kind of imagination, put mythical lands and
+      islands to the westward of the known islands as though they were really
+      trying to make a way, to sink stepping stones into the deep sea that would
+      lead their thoughts across the unknown space. In the Catalan map of the
+      world, which was the standard example of cosmography in the early days of
+      Columbus, most of these mythical islands are marked. There was the island
+      of Antilia, which was placed in 25 deg. 35' W., and was said to have been
+      discovered by Don Roderick, the last of the Gothic kings of Spain, who
+      fled there after his defeat by the Moors. There was the island of the
+      Seven Cities, which is sometimes identified with this Antilia, and was the
+      object of a persistent belief or superstition on the part of the
+      inhabitants of the Canary Islands. They saw, or thought they saw, about
+      ninety leagues to the westward, an island with high peaks and deep
+      valleys. The vision was intermittent; it was only seen in very clear
+      weather, on some of those pure, serene days of the tropics when in the
+      clear atmosphere distant objects appear to be close at hand. In cloudy,
+      and often in clear weather also, it was not to be seen at all; but the
+      inhabitants of the Canaries, who always saw it in the same place, were so
+      convinced of its reality that they petitioned the King of Portugal to
+      allow them to go and take possession of it; and several expeditions were
+      in fact despatched, but none ever came up with that fairy land. It was
+      called the island of the Seven Cities from a legend of seven bishops who
+      had fled from Spain at the time of the Moorish conquest, and, landing upon
+      this island, had founded there seven splendid cities. There was the island
+      of St. Brandan, called after the Saint who set out from Ireland in the
+      sixth century in search of an island which always receded before his
+      ships; this island was placed several hundred miles to the west of the
+      Canaries on maps and charts through out the fifteenth and sixteenth
+      centuries. There was the island of Brazil, to the west of Cape St.
+      Vincent; the islands of Royllo, San Giorgio, and Isola di Mam; but they
+      were all islands of dreams, seen by the eyes of many mariners in that
+      imaginative time, but never trodden by any foot of man. To Columbus,
+      however, and the mariners of his day, they were all real places, which a
+      man might reach by special good fortune or heroism, but which, all things
+      considered, it was not quite worth the while of any man to attempt to
+      reach. They have all disappeared from our charts, like the Atlantis of
+      Plato, that was once charted to the westward of the Straits of Gibraltar,
+      and of which the Canaries were believed to be the last peaks unsubmerged.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sea myths and legends are strange things, and do not as a rule persist in
+      the minds of men unless they have had some ghostly foundation; so it is
+      possible that these fabled islands of the West were lands that had
+      actually been seen by living eyes, although their position could never be
+      properly laid down nor their identity assured. Of all the wandering seamen
+      who talked in the wayside taverns of Atlantic seaports, some must have had
+      strange tales to tell; tales which sometimes may have been true, but were
+      never believed. Vague rumours hung about those shores, like spray and mist
+      about a headland, of lands seen and lost again in the unknown and
+      uncharted ocean. Doubtless the lamp of faith, the inner light, burned in
+      some of these storm-tossed men; but all they had was a glimpse here and
+      there, seen for a moment and lost again; not the clear sight of faith by
+      which Columbus steered his westward course.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The actual outposts of western occupation, then, were the Azores, which
+      were discovered by Genoese sailors in the pay of Portugal early in the
+      fourteenth century; the Canaries, which had been continuously discovered
+      and rediscovered since the Phoenicians occupied them and Pliny chose them
+      for his Hesperides; and Madeira, which is believed to have been discovered
+      by an Englishman under the following very romantic and moving
+      circumstances.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the reign of Edward the Third a young man named Robert Machin fell in
+      love with a beautiful girl, his superior in rank, Anne Dorset or d'Urfey
+      by name. She loved him also, but her relations did not love him; and
+      therefore they had Machin imprisoned upon some pretext or other, and
+      forcibly married the young lady to a nobleman who had a castle on the
+      shores of the Bristol Channel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The marriage being accomplished, and the girl carried away by her
+      bridegroom to his seat in the West, it was thought safe to release Machin.
+      Whereupon he collected several friends, and they followed the
+      newly-married couple to Bristol and laid their plans for an abduction. One
+      of the friends got himself engaged as a groom in the service of the
+      unhappy bride, and found her love unchanged, and if possible increased by
+      the present misery she was in. An escape was planned; and one day, when
+      the girl and her groom were riding in the park, they set spurs to their
+      horses, and galloped off to a place on the shores of the Bristol Channel
+      where young Robert had a boat on the beach and a ship in the offing. They
+      set sail immediately, intending to make for France, where the reunited
+      lovers hoped to live happily; but it came on to blow when they were off
+      the Lizard, and a southerly gale, which lasted for thirteen days, drove
+      them far out of their course.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The bride, from her joy and relief, fell into a state of the gloomiest
+      despondency, believing that the hand of God was turned against her, and
+      that their love would never be enjoyed. The tempest fell on the fourteenth
+      day, and at the break of morning the sea-worn company saw trees and land
+      ahead of them. In the sunrise they landed upon an island full of noble
+      trees, about which flights of singing birds were hovering, and in which
+      the sweetest fruits, the most lovely flowers, and the purest and most
+      limpid waters abounded. Machin and his bride and their friends made an
+      encampment on a flowery meadow in a sheltered valley, where for three days
+      they enjoyed the sweetness and rest of the shore and the companionship of
+      all kinds of birds and beasts, which showed no signs of fear at their
+      presence. On the third day a storm arose, and raged for a night over the
+      island; and in the morning the adventurers found that their ship was
+      nowhere to be seen. The despair of the little company was extreme, and was
+      increased by the condition of poor Anne, upon whom terror and remorse
+      again fell, and so preyed upon her mind that in three days she was dead.
+      Her lover, who had braved so much and won her so gallantly, was turned to
+      stone by this misfortune. Remorse and aching desolation oppressed him;
+      from the moment of her death he scarcely ate nor spoke; and in five days
+      he also was dead, surely of a broken heart. They buried him beside his
+      mistress under a spreading tree, and put up a wooden cross there, with a
+      prayer that any Christians who might come to the island would build a
+      chapel to Jesus the Saviour. The rest of the party then repaired their
+      little boat and put to sea; were cast upon the coast of Morocco, captured
+      by the Moors, and thrown into prison. With them in prison was a Spanish
+      pilot named Juan de Morales, who listened attentively to all they could
+      tell him about the situation and condition of the island, and who after
+      his release communicated what he knew to Prince Henry of Portugal. The
+      island of Madeira was thus rediscovered in 1418, and in 1425 was colonised
+      by Prince Henry, who appointed as Governor Bartolomeo de Perestrello,
+      whose daughter was afterwards to become the wife of Columbus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So much for the outposts of the Old World. Of the New World, about the
+      possibility of which Columbus is beginning to dream as he sails the
+      Mediterranean, there was no knowledge and hardly any thought. Though new
+      in the thoughts of Columbus, it was very old in itself; generations of men
+      had lived and walked and spoken and toiled there, ever since men came upon
+      the earth; sun and shower, the thrill of the seasons, birth and life and
+      death, had been visiting it for centuries and centuries. And it is quite
+      possible that, long before even the civilisation that produced Columbus
+      was in its dawn, men from the Old World had journeyed there. There are two
+      very old fragments of knowledge which indicate at least the possibility of
+      a Western World of which the ancients had knowledge. There is a fragment,
+      preserved from the fourth century before Christ, of a conversation between
+      Silenus and Midas, King of Phrygia, in which Silenus correctly describes
+      the Old World&mdash;Europe, Asia, and Africa&mdash;as being surrounded by
+      the sea, but also describes, far to the west of it, a huge island, which
+      had its own civilisation and its own laws, where the animals and the men
+      were of twice our stature, and lived for twice our years. There is also
+      the story told by Plato of the island of Atlantis, which was larger than
+      Africa and Asia together, and which in an earthquake disappeared beneath
+      the waves, producing such a slime upon the surface that no ship was able
+      to navigate the sea in that place. This is the story which the priests of
+      Sais told to Solon, and which was embodied in the sacred inscriptions in
+      their temples. It is strange that any one should think of this theory of
+      the slime who had not seen or heard of the Sargasso Sea&mdash;that great
+      bank of floating seaweed that the ocean currents collect and retain in the
+      middle of the basin of the North Atlantic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Egyptians, the Tartars, the Canaanites, the Chinese, the Arabians, the
+      Welsh, and the Scandinavians have all been credited with the colonisation
+      of America; but the only race from the Old World which had almost
+      certainly been there were the Scandinavians. In the year 983 the coast of
+      Greenland was visited by Eric the Red, the son of a Norwegian noble, who
+      was banished for the crime of murder. Some fifteen years later Eric's son
+      Lief made an expedition with thirty-five men and a ship in the direction
+      of the new land. They came to a coast where there were nothing but ice
+      mountains having the appearance of slate; this country they named
+      Helluland&mdash;that is, Land of Slate. This country is our Newfoundland.
+      Standing out to sea again, they reached a level wooded country with white
+      sandy cliffs, which they called Markland, or Land of Wood, which is our
+      Nova Scotia. Next they reached an island east of Markland, where they
+      passed the winter, and as one of their number who had wandered some
+      distance inland had found vines and grapes, Lief named the country Vinland
+      or Vine Land, which is the country we call New England. The Scandinavians
+      continued to make voyages to the West and South; and finally Thorfinn
+      Karlsefne, an Icelander, made a great expedition in the spring of 1007
+      with ships and material for colonisation. He made much progress to the
+      southwards, and the Icelandic accounts of the climate and soil and
+      characteristics of the country leave no doubt that Greenland and Nova
+      Scotia were discovered and colonised at this time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It must be remembered, however, that then and in the lifetime of Columbus
+      Greenland was supposed to&mdash;be a promontory of the coast of Europe,
+      and was not connected in men's minds with a western continent. Its early
+      discovery has no bearing on the significance of Columbus's achievement,
+      the greatness of which depends not on his having been the first man from
+      the Old World to set foot upon the shores of the New, but on the fact that
+      by pure faith and belief in his own purpose he did set out for and arrive
+      in a world where no man of his era or civilisation had ever before set
+      foot, or from which no wanderer who may have been blown there ever
+      returned. It is enough to claim for him the merit of discovery in the true
+      sense of the word. The New World was covered from the Old by a veil of
+      distance, of time and space, of absence, invisibility, virtual
+      non-existence; and he discovered it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="ch6" id="ch6"></a>CHAPTER VI.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      IN PORTUGAL
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is no reason to believe that before his twenty-fifth year Columbus
+      was anything more than a merchant or mariner, sailing before the mast, and
+      joining one ship after another as opportunities for good voyages offered
+      themselves. A change took place later, probably after his marriage, when
+      he began to adapt himself rapidly to a new set of surroundings, and to
+      show his intrinsic qualities; but all the attempts that have been made to
+      glorify him socially&mdash;attempts, it must be remembered, in which he
+      himself and his sons were in after years the leaders&mdash;are entirely
+      mistaken. That strange instinct for consistency which makes people desire
+      to see the outward man correspond, in terms of momentary and arbitrary
+      credit, with the inner and hidden man of the heart, has in truth led to
+      more biographical injustice than is fully realised. If Columbus had been
+      the man some of his biographers would like to make him out&mdash;the
+      nephew or descendant of a famous French Admiral, educated at the
+      University of Pavia, belonging to a family of noble birth and high social
+      esteem in Genoa, chosen by King Rene to be the commander of naval
+      expeditions, learned in scientific lore, in the classics, in astronomy and
+      in cosmography, the friend and correspondent of Toscanelli and other
+      learned scientists&mdash;we should find it hard indeed to forgive him the
+      shifts and deceits that he practised. It is far more interesting to think
+      of him as a common craftsman, of a lowly condition and poor circumstances,
+      who had to earn his living during the formative period of his life by the
+      simplest and hardest labour of the hand. The qualities that made him what
+      he was were of a very simple kind, and his character owed its strength,
+      not to any complexity or subtlety of training and education, but rather to
+      that very bareness and simplicity of circumstance that made him a man of
+      single rather than manifold ideas. He was not capable of seeing both sides
+      of a question; he saw only one side. But he came of a great race; and it
+      was the qualities of his race, combined with this simplicity and even
+      perhaps vacancy of mind, that gave to his idea, when once the seed of it
+      had lodged in his mind, so much vigour in growth and room for expansion.
+      Think of him, then, at the age of twenty-five as a typical plebeian
+      Genoese, bearing all the characteristic traits of his century and people&mdash;the
+      spirit of adventure, the love of gold and of power, a spirit of mysticism,
+      and more than a touch of crafty and elaborate dissimulation, when that
+      should be necessary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had been at sea for ten or eleven years, making voyages to and from
+      Genoa, with an occasional spell ashore and plunge into the paternal
+      affairs, when in the year 1476 he found himself on board a Genoese vessel
+      which formed one of a convoy going, to Lisbon. This convoy was attacked
+      off Cape St. Vincent by Colombo, or Colomb, the famous French corsair, of
+      whom Christopher himself has quite falsely been called a relative. Only
+      two of the Genoese vessels escaped, and one of these two was the ship
+      which carried Columbus. It arrived at Lisbon, where Columbus went ashore
+      and took up his abode.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This, so far as can be ascertained, is the truth about the arrival of
+      Columbus in Portugal. The early years of an obscure man who leaps into
+      fame late in life are nearly always difficult to gather knowledge about,
+      because not only are the annals of the poor short and simple and in most
+      cases altogether unrecorded, but there is always that instinct, to which I
+      have already referred, to make out that the circumstances of a man who
+      late in life becomes great and remarkable were always, at every point in
+      his career, remarkable also. We love to trace the hand of destiny guiding
+      her chosen people, protecting them from dangers, and preserving them for
+      their great moment. It is a pleasant study, and one to which the facts
+      often lend themselves, but it leads to a vicious method of biography which
+      obscures the truth with legends and pretences that have afterwards
+      laboriously to be cleared away. It was so in the case of Columbus. Before
+      his departure on his first voyage of discovery there is absolutely no
+      temporary record of him except a few dates in notarial registers. The
+      circumstances of his life and his previous conditions were supplied
+      afterwards by himself and his contemporaries; and both he and they saw the
+      past in the light of the present, and did their best to make it fit a
+      present so wonderful and miraculous. The whole trend of recent research on
+      the subject of Columbus has been unfortunately in the direction of proving
+      the complete insincerity of his own speech and writings about his early
+      life, and the inaccuracy of Las Casas writings his contemporary
+      biographer, and the first historian of the West Indies. Those of my
+      readers, then, who are inclined to be impatient with the meagreness of the
+      facts with which I am presenting them, and the disproportionate amount of
+      theory to fact with regard to these early years of Columbus, must remember
+      three things. First, that the only record of the early years of Columbus
+      was written long after those years had passed away, and in circumstances
+      which did not harmonise with them; second, that there is evidence, both
+      substantive and presumptive, that much of those records, even though it
+      came from the hands of Columbus and his friends, is false and must be
+      discarded; and third, that the only way in which anything like the truth
+      can be arrived at is by circumstantial and presumptive evidence with
+      regard to dates, names, places, and events upon which the obscure life of
+      Columbus impinged. Columbus is known to have written much about himself,
+      but very little of it exists or remains in his own handwriting. It remains
+      in the form of quotation by others, all of whom had their reasons for not
+      representing quite accurately what was, it must be feared, not even itself
+      a candid and accurate record. The evidence for these very serious
+      statements is the subject of numberless volumes and monographs, which
+      cannot be quoted here; for it is my privilege to reap the results, and not
+      to reproduce the material, of the immense research and investigation to
+      which in the last fifty years the life of Columbus has been subjected.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We shall come to facts enough presently; in the meantime we have but the
+      vaguest knowledge of what Columbus did in Lisbon. The one technical
+      possession which he obviously had was knowledge of the sea; he had also a
+      head on his shoulders, and plenty of judgment and common sense; he had
+      likely picked up some knowledge of cartography in his years at Genoa,
+      since (having abandoned wool-weaving) he probably wished to make progress
+      in the profession of the sea; and it is, therefore, believed that he
+      picked up a living in Lisbon by drawing charts and maps. Such a living
+      would only be intermittent; a fact that is indicated by his periodic
+      excursions to sea again, presumably when funds were exhausted. There were
+      other Genoese in Lisbon, and his own brother Bartholomew was with him
+      there for a time. He may actually have been there when Columbus arrived,
+      but it was more probable that Columbus, the pioneer of the family, seeing
+      a better field for his brother's talent in Lisbon than in Genoa, sent for
+      him when he himself was established there. This Bartholomew, of whom we
+      shall see a good deal in the future, is merely an outline at this stage of
+      the story; an outline that will later be filled up with human features and
+      fitted with a human character; at present he is but a brother of
+      Christopher, with a rather bookish taste, a better knowledge of
+      cartography than Christopher possessed, and some little experience of the
+      book-selling trade. He too made charts in Lisbon, and sold books also, and
+      no doubt between them the efforts of the brothers, supplemented by the
+      occasional voyages of Christopher, obtained them a sufficient livelihood.
+      The social change, in the one case from the society of Genoese
+      wool-weavers, and in the other from the company of merchant sailors, must
+      have been very great; for there is evidence that they began to make
+      friends and acquaintances among a rather different class than had been
+      formerly accessible to them. The change to a new country also and to a new
+      language makes a deep impression at the age of twenty-five; and although
+      Columbus in his sea-farings had been in many ports, and had probably
+      picked up a knowledge both of Portuguese and of Spanish, his establishment
+      in the Portuguese capital could not fail to enlarge his outlook upon life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is absolutely no record of his circumstances in the first year of
+      his life at Lisbon, so we may look once more into the glass of imagination
+      and try to find a picture there. It is very dim, very minute, very, very
+      far away. There is the little shop in a steep Lisbon street, somewhere
+      near the harbour we may be sure, with the shadows of the houses lying
+      sharp on the white sunlight of the street; the cool darkness of the shop,
+      with its odour of vellum and parchment, its rolls of maps and charts; and
+      somewhere near by the sounds and commotion of the wharves and the
+      shipping. Often, when there was a purchaser in the shop, there would be
+      talk of the sea, of the best course from this place to that, of the
+      entrance to this harbour and the other; talk of the western islands too,
+      of the western ocean, of the new astrolabe which the German Muller of
+      Konigsberg, or Regiomontanus, as they called him in Portugal, had modified
+      and improved. And if there was sometimes an evening walk, it would surely
+      be towards the coast or on a hill above the harbour, with a view of the
+      sun being quenched in the sea and travelling down into the unknown,
+      uncharted West.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="ch7" id="ch7"></a>CHAPTER VII.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      ADVENTURES BODILY AND SPIRITUAL
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Columbus had not been long in Portugal before he was off again to sea,
+      this time on a longer voyage than any he had yet undertaken. Our knowledge
+      of it depends on his own words as reported by Las Casas, and, like so much
+      other knowledge similarly recorded, is not to be received with absolute
+      certainty; but on the whole the balance of probability is in favour of its
+      truth. The words in which this voyage is recorded are given as a quotation
+      from a letter of Columbus, and, stripped of certain obvious interpolations
+      of the historian, are as follows:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "In the month of February, and in the year 1477, I navigated as far as
+        the island of Tile [Thule], a hundred leagues; and to this island, which
+        is as large as England, the English, especially those of Bristol, go
+        with merchandise; and when I was there the sea was not frozen over,
+        although there were very high tides, so much so that in some parts the
+        sea rose twenty-five 'brazas', and went down as much, twice during the
+        day."
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      The reasons for doubting that this voyage took place are due simply to
+      Columbus's habit of being untruthful in regard to his own past doings, and
+      his propensity for drawing the long bow; and the reason that has been
+      accepted by most of his biographers who have denied the truth of this
+      statement is that, in the year 1492, when Columbus was addressing the King
+      and Queen of Spain on his qualifications as a navigator, and when he
+      wished to set forth his experience in a formidable light, he said nothing
+      about this voyage, but merely described his explorations as having
+      extended from Guinea on the south to England on the north. A shrewd
+      estimate of Columbus's character makes it indeed seem incredible that, if
+      he had really been in Iceland, he should not have mentioned the fact on
+      this occasion; and yet there is just one reason, also quite characteristic
+      of Columbus, that would account for the suppression. It is just possible
+      that when he was at Thule, by which he meant Iceland, he may have heard of
+      the explorations in the direction of Greenland and Newfoundland; and that,
+      although by other navigators these lands were regarded as a part of the
+      continent of Europe, he may have had some glimmerings of an idea that they
+      were part of land and islands in the West; and he was much too jealous of
+      his own reputation as the great and only originator of the project for
+      voyaging to the West, to give away any hints that he was not the only
+      person to whom such ideas had occurred. There is deception and untruth
+      somewhere; and one must make one's choice between regarding the story in
+      the first place as a lie, or accepting it as truth, and putting down
+      Columbus's silence about it on a later occasion to a rare instinct of
+      judicious suppression. There are other facts in his life, to which, we
+      shall come later, that are in accordance with this theory. There is no
+      doubt, moreover, that Columbus had a very great experience of the sea, and
+      was one of the greatest practical seamen, if not the greatest, that has
+      ever lived; and it would be foolish to deny, except for the greatest
+      reasons, that he made a voyage to the far North, which was neither unusual
+      at the time nor a very great achievement for a seaman of his experience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Christopher returned from these voyages, of which we know nothing except
+      the facts that he has given us, towards the end of 1477; and it was
+      probably in the next year that an event very important in his life and
+      career took place. Hitherto there has been no whisper of love in that
+      arduous career of wool-weaving, sailoring, and map-making; and it is not
+      unlikely that his marriage represents the first inspiration of love in his
+      life, for he was, in spite of his southern birth, a cool-blooded man, for
+      whom affairs of the heart had never a very serious interest. But at
+      Lisbon, where he began to find himself with some footing and place in the
+      world, and where the prospect of at least a livelihood began to open out
+      before him, his thoughts took that turn towards domesticity and family
+      life which marks a moment in the development of almost every man. And now,
+      since he has at last to emerge from the misty environment of sea-spray
+      that has veiled him so long from our intimate sight, we may take a close
+      look at him as he was in this year 1478.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Unlike the southern Italians, he was fair in colouring; a man rather above
+      the middle height, large limbed, of a shapely breadth and proportion, and
+      of a grave and dignified demeanour. His face was ruddy, and inclined to be
+      freckled under the exposure to the sun, his hair at this age still fair
+      and reddish, although in a few years later it turned grey, and became
+      white while he was still a young man. His nose was slightly aquiline, his
+      face long and rather full; his eyes of a clear blue, with sharply defined
+      eyebrows&mdash;seamen's eyes, which get an unmistakable light in them from
+      long staring into the sea distances. Altogether a handsome and
+      distinguished-looking young man, noticeable anywhere, and especially among
+      a crowd of swarthy Portuguese. He was not a lively young man; on the
+      contrary, his manner was rather heavy, and even at times inclined to be
+      pompous; he had a very good opinion of himself, had the clear calculating
+      head and tidy intellectual methods of the able mariner; was shrewd and
+      cautious&mdash;in a word, took himself and the world very seriously. A
+      strictly conventional man, as the conventions of his time and race went;
+      probably some of his gayer and lighter-hearted contemporaries thought him
+      a dull enough dog, who would not join in a carouse or a gallant adventure,
+      but would probably get the better of you if he could in any commercial
+      deal. He was a great stickler for the observances of religion; and never a
+      Sunday or feast-day passed, when he was ashore, without finding him, like
+      the dutiful son of the Church that he was, hearing Mass and attending at
+      Benediction. Not, indeed, a very attractive or inspiring figure of a man;
+      not the man whose company one would likely have sought very much, or whose
+      conversation one would have found very interesting. A man rather whose
+      character was cast in a large and plain mould, without those many facets
+      which add so much to the brightness of human intercourse, and which
+      attract and reflect the light from other minds; a man who must be tried in
+      large circumstances, and placed in a big setting, if his qualities are to
+      be seen to advantage . . . . I seem to see him walking up from the shop
+      near the harbour at Lisbon towards the convent of Saints; walking gravely
+      and firmly, with a dignified demeanour, with his best clothes on, and
+      glad, for the moment, to be free of his sea acquaintances, and to be
+      walking in the direction of that upper-class world after which he has a
+      secret hankering in his heart. There are a great many churches in Lisbon
+      nearer his house where he might hear Mass on Sundays; but he prefers to
+      walk up to the rich and fashionable convent of Saints, where everybody is
+      well dressed, and where those kindling eyes of his may indulge a cool
+      taste for feminine beauty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While the chapel bell is ringing other people are hurrying through the
+      sunny Lisbon streets to Mass at the convent. Among the fashionable throng
+      are two ladies, one young, one middle-aged; they separate at the church
+      door, and the younger one leaves her mother and takes her place in the
+      convent choir. This is Philippa Moniz, who lives alone with her mother in
+      Lisbon, and amuses herself with her privileges as a cavaliera, or dame, in
+      one of the knightly orders attached to the rich convent of Saints. Perhaps
+      she has noticed the tall figure of the young Genoese in the strangers'
+      part of the convent, perhaps not; but his roving blue eye has noticed her,
+      and much is to come of it. The young Genoese continues his regular and
+      exemplary attendance at the divine Office, the young lady is zealous in
+      observing her duties in the choir; some kind friend introduces them; the
+      audacious young man makes his proposals, and, in spite of the melancholy
+      protests of the young lady's exceedingly respectable and highly-connected
+      relatives, the young people are betrothed and actually married before the
+      elders have time to recover breath from their first shock at the absurdity
+      of the suggestion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is a very curious fact in connection with his marriage that is
+      worthy of our consideration. In all his voluminous writings, letters,
+      memoirs, and journals, Columbus never once mentions his wife. His sole
+      reference to her is in his will, made at Valladolid many years later, long
+      after her death; and is contained in the two words "my wife." He ordains
+      that a chapel shall be erected and masses said for the repose of the souls
+      of his father, his mother, and his wife. He who wrote so much, did not
+      write of her; he who boasted so much, never boasted of her; he who
+      bemoaned so much, never bemoaned her. There is a blank silence on his part
+      about everything connected with his marriage and his wife. I like to think
+      that it was because this marriage, which incidentally furnished him with
+      one of the great impulses of his career, was in itself placid and
+      uneventful, and belongs to that mass of happy days that do not make
+      history. Columbus was not a passionate man. I think that love had a very
+      small place in his life, and that the fever of passion was with him brief
+      and soon finished with; but I am sure he was affectionate, and grateful
+      for any affection and tenderness that were bestowed upon him. He was much
+      away too, at first on his voyages to Guinea and afterwards on the business
+      of his petitions to the Portuguese and Spanish Courts; and one need not be
+      a cynic to believe that these absences did nothing to lessen the affection
+      between him and his wife. Finally, their married life was a short one; she
+      died within ten years, and I am sure did not outlive his affections; so
+      that there may be something solemn, some secret memories of the aching joy
+      and sorrow that her coming into his life and passing out of it brought
+      him, in this silence of Columbus concerning his wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This marriage was, in the vulgar idiom of to-day, a great thing for
+      Columbus. It not only brought him a wife; it brought him a home, society,
+      recognition, and a connection with maritime knowledge and adventure that
+      was of the greatest importance to him. Philippa Moniz Perestrello was the
+      daughter of Bartolomeo Perestrello, who had been appointed hereditary
+      governor of the island of Porto Santo on its colonisation by Prince Henry
+      in 1425 and who had died there in 1457. Her grandfather was Gil Ayres
+      Moniz, who was secretary to the famous Constable Pereira in the reign of
+      John I, and is chiefly interesting to us because he founded the chapel of
+      the "Piedad" in the Carmelite Monastery at Lisbon, in which the Moniz
+      family had the right of interment for ever, and in which the body of
+      Philippa, after her brief pilgrimage in this world was over, duly rested;
+      and whence her son ordered its disinterment and re-burial in the church of
+      Santa Clara in San Domingo. Philippa's mother, Isabel Moniz, was the
+      second or third wife of Perestrello; and after her husband's death she had
+      come to live in Lisbon. She had another daughter, Violante by name, who
+      had married one Mulier, or Muliartes, in Huelva; and a son named
+      Bartolomeo, who was the heir to the governorship of Porto Santo; but as he
+      was only a little boy at the time of his father's death his mother ceded
+      the governorship to Pedro Correa da Cunha, who had married Iseult, the
+      daughter of old Bartolomeo by his first wife. The governorship was thus
+      kept in the family during the minority of Bartolomeo, who resumed it later
+      when he came of age.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This Isabel, mother of Philippa, was a very important acquaintance indeed
+      for Columbus. It must be noted that he left the shop and poor Bartholomew
+      to take care of themselves or each other, and went to live in the house of
+      his mother-in-law. This was a great social step for the wool-weaver of
+      Genoa; and it was probably the result of a kind of compromise with his
+      wife's horrified relatives at the time of her marriage. It was doubtless
+      thought impossible for her to go and live over the chart-maker's shop; and
+      as you can make charts in one house as well as another, it was decided
+      that Columbus should live with his mother-in-law, and follow his trade
+      under her roof. Columbus, in fact, seems to have been fortunate in
+      securing the favour of his female relatives-in-law, and it was probably
+      owing to the championship of Philippa's mother that a marriage so much to
+      his advantage ever took place at all. His wife had many distinguished
+      relatives in the neighbourhood of Lisbon; her cousin was archbishop at
+      this very time; but I can neither find that their marriage was celebrated
+      with the archiepiscopal blessing or that he ever got much help or
+      countenance from the male members of the Moniz family. Archbishops even
+      today do not much like their pretty cousins marrying a man of Columbus's
+      position, whether you call him a woolweaver, a sailor, a map-maker, or a
+      bookseller. "Adventurer" is perhaps the truest description of him; and the
+      word was as much distrusted in the best circles in Lisbon in the fifteenth
+      century as it is to-day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Those of his new relatives, however, who did get to know him soon began to
+      see that Philippa had not made such a bad bargain after all. With the
+      confidence and added belief in himself that the recognition and
+      encouragement of those kind women brought him, Columbus's mind and
+      imagination expanded; and I think it was probably now that he began to
+      wonder if all his knowledge and seamanship, his quite useful smattering of
+      cartography and cosmography, his real love of adventure, and all his
+      dreams and speculations concerning the unknown and uncharted seas, could
+      not be turned to some practical account. His wife's step-sister Iseult and
+      her husband had, moreover, only lately returned to Lisbon from their long
+      residence in Porto Santo; young Bartolomeo Perestrello, her brother, was
+      reigning there in their stead, and no doubt sending home interesting
+      accounts of ships and navigators that put in at Madeira; and all the
+      circumstances would tend to fan the spark of Columbus's desire to have
+      some adventure and glory of his own on the high seas. He would wish to
+      show all these grandees, with whom his marriage had brought him
+      acquainted, that you did not need to be born a Perestrello&mdash;or
+      Pallastrelli, as the name was in its original Italian form&mdash;to make a
+      name in the world. Donna Isabel, moreover, was never tired of talking
+      about Porto Santo and her dead husband, and of all the voyages and sea
+      adventures that had filled his life. She was obviously a good teller of
+      tales, and had all the old history and traditions of Madeira at her
+      fingers' ends; the story of Robert Machin and Anne Dorset; the story of
+      the isle of Seven Cities; and the black cloud on the horizon that turned
+      out in the end to be Madeira. She told Christopher how her husband, when
+      he had first gone to Porto Santo, had taken there a litter of rabbits, and
+      how the rabbits had so increased that in two seasons they had eaten up
+      everything on the island, and rendered it uninhabitable for some time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She brought out her husband's sea-charts, memoranda, and log-books, the
+      sight of which still farther inflamed Christopher's curiosity and
+      ambition. The great thing in those days was to discover something, if it
+      was only a cape down the African coast or a rock in the Atlantic. The key
+      to fame, which later took the form of mechanical invention, and later
+      still of discovery in the region of science, took the form then of actual
+      discovery of parts of the earth's surface. The thing was in the air; news
+      was coming in every day of something new seen, something new charted. If
+      others had done so much, and the field was still half unexplored, could
+      not he do something also? It was not an unlikely thought to occur to the
+      mind of a student of sea charts and horizons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="ch8" id="ch8"></a>CHAPTER VIII.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE FIRE KINDLES
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next step in Columbus's career was a move to Porto Santo, which
+      probably took place very soon after his marriage&mdash;that is to say, in
+      the year 1479. It is likely that he had the chance of making a voyage
+      there; perhaps even of commanding a ship, for his experience of the sea
+      and skill as a navigator must by this time have raised him above the rank
+      of an ordinary seaman; and in that case nothing would be more natural than
+      that he should take his young wife with him to visit her brother
+      Bartolomeo, and to see the family property. It is one of the charms of the
+      seaman's profession that he travels free all over the world; and if he has
+      no house or other fixed possessions that need to be looked after he has
+      the freedom of the world, and can go where he likes free of cost. Porto
+      Santo and Madeira, lying in the track of the busiest trade on the Atlantic
+      coast, would provide Columbus with an excellent base from which to make
+      other voyages; so it was probably with a heart full of eager anticipation
+      for the future, and sense of quiet happiness in the present, that in the
+      year 1479 Signor Cristoforo Colombo (for he did not yet call himself Senor
+      Cristoval Colon) set out for Porto Santo&mdash;a lonely rock some miles
+      north of Madeira. Its southern shore is a long sweeping bay of white sand,
+      with a huddle of sand-hills beyond, and cliffs and peaks of basalt
+      streaked with lava fringing the other shores. When Columbus and his bride
+      arrived there the place was almost as bare as it is to-day. There were the
+      governor's house; the settlement of Portuguese who worked in the mills and
+      sugar-fields; the mills themselves, with the cultivated sugar-fields
+      behind them; and the vineyards, with the dwarf Malmsey vines pegged down
+      to the ground, which Prince Henry had imported from Candia fifty years
+      before. The forest of dragon-trees that had once covered the island was
+      nearly all gone. The wood had all been used either for building, making
+      boats, or for fuel; and on the fruit of the few trees that were left a
+      herd of pigs was fattened. There was frequent communication by boat with
+      Madeira, which was the chief of all the Atlantic islands, and the
+      headquarters of the sugar trade; and Porto Santo itself was a favourite
+      place of call for passing ships. So that it was by no means lonely for
+      Christopher Columbus and his wife, even if they had not had the society of
+      the governor and his settlement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We can allow him about three years in Porto Santo, although for a part of
+      this time at least he must have been at sea. I think it not unlikely that
+      it was the happiest time of his life. He was removed from the
+      uncomfortable environment of people who looked down upon him because of
+      his obscure birth; he was in an exquisite climate; and living by the
+      sea-shore, as a sailor loves to do; he got on well with Bartolomeo, who
+      was no doubt glad enough of the company of this grave sailor who had seen
+      so much and had visited so many countries; above all he had his wife
+      there, his beautiful, dear, proud Philippa, all to himself, and out of
+      reach of those abominable Portuguese noblemen who paid so much attention
+      to her and so little to him, and made him so jealous; and there was a
+      whispered promise of some one who was coming to make him happier still. It
+      is a splendid setting, this, for the sea adventurer; a charming picture
+      that one has of him there so long ago, walking on the white shores of the
+      great sweeping bay, with the glorious purple Atlantic sparkling and
+      thundering on the sands, as it sparkles and thunders to-day. A place empty
+      and vivid, swept by the mellow winds; silent, but for the continuous roar
+      of the sea; still, but for the scuttling of the rabbits among the
+      sand-hills and the occasional passage of a figure from the mills up to the
+      sugar-fields; but brilliant with sunshine and colour and the bright
+      environment of the sea. It was upon such scenes that he looked during this
+      happy pause in his life; they were the setting of Philippa's dreams and
+      anxieties as the time of motherhood drew near; and it was upon them that
+      their little son first opened his eyes, and with the boom of the Atlantic
+      breakers that he first mingled his small voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is but a moment of rest and happiness; for Christopher the scene is
+      soon changed, and he must set forth upon a voyage again, while Philippa is
+      left, with a new light in her eyes, to watch over the atom that wakes and
+      weeps and twists and struggles and mews, and sleeps again, in her charge.
+      Sleep well, little son! Yet a little while, and you too shall make voyages
+      and conquests; new worlds lie waiting for you, who are so greatly
+      astonished at this Old World; far journeys by land and sea, and the
+      company of courtiers and kings; and much honour from the name and deeds of
+      him who looked into your eyes with a laugh and, a sob, and was so very
+      large and overshadowing! But with her who quietly sings to you, whose
+      hands soothe and caress you, in whose eyes shines that wonderful light of
+      mother's love&mdash;only a little while longer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While Diego, as this son was christened, was yet only a baby in his
+      cradle, Columbus made an important voyage to the, coast of Guinea as all
+      the western part of the African continent was then called. His solid and
+      practical qualities were by this time beginning to be recognised even by
+      Philippa's haughty family, and it was possibly through the interest of her
+      uncle, Pedro Noronhas, a distinguished minister of the King of Portugal,
+      that he got the command of a caravel in the expedition which set out for
+      Guinea in December 1481. A few miles from Cape Coast Castle, and on the
+      borders of the Dutch colony, there are to-day the ruined remains of a
+      fort; and it is this fort, the fortress of St. George, that the expedition
+      was sent out to erect. On the 11th of December the little fleet set sail
+      for [from? D.W.] Lisbon&mdash;ten caravels, and two barges or lighters
+      laden with the necessary masonry and timber-work for the fort. Columbus
+      was in command of one of the caravels, and the whole fleet was commanded
+      by the Portuguese Admiral Azumbaga. They would certainly see Porto Santo
+      and Madeira on their way south, although they did not call there; and
+      Philippa was no doubt looking out for them, and watching from the
+      sand-hills the fleet of twelve ships going by in the offing. They called
+      at Cape Verde, where the Admiral was commissioned to present one of the
+      negro kings with some horses and hawks, and incidentally to obtain his
+      assent to a treaty. On the 19th of January 1482, having made a very good
+      voyage, they, landed just beyond the Cape of the Three Points, and
+      immediately set about the business of the expedition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a state reception, with Admiral Azumbaga walking in front in
+      scarlet and brocade, followed by his captains, Columbus among them,
+      dressed in gorgeous tunics and cloaks with golden collars and, well hidden
+      beneath their finery, good serviceable cuirasses. The banner of Portugal
+      was ceremoniously unfurled and dis played from the top of a tall tree. An
+      altar was erected and consecrated by the chaplain to the expedition, and a
+      mass was sung for the repose of the soul of Prince Henry. The Portugal
+      contingent were then met by Caramansa, the king of the country, who came,
+      surrounded by a great guard of blacks armed with assegais, their bodies
+      scantily decorated with monkey fur and palm leaves. The black monarch must
+      have presented a handsome appearance, for his arms and legs were decked
+      with gold bracelets and rings, he had a kind of dog-collar fitted with
+      bells round his neck, and some pieces of gold were daintily twisted into
+      his beard. With these aids to diplomacy, and doubtless also with the help
+      of a dram or two of spirits or of the wine of Oporto, the treaty was soon
+      concluded, and a very shrewd stroke of business accomplished for the King
+      of Portugal; for it gave him the sole right of exchanging gaudy rubbish
+      from Portugal for the precious gold of Ethiopia. When the contents of the
+      two freight-ships had been unloaded they were beached and broken up by the
+      orders of King John, who wished it to be thought that they had been
+      destroyed in the whirlpools of that dangerous sea, and that the navigation
+      of those rough waters was only safe for the caravels of the Navy. The fort
+      was built in twenty days, and the expedition returned, laden with gold and
+      ivory; Admiral Azumbaga remained behind in command of the garrison.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This voyage, which was a bold and adventurous one for the time, may be
+      regarded as the first recognition of Columbus as a man of importance, for
+      the expedition was manned and commanded by picked men; so it was for all
+      reasons a very fortunate one for him, although the possession of the
+      dangerous secret as to the whereabouts of this valuable territory might
+      have proved to be not very convenient to him in the future.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Columbus went back to Porto Santo with his ambitions thoroughly kindled.
+      He had been given a definite command in the Portuguese Navy; he had been
+      sailing with a fleet; he had been down to the mysterious coast of Africa;
+      he had been trafficking with strange tribes; he had been engaged in a
+      difficult piece of navigation such as he loved; and on the long dreamy
+      days of the voyage home, the caravels furrowing the blue Atlantic before
+      the steady trade-wind, he determined that he would find some way of
+      putting his knowledge to use, and of earning distinction for himself.
+      Living, as he had been lately, in Atlantic seaports overlooking the
+      western ocean it is certain that the idea of discovering something in that
+      direction occupied him more and more. What it was that he was to discover
+      was probably very vague in his mind, and was likely not designated by any
+      name more exact than "lands." In after years he tried to show that it was
+      a logical and scientific deduction which led him to go and seek the
+      eastern shore of the Indian continent by sailing west; but we may be
+      almost certain that at this time he thought of no such thing. He had no
+      exact scientific knowledge at this date. His map making had taught him
+      something, and naturally he had kept his ears open, and knew all the
+      gossip and hearsay about the islands of the West; and there gradually grew
+      in his mind the intuition or conviction&mdash;I refuse to call it an
+      opinion&mdash;that, over that blue verge of the West, there was land to be
+      found. How this seed of conviction first lodged in his mind it would be
+      impossible to say; in any one of the steps through which we have followed
+      him, it might have taken its root; but there it was, beginning to occupy
+      his mind very seriously indeed; and he began to look out, as all men do
+      who wish to act upon faith or conviction which they cannot demonstrate to
+      another person, for some proofs that his conviction was a sound one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And now, just at the moment when he needs it most, comes an incident that,
+      to a man of his religious and superstitious habit, seems like the pointing
+      finger of Providence. The story of the shipwrecked pilot has been
+      discredited by nearly all the modern biographers of Columbus, chiefly
+      because it does not fit in with their theory of his scientific studies and
+      the alleged bearing of these on his great discovery; but it is given by
+      Las Casas, who says that it was commonly believed by Columbus's entourage
+      at Hispaniola. Moreover, amid all the tangles of theory and argument in
+      which the achievement of Columbus has been involved, this original story
+      of shipwrecked mariners stands out with a strength and simplicity that
+      cannot be entirely disregarded by the historian who permits himself some
+      light of imagination by which to work. It is more true to life and to
+      nature that Columbus should have received his last impulse, the little
+      push that was to set his accumulated energy and determination in motion,
+      from a thing of pure chance, than that he should have built his
+      achievement up in a logical superstructure resting on a basis of profound
+      and elaborate theory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the year following Columbus's return from Guinea, then, he, and
+      probably his family, had gone over to Madeira from Porto Santo, and were
+      staying there. While they were there a small ship put in to Madeira, much
+      battered by storms and bad weather, and manned by a crew of five sick
+      mariners. Columbus, who was probably never far from the shore at Funchal
+      when a ship came into the harbour, happened to see them. Struck by their
+      appearance, and finding them in a quite destitute and grievously invalid
+      condition, he entertained them in his house until some other provision
+      could be made for them. But they were quite worn out. One by one they
+      succumbed to weakness and illness, until one only, a pilot from Huelva,
+      was left. He also was sinking, and when it was obvious that his end was
+      near at hand, he beckoned his good host to his bedside, and, in gratitude
+      for all his kindness, imparted to him some singular knowledge which he had
+      acquired, and with which, if he had lived, he had hoped to win distinction
+      for himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The pilot's story, in so far as it has been preserved, and taking the mean
+      of four contemporary accounts of it, was as follows. This man, whose name
+      is doubtful, but is given as Alonso Sanchez, was sailing on a voyage from
+      one of the Spanish ports to England or Flanders. He had a crew of
+      seventeen men. When they had got well out to sea a severe easterly gale
+      sprung up, which drove the vessel before it to the westward. Day after day
+      and week after week, for twenty-eight days, this gale continued. The
+      islands were all left far behind, and the ship was carried into a region
+      far beyond the limits of the ocean marked on the charts. At last they
+      sighted some islands, upon one of which they landed and took in wood and
+      water. The pilot took the bearings of the island, in so far as he was
+      able, and made some observations, the only one of which that has remained
+      being that the natives went naked; and, the wind having changed, set forth
+      on his homeward voyage. This voyage was long and painful. The wind did not
+      hold steady from the west; the pilot and his crew had a very hazy notion
+      of where they were; their dead reckoning was confused; their provisions
+      fell short; and one by one the crew sickened and died until they were
+      reduced to five or six&mdash;the ones who, worn out by sickness and
+      famine, and the labours of working the ship short-handed and in their
+      enfeebled condition, at last made the island of Madeira, and cast anchor
+      in the beautiful bay of Funchal, only to die there. All these things we
+      may imagine the dying man relating in snatches to his absorbed listener;
+      who felt himself to be receiving a pearl of knowledge to be guarded and
+      used, now that its finder must depart upon the last and longest voyage of
+      human discovery. Such observations as he had made&mdash;probably a few
+      figures giving the bearings of stars, an account of dead reckoning, and a
+      quite useless and inaccurate chart or map&mdash;the pilot gave to his
+      host; then, having delivered his soul of its secret, he died. This is the
+      story; not an impossible or improbable one in its main outlines. Whether
+      the pilot really landed on one of the Antilles is extremely doubtful,
+      although it is possible. Superstitious and storm-tossed sailors in those
+      days were only too ready to believe that they saw some of the fabled
+      islands of the Atlantic; and it is quite possible that the pilot simply
+      announced that he had seen land, and that the details as to his having
+      actually set foot upon it were added later. That does not seem to me
+      important in so far as it concerns Columbus. Whether it were true or not,
+      the man obviously believed it; and to the mind of Columbus, possessed with
+      an idea and a blind faith in something which could not be seen, the whole
+      incident would appear in the light of a supernatural sign. The bit of
+      paper or parchment with the rude drawing on it, even although it were the
+      drawing of a thing imagined and not of a thing seen, would still have for
+      him a kind of authority that he would find it hard to ignore. It seems
+      unnecessary to disbelieve this story. It is obviously absurd to regard it
+      as the sole origin of Columbus's great idea; it probably belongs to that
+      order of accidents, small and unimportant in themselves, which are so
+      often associated with the beginnings of mighty events. Walking on the
+      shore at Madeira or Porto Santo, his mind brooding on the great and
+      growing idea, Columbus would remember one or two other instances which, in
+      the light of his growing conviction and know ledge, began to take on a
+      significant hue. He remembered that his wife's relative, Pedro Correa, who
+      had come back from Porto Santo while Columbus was living in Lisbon, had
+      told him about some strange flotsam that came in upon the shores of the
+      island. He had seen a piece of wood of a very dark colour curiously
+      carved, but not with any tool of metal; and some great canes had also come
+      ashore, so big that, every joint would hold a gallon of wine. These canes,
+      which were utterly unlike any thing known in Europe or the islands of the
+      Atlantic, had been looked upon as such curiosities that they had been sent
+      to the King at Lisbon, where they remained, and where Columbus himself
+      afterwards saw them. Two other stories, which he heard also at this time,
+      went to strengthen his convictions. One was the tale of Martin Vincenti, a
+      pilot in the Portuguese Navy, who had found in the sea, four hundred and
+      twenty leagues to the west of Cape St. Vincent, another piece of wood,
+      curiously carved, that had evidently not been laboured with an iron
+      instrument. Columbus also remembered that the inhabitants of the Azores
+      had more than once found upon their coasts the trunks of huge pine-trees,
+      and strangely shaped canoes carved out of single logs; and, most
+      significant of all, the people of Flares had taken from the water the
+      bodies of two dead men, whose faces were of a strange broad shape, and
+      whose features differed from those of any known race of mankind. All these
+      objects, it was supposed, were brought by westerly winds to the shores of
+      Europe; it was not till long afterwards, when the currents of the Atlantic
+      came to be studied, that the presence of such flotsam came to be
+      attributed to the ocean currents, deflected by the Cape of Good Hope and
+      gathered in the Gulf of Mexico, which are sprayed out across the Atlantic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The idea once fixed in his mind that there was land at a not impossible
+      distance to the west, and perhaps a sea-road to the shores of Asia itself,
+      the next thing to be done, was to go and discover it. Rather a formidable
+      task for a man without money, a foreigner in a strange land, among people
+      who looked down upon him because of his obscure birth, and with no
+      equipment except a knowledge of the sea, a great mastery of the art and
+      craft of seamanship, a fearless spirit of adventure, and an inner light!
+      Some one else would have to be convinced before anything could be done;
+      somebody who would provide ships and men and money and provisions.
+      Altogether rather a large order; for it was not an unusual thing in those
+      days for master mariners, tired of the shore, to suggest to some grandee
+      or other the desirability of fitting out a ship or two to go in search of
+      the isle of St. Brandon, or to look up Antilia, or the island of the Seven
+      Cities. It was very hard to get an audience even for such a reasonable
+      scheme as that; but to suggest taking a flotilla straight out to the west
+      and into the Sea of Darkness, down that curving hill of the sea which it
+      might be easy enough to slide down, but up which it was known that no ship
+      could ever climb again, was a thing that hardly any serious or
+      well-informed person would listen to. A young man from Genoa, without a
+      knowledge either of the classics or of the Fathers, and with no other
+      argument except his own fixed belief and some vague talk about bits of
+      wood and shipwrecked mariners, was not the person to inspire the
+      capitalists of Portugal. Yet the thing had to be done. Obviously it could
+      not be done at Porto Santo, where there were no ships and no money.
+      Influence must be used; and Columbus knew that his proposals, if they were
+      to have even a chance of being listened to, must be presented in some
+      high-flown and elaborate form, giving reasons and offering inducements and
+      quoting authorities. He would have to get some one to help him in that; he
+      would have to get up some scientific facts; his brother Bartholomew could
+      help him, and some of those disagreeable relatives-in-law must also be
+      pressed into the service of the Idea. Obviously the first thing was to go
+      back to Lisbon; which accordingly Columbus did, about the year 1483.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="ch9" id="ch9"></a>CHAPTER IX.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      WANDERINGS WITH AN IDEA
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man to whom Columbus proposed to address his request for means with
+      which to make a voyage of discovery was no less a person than the new King
+      of Portugal. Columbus was never a man of petty or small ideas; if he were
+      going to do a thing at all, he went about it in a large and comprehensive
+      way; and all his life he had a way of going to the fountainhead, and of
+      making flights and leaps where other men would only climb or walk, that
+      had much to do with his ultimate success. King John, moreover, had shown
+      himself thoroughly sympathetic to the spirit of discovery; Columbus, as we
+      have seen, had already been employed in a trusted capacity in one of the
+      royal expeditions; and he rightly thought that, since he had to ask the
+      help of some one in his enterprise, he might as well try to enlist the
+      Crown itself in the service of his great Idea. He was not prepared,
+      however, to go directly to the King and ask for ships; his proposal would
+      have to be put in a way that would appeal to the royal ambition, and would
+      also satisfy the King that there was really a destination in view for the
+      expedition. In other words Columbus had to propose to go somewhere; it
+      would not do to say that he was going west into the Atlantic Ocean to look
+      about him. He therefore devoted all his energies to putting his proposal
+      on what is called a business footing, and expressing his vague, sublime
+      Idea in common and practical terms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The people who probably helped him most in this were his brother
+      Bartholomew and Martin Behaim, the great authority on scientific
+      navigation, who had been living in Lisbon for some time and with whom
+      Columbus was acquainted. Behaim, who was at this time about forty eight
+      years of age, was born at Nuremberg, and was a pupil of Regiomontanus, the
+      great German astronomer. A very interesting man, this, if we could
+      decipher his features and character; no mere star-gazing visionary, but a
+      man of the world, whose scientific lore was combined with a wide and
+      liberal experience of life. He was not only learned in cosmography and
+      astronomy, but he had a genius for mechanics and made beautiful
+      instruments; he was a merchant also, and combined a little business with
+      his scientific travels. He had been employed at Lisbon in adapting the
+      astrolabe of Regiomontanus for the use of sailors at sea; and in these
+      labours he was assisted by two people who were destined to have a weighty
+      influence on the career of Columbus&mdash;Doctors Rodrigo and Joseph,
+      physicians or advisers to the King, and men of great academic reputation.
+      There was nothing known about cosmography or astronomy that Behaim did not
+      know; and he had just come back from an expedition on which he had been
+      despatched, with Rodrigo and Joseph, to take the altitude of the sun in
+      Guinea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Columbus was not the man to neglect his opportunities, and there can be no
+      doubt that as soon as his purpose had established itself in his mind he
+      made use of every opportunity that presented itself for improving his
+      meagre scientific knowledge, in order that his proposal might be set forth
+      in a plausible form. In other words, he got up the subject. The whole of
+      his geographical reading with regard to the Indies up to this time had
+      been in the travels of Marco Polo; the others&mdash;whose works he quoted
+      from so freely in later years were then known to him only by name, if at
+      all. Behaim, however, could tell him a good deal about the supposed
+      circumference of the earth, the extent of the Asiatic continent, and so
+      on. Every new fact that Columbus heard he seized and pressed into the
+      service of his Idea; where there was a choice of facts, or a difference of
+      opinion between scientists, he chose the facts that were most convenient,
+      and the opinions that fitted best with his own beliefs. The very word
+      "Indies" was synonymous with unbounded wealth; there certainly would be
+      riches to tempt the King with; and Columbus, being a religious man, hit
+      also on the happy idea of setting forth the spiritual glory of carrying
+      the light of faith across the Sea of Darkness, and making of the heathen a
+      heritage for the Christian Church. So that, what with one thing and
+      another, he soon had his proposals formally arranged.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Imagine him, then, actually at Court, and having an audience of the King,
+      who could scarcely believe his ears. Here was a man, of whom he knew
+      nothing but that his conduct of a caravel had been well spoken of in the
+      recent expedition to Guinea, actually proposing to sail out west into the
+      Atlantic and to cross the unknown part of the world. Certainly his
+      proposals seemed plausible, but still&mdash;. The earth was round, said
+      Columbus, and therefore there was a way from East to West and from West to
+      East. The prophet Esdras, a scientific authority that even His Majesty
+      would hardly venture to doubt, had laid it down that only one-seventh of
+      the earth was covered by waters. From this fact Columbus deduced that the
+      maritime space extending westward between the shores of Europe and eastern
+      coast of Asia could not be large; and by sailing westward he proposed to
+      reach certain lands of which he claimed to have knowledge. The sailors'
+      tales, the logs of driftwood, the dead bodies, were all brought into the
+      proposals; in short, if His Majesty would grant some ships, and consent to
+      making Columbus Admiral over all the islands that he might discover, with
+      full viceregal state, authority, and profit, he would go and discover
+      them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There are two different accounts of what the King said when this proposal
+      was made to him. According to some authorities, John was impressed by
+      Columbus's proposals, and inclined to provide him with the necessary
+      ships, but he could not assent to all the titles and rewards which
+      Columbus demanded as a price for his services. Barros, the Portuguese
+      historian, on the other hand, represents that the whole idea was too
+      fantastic to be seriously entertained by the King for a moment, and that
+      although he at once made up his mind to refuse the request he preferred to
+      delegate his refusal to a commission. Whatever may be the truth as to King
+      John's opinions, the commission was certainly appointed, and consisted of
+      three persons, to wit: Master Rodrigo, Master Joseph the Jew, and the
+      Right Reverend Cazadilla, Bishop of Ceuta.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before these three learned men must Columbus now appear, a little less
+      happy in his mind, and wishing that he knew more Latin. Master Rodrigo,
+      Master Joseph the Jew, the Right Reverend Cazadilla: three pairs of cold
+      eyes turned rather haughtily on the Genoese adventurer; three brains much
+      steeped in learning, directed in judgment on the Idea of a man with no
+      learning at all. The Right Reverend Cazadilla, being the King's confessor,
+      and a bishop into the bargain, could speak on that matter of converting
+      the heathen; and he was of opinion that it could not be done. Joseph the
+      Jew, having made voyages, and worked with Behaim at the astrolabe, was
+      surely an authority on navigation; and he was of opinion that it could not
+      be done. Rodrigo, being also a very learned man, had read many books which
+      Columbus had not read; and he was of opinion that it could not be done.
+      Three learned opinions against one Idea; the Idea is bound to go. They
+      would no doubt question Columbus on the scientific aspect of the matter,
+      and would soon discover his grievous lack of academic knowledge. They
+      would quote fluently passages from writers that he had not heard of; if he
+      had not heard of them, they seemed to imply, no wonder he made such
+      foolish proposals. Poor Columbus stands there puzzled, dissatisfied,
+      tongue-tied. He cannot answer these wiseacres in their own learned lingo;
+      what they say, or what they quote, may be true or it may not; but it has
+      nothing to do with his Idea. If he opens his mouth to justify himself,
+      they refute him with arguments that he does not understand; there is a
+      wall between them. More than a wall; there is a world between them! It is
+      his 'credo' against their 'ignoro'; it is, his 'expecto' against their
+      'non video'. Yet in his 'credo' there lies a power of which they do not
+      dream; and it rings out in a trumpet note across the centuries, saluting
+      the life force that opposes its irresistible "I will" to the feeble "Thou
+      canst not" of the worldly-wise. Thus, in about the year 1483, did three
+      learned men sit in judgment upon our ignorant Christopher. Three learned
+      men: Doctors Rodrigo, Joseph the Jew, and the Right Reverend Cazadilla,
+      Bishop of Ceuta; three risen, stuffed to the eyes and ears with learning;
+      stuffed so full indeed that eyes and ears are closed with it. And three
+      men, it would appear, wholly destitute of mother-wit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After all his preparations this rebuff must have been a serious blow to
+      Columbus. It was not his only trouble, moreover. During the last year he
+      had been earning nothing; he was already in imagination the Admiral of the
+      Ocean Seas; and in the anticipation of the much higher duties to which he
+      hoped to be devoted it is not likely that he would continue at his humble
+      task of making maps and charts. The result was that he got into debt, and
+      it was absolutely necessary that something should be done. But a darker
+      trouble had also almost certainly come to him about this time. Neither the
+      day nor the year of Philippa's death is known; but it is likely that it
+      occurred soon after Columbus's failure at the Portuguese Court, and
+      immediately before his departure into Spain. That anonymous life,
+      fulfilling itself so obscurely in companionship and motherhood, as softly
+      as it floated upon the page of history, as softly fades from it again.
+      Those kind eyes, that encouraging voice, that helping hand and friendly
+      human soul are with him no longer; and after the interval of peace and
+      restful growth that they afforded Christopher must strike his tent and go
+      forth upon another stage of his pilgrimage with a heavier and sterner
+      heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two things are left to him: his son Diego, now an articulate little
+      creature with character and personality of his own, and with strange,
+      heart-breaking reminiscences of his mother in voice and countenance and
+      manner&mdash;that is one possession; the other is his Idea. Two things
+      alive and satisfactory, amid the ruin and loss of other possessions; two
+      reasons for living and prevailing. And these two possessions Columbus took
+      with him when he set out for Spain in the year 1485.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His first care was to take little Diego to the town of Huelva, where there
+      lived a sister of Philippa's who had married a Spaniard named Muliartes.
+      This done, he was able to devote himself solely to the furtherance of his
+      Idea. For this purpose he went to Seville, where he attached himself for a
+      little while to a group of his countrymen who were settled there, among
+      them Antonio and Alessandro Geraldini, and made such momentary living as
+      was possible to him by his old trade. But the Idea would not sleep. He
+      talked of nothing else; and as men do who talk of an idea that possesses
+      them wholly, and springs from the inner light of faith, he interested and
+      impressed many of his hearers. Some of them suggested one thing, some
+      another; but every one was agreed that it would be a good thing if he
+      could enlist the services of the great Count (afterwards Duke) of Medini
+      Celi, who had a palace at Rota, near Cadiz.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This nobleman was one of the most famous of the grandees of Spain, and
+      lived in mighty state upon his territory along the sea-shore, serving the
+      Crown in its wars and expeditions with the power and dignity of an ally
+      rather than of a subject. His domestic establishment was on a princely
+      scale, filled with chamberlains, gentlemen-at-arms, knights, retainers,
+      and all the panoply of social dignity; and there was also place in his
+      household for persons of merit and in need of protection. To this great
+      man came Columbus with his Idea. It attracted the Count, who was a judge
+      of men and perhaps of ideas also; and Columbus, finding some hope at last
+      in his attitude, accepted the hospitality offered to him, and remained at
+      Rota through the winter of 1485-86. He had not been very hopeful when he
+      arrived there, and had told the Count that he had thought of going to the
+      King of France and asking for help from him; but the Count, who found
+      something respectable and worthy of consideration in the Idea of a man who
+      thought nothing of a journey in its service from one country to another
+      and one sovereign to another, detained him, and played with the Idea
+      himself. Three or four caravels were nothing to the Count of Medina Eeli;
+      but on the other hand the man was a grandee and a diplomat, with a nice
+      sense of etiquette and of what was due to a reigning house. Either there
+      was nothing in this Idea, in which case his caravels would be employed to
+      no purpose, or there was so much in it that it was an undertaking, not
+      merely for the Count of Medina Celi, but for the Crown of Castile. Lands
+      across the ocean, and untold gold and riches of the Indies, suggested
+      complications with foreign Powers, and transactions with the Pope himself,
+      that would probably be a little too much even for the good Count;
+      therefore with a curious mixture of far-sighted generosity and shrewd
+      security he wrote to Queen Isabella, recommending Columbus to her, and
+      asking her to consider his Idea; asking her also, in case anything should
+      come of it, to remember him (the Count), and to let him have a finger in
+      the pie. Thus, with much literary circumstance and elaboration of
+      politeness, the Count of Medina Celi to Queen Isabella.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Follows an interval of suspense, the beginning of a long discipline of
+      suspense to which Columbus was to be subjected; and presently comes a
+      favourable reply from the Queen, commanding that Columbus should be sent
+      to her. Early in 1486 he set out for Cordova, where the Court was then
+      established, bearing another letter from the Count in which his own
+      private requests were repeated, and perhaps a little emphasised. Columbus
+      was lodged in the house of Alonso de Quintanilla, Treasurer to the Crown
+      of Castile, there to await an audience with Queen Isabella.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While he is waiting, and getting accustomed to his new surroundings, let
+      us consider these two monarchs in whose presence he is soon to appear, and
+      upon whose decision hangs some part of the world's destiny. Isabella
+      first; for in that strange duet of government it is her womanly soprano
+      that rings most clearly down the corridors of Time. We discern in her a
+      very busy woman, living a difficult life with much tact and judgment, and
+      exercising to some purpose that amiable taste for "doing good" that marks
+      the virtuous lady of station in every age. This, however, was a woman who
+      took risks with her eyes open, and steered herself cleverly in perilous
+      situations, and guided others with a firm hand also, and in other ways
+      made good her claim to be a ruler. The consent and the will of her people
+      were her great strength; by them she dethroned her niece and ascended the
+      throne of Castile. She had the misfortune to be at variance with her
+      husband in almost every matter of policy dear to his heart; she opposed
+      the expulsion of the Jews and the establishment of the Inquisition; but
+      when she failed to get her way, she was still able to preserve her
+      affectionate relations with her husband without disagreement and with
+      happiness. If she had a fault it was the common one of being too much
+      under the influence of her confessors; but it was a fault that was rarely
+      allowed to disturb the balance of her judgment. She liked clever people
+      also; surrounded herself with men of letters and of science, fostered all
+      learned institutions, and delighted in the details of civil
+      administration. A very dignified and graceful figure, that could equally
+      adorn a Court drawing-room or a field of battle; for she actually went
+      into the field, and wore armour as becomingly as silk and ermine. Firm,
+      constant, clever, alert, a little given to fussiness perhaps, but
+      sympathetic and charming, with some claims to genius and some approach to
+      grandeur of soul: so much we may say truly of her inner self. Outwardly
+      she was a woman well formed, of medium height, a very dignified and
+      graceful carriage, eyes of a clear summer blue, and the red and gold of
+      autumn in her hair&mdash;these last inherited from her English
+      grandmother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ferdinand of Aragon appears not quite so favourably in our pages, for he
+      never thought well of Columbus or of his proposals; and when he finally
+      consented to the expedition he did so with only half a heart, and against
+      his judgment. He was an extremely enterprising, extremely subtle,
+      extremely courageous, and according to our modern notions, an extremely
+      dishonest man; that is to say, his standards of honour were not those
+      which we can accept nowadays. He thought nothing of going back on a
+      promise, provided he got a priestly dispensation to do so; he juggled with
+      his cabinets, and stopped at nothing in order to get his way; he had a
+      craving ambition, and was lacking in magnanimity; he loved dominion, and
+      cared very little for glory. A very capable man; so capable that in spite
+      of his defects he was regarded by his subjects as wise and prudent; so
+      capable that he used his weaknesses of character to strengthen and further
+      the purposes of his reign. A very cold man also, quick and sure in his
+      judgments, of wide understanding and grasp of affairs; simple and austere
+      in dress and diet, as austerity was counted in that period of splendour;
+      extremely industrious, and close in his observations and judgments of men.
+      To the bodily eye he appeared as a man of middle size, sturdy and
+      athletic, face burned a brick red with exposure to the sun and open air;
+      hair and eyebrows of a bright chestnut; a well-formed and not unkindly
+      mouth; a voice sharp and unmelodious, issuing in quick fluent speech. This
+      was the man that earned from the Pope, for himself and his successors, the
+      title of "Most Catholic Majesty."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Queen was very busy indeed with military preparations; but in the
+      midst of her interviews with nobles and officers, contractors and state
+      officials, she snatched a moment to receive the person Christopher
+      Columbus. With that extreme mental agility which is characteristic of busy
+      sovereigns all the force of this clever woman's mind was turned for a
+      moment on Christopher, whose Idea had by this time invested him with a
+      dignity which no amount of regal state could abash. There was very little
+      time. The Queen heard what Columbus had to say, cutting him short, it is
+      likely, with kindly tact, and suppressing his tendency to launch out into
+      long-winded speeches. What she saw she liked; and, being too busy to give
+      to this proposal the attention that it obviously merited, she told
+      Columbus that the matter would be fully gone into and that in the meantime
+      he must regard himself as the guest of the Court. And so, in the
+      countenance of a smile and a promise, Columbus bows himself out. For the
+      present he must wait a little and his hot heart must contain itself while
+      other affairs, looming infinitely larger than his Idea on the royal
+      horizon, receive the attention of the Court.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was not the happiest moment, indeed, in which to talk of ships and
+      charts, and lonely sea-roads, and faraway undiscovered shores. Things at
+      home were very real and lively in those spring days at Cordova. The war
+      against the Moors had reached a critical stage; King Ferdinand was away
+      laying siege to the city of Loxa, and though the Queen was at Cordova she
+      was entirely occupied with the business of collecting and forwarding
+      troops and supplies to his aid. The streets were full of soldiers; nobles
+      and grandees from all over the country were arriving daily with their
+      retinues; glitter and splendour, and the pomp of warlike preparation,
+      filled the city. Early in June the Queen herself went to the front and
+      joined her husband in the siege of Moclin; and when this was victoriously
+      ended, and they had returned in triumph to Cordova, they had to set out
+      again for Gallicia to suppress a rebellion there. When that was over they
+      did not come back to Cordova at all, but repaired at once to Salamanca to
+      spend the winter there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the house of Alonso de Quintanilla, however, Columbus was not
+      altogether wasting his time. He met there some of the great persons of the
+      Court, among them the celebrated Pedro Gonzalez de Mendoza, Archbishop of
+      Toledo and Grand Cardinal of Spain. This was far too great a man to be at
+      this time anything like a friend of Columbus; but Columbus had been
+      presented to him; the Cardinal would know his name, and what his business
+      was; and that is always a step towards consideration. Cabrero, the royal
+      Chamberlain, was also often a fellow-guest at the Treasurer's table; and
+      with him Columbus contracted something like a friendship. Every one who
+      met him liked him; his dignity, his simplicity of thought and manner, his
+      experience of the sea, and his calm certainty and conviction about the
+      stupendous thing which he proposed to do, could not fail to attract the
+      liking and admiration of those with whom he came in contact. In the
+      meantime a committee appointed by the Queen sat upon his proposals. The
+      committee met under the presidentship of Hernando de Talavera, the prior
+      of the monastery of Santa Maria del Prado, near Valladolid, a pious
+      ecclesiastic, who had the rare quality of honesty, and who was therefore a
+      favourite with Queen Isabella; she afterwards created him Archbishop of
+      Granada. He was not, however, poor honest soul! quite the man to grasp and
+      grapple with this wild scheme for a voyage across the ocean. Once more
+      Columbus, as in Portugal, set forth his views with eloquence and
+      conviction; and once more, at the tribunal of learning, his unlearned
+      proposals were examined and condemned. Not only was Columbus's Idea
+      regarded as scientifically impossible, but it was also held to come
+      perilously near to heresy, in its assumption of a state of affairs that
+      was clearly at variance with the writings of the Fathers and the sacred
+      Scriptures themselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This new disappointment, bitter though it was, did not find Columbus in
+      such friendless and unhappy circumstances as those in which he left
+      Portugal. He had important friends now, who were willing and anxious to
+      help him, and among them was one to whom he turned, in his profound
+      depression, for religious and friendly consolation. This was Diego de DEA,
+      prior of the Dominican convent of San Estevan at Salamanca, who was also
+      professor of theology in the university there and tutor to the young
+      Prince Juan. Of all those who came in contact with Columbus at this time
+      this man seems to have understood him best, and to have realised where his
+      difficulty lay. Like many others who are consumed with a burning idea
+      Columbus was very probably at this time in danger of becoming possessed
+      with it like a monomaniac; and his new friends saw that if he were to make
+      any impression upon the conservative learning of the time to which a
+      decision in such matters was always referred he must have some opportunity
+      for friendly discussion with learned men who were not inimical to him, and
+      who were not in the position of judges examining a man arraigned before
+      them and pleading for benefits.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the Court went to Salamanca at the end of 1486, DEA arranged that
+      Columbus should go there too, and he lodged him in a country farm called
+      Valcuebo, which belonged to his convent and was equi-distant from it and
+      the city. Here the good Dominican fathers came and visited him, bringing
+      with them professors from the university, who discussed patiently with
+      Columbus his theories and ambitions, and, himself all conscious,
+      communicated new knowledge to him, and quietly put him right on many a
+      scientific point. There were professors of cosmography and astronomy in
+      the university, familiar with the works of Alfraganus and Regiomontanus.
+      It is likely that it was at this time that Columbus became possessed of
+      d'Ailly's 'Imago Mundi', which little volume contained a popular resume of
+      the scientific views of Strabo, Pliny, Ptolemy, and others, and was from
+      this time forth Columbus's constant companion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here at Valcuebo and later, when winter came, in the great hall of the
+      Dominican convent at Salamanca, known as the "De Profundis" hall, where
+      the monks received guests and held discussions, the Idea of Columbus was
+      ventilated and examined. He heard what friendly sceptics had to say about
+      it; he saw the kind of argument that he would have to oppose to the
+      existing scientific and philosophical knowledge on cosmography. There is
+      no doubt that he learnt a good deal at this time; and more important even
+      than this, he got his project known and talked about; and he made powerful
+      friends, who were afterwards to be of great use to him. The Marquesa de
+      Moya, wife of his friend Cabrera, took a great liking to him; and as she
+      was one of the oldest and closest friends of the Queen, it is likely that
+      she spoke many a good word for Columbus in Isabella's ear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By the time the Court moved to Cordova early in 1487, Columbus was once
+      more hopeful of getting a favourable hearing. He followed the Court to
+      Cordova, where he received a gracious message from the Queen to the effect
+      that she had not forgotten him, and that as soon as her military
+      preoccupations permitted it, she would go once more, and more fully, into
+      his proposals. In the meantime he was attached to the Court, and received
+      a quarterly payment of 3000 maravedis. It seemed as though the
+      unfavourable decision of Talavera's committee had been forgotten.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the meantime he was to have a change of scene. Isabella followed
+      Ferdinand to the siege of Malaga, where the Court was established; and as
+      there were intervals in which other than military business might be
+      transacted, Columbus was ordered to follow them in case his affairs should
+      come up for consideration. They did not; but the man himself had an
+      experience that may have helped to keep his thoughts from brooding too
+      much on his unfulfilled ambition. Years afterwards, when far away on
+      lonely seas, amid the squalor of a little ship and the staggering buffets
+      of a gale, there would surely sometimes leap into his memory a brightly
+      coloured picture of this scene in the fertile valley of Malaga: the silken
+      pavilions of the Court, the great encampment of nobility with its arms and
+      banners extending in a semicircle to the seashore, all glistening and
+      moving in the bright sunshine. There was added excitement at this time at
+      an attempt to assassinate Ferdinand and Isabella, a fanatic Moor having
+      crept up to one of the pavilions and aimed a blow at two people whom he
+      mistook for the King and Queen. They turned out to be Don Alvaro de
+      Portugal, who was dangerously wounded, and Columbus's friend, the Marquesa
+      de Moya, who was unhurt; but it was felt that the King and Queen had had a
+      narrow escape. The siege was raised on the 18th of August, and the
+      sovereigns went to spend the winter at Zaragoza; and Columbus, once more
+      condemned to wait, went back to Cordova.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was here that he contracted his second and, so far as we know, his last
+      romantic attachment. The long idle days of summer and autumn at Cordova,
+      empty of all serious occupation, gave nature an opportunity for indulging
+      her passion for life and continuity. Among Christopher's friends at
+      Cordova was the family of Arana, friendly hospitable souls, by some
+      accounts noble and by others not noble, and certainly in somewhat poor
+      circumstances, who had welcomed him to their house, listened to his plans
+      with enthusiasm, and formed a life-long friendship with him. Three members
+      of this family are known to us&mdash;two brothers, Diego and Pedro, both
+      of whom commanded ships in Columbus's expeditions, and a sister Beatriz.
+      Columbus was now a man of six-and-thirty, while she was little more than a
+      girl; he was handsome and winning, distinguished by the daring and
+      importance of his scheme, full of thrilling and romantic talk of distant
+      lands; a very interesting companion, we may be sure. No wonder she fell in
+      love with Christopher; no wonder that he, feeling lonely and depressed by
+      the many postponements of his suit at Court, and in need of sympathy and
+      encouragement, fell in these blank summer days into an intimacy that
+      flamed into a brief but happy passion. Why Columbus never married Beatriz
+      de Arana we cannot be sure, for it is almost certain that his first wife
+      had died some time before. Perhaps he feared to involve himself in any new
+      or embarrassing ties; perhaps he loved unwillingly, and against his
+      reason; perhaps&mdash;although the suggestion is not a happy one&mdash;he
+      by this time did not think poor Beatriz good enough for the Admiral-elect
+      of the Ocean Seas; perhaps (and more probably) Beatriz was already married
+      and deserted, for she bore the surname of Enriquez; and in that case,
+      there being no such thing as a divorce in the Catholic Church, she must
+      either sin or be celibate. But however that may be, there was an
+      uncanonical alliance between them which evidently did not in the least
+      scandalise her brothers and which resulted in the birth of Ferdinand
+      Columbus in the following year. Christopher, so communicative and
+      discursive upon some of his affairs, is as reticent about Beatriz as he
+      was about Philippa. Beatriz shares with his legitimate wife the curious
+      distinction of being spoken of by Columbus to posterity only in his will,
+      which was executed at Valladolid the day before he died. In the dry ink
+      and vellum of that ancient legal document is his only record of these two
+      passions. The reference to Beatriz is as follows:
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "And I direct him [Diego] to make provision for Beatriz Enriquez, mother
+        of D. Fernando, my son, that she may be able to live honestly, being a
+        person to whom I am under very great obligation. And this shall be done
+        for the satisfaction of my conscience, because this matter weighs
+        heavily upon my soul. The reason for which it is not fitting to write
+        here."
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      About the condition of Beatriz, temporal and spiritual, there has been
+      much controversy; but where the facts are all so buried and inaccessible
+      it is unseemly to agitate a veil which we cannot lift, and behind which
+      Columbus himself sheltered this incident of his life. "Acquainted with
+      poverty" is one fragment of fact concerning her that has come down to us;
+      acquainted also with love and with happiness, it would seem, as many poor
+      persons undoubtedly are. Enough for us to know that in the city of Cordova
+      there lived a woman, rich or poor, gentle or humble, married or not
+      married, who brought for a time love and friendly companionship into the
+      life of Columbus; that she gave what she had for giving, without stint or
+      reserve, and that she became the mother of a son who inherited much of
+      what was best in his father, and but for whom the world would be in even
+      greater darkness than it is on the subject of Christopher himself. And so
+      no more of Beatriz Enriquez de Arana, whom "God has in his keeping"&mdash;and
+      has had now these many centuries of Time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus passed the summer and autumn of 1487; precious months, precious years
+      slipping by, and the great purpose as yet unfulfilled and seemingly no
+      nearer to fulfilment. It is likely that Columbus kept up his applications
+      to the Court, and received polite and delaying replies. The next year
+      came, and the Court migrated from Zaragoza to Murcia, from Murcia to
+      Valladolid, from Valladolid to Medina del Campo. Columbus attended it in
+      one or other of these places, but without result. In August Beatriz gave
+      birth to a son, who was christened Ferdinand, and who lived to be a great
+      comfort to his father, if not to her also. But the miracle of paternity
+      was not now so new and wonderful as it had been; the battle of life, with
+      its crosses and difficulties, was thick about him; and perhaps he looked
+      into this new-comer's small face with conflicting thoughts, and memories
+      of the long white beach and the crashing surf at Porto Santo, and regret
+      for things lost&mdash;so strangely mingled and inconsistent are the
+      threads of human thought. At last he decided to turn his face elsewhere.
+      In September 1488 he went to Lisbon, for what purpose it is not certain;
+      possibly in connection with the affairs of his dead wife; and probably
+      also in the expectation of seeing his brother Bartholomew, to whom we may
+      now turn our attention for a moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After the failure of Columbus's proposals to the King of Portugal in 1486,
+      and the break-up of his home there, Bartholomew had also left Lisbon.
+      Bartholomew Diaz, a famous Portuguese navigator, was leaving for the
+      African coast in August, and Bartholomew Columbus is said to have joined
+      his small expedition of three caravels. As they neared the latitude of the
+      Cape which he was trying to make, he ran into a gale which drove him a
+      long way out of his course, west and south.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The wind veered round from north-east to north-west, and he did not strike
+      the land again until May 1487. When he did so his crew insisted upon his
+      returning, as they declined to go any further south. He therefore turned
+      to the west, and then made the startling discovery that in the course of
+      the tempest he had been blown round the Cape, and that the land he had
+      made was to the eastward of it; and he therefore rounded it on his way
+      home. He arrived back in Lisbon in December 1488, when Columbus met his
+      brother again, and was present at the reception of Diaz by the King of
+      Portugal. They had a great deal to tell each other, these two brothers; in
+      the two years and a half that had gone since they had parted a great deal
+      had happened to them; and they both knew a good deal more about the great
+      question in which they, were interested than they had known when last they
+      talked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is to this period that I attribute the inception, if not the execution,
+      of the forgery of the Toscanelli correspondence, if, as I believe, it was
+      a forgery. Christopher's unpleasant experiences before learned committees
+      and commissions had convinced him that unless he were armed with some
+      authoritative and documentary support for his theories they had little
+      chance of acceptance by the learned. The, Idea was right; he knew that;
+      but before he could convince the academic mind, he felt that it must have
+      the imprimatur of a mind whose learning could not be impugned. Therefore
+      it is not an unfair guess&mdash;and it can be nothing more than a guess&mdash;that
+      Christopher and Bartholomew at this point laid their heads together, and
+      decided that the next time Christopher had to appear before a commission
+      he would, so to speak, have something "up his sleeve." It was a risky
+      thing to do, and must in any case be used only as a very last resource;
+      which would account for the fact that the Toscanelli correspondence was
+      never used at all, and is not mentioned in any document known to men
+      written until long after Columbus's death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But these summers and winters of suspense are at last drawing to a close,
+      and we must follow Christopher rapidly through them until the hour of his
+      triumph. He was back in Spain in the spring of 1489, his travelling
+      expenses being defrayed out of the royal purse; and a little later he was
+      once more amid scenes of war at the siege of Baza, and, if report is true,
+      taking a hand himself, not without distinction. It was there that he saw
+      the two friars from the convent of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, who
+      brought a message from the Grand Soldan of Egypt, threatening the
+      destruction of the Sepulchre if the Spanish sovereigns did not desist from
+      the war against Granada; and it was there that in his simple and pious
+      mind he formed the resolve that if ever his efforts should be crowned with
+      success, and he himself become rich and powerful, he would send a crusade
+      for the rescue of the Holy Sepulchre. And it was there that, on the 22nd
+      of December, he saw Boabdil, the elder of the two rival Kings of Granada,
+      surrender all his rights and claims to Spain. Surely now there will be a
+      chance for him? No; there is another interruption, this time occasioned by
+      the royal preparations for the marriage of the Princess Isabella to the
+      heir of Portugal. Poor Columbus, sickened and disappointed by these
+      continual delays, irritated by a sense of the waste of his precious time,
+      follows the Court about from one place to another, raising a smile here
+      and a scoff there, and pointed at by children in the street. There, is
+      nothing so ludicrous as an Idea to those who do not share it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Another summer, another winter, lost out of a life made up of a limited
+      number of summers and winters; a few more winters and summers, thinks
+      Christopher, and I shall be in a world where Ideas are not needed, and
+      where there is nothing left to discover! Something had to be done. In the
+      beginning of 1491 there was only one thing spoken of at Court&mdash;the
+      preparations for the siege of Granada, which did not interest Columbus at
+      all. The camp of King Ferdinand was situated at Santa Fe, a few miles to
+      the westward of Granada, and Columbus came here late in the year,
+      determined to get a final answer one way or the other to his question. He
+      made his application, and the busy monarchs once more adopted their usual
+      polite tactics. They appointed a junta, which was presided over by no less
+      a person than the Cardinal of Spain, Gonzales de Mendoza: Once more the
+      weary business was gone through, but Columbus must have had some hopes of
+      success, since he did not produce his forged Toscanelli correspondence. It
+      was no scruple of conscience that held him back, we may be sure; the
+      crafty Genoese knew nothing about such scruples in the attainment of a
+      great object; he would not have hesitated to adopt any means to secure an
+      end which he felt to be so desirable. So it is probable that either he was
+      not quite sure of his ground and his courage failed him, or that he had
+      hopes, owing to his friendship with so many of the members of the junta,
+      that a favourable decision would at last be arrived at. In this he was
+      mistaken. The Spanish prelates again quoted the Fathers of the Church, and
+      disposed of his proposals simply on the ground that they were heretical.
+      Much talk, and much wagging of learned heads; and still no mother-wit or
+      gleam of light on this obscurity of learning. The junta decided against
+      the proposals, and reported its decision to the King and Queen. The
+      monarchs, true to their somewhat hedging methods when there was anything
+      to be gained by hedging, informed Columbus that at present they were too
+      much occupied with the war to grant his requests; but that, when the
+      preoccupations and expenses of the campaign were a thing of the past, they
+      might again turn their attention to his very interesting suggestion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was at this point that the patience of Columbus broke down. Too many
+      promises had been made to him, and hope had been held out to him too often
+      for him to believe any more in it. Spain, he decided, was useless; he
+      would try France; at least he would be no worse off there. But he had
+      first of all to settle his affairs as well as possible. Diego, now a
+      growing boy nearly eleven years old, had been staying with Beatriz at
+      Cordova, and going to school there; Christopher would take him back to his
+      aunt's at Huelva before he went away. He set out with a heavy heart, but
+      with purpose and determination unimpaired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="ch10" id="ch10"></a>CHAPTER X.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      OUR LADY OF LA RABIDA
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is a long road from Santa Fe to Huelva, a long journey to make on foot,
+      and the company of a sad heart and a little talking boy, prone to sudden
+      weariness and the asking of innumerable difficult questions, would not
+      make it very much shorter. Every step that Christopher took carried him
+      farther away from the glittering scene where his hopes had once been so
+      bright, and were now fallen to the dust; and every step brought him nearer
+      that unknown destiny as to which he was in great darkness of mind, and
+      certain only that there was some small next thing constantly to be done:
+      the putting down of one foot after another, the request for food and
+      lodging at the end of each short day's march, the setting out again in the
+      morning. That walk from Santa Fe, so real and painful and wearisome and
+      long a thing to Christopher and Diego, is utterly blank and obliterated
+      for us. What he thought and felt and suffered are things quite dead; what
+      he did-namely, to go and do the immediate thing that it seemed possible
+      and right for him to do&mdash;is a living fact to-day, for it brought him,
+      as all brave and honest doing will, a little nearer to his destiny, a
+      little nearer to the truthful realisation of what was in him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At about a day's journey from Huelva, where the general slope of the land
+      begins to fall towards the sea, two small rivers, the Odiel and the Tinto,
+      which have hitherto been making music each for itself through the pleasant
+      valleys and vineyards of Andalusia, join forces, and run with a deeper
+      stream towards the sea at Palos. The town of Palos lay on the banks of the
+      river; a little to the south of it, and on the brow of a rocky promontory
+      dark with pine trees, there stood the convent of Our Lady of La Rabida.
+      Stood, on this November evening in the year 1491; had stood in some form
+      or other, and used for varying purposes, for many years and centuries
+      before that, even to the time of the Romans; and still stands, a silent
+      and neglected place, yet to be visited and seen by such as are curious. To
+      the door of this place comes Christopher as darkness falls, urged thereto
+      by the plight of Diego, who is tired and hungry. Christopher rings the
+      bell, and asks the porter for a little bread and water for the child, and
+      a lodging for them both. There is some talk at the door; the Franciscan
+      lay brother being given, at all times in the history of his order, to the
+      pleasant indulgence of gossiping conversation, when that is lawful; and
+      the presence of a stranger, who speaks with a foreign accent, being at all
+      times a incident of interest and even of excitement in the quiet life of a
+      monastery. The moment is one big with import to the human race; it marks a
+      period in the history of our man; the scene is worth calling up. Dark
+      night, with sea breezes moaning in the pine trees, outside; raying light
+      from within falling on the lay brother leaning in the doorway and on the
+      two figures standing without: on Christopher, grave, subdued, weary, yet
+      now as always of pleasant and impressive address, and on the small boy who
+      stands beside him round-eyed and expectant, his fatigue for the moment
+      forgotten in curiosity and anticipation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /> <a name="p113" id="p113"></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
+      <img alt="p113.jpg (49K)" src="images/p113.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <a href="images/p113.jpg"> <img alt="Full Size" src="images/enlarge.jpg" />
+      </a> <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While they are talking comes no less a person than the Prior of the
+      monastery, Friar Juan Perez, bustling round, good-natured busybody that he
+      is, to see what is all this talk at the door. The Prior, as is the habit
+      of monks, begins by asking questions. What is the stranger's name? Where
+      does he come from? Where is he going to? What is his business? Is the
+      little boy his son? He has actually come from Santa Fe? The Prior, loving
+      talk after the manner of his kind, sees in this grave and smooth-spoken
+      stranger rich possibilities of talk; possibilities that cannot possibly be
+      exhausted to-night, it being now hard on the hour of Compline; the
+      stranger must come in and rest for tonight at least, and possibly for
+      several nights. There is much bustle and preparation; the travellers are
+      welcomed with monkish hospitality; Christopher, we may be sure, goes and
+      hears the convent singing Compline, and offers up devout prayers for a
+      quiet night and for safe conduct through this vale of tears; and goes
+      thankfully to bed with the plainsong echoing in his ears, and some stoic
+      sense that all days, however hard, have an evening, and all journeys an
+      end.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next morning the talk begins in earnest, and Christopher, never a very
+      reserved man, finds in the friendly curiosity of the monks abundant
+      encouragement to talk; and before very long he is in full swing with his
+      oft-told story. The Prior is delighted with it; he has not heard anything
+      so interesting for a long time. Moreover, he has not always been in a
+      convent; he was not so long ago confessor to Queen Isabella herself, and
+      has much to communicate and ask concerning that lady. Columbus's proposal
+      does not strike him as being unreasonable at all; but he has a friend in
+      Palos, a very learned man indeed, Doctor Garcia Hernandez, who often comes
+      and has a talk with him; he knows all about astronomy and cosmography; the
+      Prior will send for him. And meanwhile there must be no word of Columbus's
+      departure for a few days at any rate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Presently Doctor Garcia Hernandez arrives, and the whole story is gone
+      over again. They go at it hammer and tongs, arguments and
+      counter-arguments, reasons for and against, encouragements, and
+      objections. The result is that Doctor Garcia Hernandez, whose learning
+      seems not yet quite to have blinded or deafened him, thinks well of the
+      scheme; thinks so well of it that he protests it will be a thousand pities
+      if the chance of carrying it out is lost to Spain. The worthy Prior, who
+      has been somewhat out of it while the talk about degrees and latitudes has
+      been going on, here strikes in again; he will use his influence. Perhaps
+      the good man, living up here among the pine trees and the sea winds, and
+      involved in the monotonous round of Prime, Lauds, Nones, Vespers, has a
+      regretful thought or two of the time when he moved in the splendid
+      intricacy of Court life; at any rate he is not sorry to have an
+      opportunity of recalling himself to the attention of Her Majesty, for the
+      spiritual safety of whose soul he was once responsible; perhaps, being (in
+      spite of his Nones and Vespers) a human soul, he is glad of an opportunity
+      of opposing the counsels of his successor, Talavera. In a word, he will
+      use his Influence. Then follow much drafting of letters, and laying of
+      heads together, and clatter of monkish tongues; the upshot of which is
+      that a letter is written in which Perez urges his daughter in the Lord in
+      the strongest possible terms not to let slip so glorious an opportunity,
+      not only of fame and increment to her kingdom, but of service to the
+      Church and the kingdom of Heaven itself. He assures her that Columbus is
+      indeed about to depart from the country, but that he (Perez) will detain
+      him at La Rabida until he has an answer from the Queen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A messenger to carry the letter was found in the person of Sebastian
+      Rodriguez, a pilot of the port, who immediately set off to Santa Fe. It is
+      not likely that Columbus, after so many rebuffs, was very hopeful; but in
+      the meantime, here he was amid the pious surroundings in which the
+      religious part of him delighted, and in a haven of rest after all his
+      turmoils and trials. He could look out to sea over the flecked waters of
+      that Atlantic whose secrets he longed to discover; or he could look down
+      into the busy little port of Palos, and watch the ships sailing in and out
+      across the bar of Saltes. He could let his soul, much battered and torn of
+      late by trials and disappointments, rest for a time on the rock of
+      religion; he could snuff the incense in the chapel to his heart's content,
+      and mingle his rough top-gallant voice with the harsh croak of the monks
+      in the daily cycle of prayer and praise. He could walk with Diego through
+      the sandy roads beneath the pine trees, or through the fields and
+      vineyards below; and above all he could talk to the company that good
+      Perez invited to meet him&mdash;among them merchants and sailors from
+      Palos, of whom the chief was Martin Alonso Pinzon, a wealthy landowner and
+      navigator, whose family lived then at Palos, owning the vineyards round
+      about, and whose descendants live there to this day. Pinzon was a listener
+      after Columbus's own heart; he not only believed in his project, but
+      offered to assist it with money, and even to accompany the expedition
+      himself. Altogether a happy and peaceful time, in which hopes revived, and
+      the inner light that, although it had now and then flickered, had never
+      gone out, burned up again in a bright and steady flame.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the end of a fortnight, and much sooner than had been expected, the
+      worthy pilot returned with a letter from the Queen. Eager hands seized it
+      and opened it; delight beamed from the eyes of the good Prior. The Queen
+      was most cordial to him, thanked him for his intervention, was ready to
+      listen to him and even to be convinced by him; and in the meantime
+      commanded his immediate appearance at the Court, asking that Columbus
+      would be so good as to wait at La Rabida until he should hear further from
+      her. Then followed such a fussing and fuming, such a running hither and
+      thither, and giving and taking of instructions and clatter of tongues as
+      even the convent of La Rabida had probably never known. Nothing will serve
+      the good old busybody, although it is now near midnight, but that he must
+      depart at once. He will not wait for daylight; he will not, the good
+      honest soul! wait at all. He must be off at once; he must have this, he
+      must have that; he will take this, he will leave that behind; or no, he
+      will take that, and leave this behind. He must have a mule, for his old
+      feet will not bear him fast enough; ex-confessors of Her Majesty,
+      moreover, do not travel on foot; and after more fussing and running hither
+      and thither a mule is borrowed from one Juan Rodriguez Cabezudo of Moguer;
+      and with a God-speed from the group standing round the lighted doorway,
+      the old monk sets forth into the night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is a strange thing to consider what unimportant flotsam sometimes
+      floats visibly upon the stream of history, while the gravest events are
+      sunk deep beneath its flood. We would give a king's ransom to know events
+      that must have taken place in any one of twenty years in the life of
+      Columbus, but there is no sign of them on the surface of the stream, nor
+      will any fishing bring them to light. Yet here, bobbing up like a cork,
+      comes the name of Juan Rodriguez Cabezudo of Moguer, doubtless a good
+      worthy soul, but, since he has been dead these four centuries and more, of
+      no interest or importance to any human being; yet of whose life one
+      trivial act, surviving the flood of time which has engulfed all else that
+      he thought important, falls here to be recorded: that he did, towards
+      midnight of a day late in December 1491 lend a mule to Friar Juan Perez.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of that heroic mule journey we have no record; but it brought results
+      enough to compensate the good Prior for all his aching bones and rheumatic
+      joints. He was welcomed by the Queen, who had never quite lost her belief
+      in Columbus, but who had hitherto deferred to the apathy of Ferdinand and
+      the disapproval&mdash;of her learned advisers. Now, however, the matter
+      was reopened. She, who sometimes listened to priests with results other
+      than good, heard this worthy priest to good purpose. The feminine friends
+      of Columbus who remembered him at Court also spoke up for him, among them
+      the Marquesa de Moya, with whom he had always been a favourite; and it was
+      decided that his request should be granted and three vessels equipped for
+      the expedition, "that he might go and make discoveries and prove true the
+      words he had spoken."&mdash;Moreover, the machinery that had been so hard
+      to move before, turned swiftly now. Diego Prieto, one of the magistrates
+      of Palos, was sent to Columbus at La Rabida, bearing 20,000 maravedis with
+      which he was to buy a mule and decent clothing for himself, and repair
+      immediately to the Court at Santa Fe. Old Perez was in high feather, and
+      busy with his pen. He wrote to Doctor Garcia Hernandez, and also to
+      Columbus, in whose letter the following pleasant passage occurs:
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "Our Lord has listened to the prayers of His servant. The wise and
+        virtuous Isabella, touched by the grace of Heaven, gave a favourable
+        hearing to the words of this poor monk. All has turned out well. Far
+        from despising your project, she has adopted it from this time, and she
+        has summoned you to Court to propose the means which seem best to you
+        for the execution of the designs of Providence. My heart swims in a sea
+        of comfort, and my spirit leaps with joy in the Lord. Start at once, for
+        the Queen waits for you, and I much more than she. Commend me to the
+        prayers of my brethren, and of your little Diego. The grace of God be
+        with you, and may Our Lady of La Rabida accompany you."
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      The news of that day must have come upon Columbus like a burst of sunshine
+      after rain. I like to think how bright must have seemed to him the broad
+      view of land and sea, how deeply the solemn words of the last office which
+      he attended must have sunk into his soul, how great and glad a thing life
+      must have been to him, and how lightly the miles must have passed beneath
+      the feet of his mule as he jogged out on the long road to Santa Fe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="ch11" id="ch11"></a>CHAPTER XI.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE CONSENT OF SPAIN
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once more; in the last days of the year 1491, Columbus rode into the
+      brilliant camp which he had quitted a few weeks before with so heavy a
+      heart. Things were changed now. Instead of being a suitor, making a
+      nuisance of himself, and forcing his affairs on the attention of unwilling
+      officials, he was now an invited and honoured guest; much more than that,
+      he was in the position of one who believed that he had a great service to
+      render to the Crown, and who was at last to be permitted to render it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even now, at the eleventh hour, there was one more brief interruption. On
+      the 1st of January 1492 the last of the Moorish kings sent in his
+      surrender to King Ferdinand, whom he invited to come and take possession
+      of the city of Granada; and on the next day the Spanish army marched into
+      that city, where, in front of the Alhambra, King Ferdinand received the
+      keys of the castle and the homage of the Moorish king. The wars of eight
+      centuries were at an end, and the Christian banner of Spain floated at
+      last over the whole land. Victory and success were in the air, and the
+      humble Genoese adventurer was to have his share in them. Negotiations of a
+      practical nature were now begun; old friends&mdash;Talavera, Luis de
+      Santangel, and the Grand Cardinal himself&mdash;were all brought into
+      consultation with the result that matters soon got to the documentary
+      stage. Here, however, there was a slight hitch. It was not simply a matter
+      of granting two, or three ships. The Genoese was making a bargain, and
+      asking an impossible price. Even the great grandees and Court officials,
+      accustomed to the glitter and dignity of titles, rubbed their eyes with
+      astonishment, when they saw what Columbus was demanding. He who had been
+      suing for privileges was now making conditions. And what conditions! He
+      must be created Admiral of all the Ocean Seas and of the new lands, with
+      equal privileges and prerogatives as those appertaining to the High
+      Admiral of Castile, the supreme naval officer of Spain. Not content with
+      sea dignities, he was also to be Viceroy and Governor-General in all
+      islands or mainlands that he might acquire; he wanted a tenth part of the
+      profits resulting from his discoveries, in perpetuity; and he must have
+      the permanent right of contributing an eighth part of the cost of the
+      equipment and have an additional eighth part of the profits; and all his
+      heirs and descendants for ever were to have the same privileges. These
+      conditions were on such a scale as no sovereign could readily approve.
+      Columbus's lack of pedigree, and the fact also that he was a foreigner,
+      made them seem the more preposterous; for although he might receive
+      kindness and even friendship from some of the grand Spaniards with whom he
+      associated, that friendship and kindness were given condescendingly and
+      with a smile. He was delightful when he was merely proposing as a mariner
+      to confer additional grandeur and glory on the Crown; but when it came to
+      demanding titles and privileges which would make him rank with the highest
+      grandees in, the land, the matter took on quite a different colour. It was
+      nonsense; it could not be allowed; and many were the friendly hints that
+      Columbus doubtless received at this time to relinquish his wild demands
+      and not to overreach himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But to the surprise and dismay of his friends, who really wished him to
+      have a chance of distinguishing himself, and were shocked at the
+      impediments he was now putting in his own way, the man from Genoa stood
+      firm. What he proposed to do, he said, was worthy of the rewards that he
+      asked; they were due to the importance and grandeur of his scheme, and so
+      on. Nor did he fail to point out that the bestowal of them was a matter
+      altogether contingent on results; if there were no results, there would be
+      no rewards; if there were results, they would be worthy of the rewards.
+      This action of Columbus's deserves close study. He had come to a
+      turning-point in his life. He had been asking, asking, asking, for six
+      years; he had been put off and refused over and over again; people were
+      beginning to laugh at him for a madman; and now, when a combination of
+      lucky chances had brought him to the very door of success, he stood
+      outside the threshold bargaining for a preposterous price before he would
+      come in. It seemed like the densest stupidity. What is the explanation of
+      it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The only explanation of it is to be found in the character of Columbus. We
+      must try to see him as he is in this forty-second year of his life,
+      bargaining with notaries, bishops, and treasurers; we must try to see
+      where these forty years have brought him, and what they have made of him.
+      Remember the little boy that played in the Vico Dritto di Ponticello,
+      acquainted with poverty, but with a soul in him that could rise beyond it
+      and acquire something of the dignity of that Genoa, arrogant, splendid and
+      devout, which surrounded him during his early years. Remember his long
+      life of obscurity at sea, and the slow kindling of the light of faith in
+      something beyond the familiar horizons; remember the social inequality of
+      his marriage, his long struggle with poverty, his long familiarity with
+      the position of one who asked and did not receive; the many rebuffs and
+      indignities which his Ligurian pride must have received at the hands of
+      all those Spanish dignitaries and grandees&mdash;remember all this, and
+      then you will perhaps not wonder so much that Columbus, who was beginning
+      to believe himself appointed by Heaven to this task of discovery, felt
+      that he had much to pay himself back for. One must recognise him frankly
+      for what he was, and for no conventional hero of romance; a man who would
+      reconcile his conscience with anything, and would stop at nothing in the
+      furtherance of what he deemed a good object; and a man at the same time
+      who had a conscience to reconcile, and would, whenever it was necessary,
+      laboriously and elaborately perform the act of reconciliation. When he
+      made these huge demands in Granada he was gambling with his chances; but
+      he was a calculating gambler, just about as cunning and crafty in the
+      weighing of one chance against another as a gambler with a conscience can
+      be; and he evidently realised that his own valuation of the services he
+      proposed to render would not be without its influence on his sovereign's
+      estimate of them. At any rate he was justified by the results, for on the
+      17th of April 1492, after a deal of talk and bargaining, but apparently
+      without any yielding on Columbus's part, articles of capitulation were
+      drawn up in which the following provisions were made:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      First, that Columbus and his heirs for ever should have the title and
+      office of Admiral in all the islands and continents of the ocean that he
+      or they might discover, with similar honours and prerogatives to those
+      enjoyed by the High Admiral of Castile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Second, that he and his heirs should be Viceroys and Governors-General
+      over all the said lands and continents, with the right of nominating three
+      candidates for the governing of each island or province, one of whom
+      should be appointed by the Crown.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Third, that he end his heirs should be entitled to one-tenth of all
+      precious stones, metals, spices, and other merchandises, however acquired,
+      within his Admiralty, the cost of acquisition being first deducted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fourth, that he or his lieutenants in their districts, and the High
+      Admiral of Castile in his district, should be the sole judge in all
+      disputes arising out of traffic between Spain and the new countries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fifth, that he now, and he and his heirs at all times, should have the
+      right to contribute the eighth part of the expense of fitting out
+      expeditions, and receive the eighth part of the profits.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In addition to these articles there was another document drawn up on the
+      30th of April, which after an infinite preamble about the nature of the
+      Holy Trinity, of the Apostle Saint James, and of the Saints of God
+      generally in their relations to Princes, and with a splendid trailing of
+      gorgeous Spanish names and titles across the page, confers upon our
+      hitherto humble Christopher the right to call himself "Don," and finally
+      raises him, in his own estimation at any rate, to a social level with his
+      proud Spanish friends. It is probably from this time that he adopted the
+      Spanish form of his name, Christoval Colon; but in this narrative I shall
+      retain the more universal form in which it has become familiar to the
+      English-speaking world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was now upon a Pisgah height, from which in imagination he could look
+      forth and see his Land of Promise. We also may climb up with him, and
+      stand beside him as he looks westward. We shall not see so clearly as he
+      sees, for we have not his inner light; and it is probable that even he
+      does not see the road at all, but only the goal, a single point of light
+      shining across a gulf of darkness. But from Pisgah there is a view
+      backward as well as forward, and, we may look back for a moment on this
+      last period of Christopher's life in Spain, inwardly to him so full of
+      trouble and difficulty and disappointment, outwardly so brave and
+      glittering, musical with high-sounding names and the clash of arms; gay
+      with sun and shine and colour. The brilliant Court moving from camp to
+      camp with its gorgeous retinues and silken pavilions and uniforms and
+      dresses and armours; the excitement of war, the intrigues of the
+      antechamber&mdash;these are the bright fabric of the latter years; and
+      against it, as against a background, stand out the beautiful names of the
+      Spanish associates of Columbus at this time&mdash;Medina Celi, Alonso de
+      Quintanilla, Cabrero, Arana, DEA, Hernando de Talavera, Gonzales de
+      Mendoza, Alonso de Cardenas, Perez, Hernandez, Luis de Santangel, and
+      Rodriguez de Maldonado&mdash;names that now, in his hour of triumph, are
+      like banners streaming in the wind against a summer sky.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="ch12" id="ch12"></a>CHAPTER XII.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE PREPARATIONS AT PALOS
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <a name="p127" id="p127"></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
+      <img alt="p127.jpg (55K)" src="images/p127.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      The Palos that witnessed the fitting out of the ships of Columbus exists
+      no longer. The soul is gone from it; the trade that in those days made it
+      great and busy has floated away from it into other channels; and it has
+      dwindled and shrunk, until to-day it consists of nothing but a double
+      street of poor white houses, such almost as you may see in any sea-coast
+      village in Ireland. The slow salt tides of the Atlantic come flooding in
+      over the Manto bank, across the bar of Saltes, and, dividing at the tongue
+      of land that separates the two rivers, creep up the mud banks of the Tinto
+      and the Odiel until they lie deep beside the wharves of Huelva and Palos;
+      but although Huelva still has a trade the tides bring nothing to Palos,
+      and take nothing away with them again. From La Rabida now you can no
+      longer see, as Columbus saw, fleets of caravels lying-to and standing off
+      and on outside the bar waiting for the flood tide; only a few poor boats
+      fishing for tunny in the empty sunny waters, or the smoke of a steamer
+      standing on her course for the Guadalquiver or Cadiz.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But in those spring days of 1492 there was a great stir and bustle of
+      preparation in Palos. As soon as the legal documents had been signed
+      Columbus returned there and, taking up his quarters at La Rabida, set
+      about fitting out his expedition. The reason Palos was chosen was an
+      economical one. The port, for some misdemeanour, had lately been condemned
+      to provide two caravels for the service of the Crown for a period of
+      twelve months; and in the impoverished state of the royal exchequer this
+      free service came in very usefully in fitting out the expedition of
+      discovery. Columbus was quite satisfied, since he had such good friends at
+      Palos; and he immediately set about choosing the ships.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This, however, did not prove to be quite such a straightforward business
+      as might have been expected. The truth is that, whatever a few monks and
+      physicians may have thought of it, the proposed expedition terrified the
+      ordinary seafaring population of Palos. It was thought to be the wildest
+      and maddest scheme that any one had ever heard of. All that was known
+      about the Atlantic west of the Azores was that it was a sea of darkness,
+      inhabited by monsters and furrowed by enormous waves, and that it fell
+      down the slope of the world so steeply that no ship having once gone down
+      could ever climb up it again. And not only was there reluctance on the
+      part of mariners to engage themselves for the expedition, but also a great
+      shyness on the part of ship-owners to provide ships. This reluctance
+      proved so formidable an impediment that Columbus had to communicate with
+      the King and Queen; with the result that on the 23rd of May the population
+      was summoned to the church of Saint George, where the Notary Public read
+      aloud to them the letter from the sovereigns commanding the port to
+      furnish ships and men, and an additional order summoning the town to obey
+      it immediately. An inducement was provided in the offer of a free pardon
+      to all criminals and persons under sentence who chose to enlist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Still the thing hung fire; and on June 20 a new and peremptory order was
+      issued by the Crown authorising Columbus to impress the vessels and crew
+      if necessary. Time was slipping away; and in his difficulty Columbus
+      turned to Martin Alonso Pinzon, upon whose influence and power in the town
+      he could count. There were three brothers then in this family&mdash;Martin
+      Alonso, Vincenti Yanez, and Francisco Martin, all pilots themselves and
+      owners of ships. These three brothers saw some hope of profit out of the
+      enterprise, and they exerted themselves on Christopher's behalf so
+      thoroughly that, not only did they afford him help in the obtaining of
+      ships, men, and supplies, but they all three decided to go with him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was one more financial question to be settled&mdash;a question that
+      remains for us in considerable obscurity, but was in all probability
+      partly settled by the aid of these brothers. The total cost of the
+      expedition, consisting of three ships, wages of the crew, stores and
+      provisions, was 1,167,542 maravedis, about L950(in 1900). After all these
+      years of pleading at Court, all the disappointments and deferred hopes and
+      sacrifices made by Columbus, the smallness of this sum cannot but strike
+      us with amazement. Many a nobleman that Columbus must have rubbed
+      shoulders with in his years at Court could have furnished the whole sum
+      out of his pocket and never missed it; yet Columbus had to wait years and
+      years before he could get it from the Crown. Still more amazing, this sum
+      was not all provided by the Crown; 167,000 maravedis were found by
+      Columbus, and the Crown only contributed one million maravedis. One can
+      only assume that Columbus's pertinacity in petitioning the King and Queen
+      to undertake the expedition, when he could with comparative ease have got
+      the money from some of his noble acquaintance, was due to three things&mdash;his
+      faith and belief in his Idea, his personal ambition, and his personal
+      greed. He believed in his Idea so thoroughly that he knew he was going to
+      find something across the Atlantic. Continents and islands cannot for long
+      remain in the possession of private persons; they are the currency of
+      crowns; and he did not want to be left in the lurch if the land he hoped
+      to discover should be seized or captured by Spain or Portugal. The result
+      of his discoveries, he was convinced, was going to be far too large a
+      thing to be retained and controlled by any machinery less powerful than
+      that of a kingdom; therefore he was unwilling to accept either preliminary
+      assistance or subsequent rewards from any but the same powerful hand.
+      Admiralties, moreover, and Governor-Generalships and Viceroyships cannot
+      be conferred by counts and dukes, however powerful; the very title Don
+      could only be conferred by one power in Spain; and all the other titles
+      and dignities that Columbus craved with all his Genoese soul were to be
+      had from the hands of kings, and not from plutocrats. It was
+      characteristic of him all his life never to deal with subordinates, but
+      always to go direct to the head man; and when the whole purpose and
+      ambition of his life was to be put to the test it was only consistent in
+      him, since he could not be independent, to go forth under the protection
+      of the united Crown of Aragon and Castile. Where or how he raised his
+      share of the cost is not known; it is possible that his old friend the
+      Duke of Medina Celi came to his help, or that the Pinzon family, who
+      believed enough in the expedition to risk their lives in it, lent some of
+      the necessary money.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ever since ships were in danger of going to sea short-handed methods of
+      recruiting and manning them have been very much the same; and there must
+      have been some hot work about the harbour of Palos in the summer of 1492.
+      The place was in a panic. It is highly probable that many of the
+      volunteers were a ruffianly riff-raff from the prisons, to whom personal
+      freedom meant nothing but a chance of plunder; and the recruiting office
+      in Palos must have seen many a picturesque scoundrel coming and taking the
+      oath and making his mark. The presence of these adventurers, many of them
+      entirely ignorant of the sea, would not be exactly an encouragement to the
+      ordinary seaman. It is here very likely that the influence of the Pinzon
+      family was usefully applied. I call it influence, since that is a polite
+      term which covers the application of force in varying degrees; and it was
+      an awkward thing for a Palos sailor to offend the Pinzons, who owned and
+      controlled so much of the shipping in the port. Little by little the
+      preparations went on. In the purchasing of provisions and stores the
+      Pinzons were most helpful to Columbus and, it is not improbable, to
+      themselves also. They also procured the ships; altogether, in the whole
+      history of the fitting out of expeditions, I know nothing since the voyage
+      of the Ark which was so well kept within one family. Moreover it is
+      interesting to notice, since we know the names and places of residence of
+      all the members of the expedition, that the Pinzons, who personally
+      commanded two of the caravels, had them almost exclusively manned by
+      sailors from Palos, while the Admiral's ship was manned by a miscellaneous
+      crew from other places. To be sure they gave the Admiral the biggest ship,
+      but (in his own words) it proved "a dull sailer and unfit for discovery";
+      while they commanded the two caravels, small and open, but much faster and
+      handier. Clearly these Pinzons will take no harm from a little watching.
+      They may be honest souls enough, but their conduct is just a little
+      suspicious, and we cannot be too careful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Three vessels were at last secured. The first, named the Santa Maria, was
+      the largest, and was chosen to be the flagship of Columbus. She was of
+      about one hundred tons burden, and would be about ninety feet in length by
+      twenty feet beam. She was decked over, and had a high poop astern and a
+      high forecastle in the bows. She had three masts, two of them
+      square-rigged, with a latine sail on the mizzen mast; and she carried a
+      crew of fifty-two persons. Where and how they all stowed themselves away
+      is a matter upon which we can only make wondering guesses; for this ship
+      was about the size of an ordinary small coasting schooner, such as is
+      worked about the coasts of these islands with a crew of six or eight men.
+      The next largest ship was the Pinta, which was commanded by Martin Alonso
+      Pinzon, who took his brother Francisco with him as sailing-master. The
+      Pinta was of fifty tons burden, decked only at the bow and stern, and the
+      fastest of the three ships; she also had three masts. The third ship was a
+      caravel of forty tons and called the Nina; she belonged to Juan Nino of
+      Palos. She was commanded by Vincenti Pinzon, and had a complement of
+      eighteen men. Among the crew of the flagship, whose names and places of
+      residence are to be found in the Appendix, were an Englishman and an
+      Irishman. The Englishman is entered as Tallarte de Lajes (Ingles), who has
+      been ingeniously identified with a possible Allard or AEthelwald of
+      Winchelsea, there having been several generations of Allards who were
+      sailors of Winchelsea in the fifteenth century. Sir Clements Markham
+      thinks that this Allard may have been trading to Coruna and have married
+      and settled down at Lajes. There is also Guillermo Ires, an Irishman from
+      Galway.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Allard and William, shuffling into the recruiting office in Palos,
+      doubtless think that this is a strange place for them to meet, and rather
+      a wild business that they are embarked upon, among all these bloody
+      Spaniards. Some how I feel more confidence in Allard than in William,
+      knowing, as I do so well, this William of Galway, whether on his native
+      heath or in the strange and distant parts of the world to which his
+      sanguine temperament leads him. Alas, William, you are but the first of a
+      mighty stream that will leave the Old Country for the New World; the world
+      destined to be good for the fortunes of many from the Old Country, but for
+      the Old Country itself not good. Little does he know, drunken William,
+      willing to be on hand where there is adventure brewing, and to be after
+      going with the boys and getting his health on the salt water, what a path
+      of hope for those who go, and of heaviness for those who stay behind, he
+      is opening up . . . . Farewell, William; I hope you were not one of those
+      whom they let out of gaol.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      June slid into July, and still the preparations were not complete. Down on
+      the mud banks of the Tinto, where at low water the vessels were left high
+      and dry, and where the caulking and refitting were in hand, there was
+      trouble with the workmen. Gomaz Rascon and Christoval Quintero, the owners
+      of the Pinta, who had resented her being pressed into the service, were at
+      the bottom of a good deal of it. Things could not be found; gear
+      mysteriously gave way after it had been set up; the caulking was found to
+      have been carelessly and imperfectly done; and when the caulkers were
+      commanded to do it over again they decamped. Even the few volunteers, the
+      picked hands upon whom Columbus was relying, gave trouble. In those days
+      of waiting there was too much opportunity for talk in the shore-side
+      wine-shops; some of the volunteers repented and tried to cry off their
+      bargains; others were dissuaded by their relatives, and deserted and hid
+      themselves. No mild measures were of any use; a reign of terror had to be
+      established; and nothing short of the influence of the Pinzons was severe
+      enough to hold the company together. To these vigorous measures, however,
+      all opposition gradually yielded. By the end of July the provisions and
+      stores were on board, the whole complement of eighty-seven persons
+      collected and enlisted, and only the finishing touches left for Columbus.
+      It is a sign of the distrust and fear evinced with regard to this
+      expedition, that no priest accompanied it&mdash;something of a sorrow to
+      pious Christopher, who would have liked his chaplain. There were two
+      surgeons, or barbers, and a physician; there were an overseer, a
+      secretary, a master-at-arms; there was an interpreter to speak to the
+      natives of the new lands in Hebrew, Greek, German, Chaldean or Arabic; and
+      there was an assayer and silversmith to test the quality of the precious
+      metals that they were sure to find. Up at La Rabida, with the busy and
+      affectionate assistance of the old Prior, Columbus made his final
+      preparations. Ferdinand was to stay at Cordova with Beatriz, and to go to
+      school there; while Diego was already embarked upon his life's voyage,
+      having been appointed a page to the Queen's son, Prince Juan, and handed
+      over to the care of some of the Court ladies. The course to be sailed was
+      talked over and over again; the bearings and notes of the pilot at Porto
+      Santo consulted and discussed; and a chart was made by Columbus himself,
+      and copied with his own hands for use on the three ships.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the 2nd of August everything was ready; the ships moored out in the
+      stream, the last stragglers of the crew on board, the last sack of flour
+      and barrel of beef stowed away. Columbus confessed himself to the Prior of
+      La Rabida&mdash;a solemn moment for him in the little chapel up on the
+      pine-clad hill. His last evening ashore would certainly be spent at the
+      monastery, and his last counsels taken with Perez and Doctor Hernandez. We
+      can hardly realise the feelings of Christopher on the eve of his departure
+      from the land where all his roots were, to a land of mere faith and
+      conjecture. Even today, when the ocean is furrowed by crowded highways,
+      and the earth is girdled with speaking wires, and distances are so divided
+      and reduced that the traveller need never be very long out of touch with
+      his home, few people can set out on a long voyage without some emotional
+      disturbance, however slight it may be; and to Columbus on this night the
+      little town upon which he looked down from the monastery, which had been
+      the scene of so many delays and difficulties and vexations, must have
+      seemed suddenly dear and familiar to him as he realised that after
+      to-morrow its busy and well-known scenes might be for ever a thing of the
+      past to him. Behind him, living or dead, lay all he humanly loved and
+      cared for; before him lay a voyage full of certain difficulties and
+      dangers; dangers from the ships, dangers from the crews, dangers from the
+      weather, dangers from the unknown path itself; and beyond them, a
+      twinkling star on the horizon of his hopes, lay the land of his belief.
+      That he meant to arrive there and to get back again was beyond all doubt
+      his firm intention; and in the simple grandeur of that determination the
+      weaknesses of character that were grouped about it seem unimportant. In
+      this starlit hour among the pine woods his life came to its meridian;
+      everything that was him was at its best and greatest there. Beneath him,
+      on the talking tide of the river, lay the ships and equipment that
+      represented years of steady effort and persistence; before him lay the
+      pathless ocean which he meant to cross by the inner light of his faith.
+      What he had suffered, he had suffered by himself; what he had won, he had
+      won by himself; what he was to finish, he would finish by himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the time for meditations grows short. Lights are moving about in the
+      town beneath; there is an unwonted midnight stir and bustle; the whole
+      population is up and about, running hither and thither with lamps and
+      torches through the starlit night. The tide is flowing; it will be high
+      water before dawn; and with the first of the ebb the little fleet is to
+      set sail. The stream of hurrying sailors and townspeople sets towards the
+      church of Saint George, where mass is to be said and the Sacrament
+      administered to the voyagers. The calls and shouts die away; the bell
+      stops ringing; and the low muttering voice of the priest is heard
+      beginning the Office. The light of the candles shines upon the gaudy roof,
+      and over the altar upon the wooden image of Saint George vanquishing the
+      dragon, upon which the eyes of Christopher rested during some part of the
+      service, and where to-day your eyes may rest also if you make that
+      pilgrimage. The moment approaches; the bread and the wine are consecrated;
+      there is a shuffling of knees and feet; and then a pause. The clear notes
+      of the bell ring out upon the warm dusky silence&mdash;once, twice,
+      thrice; the living God and the cold presence of dawn enter the church
+      together. Every head is bowed; and for once at least every heart of that
+      company beats in unison with the rest. And then the Office goes on, and
+      the dark-skinned congregation streams up to the sanctuary and receives the
+      Communion, while the blue light of dawn increases and the candles pale
+      before the coming day. And then out again to the boats with shoutings and
+      farewells, for the tide has now turned; hoisting of sails and tripping of
+      anchors and breaking out of gorgeous ensigns; and the ships are moving!
+      The Maria leads, with the sign of the Redemption painted on her mainsail
+      and the standard of Castile flying at her mizzen; and there is cheering
+      from ships and from shore, and a faint sound of bells from the town of
+      Huelva.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus, the sea being&mdash;calm, and a fresh breeze blowing off the land,
+      did Christopher Columbus set sail from Palos at sunrise on Friday the 3rd
+      of August 1492.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="ch13" id="ch13"></a>CHAPTER XIII.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      EVENTS OF THE FIRST VOYAGE
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "In nomine D.N. Jesu Christi&mdash;Friday, August 3, 1492, at eight
+        o'clock we started from the bar of Saltes. We went with a strong sea
+        breeze sixty miles,&mdash;[Columbus reckoned in Italian miles, of which
+        four = one league.]&mdash;which are fifteen leagues, towards the south,
+        until sunset: afterwards to the south-west and to the south, quarter
+        south-west, which was the way to the Canaries."
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        <br /> [The account of Columbus's first voyage is taken from a Journal
+        written by himself, but which in its original form does not exist. Las
+        Casas had it in his possession, but as he regarded it (no doubt with
+        justice) as too voluminous and discursive to be interesting, he made an
+        abridged edition, in which the exact words of Columbus were sometimes
+        quoted, but which for the most part is condensed into a narrative in the
+        third person. This abridged Journal, consisting of seventy-six closely
+        written folios, was first published by Navarrette in 1825. When Las
+        Casas wrote his 'Historie,' however, he appears here and there to have
+        restored sections of the original Journal into the abridged one; and
+        many of these restorations are of importance. If the whole account of
+        his voyage written by Columbus himself were available in its exact form
+        I would print it here; but as it is not, I think it better to continue
+        my narrative, simply using the Journal of Las Casas as a document.]
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      With these rousing words the Journal of Columbus's voyage begins; and they
+      sound a salt and mighty chord which contains the true diapason of the
+      symphony of his voyages. There could not have been a more fortunate
+      beginning, with clear weather and a calm sea, and the wind in exactly the
+      right quarter. On Saturday and Sunday the same conditions held, so there
+      was time and opportunity for the three very miscellaneous ships' companies
+      to shake down into something like order, and for all the elaborate
+      discipline of sea life to be arranged and established; and we may employ
+      the interval by noting what aids to navigation Columbus had at his
+      disposal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The chief instrument was the astrolabe, which was an improvement on the
+      primitive quadrant then in use for taking the altitude of the sun. The
+      astrolabe, it will be remembered, had been greatly improved, by Martin
+      Behaim and the Portuguese Commission in 1840&mdash;[1440 D.W.]; and it was
+      this instrument, a simplification of the astrolabe used in astronomy
+      ashore, that Columbus chiefly used in getting his solar altitudes. As will
+      be seen from the illustration, its broad principle was that of a metal
+      circle with a graduated circumference and two arms pivoted in the centre.
+      It was made as heavy as possible; and in using it the observer sat on deck
+      with his back against the mainmast and with his left hand held up the
+      instrument by the ring at the top. The long arm was moved round until the
+      two sights fixed upon it were on with the sun. The point where the other
+      arm then cut the circle gave the altitude. In conjunction with this
+      instrument were used the tables of solar declination compiled by
+      Regiomontanus, and covering the sun's declination between the years 1475
+      and 1566.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /> <a name="p141" id="p141"></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
+      <img alt="p141.jpg (34K)" src="images/p141.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The compass in Columbus's day existed, so far as all essentials are
+      concerned, as it exists to-day. Although it lacked the refinements
+      introduced by Lord Kelvin it was swung in double-cradles, and had the
+      thirty-two points painted upon a card. The discovery of the compass, and
+      even of the lodestone, are things wrapt in obscurity; but the lodestone
+      had been known since at least the eleventh century, and the compass
+      certainly since the thirteenth. With the compass were used the sea charts,
+      which were simply maps on a rather larger and more exact scale than the
+      land maps of the period. There were no soundings or currents marked on the
+      old charts, which were drawn on a plane projection; and they can have been
+      of little&mdash;practical use to navigators except in the case of coasts
+      which were elaborately charted on a large scale. The chart of Columbus, in
+      so far as it was concerned with the ocean westward of the Azores, can of
+      course have contained nothing except the conjectured islands or lands
+      which he hoped to find; possibly the land seen by the shipwrecked pilot
+      may have been marked on it, and his failure to find that land may have
+      been the reason why, as we shall see, he changed his course to the
+      southward on the 7th of October. It must be remembered that Columbus's
+      conception of the world was that of the Portuguese Mappemonde of 1490, a
+      sketch of which is here reproduced.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /> <a name="p143" id="p143"></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
+      <img alt="p143.jpg (45K)" src="images/p143.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <a href="images/p143.jpg"> <img alt="Full Size" src="images/enlarge.jpg" />
+      </a> <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This conception of the world excluded the Pacific Ocean and the continent
+      of North and South America, and made it reasonable to suppose that any one
+      who sailed westward long enough from Spain would ultimately reach Cathay
+      and the Indies. Behaim's globe, which was completed in the year 1492,
+      represented the farthest point that geographical knowledge had reached
+      previous to the discoveries of Columbus, and on it is shown the island of
+      Cipango or Japan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /> <a name="behaimglobe" id="behaimglobe"></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
+      <img alt="behaimglobe.jpg (104K)" src="images/behaimglobe.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <a href="images/behaimglobe.jpg"> <img alt="Full Size"
+      src="images/enlarge.jpg" /> </a> <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By far the most important element in the navigation of Columbus, in so far
+      as estimating his position was concerned, was what is known as
+      "dead-reckoning" that is to say, the computation of the distance travelled
+      by the ship through the water. At present this distance is measured by a
+      patent log, which in its commonest form is a propeller-shaped instrument
+      trailed through the water at the end of a long wire or cord the inboard
+      end of which is attached to a registering clock. On being dragged through
+      the water the propeller spins round and the twisting action is
+      communicated by the cord to the clock-work machinery which counts the
+      miles. In the case of powerful steamers and in ordinary weather
+      dead-reckoning is very accurately calculated by the number of revolutions
+      of the propellers recorded in the engine-room; and a device not unlike
+      this was known to the Romans in the time of the Republic. They attached
+      small wheels about four feet in diameter to the sides of their ships; the
+      passage of the water turned the wheels, and a very simple gearing was
+      arranged which threw a pebble into a tallypot at each revolution. This
+      device, however, seems to have been abandoned or forgotten in Columbus's
+      day, when there was no more exact method of estimating dead-reckoning than
+      the primitive one of spitting over the side in calm weather, or at other
+      times throwing some object into the water and estimating the rate of
+      progress by its speed in passing the ship's side. The hour-glass, which
+      was used to get the multiple for long distances, was of course the only
+      portable time measurer available for Columbus. These, with a rough
+      knowledge of astronomy, and the taking of the altitude of the polar star,
+      were the only known means for ascertaining the position of his ship at
+      sea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first mishap occurred on Monday, August 6th, when the Pinta carried
+      away her rudder. The Pinta, it will be remembered, was commanded by Martin
+      Alonso Pinzon, and was owned by Gomaz Rascon and Christoval Quintero, who
+      had been at the bottom of some of the troubles ashore; and it was thought
+      highly probable that these two rascals had something to do with the
+      mishap, which they had engineered in the hope that their vessel would be
+      left behind at the Canaries. Martin Alonso, however, proved a man of
+      resource, and rigged up a sort of steering gear with ropes. There was a
+      choppy sea, and Columbus could not bring his own vessel near enough to
+      render any assistance, though he doubtless bawled his directions to
+      Pinzon, and looked with a troubled eye on the commotion going on on board
+      the Pinta. On the next day the jury-rigged rudder carried away again, and
+      was again repaired, but it was decided to try and make the island of
+      Lanzarote in the Canaries, and to get another caravel to replace the
+      Pinta. All through the next day the Santa Maria and the Nina had to
+      shorten sail in order not to leave the damaged Pinta behind; the three
+      captains had a discussion and difference of opinion as to where they were;
+      but Columbus, who was a genius at dead-reckoning, proved to be right in
+      his surmise, and they came in sight of the Canaries on Thursday morning,
+      August 9th.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Columbus left Pinzon on the Grand Canary with orders to try to obtain a
+      caravel there, while he sailed on to Gomera, which he reached on Sunday
+      night, with a similar purpose. As he was unsuccessful he sent a message by
+      a boat that was going back to tell Pinzon to beach the Pinta and repair
+      her rudder; and having spent more days in fruitless search for a vessel,
+      he started back to join Pinzon on August 23rd. During the night he passed
+      the Peak of Teneriffe, which was then in eruption. The repairs to the
+      Pinta, doubtless in no way expedited by Messrs. Rascon and Quintera, took
+      longer than had been expected; it was found necessary to make an entirely
+      new rudder for her; and advantage was taken of the delay to make some
+      alterations in the rig of the Nina, which was changed from a latine rig to
+      a square rig, so that she might be better able to keep up with the others.
+      September had come before these two jobs were completed; and on the 2nd of
+      September the three ships sailed for Gomera, the most westerly of the
+      islands, where they anchored in the north-east bay. The Admiral was in a
+      great hurry to get away from the islands and from the track of merchant
+      ships, for he had none too much confidence in the integrity of his crews,
+      which were already murmuring and finding every mishap a warning sign from
+      God. He therefore only stayed long enough at Gomera to take in wood and
+      water and provisions, and set sail from that island on the 6th of
+      September.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The wind fell lighter and lighter, and on Friday the little fleet lay
+      becalmed within sight of Ferro. But on Saturday evening north-east airs
+      sprang up again, and they were able to make nine leagues of westing. On
+      Sunday they had lost sight of land; and at thus finding their ships three
+      lonely specks in the waste of ocean the crew lost heart and began to
+      lament. There was something like a panic, many of the sailors bursting
+      into tears and imploring Columbus to take them home again. To us it may
+      seem a rather childish exhibition; but it must be remembered that these
+      sailors were unwillingly embarked upon a voyage which they believed would
+      only lead to death and disaster. The bravest of us to-day, if he found
+      himself press-ganged on board a balloon and embarked upon a journey, the
+      object of which was to land upon Mars or the moon, might find it difficult
+      to preserve his composure on losing sight of the earth; and the parallel
+      is not too extreme to indicate the light in which their present enterprise
+      must have appeared to many of the Admiral's crew.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Columbus gave orders to the captains of the other two ships that, in case
+      of separation, they were to sail westward for 700 leagues-that being the
+      distance at which he evidently expected to find land&mdash;and there to
+      lie-to from midnight until morning. On this day also, seeing the temper of
+      the sailors, he began one of the crafty stratagems upon which he prided
+      himself, and which were often undoubtedly of great use to him; he kept two
+      reckonings, one a true one, which he entered in his log, and one a false
+      one, by means of which the distance run was made out to be less than what
+      it actually was, so that in case he could not make land as soon as he
+      hoped the crew would not be unduly discouraged. In other words, he wished
+      to have a margin at the other end, for he did not want a mutiny when he
+      was perhaps within a few leagues of his destination. On this day he notes
+      that the raw and inexperienced seamen were giving trouble in other ways,
+      and steering very badly, continually letting the ship's head-fall off to
+      the north; and many must have been the angry remonstrances from the
+      captain to the man at the wheel. Altogether rather a trying day for
+      Christopher, who surely has about as much on his hands as ever mortal had;
+      but he knows how to handle ships and how to handle sailors, and so long as
+      this ten-knot breeze lasts, he can walk the high poop of the Santa Maria
+      with serenity, and snap his fingers at the dirty rabble below.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On Monday they made sixty leagues, the Admiral duly announcing
+      forty-eight; on Tuesday twenty leagues, published as sixteen; and on this
+      day they saw a large piece of a mast which had evidently belonged to a
+      ship of at least 120 tons burden. This was not an altogether cheerful
+      sight for the eighteen souls on board the little Nina, who wondered
+      ruefully what was going to happen to them of forty tons when ships three
+      times their size had evidently been unable to live in this abominable sea!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On Thursday, September 13th, when Columbus took his observations, he made
+      a great scientific discovery, although he did not know it at the time. He
+      noticed that the needle of the compass was declining to the west of north
+      instead of having a slight declination to the east of north, as all
+      mariners knew it to have. In other words, he had passed the line of true
+      north and of no variation, and must therefore have been in latitude 28
+      deg. N. and longitude 29 deg. 37' W. of Greenwich. With his usual secrecy
+      he said nothing about it; perhaps he was waiting to see if the pilots on
+      the other ships had noticed it, but apparently they were not so exact in
+      their observations as he was. On the next day, Friday, the wind falling a
+      little lighter, they, made only twenty leagues. "Here the persons on the
+      caravel Nina said they had seen a jay and a ringtail, and these birds
+      never come more than twenty-five leagues from land at most." &mdash;Unhappy
+      "persons on the Nina"! Nineteen souls, including the captain, afloat in a
+      very small boat, and arguing God knows what from the fact that a jay and a
+      ringtail never went more than twenty-five leagues from land!&mdash;The
+      next day also was not without its incident; for on Saturday evening they
+      saw a meteor, or "marvellous branch of fire" falling from the serene
+      violet of the sky into the sea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were now well within the influence of the trade-wind, which in these
+      months blows steadily from the east, and maintains an exquisite and balmy
+      climate. Even the Admiral, never very communicative about his sensations,
+      deigns to mention them here, and is reported to have said that "it was a
+      great pleasure to enjoy the morning; that nothing was lacking except to
+      hear the nightingales, and that the weather was like April in Andalusia."
+      On this day they saw some green grasses, which the Admiral considered must
+      have floated off from some island; "not the continent," says the Admiral,
+      whose theories are not to be disturbed by a piece of grass, "because I
+      make the continental land farther onward." The crew, ready to take the
+      most depressing and pessimistic view of everything, considered that the
+      lumps of grass belonged to rocks or submerged lands, and murmured
+      disparaging things about the Admiral. As a matter of fact these grasses
+      were masses of seaweed detached from the Sargasso Sea, which they were
+      soon to enter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On Monday, September 17th, four days after Columbus had noted it, the
+      other pilots noted the declination of the needle, which they had found on
+      taking the position of the North star. They did not like it; and Columbus,
+      whose knowledge of astronomy came to his aid, ordered them to take the
+      position of the North star at dawn again, which they did, and found that
+      the needles were true. He evidently thought it useless to communicate to
+      them his scientific speculations, so he explained to them that it was the
+      North star which was moving in its circle, and not the compass. One is
+      compelled to admit that in these little matters of deceit the Admiral
+      always shone. To-day, among the seaweed on the ship's side, he picked up a
+      little crayfish, which he kept for several days, presumably in a bottle in
+      his cabin; and perhaps afterwards ate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So for several days this calm and serene progress westward was maintained.
+      The trade-wind blew steady and true, balmy and warm also; the sky was
+      cloudless, except at morning and evening dusk; and there were for scenery
+      those dazzling expanses of sea and sky, and those gorgeous hues of dawn
+      and sunset, which are only to be found in the happy latitudes. The things
+      that happened to them, the bits of seaweed and fishes that they saw in the
+      water, the birds that flew around them, were observed with a wondering
+      attention and wistful yearning after their meaning such as is known only
+      to children and to sailors adventuring on uncharted seas. The breezes were
+      milder even than those of the Canaries, and the waters always less salt;
+      and the men, forgetting their fears of the monsters of the Sea of
+      Darkness, would bathe alongside in the limpid blue. The little crayfish
+      was a "sure indication of land"; a tunny fish, killed by the company on
+      the Nina, was taken to be an indication from the west, "where I hope in
+      that exalted God, in whose hands are all victories, that land will very
+      soon appear"; they saw another ringtail, "which is not accustomed to sleep
+      on the sea"; two pelicans came to the ship, "which was an indication that
+      land was near"; a large dark cloud appeared to the north, "which is a sign
+      that land is near"; they saw one day a great deal of grass, "although the
+      previous day they had not seen any"; they took a bird with their hands
+      which was like a jay; "it was a river bird and not a sea bird"; they saw a
+      whale, "which is an indication that they are near land, because they
+      always remain near it"; afterwards a pelican came from the west-north-west
+      and went to the south-east, "which was an indication that it left land to
+      the west-north-west, because these birds sleep on land and in the morning
+      they come to the sea in search of food, and do not go twenty leagues from
+      land." And "at dawn two or three small land birds came singing to the
+      ships; and afterwards disappeared before sunrise."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such beautiful signs, interpreted by the light of their wishes, were the
+      events of this part of the voyage. In the meantime, they have their little
+      differences. Martin Alonso Pinzon, on Tuesday, September 18th, speaks from
+      the Pinta to the Santa Maria, and says that he will not wait for the
+      others, but will go and make the land, since it is so near; but apparently
+      he does not get very far out of the way, the wind which wafts him wafting
+      also the Santa Maria and the Nina.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On September the 19th there was a comparison of dead-reckonings. The
+      Nina's pilot made it 440 leagues from the Canaries, the Pinta's 420
+      leagues, and the Admiral's pilot, doubtless instructed by the Admiral,
+      made it 400. On Sunday the 23rd they were getting into the seaweed and
+      finding crayfish again; and there being no reasonable cause for complaint
+      a scare was got up among the crew on an exceedingly ingenious point. The
+      wind having blown steadily from the east for a matter of three weeks, they
+      said that it would never blow in any other direction, and that they would
+      never be able to get back to Spain; but later in the afternoon the sea got
+      up from the westward, as though in answer to their fears, and as if to
+      prove that somewhere or other ahead of them there was a west wind blowing;
+      and the Admiral remarks that "the high sea was very necessary to me, as it
+      came to pass once before in the time when the Jews went out of Egypt with
+      Moses, who took them from captivity." And indeed there was something of
+      Moses in this man, who thus led his little rabble from a Spanish seaport
+      out across the salt wilderness of the ocean, and interpreted the signs for
+      them, and stood between them and the powers of vengeance and terror that
+      were set about their uncharted path.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But it appears that the good Admiral had gone just a little too far in
+      interpreting everything they saw as a sign that they were approaching
+      land; for his miserable crew, instead of being comforted by this fact, now
+      took the opportunity to be angry because the signs were not fulfilled. The
+      more the signs pointed to their nearness to land, the more they began to
+      murmur and complain because they did not see it. They began to form
+      together in little groups&mdash;always an ominous sign at sea&mdash;and
+      even at night those who were not on deck got together in murmuring
+      companies. Some, of the things that they said, indeed, were not very far
+      from the truth; among others, that it was "a great madness on their part
+      to venture their lives in following out the madness of a foreigner who to
+      make himself a great lord had risked his life, and now saw himself and all
+      of them in great exigency and was deceiving so many people." They
+      remembered that his proposition, or "dream" as they not inaptly call it,
+      had been contradicted by many great and lettered men; and then followed
+      some very ominous words indeed. They held
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        <br /> [The substance of these murmurings is not in the abridged Journal,
+        but is given by Las Casas under the date of September 24.]
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      that "it was enough to excuse them from whatever might be done in the
+      matter that they had arrived where man had never dared to navigate, and
+      that they were not obliged to go to the end of the world, especially as,
+      if they delayed more, they would not be able to have provisions to
+      return." In short, the best thing would be to throw him into the sea some
+      night, and make a story that he had fallen, into the water while taking
+      the position of a star with his astrolabe; and no one would ask any
+      questions, as he was a foreigner. They carried this talk to the Pinzons,
+      who listened to them; after all, we have not had to wait long for trouble
+      with the Pinzons! "Of these Pinzons Christopher Columbus complains
+      greatly, and of the trouble they had given him."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is only one method of keeping down mutiny at sea, and of preserving
+      discipline. It is hard enough where the mutineers are all on one ship and
+      the commander's officers are loyal to him; but when they are distributed
+      over three ships, the captains of two of which are willing to listen to
+      them, the problem becomes grave indeed. We have no details of how Columbus
+      quieted them; but it is probable that his strong personality awed them,
+      while his clever and plausible words persuaded them. He was the best
+      sailor of them all and they knew it; and in a matter of this kind the best
+      and strongest man always wins, and can only in a pass of this kind
+      maintain his authority by proving his absolute right to it. So he talked
+      and persuaded and bullied and encouraged and cheered them; "laughing with
+      them," as Las Casas says, "while he was weeping at heart."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Probably as a result of this unpleasantness there was on the following
+      day, Tuesday, September 25th, a consultation between: Martin Alonso Pinzon
+      and the Admiral. The Santa Maria closed up with the Pinta, and a chart was
+      passed over on a cord. There were islands marked on the chart in this
+      region, possibly the islands reported by the shipwrecked pilot, possibly
+      the island of Antilla; and Pinzon said he thought that they were somewhere
+      in the region of them, and the Admiral said that he thought so too. There
+      was a deal of talk and pricking of positions on charts; and then, just as
+      the sun was setting, Martin Alonso, standing on the stern of the Pinta,
+      raised a shout and said that he saw land; asking (business-like Martin) at
+      the same time for the reward which had been promised to the first one who
+      should see land: They all saw it, a low cloud to the southwest, apparently
+      about twenty-five leagues distant; and honest Christopher, in the emotion
+      of the moment, fell on his knees in gratitude to God. The crimson sunset
+      of that evening saw the rigging of the three ships black with eager
+      figures, and on the quiet air were borne the sounds of the Gloria in
+      Excelsis, which was repeated by each ship's company.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The course was altered to the south-west, and they sailed in that
+      direction seventeen leagues during the night; but in the morning there was
+      no land to be seen. The sunset clouds that had so often deceived the
+      dwellers in the Canaries and the Azores, and that in some form or other
+      hover at times upon all eagerly scanned horizons, had also deceived
+      Columbus and every one of his people; but they created a diversion which
+      was of help to the Admiral in getting things quiet again, for which in his
+      devout soul he thanked the merciful providence of God.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so they sailed on again on a westward course. They were still in the
+      Sargasso Sea, and could watch the beautiful golden floating mass of the
+      gulf-weed, covered with berries and showing, a little way under the clear
+      water, bright green leaves. The sea was as smooth as the river in Seville;
+      there were frigate pelicans flying about, and John Dorys in the water;
+      several gulls were seen; and a youth on board the Nina killed a pelican
+      with a stone. On Monday, October 1st, there was a heavy shower of rain;
+      and Juan de la Cosa, Columbus's pilot, came up to him with the doleful
+      information that they had run 578 leagues from the island of Ferro.
+      According to Christopher's doctored reckoning the distance published was
+      584 leagues; but his true reckoning, about which he said nothing to a
+      soul, showed that they had gone 707 leagues. The breeze still kept steady
+      and the sea calm; and day after day, with the temper of the crews getting
+      uglier and uglier, the three little vessels forged westward through the
+      blue, weed-strewn waters, their tracks lying undisturbed far behind them.
+      On Saturday, October 6th, the Admiral was signalled by Alonso Pinzon, who
+      wanted to change the course to the south-west. It appears that, having
+      failed to find the, islands of the shipwrecked pilot, they were now making
+      for the island of Cipango, and that this request of Pinzon had something
+      to do with some theory of his that they had better turn to the south to
+      reach that island; while Columbus's idea now evidently was&mdash;to push
+      straight on to the mainland of Cathay. Columbus had his way; but the
+      grumbling and murmuring in creased among the crew.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the next day, Sunday, and perhaps just in time to avert another
+      outbreak, there was heard the sound of a gun, and the watchers on the
+      Santa Maria and the Pinta saw a puff of smoke coming from the Nina, which
+      was sailing ahead, and hoisting a flag on her masthead. This was the
+      signal agreed upon for the discovery of land, and it seemed as though
+      their search was at last at an end. But it was a mistake. In the afternoon
+      the land that the people of the Nina thought they had seen had
+      disappeared, and the horizon was empty except for a great flight of birds
+      that was seen passing from the north to the south-west. The Admiral,
+      remembering how often birds had guided the Portuguese in the islands in
+      their possessions, argued that the birds were either going to sleep on
+      land or were perhaps flying from winter, which he assumed to be
+      approaching in the land from whence they came. He therefore altered. his
+      course from west to west-south-west. This course was entered upon an hour
+      before sunset and continued throughout the night and the next day. "The
+      sea was like the river of Seville," says the Admiral; "the breezes as soft
+      as at Seville in April, and very fragrant." More birds were to be seen,
+      and there were many signs of land; but the crew, so often disappointed in
+      their hopeful interpretations of the phenomena surrounding them, kept on
+      murmuring and complaining. On Tuesday, October 9th, the wind chopped round
+      a little and the course was altered, first to south-west and then at
+      evening to a point north of west; and the journal records that "all night
+      they heard birds passing." The next day Columbus resumed the
+      west-southwesterly course and made a run of fifty-nine leagues; but the
+      mariners broke out afresh in their discontent, and declined to go any
+      farther. They complained of the long voyage, and expressed their views
+      strongly to the commander. But they had to deal with a man who was
+      determined to begin with, and who saw in the many signs of land that they
+      had met with only an additional inducement to go on. He told them firmly
+      that with or without their consent he intended to go on until he had found
+      the land he had come to seek.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next day, Thursday, October 11th, was destined to be for ever
+      memorable in the history of the world. It began ordinarily enough, with a
+      west-south-west wind blowing fresh, and on a sea rather rougher than they
+      had had lately. The people on the Santa Maria saw some petrels and a green
+      branch in the water; the Pinta saw a reed and two small sticks carved with
+      iron, and one or two other pieces of reeds and grasses that had been grown
+      on shore, as well as a small board. Most wonderful of all, the people of
+      the Nina saw "a little branch full of dog roses"; and it would be hard to
+      estimate the sweet significance of this fragment of a wild plant from land
+      to the senses of men who had been so long upon a sea from which they had
+      thought never to land alive. The day drew to its close; and after
+      nightfall, according to their custom, the crew of the ships repeated the
+      Salve Regina. Afterwards the Admiral addressed the people and sailors of
+      his ship, "very merry and pleasant," reminding them of the favours God had
+      shown them with regard to the weather, and begging them, as they hoped to
+      see land very soon, within an hour or so, to keep an extra good look-out
+      that night from the forward forecastle; and adding to the reward of an
+      annuity of 10,000 maravedis, offered by the Queen to whoever should sight
+      land first, a gift on his own account of a silk doublet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The moon was in its third quarter, and did not rise until eleven o'clock.
+      The first part of the night was dark, and there was only a faint starlight
+      into which the anxious eyes of the look-out men peered from the
+      forecastles of the three ships. At ten o'clock Columbus was walking on the
+      poop of his vessel, when he suddenly saw a light right ahead. The light
+      seemed to rise and fall as though it were a candle or a lantern held in
+      some one's hand and waved up and down. The Admiral called Pedro Gutierrez
+      to him and asked him whether he saw anything; and he also saw the light.
+      Then he sent for Rodrigo Sanchez and asked him if he saw the light; but he
+      did not, perhaps because from where he was standing it was occulted. But
+      the others were left in no doubt, for the light was seen once or twice
+      more, and to the eyes of the anxious little group standing on the high
+      stern deck of the Santa Maria it appeared unmistakably. The Nina was not
+      close at hand, and the Pinta had gone on in front hoping to make good her
+      mistake; but there was no doubt on board the Santa Maria that the light
+      which they had seen was a light like a candle or a torch waved slowly up
+      and down. They lost the light again; and as the hours in that night stole
+      away and the moon rose slowly in the sky the seamen on the Santa Maria
+      must have almost held their breath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At about two o'clock in the morning the sound of a gun was heard from the
+      Pinta, who could be seen hoisting her flags; Rodrigo de Triana, the
+      look-out on board of her, having reported land in sight; and there sure
+      enough in the dim light lay the low shores of an island a few miles ahead
+      of them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Immediately all sails were lowered, except a small trysail which enabled
+      the ships to lie-to and stand slowly off and on, waiting for the daylight.
+      I suppose there was never a longer night than that; but dawn came at last,
+      flooding the sky with lemon and saffron and scarlet and orange, until at
+      last the pure gold of the sun glittered on the water. And when it rose it
+      showed the sea-weary mariners an island lying in the blue sea ahead of
+      them: the island of Guanahani; San Salvador, as it was christened by
+      Columbus; or, to give it its modern name, Watling's Island.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="ch14" id="ch14"></a>CHAPTER XIV.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      LANDFALL
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During the night the ships had drifted a little with the current, and
+      before the north-east wind. When the look-out man on the Pinta first
+      reported land in sight it was probably the north-east corner of the
+      island, where the land rises to a height of 120 feet, that he saw. The
+      actual anchorage of Columbus was most likely to the westward of the
+      island; for there was a strong north-easterly breeze, and as the whole of
+      the eastern coast is fringed by a barrier reef, he would not risk his
+      ships on a lee shore. Finding himself off the north end of the island at
+      sunrise, the most natural thing for him to do, on making sail again, would
+      be to stand southward along the west side of the island looking for an
+      anchorage. The first few miles of the shore have rocky exposed points, and
+      the bank where there is shoal water only extends half a mile from the
+      shore. Immediately beyond that the bottom shelves rapidly down to a depth
+      of 2000 fathoms, so that if Columbus was sounding as he came south he
+      would find no bottom there. Below what are called the Ridings Rocks,
+      however, the land sweeps to the south and east in a long sheltered bay,
+      and to the south of these rocks there is good anchorage and firm
+      holding-ground in about eight fathoms of water.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /> <a name="p163" id="p163"></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
+      <img alt="p163.jpg (57K)" src="images/p163.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <a href="images/p163.jpg"> <img alt="Full Size" src="images/enlarge.jpg" /></a>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We may picture them, therefore, approaching this land in the bright
+      sunshine of the early morning, their ears, that had so long heard nothing
+      but the slat of canvas and the rush and bubble of water under the prows,
+      filled at last with the great resounding roar of the breakers on the coral
+      reef; their eyes, that had so long looked upon blue emptiness and the
+      star-spangled violet arch of night, feasting upon the living green of the
+      foliage ashore; and the easterly breeze carrying to their eager nostrils
+      the perfumes of land. Amid an excitement and joyful anticipation that it
+      is exhilarating even to think about the cables were got up and served and
+      coiled on deck, and the anchors, which some of them had thought would
+      never grip the bottom again, unstopped and cleared. The leadsman of the
+      Santa Maria, who has been finding no bottom with his forty-fathom line,
+      suddenly gets a sounding; the water shoals rapidly until the nine-fathom
+      mark is unwetted, and the lead comes up with its bottom covered with brown
+      ooze. Sail is shortened; one after another the great ungainly sheets of
+      canvas are clewed up or lowered down on deck; one after another the three
+      helms are starboarded, and the three ships brought up to the wind. Then
+      with three mighty splashes that send the sea birds whirling and screaming
+      above the rocks the anchors go down; and the Admiral stands on his high
+      poop-deck, and looks long and searchingly at the fragment of earth,
+      rock-rimmed, surf-fringed, and tree-crowned, of which he is Viceroy and
+      Governor-General.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Watling's Island, as it is now called, or San Salvador, as Columbus named
+      it, or Guanahani, as it was known to the aborigines, is situated in
+      latitude 24 deg. 6' N., and longitude 74 deg 26' W., and is an irregularly
+      shaped white sandstone islet in about the middle of the great Bahama Bank.
+      The space occupied by the whole group is shaped like an irregular triangle
+      extending from the Navidad Bank in the Caribbean Sea at the south-east
+      corner, to Bahama Island in Florida Strait on the north, about 200 miles.
+      The south side trends west by north for 600 miles, and the north side
+      north-west by north 720 miles. Most of the islands and small rocks in this
+      group, called Keys or Cays, are very low, and rise only a few feet above
+      the sea; the highest is about 400 feet high. They are generally situated
+      on the edge of coral and sand banks, some of which are of a very dangerous
+      character. They are thinly wooded, except in the case of one or two of the
+      larger islands which contain timber of moderate dimensions. The climate of
+      the Bahamas is mild and temperate, with refreshing sea breezes in the
+      hottest months; and there is a mean temperature of 75 deg. from November
+      to April. Watling's Island is about twelve miles in length by six in
+      breadth, with rocky shores slightly indented. The greater part of its area
+      is occupied by salt-water lagoons, separated from one another by small
+      wooded hills from too to 140 feet high. There is plenty of grass; indeed
+      the island is now considered to be the most fertile in the Bahamas, and
+      raises an excellent breed of cattle and sheep. In common with the other
+      islands of the group it was originally settled by the Spaniards, and
+      afterwards by the British, who were driven from the Bahamas again by the
+      Spanish in the year 1641. After a great deal of changing hands they were
+      ceded to Great Britain in 1783, and have remained in her possession ever
+      since. In 1897 the population of the whole group was estimated at 52,000
+      the whites being in the proportion of one to six of the coloured
+      population. Watling's Island contains about 600 inhabitants scattered over
+      the surface, with a small settlement called Cockburn Town on the west
+      side, nearly opposite the landfall of Columbus. The seat of the local
+      government is in the island of New Providence, and the inhabitants of
+      Watling's Island and of Rum Cay unite in sending one representative to the
+      House of Assembly. It is high water, full and change, at Watling's Island
+      at 7 h. 40 m., as it was in the days of Columbus; and these facts form
+      about the sum of the world's knowledge of and interest in Watling's Island
+      to-day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But it was a different matter on Friday morning, October 12, 1492, when,
+      all having been made snug on board the Santa Maria, the Admiral of the
+      Ocean Seas put on his armour and his scarlet cloak over it and prepared to
+      go ashore.
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        <br /> [This date is reckoned in the old style. The true astronomical
+        date would be October 21st, which is the modern anniversary of the
+        discovery]
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      The boat was lowered and manned by a crew well armed, and Columbus took
+      with him Rodrigo de Escovedo, the secretary to the expedition, and Rodrigo
+      Sanchez his overseer; they also took on board Martin Alonso Pinzon and
+      Vincenti Yanez Pinzon, the captains of the other two ships. As they rowed
+      towards the shore they saw a few naked inhabitants, who hid themselves at
+      their approach. Columbus carried with him the royal standard, and the two
+      captains each had a banner of the expedition, which was a square flag with
+      an "F" and a "Y" upon either side, each letter being surmounted by the
+      crown of the sovereigns and a green cross covering the whole. Columbus
+      assembled his little band around him and called upon them to bear witness
+      that in the presence of them all he was taking possession of the island
+      for the King and Queen of Spain; duly making depositions in writing on the
+      spot, and having them signed and witnessed. Then he gave the name of San
+      Salvador to the island and said a prayer; and while this solemn little
+      ceremony was in progress, the astonished natives crept out of their hiding
+      and surrounded the strange white men. They gesticulated and grovelled and
+      pointed upwards, as though this gang of armed and bearded Spaniards, with
+      the tall white-bearded Italian in the midst of them, had fallen from the
+      skies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first interest of the voyagers was in the inhabitants of this
+      delightful land. They found them well built, athletic-looking men, most of
+      them young, with handsome bodies and intelligent faces. Columbus, eager to
+      begin his missionary work, gave them some red caps and some glass beads,
+      with which he found them so delighted that he had good hopes of making
+      converts, and from which he argued that "they were a people who would
+      better be freed and converted to our Holy Faith by love than by force,"
+      which sentence of his contains within itself the whole missionary spirit
+      of the time. These natives, who were the freest people in the world, were
+      to be "freed"; freed or saved from the darkness of their happy innocence
+      and brought to the light of a religion that had just evolved the
+      Inquisition; freed by love if possible, and by red caps and glass beads;
+      if not possible, then freed by force and with guns; but freed they were to
+      be at all costs. It is a tragic thought that, at the very first impact of
+      the Old World upon this Eden of the West, this dismal error was set on
+      foot and the first links in the chain of slavery forged. But for the
+      moment nothing of it was perceptible; nothing but red caps and glass
+      beads, and trinkets and toys, and freeing by love. The sword that Columbus
+      held out to them, in order to find out if they knew the use of weapons,
+      they innocently grasped by the blade and so cut their fingers; and that
+      sword, extended with knowledge and grasped with fearless ignorance, is
+      surely an emblem of the spread of civilisation and of its doubtful
+      blessings in the early stages. Let us hear Columbus himself, as he
+      recorded his first impression of Guanahani:
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "Further, it appeared to me that they were a very poor people, in
+        everything. They all go naked as their mothers gave them birth, and the
+        women also, although I only saw one of the latter who was very young,
+        and all those whom I saw were young men, none more than thirty years of
+        age. They were very well built with very handsome bodies, and very good
+        faces. Their hair was almost as coarse as horses' tails, and short, and
+        they wear it over the eyebrows, except a small quantity behind, which
+        they wear long and never cut. Some paint themselves blackish, and they
+        are of the colour of the inhabitants of the Canaries, neither black nor
+        white, and some paint themselves white, some red, some whatever colour
+        they find: and some paint their faces, some all the body, some only the
+        eyes, and some only the nose. They do not carry arms nor know what they
+        are, because I showed them swords and they took them by the edge and
+        ignorantly cut themselves. They have no iron: their spears are sticks
+        without iron, and some of them have a fish's tooth at the end and others
+        have other things. They are all generally of good height, of pleasing
+        appearance and well built: I saw some who had indications of wounds on
+        their bodies, and I asked them by signs if it was that, and they showed
+        me that other people came there from other islands near by and wished to
+        capture them and they defended themselves: and I believed and believe,
+        that they come here from the continental land to take them captive. They
+        must be good servants and intelligent, as I see that they very quickly
+        say all that is said to them, and I believe that they would easily
+        become Christians, as it appeared to me that they had no sect. If it
+        please our Lord, at the time of my departure, I will take six of them
+        from here to your Highnesses that they may learn to speak. I saw no
+        beast of any kind except parrots on this island."
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      They very quickly say all that is said to them, and they will very easily
+      become good slaves; good Christians also it appears, since the Admiral's
+      research does not reveal the trace of any religious sect. And finally "I
+      will take six of them"; ostensibly that they may learn to speak the
+      language, but really that they may form the vanguard of cargo after cargo
+      of slaves ravished from their happy islands of dreams and sunshine and
+      plenty to learn the blessings of Christianity under the whip and the
+      sword. It is all, alas, inevitable; was inevitable from the moment that
+      the keel of Columbus's boat grated upon the shingle of Guanahani. The
+      greater must prey upon the less, the stronger must absorb and dominate the
+      weaker; and the happy gardens of the Golden Cyclades must be spoiled and
+      wasted for the pleasure and enrichment of a corrupting civilisation. But
+      while we recognise the inevitable, and enter into the joy and pride of
+      Columbus and his followers on this first happy morning of their landing,
+      we may give a moment's remembrance to the other side of the picture, and
+      admit that for this generation of innocents the discovery that was to be
+      all gain for the Old World was to be all loss to them. In the meantime,
+      decrees the Admiral, they are to be freed and converted; and "I will take
+      six of them that they may learn to speak."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There are no paths or footprints left in the sea, and the water furrowed
+      on that morning more than four hundred years ago by the keels of
+      Columbus's little fleet is as smooth and trackless as it was before they
+      clove it. Yet if you approach Guanahani from the east during the hours of
+      darkness you also will see a light that waxes and wanes on the horizon.
+      What the light was that Columbus saw is not certain; it was probably the
+      light from a torch held by some native woman from the door of her hut; but
+      the light that you will see is from the lighthouse on Dixon Hill, where a
+      tower of coral holds a lamp one hundred and sixty feet above the sea at
+      the north-east point of the island. It was erected in no sentimental
+      spirit, but for very practical purposes, and at a date when Watling's
+      Island had not been identified with the Guanahani of Columbus's landfall;
+      and yet of all the monuments that have been raised to him I can think of
+      nothing more appropriate than this lonely tower that stands by day amid
+      the bright sunshine in the track of the trade wind, and by night throws
+      its powerful double flash every half-minute across the dark lonely sea.
+      For it was by a light, although not of man's kindling, that Columbus was
+      guided upon his lonely voyage and through his many difficulties; amid all
+      his trials and disappointments, dimly as it must have burned sometimes, it
+      never quite went out. Darkness was the name of the sea across which he
+      took his way; darkness, from his religious point of view, was the state of
+      the lands to which he journeyed; and, whatever its subsequent worth may
+      have been, it was a burning fragment from the living torch of the
+      Christian religion that he carried across the world with him, and by which
+      he sought to kindle the fire of faith in the lands of his discovery. So
+      that there is a profound symbolism in those raying beams that now, night
+      after night, month by month, and year after year, shine out across the sea
+      from Watling's Island in the direction of the Old World.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the preparations for this voyage, and in the conduct and accomplishment
+      of it, the personality of the man Columbus stands clearly revealed. He was
+      seen at his best, as all men are who have a chance of doing the thing for
+      which they are best fitted. The singleness of aim that can accomplish so
+      much is made manifest in his dogged search for means with which to make
+      his voyage; and his Italian quality of unscrupulousness in the means
+      employed to attain a good end was exercised to the full. The, practical
+      seaman in him carried him through the easiest part of his task, which was
+      the actual sailing of his ships from Palos to Guanahani; Martin Alonso
+      Pinzon could have done as much as that. But no Martin Alonso Pinzon or any
+      other man of that time known to history had the necessary combination of
+      defective and effective qualities that made Columbus, once he had
+      conceived his glorious hazy idea, spend the best years of his life, first
+      in acquiring the position that would make him listened to by people
+      powerful enough to help him, and then in besieging them in the face of
+      every rebuff and discouragement. Another man, proposing to venture across
+      the unknown ocean to unknown lands, would have required a fleet for his
+      conveyance, and an army for his protection; but Columbus asked for what he
+      thought he had some chance of getting, and for the barest equipment that
+      would carry him across the water. Another man would at least have had a
+      bodyguard; but Columbus relied upon himself, and alone held his motley
+      crew in the bonds of discipline. A Pinzon could have navigated the fleet
+      from Palos to Guanahani; but only a Columbus, only a man burning with
+      belief is himself and in his quest, could have kept that superstitious
+      crowd of loafers and malefactors and gaol-birds to their duties, and bent
+      them to his will. He was destined in after years for situations which were
+      beyond his power to deal with, and for problems that were beyond his
+      grasp; but here at least he was supreme, master of himself and of his
+      material, and a ruler over circumstances. The supreme thing that he had
+      professed to be able to do and which he had guaranteed to do was, in the
+      sublime simplicity of his own phrase, "to discover new lands," and luck or
+      no luck, help or hindrance, he did it at the very first attempt and in the
+      space of thirty-five days. And although it was from the Pinta that the gun
+      was fired, and the first loom of the actual land seen in the early
+      morning, I am glad to think that, of all the number of eager watching men,
+      it was Columbus who first saw the dim tossing light that told him his
+      journey was at an end.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="bk2" id="bk2"></a>BOOK II.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE NEW WORLD
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br /> <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="ch1b" id="ch1b"></a>CHAPTER I.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE ENCHANTED ISLANDS
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Columbus did not intend to remain long at San Salvador. His landfall
+      there, although it signified the realisation of one part of his dream, was
+      only the starting-point of his explorations in the New World. Now that he
+      had made good his undertaking to "discover new lands," he had to make good
+      his assurance that they were full of wealth and would swell the revenues
+      of the King and Queen of Spain. A brief survey of this first island was
+      all he could afford time for; and after the first exquisite impression of
+      the white beach, and the blue curve of the bay sparkling in the sunshine,
+      and the soft prismatic colours of the acanthus beneath the green wall of
+      the woods had been savoured and enjoyed, he was anxious to push on to the
+      rich lands of the Orient of which he believed this island to be only an
+      outpost.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the morning after his arrival the natives came crowding down to the
+      beach and got down their canoes, which were dug out of the trunk of a
+      single tree, and some of which were large enough to contain forty or
+      forty-five men: They came paddling out to the ship, sometimes, in the case
+      of the smaller canoes which only held one man, being upset by the surf,
+      and swimming gaily round and righting their canoes again and bailing them
+      out with gourds. They brought balls of spun cotton, and parrots and
+      spears. All their possessions, indeed, were represented in the offerings
+      they made to the strangers. Columbus, whose eye was now very steadily
+      fixed on the main chance, tried to find out if they had any gold, for he
+      noticed that some of them wore in their noses a ring that looked as though
+      it were made of that metal; and by making signs he asked them if there was
+      any more of it to be had. He understood them to say that to the south of
+      the island there dwelt a king who had large vessels of gold, and a great
+      many of them; he tried to suggest that some of the natives should come and
+      show him the way, but he "saw that they were not interested in going."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The story of the Rheingold was to be enacted over again, and the whole of
+      the evils that followed in its glittering train to be exemplified in this
+      voyage of discovery. To the natives of these islands, who guarded the
+      yellow metal and loved it merely for its shining beauty, it was harmless
+      and powerless; they could not buy anything with it, nor did they seek by
+      its aid to secure any other enjoyments but the happiness of looking at it
+      and admiring it. As soon as the gold was ravished from their keeping,
+      however, began the reign of lust and cruelty that always has attended and
+      always will attend the knowledge that things can be bought with it. In all
+      its history, since first it was brought up from the dark bowels of the
+      earth to glitter in the light of day, there is no more significant scene
+      than this that took place on the bright sands of San Salvador so long ago&mdash;Columbus
+      attentively examining the ring in the nose of a happy savage, and trying
+      to persuade him to show him the place that it was brought from; and the
+      savage "not interested in going."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From his sign-conversation with the natives Columbus understood that there
+      was land to the south or the south-west, and also to the north-west, and
+      that the people from the north-west went to the south-west in search of
+      gold and precious stones. In the meantime he determined to spend the
+      Sunday in making a survey of the island, while the rest of Saturday was
+      passed in barterings with the natives, who were very happy and curious to
+      see all the strange things belonging to the voyagers; and so innocent were
+      their ideas of value that "they give all they have for whatever thing may
+      be given them." Columbus, however, who was busy making calculations, would
+      not allow the members of the crew to take anything more on their own
+      account, ordering that where any article of commerce existed in quantity
+      it was to be acquired for the sovereigns and taken home to Spain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Early on Sunday morning a boat was prepared from each ship, and a little
+      expedition began to row north about the island. As they coasted the white
+      rocky shores people came running to the beach and calling to them; "giving
+      thanks to God," says Columbus, although this is probably a flight of
+      fancy. When they saw that the boats were not coming to land they threw
+      themselves into the water and came swimming out to them, bringing food and
+      drink. Columbus noticed a tongue of land lying between the north-west arm
+      of the internal lagoon and the sea, and saw that by cutting a canal
+      through it entrance could be secured to a harbour that would float "as
+      many ships as there are in Christendom." He did not, apparently, make a
+      complete circuit of the island, but returned in the afternoon to the
+      ships, having first collected seven natives to take with him, and got
+      under way again; and before night had fallen San Salvador had disappeared
+      below the north-west horizon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      About midday he reached another island to the southeast. He sailed along
+      the coast until evening, when he saw yet another island in the distance to
+      the south-west; and he therefore lay-to for the night. At dawn the next
+      morning he landed on the island and took formal possession of it, naming
+      it Santa Maria de la Concepcion, which is the Rum Cay of the modern
+      charts. As the wind chopped round and he found himself on a lee-shore he
+      did not stay there, but sailed again before night. Two of the unhappy
+      prisoners from Guanahani at this point made good their escape by swimming
+      to a large canoe which one of the natives of the new island had rowed out&mdash;a
+      circumstance which worried Columbus not a little; since he feared it would
+      give him a bad name with the natives. He tried to counteract it by loading
+      with presents another native who came to barter balls of cotton, and
+      sending him away again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The effect of all that he was seeing, of the bridge of islands that seemed
+      to be stretching towards the south-west and leading him to the region of
+      untold wealth, was evidently very stimulating and exciting to Columbus.
+      His Journal is almost incoherent where he attempts to set down all he has
+      got to say. Let us listen to him for a moment:
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "These islands are very green and fertile, and the breezes are very
+        soft, and there may be many things which I do not know, because I did
+        not wish to stop, in order to discover and search many islands to find
+        gold. And since these people make signs thus, that they wear gold on
+        their arms and legs,&mdash;and it is gold, because I showed them some
+        pieces which I have,&mdash;I cannot fail, with the aid of our Lord, in
+        finding it where it is native. And being in the middle of the gulf
+        between these two islands, that is to say, the island of Santa Maria and
+        this large one, which I named Fernandina, I found a man alone in a canoe
+        who was going from the island of Santa Maria to Fernandina, and was
+        carrying a little of his bread which might have been about as large as
+        the fist, and a gourd of water, and a piece of reddish earth reduced to
+        dust and afterwards kneaded, and some dry leaves&mdash;[Tobacco]&mdash;which
+        must be a thing very much appreciated among them, because they had
+        already brought me some of them as a present at San Salvador: and he was
+        carrying a small basket of their kind, in which he had a string of small
+        glass beads and two blancas, by which I knew that he came from the
+        island of San Salvador, and had gone from there to Santa Maria and was
+        going to Fernandina. He came to the ship: I caused him to enter it, as
+        he asked to do so, and I had his canoe placed on the ship and had
+        everything which he was carrying guarded and I ordered that bread and
+        honey be given him to eat and something to drink. And I will go to
+        Fernandina thus and will give him everything, which belongs to him, that
+        he may give good reports of us. So that, when your Highnesses send here,
+        our Lord pleasing, those who come may receive honour and the Indians
+        will give them of everything which they have."
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      This hurried gabbling about gold and the aid of our Lord, interlarded with
+      fragments of natural and geographical observation, sounds strangely across
+      the gulf of time and impresses one with a disagreeable sense of bewildered
+      greed&mdash;like that of a dog gulping at the delicacies in his platter
+      and unwilling to do justice to one for fear the others should escape him;
+      and yet it is a natural bewilderment, and one with which we must do our
+      best to sympathise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fernandina was the name which Columbus had already given to Long Island
+      when he sighted it from Santa Maria; and he reached it in the evening of
+      Tuesday, October 16th. The man in the canoe had arrived before him; and
+      the astute Admiral had the satisfaction of finding that once more his
+      cleverness had been rewarded, and that the man in the canoe had given such
+      glowing accounts of his generosity that there was no difficulty about his
+      getting water and supplies. While the barrels of water were being filled
+      he landed and strolled about in the pleasant groves, observing the
+      islanders and their customs, and finding them on the whole a little more
+      sophisticated than those of San Salvador. The women wore mantillas on
+      their heads and "little pieces of cotton" round their loins&mdash;a
+      sufficiently odd costume; and they appeared to Columbus to be a little
+      more astute than the other islanders, for though they brought cotton in
+      quantities to the ships they exacted payment of beads for it. In the charm
+      and wonder of his walk in this enchanted land he was able for a moment to
+      forget his hunger for gold and to admire the great branching palm-trees,
+      and the fish that
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "are here so different from ours that it is wonderful. There are some
+        formed like cocks of the finest colours in the world, blue, yellow, red
+        and of all colours, and others tinted in a thousand manners: and the
+        colours are so fine, that there is not a man who does not wonder at
+        them, and who does not take great pleasure in seeing them. Also, there
+        are whales. I saw no beasts on land of any kind except parrots and
+        lizards. A boy told me that he saw a large snake. I did not see sheep
+        nor goats, nor any other beast; although I have been here a very short
+        time, as it is midday, still if there had been any, I could not have
+        missed seeing some."
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      Columbus was not a very good descriptive writer, and he has but two
+      methods of comparison; either a thing is like Spain, or it is not like
+      Spain. The verdure was "in such condition as it is in the month of May in
+      Andalusia; and the trees were all as different from ours as day from
+      night, and also the fruits and grasses and the stones and all the things."
+      The essay written by a cockney child after a day at the seaside or in the
+      country, is not greatly different from some of the verbatim passages of
+      this journal; and there is a charm in that fact too, for it gives us a
+      picture of Columbus, in spite of his hunt for gold and precious stones,
+      wandering, still a child at heart, in the wonders of the enchanted world
+      to which he had come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was trouble on this day, because some of the crew had found an
+      Indian with a piece of gold in his nose, and they got a scolding from
+      Columbus for not detaining him and bartering with him for it. There was
+      bad weather also, with heavy rain and a threatening of tempest; there was
+      a difference of opinion with Martin Alonso Pinzon about which way they
+      should go round the island: but the next day the weather cleared, and the
+      wind settled the direction of their course for them. Columbus, whose eye
+      never missed anything of interest to the sailor and navigator, notes thus
+      early a fact which appears in every book of sailing directions for the
+      Bahama Islands&mdash;that the water is so clear and limpid that the bottom
+      can be seen at a great depth; and that navigation is thus possible and
+      even safe among the rockstrewn coasts of the islands, when thus performed
+      by sight and with the sun behind the ship. He was also keenly alive to
+      natural charm and beauty in the new lands that he was visiting, and there
+      are unmistakable fragments of himself in the journal that speak eloquently
+      of his first impressions. "The singing of the little birds is such that it
+      appears a man would wish never to leave here, and the flocks of parrots
+      obscure the sun."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But life, even to the discoverer of a New World, does not consist of
+      wandering in the groves, and listening to the singing birds, and smelling
+      the flowers, and remembering the May nights of Andalusia. There was gold
+      to be found and the mainland of Cathay to be discovered, and a letter,
+      written by the sovereigns at his earnest request, to be delivered to the
+      Great Khan. The natives had told him of an island called Samoete to the
+      southward, which was said to contain a quantity of gold. He sailed thither
+      on the 19th, and called it Isabella; its modern name is Crooked Island. He
+      anchored here and found it to be but another step in the ascending scale
+      of his delight; it was greener and more beautiful than any of the islands
+      he had yet seen. He spent some time looking for the gold, but could not
+      find any; although he heard of the island of Cuba, which he took to be the
+      veritable Cipango. He weighed anchor on October 24th and sailed
+      south-west, encountering some bad weather on the way; but on Sunday the
+      28th he came up with the north coast of Cuba and entered the mouth of a
+      river which is the modern Nuevitas. To the island of Cuba he gave the name
+      of Juana in honour of the young prince to whom his son Diego had been
+      appointed a page.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If the other islands had seemed beautiful to him, Cuba seemed like heaven
+      itself. The mountains grandly rising in the interior, the noble rivers and
+      long sweeping plains, the headlands melting into the clear water, and the
+      gorgeous colours and flowers and birds and insects on land acted like a
+      charm on Columbus and his sailors. As they entered the river they lowered
+      a boat in order to go ahead and sound for an anchorage; and two native
+      canoes put off from the shore, but, when they saw the boat approaching,
+      fled again. The Admiral landed and found two empty houses containing nets
+      and hooks and fishing-lines, and one of the strange silent dogs, such as
+      they had encountered on the other island&mdash;dogs that pricked their
+      ears and wagged their tails, but that never barked. The Admiral, in spite
+      of his greed for gold and his anxiety to "free" the people of the island,
+      was now acting much more discreetly, and with the genuine good sense which
+      he always possessed and which was only sometimes obscured. He would not
+      allow anything in the empty houses to be disturbed or taken away, and
+      whenever he saw the natives he tried to show them that he intended to do
+      them no harm, and to win their good will by making them presents of beads
+      and toys for which he would take no return. As he went on up the river the
+      scenery became more and more enchanting, so that he felt quite unhappy at
+      not being able to express all the wonders and beauties that he saw. In the
+      pure air and under the serene blue of the sky those matchless hues of
+      blossom and foliage threw a rainbow-coloured garment on either bank of the
+      river; the flamingoes, the parrots and woodpeckers and humming-birds
+      calling to one another and flying among the tree-tops, made the upper air
+      also seem alive and shot with all the colours of the rainbow. Humble
+      Christopher, walking amid these gorgeous scenes, awed and solemnised by
+      the strangeness and magnificence of nature around him, tries to identify
+      something that he knows; and thinks, that amid all these strange
+      chorusings of unknown birds, he hears the familiar note of a nightingale.
+      Amid all his raptures, however, the main chance is not forgotten;
+      everything that he sees he translates into some terms of practical
+      utility. Just as on the voyage out every seaweed or fish or flying bird
+      that he saw was hailed by him as a sign that land was near, so amid the
+      beauty of this virgin world everything that he sees is taken to indicate
+      either that he is close upon the track of the gold, or that he must be in
+      Cipango, or that the natives will be easy to convert to Christianity. In
+      the fragrance of the woods of Cuba, Columbus thought that he smelled
+      Oriental spices, which Marco Polo had described as abounding in Cipango;
+      when he walked by the shore and saw the shells of pearl oysters, he
+      believed the island to be loaded with pearls and precious stones; when he
+      saw a scrap of tinsel or bright metal adorning a native, he argued that
+      there was a gold mine close at hand. And so he went on in an increasing
+      whirl of bewildering enchantment from anchorage to anchorage and from
+      island to island, always being led on by that yellow will o'-the-wisp,
+      gold, and always believing that the wealth of the Orient would be his on
+      the morrow. As he coasted along towards the west he entered the river
+      which he called Rio de Mares. He found a large village here full of
+      palm-branch houses furnished with chairs and hammocks and adorned with
+      wooden masks and statues; but in spite of his gentleness and offer of
+      gifts the inhabitants all fled to the mountains, while he and his men
+      walked curiously through the deserted houses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On Tuesday, October 30th, Martin Alonso Pinzon, whose communications the
+      Admiral was by this time beginning to dread, came with some exciting news.
+      It seemed that the Indians from San Salvador who were on board the Pinta
+      had told him that beyond the promontory, named by Columbus the Cape of
+      Palms, there was a river, four days' journey upon which would bring one to
+      the city of Cuba, which was very rich and large and abounded with gold;
+      and that the king of that country was at war with a monarch whom they
+      called Cami, and whom Pinzon identified with the Great Khan. More than
+      this, these natives assured him that the land they were on at present was
+      the mainland itself, and that they could not be very far from Cathay.
+      Columbus for once found himself in agreement with Martin Alonso. The
+      well-thumbed copy of Marco Polo was doubtless brought out, and abundant
+      evidence found in it; and it was decided to despatch a little embassy to
+      this city in order to gain information about its position and wealth. When
+      they continued their course, however, and rounded the cape, no river
+      appeared; they sailed on, and yet promontory after promontory was opened
+      ahead of them; and as the wind turned against them and the weather was
+      very threatening they decided to turn back and anchor again in the Rio de
+      Mares.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Columbus was now, as he thought, hot upon the track of the Great Khan
+      himself; and on the first of November he sent boats ashore and told the
+      sailors to get information from the houses; but the inhabitants fled shyly
+      into the woods. Having once postulated the existence of the Great Khan in
+      this immediate territory Columbus, as his habit was, found that everything
+      fitted with the theory; and he actually took the flight of the natives,
+      although it had occurred on a dozen other occasions, as a proof that they
+      mistook his bands of men for marauding expeditions despatched by the great
+      monarch himself. He therefore recalled them, and sent a boat ashore with
+      an Indian interpreter who, standing in the boat at the edge of the water,
+      called upon the natives to draw near, and harangued them. He assured them
+      of the peaceable intentions of the great Admiral, and that he had nothing
+      whatever to do with the Great Khan; which cannot very greatly have
+      thrilled the Cubans, who knew no more about the Great Khan than they did
+      about Columbus. The interpreter then swam ashore and was well received; so
+      well, that in the evening some sixteen canoes came off to the ships
+      bringing cotton yarn and spears for traffic. Columbus, with great
+      astuteness, forbade any trading in cotton or indeed in anything at all
+      except gold, hoping by this means to make the natives produce their
+      treasures; and he would no doubt have been successful if the natives had
+      possessed any gold, but as the poor wretches had nothing but the naked
+      skins they stood up in, and the few spears and pots and rolls of cotton
+      that they were offering, the Admiral's astuteness was for once thrown
+      away. There was one man, however, with a silver ring in his nose, who was
+      understood to say that the king lived four days' journey in the interior,
+      and that messengers had been sent to him to tell him of the arrival of the
+      strange ships; which messengers would doubtless soon return bringing
+      merchants with them to trade with the ships. If this native was lying he
+      showed great ingenuity in inventing the kind of story that his questioners
+      wanted; but it is more likely that his utterances were interpreted by
+      Columbus in the light of his own ardent beliefs. At any rate it was
+      decided to send at once a couple of envoys to this great city, and not to
+      wait for the arrival of the merchants. Two Spaniards, Rodrigo de Jerez and
+      Luis de Torres, the interpreter to the expedition&mdash;who had so far
+      found little use for his Hebrew and Chaldean&mdash;were chosen; and with
+      them were sent two Indians, one from San Salvador and the other a local
+      native who went as guide. Red caps and beads and hawks' bells were duly
+      provided, and a message for the king was given to them telling him that
+      Columbus was waiting with letters and presents from Spanish sovereigns,
+      which he was to deliver personally. After the envoys had departed,
+      Columbus, whose ships were anchored in a large basin of deep water with a
+      clean and steep beach, decided to take the opportunity of having the
+      vessels careened. Their hulls were covered with shell and weed; the
+      caulking, which had been dishonestly done at Palos, had also to be
+      attended to; so the ships were beached and hove down one at a time&mdash;an
+      unnecessary precaution, as it turned out, for there was no sign of
+      treachery on the part of the natives. While the men were making fires to
+      heat their tar they noticed that the burning wood sent forth a heavy odour
+      which was like mastic; and the Admiral, now always busy with optimistic
+      calculations, reckoned that there was enough in that vicinity to furnish a
+      thousand quintals every year. While the work on the ships was going
+      forward he employed himself in his usual way, going ashore, examining the
+      trees and vegetables and fruits, and holding such communication as he was
+      able with the natives. He was up every morning at dawn, at one time
+      directing the work of his men, at another going ashore after some birds
+      that he had seen; and as dawn comes early in those islands his day was
+      probably a long one, and it is likely that he was in bed soon after dark.
+      On the day that he went shooting, Martin Alonso Pinzon was waiting for him
+      on his return; this time not to make any difficulties or independent
+      proposals, but to show him two pieces of cinnamon that one of his men had
+      got from an Indian who was carrying a quantity of it. "Why did the man not
+      get it all from him?" says greedy Columbus. "Because of the prohibition of
+      the Admiral's that no one should do any trading," says Martin Alonso, and
+      conceives himself to have scored; for truly these two men do not love one
+      another. The boatswain of the Pinta, adds Martin Alonso, has found whole
+      trees of it. "The Admiral then went there and found that it was not
+      cinnamon." The Admiral was omnipotent; if he had said that it was manna
+      they would have had to make it so, and as he chose to say that it was not
+      cinnamon, we must take his word for it, as Martin Alonso certainly had to
+      do; so that it was the Admiral who scored this time. Columbus, however,
+      now on the track of spices, showed some cinnamon and pepper to the
+      natives; and the obliging creatures "said by signs that there was a great
+      deal of it towards the south-east." Columbus then showed them some gold
+      and pearls; and "certain old men" replied that in a place they called
+      Bo-No there was any amount of gold; the people wore it in their ears and
+      on their arms and legs, and there were pearls also, and large ships and
+      merchandise&mdash;all to the south-east. Finding this information, which
+      was probably entirely untrue and merely a polite effort to do what was
+      expected of them, well received, the natives added that "a long distance
+      from there, there were men with one eye, and other men with dogs' snouts
+      who ate men, and that when they caught a man they beheaded him and drank
+      his blood." . . . Soon after this the Admiral went on board again and
+      began to write up his Journal, solemnly entering all these facts in it. It
+      is the most childish nonsense; but after all, how interesting and credible
+      it must have been! To live thus smelling the most heavenly perfumes,
+      breathing the most balmy air, viewing the most lovely scenes, and to be
+      always hot upon the track of gold and pearls and spices and wealth and
+      dog-nosed, blood-drinking monstrosities&mdash;what an adventure, what a
+      vivid piece of living!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After a few days&mdash;on Tuesday, November 6th&mdash;the two men who had
+      been sent inland to the great and rich city came back again with their
+      report. Alas for visions of the Great Khan! The city turned out to be a
+      village of fifty houses with twenty people in each house. The envoys had
+      been received with great solemnity; and all the men "as well as the women"
+      came to see them, and lodged them in a fine house. The chief people in the
+      village came and kissed their hands and feet, hailing them as visitors
+      from the skies, and seating them in two chairs, while they sat round on
+      the floor. The native interpreter, doubtless according to instructions,
+      then told them "how the Christians lived and how they were good people";
+      and I would give a great deal to have heard that brief address. Afterwards
+      the men went out and the women came in, also kissing the hands and feet of
+      the visitors, and "trying them to see if they were of flesh and of bone
+      like themselves." The results were evidently so satisfactory that the
+      strangers were implored to remain at least five days. The real business of
+      the expedition was then broached. Had they any gold or pearls? Had they
+      any cinnamon or spices? Answer, as usual: "No, but they thought there was
+      a great deal of it to the south-east." The interest of the visitors then
+      evaporated, and they set out for the coast again; but they found that at
+      least five hundred men and women wanted to come with them, since they
+      believed that they were returning to heaven. On their journey back the two
+      Spaniards noticed many people smoking, as the Admiral himself had done a
+      few days before; and this is the first known discovery of tobacco by
+      Europeans.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They saw a great many geese, and the strange dogs that did not bark, and
+      they saw potatoes also, although they did not know what they were.
+      Columbus, having heard this report, and contemplating these gentle amiable
+      creatures, so willing to give all they had in return for a scrap of
+      rubbish, feels his heart lifted in a pious aspiration that they might know
+      the benefits of the Christian religion. "I have to say, Most Serene
+      Princes," he writes,
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "that by means of devout religious persons knowing their language well,
+        all would soon become Christians: and thus I hope in our Lord that Your
+        Highnesses will appoint such persons with great diligence in order to
+        turn to the Church such great peoples, and that they will convert them,
+        even as they have destroyed those who would not confess the Father and
+        the Son and the Holy Spirit: and after their days, as we are all mortal,
+        they will leave their realms&mdash;in a very tranquil condition and
+        freed from heresy and wickedness, and will be well received before the
+        Eternal Creator, Whom may it please to give them a long life and a great
+        increase of larger realms and dominions, and the will and disposition to
+        spread the holy Christian religion, as they have done up to the present
+        time, Amen. To-day I will launch the ship and make haste to start on
+        Thursday, in the name of God, to go to the southeast and seek gold and
+        spices, and discover land." Thus Christopher Columbus, in the Name of
+        God,
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        November 11, 1492.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="ch2b" id="ch2b"></a>CHAPTER II.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE EARTHLY PARADISE
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Columbus weighed anchor on the 12th of November he took with him six
+      captive Indians. It was his intention to go in search of the island of
+      Babeque, which the Indians alleged lay about thirty leagues to the
+      east-south-east, and where, they said, the people gathered gold out of the
+      sand with candles at night, and afterwards made bars of it with a hammer.
+      They told him this by signs; and we have only one more instance of the
+      Admiral's facility in interpreting signs in favour of his own beliefs. It
+      is only a few days later that in the same Journal he says, "The people of
+      these lands do not understand me, nor do I nor any other person I have
+      with me understand them; and these Indians I am taking with me, many times
+      understand things contrary to what they are." It was a fault at any rate
+      not exclusively possessed by the Indians, who were doubtless made the
+      subject of many philological experiments on the part of the interpreter;
+      all that they seemed to have learned at this time were certain religious
+      gestures, such as making the Sign of the Cross, which they did
+      continually, greatly to the edification of the crew.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In order to keep these six natives in a good temper Columbus kidnapped
+      "seven women, large and small, and three children," in order, he alleged,
+      that the men might conduct themselves better in Spain because of having
+      their "wives" with them; although whether these assorted women were indeed
+      the wives of the kidnapped natives must at the best be a doubtful matter.
+      The three children, fortunately, had their father and mother with them;
+      but that was only because the father, having seen his wife and children
+      kidnapped, came and offered to go with them of his own accord. This taking
+      of the women raises a question which must be in the mind of any one who
+      studies this extraordinary voyage&mdash;the question of the treatment of
+      native women by the Spaniards. Columbus is entirely silent on the subject;
+      but taking into account the nature of the Spanish rabble that formed his
+      company, and his own views as to the right which he had to possess the
+      persons and goods of the native inhabitants, I am afraid that there can be
+      very little doubt that in this matter there is a good reason, for his
+      silence. So far as Columbus himself was concerned, it is probable that he
+      was innocent enough; he was not a sensualist by nature, and he was far too
+      much interested and absorbed in the principal objects of his expedition,
+      and had too great a sense of his own personal dignity, to have indulged in
+      excesses that would, thus sanctioned by him, have produced a very
+      disastrous effect on the somewhat rickety discipline of his crew. He was
+      too wise a master, however, to forbid anything that it was not in his
+      power to prevent; and it is probable that he shut his eyes to much that,
+      if he did not tolerate it, he at any rate regarded as a matter of no very
+      great importance. His crew had by this time learned to know their
+      commander well enough not to commit under his eyes offences for which he
+      would have been sure to punish them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For two days they ran along the coast with a fair wind; but on the 14th a
+      head wind and heavy sea drove them into the shelter of a deep harbour
+      called by Columbus Puerto del Principe, which is the modern Tanamo. The
+      number of islands off this part of the coast of Cuba confirmed Columbus in
+      his profound geographical error; he took them to be "those innumerable
+      islands which in the maps of the world are placed at the end of the east."
+      He erected a great wooden cross on an eminence here, as he always did when
+      he took possession of a new place, and made some boat excursions among the
+      islands in the harbour. On the 17th of November two of the six youths whom
+      he had taken on board the week before swam ashore and escaped. When he
+      started again on his voyage he was greatly inconvenienced by the wind,
+      which veered about between the north and south of east, and was generally
+      a foul wind for him. There is some difference of opinion as to what point
+      of the wind the ships of Columbus's time would sail on; but there is no
+      doubt that they were extremely unhandy in anything approaching a head
+      wind, and that they were practically no good at all at beating to
+      windward. The shape of their hulls, the ungainly erections ahead and
+      astern, and their comparatively light hold on the water, would cause them
+      to drift to leeward faster than they could work to windward. In this head
+      wind, therefore, Columbus found that he was making very little headway,
+      although he stood out for long distances to the northward. On Wednesday,
+      November 21st, occurred a most disagreeable incident, which might easily
+      have resulted in the Admiral's never reaching Spain alive. Some time in
+      the afternoon he noticed the Pinta standing away ahead of him in a
+      direction which was not the course which he was steering; and he signalled
+      her to close up with him. No answer, however, was made to his signal,
+      which he repeated, but to which he failed to attract any response. He was
+      standing south at the time, the wind being well in the north-east; and
+      Martin Alonso Pinzon, whose caravel pointed into the wind much better than
+      the unhandy Santa Maria, was standing to the east. When evening fell he
+      was still in sight, at a distance of sixteen miles. Columbus was really
+      concerned, and fired lombards and flew more signals of invitation; but
+      there was no reply. In the evening he shortened sail and burned a torch
+      all night, "because it appeared that Martin Alonso was returning to me;
+      and the night was very clear, and there was a nice little breeze by which
+      to come to me if he wished." But he did not wish, and he did not come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Martin Alonso has in fact shown himself at last in his true colours. He
+      has got the fastest ship, he has got a picked company of his own men from
+      Palos; he has got an Indian on board, moreover, who has guaranteed to take
+      him straight to where the gold is; and he has a very agreeable plan of
+      going and getting it, and returning to Spain with the first news and the
+      first wealth. It is open mutiny, and as such cannot but be a matter of
+      serious regret and trouble to the Admiral, who sits writing up his Journal
+      by the swinging lamp in his little cabin. To that friend and confidant he
+      pours out his troubles and his long list of grievances against Martin
+      Alonso; adding, "He has done and said many other things to me." Up on deck
+      the torch is burning to light the wanderer back again, if only he will
+      come; and there is "a nice little breeze" by which to come if he wishes;
+      but Martin Alonso has wishes quite other than that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Pinta was out of sight the next morning, and the little Nina was all
+      that the Admiral had to rely upon for convoy. They were now near the east
+      end of the north coast of Cuba, and they stood in to a harbour which the
+      Admiral called Santa Catalina, and which is now called Cayo de Moa. As the
+      importance of the Nina to the expedition had been greatly increased by the
+      defection of the Pinta, Columbus went on board and examined her. He found
+      that some of her spars were in danger of giving way; and as there was a
+      forest of pine trees rising from the shore he was able to procure a new
+      mizzen mast and latine yard in case it should be necessary to replace
+      those of the Nina. The next morning he weighed anchor at sunrise and
+      continued east along the coast. He had now arrived at the extreme end of
+      Cuba, and was puzzled as to what course he should take. Believing Cuba, as
+      he did, to be the mainland of Cathay, he would have liked to follow the
+      coast in its trend to the south-west, in the hope of coming upon the rich
+      city of Quinsay; but on the other hand there was looming to the south-west
+      some land which the natives with him assured him was Bohio, the place
+      where all the gold was. He therefore held on his course; but when the
+      Indians found that he was really going to these islands they became very
+      much alarmed, and made signs that the people would eat them if they went
+      there; and, in order further to dissuade the Admiral, they added that the
+      people there had only one eye, and the faces, of dogs. As it did not suit
+      Columbus to believe them he said that they were lying, and that he "felt"
+      that the island must belong to the domain of the Great Khan. He therefore
+      continued his course, seeing many beautiful and enchanting bays opening
+      before him, and longing to go into them, but heroically stifling his
+      curiosity, "because he was detained more than he desired by the pleasure
+      and delight he felt in seeing and gazing on the beauty and freshness of
+      those countries wherever he entered, and because he did not wish to be
+      delayed in prosecuting what he was engaged upon; and for these reasons he
+      remained that night beating about and standing off and on until day." He
+      could not trust himself, that is to say, to anchor in these beautiful
+      harbours, for he knew he would be tempted to go ashore and waste valuable
+      time exploring the woods; and so he remained instead, beating about in the
+      open sea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As it was, what with contrary winds and his own indecision as to which
+      course he should pursue, it was December the 6th before he came up with
+      the beautiful island of Hayti, and having sent the Nina in front to
+      explore for a harbour, entered the Mole Saint Nicholas, which he called
+      Puerto Maria. Towards the east he saw an island shaped like a turtle, and
+      this island he named Tortuga; and the harbour, which he entered that
+      evening on the hour of Vespers, he called Saint Nicholas, as it was the
+      feast of that saint. Once more his description flounders among
+      superlatives: he thought Cuba was perfect; but he finds the new island
+      more perfect still. The climate is like May in Cordova; the tracts of
+      arable land and fertile valleys and high mountains are like those in
+      Castile; he finds mullet like those of Castile; soles and other fish like
+      those in Castile; nightingales and other small birds like those in
+      Castile; myrtle and other trees and grasses like those in Castile! In
+      short, this new land is so like Spain, only more wonderful and beautiful,
+      that he christens it Espanola.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They stayed two days in the harbour of Saint Nicholas, and then began to
+      coast eastwards along the shores of Espaniola. Their best progress was
+      made at dawn and sunset, when the land breeze blew off the island; and
+      during the day they encountered a good deal of colder weather and easterly
+      winds, which made their progress slow. Every day they put in at one or
+      other of the natural harbours in which that beautiful coast abounds; every
+      day they saw natives on the shores who generally fled at their approach,
+      but were often prevailed upon to return and to converse with the natives
+      on board the Admiral's ship, and to receive presents and bring parrots and
+      bits of gold in exchange. On one day a party of men foraging ashore saw a
+      beautiful young girl, who fled at their approach; and they chased her a
+      long way through the woods, finally capturing her and bringing her on
+      board. Columbus "caused her to be clothed"&mdash;doubtless a diverting
+      occupation for Rodrigo, Juan, Garcia, Pedro, William, and the rest of
+      them, although for the poor, shy, trembling captive not diverting at all&mdash;and
+      sent her ashore again loaded with beads and brass rings&mdash;to act as a
+      decoy. Having sown this good seed the Admiral waited for a night, and then
+      sent a party of men ashore, "well prepared with arms and adapted for such
+      an affair," to have some conversation with the people. The innocent
+      harvest was duly reaped; the natives met the Spaniards with gifts of food
+      and drink, and understanding that the Admiral would like to have a parrot,
+      they sent as many parrots as were wanted. The husband of the girl who had
+      been captured and clothed came back with her to the shore with a large
+      body of natives, in order to thank the Admiral for his kindness and
+      clemency; and their confidence was not misplaced, as the Admiral did not
+      at that moment wish to do any more kidnapping. The Spaniards were more and
+      more amazed and impressed with the beauty and fertility of these islands.
+      The lands were more lovely than the finest land in Castile; the rivers
+      were large and wide, the trees green and full of fruit, the grasses
+      knee-deep and starred with flowers; the birds sang sweetly all night;
+      there were mastic trees and aloes and plantations of cotton. There was
+      fishing in plenty; and if there were not any gold mines immediately at
+      hand, they here sure to be round the next headland or, at the farthest, in
+      the next island. The people, too, charmed and delighted the Admiral, who
+      saw in them a future glorious army of souls converted to the Christian
+      religion. They were taller and handsomer than the inhabitants of the other
+      islands, and the women much fairer; indeed, if they had not been so much
+      exposed to the sun, and if they could only be clothed in the decent
+      garments of civilisation, the Admiral thought that their skins would be as
+      white as those of the women of Spain&mdash;which was only another argument
+      for bringing them within the fold of the Holy Catholic Church. The men
+      were powerful and apparently harmless; they showed no truculent or
+      suspicious spirit; they had no knowledge of arms; a thousand of them would
+      not face three Christians; and
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "so they are suitable to be governed and made to work and sow and do
+        everything else that shall be necessary, and to build villages and be
+        taught to wear clothing and observe our customs."
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      At present, you see, they are but poor happy heathens, living in a
+      paradise of their own, where the little birds sing all through the warm
+      nights, and the rivers murmur through flowery meadows, and no one has any
+      knowledge of arms or desire of such knowledge, and every one goes naked
+      and unashamed. High time, indeed, that they should be taught to wear
+      clothing and observe our customs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The local chief came on a visit of state to the ship; and the Admiral paid
+      him due honour, telling him that he came as an envoy from the greatest
+      sovereigns in the world. But this charming king, or cacique as they called
+      him, would not believe this; he thought that Columbus was, for reasons of
+      modesty, speaking less than the truth&mdash;a new charge to bring against
+      our Christopher! He believed that the Spaniards came from heaven, and that
+      the realms of the sovereigns of Castile were in the heavens and not in
+      this world. He took some refreshment, as his councillors did also, little
+      dreaming, poor wretches, what in after years was to come to them through
+      all this palavering and exchanging of presents. The immediate result of
+      the interview, however, was to make intercourse with the natives much
+      freer and pleasanter even than it had been before; and some of the sailors
+      went fishing with the natives. It was then that they were shown some cane
+      arrows with hardened points, which the natives said belonged to the people
+      of 'Caniba', who, they alleged, came to the island to capture and eat the
+      natives. The Admiral did not believe it; his sublime habit of rejecting
+      everything that did not fit in with his theory of the moment, and
+      accepting everything that did, made him shake his head when this piece of
+      news was brought to him. He could not get the Great Khan out of his head,
+      and his present theory was that this island, being close to the mainland
+      of Cathay, was visited by the armies of the Great Khan, and that it was
+      his men who had used the arrows and made war upon the natives. It was no
+      good for the natives to show him some of their mutilated bodies, and to
+      tell him that the cannibals ate them piecemeal; he had no use for such
+      information. His mind was like a sieve of which the size of the meshes
+      could be adjusted at will; everything that was not germane to the idea of
+      the moment fell through it, and only confirmative evidence remained; and
+      at the moment he was not believing any stories which did not prove that
+      the Great Khan was, so to speak, just round the corner. If they talked
+      about gold he would listen to them; and so the cacique brought him a piece
+      of gold the size of his hand and, breaking it into pieces, gave it to him
+      a bit at a time. This the Admiral took to be sign of great intelligence.
+      They told him there was gold at Tortuga, but he preferred to believe that
+      it came from Babeque, which may have been Jamaica and may have been
+      nothing at all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But his theory was that it existed on Espanola only in small pieces
+      because that country was so rich that the natives had no need for it; an
+      economic theory which one grows dizzy in pondering. At any rate "the
+      Admiral believed that he was very near the fountainhead, and that Our Lord
+      was about to show him where the gold originates."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On Tuesday, December 18th, the ships were all dressed in honour of a
+      religious anniversary, and the cacique, hearing the firing of the lombards
+      with which the festival was greeted, came down to the shore to see what
+      was the matter. As Columbus was sitting at dinner on deck beneath the poop
+      the cacique arrived with all his people; and the account of his visit is
+      preserved in Columbus's own words.
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "As he entered the ship he found that I was eating at the table below
+        the stern forecastle, and he came quickly to seat himself beside me, and
+        would not allow me to go to meet him or get up from the table, but only
+        that I should eat. I thought that he would like to eat some of our
+        viands and I then ordered that things should be brought him to eat. And
+        when he entered under the forecastle, he signed with his hand that all
+        his people should remain without, and they did so with the greatest
+        haste and respect in the world, and all seated themselves on the deck,
+        except two men of mature age whom I took to be his counsellors and
+        governors, and who came and seated themselves at his feet: and of the
+        viands which I placed before him he took of each one as much as may be
+        taken for a salutation, and then he sent the rest to his people and they
+        all ate some of it, and he did the same with the drink, which he only
+        touched to his mouth, and then gave it to the others in the same way,
+        and it was all done in wonderful state and with very few words, and
+        whatever he said, according to what I was able to understand, was very
+        formal and prudent, and those two looked in his face and spoke for him
+        and with him, and with great respect.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "After eating, a page brought a belt which is like those of Castile in
+        shape, but of a different make, which he took and gave me, and also two
+        wrought pieces of gold, which were very thin, as I believe they obtain
+        very little of it here, although I consider they are very near the place
+        where it has its home, and that there is a great deal of it. I saw that
+        a drapery that I had upon my bed pleased him. I gave it to him, and some
+        very good amber beads which I wore around my neck and some red shoes and
+        a flask of orange-flower water, with which he was so pleased it was
+        wonderful; and he and his governor and counsellors were very sorry that
+        they did not understand me, nor I them. Nevertheless I understood that
+        he told me that if anything from here would satisfy me that all the
+        island was at my command. I sent for some beads of mine, where as a sign
+        I have a 'excelente' of gold upon which the images of your Highnesses
+        are engraved, and showed it to him, and again told him the same as
+        yesterday, that your Highnesses command and rule over all the best part
+        of the world, and that there are no other such great Princes: and I
+        showed him the royal banners and the others with the cross, which he
+        held in great estimation: and he said to his counsellors that your
+        Highnesses must be great Lords, since you had sent me here from so far
+        without fear: and many other things happened which I did not understand,
+        except that I very well saw he considered everything as very wonderful."
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      Later in the day Columbus got into talk with an old man who told him that
+      there was a great quantity of gold to be found on some island about a
+      hundred leagues away; that there was one island that was all gold; and
+      that in the others there was such a quantity that they natives gathered it
+      and sifted it with sieves and made it into bars. The old man pointed out
+      vaguely the direction in which this wonderful country lay; and if he had
+      not been one of the principal persons belonging to the King Columbus would
+      have detained him and taken him with him; but he decided that he had paid
+      the cacique too much respect to make it right that he should kidnap one of
+      his retinue. He determined, however, to go and look for the gold. Before
+      he left he had a great cross erected in the middle of the Indian village;
+      and as he made sail out of the harbour that evening he could see the
+      Indians kneeling round the cross and adoring it. He sailed eastward,
+      anchoring for a day in the Bay of Acul, which he called Cabo de Caribata,
+      receiving something like an ovation from the natives, and making them
+      presents and behaving very graciously and kindly to them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was at this time that Columbus made the acquaintance of a man whose
+      character shines like a jewel amid the dismal scenes that afterwards
+      accompanied the first bursting of the wave of civilisation on these happy
+      shores. This was the king of that part of the island, a young man named
+      Guacanagari. This king sent out a large canoe full of people to the
+      Admiral's ship, with a request that Columbus would land in his country,
+      and a promise that the chief would give him whatever he had. There must
+      have been an Intelligence Department in the island, for the chief seemed
+      to know what would be most likely to attract the Admiral; and with his
+      messengers he sent out a belt with a large golden mask attached to it.
+      Unfortunately the natives on board the Admiral's ship could not understand
+      Guacanagari's messengers, and nearly the whole of the day was passed in
+      talking before the sense of their message was finally made out by means of
+      signs. In the evening some Spaniards were sent ashore to see if they could
+      not get some gold; but Columbus, who had evidently had some recent
+      experience of their avariciousness, and who was anxious to keep on good
+      terms with the chiefs of the island, sent his secretary with them to see
+      that they did nothing unjust or unreasonable. He was scrupulous to see
+      that the natives got their bits of glass and beads in exchange for the
+      gold; and it is due to him to remember that now, as always, he was rigid
+      in regulating his conduct with other men in accordance with his ideas of
+      justice and honour, however elastic those ideas may seem to have been. The
+      ruffianly crew had in their minds only the immediate possession of what
+      they could get from the Indians; the Admiral had in his mind the whole
+      possession of the islands and the bodies and souls of its inhabitants. If
+      you take a piece of gold without giving a glass bead in exchange for it,
+      it is called stealing; if you take a country and its inhabitants, and
+      steal their peace from them, and give them blood and servitude in exchange
+      for it, it is called colonisation and Empire-building. Every one
+      understands the distinction; but so few people see the difference that
+      Columbus of all men may be excused for his unconsciousness of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Indeed Columbus was seeing yellow at this point in his career. The word
+      "gold" is scattered throughout every page of his journal; he can
+      understand nothing that the natives say to him except that there is a
+      great quantity of gold somewhere about. He is surrounded by natives
+      pressing presents upon him, protesting their homage, and assuring him (so
+      he thinks) that there are any amount of gold mines; and no wonder that the
+      yellow light blinds his eyes and confounds his senses, and that sometimes,
+      even when the sun has gone down and the natives have retired to their
+      villages and he sits alone in the seclusion of his cabin, the glittering
+      motes still dance before his eyes and he becomes mad, maudlin, ecstatic .
+      . . . The light flickers in the lamp as the ship swings a little on the
+      quiet tide and a night breeze steals through the cabin door; the sound of
+      voices ashore sounds dimly across the water; the brain of the Admiral,
+      overfilled with wonders and promises and hopes, sends its message to the
+      trembling hand that holds the pen, and the incoherent words stream out on
+      the ink. "May our Lord in His mercy direct me until I find this gold, I
+      say this Mine, because I have many people here who say that they know it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On Christmas Eve a serious misfortune befell Columbus. What with looking
+      for gold, and trying to understand the people who talked about it, and
+      looking after his ships, and writing up his journal, he had had
+      practically no sleep for two days and a night; and at eleven o'clock on
+      the 24th of December, the night being fine and his ship sailing along the
+      coast with a light land breeze, he decided to lie down to get some sleep.
+      There were no difficulties in navigation to be feared, because the ship's
+      boats had been rowed the day before a distance of about ten miles ahead on
+      the course which they were then steering and had seen that there was open
+      water all the way. The wind fell calm; and the man at the helm, having
+      nothing to do, and feeling sleepy, called a ship's boy to him, gave him
+      the helm, and went off himself to lie down. This of course was against all
+      rules; but as the Admiral was in his cabin and there was no one to tell
+      them otherwise the watch on deck thought it a very good opportunity to
+      rest. Suddenly the boy felt the rudder catch upon something, saw the ship
+      swinging, and immediately afterwards heard the sound of tide ripples. He
+      cried out; and in a moment Columbus, who was sleeping the light sleep of
+      an anxious shipmaster, came tumbling up to see what was the matter. The
+      current, which flows in that place at a speed of about two knots, had
+      carried the ship on to a sand bank, but she touched so quietly that it was
+      hardly felt. Close on the heels of, Columbus came the master of the ship
+      and the delinquent watch; and the Admiral immediately ordered them to
+      launch the ship's boat&mdash;and lay out an anchor astern so that they
+      could warp her off. The wretches lowered the boat, but instead of getting
+      the anchor on board rowed off in the direction of the Nina, which was
+      lying a mile and a half to windward. As soon as Columbus saw what they
+      were doing he ran to the side and, seeing that the tide was failing and
+      that the ship had swung round across the bank, ordered the remainder of
+      the crew to cut away the mainmast and throw the deck hamper overboard, in
+      order to lighten the ship. This took some time; the tide was falling, and
+      the ship beginning to heel over on her beam; and by the time it was done
+      the Admiral saw that it would be of no use, for the ship's seams had
+      opened and she was filling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this point the miserable crew in the ship's boat came back, the loyal
+      people on the Nina having refused to receive them and sent them back to
+      the assistance of the Admiral. But it was now too late to do anything to
+      save the ship; and as he did not know but that she might break up,
+      Columbus decided to tranship the people to the Nina, who had by this time
+      sent her own boat. The whole company boarded the Nina, on which the
+      Admiral beat about miserably till morning in the vicinity of his doomed
+      ship. Then he sent Diego de Arana, the brother of Beatriz and a trusty
+      friend, ashore in a boat to beg the help of the King; and Guacanagari
+      immediately sent his people with large canoes to unload the wrecked ship,
+      which was done with great efficiency and despatch, and the whole of her
+      cargo and fittings stored on shore under a guard. And so farewell to the
+      Santa Maria, whose bones were thenceforward to bleach upon the shores of
+      Hayti, or incongruously adorn the dwellings of the natives. She may have
+      been "a bad sailer and unfit for discovery"; but no seaman looks without
+      emotion upon the wreck of a ship whose stem has cut the waters of home,
+      which has carried him safely over thousands of uncharted miles, and which
+      has for so long been his shelter and sanctuary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At sunrise the kind-hearted cacique came down to the Nina, where Columbus
+      had taken up his quarters, and with tears in his eyes begged the Admiral
+      not to grieve at his losses, for that he, the cacique, would give him
+      everything that he possessed; that he had already given two large houses
+      to the Spaniards from the Santa Maria who had been obliged to encamp on
+      shore, and that he would provide more accommodation and help if necessary.
+      In fact, the day which had been ushered in so disastrously turned into a
+      very happy one; and before it was over Columbus had decided that, as he
+      could not take the whole of his company home on the Nina, he would
+      establish a settlement on shore so that the men who were left behind could
+      collect gold and store it until more ships could be sent from Spain. The
+      natives came buzzing round anxious to barter whatever they had for hawks'
+      bells, which apparently were the most popular of the toys that had been
+      brought for bartering; "they shouted and showed the pieces of gold, saying
+      chuq, chuq, for hawks' bells, as they are in a likely state to become
+      crazy for them." The cacique was delighted to see that the Admiral was
+      pleased with the gold that was brought to him, and he cheered him up by
+      telling him that there was any amount in Cibao, which Columbus of course
+      took for Cipango. The cacique entertained Columbus to a repast on shore,
+      at which the monarch wore a shirt and a pair of gloves that Columbus had
+      given him; "and he rejoiced more over the gloves than anything that had
+      been given him." Columbus was pleased with his clean and leisurely method
+      of eating, and with his dainty rubbing of his hands with herbs after he
+      had eaten. After the repast Columbus gave a little demonstration of
+      bow-and-arrow shooting and the firing of lombards and muskets, all of
+      which astonished and impressed the natives.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The afternoon was spent in deciding on a site for the fortress which was
+      to be constructed; and Columbus had no difficulty in finding volunteers
+      among the crews to remain in the settlement. He promised to leave with
+      them provisions of bread and wine for a year, a ship's boat, seeds for
+      sowing crops, and a carpenter, a caulker, a gunner, and a cooper. Before
+      the day was out he was already figuring up the profit that would arise out
+      of his misfortune of the day before; and he decided that it was the act of
+      God which had cast his ship away in order that this settlement should be
+      founded. He hoped that the settlers would have a ton of gold ready for him
+      when he came back from Castile, so that, as he had said in the glittering
+      camp of Santa Fe, where perhaps no one paid very much heed to him, there
+      might be such a profit as would provide for the conquest of Jerusalem and
+      the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre. After all, if he was greedy for gold,
+      he had a pious purpose for its employment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The last days of the year were very busy ones for the members of the
+      expedition. Assisted by the natives they were building the fort which, in
+      memory of the day on which it was founded, Columbus called La Villa-de la
+      Navidad. The Admiral spent much time with King Guacanagari, who "loved him
+      so much that it was wonderful," and wished to cover him all over with gold
+      before he went away, and begged him not to go before it was done. On
+      December 27th there was some good news; a caravel had been seen entering a
+      harbour a little further along the coast; and as this could only mean that
+      the Pinta had returned, Columbus borrowed a canoe from the king, and
+      despatched a sailor in it to carry news of his whereabouts to the Pinta.
+      While it was away Guacanagari collected all the other kings and chiefs who
+      were subject to him, and held a kind of durbar. They all wore their
+      crowns; and Guacanagari took off his crown and placed it on Columbus's
+      head; and the Admiral, not to be outdone, took from his own neck "a collar
+      of good bloodstones and very beautiful beads of fine colours; which
+      appeared very good in all parts, and placed it upon the King; and he took
+      off a cloak of fine scarlet cloth which he had put on that day, and
+      clothed the King with it; and he sent for some coloured buskins which he
+      made him put on, and placed upon his finger a large silver ring"&mdash;all
+      of which gives us a picturesque glimpse into the contents of the Admiral's
+      wardrobe, and a very agreeable picture of King Guacanagari, whom we must
+      now figure as clothed, in addition to his shirt and gloves, in a pair of
+      coloured buskins, a collar of bloodstones, a scarlet cloak and a silver
+      ring.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the time was running short; the Admiral, hampered as he was by the
+      possession of only one small ship, had now but one idea, which was to get
+      back to Castile as quickly as possible, report the result of his
+      discoveries, and come back again with a larger and more efficient
+      equipment. Before he departed he had an affectionate leave-taking with
+      King Guacanagari; he gave him another shirt, and also provided a
+      demonstration of the effect of lombards by having one loaded, and firing
+      at the old Santa Maria where she lay hove down on the sandbank. The shot
+      went clean through her hull and fell into the sea beyond, and produced
+      what might be called a very strong moral effect, although an unnecessary
+      one, on the natives. He then set about the very delicate business of
+      organising the settlement. In all, forty-two men were to remain behind,
+      with Diego de Arana in the responsible position of chief lieutenant,
+      assisted by Pedro Gutierrez and Rodrigo de Escovedo, the nephew of Friar
+      Juan Perez of La Rabida. To these three he delegated all his powers and
+      authority as Admiral and Viceroy; and then, having collected the
+      colonists, gave them a solemn address. First, he reminded them of the
+      goodness of God to them, and advised them to remain worthy of it by
+      obeying the Divine command in all their actions. Second, he ordered them,
+      as a representative of the Sovereigns of Spain, to obey the captain whom
+      he had appointed for them as they would have obeyed himself. Third, he
+      urged them to show respect and reverence towards King Guacanagari and his
+      chiefs, and to the inferior chiefs, and to avoid annoying them or
+      tormenting them, since they were to remain in a land that was as yet under
+      native dominion; to "strive and watch by their soft and honest speech to
+      gain their good-will and keep their friendship and love, so that he should
+      find them as friendly and favourable and more so when he returned."
+      Fourth, he commanded them "and begged them earnestly" to do no injury and
+      use no force against any natives; to take nothing from them against their
+      will; and especially to be on their guard to avoid injury or violence to
+      the women, "by which they would cause scandal and set a bad example to the
+      Indians and show the infamy of the Christians." Fifth, he charged them not
+      to scatter themselves or leave the place where they then were, but to
+      remain together until he returned. Sixth, he "animated" them to suffer
+      their solitude and exile cheerfully and bravely, since they had willingly
+      chosen it. The seventh order was, that they should get help from the King
+      to send boat expeditions in search of the gold mines; and lastly, he
+      promised that he would petition the Sovereigns to honour them with special
+      favours and rewards. To this very manly, wise and humane address the
+      people listened with some emotion, assuring Columbus that they placed
+      their hopes in him, "begging him earnestly to remember them always, and
+      that as quickly as he could he should give them the great joy which they
+      anticipated from his coming again."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All of which things being done, the ships [ship&mdash;there was only the
+      Nina] loaded and provisioned, and the Admiral's final directions given, he
+      makes his farewells and weighs anchor at sunrise on Friday, January 4.,
+      1493. Among the little crowd on the shore who watch the Nina growing
+      smaller in the distance are our old friends Allard and William, tired of
+      the crazy confinement of a ship and anxious for shore adventures. They are
+      to have their fill of them, as it happens; adventures that are to bring to
+      the settlers a sudden cloud of blood and darkness, and for the islanders a
+      brief return to their ancient peace. But death waits for Allard and
+      William in the sunshine and silence of Espanola.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="ch3b" id="ch3b"></a>CHAPTER III.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE VOYAGE HOME
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Columbus did not stand out to sea on his homeward course immediately, but
+      still coasted along the shores of the island as though he were loth to
+      leave it, and as though he might still at some bend of a bay or beyond
+      some verdant headland come upon the mines and jewels that he longed for.
+      The mountain that he passed soon after starting he called Monte Christi,
+      which name it bears to this day; and he saw many other mountains and capes
+      and bays, to all of which he gave names. And it was a fortunate chance
+      which led him thus to stand along the coast of the island; for on January
+      6th the sailor who was at the masthead, looking into the clear water for
+      shoals and rocks, reported that he saw the caravel Pinta right ahead. When
+      she came up with him, as they were in very shallow water not suitable for
+      anchorage, Columbus returned to the bay of Monte Christi to anchor there.
+      Presently Martin Alonso Pinzon came on board to report himself&mdash;a
+      somewhat crestfallen Martin, we may be sure, for he had failed to find the
+      gold the hope of which had led him to break his honour as a seaman. But
+      the Martin Alonsos of this world, however sorry their position may be,
+      will always find some kind of justification for it. It must have been a
+      trying moment for Martin Alonso as his boat from the Pinta drew near the
+      Nina, and he saw the stalwart commanding figure of the white-haired
+      Admiral walking the poop. He knew very well that according to the law and
+      custom of the sea Columbus would have been well within his right in
+      shooting him or hanging him on the spot; but Martin puts on a bold face
+      as, with a cold dread at his heart and (as likely as not) an ingratiating
+      smile upon his face he comes up over the side. Perhaps, being in some ways
+      a cleverer man than Christopher, he knew the Admiral's weak points; knew
+      that he was kind-hearted, and would remember those days of preparation at
+      Palos when Martin Alonso had been his principal stay and help. Martin's
+      story was that he had been separated from the Admiral against his will;
+      that the crew insisted upon it, and that in any case they had only meant
+      to go and find some gold and bring it back to the Admiral. Columbus did
+      not believe him for a moment, but either his wisdom or his weakness
+      prevented him from saying so. He reproached Martin Alonso for acting with
+      pride and covetousness "that night when he went away and left him"; and
+      Columbus could not think "from whence had come the haughty actions and
+      dishonesty Martin had shown towards him on that voyage." Martin had done a
+      good trade and had got a certain amount of gold; and no doubt he knew well
+      in what direction to turn the conversation when it was becoming unpleasant
+      to himself. He told Columbus of an island to the south of Juana&mdash;[Cuba]&mdash;called
+      Yamaye,&mdash;[Jamaica]&mdash;where pieces of gold were taken from the
+      mines as large as kernels of wheat, and of another island towards the east
+      which was inhabited only by women.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The unpleasantness was passed over as soon as possible, although the
+      Admiral felt that the sooner he got home the better, since he was
+      practically at the mercy of the Pinzon brothers and their following from
+      Palos. He therefore had the Pinta beached and recaulked and took in wood
+      and water, and continued his voyage on Tuesday, January 8th. He says that
+      "this night in the name of our Lord he will start on his journey without
+      delaying himself further for any matter, since he had found what he had
+      sought, and he did not wish to have more trouble with that Martin Alonso
+      until their Highnesses learned the news of the voyage and what he has
+      done." After that it will be another matter, and his turn will come; for
+      then, he says, "I will not suffer the bad deeds of persons without virtue,
+      who, with little respect, presume to carry out their own wills in
+      opposition to those who did them honour." Indeed, for several days, the
+      name of "that Martin Alonso" takes the place of gold in Columbus's
+      Journal. There were all kinds of gossip about the ill deeds of Martin
+      Alonso, who had taken four Indian men and two young girls by force; the
+      Admiral releasing them immediately and sending them back to their homes.
+      Martin Alonso, moreover, had made a rule that half the gold that was found
+      was to be kept by himself; and he tried to get all the people of his ship
+      to swear that he had been trading for only six days, but "his wickedness
+      was so public that he could not hide it." It was a good thing that
+      Columbus had his journal to talk to, for he worked off a deal of
+      bitterness in it. On Sunday, January 13th, when he had sent a boat ashore
+      to collect some "ajes" or potatoes, a party of natives with their faces
+      painted and with the plumes of parrots in their hair came and attacked the
+      party from the boat; but on getting a slash or two with a cutlass they
+      took to flight and escaped from the anger of the Spaniards. Columbus
+      thought that they were cannibals or caribs, and would like to have taken
+      some of them, but they did not come back, although afterwards he collected
+      four youths who came out to the caravel with cotton and arrows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Columbus was very curious about the island of Matinino,&mdash;[Martinique]&mdash;which
+      was the one said to be inhabited only by women, and he wished very much to
+      go there; but the caravels were leaking badly, the crews were complaining,
+      and he was reluctantly compelled to shape his course for Spain. He sailed
+      to the north-east, being anxious apparently to get into the region of
+      westerly winds which he correctly guessed would be found to the north of
+      the course he had sailed on his outward voyage. By the 17th of January he
+      was in the vicinity of the Sargasso Sea again, which this time had no
+      terrors for him. From his journal the word "gold" suddenly disappears; the
+      Viceroy and Governor-General steps off the stage; and in his place appears
+      the sea captain, watching the frigate birds and pelicans, noting the
+      golden gulf-weed in the sea, and smelling the breezes that are once more
+      as sweet as the breezes of Seville in May. He had a good deal of trouble
+      with his dead-reckoning at this time, owing to the changing winds and
+      currents; but he made always from fifty to seventy miles a day in a
+      direction between north-by-east and north-north-east. The Pinta was not
+      sailing well, and he often had to wait for her to come up with him; and he
+      reflected in his journal that if Martin Alonso Pinzon had taken as much
+      pains to provide himself with a good mast in the Indies as he had to
+      separate himself from the Admiral, the Pinta would have sailed better.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so he went on for several days, with the wind veering always south and
+      south-west, and pointing pretty steadily to the north-east. On February
+      4th he changed his course, and went as near due east as he could. They now
+      began to find themselves in considerable doubt as to their position. The
+      Admiral said he was seventy-five leagues to the south of Flores; Vincenti
+      Pinzon and the pilots thought that they had passed the Azores and were in
+      the neighbourhood of Madeira. In other words, there was a difference of
+      600 miles between their estimates, and the Admiral remarks that "the grace
+      of God permitting, as soon as land is seen, it will be known who has
+      calculated the surest."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A great quantity of birds that began to fly about the ship made him think
+      that they were near land, but they turned out to be the harbingers of a
+      storm. On Tuesday, February 12th, the sea and wind began to rise, and it
+      continued to blow harder throughout that night and the next day. The wind
+      being aft he went under bare poles most of the night, and when day came
+      hoisted a little sail; but the sea was terrible, and if he had not been so
+      sure of the staunch little Nina he would have felt himself in danger of
+      being lost. The next day the sea, instead of going down, increased in
+      roughness; there was a heavy cross sea which kept breaking right over the
+      ship, and it became necessary to make a little sail in order to run before
+      the wind, and to prevent the vessel falling back into the trough of the
+      seas. All through Thursday he ran thus under the half hoisted staysail,
+      and he could see the Pinta running also before the wind, although since
+      she presented more surface, and was able to carry a little more sail than
+      the Nina, she was soon lost to sight. The Admiral showed lights through
+      the night, and this time there was no lack of response from Martin Alonso;
+      and for some part of that dark and stormy night these two humanly
+      freighted scraps of wood and cordage staggered through the gale showing
+      lights to each other; until at last the light from the Pinta disappeared.
+      When morning came she was no longer to be seen; and the wind and the sea
+      had if anything increased. The Nina was now in the greatest danger. Any
+      one wave of the heavy cross sea, if it had broken fairly across her, would
+      have sunk her; and she went swinging and staggering down into the great
+      valleys and up into the hills, the steersman's heart in his mouth, and the
+      whole crew in an extremity of fear. Columbus, who generally relied upon
+      his seamanship, here invoked external aid, and began to offer bargains to
+      the Almighty. He ordered that lots should be cast, and that he upon whom
+      the lot fell should make a vow to go on pilgrimage to Santa Maria de
+      Guadaloupe carrying a white candle of five pounds weight. Same dried peas
+      were brought, one for every member of the crew, and on one of them a cross
+      was marked with a knife; the peas were well shaken and were put into a
+      cap. The first to draw was the Admiral; he drew the marked pea, and he
+      made the vow. Lots were again drawn, this time for a greater pilgrimage to
+      Santa Maria de Loretto in Ancona; and the lot fell on a seaman named Pedro
+      de Villa,&mdash;the expenses of whose pilgrimage Columbus promised to pay.
+      Again lots were drawn for a pilgrimage to the shrine of Santa Clara of
+      Moguer, the pilgrim to watch and pray for one night there; and again the
+      lot fell on Columbus. In addition to these, every one, since they took
+      themselves for lost, made some special and private vow or bargain with
+      God; and finally they all made a vow together that at the first land they
+      reached they would go in procession in their shirts to pray at an altar of
+      Our Lady.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The scene thus conjured up is one peculiar to the time and condition of
+      these people, and is eloquent and pathetic enough: the little ship
+      staggering and bounding along before the wind, and the frightened crew,
+      who had gone through so many other dangers, huddled together under the
+      forecastle, drawing peas out of a cap, crossing themselves, making vows
+      upon their knees, and seeking to hire the protection of the Virgin by
+      their offers of candles and pilgrimages. Poor Christopher, standing in his
+      drenched oilskins and clinging to a piece of rigging, had his own
+      searching of heart and examining of conscience. He was aware of the
+      feverish anxiety and impatience that he felt, now that he had been
+      successful in discovering a New World, to bring home the news and fruits
+      of it; his desire to prove true what he had promised was so great that, in
+      his own graphic phrase, "it seemed to him that every gnat could disturb
+      and impede it"; and he attributed this anxiety to his lack of faith in
+      God. He comforted himself, like Robinson Crusoe in a similar extremity, by
+      considering on the other hand what favours God had shown him, and by
+      remembering that it was to the glory of God that the fruits of his
+      discovery were to be dedicated. But in the meantime here he was in a ship
+      insufficiently ballasted (for she was now practically empty of provisions,
+      and they had found it necessary to fill the wine and water casks with salt
+      water in order to trim her) and flying before a tempest such as he had
+      never experienced in his life. As a last resource, and in order to give
+      his wonderful news a chance of reaching Spain in case the ship were lost,
+      he went into his cabin and somehow or other managed to write on a piece of
+      parchment a brief account of his discoveries, begging any one who might
+      find it to carry it to the Spanish Sovereigns. He tied up the parchment in
+      a waxed cloth, and put it into a large barrel without any one seeing him,
+      and then ordered the barrel to be thrown into the sea, which the crew took
+      to be some pious act of sacrifice or devotion. Then he went back on deck
+      and watched the last of the daylight going and the green seas swelling and
+      thundering about his little ship, and thought anxiously of his two little
+      boys at school in Cordova, and wondered what would become of them if he
+      were lost. The next morning the wind had changed a little, though it was
+      still very high; but he was able to hoist up the bonnet or topsail, and
+      presently the sea began to go down a little. When the sun rose they saw
+      land to the east-north-east. Some of them thought it was Madeira, others
+      the rock of Cintra in Portugal; the pilots said it was the coast of Spain,
+      the Admiral thought it was the Azores; but at any rate it was land of some
+      kind. The sun was shining upon it and upon the tumbling sea; and although
+      the waves were still raging mast-high and the wind still blowing a hard
+      gale, the miserable crew were able to hope that, having lived through the
+      night, they could live through the day also. They had to beat about to
+      make the land, which was now ahead of them, now on the beam, and now
+      astern; and although they had first sighted it at sunrise on Friday
+      morning it was early on Monday morning, February 18th, before Columbus was
+      able to cast anchor off the northern coast of an island which he
+      discovered to be the island of Santa Maria in the Azores. On this day
+      Columbus found time to write a letter to Luis de Santangel, the royal
+      Treasurer, giving a full account of his voyage and discoveries; which
+      letter he kept and despatched on the 4th of March, after he had arrived in
+      Lisbon. Since it contained a postscript written at the last moment we
+      shall read it at that stage of our narrative. The inhabitants of Santa
+      Maria received the voyagers with astonishment, for they believed that
+      nothing could have lived through the tempest that had been raging for the
+      last fortnight. They were greatly excited by the story of the discoveries;
+      and the Admiral, who had now quite recovered command of himself, was able
+      to pride himself on the truth of his dead-reckoning, which had proved to
+      be so much more accurate than that of the pilots.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /> <a name="p227" id="p227"></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
+      <img alt="p227.jpg (38K)" src="images/p227.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <a href="images/p227.jpg"> <img alt="Full Size" src="images/enlarge.jpg" /></a>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the Tuesday evening three men hailed them from the shore, and when they
+      were brought off to the ship delivered a message from the Portuguese
+      Governor of the island, Juan de Castaneda, to the effect that he knew the
+      Admiral very well, and that he was delighted to hear of his wonderful
+      voyage. The next morning Columbus, remembering the vow that had been made
+      in the storm, sent half the crew ashore in their shirts to a little
+      hermitage, which was on the other side of a point a short distance away,
+      and asked the Portuguese messenger to send a priest to say Mass for them.
+      While the members of the crew were at their prayers, however, they
+      received a rude surprise. They were suddenly attacked by the islanders,
+      who had come up on horses under the command of the treacherous Governor,
+      and taken prisoners. Columbus waited unsuspectingly for the boat to come
+      back with them, in order that he and the other half of the crew could go
+      and perform their vow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the boat did not come back he began to fear that some accident must
+      have happened to it, and getting his anchor up he set sail for the point
+      beyond which the hermitage was situated. No sooner had he rounded the
+      point than he saw a band of horsemen, who dismounted, launched the boat
+      which was drawn up on the beach, and began to row out, evidently with the
+      intention of attacking the Admiral. When they came up to the Nina the man
+      in command of them rose and asked Columbus to assure him of personal
+      safety; which assurance was wonderingly given; and the Admiral inquired
+      how it was that none of his own people were in the boat? Columbus
+      suspected treachery and tried to meet it with treachery also, endeavouring
+      with smooth words to get the captain to come on board so that he could
+      seize him as a hostage. But as the Portuguese would not come on board
+      Columbus told them that they were acting very unwisely in affronting his
+      people; that in the land of the Sovereigns of Castile the Portuguese were
+      treated with great honour and security; that he held letters of
+      recommendation from the Sovereigns addressed to every ruler in the world,
+      and added that he was their Admiral of the Ocean Seas and Viceroy of the
+      Indies, and could show the Portuguese his commission to that effect; and
+      finally, that if his people were not returned to him, he would immediately
+      make sail for Spain with the crew that was left to him and report this
+      insult to the Spanish Sovereigns. To all of which the Portuguese captain
+      replied that he did not know any Sovereigns of Castile; that neither they
+      nor their letters were of any account in that island; that they were not
+      afraid of Columbus; and that they would have him know that he had Portugal
+      to deal with&mdash;edging away in the boat at the same time to a
+      convenient distance from the caravel. When he thought he was out of
+      gunshot he shouted to Columbus, ordering him to take his caravel back to
+      the harbour by command of the Governor of the island. Columbus answered by
+      calling his crew to witness that he pledged his word not to descend from
+      or leave his caravel until he had taken a hundred Portuguese to Castile,
+      and had depopulated all their islands. After which explosion of words he
+      returned to the harbour and anchored there, "as the weather and wind were
+      very unfavourable for anything else."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was, however, in a very bad anchorage, with a rocky bottom which
+      presently fouled his anchors; and on the Wednesday he had to make sail
+      towards the island of San Miguel if order to try and find a better
+      anchorage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the wind and sea getting up again very badly he was obliged to beat
+      about all night in a very unpleasant situation, with only three sailors
+      who could be relied upon, and a rabble of gaol-birds and longshoremen who
+      were of little use in a tempest but to draw lots and vow pilgrimages.
+      Finding himself unable to make the island of San Miguel he decided to go
+      back to Santa Maria and make an attempt to recover his boat and his crew
+      and the anchor and cables he had lost there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In his Journal for this day, and amid all his anxieties, he found time to
+      note down one of his curious visionary cosmographical reflections. This
+      return to a region of storms and heavy seas reminded him of the long
+      months he had spent in the balmy weather and calm waters of his discovery;
+      in which facts he found a confirmation of the theological idea that the
+      Eden, or Paradise, of earth was "at the end of the Orient, because it is a
+      most temperate place. So that these lands which he had now discovered are
+      at the end of the Orient." Reflections such as these, which abound in his
+      writings, ought in themselves to be a sufficient condemnation of those who
+      have endeavoured to prove that Columbus was a man of profound
+      cosmographical learning and of a scientific mind. A man who would believe
+      that he had discovered the Orient because in the place where he had been
+      he had found calm weather, and because the theologians said that the
+      Garden of Eden must be in the Orient since it is a temperate place, would
+      believe anything.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Late on Thursday night, when he anchored again in the harbour of San
+      Lorenzo at Santa Maria, a man hailed them from the rocks, and asked them
+      not to go away. Presently a boat containing five sailors, two priests, and
+      a notary put off from the beach; and they asked for a guarantee of
+      security in order that they might treat with the Admiral. They slept on
+      board that night, and in the morning asked him to show them his authority
+      from the Spanish Sovereigns, which the Admiral did, understanding that
+      they had asked for this formality in order to save their dignity. He
+      showed them his general letter from the King and Queen of Spain, addressed
+      to "Princes and Lords of High Degree"; and being satisfied with this they
+      went ashore and released the Admiral's people, from whom he learned that
+      what had been done had been done by command of the King of Portugal, and
+      that he had issued an order to the Governors of all the Portuguese islands
+      that if Columbus landed there on his way home he was to be taken prisoner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He sailed again on Sunday, February 24th, encountering heavy winds and
+      seas, which troubled him greatly with fears lest some disaster should
+      happen at the eleventh hour to interfere with his, triumph. On Sunday,
+      March 3rd, the wind rose to the force of a hurricane, and, on a sudden
+      gust of violent wind splitting all the sails, the unhappy crew gathered
+      together again and drew more lots and made more vows. This time the
+      pilgrimage was to be to the shrine of Santa Maria at Huelva, the pilgrim
+      to go as before in his shirt; and the lot fell to the Admiral. The rest of
+      them made a vow to fast on the next Saturday on bread and water; but as
+      they all thought it extremely unlikely that by that time they would be in
+      need of any bodily sustenance the sacrifice could hardly have been a great
+      one. They scudded along under bare poles and in a heavy cross sea all that
+      night; but at dawn on Monday they saw land ahead of them, which Columbus
+      recognised as the rock of Cintra at Lisbon; and at Lisbon sure enough they
+      landed some time during the morning. As soon as they were inside the river
+      the people came flocking down with stories of the gale and of all the
+      wrecks that there had been on the coast. Columbus hurried away from the
+      excited crowds to write a letter to the King of Portugal, asking him for a
+      safe conduct to Spain, and assuring him that he had come from the Indies,
+      and not from any of the forbidden regions of Guinea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next day brought a visit from no less a person than Bartholomew Diaz.
+      Columbus had probably met him before in 1486, when Diaz had been a
+      distinguished man and Columbus a man not distinguished; but now things
+      were changed. Diaz ordered Columbus to come on board his small vessel in
+      order to go and report himself to the King's officers; but Columbus
+      replied that he was the Admiral of the Sovereigns of Castile, "that he did
+      not render such account to such persons," and that he declined to leave
+      his ship. Diaz then ordered him to send the captain of the Nina; but
+      Columbus refused to send either the captain or any other person, and
+      otherwise gave himself airs as the Admiral of the Ocean Seas. Diaz then
+      moderated his requests, and merely asked Columbus to show him his letter
+      of authority, which Columbus did; and then Diaz went away and brought back
+      with him the captain of the Portuguese royal yacht, who came in great
+      state on board the shabby little Nina, with kettle-drums and trumpets and
+      pipes, and placed himself at the disposal of Columbus. It is a curious
+      moment, this, in which the two great discoverers of their time, Diaz and
+      Columbus, meet for an hour on the deck of a forty-ton caravel; a curious
+      thing to consider that they who had performed such great feats of skill
+      and bravery, one to discover the southernmost point of the old world and
+      the other to voyage across an uncharted ocean to the discovery of an
+      entirely new world, could find nothing better to talk about than their
+      respective ranks and glories; and found no more interesting subject of
+      discussion than the exact amount of state and privilege which should be
+      accorded to each.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During the day or two in which Columbus waited in the port crowds of
+      people came down from Lisbon to see the little Nina, which was an object
+      of much admiration and astonishment; to see the Indians also, at whom they
+      greatly marvelled. It was probably at this time that the letter addressed
+      to Luis de Santangel, containing the first official account of the voyage,
+      was despatched.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">                              *
+                                 *****
+                                   *
+                                   *</pre>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "Sir: As I am sure you will be pleased at the great victory which the
+        Lord has given me in my voyage, I write this to inform you that in
+        twenty' days I arrived in the Indies with the squadron which their
+        Majesties had placed under my command. There I discovered many islands,
+        inhabited by a numerous population, and took possession of them for
+        their Highnesses, with public ceremony and the royal flag displayed,
+        without molestation.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "The first that I discovered I named San Salvador, in remembrance of
+        that Almighty Power which had so miraculously bestowed them. The Indians
+        call it Guanahani. To the second I assigned the name of Santa Marie de
+        Conception; to the third that of Fernandina; to the fourth that of
+        Isabella; to the fifth Juana; and so on, to every one a new name.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "When I arrived at Juana, I followed the coast to the westward, and
+        found it so extensive that I considered it must be a continent and a
+        province of Cathay. And as I found no towns or villages by the seaside,
+        excepting some small settlements, with the people of which I could not
+        communicate because they all ran away, I continued my course to the
+        westward, thinking I should not fail to find some large town and cities.
+        After having coasted many leagues without finding any signs of them, and
+        seeing that the coast took me to the northward, where I did not wish to
+        go, as the winter was already set in, I considered it best to follow the
+        coast to the south and the wind being also scant, I determined to lose
+        no more time, and therefore returned to a certain port, from whence I
+        sent two messengers into the country to ascertain whether there was any
+        king there or any large city.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "They travelled for three days, finding an infinite number of small
+        settlements and an innumerable population, but nothing like a city: on
+        which account&mdash;they returned. I had tolerably well ascertained from
+        some Indians whom I had taken that this land was only an island, so I
+        followed the coast of it to the east 107 leagues, to its termination.
+        And about eighteen leagues from this cape, to the east, there was
+        another island, to which I shortly gave the name of Espanola. I went to
+        it, and followed the north coast of it, as I had done that of Juana, for
+        178&mdash;[should be 188]&mdash;long leagues due east.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "This island is very fertile, as well, indeed, as all the rest. It
+        possesses numerous harbours, far superior to any I know in Europe, and
+        what is remarkable, plenty of large inlets. The land is high, and
+        contains many lofty ridges and some very high mountains, without
+        comparison of the island of Centrefrey;&mdash;[Tenerife]&mdash;all of
+        them very handsome and of different forms; all of them accessible and
+        abounding in trees of a thousand kinds, high, and appearing as if they
+        would reach the skies. And I am assured that the latter never lose their
+        fresh foliage, as far as I can understand, for I saw them as fresh and
+        flourishing as those of Spain in the month of May. Some were in blossom,
+        some bearing fruit, and others in other states, according to their
+        nature.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "The nightingale and a thousand kinds of birds enliven the woods with
+        their song, in the month of November, wherever I went. There are seven
+        or eight kinds of palms, of various elegant forms, besides various other
+        trees, fruits, and herbs. The pines of this island are magnificent. It
+        has also extensive plains, honey, and a great variety of birds and
+        fruits. It has many metal mines, and a population innumerable.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "Espanola is a wonderful island, with mountains, groves, plains, and the
+        country generally beautiful and rich for planting and sowing, for
+        rearing sheep and cattle of all kinds, and ready for towns and cities.
+        The harbours must be seen to be appreciated; rivers are plentiful and
+        large and of excellent water; the greater part of them contain gold.
+        There is a great difference between the trees, fruits, and herbs of this
+        island and those of Juana. In this island there are many spices, and
+        large mines of gold and other metals.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "The people of this island and of all the others which I have discovered
+        or heard of, both men and women, go naked as they were born, although
+        some of the women wear leaves of herbs or a cotton covering made on
+        purpose. They have no iron or steel, nor any weapons; not that they are
+        not a well-disposed people and of fine stature, but they are timid to a
+        degree. They have no other arms excepting spears made of cane, to which
+        they fix at the end a sharp piece of wood, and then dare not use even
+        these. Frequently I had occasion to send two or three of my men onshore
+        to some settlement for information, where there would be multitudes of
+        them; and as soon as they saw our people they would run away every soul,
+        the father leaving his child; and this was not because any one had done
+        them harm, for rather at every cape where I had landed and been able to
+        communicate with them I have made them presents of cloth and many other
+        things without receiving anything in return; but because they are so
+        timid. Certainly, where they have confidence and forget their fears,
+        they are so open-hearted and liberal with all they possess that it is
+        scarcely to be believed without seeing it. If anything that they have is
+        asked of them they never deny it; on the contrary, they will offer it.
+        Their generosity is so great that they would give anything, whether it
+        is costly or not, for anything of every kind that is offered them and be
+        contented with it. I was obliged to prevent such worth less things being
+        given them as pieces of broken basins, broken glass, and bits of
+        shoe-latchets, although when they obtained them they esteemed them as if
+        they had been the greatest of treasures. One of the seamen for a latchet
+        received a piece of gold weighing two dollars and a half, and others,
+        for other things of much less value, obtained more. Again, for new
+        silver coin they would give everything they possessed, whether it was
+        worth two or three doubloons or one or two balls of cotton. Even for
+        pieces of broken pipe-tubes they would take them and give anything for
+        them, until, when I thought it wrong, I prevented it. And I made them
+        presents of thousands of things which I had, that I might win their
+        esteem, and also that they might be made good Christians and be disposed
+        to the service of Your Majesties and the whole Spanish nation, and help
+        us to obtain the things which we require and of which there is abundance
+        in their country.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "And these people appear to have neither religion nor idolatry, except
+        that they believe that good and evil come from the skies; and they
+        firmly believed that our ships and their crews, with myself, came from
+        the skies, and with this persuasion,&mdash;after having lost their
+        fears, they always received us. And yet this does not proceed from
+        ignorance, for they are very ingenious, and some of them navigate their
+        seas in a wonderful manner and give good account of things, but because
+        they never saw people dressed or ships like ours.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "And as soon as I arrived in the Indies, at the first island at which I
+        touched, I captured some of them, that we might learn from them and
+        obtain intelligence of what there was in those parts. And as soon as we
+        understood each other they were of great service to us; but yet, from
+        frequent conversation which I had with them, they still believe we came
+        from the skies. These were the first to express that idea, and others
+        ran from house to house, and to the neighbouring villages, crying out,
+        "Come and see the people from the skies." And thus all of them, men and
+        women, after satisfying themselves of their safety, came to us without
+        reserve, great and small, bringing us something to eat and drink, and
+        which they gave to us most affectionately.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "They have many canoes in those islands propelled by oars, some of them
+        large and others small, and many of them with eight or ten paddles of a
+        side, not very wide, but all of one trunk, and a boat cannot keep way
+        with them by oars, for they are incredibly fast; and with these they
+        navigate all the islands, which are innumerable, and obtain their
+        articles of traffic. I have seen some of these canoes with sixty or
+        eighty men in them, and each with a paddle.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "Among the islands I did not find much diversity of formation in the
+        people, nor in their customs, nor their language. They all understand
+        each other, which is remarkable; and I trust Your Highnesses will
+        determine on their being converted to our faith, for which they are very
+        well disposed.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "I have already said that I went 107 leagues along the coast of Juana,
+        from east to west. Thus, according to my track, it is larger than
+        England and Scotland together, for, besides these 107 leagues, there
+        were further west two provinces to which I did not go, one of which is
+        called Cibau, the people of which are born with tails; which provinces
+        must be about fifty or sixty leagues long, according to what I can make
+        out from the Indians I have with me, who know all the islands. The other
+        island (Espanola) is larger in circuit than the whole of Spain, from the
+        Straits of Gibralter (the Columns) to Fuentarabia in Biscay, as I sailed
+        138 long leagues in a direct line from west to east. Once known it must
+        be desired, and once seen one desires never to leave it; and which,
+        being taken possession of for their Highnesses, and the people being at
+        present in a condition lower than I can possibly describe, the
+        Sovereigns of Castile may dispose of it in any manner they please in the
+        most convenient places. In this Espanola, and in the best district,
+        where are gold mines, and, on the other side, from thence to terra
+        firma, as well as from thence to the Great Khan, where everything is on
+        a splendid scale&mdash;I have taken possession of a large town, to which
+        I gave the name of La Navidad, and have built a fort in it, in every
+        respect complete. And I have left sufficient people in it to take care
+        of it, with artillery and provisions for more than a year; also a boat
+        and coxswain with the equipments, in complete friendship with the King
+        of the islands, to that degree that he delighted to call me and look on
+        me as his brother. And should they fall out with these people, neither
+        he nor his subjects know anything of weapons, and go naked, as I have
+        said, and they are the most timorous people in the world. The few people
+        left there are sufficient to conquer the country, and the island would
+        thus remain without danger to them, they keeping order among themselves.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "In all these islands it appeared to me the men are contented with one
+        wife, but to their governor or king they allow twenty. The women seem to
+        work more than the men. I have not been able to discover whether they
+        respect personal property, for it appeared to me things were common to
+        all, especially in the particular of provisions. Hitherto I have not
+        seen in any of these islands any monsters, as there were supposed to be;
+        the people, on the contrary, are generally well formed, nor are they
+        black like those of the Guinea, saving their hair, and they do not
+        reside in places exposed to the sun's rays. It is true that the sun is
+        most powerful there, and it is only twenty-six degrees from the equator.
+        In this last winter those islands which were mountainous were cold, but
+        they were accustomed to it, with good food and plenty of spices and hot
+        nutriment. Thus I have found no monsters nor heard of any, except at an
+        island which is the second in going to the Indies, and which is
+        inhabited by a people who are considered in all the islands as
+        ferocious, and who devour human flesh. These people have many canoes,
+        which scour all the islands of India, and plunder all they can. They are
+        not worse formed than the others, but they wear the hair long like
+        women, and use bows and arrows of the same kind of cane, pointed with a
+        piece of hard wood instead of iron, of which they have none. They are
+        fierce compared with the other people, who are in general but sad
+        cowards; but I do not consider them in any other way superior to them.
+        These are they who trade in women, who inhabit the first island met with
+        in going from Spain to the Indies, in which there are no men whatever.
+        They have no effeminate exercise, but bows and arrows, as before said,
+        of cane, with which they arm themselves, and use shields of copper, of
+        which they have plenty.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "There is another island, I am told, larger than Espanola, the natives
+        of which have no hair. In this there is gold without limit, and of this
+        and the others I have Indians with me to witness.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "In conclusion, referring only to what has been effected by this voyage,
+        which was made with so much haste, Your Highnesses may see that I shall
+        find as much gold as desired with the very little assistance afforded to
+        me; there is as much spice and cotton as can be wished for, and also
+        gum, which hitherto has only been found in Greece, in the island of
+        Chios, and they may sell it as they please, and the mastich, as much as
+        may be desired, and slaves, also, who will be idolators. And I believe
+        that I have rhubarb, and cinnamon, and a thousand other things I shall
+        find, which will be discovered by those whom I have left behind, for I
+        did not stop at any cape when the wind enabled me to navigate, except at
+        the town of Navidad, where I was very safe and well taken care of. And
+        in truth much more I should have done if the ships had served me as
+        might have been expected. This is certain, that the Eternal God our Lord
+        gives all things to those who obey Him, and the victory when it seems
+        impossible, and this, evidently, is an instance of it, for although
+        people have talked of these lands, all was conjecture unless proved by
+        seeing them, for the greater part listened and judged more by hearsay
+        than by anything else.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "Since, then, our Redeemer has given this victory to our illustrious
+        King and Queen and celebrated their reigns by such a great thing, all
+        Christendom should rejoice and make great festivals, and give solemn
+        thanks to the Blessed Trinity, with solemn praises for the exaltation of
+        so much people to our holy faith; and next for the temporal blessings
+        which not only Spain but they will enjoy in becoming Christians, and
+        which last may shortly be accomplished.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "Written in the caravel off Santa Maria; on the eighteenth of February,
+        ninety-three."
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      The following postscript was added to the letter before it was despatched:
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "After writing the above, being in the Castilian Sea (off the coast of
+        Castile), I experienced so severe a wind from south and south-east that
+        I have been obliged to run to-day into this port of Lisbon, and only by
+        a miracle got safely in, from whence I intended to write to Your
+        Highnesses. In all parts of the Indies I have found the weather like
+        that of May, where I went in ninety-three days, and returned in
+        seventy-eight, saving these thirteen days of bad weather that I have
+        been detained beating about in this sea. Every seaman here says that
+        never was so severe a winter, nor such loss of ships."
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      On the Friday a messenger came from the King in the person of Don Martin
+      de Noronha, a relative of Columbus by marriage, and one who had perhaps
+      looked down upon him in the days when he attended the convent chapel at
+      Lisbon, but who was now the bearer of a royal invitation and in the
+      position of a mere envoy. Columbus repaired to Paraiso where the King was,
+      and where he was received with great honour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      King John might well have been excused if he had felt some mortification
+      at this glorious and successful termination of a project which had been
+      offered to him and which he had rejected; but he evidently behaved with
+      dignity and a good grace, and did everything that he could to help
+      Columbus. It was extremely unlikely that he had anything to do with the
+      insult offered to Columbus at the Azores, for though he was bitterly
+      disappointed that the glory of this discovery belonged to Spain and not to
+      Portugal, he was too much of a man to show it in this petty and revengeful
+      manner. He offered to convey Columbus by land into Spain; but the Admiral,
+      with a fine dramatic sense, preferred to arrive by sea on board of all
+      that was left of the fleet with which he had sailed. He sailed for Seville
+      on Wednesday, March 13th, but during the next day, when he was off Cape
+      Saint Vincent, he evidently changed his mind and decided to make for
+      Palos. Sunrise on Friday saw him off the bar of Saltes, with the white
+      walls of La Rabida shining on the promontory among the dark fir-trees.
+      During the hours in which he stood off and on waiting for the tide he was
+      able to recognise again all the old landmarks and the scenes which had
+      been so familiar to him in those busy days of preparation nine months
+      before; and at midday he sailed in with the flood tide and dropped his
+      anchor again in the mud of the river by Palos.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The caravel had been sighted some time before, probably when she was
+      standing off, the bar waiting for the tide; she was flying the Admiral's
+      flag and there was no mistaking her identity; and we can imagine the news
+      spreading throughout the town of Palos, and reaching Huelva, and one by
+      one the bells beginning to ring, and the places of business to be closed,
+      and the people to come pouring out into the streets to be ready to greet
+      their friends. Some more impatient than the others would sail out in
+      fishing-boats to get the first news; and I should be surprised to know
+      that a boat did not put off from the little pier beneath La Rabida, to row
+      round the point and out to where the Nina was lying&mdash;to beyond the
+      Manto Bank. When the flood began to make over the bar and to cover the
+      long sandbank that stretches from the island of Saltes, the Nina came
+      gliding in, greeted by every joyful sound and signal that the inhabitants
+      of the two seaports could make. Every one hurried down to Palos as the
+      caravel rounded the Convent Point. Hernando, Marchena, and good old Juan
+      Perez were all there, we may be sure. Such excitements, such triumphs as
+      the bronzed, white-bearded Admiral steps ashore at last, and is seized by
+      dozens of eager hands! Such excitements as all the wives and inamoratas of
+      the Rodrigos and Juans and Franciscos rush to meet the swarthy voyagers
+      and cover them with embraces; such disappointments also, when it is
+      realised that some two score of the company are still on a sunbaked island
+      infinitely far over the western horizon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tears of joy and grief, shouts and feastings, firing of guns and flying of
+      flags, processions and receptions with these the deathless day is filled;
+      and the little Nina, her purpose staunchly fulfilled, swings deserted on
+      the turning tide, the ripples of her native Tinto making a familiar music
+      under her bowsprit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And in the evening, with the last of the flood, another ship comes gliding
+      round the point and up the estuary. The inhabitants of Palos have all left
+      the shore and are absorbed in the business of welcoming the great man; and
+      there is no one left to notice or welcome the Pinta. For it is she that,
+      by a strange coincidence, and after many dangers and distresses endured
+      since she had parted company from the Nina in the storm, now has made her
+      native port on the very same day as the Nina. Our old friend Martin Alonso
+      Pinzon is on board, all the fight and treachery gone out of him, and
+      anxious only to get home unobserved. For (according to the story) he had
+      made the port of Bayona on the north-west coast of Spain, and had written
+      a letter from there to the Sovereigns announcing his arrival and the
+      discoveries that he had made; and it is said that he had received an
+      unpleasant letter in return, reproaching him for not waiting for his
+      commander and forbidding him to come to Court. This story is possible if
+      his letter reached the Sovereigns after the letter from the Admiral; for
+      it is probable that Columbus may have reported some of Martin's doings to
+      them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Be that as it may, there are no flags and guns for him as he comes
+      creeping in up the river; his one anxiety is to avoid the Admiral and to
+      get home as quickly and quietly as he can. For he is ill, poor Martin
+      Alonso; whether from a broken heart, as the early historians say, or from
+      pure chagrin and disappointment, or, as is more likely, from some illness
+      contracted on the voyage, it is impossible to say. He has endured his
+      troubles and hardships like all the rest of them; no less skilfully than
+      Columbus has he won through that terrible tempest of February; and his
+      foolish and dishonest conduct has deprived him not only of the rewards
+      that he tried to steal, but of those which would otherwise have been his
+      by right. He creeps quietly ashore and to his home, where at any rate we
+      may hope that there is some welcome for him; takes to his bed, turns his
+      face to the wall; and dies in a few days. So farewell to Martin Alonso,
+      who has borne us company thus far. He did not fail in the great matters of
+      pluck and endurance and nautical judgment, but only in the small matters
+      of honesty and decent manly conduct. We will not weep for Martin Alonso;
+      we will make our farewells in silence, and leave his deathbed undisturbed
+      by any more accusations or reproaches.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="ch4b" id="ch4b"></a>CHAPTER IV.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE HOUR OF TRIUMPH
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From the moment when Columbus set foot on Spanish soil in the spring of
+      1493 he was surrounded by a fame and glory which, although they were
+      transient, were of a splendour such as few other men can have ever
+      experienced. He had not merely discovered a country, he had discovered a
+      world. He had not merely made a profitable expedition; he had brought the
+      promise of untold wealth to the kingdom of Spain. He had not merely made
+      himself the master of savage tribes; he had conquered the supernatural,
+      and overcome for ever those powers of darkness that had been thought to
+      brood over the vast Atlantic. He had sailed away in obscurity, he had
+      returned in fame; he had departed under a cloud of scepticism and
+      ridicule, he had come again in power and glory. He had sailed from Palos
+      as a seeker after hidden wealth, hidden knowledge; he returned as teacher,
+      discoverer, benefactor. The whole of Spain rang with his fame, and the
+      echoes of it spread to Portugal, France, England, Germany, and Italy; and
+      it reached the ears of his own family, who had now left the Vico Dritto di
+      Ponticello in Genoa and were living at Savona.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His life ashore in the first weeks following his return was a succession
+      of triumphs and ceremonials. His first care on landing had been to go with
+      the whole of his crew to the church of Saint George, where a Te Deum was
+      sung in honour of his return; and afterwards to perform those vows that he
+      had made at sea in the hour of danger. There was a certain amount of
+      business to transact at Palos in connection with the paying of the ships'
+      crews, writing of reports to the Sovereigns, and so forth; and it is
+      likely that he stayed with his friends at the monastery of La Rabida while
+      this was being done. The Court was at Barcelona; and it was probably only
+      a sense of his own great dignity and importance that prevented Christopher
+      from setting off on the long journey immediately. But he who had made so
+      many pilgrimages to Court as a suitor could revel in a position that made
+      it possible for him to hang back, and to be pressed and invited; and so
+      when his business at Palos was finished he sent a messenger with his
+      letters and reports to Barcelona, and himself, with his crew and his
+      Indians and all his trophies, departed for Seville, where he arrived on
+      Palm Sunday.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His entrance into that city was only a foretaste of the glory in which he
+      was to move across the whole of Spain. He was met at the gates of the city
+      by a squadron of cavalry commanded by an envoy sent by Queen Isabella; and
+      a procession was formed of members of the crew carrying parrots, alive and
+      stuffed, fruits, vegetables, and various other products of the New World.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a prominent place came the Indians, or rather four of them, for one had
+      died on the day they entered Palos and three were too ill to leave that
+      town; but the ones that took part in the procession got all the more
+      attention and admiration. The streets of Seville were crowded; crowded
+      also were the windows, balconies, and roofs. The Admiral was entertained
+      at the house of the Count of Cifuentes, where his little museum of dead
+      and live curiosities was also accommodated, and where certain favoured
+      visitors were admitted to view it. His two sons, Diego and Ferdinand, were
+      sent from Cordova to join him; and perhaps he found time to visit Beatriz,
+      although there is no record of his having been to Cordova or of her having
+      come to Seville.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meanwhile his letters and messengers to the King and Queen had produced
+      their due effect. The almost incredible had come to pass, and they saw
+      themselves the monarchs not merely of Spain, but of a new Empire that
+      might be as vast as Europe and Africa together. On the 30th of March they
+      despatched a special messenger with a letter to Columbus, whose eyes must
+      have sparkled and heart expanded when he read the superscription: "From
+      the King and Queen to Don Christoval Colon, their Admiral of the Ocean
+      Seas and Viceroy and Governor of the Islands discovered in the Indies." No
+      lack of titles and dignities now! Their Majesties express a profound sense
+      of his ability and distinction, of the greatness of his services to them,
+      to the Church, and to God Himself. They hope that he will lose no time,
+      but repair to Barcelona immediately, so that they can have the pleasure of
+      hearing from his own lips an account of his wonderful expedition, and of
+      discussing with him the preparations that must immediately be set on foot
+      to fit out a new one. On receiving this letter Christopher immediately
+      drew up a list of what he thought necessary for the new expedition and,
+      collecting all his retinue and his museum of specimens, started by road
+      for Barcelona.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Every one in Spain had by this time heard more or less exaggerated
+      accounts of the discoveries, and the excitement in the towns and villages
+      through which he passed was extreme. Wherever he went he was greeted and
+      feasted like a king returning from victorious wars; the people lined the
+      streets of the towns and villages, and hung out banners, and gazed their
+      fill at the Indians and at the strange sun-burned faces of the crew. At
+      Barcelona, where they arrived towards the end of April, the climax of
+      these glittering dignities was reached. When the King and Queen heard that
+      Columbus was approaching the town they had their throne prepared under a
+      magnificent pavilion, and in the hot sunshine of that April day they sat
+      and waited the&mdash;coming of the great man. A glittering troop of
+      cavalry had been sent out to meet him, and at the gates of the town a
+      procession was formed similar to that at Seville. He had now six natives
+      with him, who occupied an important place in the procession; sailors also,
+      who carried baskets of fruit and vegetables from Espanola, with stuffed
+      birds and animals, and a monstrous lizard held aloft on a stick. The
+      Indians were duly decked out in all their paint and feathers; but if they
+      were a wonder and marvel to the people of Spain, what must Spain have been
+      to them with its great buildings and cities, its carriages and horses, its
+      glittering dresses and armours, its splendour and luxury! We have no
+      record of what the Indians thought, only of what the crowd thought who
+      gaped upon them and upon the gaudy parrots that screeched and fluttered
+      also in the procession. Columbus came riding on horseback, as befitted a
+      great Admiral and Viceroy, surrounded by his pilots and principal
+      officers; and followed by men bearing golden belts, golden masks, nuggets
+      of gold and dust of gold, and preceded by heralds, pursuivants, and
+      mace-bearers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What a return for the man who three years before had been pointed at and
+      laughed to scorn in this same brilliant society! The crowds pressed so
+      closely that the procession could hardly get through the streets; the
+      whole population was there to witness it; and the windows and balconies
+      and roofs of the houses, as well as the streets themselves, were thronged
+      with a gaily dressed and wildly excited crowd. At length the procession
+      reaches the presence of the King and Queen and, crowning and unprecedented
+      honour! as the Admiral comes before them Ferdinand and Isabella rise to
+      greet him. Under their own royal canopy a seat is waiting for him; and
+      when he has made his ceremonial greeting he is invited to sit in their
+      presence and give an account of his voyage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He is fully equal to the situation; settles down to do himself and his
+      subject justice; begins, we may be sure, with a preamble about the
+      providence of God and its wisdom and consistency in preserving the
+      narrator and preparing his life for this great deed; putting in a deal of
+      scientific talk which had in truth nothing to do with the event, but was
+      always applied to it in Columbus's writings from this date onwards; and
+      going on to describe the voyage, the sea of weeds, the landfall, his
+      intercourse with the natives, their aptitude for labour and Christianity,
+      and the hopes he has of their early conversion to the Catholic Church. And
+      then follows a long description of the wonderful climate, "like May in
+      Andalusia," the noble rivers, and gorgeous scenery, the trees and fruits
+      and flowers and singing birds; the spices and the cotton; and chief of
+      all, the vast stores of gold and pearls of which the Admiral had brought
+      home specimens. At various stages in his narrative he produces
+      illustrations; now a root of rhubarb or allspice; now a raw nugget of
+      gold; now a piece of gold laboured into a mask or belt; now a native
+      decorated with the barbaric ornaments that were the fashion in Espanola.
+      These things, says Columbus, are mere first-fruits of the harvest that is
+      to come; the things which he, like the dove that had flown across the sea
+      from the Ark and brought back an olive leaf in its mouth, has brought back
+      across the stormy seas to that Ark of civilisation from which he had flown
+      forth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was to Columbus an opportunity of stretching his visionary wings and
+      creating with pompous words and images a great halo round himself of
+      dignity and wonder and divine distinction,&mdash;an opportunity such as he
+      loved, and such as he never failed to make use of.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Sovereigns were delighted and profoundly impressed. Columbus wound up
+      his address with an eloquent peroration concerning the glory to
+      Christendom of these new discoveries; and there followed an impressive
+      silence, during which the Sovereigns sank on their knees and raised hands
+      and tearful eyes to heaven, an example in which they were followed by the
+      whole of the assembly; and an appropriate gesture enough, seeing what was
+      to come of it all. The choir of the Chapel Royal sang a solemn Te Deum on
+      the spot; and the Sovereigns and nobles, bishops, archbishops, grandees,
+      hidalgos, chamberlains, treasurers, chancellors and other courtiers, being
+      exhausted by these emotions, retired to dinner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During his stay at Barcelona Columbus was the guest of the
+      Cardinal-Archbishop of Toledo, and moved thus in an atmosphere of combined
+      temporal and spiritual dignity such as his soul loved. Very agreeable
+      indeed to him was the honour shown to him at this time. Deep down in his
+      heart there was a secret nerve of pride and vanity which throughout his
+      life hitherto had been continually mortified and wounded; but he was able
+      now to indulge his appetite for outward pomp and honour as much as he
+      pleased. When King Ferdinand went out to ride Columbus would be seen
+      riding on one side of him, the young Prince John riding on the other side;
+      and everywhere, when he moved among the respectful and admiring throng,
+      his grave face was seen to be wreathed in complacent smiles. His hair,
+      which had turned white soon after he was thirty, gave him a dignified and
+      almost venerable appearance, although he was only in his forty-third year;
+      and combined with his handsome and commanding presence to excite immense
+      enthusiasm among the Spaniards. They forgot for the moment what they had
+      formerly remembered and were to remember again&mdash;that he was a
+      foreigner, an Italian, a man of no family and of poor origin. They saw in
+      him the figure-head of a new empire and a new glory, an emblem of power
+      and riches, of the dominion which their proud souls loved; and so there
+      beamed upon him the brief fickle sunshine of their smiles and favour,
+      which he in his delusion regarded as an earnest of their permanent honour
+      and esteem.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is almost always thus with a man not born to such dignities, and who
+      comes by them through his own efforts and labours. No one would grudge him
+      the short-lived happiness of these summer weeks; but although he believed
+      himself to be as happy as a man can be, he appears to quietly
+      contemplating eyes less happy and fortunate than when he stood alone on
+      the deck of his ship, surrounded by an untrustworthy crew, prevailing by
+      his own unaided efforts over the difficulties and dangers with which he
+      was surrounded. Court functions and processions, and the companionship of
+      kings and cardinals, are indeed no suitable reward for the kind of work
+      that he did. Courtly dignities are suited to courtly services; but they
+      are no suitable crown for rough labour and hardship at sea, or for the
+      fulfilment of a man's self by lights within him; no suitable crown for any
+      solitary labour whatsoever, which must always be its own and only reward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is to this period of splendour that the story of the egg, which is to
+      some people the only familiar incident in Columbian biography, is
+      attributed. The story is that at a banquet given by the Cardinal-Arch
+      bishop the conversation ran, as it always did in those days when he was
+      present, on the subject of the Admiral's discoveries; and that one of the
+      guests remarked that it was all very well for Columbus to have done what
+      he did, but that in a country like Spain, where there were so many men
+      learned in science and cosmography, and many able mariners besides, some
+      one else would certainly have been found who would have done the same
+      thing. Whereupon Columbus, calling for an egg, laid a wager that none of
+      the company but him self could make it stand on its end without support.
+      The egg was brought and passed round, and every one tried to make it stand
+      on end, but without success. When it came to Columbus he cracked the shell
+      at one end, making a flat surface on which the egg stood upright; thus
+      demonstrating that a thing might be wonderful, not because it was
+      difficult or impossible, but merely because no one had ever thought of
+      doing it before. A sufficiently inane story, and by no means certainly
+      true; but there is enough character in this little feat, ponderous,
+      deliberate, pompous, ostentatious, and at bottom a trick and deceitful
+      quibble, to make it accord with the grandiloquent public manner of
+      Columbus, and to make it easily believable of one who chose to show
+      himself in his speech and writings so much more meanly and pretentiously
+      than he showed himself in the true acts and business of his life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But pomp and parade were not the only occupation of these Barcelona days.
+      There were long consultations with Ferdinand and Isabella about the
+      colonisation of the new lands; there were intrigues, and parrying of
+      intrigues, between the Spanish and Portuguese Courts on the subject of the
+      discoveries and of the representative rights of the two nations to be the
+      religious saviours of the New World. The Pope, to whose hands the heathen
+      were entrusted by God to be handed for an inheritance to the highest and
+      most religious bidder, had at that time innocently divided them into two
+      portions, to wit: heathen to the south of Spain and Portugal, and heathen
+      to the west of those places. By the Bull of 1438, granted by Pope Martin
+      V., the heathen to the west had been given to the Spanish, and the heathen
+      to the south to the Portuguese, and the two crowns had in 1479 come to a
+      working agreement. Now, however, the existence of more heathen to the west
+      of the Azores introduced a new complication, and Ferdinand sent a message
+      to Pope Alexander VI. praying for a confirmation of the Spanish title to
+      the new discoveries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This Pope, who was a native of Aragon and had been a subject of Ferdinand,
+      was a stolid, perverse, and stubborn being; so much is advertised in his
+      low forehead, impudent prominent nose, thick sensual lips, and stout bull
+      neck. This Pope considers the matter; considers, by such lights as he has,
+      to whom he shall entrust the souls of these new heathen; considers which
+      country, Spain or Portugal, is most likely to hold and use the same for
+      the increase of the Christian faith in general, the furtherance of the
+      Holy Catholic Church in special, and the aggrandisement of Popes in
+      particular; and shrewdly decides that the country in which the.
+      Inquisition can flourish is the country to whom the heathen souls should
+      be entrusted. He therefore issues a Bull, dated May 3, 1493, granting to
+      the Spanish the possession of all lands, not occupied by Christian powers,
+      that lie west of a meridian drawn one hundred leagues to the westward of
+      the Azores, and to the Portuguese possession of all similar lands lying to
+      the eastward of that line. He sleeps upon this Bull, and has inspiration;
+      and on the morrow, May 4th, issues another Bull, drawing a line from the
+      arctic to the antarctic pole, and granting to Spain all heathen
+      inheritance to the westward of the same. The Pope, having signed this
+      Bull, considers it further-assisted, no doubt, by the Portuguese
+      Ambassador at the Vatican, to whom it has been shown; realises that in the
+      wording of the Bull an injustice has been done to Portugal, since Spain is
+      allowed to fix very much at her own convenience the point at which the
+      line drawn from pole to pole shall cut the equator; and also because,
+      although Spain is given all the lands in existence within her territory,
+      Portugal is only given the lands which she may actually have occupied.
+      Even the legal mind of the Pope, although much drowsed and blunted by
+      brutish excesses, discerns faultiness in this document; and consequently
+      on the same day issues a third Bull, in which the injustice to Portugal is
+      redressed. Nothing so easy, thinks the Pope, as to issue Bulls; if you
+      make a mistake in one Bull, issue another; and, having issued three Bulls
+      in twenty-four hours, he desists for the present, having divided the
+      earthly globe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus easy it is for a Pope to draw lines from pole to pole, and across the
+      deep of the sea. Yet the poles sleep still in their icy virginal sanctity,
+      and the blue waves through which that papal line passes shift and shimmer
+      and roll in their free salt loneliness, unaffected by his demarcation; the
+      heathen also, it appears, since that distant day, have had something to
+      say to their disposition. If he had slept upon it another night, poor
+      Pope, it might have occurred to him that west and east might meet on a
+      meridian situated elsewhere on the globe than one hundred miles west of
+      the Azores; and that the Portuguese, who for the moment had nothing
+      heathen except Africa left to them, might according to his demarcation
+      strike a still richer vein of heathendom than that granted to Spain. But
+      the holy Pontiff, bull neck, low forehead, impudent prominent nose, and
+      sensual lips notwithstanding, is exhausted by his cosmographical efforts,
+      and he lets it rest at that. Later, when Spain discovers that her
+      privileges have been abated, he will have to issue another Bull; but not
+      to-day. Sufficient unto the day are the Bulls thereof. For the moment King
+      proposes and Pope disposes; but the matter lies ultimately in the hands of
+      the two eternal protagonists, man and God.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the meantime here are six heathen alive and well, or at any rate well
+      enough to support, willy-nilly, the rite of holy baptism. They must have
+      been sufficiently dazed and bewildered by all that had happened to them
+      since they were taken on board the Admiral's ship, and God alone knows
+      what they thought of it all, or whether they thought anything more than
+      the parrots that screamed and fluttered and winked circular eyes in the
+      procession with them. Doubtless they were willing enough; and indeed,
+      after all they had come through, a little cold water could not do them any
+      harm. So baptized they were in Barcelona; pompously baptized with infinite
+      state and ceremony, the King and Queen and Prince Juan officiating as
+      sponsors. Queen Isabella, after the manner of queens, took a kindly
+      feminine interest in these heathen, and in their brethren across the sea.
+      She had seen a good deal of conquest, and knew her Spaniard pretty
+      intimately; and doubtless her maternal heart had some misgivings about the
+      ultimate happiness of the gentle, handsome creatures who lived in the
+      sunshine in that distant place. She made their souls her especial care,
+      and honestly believed that by providing for their spiritual conversion she
+      was doing them the greatest service in her power. She provided from her
+      own private chapel vestments and altar furniture for the mission church in
+      Espanola; she had the six exiles in Barcelona instructed under her eye;
+      and she gave Columbus special orders to inflict severe punishments on any
+      one who should offer the natives violence or injustice of any kind. It
+      must be remembered to her credit that in after days, when slavery and an
+      intolerable bloody and brutish oppression had turned the paradise of
+      Espanola into a shambles, she fought almost singlehanded, and with an
+      ethical sense far in advance of her day, against the system of slavery
+      practised by Spain upon the inhabitants of the New World.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The dignities that had been provisionally granted to Columbus before his
+      departure on the first voyage were now elaborately confirmed; and in
+      addition he was given another title&mdash;that of Captain-General of the
+      large fleet which was to be fitted out to sail to the new colonies. He was
+      entrusted with the royal seal, which gave him the right to grant letters
+      patent, to issue commissions, and to Appoint deputies in the royal name. A
+      coat-of-arms was also granted to him in which, in its original form, the
+      lion and castle of Leon and Castile were quartered with islands of the sea
+      or on a field azure, and five anchors or on a field azure. This was
+      changed from time to time, chiefly by Columbus himself, who afterwards
+      added a continent to the islands, and modified the blazonry of the lion
+      and castle to agree with those on the royal arms&mdash;a piece of
+      ignorance and childish arrogance which was quite characteristic of him.
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        [A motto has since been associated with the coat-of-arms, although it is
+        not certain that Columbus adopted it in his lifetime. In one form it
+        reads:
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "Por Castilla e por Leon Nueva Mundo hallo Colon."]
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      (For Castile and Leon Columbus found a New World.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And in the other:
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "A Castilla y a Leon Nuevo Mundo dio Colon."
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      (To Castile and Leon Columbus gave a New World.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Equally characteristic and less excusable was his acceptance of the
+      pension of ten thousand maravedis which had been offered to the member of
+      the expedition who should first sight land. Columbus was granted a very
+      large gratuity on his arrival in Barcelona, and even taking the product of
+      the islands at a tenth part of their value as estimated by him, he still
+      had every right to suppose himself one of the richest men in Spain. Yet he
+      accepted this paltry pension of L8. 6s. 8d. in our modern money (of 1900),
+      which, taking the increase in the purchasing power of money at an extreme
+      estimate, would not be more than the equivalent of $4000 now. Now Columbus
+      had not been the first person to see land; he saw the light, but it was
+      Rodrigo de Triana, the look-out man on the Pinta, who first saw the actual
+      land. Columbus in his narrative to the King and Queen would be sure to
+      make much of the seeing of the light, and not so much of the actual
+      sighting of land; and he was on the spot, and the reward was granted to
+      him. Even if we assume that in strict equity Columbus was entitled to it,
+      it was at least a matter capable of argument, if only Rodrigo de Triana
+      had been there to argue it; and what are we to think of the Admiral of the
+      Ocean Seas and Viceroy of the Indies who thus takes what can only be
+      called a mean advantage of a poor seaman in his employ? It would have been
+      a competence and a snug little fortune to Rodrigo de Triana; it was a mere
+      flea-bite to a man who was thinking in eighth parts of continents. It may
+      be true, as Oviedo alleges, that Columbus transferred it to Beatriz
+      Enriquez; but he had no right to provide for her out of money that in all
+      equity and decency ought to have gone to another and a poorer man. His
+      biographers, some of whom have vied with his canonisers in insisting upon
+      seeing virtue in his every action, have gone to all kinds of ridiculous
+      extremes in accounting for this piece of meanness. Irving says that it was
+      "a subject in which his whole ambition was involved"; but a plain person
+      will regard it as an instance of greed and love of money. We must not
+      shirk facts like this if we wish to know the man as he really was. That he
+      was capable of kindness and generosity, and that he was in the main
+      kind-hearted, we have fortunately no reason to doubt; and if I dwell on
+      some of his less amiable characteristics it is with no desire to magnify
+      them out of their due proportion. They are part of that side of him that
+      lay in shadow, as some side of each one of us lies; for not all by light
+      nor all by shade, but by light and shade combined, is the image of a man
+      made visible to us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is quite of a piece with the character of Columbus that while he was
+      writing a receipt for the look-out man's money and thinking what a pretty
+      gift it would make for Beatriz Enriquez he was planning a splendid and
+      spectacular thank-offering for all the dignities to which he had been
+      raised; and, brooding upon the vast wealth that was now to be his, that he
+      should register a vow to furnish within seven years an expedition of four
+      thousand horse and fifty thousand foot for the rescue of the Holy
+      Sepulchre, and a similar force within five years after the first if it
+      should be necessary. It was probable that the vow was a provisional one,
+      and that its performance was to be contingent on his actual receipt and
+      possession of the expected money; for as we know, there was no money and
+      no expedition. The vow was in effect a kind of religious flourish much
+      beloved by Columbus, undertaken seriously and piously enough, but
+      belonging rather to his public than to his private side. A much more
+      simple and truly pious act of his was, not the promising of visionary but
+      the sending of actual money to his old father in Savona, which he did
+      immediately after his arrival in Spain. The letter which he wrote with
+      that kindly remittance, not being couched in the pompous terms which he
+      thought suitable for princes, and doubtless giving a brief homely account
+      of what he had done, would, if we could come by it, be a document beyond
+      all price; but like every other record of his family life it has utterly
+      perished.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He wrote also from Barcelona to his two brothers, Bartholomew and Giacomo,
+      or James, since we may as well give him the English equivalent of his
+      name. Bartholomew was in France, whither he had gone some time after his
+      return from his memorable voyage with Bartholomew Diaz; he was employed as
+      a map-maker at the court of Anne de Beaujeu, who was reigning in the
+      temporary absence of her brother Charles VIII. Columbus's letter reached
+      him, but much too late for him to be able to join in the second
+      expedition; in fact he did not reach Seville until five months after it
+      had sailed. James, however, who was now twenty-five years old, was still
+      at Savona; he, like Columbus, had been apprenticed to his father, but had
+      apparently remained at home earning his living either as a wool-weaver or
+      merchant. He was a quiet, discreet young fellow, who never pushed himself
+      forward very much, wore very plain clothes, and was apparently much
+      overawed by the grandeur and dignity of his elder brother. He was,
+      however, given a responsible post in the new expedition, and soon had his
+      fill of adventure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The business of preparing for the new expedition was now put in hand, and
+      Columbus, having taken leave of Ferdinand and Isabella, went to Seville to
+      superintend the preparations. All the ports in Andalusia were ordered to
+      supply such vessels as might be required at a reasonable cost, and the old
+      order empowering the Admiral to press mariners into the service was
+      renewed. But this time it was unnecessary; the difficulty now was rather
+      to keep down the number of applicants for berths in the expedition, and to
+      select from among the crowd of adventurers who offered themselves those
+      most suitable for the purposes of the new colony. In this work Columbus
+      was assisted by a commissioner whom the Sovereigns had appointed to
+      superintend the fitting out of the expedition. This man was a cleric, Juan
+      Rodriguez de Fonseca, Archdeacon of Seville, a person of excellent family
+      and doubtless of high piety, and of a surpassing shrewdness for this work.
+      He was of a type very commonly produced in Spain at this period; a very
+      able organiser, crafty and competent, but not altogether trustworthy on a
+      point of honour. Like so many ecclesiastics of this stamp, he lived for as
+      much power and influence as he could achieve; and though he was afterwards
+      bishop of three sees successively, and became Patriarch of the Indies, he
+      never let go his hold on temporal affairs. He began by being jealous of
+      Columbus, and by objecting to the personal retinue demanded by the
+      Admiral; and in this, if I know anything of the Admiral, he was probably
+      justified. The matter was referred to the Sovereigns, who ordered Fonseca
+      to carry out the Admiral's wishes; and the two were immediately at
+      loggerheads. When the Council for the Indies was afterwards formed Fonseca
+      became head, of it, and had much power to make things pleasant or
+      otherwise for Columbus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It became necessary now to raise a considerable sum of money for the new
+      expedition. Two-thirds of the ecclesiastical tithes were appropriated, and
+      a large proportion of the confiscated property of the Jews who had been
+      banished from Spain the year before; but this was not enough; and five
+      million maravedis were borrowed from the Duke of Medina Sidonia in order
+      to complete the financial supplies necessary for this very costly
+      expedition. There was a treasurer, Francisco Pinelo, and an accountant,
+      Juan de Soria, who had charge of all the financial arrangements; but the
+      whole of the preparations were conducted on a ruinously expensive scale,
+      owing to the haste which the diplomatic relations with Portugal made
+      necessary. The provisioning was done by a Florentine merchant named
+      Juonato Beradi, who had an assistant named Amerigo Vespucci&mdash;who, by
+      a strange accident, was afterwards to give his name to the continent of
+      the New World.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While these preparations were going on the game of diplomacy was being
+      played between the Courts of Spain and Portugal. King John of Portugal had
+      the misfortune to be badly advised; and he was persuaded that, although he
+      had lost the right to the New World through his rejection of Columbus's
+      services when they were first offered to him, he might still discover it
+      for himself, relying for protection on the vague wording of the papal
+      Bulls. He immediately began to prepare a fleet, nominally to go to the
+      coast of Africa, but really to visit the newly discovered lands in the
+      west. Hearing of these preparations, King Ferdinand sent an Ambassador to
+      the Portuguese Court; and King John agreed also to appoint an Ambassador
+      to discuss the whole matter of the line of demarcation, and in the
+      meantime not to allow any of his ships to sail to the west for a period of
+      sixty days after his Ambassador had reached Barcelona. There followed a
+      good deal of diplomatic sharp practice; the Portuguese bribing the Spanish
+      officials to give them information as to what was going on, and the
+      Spaniards furnishing their envoys with double sets of letters and
+      documents so that they could be prepared to counter any movement on the
+      part of King John. The idea of the Portuguese was that the line of
+      demarcation should be a parallel rather than a meridian; and that
+      everything north of the Canaries should belong to Spain and everything
+      south to Portugal; but this would never do from the Spanish point of view.
+      The fact that a proposal had come from Portugal, however, gave Ferdinand
+      an opportunity of delaying the diplomatic proceedings until his own
+      expedition was actually ready to set sail; and he wrote to Columbus
+      repeatedly, urging him to make all possible haste with his preparations.
+      In the meantime he despatched a solemn embassy to Portugal, the purport of
+      which, much beclouded and delayed by preliminary and impossible proposals,
+      was to submit the whole question to the Pope for arbitration. And all the
+      time he was busy petitioning the Pope to restore to Spain those
+      concessions granted in the second Bull, but taken away again in the third.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This, being much egged on to it, the Pope ultimately did; waking up on
+      September 26th, the day after Columbus's departure, and issuing another
+      Bull in which the Spanish Sovereigns were given all lands and islands,
+      discovered or not discovered, which might be found by sailing west and
+      south. Four Bulls; and after puzzling over them for a year, the Kings of
+      Spain and Portugal decided to make their own Bull, and abide by it, which,
+      having appointed commissioners, they did on June 7, 1494., when by the
+      Treaty of Tordecillas the line of demarcation was finally fixed to pass
+      from north to south through a point 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde
+      Islands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="ch5b" id="ch5b"></a>CHAPTER V.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      GREAT EXPECTATIONS
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      July, August, and September in the year 1493 were busy months for
+      Columbus, who had to superintend the buying or building and fitting of
+      ships, the choice and collection of stores, and the selection of his
+      company. There were fourteen caravels, some of them of low tonnage and
+      light draught, and suitable for the navigation of rivers; and three large
+      carracks, or ships of three to four hundred tons. The number of volunteers
+      asked for was a thousand, but at least two thousand applied for permission
+      to go with the expedition, and ultimately some fourteen or fifteen hundred
+      did actually go, one hundred stowaways being included in the number.
+      Unfortunately these adventurers were of a class compared with whom even
+      the cut-throats and gaol-birds of the humble little expedition that had
+      sailed the year before from Palos were useful and efficient. The universal
+      impression about the new lands in the West was that they were places where
+      fortunes could be picked up like dirt, and where the very shores were
+      strewn with gold and precious stones; and every idle scamp in Spain who
+      had a taste for adventure and a desire to get a great deal of money
+      without working for it was anxious to visit the new territory. The result
+      was that instead of artisans, farmers, craftsmen, and colonists, Columbus
+      took with him a company at least half of which consisted of exceedingly
+      well-bred young gentlemen who had no intention of doing any work, but who
+      looked forward to a free and lawless holiday and an early return crowned
+      with wealth and fortune. Although the expedition was primarily for the
+      establishment of a colony, no Spanish women accompanied it; and this was
+      but one of a succession of mistakes and stupidities.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Admiral, however, was not to be so lonely a person as he had been on
+      his first voyage; friends of his own choice and of a rank that made
+      intimacy possible even with the Captain-General were to accompany him.
+      There was James his brother; there was Friar Bernardo Buil, a Benedictine
+      monk chosen by the Pope to be his apostolic vicar in the New World; there
+      was Alonso de Ojeda, a handsome young aristocrat, cousin to the Inquisitor
+      of Spain, who was distinguished for his dash and strength and pluck; an
+      ideal adventurer, the idol of his fellows, and one of whose daring any
+      number of credible and incredible tales were told. There was Pedro
+      Margarite, a well-born Aragonese, who was destined afterwards to cause
+      much trouble; there was Juan Ponce de Leon, the discoverer of Florida;
+      there was Juan de La Cosa, Columbus's faithful pilot on the Santa Maria on
+      his first voyage; there was Pedro de Las Casas, whose son, at this time a
+      student in Seville, was afterwards to become the historian of the New
+      World and the champion of decency and humanity there. There was also
+      Doctor Chanca, a Court physician who accompanied the expedition not only
+      in his professional capacity but also because his knowledge of botany
+      would enable him to make, a valuable report on the vegetables and fruits
+      of the New World; there was Antonio de Marchena, one of Columbus's oldest
+      friends, who went as astronomer to the expedition. And there was one Coma,
+      who would have remained unknown to this day but that he wrote an
+      exceedingly elegant letter to his friend Nicolo Syllacio in Italy,
+      describing in flowery language the events of the second voyage; which
+      letter, and one written by Doctor Chanca, are the only records of the
+      outward voyage that exist. The journal kept by Columbus on this voyage has
+      been lost, and no copy of it remains.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Columbus settled at Cadiz during the time in which he was engaged upon the
+      fitting out of the expedition. It was no light matter to superintend the
+      appointment of the crews and passengers, every one of whom was probably
+      interviewed by Columbus himself, and at the same time to keep level with
+      Archdeacon Fonseca. This official, it will be remembered, had a
+      disagreement with Columbus as to the number of personal attendants he was
+      to be allowed; and on the matter being referred to the King and Queen they
+      granted Columbus the ridiculous establishment of ten footmen and twenty
+      other servants.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Naturally Fonseca held up his hands and wondered where it would all end.
+      It was no easy matter, moreover, on receipt of letters from the Queen
+      about small matters which occurred to her from time to time, to answer
+      them fully and satisfactorily, and at the same time to make out all the
+      lists of things that would likely be required both for provisioning the
+      voyage and establishing a colony. The provisions carried in those days
+      were not very different from the provisions carried on deep-sea vessels at
+      the present time&mdash;except that canned meat, for which, with its
+      horrors and conveniences, the world may hold Columbus responsible, had not
+      then been invented. Unmilled wheat, salted flour, and hard biscuit formed
+      the bulk of the provisions; salted pork was the staple&mdash;of the meat
+      supply, with an alternative of salted fish; while cheese, peas, lentils
+      and beans, oil and vinegar, were also carried, and honey and almonds and
+      raisins for the cabin table. Besides water a large provision of rough wine
+      in casks was taken, and the dietary scale would probably compare
+      favourably with that of the British and American mercantile service sixty
+      years ago. In addition a great quantity of seeds of all kinds were taken
+      for planting in Espanola; sugar cane, rice, and vines also, and an
+      equipment of agricultural implements, as well as a selection of horses and
+      other domestic animals for breeding purposes. Twenty mounted soldiers were
+      also carried, and the thousand and one impedimenta of naval, military, and
+      domestic existence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the middle of all these preparations news came that a Portuguese
+      caravel had set sail from Madeira in the direction of the new lands.
+      Columbus immediately reported this to the King and Queen, and suggested
+      detaching part of his fleet to pursue her; but instead King John was
+      communicated with, and he declared that if the vessel had sailed as
+      alleged it was without his knowledge and permission, and that he would
+      send three ships after her to recall her&mdash;an answer which had to be
+      accepted, although it opened up rather alarming possibilities of four
+      Portuguese vessels reaching the new islands instead of one. Whether these
+      ships ever really sailed or not, or whether the rumour was merely a rumour
+      and an alarm, is not certain; but Columbus was ordered to push on his
+      preparations with the greatest possible speed, to avoid Portuguese waters,
+      but to capture any vessels which he might find in the part of the ocean
+      allotted to Spain, and to inflict summary punishment on the crews. As it
+      turned out he never saw any Portuguese vessels, and before he had returned
+      to Spain again the two nations had come to an amicable agreement quite
+      independently of the Pope and his Bulls. Spain undertook to make no
+      discoveries to the east of the line of demarcation, and Portugal none to
+      the west of it; and so the matter remained until the inhabitants of the
+      discovered lands began to have a voice in their own affairs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With all his occupations Columbus found time for some amenities, and he
+      had his two sons, Diego and Ferdinand, staying with him at Cadiz. Great
+      days they must have been for these two boys; days filled with excitement
+      and commotion, with the smell of tar and the loading of the innumerable
+      and fascinating materials of life; and many a journey they must have made
+      on the calm waters of Cadiz harbour from ship to ship, dreaming of the
+      distant seas that these high, quaintly carven prows would soon be
+      treading, and the wonderful bays and harbours far away across the world
+      into the waters of which their anchors were to plunge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      September 24th, the day before the fleet sailed, was observed as a
+      festival; and in full ceremonial the blessing of God upon the enterprise
+      was invoked. The ships were hung with flags and with dyed silks and
+      tapestries; every vessel flew the royal standard; and the waters of the
+      harbour resounded with the music of trumpets and harps and pipes and the
+      thunder of artillery. Some Venetian galleys happened to enter the harbour
+      as the fleet was preparing to weigh, and they joined in the salutes and
+      demonstrations which signalled the departure. The Admiral hoisted his flag
+      on the 'Marigalante', one of the largest of the ships; and somewhere among
+      the smaller caravels the little Nina, re-caulked and re-fitted, was also
+      preparing to brave again the dangers over which she had so staunchly
+      prevailed. At sunrise on the 25th the fleet weighed anchor, with all the
+      circumstance and bustle and apparent confusion that accompanies the
+      business of sailing-ships getting under weigh. Up to the last minute
+      Columbus had his two sons on board with him, and it was not until the
+      ripples were beginning to talk under the bow of the Marigalante that he
+      said good-bye to them and saw them rowed ashore. In bright weather, with a
+      favourable breeze, in glory and dignity, and with high hopes in his heart,
+      the Admiral set out once more on the long sea-road.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="ch6b" id="ch6b"></a>CHAPTER VI.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE SECOND VOYAGE
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The second voyage of Columbus, profoundly interesting as it must have been
+      to him and to the numerous company to whom these waters were a strange and
+      new region, has not the romantic interest for us that his first voyage
+      had. To the faith that guided him on his first venture knowledge and
+      certainty had now been added; he was going by a familiar road; for to the
+      mariner a road that he has once followed is a road that he knows. As a
+      matter of fact, however, this second voyage was a far greater test of
+      Columbus's skill as a navigator than the first voyage had been. If his
+      navigation had been more haphazard he might never have found again the
+      islands of his first discovery; and the fact that he made a landfall
+      exactly where he wished to make it shows a high degree of exactness in his
+      method of ascertaining latitude, and is another instance of his skill in
+      estimating his dead-reckoning. If he had been equipped with a modern
+      quadrant and Greenwich chronometers he could not have made a quicker
+      voyage nor a more exact landfall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It will be remembered that he had been obliged to hurry away from Espanola
+      without visiting the islands of the Caribs as he had wished to do. He knew
+      that these islands lay to the south-east of Espanola, and on his second
+      voyage he therefore took a course rather more southerly in order, to make
+      them instead of Guanahani or Espanola. From the day they left Spain his
+      ships had pleasant light airs from the east and north-east which wafted
+      them steadily but slowly on their course. In a week they had reached the
+      Grand Canary, where they paused to make some repairs to one of the ships
+      which, was leaking. Two days later they anchored at Gomera, and loaded up
+      with such supplies as could be procured there better than in Spain. Pigs,
+      goats, sheep and cows were taken on board; domestic fowls also, and a
+      variety of orchard plants and fruit seeds, as well as a provision of
+      oranges, lemons, and melons. They sailed from Gomera on the 7th of
+      October, but the winds were so light that it was a week later before they
+      had passed Ferro and were once more in the open Atlantic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On setting his course from Ferro Columbus issued sealed instructions to
+      the captain of each ship which, in the event of the fleet becoming
+      scattered, would guide them to the harbour of La Navidad in Espanola; but
+      the captains had strict orders not to open these instructions unless their
+      ships became separated from the fleet, as Columbus still wished to hold
+      for himself the secret of this mysterious road to the west. There were no
+      disasters, however, and no separations. The trade wind blew soft and
+      steady, wafting them south and west; and because of the more southerly
+      course steered on this voyage they did not even encounter the weed of the
+      Sargasso Sea, which they left many leagues on their starboard hand. The
+      only incident of the voyage was a sudden severe hurricane, a brief summer
+      tempest which raged throughout one night and terrified a good many of the
+      voyagers, whose superstitious fears were only allayed when they saw the
+      lambent flames of the light of Saint Elmo playing about the rigging of the
+      Admiral's ship. It was just the Admiral's luck that this phenomenon should
+      be observed over his ship and over none of the others; it added to his
+      prestige as a person peculiarly favoured by the divine protection, and
+      confirmed his own belief that he held a heavenly as well as a royal
+      commission.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The water supply had been calculated a little too closely, and began to
+      run low. The hurried preparation of the ships had resulted as usual in bad
+      work; most of them were leaking, and the crew were constantly at work at
+      the pumps; and there was the usual discontent. Columbus, however, knew by
+      the signs as well as by his dead-reckoning that he was somewhere close to
+      land; and with a fine demonstration of confidence he increased the ration
+      of water, instead of lowering it, assuring the crews that they would be
+      ashore in a day or two. On Saturday evening, November 2nd, although no
+      land was in sight, Columbus was so sure of his position that he ordered
+      the fleet to take in sail and go on slowly until morning. As the Sunday
+      dawned and the sky to the west was cleared of the morning bank of clouds
+      the look-out on the Marigalante reported land ahead; and sure enough the
+      first sunlight of that day showed them a green and verdant island a few
+      leagues away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As they approached it Columbus christened it Dominica in honour of the day
+      on which it was discovered. He sailed round it; but as there was no
+      harbour, and as another island was in sight to the north, he sailed on in
+      that direction. This little island he christened Marigalante; and going
+      ashore with his retinue he hoisted the royal banner, and formally took
+      possession of the whole group of six islands which were visible from the
+      high ground. There were no inhabitants on the island, but the voyagers
+      spent some hours wandering about its tangled woods and smelling the rich
+      odours of spice, and tasting new and unfamiliar fruits. They next sailed
+      on to an island to the north which Columbus christened Guadaloupe as a
+      memorial of the shrine in Estremadura to which he had made a pious
+      pilgrimage. They landed on this island and remained a week there, in the
+      course of which they made some very remarkable discoveries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The villagers were not altogether unfriendly, although they were shy at
+      first; but red caps and hawks' bells had their usual effect. There were
+      signs of warfare, in the shape of bone-tipped arrows; there were tame
+      parrots much larger than those of the northern islands; they found pottery
+      and rough wood carving, and the unmistakable stern timber of a European
+      vessel. But they discovered stranger things than that. They found human
+      skulls used as household utensils, and gruesome fragments of human bodies,
+      unmistakable remains of a feast; and they realised that at last they were
+      in the presence of a man-eating tribe. Later they came to know, something
+      of the habits of the islanders; how they made raiding expeditions to the
+      neighbouring islands, and carried off large numbers of prisoners,
+      retaining the women as concubines and eating the men. The boys were
+      mutilated and fattened like capons, being employed as labourers until they
+      had arrived at years of discretion, at which point they were killed and
+      eaten, as these cannibal epicures did not care for the flesh of women and
+      boys. There were a great number of women on the island, and many of them
+      were taken off to the ships&mdash;with their own consent, according to
+      Doctor Chanca. The men, however, eluded the Spaniards and would not come
+      on board, having doubtless very clear views about the ultimate destination
+      of men who were taken prisoners. Some women from a neighbouring island,
+      who had been captured by the cannibals, came to Columbus and begged to be
+      taken on board his ship for protection; but instead of receiving them he
+      decked them with ornaments and sent them ashore again. The cannibals
+      artfully stripped off their ornaments and sent them back to get some more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The peculiar habits of the islanders added an unusual excitement to shore
+      leave, and there was as a rule no trouble in collecting the crews and
+      bringing them off to the ships at nightfall. But on one evening it was
+      discovered that one of the captains and eight men had not returned. An
+      exploring party was sent of to search for them, but they came back without
+      having found anything, except a village in the middle of the forest from
+      which the inhabitants had fled at their approach, leaving behind them in
+      the cooking pots a half-cooked meal of human remains&mdash;an incident
+      which gave the explorers a distaste for further search. Young Alonso de
+      Ojeda, however, had no fear of the cannibals; this was just the kind of
+      occasion in which he revelled; and he offered to take a party of forty men
+      into the interior to search for the missing men. He went right across the
+      island, but was able to discover nothing except birds and fruits and
+      unknown trees; and Columbus, in great distress of mind, had to give up his
+      men for lost. He took in wood and water, and was on the point of weighing
+      anchor when the missing men appeared on the shore and signalled for a
+      boat. It appeared that they had got lost in a tangled forest in the
+      interior, that they had tried to climb the trees in order to get their
+      bearings by the stars, but without success; and that they had finally
+      struck the sea-shore and followed it until they had arrived opposite the
+      anchorage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They brought some women and boys with them, and the fleet must now have
+      had a large number of these willing or unwilling captives. This was the
+      first organised transaction of slavery on the part of Columbus, whose
+      design was to send slaves regularly back to Spain in exchange for the
+      cattle and supplies necessary for the colonies. There was not very much
+      said now about religious conversion, but only about exchanging the natives
+      for cattle. The fine point of Christopher's philosophy on this subject had
+      been rubbed off; he had taken the first step a year ago on the beach at
+      Guanahani, and after that the road opened out broad before him. Slaves for
+      cattle, and cattle for the islands; and wealth from cattle and islands for
+      Spain, and payment from Spain for Columbus, and money from Columbus for
+      the redemption of the Holy Sepulchre&mdash;these were the links in the
+      chain of hope that bound him to his pious idea. He had seen the same thing
+      done by the Portuguese on the Guinea coast, and it never occurred to him
+      that there was anything the matter with it. On the contrary, at this time
+      his idea was only to take slaves from among the Caribs and man-eating
+      islanders as a punishment for their misdeeds; but this, like his other
+      fine ideas, soon had to give way before the tide of greed and conquest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Admiral was now anxious to get back to La Navidad, and discover the
+      condition of the colony which he had left behind him there. He therefore
+      sailed from Guadaloupe on November 20th and steered to the north-west. His
+      captive islanders told him that the mainland lay to the south; and if he
+      had listened to them and sailed south he would have probably landed on the
+      coast of South America in a fortnight. He shaped his course instead to the
+      north-west, passing many islands, but not pausing until the 14th, when he
+      reached the island named by him Santa Cruz. He found more Caribs here, and
+      his men had a brush with them, one of the crew being wounded by a poisoned
+      arrow of which he died in a few days. The Carib Chiefs were captured and
+      put in irons. They sailed again and passed a group of islets which
+      Columbus named after Saint Ursula and the Eleven Thousand Virgins;
+      discovered Porto Rico also, in one of the beautiful harbours of which they
+      anchored and stayed for two days. Sailing now to the west they made land
+      again on the 22nd of November; and coasting along it they soon sighted the
+      mountain of Monte Christi, and Columbus recognised that he was on the
+      north coast of Espanola.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lt; <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="ch7b" id="ch7b"></a>CHAPTER VII.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE EARTHLY PARADISE REVISITED
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the 25th November 1493, Columbus once more dropped his anchor in the
+      harbour of Monte Christi, and a party was sent ashore to prospect for a
+      site suitable for the new town which he intended to build, for he was not
+      satisfied with the situation of La Navidad. There was a large river close
+      by; and while the party was surveying the land they came suddenly upon two
+      dead bodies lying by the river-side, one with a rope round its neck and
+      the other with a rope round its feet. The bodies were too much decomposed
+      to be recognisable; nevertheless to the party rambling about in the
+      sunshine and stillness of that green place the discovery was a very
+      gruesome one. They may have thought much, but they said little. They
+      returned to the ship, and resumed their search on the next day, when they
+      found two more corpses, one of which was seen to have a large quantity of
+      beard. As all the natives were beardless this was a very significant and
+      unpleasant discovery, and the explorers returned at once and reported what
+      they had seen to Columbus. He thereupon set sail for La Navidad, but the
+      navigation off that part of the coast was necessarily slow because of the
+      number of the shoals and banks, on one of which the Admiral's ship had
+      been lost the year before; and the short voyage occupied three days.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They arrived at La Navidad late on the evening of the 27th&mdash;too late
+      to make it advisable to land. Some natives came out in a canoe, rowed
+      round the Admiral's ship, stopped and looked at it, and then rowed away
+      again. When the fleet had anchored Columbus ordered two guns to be fired;
+      but there was no response except from the echoes that went rattling among
+      the islands, and from the frightened birds that rose screaming and
+      circling from the shore. No guns and no signal fires; no sign of human
+      habitation whatever; and no sound out of the weird darkness except the lap
+      of the water and the call of the birds . . . . The night passed in anxiety
+      and depression, and in a certain degree of nervous tension, which was
+      relieved at two or three o'clock in the morning by the sound of paddles
+      and the looming of a canoe through the dusky starlight. Native voices were
+      heard from the canoe asking in a loud voice for the Admiral; and when the
+      visitors had been directed to the Marigalante they refused to go on board
+      until Columbus himself had spoken to them, and they had seen by the light
+      of a lantern that it was the Admiral himself. The chief of them was a
+      cousin of Guacanagari, who said that the King was ill of a wound in his
+      leg, or that he would certainly have come himself to welcome the Admiral.
+      The Spaniards? Yes, they were well, said the young chief; or rather, he
+      added ominously, those that remained were well, but some had died of
+      illness, and some had been killed in quarrels that had arisen among them.
+      He added that the province had been invaded by two neighbouring kings who
+      had burned many of the native houses. This news, although grave, was a
+      relief from the dreadful uncertainty that had prevailed in the early part
+      of the night, and the Admiral's company, somewhat consoled, took a little
+      sleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the morning a party was sent ashore to La Navidad. Not a boat was in
+      sight, nor any native canoes; the harbour was silent and deserted. When
+      the party had landed and gone up to the place where the fort had been
+      built they found no fort there; only the blackened and charred remains of
+      a fort. The whole thing had been burned level with the ground, and amid
+      the blackened ruins they found pieces of rag and clothing. The natives,
+      instead of coming to greet them, lurked guiltily behind trees, and when
+      they were seen fled away into the woods. All this was very disquieting
+      indeed, and in significant contrast to their behaviour of the year before.
+      The party from the ship threw buttons and beads and bells to the retiring
+      natives in order to try and induce them to come forward, but only four
+      approached, one of whom was a relation of Guacanagari. These four
+      consented to go into the boat and to be rowed out to the ship. Columbus
+      then spoke to them through his interpreter; and they admitted what had
+      been only too obvious to the party that went ashore&mdash;that the
+      Spaniards were all dead, and that not one of the garrison remained. It
+      seemed that two neighbouring kings, Caonabo and Mayreni, had made an
+      attack upon the fort, burned the buildings, and killed and wounded most of
+      the defenders; and that Guacanagari, who had been fighting on their
+      behalf, had also been wounded and been obliged to retire. The natives
+      offered to go and fetch Guacanagari himself, and departed with that
+      object.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the greatest anxiety the Admiral and his company passed that day and
+      night waiting for the King to come. Early the next morning Columbus
+      himself went ashore and visited the spot where the settlement had been.
+      There he found destruction whole and complete, with nothing but a few rags
+      of clothing as an evidence that the place had ever been inhabited by human
+      beings. As Guacanagari did not appear some of the Spaniards began to
+      suspect that he had had a hand in the matter, and proposed immediate
+      reprisal; but Columbus, believing still in the man who had "loved him so
+      much that it was wonderful" did not take this view, and his belief in
+      Guacanagari's loyalty was confirmed by the discovery that his own dwelling
+      had also been burned down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Columbus set some of his party searching in the ditch of the fort in case
+      any treasure should have been buried there, as he had ordered it should be
+      in event of danger, and while this was going on he walked along the coast
+      for a few miles to visit a spot which he thought might be suitable for the
+      new settlement. At a distance of a mile or two he found a village of seven
+      or eight huts from which the inhabitants fled at his approach, carrying
+      such of their goods as were portable, and leaving the rest hidden in the
+      grass. Here were found several things that had belonged to the Spaniards
+      and which were not likely to have been bartered; new Moorish mantles,
+      stockings, bolts of cloth, and one of the Admiral's lost anchors; other
+      articles also, among them a dead man's head wrapped up with great care in
+      a small basket. Shaking their own living heads, Columbus and his party
+      returned. Suddenly they came on some suspicious-looking mounds of earth
+      over which new grass was growing. An examination of these showed them to
+      be the graves of eleven of the Spaniards, the remains of the clothing
+      being quite sufficient to identify them. Doctor Chanca, who examined them,
+      thought that they had not been dead two months. Speculation came to an end
+      in the face of this eloquent certainty; there were the dead bodies of some
+      of the colonists; and the voyagers knelt round with bare heads while the
+      bodies were replaced in the grave and the ceremony of Christian burial
+      performed over them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Little by little the dismal story was elicited from the natives, who
+      became less timid when they saw that the Spaniards meant them no harm. It
+      seemed that Columbus had no sooner gone away than the colonists began to
+      abandon themselves to every kind of excess. While the echo of the
+      Admiral's wise counsels was yet in their ears they began to disobey his
+      orders. Honest work they had no intention of doing, and although Diego
+      Arana, their commander, did his best to keep order, and although one or
+      two of the others were faithful to him and to Columbus, their authority
+      was utterly insufficient to check the lawless folly of the rest. Instead
+      of searching for gold mines, they possessed themselves by force of every
+      ounce of gold they could steal or seize from the natives, treating them
+      with both cruelty and contempt. More brutal excesses followed as a matter
+      of course. Guacanagari, in his kindly indulgence and generosity, had
+      allowed them to take three native wives apiece, although he himself and
+      his people were content with one. But of course the Spaniards had thrown
+      off all restraint, however mild, and ran amok among the native
+      inhabitants, seizing their wives and seducing their daughters. Upon this
+      naturally followed dissensions among themselves, jealousy coming hot upon
+      the heels of unlawful possession; and, in the words of Irving, "the
+      natives beheld with astonishment the beings whom they had worshipped as
+      descended from the skies abandoned to the grossest of earthly passions and
+      raging against each other with worse than brutal ferocity."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Upon their strifes and dissensions followed another breach of the
+      Admiral's wise regulations; they no longer cared to remain together in the
+      fort, but split up into groups and went off with their women into the
+      woods, reverting to a savagery beside which the gentle existence of the
+      natives was high civilisation. There were squabbles and fights in which
+      one or two of the Spaniards were killed; and Pedro Gutierrez and Rodrigo
+      de Escovedo, whom Columbus had appointed as lieutenants to Arana, headed a
+      faction of revolt against his authority, and took themselves off with nine
+      other Spaniards and a great number of women. They had heard a great deal
+      about the mines of Cibao, and they decided to go in search of them and
+      secure their treasures for themselves. They went inland into a territory
+      which was under the rule of King Caonabo, a very fierce Carib who was not
+      a native of Espanola, but had come there as an adventurer and remained as
+      a conqueror. Although he resented the intrusion of the Spaniards into the
+      island he would not have dared to come and attack them there if they had
+      obeyed the Admiral's orders and remained in the territory of Guacanagari;
+      but when they came into his own country he had them in a trap, and it was
+      easy for him to fall upon those foolish swaggering Spaniards and put them
+      to death. He then decided to go and take the fort.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He formed an alliance with the neighbouring king, Mayreni, whose province
+      was in the west of the island. Getting together a force of warriors these
+      two kings marched rapidly and stealthily through the, forest for several
+      days until they arrived at its northern border. They came in the dead of
+      night to the neighbourhood of La Navidad, where the inhabitants of the
+      fortress, some ten in number, were fast asleep. Fast asleep were the
+      remaining dozen or so of the Spaniards who were living in houses or huts
+      in the neighbourhood; fast asleep also the gentle natives, not dreaming of
+      troubles from any quarter but that close at hand. The sweet silence of the
+      tropical night was suddenly broken by frightful yells as Caonabo and his
+      warriors rushed the fortress and butchered the inhabitants, setting fire
+      to it and to the houses round about. As their flimsy huts burst into
+      flames the surprised Spaniards rushed out, only to be fallen upon by the
+      infuriated blacks. Eight of the Spaniards rushed naked into the sea and
+      were drowned; the rest were butchered. Guacanagari manfully came to their
+      assistance and with his own followers fought throughout the night; but his
+      were a gentle and unwarlike people, and they were easily routed. The King
+      himself was badly wounded in the thigh, but Caonabo's principal object
+      seems to have been the destruction of the Spaniards, and when that was
+      completed he and his warriors, laden with the spoils, retired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus Columbus, walking on the shore with his native interpreter, or
+      sitting in his cabin listening with knitted brow to the accounts of the
+      islanders, learns of the complete and utter failure of his first hopes. It
+      has come to this. These are the real first-fruits of his glorious conquest
+      and discovery. The New World has served but as a virgin field for the Old
+      Adam. He who had sought to bring light and life to these happy islanders
+      had brought darkness and death; they had innocently clasped the sword he
+      had extended to them and cut themselves. The Christian occupation of the
+      New World had opened with vice, cruelty, and destruction; the veil of
+      innocence had been rent in twain, and could never be mended or joined
+      again. And the Earthly Paradise in which life had gone so happily, of
+      which sun and shower had been the true rulers, and the green sprouting
+      harvests the only riches, had been turned into a shambles by the
+      introduction of human rule and civilised standards of wealth. Gold first
+      and then women, things beautiful and innocent in the happy native
+      condition of the islands, had been the means of the disintegration and
+      death of this first colony. These are serious considerations for any
+      coloniser; solemn considerations for a discoverer who is only on the verge
+      and beginning of his empire-making; mournful considerations for
+      Christopher as he surveys the blackened ruins of the fort, or stands
+      bare-headed by the grass-covered graves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There seemed to be a certain hesitancy on the part of Guacanagari to
+      present himself; for though he kept announcing his intention of coming to
+      visit the Admiral he did not come. A couple of days after the discovery of
+      the remains, however, he sent a message to Columbus begging him to come
+      and see him, which the Admiral accordingly did, accompanied by a formal
+      retinue and carrying with him the usual presents. Guacanagari was in bed
+      sure enough complaining of a wounded leg, and he told the story of the
+      settlement very much as Columbus had already heard it from the other
+      natives. He pointed to his own wounded leg as a sign that he had been
+      loyal and faithful to his friendly promises; but when the leg was examined
+      by the surgeon in order that it might be dressed no wound could be
+      discovered, and it was obvious to Doctor Chanca that the skin had not been
+      broken. This seemed odd; Friar Buil was so convinced that the whole story
+      was a deception that he wished the Admiral to execute Guacanagari on the
+      spot. Columbus, although he was puzzled, was by no means convinced that
+      Guacanagari had been unfaithful to him, and decided to do nothing for the
+      present. He invited the cacique to come on board the flagship; which he
+      did, being greatly interested by some of the Carib prisoners, notably a
+      handsome woman, named by the Spaniards Dofia Catalina, with whom he held a
+      long conversation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Relations between the Admiral and the cacique, although outwardly cordial,
+      were altogether different from what they had been in, the happy days after
+      their first meeting; the man seemed to shrink from all the evidence of
+      Spanish power, and when they proposed to hang a cross round his neck the
+      native king, much as he loved trinkets and toys, expressed a horror and
+      fear of this jewel when he learned that it was an emblem of the Christian
+      faith. He had seen a little too much of the Christian religion; and Heaven
+      only knows with what terror and depression the emblem of the cross
+      inspired him. He went ashore; and when a messenger was sent to search for
+      him a few days afterwards, it was found that he had moved his whole
+      establishment into the interior of the island. The beautiful native woman
+      Catalina escaped to shore and disappeared at the same time; and the two
+      events were connected in the minds of some of the Spaniards, and held,
+      wrongly as it turned out, to be significant of a deep plot of native
+      treachery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The most urgent need was to build the new settlement and lay out a town.
+      Several small parties were sent out to reconnoitre the coast in both
+      directions, but none of them found a suitable place; and on December 7th
+      the whole fleet sailed to the east in the hope of finding a better
+      position. They were driven by adverse winds into a harbour some thirty
+      miles to the east of Monte Christi, and when they went ashore they decided
+      that this was as good a site as any for the new town. There was about a
+      quarter of a mile of level sandy beach enclosed by headlands on either
+      side; there was any amount of rock and stones for building, and there was
+      a natural barrier of hills and mountains a mile or so inland that would
+      protect a camp from that side.&mdash;The soil was very fertile, the
+      vegetation luxuriant; and the mango swamps a little way inland drained
+      into a basin or lake which provided an unlimited water supply. Columbus
+      therefore set about establishing a little town, to which he gave the name
+      of Isabella. Streets and squares were laid out, and rows of temporary
+      buildings made of wood and thatched with grass were hastily run up for the
+      accommodation of the members of the expedition, while the foundations of
+      three stone buildings were also marked out and the excavations put in
+      hand. These buildings were the church, the storehouse, and a residence for
+      Columbus as Governor-General. The stores were landed, the horses and
+      cattle accommodated ashore, the provisions, ammunition, and agricultural
+      implements also. Labourers were set to digging out the foundations of the
+      stone buildings, carpenters to cutting down trees and running up the light
+      wooden houses that were to serve as barracks for the present; masons were
+      employed in hewing stones and building landing-piers; and all the crowd of
+      well-born adventurers were set to work with their hands, much to their
+      disgust. This was by no means the life they had imagined, and at the first
+      sign of hard work they turned sulky and discontented. There was, to be
+      sure, some reason for their discontent. Things had not quite turned out as
+      Columbus had promised they should; there was no store of gold, nor any
+      sign of great desire on the part of the natives to bring any; and to add
+      to their other troubles, illness began to break out in the camp. The
+      freshly-turned rank soil had a bad effect on the health of the garrison;
+      the lake, which had promised to be so pleasant a feature in the new town,
+      gave off dangerous malarial vapours at night; and among the sufferers from
+      this trouble was Columbus himself, who endured for some weeks all the
+      pains and lassitude of the disagreeable fever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /> <a name="espanola" id="espanola"></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
+      <img alt="espanola.jpg (108K)" src="images/espanola.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <a href="images/espanola.jpg"> <img alt="Full Size"
+      src="images/enlarge.jpg" /></a> <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The ships were now empty and ready for the return voyage, and as soon as
+      Columbus was better he set to work to face the situation. After all his
+      promises it would never do to send them home empty or in ballast; a cargo
+      of stones from the new-found Indies would not be well received in Spain.
+      The natives had told him that somewhere in the island existed the gold
+      mines of Cibao, and he determined to make an attempt to find these, so
+      that he could send his ships home laden with a cargo that would be some
+      indemnity for the heavy cost of the expedition and some compensation for
+      the bad news he must write with regard to his first settlement. Young
+      Ojeda was chosen to lead an expedition of fifteen picked men into the
+      interior; and as the gold mines were said to be in a part of the island
+      not under the command of Guacanagari, but in the territory of the dreaded
+      Caonabo, there was no little anxiety felt about the expedition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ojeda started in the beginning of January 1494, and marched southwards
+      through dense forests until, having crossed a mountain range, he came down
+      into a beautiful and fertile valley, where they were hospitably received
+      by the natives. They saw plenty of gold in the sand of the river that
+      watered the valley, which sand the natives had a way of washing so that
+      the gold was separated from it; and there seemed to be so much wealth
+      there that Ojeda hurried back to the new city of Isabella to make his
+      report to Columbus. The effect upon the discontented colonists was
+      remarkable. Once more everything was right; wealth beyond the dreams of
+      avarice was at their hand; and all they had to do was to stretch out their
+      arms and take it. Columbus felt that he need no longer delay the despatch
+      of twelve of his ships on the homeward voyage. If he had not got golden
+      cargoes for them, at any rate he had got the next best thing, which was
+      the certainty of gold; and it did not matter whether it was in the ships
+      or in his storehouse. He had news to send home at any rate, and a great
+      variety of things to ask for in return, and he therefore set about writing
+      his report to the Sovereigns. Other people, as we know, were writing
+      letters too; the reiterated promise of gold, and the marvellous anecdotes
+      which these credulous settlers readily believed from the natives, such as
+      that there was a rock close by out of which gold would burst if you struck
+      it with a club, raised greed and expectation in Spain to a fever pitch,
+      and prepared the reaction which followed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We may now read the account of the New World as Columbus sent it home to
+      the King and Queen of Spain in the end of January 1494, and as they read
+      it some weeks later. Their comments, written in the margin of the
+      original, are printed in smaller print at the end of each paragraph. It
+      was drawn up in the form of a memorandum, and entrusted to Antonio de
+      Torres, who was commanding the return expedition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What you, Antonio de Torres, captain of the ship Marigalante and Alcalde
+      of the City of Isabella, are to say and supplicate on my part to the King
+      and Queen, our Lords, is as follows:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "First. Having delivered the letters of credence which you carry from me
+        for their Highnesses, you will kiss for me their Royal feet and hands
+        and will recommend me to their Highnesses as to a King and Queen, my
+        natural Lords, in whose service I desire to end my days: as you will be
+        able to say this more fully to their Highnesses, according to what you
+        have seen and known of me.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br /> ["Their Highnesses hold him in their favour.]
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "Item. Although by the letters I write to their Highnesses, and also the
+        father Friar Buil and the Treasurer, they will be able to understand all
+        that has been done here since our arrival, and this very minutely and
+        extensively: nevertheless, you will say to their Highnesses on my part,
+        that it has pleased God to give me such favour in their service, that up
+        to the present time. I do not find less, nor has less been found in
+        anything than what I wrote and said and affirmed to their Highnesses in
+        the past: but rather, by the Grace of God, I hope that it will appear,
+        by works much more clearly and very soon, because such signs and
+        indications of spices have been found on the shores of the sea alone,
+        without having gone inland, that there is reason that very much better
+        results may be hoped for: and this also may be hoped for in the mines of
+        gold, because by two persons only who went to investigate, each one on
+        his own part, without remaining there because there was not many people,
+        so many rivers have been discovered so filled with gold, that all who
+        saw it and gathered specimens of it with the hands alone, came away so
+        pleased and say such things in regard to its abundance, that I am timid
+        about telling it and writing it to their Highnesses: but because
+        Gorbalan, who was one of the discoverers, is going yonder, he will tell
+        what he saw, although another named Hojeda remains here, a servant of
+        the Duke of Medinaceli, a very discreet youth and very prudent, who
+        without doubt and without comparison even, discovered much more
+        according to the memorandum which he brought of the rivers, saying that
+        there is an incredible quantity in each one of them for this their
+        Highnesses may give thanks to God, since He has been so favourable to
+        them in all their affairs.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br /> ["Their Highnesses give many thanks to God for this, and consider
+        as a very signal service all that the Admiral has done in this matter
+        and is doing: because they know that after God they are indebted to him
+        for all they have had, and will have in this affair: and as they are
+        writing him more fully about this, they refer him to their letter.]
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "Item. You will say to their Highnesses, although I already have written
+        it to them, that I desired greatly to be able to send them a larger
+        quantity of gold in this fleet, from that which it is hoped may be
+        gathered here, but the greater part of our people who are here, have
+        fallen suddenly ill: besides, this fleet cannot remain here longer, both
+        on account of the great expense it occasions and because this time is
+        suitable for those persons who are to bring the things which are greatly
+        needed here, to go and be able to return: as, if they delay going away
+        from here, those who are to return will not be able to do so by May: and
+        besides this, if I wished to undertake to go to the mines or rivers now,
+        with the well people who are here, both on the sea and in the settlement
+        on land, I would have many difficulties and even dangers, because in
+        order to go twenty-three or twenty-four leagues from here where there
+        are harbours and rivers to cross, and in order to cover such a long
+        route and reach there at the time which would be necessary to gather the
+        gold, a large quantity of provisions would have to be carried, which
+        cannot be carried on the shoulders, nor are there beasts of burden here
+        which could be used for this purpose: nor are the roads and passes
+        sufficiently prepared, although I have commenced to get them in
+        readiness so as to be passable: and also it was very inconvenient to
+        leave the sick here in an open place, in huts, with the provisions and
+        supplies which are on land: for although these Indians may have shown
+        themselves to the discoverers and show themselves every day, to be very
+        simple and not malicious nevertheless, as they come here among us each
+        day, it did not appear that it would be a good idea to risk losing these
+        people and the supplies. This loss an Indian with a piece of burning
+        wood would be able to cause by setting fire to the huts, because they
+        are always going and coming by night and by day: on their account, we
+        have guards in the camp, while the settlement is open and defenceless.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br /> ["That he did well.]
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "Moreover, as we have seen among those who went by land to make
+        discoveries that the greater part fell sick after returning, and some of
+        them even were obliged to turn back on the road, it was also reasonable
+        to fear that the same thing would happen to those who are well, who
+        would now go, and as a consequence they would run the risk of two
+        dangers: the one, that of falling sick yonder, in the same work, where
+        there is no house nor any defence against that cacique who is called
+        Caonabb, who is a very bad man according to all accounts, and much more
+        audacious and who, seeing us there, sick and in such disorder, would be
+        able to undertake what he would not dare if we were well: and with this
+        difficulty there is another&mdash;that of bringing here what gold we
+        might obtain, because we must either bring a small quantity and go and
+        come each day and undergo the risk of sickness, or it must be sent with
+        some part of the people, incurring the same danger of losing it.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br /> ["He did well.]
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "So that, you will say to their Highnesses, that these are the causes
+        why the fleet has not been at present detained, and why more gold than
+        the specimens has not been sent them: but confiding in the mercy of God,
+        who in everything and for everything has guided us as far as here, these
+        people will quickly become convalescent, as they are already doing,
+        because only certain places in the country suit them and they then
+        recover; and it is certain that if they had some fresh meat in order to
+        convalesce, all with the aid of God would very quickly be on foot, and
+        even the greater part would already be convalescent at this time:
+        nevertheless they will be re-established. With the few healthy ones who
+        remain here, each day work is done toward enclosing the settlement and
+        placing it in a state of some defence and the supplies in safety, which
+        will be accomplished in a short time, because it is to be only a small
+        dry wall. For the Indians are not a people to undertake anything unless
+        they should find us sleeping, even though they might have thought of it
+        in the manner in which they served the others who remained here. Only on
+        account of their (the Spaniards') lack of caution&mdash;they being so
+        few&mdash;and the great opportunities they gave the Indians to have and
+        do what they did, they would never have dared to undertake to injure
+        them if they had seen that they were cautious. And this work being
+        finished, I will then undertake to go to the said rivers, either
+        starting upon the road from here and seeking the best possible
+        expedients, or going around the island by sea as far as that place from
+        which it is said it cannot be more than six or seven leagues to the said
+        rivers. In such a manner that the gold can be gathered and placed in
+        security in some fortress or tower which can then be constructed there,
+        in order to keep it securely until the time when the two caravels return
+        here, and in order that then, with the first suitable weather for
+        sailing this course, it may be sent to a place of safety.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br /> ["That this is well and must be done in this manner.]
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "Item. You will say to their Highnesses, as has been said, that the
+        cause of the general sicknesses common to all is the change of water and
+        air, because we see that it extends to all conditions and few are in
+        danger: consequently, for the preservation of health, after God, it is
+        necessary that these people be provided with the provisions to which
+        they are accustomed in Spain, because neither they, nor others who may
+        come anew, will be able to serve their Highnesses if they are not well:
+        and this provision must continue until a supply is accumulated here from
+        what shall be sowed and planted here. I say wheat and barley, and vines,
+        of which little has been done this year because a site for the town
+        could not be selected before, and then when it was selected the few
+        labourers who were here became sick, and they, even though they had been
+        well, had so few and such lean and meagre beasts of burden, that they
+        were able to do but little: nevertheless, they have sown something, more
+        in order to try the soil which appears very wonderful, so that from it
+        some relief may be hoped in our necessities. We are very sure, as the
+        result makes it apparent to us, that in this country wheat as well as
+        the vine will grow very well: but the fruit must be waited for, which,
+        if it corresponds to the quickness with which the wheat grows and of
+        some few vine-shoots which were planted, certainly will not cause regret
+        here for the productions of Andalusia or Sicily: neither is it different
+        with the sugar-canes according to the manner in which some few that were
+        planted have grown. For it is certain that the sight of the land of
+        these islands, as well of the mountains and sierras and waters as of the
+        plains where there are rich rivers, is so beautiful, that no other land
+        on which the sun shines can appear better or as beautiful.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br /> ["Since the land is such, it must be managed that the greatest
+        possible quantity of all things shall be sown, and Don Juan de Fonseca
+        is to be written to send continually all that is necessary for this
+        purpose.]
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "Item. You will say that, inasmuch as much of the wine which the fleet
+        brought was wasted on this journey, and this, according to what the
+        greater number say, was because of the bad workmanship which the coopers
+        did in Seville, the greatest necessity we feel here at the present time
+        is for wines, and it is what we desire most to have and although we may
+        have biscuit as well as wheat sufficient for a longer time, nevertheless
+        it is necessary that a reasonable quantity should also be sent, because
+        the journey is long and provision cannot be made each day and in the
+        same manner some salted meat, I say bacon, and other salt meat better
+        than that we brought on this journey. It is necessary that each time a
+        caravel comes here, fresh meat shall be sent, and even more than that,
+        lambs and little ewe lambs, more females than males, and some little
+        yearling calves, male and female, and some he-asses and she-asses and
+        some mares for labour and breeding, as there are none of these animals
+        here of any value or which can be made use of by man. And because I
+        apprehend that their Highnesses may not be, in Seville, and that the
+        officials or ministers will not provide these things without their
+        express order, and as it is necessary they should come at the first
+        opportunity, and as in consultation and reply the time for the departure
+        of the vessels-which must be here during all of Maywill be past: you
+        will say to their Highnesses that I charged and commanded you to pledge
+        the gold you are carrying yonder and place it in possession of some
+        merchant in Seville, who will furnish therefor the necessary maravedis
+        to load two caravels with wine and wheat and the other things of which
+        you are taking a memorandum; which merchant will carry or send the said
+        gold to their Highnesses that they may see it and receive it, and cause
+        what shall have been expended for fitting out and loading of the said
+        two caravels to be paid: and in order to comfort and strengthen these
+        people remaining here, the utmost efforts must be made for the return of
+        these caravels for all the month of May, that the people before
+        commencing the summer may see and have some refreshment from these
+        things, especially the invalids: the things of which we are already in
+        great need here are such as raisins, sugar, almonds, honey and rice,
+        which should have been sent in large quantities and very little was
+        sent, and that which came is already used and consumed, and even the
+        greater part of the medicines which were brought from there, on account
+        of the multitude of sick people. You are carrying memoranda signed by my
+        hand, as has been said, of things for the people in good health as well
+        as for the sick. You will provide these things fully if the money is
+        sufficient, or at least the things which it is most necessary to send at
+        once, in order that the said two vessels can bring them, and you can
+        arrange with their Highnesses, to have the remaining things sent by
+        other vessels as quickly as possible.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br /> ["Their Highnesses sent an order to Don Juan de Fonseca to obtain
+        at once information about the persons who committed the fraud of the
+        casks, and to cause all the damage to the wine to be recovered from
+        them, with the costs: and he must see that the canes which are sent are
+        of good quality, and that the other things mentioned here are provided
+        at once.]
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "Item. You will say to their Highnesses that as there is no language
+        here by means of which these people can be made to understand our Holy
+        Faith, as your Highnesses and also we who are here desire, although we
+        will do all we can towards it&mdash;I am sending some of the cannibals
+        in the vessels, men and women and male and female children, whom their
+        Highnesses can order placed with persons from whom they can better learn
+        the language, making use of them in service, and ordering that little by
+        little more pains be taken with them than with other slaves, that they
+        may learn one from the other: if they do not see or speak with each
+        other until some time has passed, they will learn more quickly there
+        than here, and will be better interpreters&mdash;although we will not
+        cease to do as much as possible here. It is true that as there is little
+        intercourse between these people from one island to another, there is
+        some difference in their language, according to how far distant they are
+        from each other. And as, of the other islands, those of the cannibals
+        are very large and very well populated, it would appear best to take
+        some of their men and women and send them yonder to Castile, because by
+        taking them away, it may cause them to abandon at once that inhuman
+        custom which they have of eating men: and by learning the language there
+        in Castile, they will receive baptism much more quickly, and provide for
+        the safety of their souls. Even among the peoples who are not cannibals
+        we shall gain great credit, by their seeing that we can seize and take
+        captive those from whom they are accustomed to receive injuries, and of
+        whom they are in such terror that they are frightened by one man alone.
+        You will certify to their Highnesses that the arrival here and sight of
+        such a fine fleet all together has inspired very great authority here
+        and assured very great security for future things: because all the
+        people on this great island and in the other islands, seeing the good
+        treatment which those who well behave receive, and the bad treatment
+        given to those who behave ill, will very quickly render obedience, so
+        that they can be considered as vassals of their Highnesses. And as now
+        they not only do willingly whatever is required of them by our people,
+        but further, they voluntarily undertake everything which they understand
+        may please us, their Highnesses may also be certain that in many
+        respects, as much for the present as for the future, the coming of this
+        fleet has given them a great reputation, and not less yonder among the
+        Christian princes: which their Highnesses will be better able to
+        consider and understand than I can tell them.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br /> ["That he is to be told what has befallen the cannibals who came
+        here. That it is very well and must be done in this manner, but that he
+        must try there as much as possible to bring them to our Holy Catholic
+        faith and do the same with the inhabitants of the islands where he is.]
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "Item. You will say to their Highnesses that the safety of the souls of
+        the said cannibals, and further of those here, has inspired the thought
+        that the more there are taken yonder, the better it will be, and their
+        Highnesses can be served by it in this manner: having seen how necessary
+        the flocks and beasts of burden are here, for the sustenance of the
+        people who must be here, and even of all these islands, their Highnesses
+        can give licence and permission to a sufficient number of caravels to
+        come here each year, and bring the said flocks and other supplies and
+        things to settle the country and make use of the land: and this at
+        reasonable prices at the expense of those who bring them: and these
+        things can be paid for in slaves from among these cannibals, a very
+        proud and comely people, well proportioned and of good intelligence, who
+        having been freed from that inhumanity, we believe will be better than
+        any other slaves. They will be freed from this cruelty as soon as they
+        are outside their country, and many of them can be taken with the
+        row-boats which it is known how to build here: it being understood,
+        however, that a trustworthy person shall be placed on each one of the
+        caravels coming here, who shall forbid the said caravels to stop at any
+        other place or island than this place, where the loading and unloading
+        of all the merchandise must be done. And further, their Highnesses will
+        be able to establish their rights over these slaves which are taken from
+        here yonder to Spain. And you will bring or send a reply to this, in
+        order that the necessary preparations may be made here with more
+        confidence if it appears well to their Highnesses.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br /> ["This project must be held in abeyance for the present until
+        another method is suggested from there, and the Admiral may write what
+        he thinks in regard to it.]
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "Item. Also you will say to their Highnesses that it is more profitable
+        and costs less to hire the vessels as the merchants hire them for
+        Flanders, by tons, rather than in any other manner: therefore I charged
+        you to hire the two caravels which you are to send here, in this manner:
+        and all the others which their Highnesses send here can be hired thus,
+        if they consider it for their service but I do not intend to say this of
+        those vessels which are to come here with their licence, for the slave
+        trade.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br /> ["Their Highnesses order Don Juan de Fonseca to hire the caravels
+        in this manner if it can be done.]
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "Item. You will say to their Highnesses, that to avoid any further cost,
+        I bought these caravels of which you are taking a memorandum in order to
+        retain them here with these two ships: that is to say the Gallega and
+        that other, the Capitana, of which I likewise purchased the
+        three-eighths from the master of it, for the price given in the said
+        memorandum which you are taking, signed by my hand. These ships not only
+        will give authority and great security to the people who are obliged to
+        remain inland and make arrangements with the Indians to gather the gold,
+        but they will also be of service in any other dangerous matter which may
+        arise with a strange people; besides the caravels are necessary for the
+        discovery of the mainland and the other islands which lie between here
+        and there: and you will entreat their Highnesses to order the maravedis
+        which these ships cost, paid at the times which they have been promised,
+        because without doubt they will soon receive what they cost, according
+        to what I believe and hope in the mercy of God.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br /> ["The Admiral has done well, and to tell him that the sum has been
+        paid here to the one who sold the ship, and Don Juan de Fonseca has been
+        ordered to pay for the two caravels which the Admiral bought.]
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "Item. You will say to their Highnesses, and will supplicate on my part
+        as humbly as possible, that it may please them to reflect on what they
+        will learn most fully from the letters and other writings in regard to
+        the peace and tranquillity and concord of those who are here: and that
+        for the service of their Highnesses such persons may be selected as
+        shall not be suspected, and who will give more attention to the matters
+        for which they are sent than to their own interests: and since you saw
+        and knew everything in regard to this matter, you will speak and will
+        tell their Highnesses the truth about all the things as you understood
+        them, and you will endeavour that the provision which their Highnesses
+        make in regard to it shall come with the first ships if possible, in
+        order that there may be no scandals here in a matter of so much
+        importance in the service of their Highnesses.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br /> ["Their Highnesses are well informed in regard to this matter, and
+        suitable provision will be made for everything.]
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "Item. You will tell their Highnesses of the situation of this city, and
+        the beauty of the surrounding province as you saw and understood it, and
+        how I made you its Alcade, by the powers which I have for same from
+        their Highnesses: whom I humbly entreat to hold the said provision in
+        part satisfaction of your services, as I hope from their Highnesses.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br /> ["It pleases their Highnesses that you shall be Alcade.]
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "Item. Because Mosen Pedro Margarite, servant of their Highnesses, has
+        done good service, and I hope he will do the same henceforward in
+        matters which are entrusted to him, I have been pleased to have him
+        remain here, and also Gaspar and Beltran, because they are recognised
+        servants of their Highnesses, in order to intrust them with matters of
+        confidence. You will specialty entreat their Highnesses in regard to the
+        said Mosen Pedro, who is married and has children, to provide him with
+        some charge in the order of Santiago, whose habit he wears, that his
+        wife and children may have the wherewith to live. In the same manner you
+        will relate how well and diligently Juan Aguado, servant of their
+        Highnesses, has rendered service in everything which he has been ordered
+        to do, and that I supplicate their Highnesses to have him and the
+        aforesaid persons in their charge and to reward them.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br /> ["Their Highnesses order 30,000 maravedis to be assigned to Mosen
+        Pedro each year, and to Gaspar and Beltran, to each one, 15,000
+        maravedis each year, from the present, August 15, 1494, henceforward:
+        and thus the Admiral shall cause to be paid to them whatever must be
+        paid yonder in the Indies, and Don Juan de Fonseca whatever must be paid
+        here: and in regard to Juan Iguado, their Highnesses will hold him in
+        remembrance.]
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "Item. You will tell their Highnesses of the labour performed by Dr.
+        Chanca, confronted with so many invalids, and still more because of the
+        lack of provisions and nevertheless, he acts with great diligence and
+        charity in everything pertaining to his office. And as their Highnesses
+        referred to me the salary which he was to receive here, because, being
+        here, it is certain that he cannot take or receive anything from any
+        one, nor earn money by his office as he earned it in Castile, or would
+        be able to earn it being at his ease and living in a different manner
+        from the way he lives here; therefore, notwithstanding he swears that he
+        earned more there, besides the salary which their Highnesses gave him, I
+        did not wish to allow more than 50,000 maravedis each year for the work
+        he performs here while he remains here. This I entreat their Highnesses
+        to order allowed to him with the salary from here, and that, because he
+        says and affirms that all the physicians of their Highnesses who are
+        employed in Royal affairs or things similar to this, are accustomed to
+        have by right one day's wages in all the year from all the people.
+        Nevertheless, I have been informed and they tell me, that however this
+        may be, the custom is to give them a certain sum, fixed according to the
+        will and command of their Highnesses in compensation for that day's
+        wages. You will entreat their Highnesses to order provision made as well
+        in the matter of the salary as of this custom, in such manner that the
+        said Dr. Chanca may have reason to be satisfied.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br /> ["Their Highnesses are pleased in regard to this matter of Dr.
+        Chanca, and that he shall be paid what the Admiral has assigned him,
+        together with his salary. "In regard to the day's wages of the
+        physicians, they are not accustomed to receive it, save where the King,
+        our Lord, may be in persona.]
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "Item. You will say to their Highnesses that Coronel is a man for the
+        service of their Highnesses in many things, and how much service he has
+        rendered up to the present in all the most necessary matters, and the
+        need we feel of him now that he is sick; and that rendering service in
+        such a manner, it is reasonable that he should receive the fruit of his
+        service, not only in future favours, but in his present salary, so that
+        he and those who are here may feel that their service profits them;
+        because, so great is the labour which must be performed here in
+        gathering the gold that the persons who are so diligent are not to be
+        held in small consideration; and as, for his skill, he was provided here
+        by me with the office of Alguacil Mayor of these Indies; and since in
+        the provision the salary is left blank, you will say that I supplicate
+        their Highnesses to order it filled in with as large an amount as they
+        may think right, considering his services, confirming to him the
+        provision I have given him here, and assuring it to him annually.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br /> ["Their Highnesses order that 15,000 maravedis more than his
+        salary shall be assigned him each year, and that it shall be paid to him
+        with his salary.]
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "In the same manner you will tell their Highnesses how the lawyer Gil
+        Garcia came here for Alcalde Mayor and no salary has been named or
+        assigned to him; and he is a capable person, well educated and diligent,
+        and is very necessary here; that I entreat their Highnesses to order his
+        salary named and assigned, so that he can sustain himself, and that it
+        may be paid from the money allowed for salaries here.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br /> "[Their Highnesses order 20,000 maravedis besides his salary
+        assigned to him each year, as long as he remains yonder, and that it
+        shall be paid him when his salary is paid.]
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "Item. You will say to their Highnesses, although it is already written
+        in the letters, that I do not think it will be possible to go to make
+        discoveries this year, until these rivers in which gold is found are
+        placed in the most suitable condition for the service of their
+        Highnesses, as afterwards it can be done much better. Because it is a
+        thing which no one can do without my presence, according to my will or
+        for the service of their Highnesses, however well it may be done, as it
+        is doubtful what will be satisfactory to a man unless he is present.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br /> ["Let him endeavour that the amount of this gold may be known as
+        precisely as possible.]
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "Item. You will say to their Highnesses that the Squires who came from
+        Granada showed good horses in the review which took place at Seville,
+        and afterward at the embarkation I did not see them because I was
+        slightly unwell, and they replaced them with such horses that the best
+        of them do not appear to be worth 2000 maravedis, as they sold the
+        others and bought these; and this was done in the same way to many
+        people as I very well saw yonder, in the reviews at Seville. It appears
+        that Juan de Soria, after he had been given the money for the wages, for
+        some interest of his own substituted others in place of those I expected
+        to find here, and I found people whom I had never seen. In this matter
+        he was guilty of great wickedness, so that I do not know if I should
+        complain of him alone. On this account, having seen that the expenses of
+        these Squires have been defrayed until now, besides their wages and also
+        wages for their horses, and it is now being done: and they are persons
+        who, when they are sick or when they do not desire to do so, will not
+        allow any use to be made of their horses save by themselves: and their,
+        Highnesses do not desire that these horses should be purchased of them,
+        but that they should be used in the service of their Highnesses: and it
+        does not appear to them that they should do anything or render any
+        service except on horseback, which at the present time is not much to
+        the purpose: on this account, it seems that it would be better to buy
+        the horses from them, since they are of so little value, and not have
+        these disagreements with them every day. Therefore their Highnesses may
+        determine this as will best serve them.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br /> ["Their Highnesses order Don Juan de Fonseca to inform himself in
+        regard to this matter of the horses, and if it shall be found true that
+        this fraud was committed, those persons shall be sent to their
+        Highnesses to be punished: and also he is to inform himself in regard to
+        what is said of the other people, and send the result in the examination
+        to their Highnesses; and in regard to these Squires, their Highnesses
+        command that they remain there and render service, since they belong to
+        the guards and servants of their Highnesses: and their Highnesses order
+        the Squires to give up the horses each time it is necessary and the
+        Admiral orders it, and if the horses receive any injury through others
+        using them, their Highnesses order that the damage shall be paid to them
+        by means of the Admiral.]
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "Item. You will say to their Highnesses that more than 200 persons have
+        come here without wages, and there are some of them who render good
+        service. And as it is ordered that the others rendering similar service
+        should be paid: and as for these first three years it would be of great
+        benefit to have 1000 men here to settle, and place this island and the
+        rivers of gold in very great security, and even though there were 100
+        horsemen nothing would be lost, but rather it seems necessary, although
+        their Highnesses will be able to do without these horsemen until gold is
+        sent: nevertheless, their Highnesses must send to say whether wages
+        shall be paid to these 200 persons, the same as to the others rendering
+        good service, because they are certainly necessary, as I have said in
+        the beginning of this memorandum.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br /> ["In regard to these 200 persons, who are here said to have gone
+        without wages, their Highnesses order that they shall take the places of
+        those who went for wages, who have failed or shall fail to fulfil their
+        engagements, if they are skilful and satisfactory to the Admiral. And
+        their Highnesses order the Purser (Contador) to enrol them in place of
+        those who fail to fulfil their engagements, as the Admiral shall
+        instruct him.]
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "Item. As the cost of these people can be in some degree lightened and
+        the better part of the expense could be avoided by the same means
+        employed by other Princes in other places: it appears, that it would be
+        well to order brought in the ships, besides the other things which are
+        for the common maintenance and the medicines, shoes and the skins from
+        which to order the shoes made, common shirts and others, jackets, linen,
+        sack-coats, trowsers and cloths suitable for wearing apparel, at
+        reasonable prices: and other things like conserves which are not
+        included in rations and are for the preservation of health, which things
+        all the people here would willingly receive to apply on their wages and
+        if these were purchased yonder in Spain by faithful Ministers who would
+        act for the advantage of their Highnesses, something would be saved.
+        Therefore you will learn the will of their Highnesses about this matter,
+        and if it appears to them to be of benefit to them, then it must be
+        placed in operation.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br /> ["This arrangement is to be in abeyance until the Admiral writes
+        more fully, and at another time they will send to order Don Juan de
+        Fonseca with Jimeno de Bribiesca to make provision for the same.]
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "Item. You will say to their Highnesses that inasmuch as yesterday in
+        the review people were found who were without arms, which I think
+        happened in part by that exchange which took place yonder in Seville, or
+        in the harbour when those who presented themselves armed were left, and
+        others were taken who gave something to those who made the exchange, it
+        seems that it would be well to order 200 cuirasses sent, and 100 muskets
+        and 100 crossbows, and a large quantity of arsenal supplies, which is
+        what we need most, and all these arms can be given to those who are
+        unarmed.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br /> ["Already Don Juan de Fonseca has been written to make provision
+        for this.]
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "Item. Inasmuch as some artisans who came here, such as masons and other
+        workmen, are married and have wives yonder in Spain, and would like to
+        have what is owing them from their wages given to their wives or to the
+        persons to whom they will send their requirements in order that they may
+        buy for them the things which they need here I supplicate their
+        Highnesses to order it paid to them, because it is for their benefit to
+        have these persons provided for here.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br /> ["Their Highnesses have already sent orders to Don Juan de Fonseca
+        to make provision for this matter.]
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "Item. Because, besides the other things which are asked for there
+        according to the memoranda which you are carrying signed by my hand, for
+        the maintenance of the persons in good health as well as for the sick
+        ones, it would be very well to have fifty casks of molasses (miel de
+        azucar) from the island of Madeira, as it is the best sustenance in the
+        world and the most healthful, and it does not usually cost more than two
+        ducats per cask, without the cask: and if their Highnesses order some
+        caravel to stop there in returning, it can be purchased and also ten
+        cases of sugar, which is very necessary; as this is the best season of
+        the year to obtain it, I say between the present time and the month of
+        April, and to obtain it at a reasonable price. If their Highnesses
+        command it, the order could be given, and it would not be known there
+        for what place it is wanted.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br /> ["Let Don Juan de Fonseca make provision for this matter.]
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "Item. You will say to their Highnesses that although the rivers contain
+        gold in the quantity related by those who have seen it, yet it is
+        certain that the gold is not engendered in the rivers but rather on the
+        land, the waters of the rivers which flow by the mines bringing it
+        enveloped in the sands: and as among these rivers which have been
+        discovered there are some very large ones, there are others so small
+        that they are fountains rather than rivers, which are not more than two
+        fingers of water in depth, and then the source from which they spring
+        may be found: for this reason not only labourers to gather it in the
+        sand will be profitable, but others to dig for it in the earth, which
+        will be the most particular operation and produce a great quantity. And
+        for this, it will be well for their Highnesses to send labourers, and
+        from among those who work yonder in Spain in the mines of Almaden, that
+        the work may be done in both ways. Although we will not await them here,
+        as with the labourers we have here we hope, with the aid of God, once
+        the people are in good health, to amass a good quantity of gold to be
+        sent on the first caravels which return.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br /> ["This will be fully provided for in another manner. In the
+        meantime their Highnesses order Don Yuan de Fonseca to send the best
+        miners he can obtain; and to write to Almaden to have the greatest
+        possible number taken from there and sent.]
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "Item. You will entreat their Highnesses very humbly on my part, to
+        consider Villacorta as speedily recommended to them, who, as their
+        Highnesses know, has rendered great service in this business, and with a
+        very good will, and as I know him, he is a diligent person and very
+        devoted to their service: it will be a favour to me if he is given some
+        confidential charge for which he is fitted, and where he can show his
+        desire to serve them and his diligence: and this you will obtain in such
+        a way that Villacorta may know by the result, that what he has done for
+        me when I needed him profits him in this manner.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br /> ["It will be done thus.]
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "Item. That the said Mosen Pedro and Gaspar and Beltran and others who
+        have remained here gave up the captainship of caravels, which have now
+        returned, and are not receiving wages: but because they are persons who
+        must be employed in important matters and of confidence, their
+        compensation, which must be different from the others, has not been
+        determined. You will entreat their Highnesses on my part to determine
+        what is to be given them each year, or by the month, according to their
+        service.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "Done in the city of Isabella, January 30, 1494.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br /> ["This has already been replied to above, but as it is stated in
+        the said item that they enjoy their salary, from the present time their
+        Highnesses order that their wages shall be paid to all of them from the
+        time they left their captainships."]
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      This document is worth studying, written as it was in circumstances that
+      at one moment looked desperate and at another were all hope. Columbus was
+      struggling manfully with difficulties that were already beginning to be
+      too much for him. The Man from Genoa, with his guiding star of faith in
+      some shore beyond the mist and radiance of the West&mdash;see into what
+      strange places and to what strange occupations this star has led him! The
+      blue visionary eyes, given to seeing things immediately beyond the present
+      horizon, must fix themselves on accounts and requisitions, on the needs of
+      idle, aristocratic, grumbling Spaniards; must fix themselves also on that
+      blank void in the bellies of his returning ships, where the gold ought to
+      have been. The letter has its practical side; the requisitions are made
+      with good sense and a grasp of the economic situation; but they have a
+      deeper significance than that. All this talk about little ewe lambs, wine
+      and bacon (better than the last lot, if it please your Highnesses), little
+      yearling calves, and fifty casks of molasses that can be bought a ducat or
+      two cheaper in Madeira in the months of April and May than at any other
+      time or place, is only half real. Columbus fills his Sovereigns' ears with
+      this clamour so that he shall not hear those embarrassing questions that
+      will inevitably be asked about the gold and the spices. He boldly begins
+      his letter with the old story about "indications of spices" and gold "in
+      incredible quantities," with a great deal of "moreover" and "besides," and
+      a bold, pompous, pathetic "I will undertake"; and then he gets away from
+      that subject by wordy deviations, so that to one reading his letter it
+      really might seem as though the true business of the expedition was to
+      provide Coronel, Mosen Pedro, Gaspar, Beltran, Gil Garcia, and the rest of
+      them with work and wages. Everything that occurs to him, great or little,
+      that makes it seem as though things were humming in the new settlement, he
+      stuffs into this document, shovelling words into the empty hulls of the
+      ships, and trying to fill those bottomless pits with a stream of talk. A
+      system of slavery is boldly and bluntly sketched; the writer, in the hurry
+      and stress of the moment, giving to its economic advantages rather greater
+      prominence than to its religious glories. The memorandum, for all its
+      courageous attempt to be very cool and orderly and practical, gives us, if
+      ever a human document did, a picture of a man struggling with an
+      impossible situation which he will not squarely face, like one who should
+      try to dig up the sea-shore and keep his eyes shut the while.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the royal comments written against the document one seems to trace the
+      hand of Isabella rather than of Ferdinand. Their tone is matter-of-fact,
+      cool, and comforting, like the coolness of a woman's hand placed on a
+      feverish brow. Isabella believed in him; perhaps she read between the
+      lines of this document, and saw, as we can see, how much anxiety and
+      distress were written there; and her comments are steadying and
+      encouraging. He has done well; what he asks is being attended to; their
+      Highnesses are well informed in regard to this and that matter; suitable
+      provision will be made for everything; but let him endeavour that the
+      amount of this gold may be known as precisely as possible. There is no
+      escaping from that. The Admiral (no one knows it better than himself) must
+      make good his dazzling promises, and coin every boastful word into a
+      golden excelente of Spain. Alas! he must no longer write about the lush
+      grasses, the shining rivers, the brightly coloured parrots, the gaudy
+      flies and insects, the little singing birds, and the nights that are like
+      May in Cordova. He must find out about the gold; for it has come to grim
+      business in the Earthly Paradise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /> <a name="fourvoyages" id="fourvoyages"></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
+      <img alt="fourvoyages.jpg (176K)" src="images/fourvoyages.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <a href="images/fourvoyages.jpg"> <img alt="Full Size"
+      src="images/enlarge.jpg" /></a> <br /><br /><br /><br /> <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS
+    </h1>
+    <h1>
+      AND THE NEW WORLD OF HIS DISCOVERY
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      A NARRATIVE BY FILSON YOUNG
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      VOLUME II.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /> <a name="portrait" id="portrait"></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
+      <img alt="portrait.jpg (27K)" src="images/portrait.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="bk3" id="bk3"></a>BOOK III.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      DESPERATE REMEDIES
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br /><br /> <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="ch1c" id="ch1c"></a>CHAPTER I.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE VOYAGE TO CUBA
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sight of the greater part of their fleet disappearing in the direction
+      of home threw back the unstable Spanish colony into doubt and despondency.
+      The brief encouragement afforded by Ojeda's report soon died away, and the
+      actual discomforts of life in Isabella were more important than visionary
+      luxuries that seemed to recede into the distance with the vanishing ships.
+      The food supply was the cause of much discomfort; the jobbery and
+      dishonesty which seem inseparable from the fitting out of a large
+      expedition had stored the ships with bad wine and imperfectly cured
+      provisions; and these combined with the unhealthy climate to produce a
+      good deal of sickness. The feeling against Columbus, never far below the
+      Spanish surface, began to express itself definitely in treacherous
+      consultations and plots; and these were fomented by Bernal Diaz, the
+      comptroller of the colony, who had access to Columbus's papers and had
+      seen the letter sent by him to Spain. Columbus was at this time prostrated
+      by an attack of fever, and Diaz took the opportunity to work the growing
+      discontent up to the point of action. He told the colonists that Columbus
+      had painted their condition in far too favourable terms; that he was
+      deceiving them as well as the Sovereigns; and a plot was hatched to seize
+      the ships that remained and sail for home, leaving Columbus behind to
+      enjoy the riches that he had falsely boasted about. They were ready to
+      take alarm at anything, and to believe anything one way or the other; and
+      as they had believed Ojeda when he came back with his report of riches,
+      now they believed Cado, the assayer, who said that even such gold as had
+      been found was of a very poor and worthless quality. The mutiny developed
+      fast; and a table of charges against Columbus, which was to be produced in
+      Spain as a justification for it, had actually been drawn up when the
+      Admiral, recovering from his illness, discovered what was on foot. He
+      dealt promptly and firmly with it in his quarterdeck manner, which was
+      always far more effective than his viceregal manner. Diaz was imprisoned
+      and lodged in chains on board one of the ships, to be sent to Spain for
+      trial; and the other ringleaders were punished also according to their
+      deserts. The guns and ammunition were all stored together on one ship
+      under a safe guard, and the mutiny was stamped out. But the Spaniards did
+      not love Columbus any the better for it; did not any the more easily
+      forgive him for being in command of them and for being a foreigner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But it would never do for the colony to stagnate in Isabella, and Columbus
+      decided to make a serious attempt, not merely to discover the gold of
+      Cibao, but to get it. He therefore organised a military expedition of
+      about 400 men, including artificers, miners, and carriers, with the little
+      cavalry force that had been brought out from Spain. Every one who had
+      armour wore it, flags and banners were carried, drums and trumpets were
+      sounded; the horses were decked out in rich caparisons, and as glittering
+      and formidable a show was made as possible. Leaving his brother James in
+      command of the settlement, Columbus set out on the 12th of March to the
+      interior of the island. Through the forest and up the mountainside a road
+      was cut by pioneers from among the aristocratic adventurers who had come
+      with the party; which road, the first made in the New World, was called El
+      Puerto de los Hidalgos. The formidable, glittering cavalcade inspired the
+      natives with terror and amazement; they had never seen horses before, and
+      when one of the soldiers dismounted it seemed to them as though some
+      terrifying two-headed, six-limbed beast had come asunder. What with their
+      fright of the horses and their desire to possess the trinkets that were
+      carried they were very friendly and hospitable, and supplied the
+      expedition with plenty of food. At last, after passing mountain ranges
+      that made their hearts faint, and rich valleys that made them hopeful
+      again, the explorers came to the mountains of Cibao, and passing over the
+      first range found themselves in a little valley at the foot of the hills
+      where a river wound round a fertile plain and there was ample
+      accommodation for an encampment. There were the usual signs of gold, and
+      Columbus saw in the brightly coloured stones of the river-bed evidence of
+      unbounded wealth in precious stones. At last he had come to the place! He
+      who had doubted so much, and whose faith had wavered, had now been led to
+      a place where he could touch and handle the gold and jewels of his desire;
+      and he therefore called the place Saint Thomas. He built a fort here,
+      leaving a garrison of fifty-six men under the command of Pedro Margarite
+      to collect gold from the natives, and himself returned to Isabella, which
+      he reached at the end of March.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Enforced absence from the thing he has organised is a great test of
+      efficiency in any man. The world is full of men who can do things
+      themselves; but those who can organise from the industry of their men a
+      machine which will steadily perform the work whether the organiser is
+      absent or present are rare indeed. Columbus was one of the first class.
+      His own power and personality generally gave him some kind of mastery over
+      any circumstances in which he was immediately concerned; but let him be
+      absent for a little time, and his organisation went to pieces. No one was
+      better than he at conducting a one-man concern; and his conduct of the
+      first voyage, so long as he had his company under his immediate command,
+      was a model of efficiency. But when the material under his command began
+      to grow and to be divided into groups his life became a succession of ups
+      and downs. While he was settling and disciplining one group mutiny and
+      disorder would attack the other; and when he went to attend to them, the
+      first one immediately fell into confusion again. He dealt with the
+      discontent in Isabella, organising the better disposed part of it in
+      productive labour, and himself marching the malcontents into something
+      like discipline and order, leaving them at Saint Thomas, as we have seen,
+      usefully collecting gold. But while he was away the people at Isabella had
+      got themselves into trouble again, and when he arrived there on the
+      morning of March 29th he found the town in a deplorable condition. The
+      lake beside which the city had been built, and which seemed so attractive
+      and healthy a spot, turned out to be nothing better than a fever trap.
+      Drained from the malarial marshes, its sickly exhalations soon produced an
+      epidemic that incapacitated more than half the colony and interrupted the
+      building operations. The time of those who were well was entirely occupied
+      with the care of those who were sick, and all productive work was at a
+      standstill. The reeking virgin soil had produced crops in an incredibly
+      short time, and the sowings of January were ready for reaping in the
+      beginning of April. But there was no one to reap them, and the further
+      cultivation of the ground had necessarily been neglected.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The faint-hearted Spaniards, who never could meet any trouble without
+      grumbling, were now in the depths of despair and angry discontent; and it
+      had not pleased them to be put on a short allowance of even the
+      unwholesome provisions that remained from the original store. A couple of
+      rude hand-mills had been erected for the making of flour, and as food was
+      the first necessity Columbus immediately put all the able-bodied men in
+      the colony, whatever their rank, to the elementary manual work of
+      grinding. Friar Buil and the twelve Benedictine brothers who were with him
+      thought this a wise order, assuming of course that as clerics they would
+      not be asked to work. But great was their astonishment, and loud and angry
+      their criticism of the Admiral, when they found that they also were
+      obliged to labour with their hands. But Columbus was firm; there were
+      absolutely no exceptions made; hidalgo and priest had to work alongside of
+      sailor and labourer; and the curses of the living mingled with those of
+      the dying on the man whose boastful words had brought them to such a place
+      and such a condition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was only in the nature of things that news should now arrive of trouble
+      at Saint Thomas. Gold and women again; instead of bartering or digging,
+      the Spaniards had been stealing; and discipline had been relaxed, with the
+      usual disastrous results with regard to the women of the adjacent native
+      tribes. Pedro Margarite sent a nervous message to Columbus expressing his
+      fear that Caonabo, the native king, should be exasperated to the point of
+      attacking them again. Columbus therefore despatched Ojeda in command of a
+      force of 350 armed men to Saint Thomas with instructions that he was to
+      take over the command of that post, while Margarite was to take out an
+      expedition in search of Caonabo whom, with his brothers, Margarite was
+      instructed to capture at all costs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Having thus set things going in the interior, and once more restored
+      Isabella to something like order, he decided to take three ships and
+      attempt to discover the coast of Cathay. The old Nina, the San Juan, and
+      the Cordera, three small caravels, were provisioned for six months and
+      manned by a company of fifty-two men. Francisco Nino went once more with
+      the Admiral as pilot, and the faithful Juan de la Cosa was taken to draw
+      charts; one of the monks also, to act as chaplain. The Admiral had a
+      steward, a secretary, ten seamen and six boys to complete the company on
+      the Nina. The San Juan was commanded by Alonso Perez Roldan and the
+      Cordera by Christoval Nino. Diego was again left in command of the colony,
+      with four counsellors, Friar Buil, Fernandez Coronel, Alonso Sanchez
+      Carvajal, and Juan de Luxan, to assist his authority.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Admiral sailed on April 24th, steering to the westward and touching at
+      La Navidad before he bore away to the island of Cuba, the southern shore
+      of which it was now his intention to explore. At one of his first
+      anchorages he discovered a native feast going on, and when the boats from
+      his ships pulled ashore the feasters fled in terror&mdash;the hungry
+      Spaniards finishing their meal for them. Presently, however, the feasters
+      were induced to come back, and Columbus with soft speeches made them a
+      compensation for the food that had been taken, and produced a favourable
+      impression, as his habit was; with the result that all along the coast he
+      was kindly received by the natives, who supplied him with food and fresh
+      fruit in return for trinkets. At the harbour now known as Santiago de
+      Cuba, where he anchored on May 2nd, he had what seemed like authentic
+      information of a great island to the southward which was alleged to be the
+      source of all the gold. The very compasses of Columbus's ships seem by
+      this time to have become demagnetised, and to have pointed only to gold;
+      for no sooner had he heard this report than he bore away to the south in
+      pursuit of that faint yellow glitter that had now quite taken the place of
+      the original inner light of faith.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The low coast of Jamaica, hazy and blue at first, but afterwards warming
+      into a golden belt crowned by the paler and deeper greens of the foliage,
+      was sighted first by Columbus on Sunday, May 4th; and he anchored the next
+      day in the beautiful harbour of Saint Anne, to which he gave the name of
+      Santa Gloria. To the island itself he gave the name of Santiago, which
+      however has never displaced its native name of Jamaica. The dim blue
+      mountains and clumps of lofty trees about the bay were wonderful even to
+      Columbus, whose eyes must by this time have been growing accustomed to the
+      beauty of the West Indies, and he lost his heart to Jamaica from the first
+      moment that his eyes rested on its green and golden shores. Perhaps he was
+      by this time a little out of conceit with Hayti; but be that as it may he
+      retracted all the superlatives he had ever used for the other lands of his
+      discovery, and bestowed them in his heart upon Jamaica.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was not humanly so well received as he had been on the other islands,
+      for when he cast anchor the natives came out in canoes threatening
+      hostilities and had to be appeased with red caps and hawks' bells. Next
+      day, however, Columbus wished to careen his ships, and sailed a little to
+      the west until he found a suitable beach at Puerto Bueno; and as he
+      approached the shore some large canoes filled with painted and feathered
+      warriors came out and attacked his ships, showering arrows and javelins,
+      and whooping and screaming at the Spaniards. The guns were discharged, and
+      an armed party sent ashore in a boat, and the natives were soon put to
+      flight. There was no renewal of hostilities; the next day the local
+      cacique came down offering provisions and help; presents were exchanged,
+      and cordial relations established. Columbus noticed that the Jamaicans
+      seemed to be a much more virile community than either the Cubans or the
+      people of Espanola. They had enormous canoes hollowed out of single
+      mahogany trees, some of them 96 feet long and 8 feet broad, which they
+      handled with the greatest ease and dexterity; they had a merry way with
+      them too, were quick of apprehension and clever at expressing their
+      meaning, and in their domestic utensils and implements they showed an
+      advance in civilisation on the other islanders of the group. Columbus did
+      some trade with the islanders as he sailed along the coast, but he does
+      not seem to have believed much in the gold story, for after sailing to the
+      western point of the island he bore away to the north again and sighted
+      the coast of Cuba on the 18th of May.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The reason why Columbus kept returning to the coast of Cuba was that he
+      believed it to be the mainland of Asia. The unlettered natives, who had
+      never read Marco Polo, told him that it was an island, although no man had
+      ever seen the end of it; but Columbus did not believe them, and sailed
+      westward in the belief that he would presently come upon the country and
+      city of Cathay. Soon he found himself in the wonderful labyrinth of islets
+      and sandbanks off the south coast; and because of the wonderful colours of
+      their flowers and climbing plants he called them Jardin de la Reina or
+      Queen's Garden. Dangerous as the navigation through these islands was, he
+      preferred to risk the shoals and sandbanks rather than round them out at
+      sea to the southward, for he believed them to be the islands which,
+      according to Marco Polo, lay in masses along the coast of Cathay. In this
+      adventure he had a very hard time of it; the lead had to be used all the
+      time, the ships often had to be towed, the wind veered round from every
+      quarter of the compass, and there were squalls and tempests, and currents
+      that threatened to set them ashore. By great good fortune, however, they
+      managed to get through the Archipelago without mishap. By June 3rd they
+      were sailing along the coast again, and Columbus had some conversation
+      with an old cacique who told him of a province called Mangon (or so
+      Columbus understood him) that lay to the west. Sir John Mandeville had
+      described the province of Mangi as being the richest in Cathay; and of
+      course, thought the Admiral, this must be the place. He went westward past
+      the Gulf of Xagua and got into the shallow sandy waters, now known as the
+      Jardinillos Bank, where the sea was whitened with particles of sand. When
+      he had got clear of this shoal water he stood across a broad bay towards a
+      native settlement where he was able to take in yams, fruit, fish, and
+      fresh water.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But this excitement and hard work were telling on the Admiral, and when a
+      native told him that there was a tribe close by with long tails, he
+      believed him; and later, when one of his men, coming back from a shore
+      expedition, reported that he had seen some figures in a forest wearing
+      white robes, Columbus believed that they were the people with the tails,
+      who wore a long garment to conceal them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was moving in a world of enchantment; the weather was like no weather
+      in any known part of the world; there were fogs, black and thick, which
+      blew down suddenly from the low marshy land, and blew away again as
+      suddenly; the sea was sometimes white as milk, sometimes black as pitch,
+      sometimes purple, sometimes green; scarlet cranes stood looking at them as
+      they slid past the low sandbanks; the warm foggy air smelt of roses;
+      shoals of turtles covered the waters, black butterflies circled in the
+      mist; and the fever that was beginning to work in the Admiral's blood
+      mounted to his brain, so that in this land of bad dreams his fixed ideas
+      began to dominate all his other faculties, and he decided that he must
+      certainly be on the coast of Cathay, in the magic land described by Marco
+      Polo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is nothing which illustrates the arbitrary and despotic government
+      of sea life so well as the nautical phrase "make it so." The very hours of
+      the day, slipping westward under the keel of an east-going ship, are
+      "made" by rigid decree; the captain takes his observation of sun or stars,
+      and announces the position of the ship to be at a certain spot on the
+      surface of the globe; any errors of judgment or deficiencies of method are
+      covered by the words "make it so." And in all the elusive phenomena
+      surrounding him the fevered brain of the Admiral discerned evidence that
+      he was really upon the coast of Asia, although there was no method by
+      which he could place the matter beyond a doubt. The word Asia was not
+      printed upon the sands of Cuba, as it might be upon a map; the lines of
+      longitude did not lie visibly across the surface of the sea; there was
+      nothing but sea and land, the Admiral's charts, and his own conviction.
+      Therefore Columbus decided to "make it so." If there was no other way of
+      being sure that this was the coast of Cathay, he would decree it to be the
+      coast of Cathay by a legal document and by oaths and affidavits. He would
+      force upon the members of his expedition a conviction at least equal to
+      his own; and instead of pursuing any further the coast that stretched
+      interminably west and south-west, he decided to say, in effect, and once
+      and for all, "Let this be the mainland of Asia."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He called his secretary to him and made him draw up a form of oath or
+      testament, to which every member of the expedition was required to
+      subscribe, affirming that the land off which they were then lying (12th
+      June 1494), was the mainland of the Indies and that it was possible to
+      return to Spain by land from that place; and every officer who should ever
+      deny it in the future was laid under a penalty of ten thousand maravedis,
+      and every ship's boy or seaman under a penalty of one hundred lashes; and
+      in addition, any member of the expedition denying it in the future was to
+      have his tongue cut out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No one will pretend that this was the action of a sane man; neither will
+      any one wonder that Columbus was something less than sane after all he had
+      gone through, and with the beginnings of a serious illness already in his
+      blood. His achievement was slipping from his grasp; the gold had not been
+      found, the wonders of the East had not been discovered; and it was his
+      instinct to secure something from the general wreck that seemed to be
+      falling about him, and to force his own dreams to come true, that caused
+      him to cut this grim and fantastic legal caper off the coast of Cuba. He
+      thought it at the time unlikely, seeing the difficulties of navigation
+      that he had gone through, which he might be pardoned for regarding as
+      insuperable to a less skilful mariner, that any one should ever come that
+      way again; even he himself said that he would never risk his life again in
+      such a place. He wished his journey, therefore, not to have been made in
+      vain; and as he himself believed that he had stood on the mainland of Asia
+      he took care to take back with him the only kind of evidence that was
+      possible namely, the sworn affidavits of the ships' crews.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Perhaps in his madness he would really have gone on and tried to reach the
+      Golden Chersonesus of Ptolemy, which according to Marco Polo lay just
+      beyond, and so to steer homeward round Ceylon and the Cape of Good Hope;
+      in which case he would either have been lost or would have discovered
+      Mexico. The crews, however, would not hear of the voyage being continued
+      westward. The ships were leaking and the salt water was spoiling the
+      already doubtful provisions and he was forced to turn back. He stood to
+      the south-east, and reached the Isle of Pines, to which he gave the name
+      of Evangelista, where the water-casks were filled, and from there he tried
+      to sail back to the east. But he found himself surrounded by islands and
+      banks in every direction, which made any straight course impossible. He
+      sailed south and east and west and north, and found himself always back
+      again in the middle of this charmed group of islands. He spent almost a
+      month trying to escape from them, and once his ship went ashore on a
+      sandbank and was only warped off with the greatest difficulty. On July 7th
+      he was back again in the region of the "Queen's Gardens," from which he
+      stood across to the coast of Cuba.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He anchored and landed there, and being in great distress and difficulty
+      he had a large cross erected on the mainland, and had mass said. When the
+      Spaniards rose from their knees they saw an old native man observing them;
+      and the old man came and sat down beside Columbus and talked to him
+      through the interpreter. He told him that he had been in Jamaica and
+      Espanola as well as in Cuba, and that the coming of the Spaniards had
+      caused great distress to the people of the islands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He then spoke to Columbus about religion, and the gist of what he said was
+      something like this: "The performance of your worship seems good to me.
+      You believe that this life is not everything; so do we; and I know that
+      when this life is over there are two places reserved for me, to one of
+      which I shall certainly go; one happy and beautiful, one dreadful and
+      miserable. Joy and kindness reign in the one place, which is good enough
+      for the best of men; and they will go there who while they have lived on
+      the earth have loved peace and goodness, and who have never robbed or
+      killed or been unkind. The other place is evil and full of shadows, and is
+      reserved for those who disturb and hurt the sons of men; how important it
+      is, therefore, that one should do no evil or injury in this world!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Columbus replied with a brief statement of his own theological views, and
+      added that he had been sent to find out if there were any persons in those
+      islands who did evil to others, such as the Caribs or cannibals, and that
+      if so he had come to punish them. The effect of this ingenuous speech was
+      heightened by a gift of hawks' bells and pieces of broken glass; upon
+      receiving which the good old man fell down on his knees, and said that the
+      Spaniards must surely have come from heaven.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A few days later the voyage to the, south-east was resumed, and some
+      progress was made along the coast. But contrary winds arose which made it
+      impossible for the ships to round Cape Cruz, and Columbus decided to
+      employ the time of waiting in completing his explorations in Jamaica. He
+      therefore sailed due south until he once more sighted the beautiful
+      northern coast of that island, following it to the west and landing, as
+      his custom was, whenever he saw a good harbour or anchorage. The wind was
+      still from the east, and he spent a month beating to the eastward along
+      the south coast of the island, fascinated by its beauty, and willing to
+      stay and explore it, but prevented by the discontent of his crews, who
+      were only anxious to get back to Espanola. He had friendly interviews with
+      many of the natives of Jamaica, and at almost the last harbour at which he
+      touched a cacique with his wife and family and complete retinue came off
+      in canoes to the ship, begging Columbus to take him and his household back
+      to Spain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Columbus considers this family, and thinks wistfully how well they would
+      look in Barcelona. Father dressed in a cap of gold and green jewels,
+      necklace and earrings of the same; mother decked out in similar regalia,
+      with the addition of a small cotton apron; two sons and five brothers
+      dressed principally in a feather or two; two daughters mother-naked,
+      except that the elder, a handsome girl of eighteen, wears a jewelled
+      girdle from which depends a tablet as big as an ivy leaf, made of various
+      coloured stones embroidered on cotton. What an exhibit for one of the
+      triumphal processions: "Native royal family, complete"! But Columbus
+      thinks also of the scarcity of provisions on board his ships, and wonders
+      how all these royalties would like to live on a pint of sour wine and a
+      rotten biscuit each per day. Alas! there is not sour wine and rotten
+      biscuit enough for his own people; it is still a long way to Espanola; and
+      he is obliged to make polite excuses, and to say that he will come back
+      for his majesty another time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was on the 20th of August that Columbus, having the day before seen the
+      last of the dim blue hills of Jamaica, sighted again the long peninsula of
+      Hayti, called by him Cape San Miguel, but known to us as Cape Tiburon;
+      although it was not until he was hailed by a cacique who called out to him
+      "Almirante, Almirante," that the seaworn mariners realised with joy that
+      the island must be Espanola. But they were a long way from Isabella yet.
+      They sailed along the south coast, meeting contrary winds, and at one
+      point landing nine men who were to cross the island, and try to reach
+      Isabella by land. Week followed week, and they made very poor progress. In
+      the beginning of September they were caught in a severe tempest, which
+      separated the ships for a time, and held the Admiral weather-bound for
+      eight days. There was an eclipse of the moon during this period, and he
+      took advantage of it to make an observation for longitude, by which he
+      found himself to be 5 hrs. 23 min., or 80 deg. 40', west of Cadiz. In this
+      observation there is an error of eighteen degrees, the true longitude of
+      the island of Saona, where the observation was taken, being 62 deg. 20'
+      west of Cadiz; and the error is accounted for partly by the inaccuracy of
+      the tables of Regiomontanus and partly by the crudity and inexactness of
+      the Admiral's methods. On the 24th of September they at last reached the
+      easternmost point of Espanola, named by Columbus San Rafael. They stood to
+      the east a little longer, and discovered the little island of Mona, which
+      lies between Espanola and Puerto Rico; and from thence shaped their course
+      west-by-north for Isabella. And no sooner had the course been set for home
+      than the Admiral suddenly and completely collapsed; was carried
+      unconscious to his cabin; and lay there in such extremity that his
+      companions gave him up for lost.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is no ordinary strain to which poor Christopher has succumbed. He has
+      been five months at sea, sharing with the common sailors their bad food
+      and weary vigils, but bearing alone on his own shoulders a weight of
+      anxiety of which they knew nothing. Watch has relieved watch on his ships,
+      but there has been no one to relieve him, or to lift the burden from his
+      mind. The eyes of a nation are upon him, watchful and jealous eyes that
+      will not forgive him any failure; and to earn their approval he has taken
+      this voyage of five months, during which he has only been able to forget
+      his troubles in the brief hours of slumber. Strange uncharted seas,
+      treacherous winds and currents, drenching surges have all done their part
+      in bringing him to this pass; and his body, now starved on rotten
+      biscuits, now glutted with unfamiliar fruits, has been preyed upon by the
+      tortured mind as the mind itself has been shaken and loosened by the
+      weakness of the body. He lies there in his cabin in a deep stupor; memory,
+      sight, and all sensation completely gone from him; dead but for the heart
+      that beats on faintly, and the breath that comes and goes through the
+      parted lips. Nino, de la Cosa, and the others come and look at him, shake
+      their heads, and go away again. There is nothing to be done; perhaps they
+      will get him back to Isabella in time to bury him there; perhaps not.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And meanwhile they are back again in calm and safe waters, and coasting a
+      familiar shore; and the faithful little Nina, shaking out her wings in the
+      sunny breezes, trips under the guidance of unfamiliar hands towards her
+      moorings in the Bay of Isabella. It is a sad company that she carries; for
+      in the cabin, deaf and blind and unconscious, there lies the heart and
+      guiding spirit of the New World. He does not hear the talking of the
+      waters past the Nina's timbers, does not hear the stamping on the deck and
+      shortening of sail and unstopping of cables and getting out of gear; does
+      not hear the splash of the anchor, nor the screams of birds that rise
+      circling from the shore. Does not hear the greetings and the news; does
+      not see bending over him a kind, helpful, and well-beloved face. He sees
+      and hears and knows nothing; and in that state of rest and absence from
+      the body they carry him, still living and breathing, ashore.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="ch2c" id="ch2c"></a>CHAPTER II.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE CONQUEST OF ESPANOLA
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We must now go back to the time when Columbus, having made what
+      arrangements he could for the safety of Espanola, left it under the charge
+      of his brother James. Ojeda had duly marched into the interior and taken
+      over the command of Fort St. Thomas, thus setting free Margarite,
+      according to his instructions, to lead an expedition for purposes of
+      reconnoitre and demonstration through the island. These, at any rate, were
+      Margarite's orders, duly communicated to him by Ojeda; but Margarite will
+      have none of them. Well born, well educated, well bred, he ought at least
+      to have the spirit to carry out orders so agreeable to a gentleman of
+      adventure; but unfortunately, although Margarite is a gentleman by birth,
+      he is a low and dishonest dog by nature. He cannot take the decent course,
+      cannot even play the man, and take his share in the military work of the
+      colony. Instead of cutting paths through the forest, and exhibiting his
+      military strength in an orderly and proper way as the Admiral intended he
+      should, he marches forth from St. Thomas, on hearing that Columbus has
+      sailed away, and encamps no further off than the Vega Real, that pleasant
+      place of green valleys and groves and murmuring rivers. He encamps there,
+      takes up his quarters there, will not budge from there for any Admiral;
+      and as for James Columbus and his counsellors, they may go to the devil
+      for all Margarite cares. One of them at least, he knows&mdash;Friar Buil&mdash;is
+      not such a fool as to sit down under the command of that solemn-faced,
+      uncouth young snip from Genoa; and doubtless when he is tired of the Vega
+      Real he and Buil can arrange something between them. In the meantime, here
+      is a very beautiful sunshiny place, abounding in all kinds of provisions;
+      food for more than one kind of appetite, as he has noticed when he has
+      thrust his rude way into the native houses and seen the shapely daughters
+      of the islanders. He has a little army of soldiers to forage for him; they
+      can get him food and gold, and they are useful also in those other
+      marauding expeditions designed to replenish the seraglio that he has
+      established in his camp; and if they like to do a little marauding and
+      woman-stealing on their own account, it is no affair of his, and may keep
+      the devils in a good temper. Thus Don Pedro Margarite to himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The peaceable and gentle natives soon began to resent these gross doings.
+      To robbery succeeded outrage, and to outrage murder&mdash;all three
+      committed in the very houses of the natives; and they began to murmur, to
+      withhold that goodwill which the Spaniards had so sorely tried, and to
+      develop a threatening attitude that was soon communicated to the natives
+      in the vicinity of Isabella, and came under the notice of James Columbus
+      and his council. Grave, bookish, wool-weaving young James, not used to
+      military affairs, and not at all comfortable in his command, can think of
+      no other expedient than&mdash;to write a letter to Margarite remonstrating
+      with him for his licentious excesses and reminding him of the Admiral's
+      instructions, which were being neglected.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Margarite receives the letter and reads it with a contemptuous laugh. He
+      is not going to be ordered about by a family of Italian wool-weavers, and
+      the only change in his conduct is that he becomes more and more careless
+      and impudent, extending the area of his lawless operations, and making
+      frequent visits to Isabella itself, swaggering under the very nose of
+      solemn James, and soon deep in consultation with Friar Buil.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this moment, that is to say very soon after the departure of
+      Christopher on his voyage to Cuba and Jamaica, three ships dropped anchor
+      in the Bay of Isabella. They were laden with the much-needed supplies from
+      Spain, and had been sent out under the command of Bartholomew Columbus. It
+      will be remembered that when Christopher reached Spain after his first
+      voyage one of his first cares had been to write to Bartholomew, asking him
+      to join him. The letter, doubtless after many wanderings, had found
+      Bartholomew in France at the court of Charles VIII., by whom he was held
+      in some esteem; in fact it was Charles who provided him with the necessary
+      money for his journey to Spain, for Bartholomew had not greatly prospered,
+      in spite of his voyage with Diaz to the Cape of Good Hope and of his
+      having been in England making exploration proposals at the court of Henry
+      VII. He had arrived in Spain after Columbus had sailed again, and had
+      presented himself at court with his two nephews, Ferdinand and Diego, both
+      of whom were now in the service of Prince Juan as pages. Ferdinand and
+      Isabella seem to have received Bartholomew kindly. They liked this capable
+      navigator, who had much of Christopher's charm of manner, and was more a
+      man of the world than he. Much more practical also; Ferdinand would be
+      sure to like him better than he liked Christopher, whose pompous manner
+      and long-winded speeches bored him. Bartholomew was quick, alert, decisive
+      and practical; he was an accomplished navigator&mdash;almost as
+      accomplished as Columbus, as it appeared. He was offered the command of
+      the three ships which were being prepared to go to Espanola with supplies;
+      and he duly arrived there after a prosperous voyage. It will be remembered
+      that Christopher had, so far as we know, kept the secret of the road to
+      the new islands; and Bartholomew can have had nothing more to guide him
+      than a rough chart showing the islands in a certain latitude, and the
+      distance to be run towards them by dead-reckoning. That he should have
+      made an exact landfall and sailed into the Bay of Isabella, never having
+      been there before, was a certificate of the highest skill in navigation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Unfortunately it was James who was in charge of the colony; Bartholomew
+      had no authority, for once his ships had arrived in port his mission was
+      accomplished until Christopher should return and find him employment. He
+      was therefore forced to sit still and watch his young brother struggling
+      with the unruly Spaniards. His presence, however, was no doubt a further
+      exasperation to the malcontents. There existed in Isabella a little
+      faction of some of the aristocrats who had never, forgiven Columbus for
+      employing them in degrading manual labour; who had never forgiven him in
+      fact for being there at all, and in command over them. And now here was
+      another woolweaver, or son of a wool-weaver, come to put his finger in the
+      pie that Christopher has apparently provided so carefully for himself and
+      his family.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Margarite and Buil and some others, treacherous scoundrels all of them,
+      but clannish to their own race and class, decide that they will put up
+      with it no longer; they are tired of Espanola in any case, and Margarite,
+      from too free indulgence among the native women, has contracted an
+      unpleasant disease, and thinks that a sea voyage and the attentions of a
+      Spanish doctor will be good for him. It is easy for them to put their plot
+      into execution. There are the ships; there is nothing, for them to do but
+      take a couple of them, provision them, and set sail for Spain, where they
+      trust to their own influence, and the story they will be able to tell of
+      the falseness of the Admiral's promises, to excuse their breach of
+      discipline. And sail they do, snapping their fingers at the wool-weavers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      James and Bartholomew were perhaps glad to be rid of them, but their
+      relief was tempered with anxiety as to the result on Christopher's
+      reputation and favour when the malcontents should have made their false
+      representations at Court. The brothers were powerless to do anything in
+      that matter, however, and the state of affairs in Espanola demanded their
+      close attention. Margarite's little army, finding itself without even the
+      uncertain restraint of its commander, now openly mutinied and abandoned
+      itself to the wildest excesses. It became scattered and disbanded, and
+      little groups of soldiers went wandering about the country, robbing and
+      outraging and carrying cruelty and oppression among the natives.
+      Long-suffering as these were, and patiently as they bore with the
+      unspeakable barbarities of the Spanish soldiers, there came a point beyond
+      which their forbearance would not go. An aching spirit of unforgiveness
+      and revenge took the place of their former gentleness and compliance; and
+      here and there, when the Spaniards were more brutal and less cautious than
+      was their brutal and incautious habit, the natives fell upon them and took
+      swift and bloody revenge. Small parties found themselves besieged and put
+      to death whole villages, whose hospitality had been abused, cut off
+      wandering groups of the marauders and burned the houses where they lodged.
+      The disaffection spread; and Caonabo, who had never abated his resentment
+      at the Spanish intrusion into the island, thought the time had come to
+      make another demonstration of native power.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fortunately for the Spaniards his object was the fort of St. Thomas,
+      commanded by the alert Ojeda; and this young man, who was not easily to be
+      caught napping, had timely intelligence of his intention. When Caonabo,
+      mustering ten thousand men, suddenly surrounded the fort and prepared to
+      attack it, he found the fifty Spaniards of the garrison more than ready
+      for him, and his naked savages dared not advance within the range of the
+      crossbows and arquebuses. Caonabo tried to besiege the station, watching
+      every gorge and road through which supplies could reach it, but Ojeda made
+      sallies and raids upon the native force, under which it became thinned and
+      discouraged; and Caonabo had finally to withdraw to his own territory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But he was not yet beaten. He decided upon another and much larger
+      enterprise, which was to induce the other caciques of the island to
+      co-operate with him in an attack upon Isabella, the population of which he
+      knew would have been much thinned and weakened by disease. The island was
+      divided into five native provinces. The northeastern part, named Marien,
+      was under the rule of Guacanagari, whose headquarters were near the
+      abandoned La Navidad. The remaining eastern part of the island, called
+      Higuay, was under a chief named Cotabanama. The western province was
+      Xaragua, governed by one Behechio, whose sister, Anacaona, was the wife of
+      Caonabo. The middle of the island was divided into two provinces-that
+      which extended from the northern coast to the Cibao mountains and included
+      the Vega Real being governed by Guarionex, and that which extended from
+      the Cibao mountains to the south being governed by Caonabo. All these
+      rulers were more or less embittered by the outrages and cruelties of the
+      Spaniards, and all agreed to join with Caonabo except Guacanagari. That
+      loyal soul, so faithful to what he knew of good, shocked and distressed as
+      he was by outrages from which his own people had suffered no less than the
+      others, could not bring himself to commit what he regarded as a breach of
+      the laws of hospitality. It was upon his shores that Columbus had first
+      landed; and although it was his own country and his own people whose
+      wrongs were to be avenged, he could not bring himself to turn traitor to
+      the grave Admiral with whom, in those happy days of the past, he had
+      enjoyed so much pleasant intercourse. His refusal to co-operate delayed
+      the plan of Caonabo, who directed the island coalition against Guacanagari
+      himself in order to bring him to reason. He was attacked by the
+      neighbouring chiefs; one of his wives was killed and another captured; but
+      still he would not swerve from his ideal of conduct.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first thing that Columbus recognised when he opened his eyes after his
+      long period of lethargy and insensibility was the face of his brother
+      Bartholomew bend-over him where he lay in bed in his own house at
+      Espanola. Nothing could have been more welcome to him, sick, lonely and
+      discouraged as he was, than the presence of that strong, helpful brother;
+      and from the time when Bartholomew's friendly face first greeted him he
+      began to get better. His first act, as soon as he was strong enough to
+      sign a paper, was to appoint Bartholomew to the office of Adelantado, or
+      Lieutenant-Governor&mdash;an indiscreet and rather tactless proceeding
+      which, although it was not outside his power as a bearer of the royal
+      seal, was afterwards resented by King Ferdinand as a piece of impudent
+      encroachment upon the royal prerogative. But Columbus was unable to
+      transact business himself, and James was manifestly of little use; the
+      action was natural enough.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the early days of his convalescence he had another pleasant experience,
+      in the shape of a visit from Guacanagari, who came to express his concern
+      at the Admiral's illness, and to tell him the story of what had been going
+      on in his absence. The gentle creature referred again with tears to the
+      massacre at La Navidad, and again asserted that innocence of any hand in
+      it which Columbus had happily never doubted; and he told him also of the
+      secret league against Isabella, of his own refusal to join it, and of the
+      attacks to which he had consequently been subjected. It must have been an
+      affecting meeting for these two, who represented the first friendship
+      formed between the Old World and the New, who were both of them destined
+      to suffer in the impact of civilisation and savagery, and whose names and
+      characters were happily destined to survive that impact, and to triumph
+      over the oblivion of centuries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So long as the native population remained hostile and unconquered by
+      kindness or force, it was impossible to work securely at the development
+      of the colony; and Columbus, however regretfully, had come to feel that
+      circumstances more or less obliged him to use force. At first he did not
+      quite realise the gravity of the position, and attempted to conquer or
+      reconcile the natives in little groups. Guarionex, the cacique of the Vega
+      Real, was by gifts and smooth words soothed back into a friendship which
+      was consolidated by the marriage of his daughter with Columbus's native
+      interpreter. It was useless, how ever, to try and make friends with
+      Caonabo, that fierce irreconcilable; and it was felt that only by
+      stratagem could he be secured. No sooner was this suggested than Ojeda
+      volunteered for the service. Amid the somewhat slow-moving figures of our
+      story this man appears as lively as a flea; and he dances across our pages
+      in a sensation of intrepid feats of arms that make his great popularity
+      among the Spaniards easily credible to us. He did not know what fear was;
+      he was always ready for a fight of any kind; a quarrel in the streets of
+      Madrid, a duel, a fight with a man or a wild beast, a brawl in a tavern or
+      a military expedition, were all the same to him, if only they gave him an
+      opportunity for fighting. He had a little picture of the Virgin hung round
+      his neck, by which he swore, and to which he prayed; he had never been so
+      much as scratched in all his affrays, and he believed that he led a
+      charmed life. Who would go out against Caonabo, the Goliath of the island?
+      He, little David Ojeda, he would go out and undertake to fetch the giant
+      back with him; and all he wanted was ten men, a pair of handcuffs, a
+      handful of trinkets, horses for the whole of his company, and his little
+      image or picture of the Virgin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Columbus may have smiled at this proposal, but he knew his man; and Ojeda
+      duly departed with his horses and his ten men. Plunging into the forest,
+      he made his way through sixty leagues of dense undergrowth until he
+      arrived in the very heart of Caonabo's territory and presented himself at
+      the chiefs house. The chief was at home, and, not unimpressed by the
+      valour of Ojeda, who represented himself as coming on a friendly mission,
+      received him under conditions of truce. He had an eye for military
+      prowess, this Caonabo, and something of the lion's heart in him; he
+      recognised in Ojeda the little man who kept him so long at bay outside
+      Fort St. Thomas; and, after the manner of lion-hearted people, liked him
+      none the worse for that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ojeda proposes that the King should accompany him to Isabella to make
+      peace. No, says Caonabo. Then Ojeda tries another way. There is a poetical
+      side to this big fighting savage, and often in more friendly days, when
+      the bell in the little chapel of Isabella has been ringing for Vespers,
+      the cacique has been observed sitting alone on some hill listening,
+      enchanted by the strange silver voice that floated to him across the
+      sunset. The bell has indeed become something of a personality in the
+      island: all the neighbouring savages listen to its voice with awe and
+      fascination, pausing with inclined heads whenever it begins to speak from
+      its turret.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ojeda talks to Caonabo about the bell, and tells him what a wonderful
+      thing it is; tells him also that if he will come with him to Isabella he
+      shall have the bell for a present. Poetry and public policy struggle
+      together in Caonabo's heart, but poetry wins; the great powerful savage,
+      urged thereto by his childish lion-heart, will come to Isabella if they
+      will give him the bell. He sets forth, accompanied by a native retinue,
+      and by Ojeda and his ten horsemen. Presently they come to a river and
+      Ojeda produces his bright manacles; tells the King that they are royal
+      ornaments and that he has been instructed to bestow them upon Caonabo as a
+      sign of honour. But first he must come alone to the river and bathe, which
+      he does. Then he must sit with Ojeda upon his horse; which he does. Then
+      he must have fitted on to him the shining silver trinkets; which he does,
+      the great grinning giant, pleased with his toys. Then, to show him what it
+      is like to be on a horse, Ojeda canters gently round in widening and ever
+      widening circles; a turn of his spurred heels, and the canter becomes a
+      gallop, the circle becomes a straight line, and Caonabo is on the road to
+      Isabella. When they are well beyond reach of the natives they pause and
+      tie Caonabo securely into his place; and by this treachery bring him into
+      Isabella, where he is imprisoned in the Admiral's house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sulky giant, brought thus into captivity, refuses to bend his proud,
+      stubborn heart into even a form of submission. He takes no notice of
+      Columbus, and pays him no honour, although honour is paid to himself as a
+      captive king. He sits there behind his bars gnawing his fingers, listening
+      to the voice of the bell that has lured him into captivity, and thinking
+      of the free open life which he is to know no more. Though he will pay no
+      deference to the Admiral, will not even rise when he enters his presence,
+      there is one person he holds in honour, and that is Ojeda. He will not
+      rise when the Admiral comes; but when Ojeda comes, small as he is, and
+      without external state, the chief makes his obeisance to him. The Admiral
+      he sets at defiance, and boasts of his destruction of La Navidad, and of
+      his plan to destroy Isabella; Ojeda he respects and holds in honour, as
+      being the only man in the island brave enough to come into his house and
+      carry him off a captive. There is a good deal of the sportsman in Caonabo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The immediate result of the capture of Caonabo was to rouse the islanders
+      to further hostilities, and one of the brothers of the captive king led a
+      force of seven thousand men to the vicinity of St. Thomas, to which Ojeda,
+      however, had in the meantime returned. His small force was augmented by
+      some men despatched by Bartholomew Columbus on receipt of an urgent
+      message; and in command of this force Ojeda sallied forth against the
+      natives and attacked them furiously on horse and on foot, killing a great
+      part of them, taking others prisoner, and putting the rest to flight. This
+      was the beginning of the end of the island resistance. A month or two
+      later, when Columbus was better, he and Bartholomew together mustered the
+      whole of their available army and marched out in search of the native
+      force, which he knew had been rallied and greatly augmented.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two forces met near the present town of Santiago, in the plain known
+      as the Savanna of Matanza. The Spanish force was divided into three main
+      divisions, under the command of Christopher and Bartholomew Columbus and
+      Ojeda respectively. These three divisions attacked the Indians
+      simultaneously from different points, Ojeda throwing his cavalry upon
+      them, riding them down, and cutting them to pieces. Drums were beaten and
+      trumpets blown; the guns were fired from the cover of the trees; and a
+      pack of bloodhounds, which had been sent out from Spain with Bartholomew,
+      were let loose upon the natives and tore their bodies to pieces. It was an
+      easy and horrible victory. The native force was estimated by Columbus at
+      one hundred thousand men, although we shall probably be nearer the mark if
+      we reduce that estimate by one half.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The powers of hell were let loose that day into the Earthly Paradise. The
+      guns mowed red lines of blood through the solid ranks of the natives; the
+      great Spanish horses trod upon and crushed their writhing bodies, in which
+      arrows and lances continually stuck and quivered; and the ferocious dogs,
+      barking and growling, seized the naked Indians by the throat, dragged them
+      to the ground, and tore out their very entrails . . . . Well for us that
+      the horrible noises of that day are silent now; well for the world that
+      that place of bloodshed and horror has grown green again; better for us
+      and for the world if those cries had never been heard, and that quiet
+      place had never received a stain that centuries of green succeeding
+      springtides can never wash away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was some time before this final battle that the convalescence of the
+      Admiral was further assisted by the arrival of four ships commanded by
+      Antonio Torres, who must have passed, out of sight and somewhere on the
+      high seas, the ships bearing Buil and Margarite back to Spain. He brought
+      with him a large supply of fresh provisions for the colony, and a number
+      of genuine colonists, such as fishermen, carpenters, farmers, mechanics,
+      and millers. And better still he brought a letter from the Sovereigns,
+      dated the 16th of August 1494, which did much to cheer the shaken spirits
+      of Columbus. The words with which he had freighted his empty ships had not
+      been in vain; and in this reply to them he was warmly commended for his
+      diligence, and reminded that he enjoyed the unshaken confidence of the
+      Sovereigns. They proposed that a caravel should sail every month from
+      Spain and from Isabella, bearing intelligence of the colony and also, it
+      was hoped, some of its products. In a general letter addressed to the
+      colony the settlers were reminded of the obedience they owed to the
+      Admiral, and were instructed to obey him in all things under the penalty
+      of heavy fines. They invited Columbus to come back if he could in order to
+      be present at the convention which was to establish the line of
+      demarcation between Spanish and Portuguese possessions; or if he could not
+      come himself to send his brother Bartholomew. There were reasons, however,
+      which made this difficult. Columbus wished to despatch the ships back
+      again as speedily as possible, in order that news of him might help to
+      counteract the evil rumours that he knew Buil and Margarite would be
+      spreading. He himself was as yet (February 1494) too ill to travel; and
+      during his illness Bartholomew could not easily be spared. It was
+      therefore decided to send home James, who could most easily be spared, and
+      whose testimony as a member of the governing body during the absence of
+      the Admiral on his voyage to Cuba might be relied upon to counteract the
+      jealous accusations of Margarite and Buil.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Unfortunately there was no golden cargo to send back with him. As much
+      gold as possible was scraped together, but it was very little. The usual
+      assortment of samples of various island products was also sent; but still
+      the vessels were practically empty. Columbus must have been painfully
+      conscious that the time for sending samples had more than expired, and
+      that the people in Spain might reasonably expect some of the actual riches
+      of which there had been so many specimens and promises. In something
+      approaching desperation, he decided to fill the empty holds of the ships
+      with something which, if it was not actual money, could at least be made
+      to realise money. From their sunny dreaming life on the island five
+      hundred natives were taken and lodged in the dark holds of the caravels,
+      to be sent to Spain and sold there for what they would fetch. Of course
+      they were to be "freed" and converted to Christianity in the process; that
+      was always part of the programme, but it did not interfere with business.
+      They were not man-eating Caribs or fierce marauding savages from
+      neighbouring islands, but were of the mild and peaceable race that peopled
+      Espanola. The wheels of civilisation were beginning to turn in the New
+      World.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /> <a name="crudemap" id="crudemap"></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
+      <img alt="crudemap.jpg (40K)" src="images/crudemap.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <a href="images/crudemap.jpg"> <img alt="Full Size"
+      src="images/enlarge.jpg" /></a> <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After the capture of Caonabo and the massacre of April 25th Columbus
+      marched through the island, receiving the surrender and submission of the
+      terrified natives. At the approach of his force the caciques came out and
+      sued for peace; and if here and there there was a momentary resistance, a
+      charge of cavalry soon put an end to it. One by one the kings surrendered
+      and laid down their arms, until all the island rulers had capitulated with
+      the exception of Behechio, into whose territory Columbus did not march,
+      and who sullenly retired to the south-western corner of the island. The
+      terms of peace were harsh enough, and were suggested by the dilemma of
+      Columbus in his frantic desire to get together some gold at any cost. A
+      tribute of gold-dust was laid upon every adult native in the island. Every
+      three months a hawk's bell full of gold was to be brought to the treasury
+      at Isabella, and in the case 39 of caciques the measure was a calabash. A
+      receipt in the form of a brass medal was fastened to the neck of every
+      Indian when he paid his tribute, and those who could not show the medal
+      with the necessary number of marks were to be further fined and punished.
+      In the districts where there was no gold, 25 lbs. of cotton was accepted
+      instead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This levy was made in ignorance of the real conditions under which the
+      natives possessed themselves of the gold. What they had in many cases
+      represented the store of years, and in all but one or two favoured
+      districts it was quite impossible for them to keep up the amount of the
+      tribute. Yet the hawks' bells, which once had been so eagerly coveted and
+      were now becoming hated symbols of oppression, had to be filled somehow;
+      and as the day of payment drew near the wretched natives, who had formerly
+      only sought for gold when a little of it was wanted for a pretty ornament,
+      had now to work with frantic energy in the river sands; or in other cases,
+      to toil through the heat of the day in the cotton fields which they had
+      formerly only cultivated enough to furnish their very scant requirements
+      of use and adornment. One or two caciques, knowing that their people could
+      not possibly furnish the required amount of gold, begged that its value in
+      grain might be accepted instead; but that was not the kind of wealth that
+      Columbus was seeking. It must be gold or nothing; and rather than receive
+      any other article from the gold-bearing districts, he consented to take
+      half the amount.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus step by step, and under the banner of the Holy Catholic religion, did
+      dark and cruel misery march through the groves and glades of the island
+      and banish for ever its ancient peace. This long-vanished race that was
+      native to the island of Espanola seems to have had some of the happiest
+      and most lovable qualities known to dwellers on this planet. They had none
+      of the brutalities of the African, the paralysing wisdom of the Asian, nor
+      the tragic potentialities of the European peoples. Their life was from day
+      to day, and from season to season, like the life of flowers and birds.
+      They lived in such order and peaceable community as the common sense of
+      their own simple needs suggested; they craved no pleasures except those
+      that came free from nature, and sought no wealth but what the sun gave
+      them. In their verdant island, near to the heart and source of light,
+      surrounded by the murmur of the sea, and so enriched by nature that the
+      idea, of any other kind of riches never occurred to them, their existence
+      went to a happy dancing measure like that of the fauns and nymphs in whose
+      charmed existence they believed. The sun and moon were to them creatures
+      of their island who had escaped from a cavern by the shore and now
+      wandered free in the upper air, peopling it with happy stars; and man
+      himself they believed to have sprung from crevices in the rocks, like the
+      plants that grew tall and beautiful wherever there was a handful of soil
+      for their roots. Poor happy children! You are all dead a long while ago
+      now, and have long been hushed in the great humming sleep and silence of
+      Time; the modern world has no time nor room for people like you, with so
+      much kindness and so little ambition . . . . Yet their free pagan souls
+      were given a chance to be penned within the Christian fold; the priest
+      accompanied the gunner and the bloodhound, the missionary walked beside
+      the slave-driver; and upon the bewildered sun-bright surface of their
+      minds the shadow of the cross was for a moment thrown. Verily to them the
+      professors of Christ brought not peace, but a sword.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="ch3c" id="ch3c"></a>CHAPTER III.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      UPS AND DOWNS
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While Columbus was toiling under the tropical sun to make good his
+      promises to the Crown, Margarite and Buil, having safely come home to
+      Spain from across the seas, were busy setting forth their view of the
+      value of his discoveries. It was a view entirely different from any that
+      Ferdinand and Isabella had heard before, and coming as it did from two men
+      of position and importance who had actually been in Espanola, and were
+      loyal and religious subjects of the Crown, it could not fail to receive,
+      if not immediate and complete credence, at any rate grave attention.
+      Hitherto the Sovereigns had only heard one side of the matter; an
+      occasional jealous voice may have been raised from the neighbourhood of
+      the Pinzons or some one else not entirely satisfied with his own position
+      in the affair; but such small cries of dissent had naturally had little
+      chance against the dignified eloquence of the Admiral.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, however, the matter was different. People who were at least the
+      equals of Columbus in intelligence, and his superiors by birth and
+      education, had seen with their own eyes the things of which he had spoken,
+      and their account differed widely from his. They represented things in
+      Espanola as being in a very bad way indeed, which was true enough; drew a
+      dismal picture of an overcrowded colony ravaged with disease and suffering
+      from lack of provisions; and held forth at length upon the very doubtful
+      quality of the gold with which the New World was supposed to abound. More
+      than this, they brought grave charges against Columbus himself,
+      representing him as unfit to govern a colony, given to favouritism, and,
+      worst of all, guilty of having deliberately misrepresented for his own
+      ends the resources of the colony. This as we know was not true. It was not
+      for his own ends, or for any ends at all within the comprehension of men
+      like Margarite and Buil, that poor Christopher had spoken so glowingly out
+      of a heart full of faith in what he had seen and done. Purposes, dim
+      perhaps, but far greater and loftier than any of which these two mean
+      souls had understanding, animated him alike in his discoveries and in his
+      account of them; although that does not alter the unpleasant fact that at
+      the stage matters had now reached it seemed as though there might have
+      been serious misrepresentation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ferdinand and Isabella, thus confronted with a rather difficult situation,
+      acted with great wisdom and good sense. How much or how little they
+      believed we do not know, but it was obviously their duty, having heard
+      such an account from responsible officers, to investigate matters for
+      themselves without assuming either that the report was true or untrue.
+      They immediately had four caravels furnished with supplies, and decided to
+      appoint an agent to accompany the expedition, investigate the affairs of
+      the colony, and make a report to them. If the Admiral was still absent
+      when their agent reached the colony he was to be entrusted with the
+      distribution of the supplies which were being sent out; for Columbus's
+      long absence from Espanola had given rise to some fears for his safety.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Sovereigns had just come to this decision (April 1495) when a letter
+      arrived from the Admiral himself, announcing his return to Espanola after
+      discovering the veritable mainland of Asia, as the notarial document
+      enclosed with the letter attested. Torres and James Columbus had arrived
+      in Spain, bearing the memorandum which some time ago we saw the Admiral
+      writing; and they were able to do something towards allaying the fears of
+      the Sovereigns as to the condition of the colony. The King and Queen,
+      nevertheless, wisely decided to carry out their original intention, and in
+      appointing an agent they very handsomely chose one of the men whom
+      Columbus had recommended to them in his letter&mdash;Juan Aguado. This
+      action shows a friendliness to Columbus and confidence in him that lead
+      one to suspect that the tales of Margarite and Buil had been taken with a
+      grain of salt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the same time the Sovereigns made one or two orders which could not but
+      be unwelcome to Columbus. A decree was issued making it lawful for all
+      native-born Spaniards to make voyages of discovery, and to settle in
+      Espanola itself if they liked. This was an infringement of the original
+      privileges granted to the Admiral&mdash;privileges which were really
+      absurd, and which can only have been granted in complete disbelief that
+      anything much would come of his discovery. It took Columbus two years to
+      get this order modified, and in the meantime a great many Spanish
+      adventurers, our old friends the Pinzons among them, did actually make
+      voyages and added to the area explored by the Spaniards in Columbus's
+      lifetime. Columbus was bitterly jealous that any one should be admitted to
+      the western ocean, which he regarded as his special preserve, except under
+      his supreme authority; and he is reported to have said that once the way
+      to the West had been pointed out "even the very tailors turned explorers."
+      There, surely, spoke the long dormant woolweaver in him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The commission given to Aguado was very brief, and so vaguely worded that
+      it might mean much or little, according to the discretion of the
+      commissioner and the necessities of the case as viewed by him. "We send to
+      you Juan Aguada, our Groom of the Chambers, who will speak to you on our
+      part. We command you to give him faith and credit." A letter was also sent
+      to Columbus in which he was instructed to reduce the number of people
+      dependent on the colony to five hundred instead of a thousand; and the
+      control of the mines was entrusted to one Pablo Belvis, who was sent out
+      as chief metallurgist. As for the slaves that Columbus had sent home,
+      Isabella forbade their sale until inquiry could be made into the condition
+      of their capture, and the fine moral point involved was entrusted to the
+      ecclesiastical authorities for examination and solution. Poor Christopher,
+      knowing as he did that five hundred heretics were being burned every year
+      by the Grand Inquisitor, had not expected this hair-splitting over the
+      fate of heathens who had rebelled against Spanish authority; and it caused
+      him some distress when he heard of it. The theologians, however, proved
+      equal to the occasion, and the slaves were duly sold in Seville market.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Aguado sailed from Cadiz at the end of August 1495, and reached Espanola
+      in October. James Columbus (who does not as yet seem to be in very great
+      demand anywhere, and who doubtless conceals behind his grave visage much
+      honest amazement at the amount of life that he is seeing) returned with
+      him. Aguado, on arriving at Isabella, found that Columbus was absent
+      establishing forts in the interior of the island, Bartholomew being left
+      in charge at Isabella.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Aguado, who had apparently been found faithful in small matters, was found
+      wanting in his use of the authority that had been entrusted to him. It
+      seems to have turned his head; for instead of beginning quietly to
+      investigate the affairs of the colony as he had been commanded to do he
+      took over from Bartholomew the actual government, and interpreted his
+      commission as giving him the right to supersede the Admiral himself. The
+      unhappy colony, which had no doubt been enjoying some brief period of
+      peace under the wise direction of Bartholomew, was again thrown into
+      confusion by the doings of Aguado. He arrested this person, imprisoned
+      that; ordered that things should be done this way, which had formerly been
+      done that way; and if they had formerly been done that way, then he
+      ordered that they should be done this way&mdash;in short he committed
+      every mistake possible for a man in his situation armed with a little
+      brief authority. He did not hesitate to let it be known that he was there
+      to examine the conduct of the Admiral himself; and we may be quite sure
+      that every one in the colony who had a grievance or an ill tale to carry,
+      carried it to Aguado. His whole attitude was one of enmity and disloyalty
+      to the Admiral who had so handsomely recommended him to the notice of the
+      Sovereigns; and so undisguised was his attitude that even the Indians
+      began to lodge their complaints and to see a chance by which they might
+      escape from the intolerable burden of the gold tribute.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was at this point that Columbus returned and found Aguado ruling in the
+      place of Bartholomew, who had wisely made no protest against his own
+      deposition, but was quietly waiting for the Admiral to return. Columbus
+      might surely have been forgiven if he had betrayed extreme anger and
+      annoyance at the doings of Aguado; and it is entirely to his credit that
+      he concealed such natural wrath as he may have felt, and greeted Aguado
+      with extreme courtesy and ceremony as a representative of the Sovereigns.
+      He made no protest, but decided to return himself to Spain and confront
+      the jealousy and ill-fame that were accumulating against him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Just as the ships were all ready to sail, one of the hurricanes which
+      occur periodically in the West Indies burst upon the island, lashing the
+      sea into a wall of advancing foam that destroyed everything before it.
+      Among other things it destroyed three out of the four ships, dashing them
+      on the beach and reducing them to complete wreckage. The only one that
+      held to her anchor and, although much battered and damaged, rode out the
+      gale, was the Nina, that staunch little friend that had remained faithful
+      to the Admiral through so many dangers and trials. There was nothing for
+      it but to build a new ship out of the fragments of the wrecks, and to make
+      the journey home with two ships instead of with four.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this moment, while he was waiting for the ship to be completed,
+      Columbus heard a piece of news of a kind that never failed to rouse his
+      interest. There was a young Spaniard named Miguel Diaz who had got into
+      disgrace in Isabella some time before on account of a duel, and had
+      wandered into the island until he had come out on the south coast at the
+      mouth of the river Ozama, near the site of the present town of Santo
+      Domingo. There he had fallen in love with a female cacique and had made
+      his home with her. She, knowing the Spanish taste, and anxious to please
+      her lover and to retain him in her territory, told him of some rich
+      gold-mines that there were in the neighbourhood, and suggested that he
+      should inform the Admiral, who would perhaps remove the settlement from
+      Isabella to the south coast. She provided him with guides and sent him off
+      to Isabella, where, hearing that his antagonist had recovered, and that he
+      himself was therefore in no danger of punishment, he presented himself
+      with his story.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Columbus immediately despatched Bartholomew with a party to examine the
+      mines; and sure enough they found in the river Hayna undoubted evidence of
+      a wealth far in excess of that contained in the Cibao gold-mines.
+      Moreover, they had noticed two ancient excavations about which the natives
+      could tell them nothing, but which made them think that the mines had once
+      been worked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Columbus was never backward in fitting a story and a theory to whatever
+      phenomena surrounded him; and in this case he was certain that the
+      excavations were the work of Solomon, and that he had discovered the gold
+      of Ophir. "Sure enough," thinks the Admiral, "I have hit it this time; and
+      the ships came eastward from the Persian Gulf round the Golden
+      Chersonesus, which I discovered this very last winter." Immediately, as
+      his habit was, Columbus began to build castles in Spain. Here was a fine
+      answer to Buil and Margarite! Without waiting a week or two to get any of
+      the gold this extraordinary man decided to hurry off at once to Spain with
+      the news, not dreaming that Spain might, by this time, have had a surfeit
+      of news, and might be in serious need of some simple, honest facts. But he
+      thought his two caravels sufficiently freighted with this new belief&mdash;the
+      belief that he had discovered the Ophir of Solomon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Admiral sailed on March 10th, 1496, carrying with him in chains the
+      vanquished Caonabo and other natives. He touched at Marigalante and at
+      Guadaloupe, where his people had an engagement with the natives, taking
+      several prisoners, but releasing them all again with the exception of one
+      woman, a handsome creature who had fallen in love with Caonabo and refused
+      to go. But for Caonabo the joys of life and love were at an end; his heart
+      and spirit were broken. He was not destined to be paraded as a captive
+      through the streets of Spain, and it was somewhere in the deep Atlantic
+      that he paid the last tribute to the power that had captured and broken
+      him. He died on the voyage, which was longer and much more full of
+      hardships than usual. For some reason or other Columbus did not take the
+      northerly route going home, but sailed east from Gaudaloupe, encountering
+      the easterly trade winds, which delayed him so much that the voyage
+      occupied three months instead of six weeks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once more he exhibited his easy mastery of the art of navigation and his
+      extraordinary gift for estimating dead-reckoning. After having been out of
+      sight of land for eight weeks, and while some of the sailors thought they
+      might be in the Bay of Biscay, and others that they were in the English
+      Channel, the Admiral suddenly announced that they were close to Cape Saint
+      Vincent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No land was in sight, but he ordered that sail should be shortened that
+      evening; and sure enough the next morning they sighted the land close by
+      Cape Saint Vincent. Columbus managed his landfalls with a fine dramatic
+      sense as though they were conjuring tricks; and indeed they must have
+      seemed like conjuring tricks, except that they were almost always
+      successful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="ch4c" id="ch4c"></a>CHAPTER VI.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      IN SPAIN AGAIN
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The loiterers about the harbour of Cadiz saw a curious sight on June 11th,
+      1496, when the two battered ships, bearing back the voyagers from the
+      Eldorado of the West, disembarked their passengers. There were some 220
+      souls on board, including thirty Indians: and instead of leaping ashore,
+      flushed with health, and bringing the fortunes which they had gone out to
+      seek, they crawled miserably from the boats or were carried ashore,
+      emaciated by starvation, yellow with disease, ragged and unkempt from
+      poverty, and with practically no possessions other than the clothes they
+      stood up in. Even the Admiral, now in his forty-sixth year, hardly had the
+      appearance that one would expect in a Viceroy of the Indies. His white
+      hair and beard were rough and matted, his handsome face furrowed by care
+      and sunken by illness and exhaustion, and instead of the glittering armour
+      and uniform of his office he wore the plain robe and girdle of the
+      Franciscan order&mdash;this last probably in consequence of some vow or
+      other he had made in an hour of peril on the voyage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One lucky coincidence marked his arrival. In the harbour, preparing to
+      weigh anchor, was a fleet of three little caravels, commanded by Pedro
+      Nino, about to set out for Espanola with supplies and despatches. Columbus
+      hurried on board Nino's ship, and there read the letters from the
+      Sovereigns which it had been designed he should receive in Espanola. The
+      letters are not preserved, but one can make a fair guess at their
+      contents. Some searching questions would certainly be asked, kind
+      assurances of continued confidence would doubtless be given, with many
+      suggestions for the betterment of affairs in the distant colony. Only
+      their result upon the Admiral is known to us. He sat down there and then
+      and wrote to Bartholomew, urging him to secure peace in the island by
+      every means in his power, to send home any caciques or natives who were
+      likely to give trouble, and most of all to push on with the building of a
+      settlement on the south coast where the new mines were, and to have a
+      cargo of gold ready to send back with the next expedition. Having written
+      this letter, the Admiral saw the little fleet sail away on June 17th, and
+      himself prepared with mingled feelings to present himself before his
+      Sovereigns.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While he was waiting for their summons at Los Palacios, a small town near
+      Seville, he was the guest of the curate of that place, Andrez Bernaldez,
+      who had been chaplain to Christopher's old friend DEA, the Archbishop of
+      Seville. This good priest evidently proved a staunch friend to Columbus at
+      this anxious period of his life, for the Admiral left many important
+      papers in his charge when he again left Spain, and no small part of the
+      scant contemporary information about Columbus that has come down to us is
+      contained in the 'Historia de los Reyes Catolicos', which Bernaldez wrote
+      after the death of Columbus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fickle Spain had already forgotten its first sentimental enthusiasm over
+      the Admiral's discoveries, and now was only interested in their financial
+      results. People cannot be continually excited about a thing which they
+      have not seen, and there were events much nearer home that absorbed the
+      public interest. There was the trouble with France, the contemplated
+      alliance of the Crown Prince with Margaret of Austria, and of the Spanish
+      Princess Juana with Philip of Austria; and there were the designs of
+      Ferdinand upon the kingdom of Naples, which was in his eyes a much more
+      desirable and valuable prize than any group of unknown islands beyond the
+      ocean.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Columbus did his very best to work up enthusiasm again. He repeated the
+      performance that had been such a success after his first voyage&mdash;the
+      kind of circus procession in which the natives were marched in column
+      surrounded by specimens of the wealth of the Indies. But somehow it did
+      not work so well this time. Where there had formerly been acclamations and
+      crowds pressing forward to view the savages and their ornaments, there
+      were now apathy and a dearth of spectators. And although Columbus did his
+      very best, and was careful to exhibit every scrap of gold that he had
+      brought, and to hang golden collars and ornaments about the necks of the
+      marching Indians, his exhibition was received either in ominous silence
+      or, in some quarters, with something like derision. As I have said before,
+      there comes a time when the best-disposed debtors do not regard themselves
+      as being repaid by promises, and when the most enthusiastic optimist
+      desires to see something more than samples. It was only old Colon going
+      round with his show again&mdash;flamingoes, macaws, seashells, dye-woods,
+      gums and spices; some people laughed, and some were angry; but all were
+      united in thinking that the New World was not a very profitable
+      speculation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Things were a little better, however, at Court. Isabella certainly
+      believed still in Columbus; Ferdinand, although he had never been
+      enthusiastic, knew the Admiral too well to make the vulgar mistake of
+      believing him an impostor; and both were too polite and considerate to add
+      to his obvious mortification and distress by any discouraging comments.
+      Moreover, the man himself had lost neither his belief in the value of his
+      discoveries nor his eloquence in talking of them; and when he told his
+      story to the Sovereigns they could not help being impressed, not only with
+      his sincerity but with his ability and single-heartedness also. It was
+      almost the same old story, of illimitable wealth that was just about to be
+      acquired, and perhaps no one but Columbus could have made it go down once
+      more with success; but talking about his exploits was never any trouble to
+      him, and his astonishing conviction, the lofty and dignified manner in
+      which he described both good and bad fortune, and the impressive way in
+      which he spoke of the wealth of the gold of Ophir and of the far-reaching
+      importance of his supposed discovery of the Golden Chersonesus and the
+      mainland of Asia, had their due effect on his hearers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was always his way, plausible Christopher, to pass lightly over the
+      premises and to dwell with elaborate detail on the deductions. It was by
+      no means proved that he had discovered the mines of King Solomon; he had
+      never even seen the place which he identified with them; it was in fact
+      nothing more than an idea in his own head; but we may be sure that he took
+      it as an established fact that he had actually discovered the mines of
+      Ophir, and confined his discussion to estimates of the wealth which they
+      were likely to yield, and of what was to be done with the wealth when the
+      mere details of conveying it from the mines to the ships had been disposed
+      of. So also with the Golden Chersonesus. The very name was enough to stop
+      the mouths of doubters; and here was the man himself who had actually been
+      there, and here was a sworn affidavit from every member of his crew to say
+      that they had been there too. This kind of logic is irresistible if you
+      only grant the first little step; and Columbus had the art of making it
+      seem an act of imbecility in any of his hearers to doubt the strength of
+      the little link by which his great golden chains of argument were fastened
+      to fact and truth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For Columbus everything depended upon his reception by the Sovereigns at
+      this time. Unless he could re-establish his hold upon them and move to a
+      still more secure position in their confidence he was a ruined man and his
+      career was finished; and one cannot but sympathise with him as he sits
+      there searching his mind for tempting and convincing arguments, and
+      speaking so calmly and gravely and confidently in spite of all the doubts
+      and flutterings in his heart. Like a tradesman setting out his wares, he
+      brought forth every inducement he could think of to convince the
+      Sovereigns that the only way to make a success of what they had already
+      done was to do more; that the only way to make profitable the money that
+      had already been spent was to spend more; that the only way to prove the
+      wisdom of their trust in him was to trust him more. One of his
+      transcendent merits in a situation of this kind was that he always had
+      something new and interesting to propose. He did not spread out his hands
+      and say, "This is what I have done: it is the best I can do; how are you
+      going to treat me?" He said in effect, "This is what I have done; you will
+      see that it will all come right in time; do not worry about it; but
+      meanwhile I have something else to propose which I think your Majesties
+      will consider a good plan."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His new demand was for a fleet of six ships, two of which were to convey
+      supplies to Espanola, and the other four to be entrusted to him for the
+      purpose of a voyage of discovery towards the mainland to the south of
+      Espanola, of which he had heard consistent rumours; which was said to be
+      rich in gold, and (a clever touch) to which the King of Portugal was
+      thinking of sending a fleet, as he thought that it might lie within the
+      limits of his domain of heathendom. And so well did he manage, and so
+      deeply did he impress the Sovereigns with his assurance that this time the
+      thing amounted to what is vulgarly called "a dead certainty," that they
+      promised him he should have his ships.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But promise and performance, as no one knew better than Columbus, are
+      different things; and it was a long while before he got his ships. There
+      was the usual scarcity of money, and the extensive military and diplomatic
+      operations in which the Crown was then engaged absorbed every maravedi
+      that Ferdinand could lay his hands on. There was an army to be maintained
+      under the Pyrenees to keep watch over France; fleets had to be kept
+      patrolling both the Mediterranean and Atlantic seaboards; and there was a
+      whole armada required to convey the princesses of Spain and Austria to
+      their respective husbands in connection with the double matrimonial
+      alliance arranged between the two countries. And when at last, in October
+      1496, six million maravedis were provided wherewith Columbus might equip
+      his fleet, they were withdrawn again under very mortifying circumstances.
+      The appropriation had just been made when a letter arrived from Pedro
+      Nino, who had been to Espanola and come back again, and now wrote from
+      Cadiz to the Sovereigns, saying that his ships were full of gold. He did
+      not present himself at Court, but went to visit his family at Huelva; but
+      the good news of his letter was accepted as an excuse for this oversight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No one was better pleased than the Admiral. "What did I tell you?" he
+      says; "you see the mines of Hayna are paying already." King Ferdinand,
+      equally pleased, and having an urgent need of money in connection with his
+      operations against France, took the opportunity to cancel the
+      appropriation of the six million maravedis, giving Columbus instead an
+      order for the amount to be paid out of the treasure brought home by Nino.
+      Alas, the mariner's boast of gold had been a figure of speech. There was
+      no gold; there was only a cargo of slaves, which Nino deemed the
+      equivalent of gold; and when Bartholomew's despatches came to be read he
+      described the affairs of Espanola as being in very much the same condition
+      as before. This incident produced a most unfortunate impression. Even
+      Columbus was obliged to keep quiet for a little while; and it is likely
+      that the mention of six million maravedis was not welcomed by him for some
+      time afterwards.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After the wedding of Prince Juan in March 1497, when Queen Isabella had
+      more time to give to external affairs, the promise to Columbus was again
+      remembered, and his position was considered in detail. An order was made
+      (April 23rd, 1497), restoring to the Admiral the original privileges
+      bestowed upon him at Santa Fe. He was offered a large tract of land in
+      Espanola, with the title of Duke; but much as he hankered after titular
+      honours, he was for once prudent enough to refuse this gift. His reason
+      was that it would only further damage his influence, and give apparent
+      justification to those enemies who said that the whole enterprise had been
+      undertaken merely in his own interests; and it is possible also that his
+      many painful associations with Espanola, and the bloodshed and horrors
+      that he had witnessed there, had aroused in his superstitious mind a
+      distaste for possessions and titles in that devastated Paradise. Instead,
+      he accepted a measure of relief from the obligations incurred by his
+      eighth share in the many unprofitable expeditions that had been sent out
+      during the last three years, agreeing for the next three years to receive
+      an eighth share of the gross income, and a tenth of the net profits,
+      without contributing anything to the cost. His appointment of Bartholomew
+      to the office of Adelantado, which had annoyed Ferdinand, was now
+      confirmed; the universal license which had been granted to Spanish
+      subjects to settle in the new lands was revoked in so far as it infringed
+      the Admiral's privileges; and he was granted a force of 330 officers,
+      soldiers, and artificers to be at his personal disposal in the prosecution
+      of his next voyage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The death of Prince Juan in October 1497 once more distracted the
+      attention of the Court from all but personal matters; and Columbus
+      employed the time of waiting in drafting a testamentary document in which
+      he was permitted to create an entail on his title and estates in favour of
+      his two sons and their heirs for ever. This did not represent his complete
+      or final testament, for he added codicils at various times, the latest
+      being executed the day before his death. The document is worth studying;
+      it reveals something of the laborious, painstaking mind reaching out down
+      the rivers and streams of the future that were to flow from the fountain
+      of his own greatness; it reveals also his triple conception of the
+      obligations of human life in this world&mdash;the cultivation and
+      retention of temporal dignity, the performance of pious and charitable
+      acts, and the recognition of duty to one's family. It was in this document
+      that Columbus formulated the curious cipher which he always now used in
+      signing his name, and of which various readings are given in the Appendix.
+      He also enjoined upon his heir the duty of using the simple title which he
+      himself loved and used most&mdash;"The Admiral."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After the death of Prince Juan, Queen Isabella honoured Columbus by
+      attaching his two sons to her own person as pages; and her friendship must
+      at this time have gone far to compensate him for the coolness shown
+      towards him by the public at large. He might talk as much as he pleased,
+      but he had nothing to show for all his talk except a few trinkets, a
+      collection of interesting but valueless botanical specimens, and a handful
+      of miserable slaves. Lives and fortunes had been wrecked on the
+      enterprise, which had so far brought nothing to Spain but the promise of
+      luxurious adventure that was not fulfilled and of a wealth and glory that
+      had not been realised. It must have been a very humiliating circumstance
+      to Columbus that in the preparations which he was now (February 1498)
+      making for the equipment of his new expedition a great difficulty was
+      found in procuring ships and men. Not even before the first voyage had so
+      much reluctance been shown to risk life and property in the enterprise.
+      Merchants and sailors had then been frightened of dangers which they did
+      not know; now, it seemed, the evils of which they did know proved a still
+      greater deterrent. The Admiral was at this time the guest of his friend
+      Bernaldez, who has told us something of his difficulties; and the
+      humiliating expedient of seizing ships under a royal order had finally to
+      be adopted. But it would never have done to impress the colonists also;
+      that would have been too open a confession of failure for the proud
+      Admiral to tolerate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Instead he had recourse to the miserable plan of which he had made use in
+      Palos; the prisons were opened, and criminals under sentence invited to
+      come forth and enjoy the blessings of colonial life. Even then there was
+      not that rush from the prison doors that might have been expected, and
+      some desperate characters apparently preferred the mercies of a Spanish
+      prison to what they had heard of the joys of the Earthly Paradise. Still a
+      number of criminals did doubtfully crawl forth and furnish a retinue for
+      the great Admiral and Viceroy. Trembling, suspicious, and with more than
+      half a mind to go back to their bonds, some part of the human vermin of
+      Spain was eventually cajoled and chivied on board the ships.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The needs of the colony being urgent, and recruiting being slow, two
+      caravels laden with provisions were sent off in advance; but even for this
+      purpose there was a difficulty about money, and good Isabella furnished
+      the expense, at much inconvenience, from her private purse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Columbus had to supervise everything himself; and no wonder that by the
+      end of May, when he was ready to sail, his patience and temper were
+      exhausted and his much-tried endurance broke down under the petty gnatlike
+      irritations of Fonseca and his myrmidons. It was on the deck of his own
+      ship, in the harbour of San Lucar, that he knocked down and soundly kicked
+      Ximeno de Breviesca, Fonseca's accountant, whose nagging requisitions had
+      driven the Admiral to fury.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After all these years of gravity and restraint and endurance, this
+      momentary outbreak of the old Adam in our hero is like a breath of wind
+      through an open window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To the portraits of Columbus hanging in the gallery of one's imagination
+      this must surely be added; in which Christopher, on the deck of his ship,
+      with the royal standard and the Admiral's flag flying from his masthead,
+      is observed to be soundly kicking a prostrate accountant. The incident is
+      worthy of a date, which is accordingly here given, as near as may be&mdash;May
+      29, 1498.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="ch5c" id="ch5c"></a>CHAPTER V.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE THIRD VOYAGE
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Columbus was at sea again; firm ground to him, although so treacherous and
+      unstable to most of us; and as he saw the Spanish coast sinking down on
+      the horizon he could shake himself free from his troubles, and feel that
+      once more he was in a situation of which he was master. He first touched
+      at Porto Santo, where, if the story of his residence there be true, there
+      must have been potent memories for him in the sight of the long white
+      beach and the plantations, with the Governor's house beyond. He stayed
+      there only a few hours and then crossed over to Madeira, anchoring in the
+      Bay of Funchal, where he took in wood and water. As it was really
+      unnecessary for him to make a port so soon after leaving, there was
+      probably some other reason for his visit to these islands; perhaps a
+      family reason; perhaps nothing more historically important than the desire
+      to look once more on scenes of bygone happiness, for even on the page of
+      history every event is not necessarily big with significance. From Madeira
+      he took a southerly course to the Canary Islands, and on June 16th
+      anchored at Gomera, where he found a French warship with two Spanish
+      prizes, all of which put to sea as the Admiral's fleet approached. On June
+      21st, when he sailed from Gomera, he divided his fleet of six vessels into
+      two squadrons. Three ships were despatched direct to Espanola, for the
+      supplies which they carried were urgently needed there. These three ships
+      were commanded by trustworthy men: Pedro de Arana, a brother of Beatriz,
+      Alonso Sanchez de Carvajal, and Juan Antonio Colombo&mdash;this last no
+      other than a cousin of Christopher's from Genoa. The sons of Domenico's
+      provident younger brother had not prospered, while the sons of improvident
+      Domenico were now all in high places; and these three poor cousins,
+      hearing of Christopher's greatness, and deciding that use should be made
+      of him, scraped together enough money to send one of their number to
+      Spain. The Admiral always had a sound family feeling, and finding that
+      cousin Antonio had sea experience and knew how to handle a ship he gave
+      him command of one of the caravels on this voyage&mdash;a command of which
+      he proved capable and worthy. From these three captains, after giving them
+      full sailing directions for reaching Espanola, Columbus parted company off
+      the island of Ferro. He himself stood on a southerly course towards the
+      Cape Verde Islands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His plan on this voyage was to find the mainland to the southward, of
+      which he had heard rumours in Espanola. Before leaving Spain he had
+      received a letter from an eminent lapidary named Ferrer who had travelled
+      much in the east, and who assured him that if he sought gold and precious
+      stones he must go to hot lands, and that the hotter the lands were, and
+      the blacker the inhabitants, the more likely he was to find riches there.
+      This was just the kind of theory to suit Columbus, and as he sailed
+      towards the Cape Verde Islands he was already in imagination gathering
+      gold and pearls on the shores of the equatorial continent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stayed for about a week at the Cape Verde Islands, getting in
+      provisions and cattle, and curiously observing the life of the Portuguese
+      lepers who came in numbers to the island of Buenavista to be cured there
+      by eating the flesh and bathing in the blood of turtles. It was not an
+      inspiriting week which he spent in that dreary place and enervating
+      climate, with nothing to see but the goats feeding among the scrub, the
+      turtles crawling about the sand, and the lepers following the turtles. It
+      began to tell on the health of the crew, so he weighed anchor on July 5th
+      and stood on a southwesterly course.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This third voyage, which was destined to be the most important of all, and
+      the material for which had cost him so much time and labour, was
+      undertaken in a very solemn and determined spirit. His health, which he
+      had hoped to recover in Spain, had been if anything damaged by his
+      worryings with officialdom there; and although he was only forty-seven
+      years of age he was in some respects already an old man. He had entered,
+      although happily he did not know it, on the last decade of his life; and
+      was already beginning to suffer from the two diseases, gout and
+      ophthalmia, which were soon to undermine his strength and endurance.
+      Religion of a mystical fifteenth-century sort was deepening in him; he had
+      undertaken this voyage in the name of the Holy Trinity; and to that
+      theological entity he had resolved to dedicate the first new land that he
+      should sight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For ten days light baffling winds impeded his progress; but at the end of
+      that time the winds fell away altogether, and the voyagers found
+      themselves in that flat equatorial calm known to mariners as the Doldrums.
+      The vertical rays of the sun shone blisteringly down upon them, making the
+      seams of the ships gape and causing the unhappy crews mental as well as
+      bodily distress, for they began to fear that they had reached that zone of
+      fire which had always been said to exist in the southern ocean.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Day after day the three ships lay motionless on the glassy water, with
+      wood-work so hot as to burn the hands that touched it, with the meat
+      putrefying in the casks below, and the water running from the loosened
+      casks, and no one with courage and endurance enough to venture into the
+      stifling hold even to save the provisions. And through all this the
+      Admiral, racked with gout, had to keep a cheerful face and assure his
+      prostrate crew that they would soon be out of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were showers of rain sometimes, but the moisture in that baking
+      atmosphere only added to its stifling and enervating effects. All the
+      while, however, the great slow current of the Atlantic was moving
+      westward, and there came a day when a heavenly breeze, stirred in the
+      torrid air and the musical talk of ripples began to rise again from the
+      weedy stems of the ships. They sailed due west, always into a cooler and
+      fresher atmosphere; but still no land was sighted, although pelicans and
+      smaller birds were continually seen passing from south-west to north-east.
+      As provisions were beginning to run low, Columbus decided on the 31st July
+      to alter his course to north-by-east, in the hope of reaching the island
+      of Dominica. But at mid-day his servant Alonso Perez, happening to go to
+      the masthead, cried out that there was land in sight; and sure enough to
+      the westward there rose three peaks of land united at the base. Here was
+      the kind of coincidence which staggers even the unbeliever. Columbus had
+      promised to dedicate the first land he saw to the Trinity; and here was
+      the land, miraculously provided when he needed it most, three peaks in one
+      peak, in due conformity with the requirements of the blessed Saint
+      Athanasius. The Admiral was deeply affected; the God of his belief was
+      indeed a good friend to him; and he wrote down his pious conviction that
+      the event was a miracle, and summoned all hands to sing the Salve Regina,
+      with other hymns in praise of God and the Virgin Mary. The island was duly
+      christened La Trinidad. By the hour of Compline (9 o'clock in the evening)
+      they had come up with the south coast of the island, but it was the next
+      day before the Admiral found a harbour where he could take in water. No
+      natives were to be seen, although there were footprints on the shore and
+      other signs of human habitation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He continued all day to sail slowly along the shore of the island, the
+      green luxuriance of which astonished him; and sometimes he stood out from
+      the coast to the southward as he made a long board to round this or that
+      point. It must have been while reaching out in this way to the southward
+      that he saw a low shore on his port hand some sixty miles to the south of
+      Trinidad, and that his sight, although he did not know it, rested for the
+      first time on the mainland of South America. The land seen was the low
+      coast to the west of the Orinoco, and thinking that it was an island he
+      gave it the name of Isla Sancta.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the 2nd of August they were off the south-west of Trinidad, and saw the
+      first inhabitants in the shape of a canoe full of armed natives, who
+      approached the ships with threatening gestures. Columbus had brought out
+      some musicians with him, possibly for the purpose of impressing the
+      natives, and perhaps with the idea of making things a little more cheerful
+      in Espanola; and the musicians were now duly called upon to give a
+      performance, a tambourine-player standing on the forecastle and beating
+      the rhythm for the ships' boys to dance to. The effect was other than was
+      anticipated, for the natives immediately discharged a thick flight of
+      arrows at the musicians, and the music and dancing abruptly ceased.
+      Eventually the Indians were prevailed upon to come on board the two
+      smaller ships and to receive gifts, after which they departed and were
+      seen no more. Columbus landed and made some observations of the vegetation
+      and climate of Trinidad, noticing that the fruits and-trees were similar
+      to those of Espanola, and that oysters abounded, as well as "very large,
+      infinite fish, and parrots as large as hens."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He saw another peak of the mainland to the northwest, which was the
+      peninsula of Paria, and to which Columbus, taking it to be another island,
+      gave the name of Isla de Gracia. Between him and this land lay a narrow
+      channel through which a mighty current was flowing&mdash;that press of
+      waters which, sweeping across the Atlantic from Africa, enters the
+      Caribbean Sea, sprays round the Gulf of Mexico, and turns north again in
+      the current known as the Gulf Stream. While his ships were anchored at the
+      entrance to this channel and Columbus was wondering how he should cross
+      it, a mighty flood of water suddenly came down with a roar, sending a
+      great surging wave in front of it. The vessels were lifted up as though by
+      magic; two of them dragged their anchors from the bottom, and the other
+      one broke her cable. This flood was probably caused by a sudden flush of
+      fresh water from one of the many mouths of the Orinoco; but to Columbus,
+      who had no thought of rivers in his mind, it was very alarming.
+      Apparently, however, there was nothing for it but to get through the
+      channel, and having sent boats on in front to take soundings and see that
+      there was clear water he eventually piloted his little squadron through,
+      with his heart in his mouth and his eyes fixed on the swinging eddies and
+      surging circles of the channel. Once beyond it he was in the smooth water
+      of the Gulf of Paria. He followed the westerly coast of Trinidad to the
+      north until he came to a second channel narrower than the first, through
+      which the current boiled with still greater violence, and to which he gave
+      the name of Dragon's Mouth. This is the channel between the northwesterly
+      point of Trinidad and the eastern promontory of Paria. Columbus now began
+      to be bewildered, for he discovered that the water over the ship's side
+      was fresh water, and he could not make out where it came from. Thinking
+      that the peninsula of Paria was an island, and not wishing to attempt the
+      dangerous passage of the Dragon's Mouth, he decided to coast along the
+      southern shore of the land opposite, hoping to be able to turn north round
+      its western extremity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sweeter blew the breezes, fresher grew the water, milder and more balmy
+      the air, greener and deeper the vegetation of this beautiful region. The
+      Admiral was ill with the gout, and suffering such pain from his eyes that
+      he was sometimes blinded by it; but the excitement of the strange
+      phenomena surrounding him kept him up, and his powers of observation,
+      always acute, suffered no diminution. There were no inhabitants to be seen
+      as they sailed along the coast, but monkeys climbed and chattered in the
+      trees by the shore, and oysters were found clinging to the branches that
+      dipped into the water. At last, in a bay where they anchored to take in
+      water, a native canoe containing three, men was seen cautiously
+      approaching; and the men, who were shy, were captured by the device of a
+      sailor jumping on to the gunwale of the canoe and overturning it, the
+      natives being easily caught in the water, and afterwards soothed and
+      captivated by the unfailing attraction of hawks' bells. They were tall men
+      with long hair, and they told Columbus that the name of their country was
+      Paria; and when they were asked about other inhabitants they pointed to
+      the west and signified that there was a great population in that
+      direction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the 10th of August 1498 a party landed on this coast and formally took
+      possession of it in the name of the Sovereigns of Spain. By an unlucky
+      chance Columbus himself did not land. His eyes were troubling him so much
+      that he was obliged to lie down in his cabin, and the formal act of
+      possession was performed by a deputy. If he had only known! If he could
+      but have guessed that this was indeed the mainland of a New World that did
+      not exist even in his dreams, what agonies he would have suffered rather
+      than permit any one else to pronounce the words of annexation! But he lay
+      there in pain and suffering, his curious mystical mind occupied with a
+      conception very remote indeed from the truth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For in that fertile hotbed of imagination, the Admiral's brain, a new and
+      staggering theory had gradually been taking shape. As his ships had been
+      wafted into this delicious region, as the airs had become sweeter, the
+      vegetation more luxuriant, and the water of the sea fresher,&mdash;he had
+      solemnly arrived at the conclusion that he was approaching the region of
+      the true terrestrial Paradise: the Garden of Eden that some of the Fathers
+      had declared to be situated in the extreme east of the Old World, and in a
+      region so high that the flood had not overwhelmed it. Columbus, thinking
+      hard in his cabin, blood and brain a little fevered, comes to the
+      conclusion that the world is not round but pear-shaped. He knows that all
+      this fresh water in the sea must come from a great distance and from no
+      ordinary river; and he decides that its volume and direction have been
+      acquired in its fall from the apex of the pear, from the very top of the
+      world, from the Garden of Eden itself. It was a most beautiful conception;
+      a theory worthy to be fitted to all the sweet sights and sounds in the
+      world about him; but it led him farther and farther away from the truth,
+      and blinded him to knowledge and understanding of what he had actually
+      accomplished.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had thought the coast of Cuba the mainland, and he now began to
+      consider it at least possible that the peninsula of Paria was mainland
+      also&mdash;another part of the same continent. That was the truth&mdash;Paria
+      was the mainland&mdash;and if he had not been so bemused by his dreams and
+      theories he might have had some inkling of the real wonder and
+      significance of his discovery. But no; in his profoundly unscientific mind
+      there was little of that patience which holds men back from theorising and
+      keeps them ready to receive the truth. He was patient enough in doing, but
+      in thinking he was not patient at all. No sooner had he observed a fact
+      than he must find a theory which would bring it into relation with the
+      whole of his knowledge; and if the facts would not harmonise of themselves
+      he invented a scheme of things by which they were forced into harmony. He
+      was indeed a Darwinian before his time, an adept in the art of inventing
+      causes to fit facts, and then proving that the facts sprang from the
+      causes; but his origins were tangible, immovable things of rock and soil
+      that could be seen and visited by other men, and their true relation to
+      the terrestrial phenomena accurately established; so that his very proofs
+      were monumental, and became themselves the advertisements of his profound
+      misjudgment. But meanwhile he is the Admiral of the Ocean Seas, and can
+      "make it so"; and accordingly, in a state of mental instability, he makes
+      the Gulf of Paria to be a slope of earth immediately below the Garden of
+      Eden, although fortunately he does not this time provide a sworn affidavit
+      of trembling ships' boys to confirm his discovery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meanwhile also here were pearls; the native women wore ropes of them all
+      over their bodies, and a fair store of them were bartered for pieces of
+      broken crockery. Asked as usual about the pearls the natives, also as
+      usual, pointed vaguely to the west and south-west, and explained that
+      there were more pearls in that direction. But the Admiral would not tarry.
+      Although he believed that he was within reach of Eden and pearls, he was
+      more anxious to get back to Espanola and send the thrilling news to Spain
+      than he was to push on a little farther and really assure himself of the
+      truth. How like Christopher that was! Ideas to him were of more value than
+      facts, as indeed they are to the world at large; but one is sometimes led
+      to wonder whether he did not sometimes hesitate to turn his ideas into
+      facts for very fear that they should turn out to be only ideas. Was he, in
+      his relations with Spain and the world, a trader in the names rather than
+      the substance of things? We have seen him going home to Spain and
+      announcing the discovery of the Golden Chersonesus, although he had only
+      discovered what he erroneously supposed to be an indication of it;
+      proclaiming the discovery of the Ophir of Solomon without taking the
+      trouble to test for himself so tremendous an assumption; and we now see
+      him hurrying away to dazzle Spain with the story that he has discovered
+      the Garden of Eden, without even trying to push on for a few days more to
+      secure so much as a cutting from the Tree of Life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These are grave considerations; for although happily the Tree of Life is
+      now of no importance to any human being, the doings of Admiral Christopher
+      were of great importance to himself and to his fellow-men at that time,
+      and are still to-day, through the infinite channels in which human thought
+      and action run and continue thoughout the world, of grave importance to
+      us. Perhaps this is not quite the moment, now that the poor Admiral is
+      lying in pain and weakness and not quite master of his own mind, to
+      consider fully how he stands in this matter of honesty; we will leave it
+      for the present until he is well again, or better still, until his tale of
+      life and action is complete, and comes as a whole before the bar of human
+      judgment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On August 11th Columbus turned east again after having given up the
+      attempt to find a passage to the north round Paria. There were practical
+      considerations that brought him to this action. As the water was growing
+      shoaler and shoaler he had sent a caravel of light draft some way further
+      to the westward, and she reported that there lay ahead of her a great
+      inner bay or gulf consisting of almost entirely fresh water. Provisions,
+      moreover, were running short, and were, as usual, turning bad; the
+      Admiral's health made vigorous action of any kind impossible for him; he
+      was anxious about the condition of Espanola&mdash;anxious also, as we have
+      seen, to send this great news home; and he therefore turned back and
+      decided to risk the passage of the Dragon's Mouth. He anchored in the
+      neighbouring harbour until the wind was in the right quarter, and with
+      some trepidation put his ships into the boiling tideway. When they were in
+      the middle of the passage the wind fell to a dead calm, and the ships,
+      with their sails hanging loose, were borne on the dizzy surface of eddies,
+      overfalls, and whirls of the tide. Fortunately there was deep water in the
+      passage, and the strength of the current carried them safely through. Once
+      outside they bore away to the northward, sighting the islands of Tobago
+      and Grenada and, turning westward again, came to the islands of Cubagua
+      and Margarita, where three pounds of pearls were bartered from the
+      natives. A week after the passage of the Dragon's Mouth Columbus sighted
+      the south coast of Espanola, which coast he made at a point a long way to
+      the east of the new settlement that he had instructed Bartholomew to
+      found; and as the winds were contrary, and he feared it might take him a
+      long time to beat up against them, he sent a boat ashore with a letter
+      which was to be delivered by a native messenger to the Adelantado. The
+      letter was delivered; a few days later a caravel was sighted which
+      contained Bartholomew himself; and once more, after a long separation,
+      these two friends and brothers were united.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The see-saw motion of all affairs with which Columbus had to do was in
+      full swing. We have seen him patching up matters in Espanola; hurrying to
+      Spain just in time to rescue his damaged reputation and do something to
+      restore it; and now when he had come back it was but a sorry tale that
+      Bartholomew had to tell him. A fortress had been built at the Hayna
+      gold-mines, but provisions had been so scarce that there had been
+      something like a famine among the workmen there; no digging had been done,
+      no planting, no making of the place fit for human occupation and industry.
+      Bartholomew had been kept busy in collecting the native tribute, and in
+      planning out the beginnings of the settlement at the mouth of the river
+      Ozema, which was at first called the New Isabella, but was afterwards
+      named San Domingo in honour of old Domenico at Savona. The cacique
+      Behechio had been giving trouble; had indeed marched out with an army
+      against Bartholomew, but had been more or less reconciled by the
+      intervention of his sister Anacaona, widow of the late Caonabo, who had
+      apparently transferred her affections to Governor Bartholomew. The battle
+      was turned into a friendly pagan festival&mdash;one of the last ever held
+      on that once happy island&mdash;in which native girls danced in a green
+      grove, with the beautiful Anacaona, dressed only in garlands, carried on a
+      litter in their midst.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But in the Vega Real, where a chapel had been built by the priests of the
+      neighbouring settlement who were beginning to make converts, trouble had
+      arisen in consequence of an outrage on the wife of the cacique Guarionex.
+      The chapel was raided, the shrine destroyed, and the sacred vessels
+      carried off. The Spaniards seized a number of Indians whom they suspected
+      of having had a hand in the desecration, and burned them at the stake in
+      the most approved manner of the Inquisition&mdash;a hideous punishment
+      that fanned the remaining embers of the native spirit into flame, and
+      produced a hostile combination of Guarionex and several other caciques,
+      whose rebellion it took the Adelantado some trouble and display of arms to
+      quench.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the worst news of all was the treacherous revolt of Francisco Roldan,
+      a Spaniard who had once been a servant of the Admiral's, and who had been
+      raised by him to the office of judge in the island&mdash;an able creature,
+      but, like too many recipients of Christopher's favour, a treacherous
+      rascal at bottom. As soon as the Admiral's back was turned Roldan had
+      begun to make mischief, stirring up the discontent that was never far
+      below the surface of life in the colony, and getting together a large band
+      of rebellious ruffians. He had a plan to murder Bartholomew Columbus and
+      place himself at the head of the colony, but this fell through. Then, in
+      Bartholomew's absence, he had a passage with James Columbus, who had now
+      returned to the island and had resumed his. official duties at Isabella.
+      Bartholomew, who was at another part of the coast collecting tribute, had
+      sent a caravel laden with cotton to Isabella, and well-meaning James had
+      her drawn up on the beach. Roldan took the opportunity to represent this
+      innocent action as a sign of the intolerable autocracy of the Columbus
+      family, who did not even wish a vessel to be in a condition to sail for
+      Spain with news of their misdeeds. Insolent Roldan formally asks James to
+      send the caravel to Spain with supplies; poor James refuses and, perhaps
+      being at bottom afraid of Roldan and his insolences, despatches him to the
+      Vega Real with a force to bring to order some caciques who had been giving
+      trouble. Possibly to his surprise, although not to ours, Roldan departs
+      with alacrity at the head of seventy armed men. Honest, zealous James, no
+      doubt; but also, we begin to fear, stupid James.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Vega Real was the most attractive part of the colony, and the scene of
+      infinite idleness and debauchery in the early days of the Spanish
+      settlement. As Margarite and other mutineers had acted, so did Roldan and
+      his soldiers now act, making sallies against several of the chain of forts
+      that stretched across the island, and even upon Isabella itself; and
+      returning to the Vega to the enjoyment of primitive wild pleasures. Roldan
+      and Bartholomew Columbus stalked each other about the island with armed
+      forces for several months, Roldan besieging Bartholomew in the fortress at
+      the Vega, which he had occupied in Roldan's absence, and trying to starve
+      him out there. The arrival in February 1498 of the two ships which had
+      been sent out from Spain in advance, and which brought also the news of
+      the Admiral's undamaged favour at Court, and of the royal confirmation of
+      Bartholomew's title, produced for the moment a good moral effect; Roldan
+      went and sulked in the mountains, refusing to have any parley or
+      communication with the Adelantado, declining indeed to treat with any one
+      until the Admiral himself should return. In the meantime his influence
+      with the natives was strong enough to produce a native revolt, which
+      Bartholomew had only just succeeded in suppressing when Christopher
+      arrived on August 30th.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Admiral was not a little distressed to find that the three ships from
+      which he had parted company at Ferro had not yet arrived. His own voyage
+      ought to have taken far longer than theirs; they had now been nine weeks
+      at sea, and there was nothing to account for their long delay. When at
+      last they did appear, however they brought with them only a new
+      complication. They had lost their way among the islands and had been
+      searching about for Espanola, finally making a landfall there on the coast
+      of Xaragua, the south-western province of the island, where Roldan and his
+      followers were established. Roldan had received them and, concealing the
+      fact of his treachery, procured a large store of provisions from them, his
+      followers being meanwhile busy among the crews of the ships inciting them
+      to mutiny and telling them of the oppression of the Admiral's rule and the
+      joys of a lawless life. The gaol-birds were nothing loth; after eight
+      weeks at sea a spell ashore in this pleasant land, with all kinds of
+      indulgences which did not come within the ordinary regimen of convicts and
+      sailors, greatly appealing to them. The result was that more than half of
+      the crews mutinied and joined Roldan, and the captains were obliged to put
+      to sea with their small loyal remnant. Carvajal remained behind in order
+      to try to persuade Roldan to give himself up; but Roldan had no such idea,
+      and Carvajal had to make his way by land to San Domingo, where he made his
+      report to the Admiral. Roldan has in fact delivered a kind of ultimatum.
+      He will surrender to no one but the Admiral, and that only on condition
+      that he gets a free pardon. If negotiations are opened, Roldan will treat
+      with no one but Carvajal. The Admiral, whose grip of the situation is
+      getting weaker and weaker, finds himself in a difficulty. His loyal army
+      is only some seventy strong, while Roldan has, of disloyal settlers,
+      gaol-birds, and sailors, much more than that. The Admiral, since he cannot
+      reduce his enemy's force by capturing them, seeks to do it by bribing
+      them; and the greatest bribe that he can think of to offer to these
+      malcontents is that any who like may have a free passage home in the five
+      caravels which are now waiting to return to Spain. To such a pass have
+      things come in the paradise of Espanola! But the rabble finds life
+      pleasant enough in Xaragua, where they are busy with indescribable
+      pleasures; and for the moment there is no great response to this
+      invitation to be gone. Columbus therefore despatches his ships, with such
+      rabble of colonists, gaol-birds, and mariners as have already had their
+      fill both of pain and pleasure, and writes his usual letter to the
+      Sovereigns&mdash;half full of the glories of the new discoveries he has
+      made, the other half setting forth the evil doings of Roldan, and begging
+      that he may be summoned to Spain for trial there. Incidentally, also, he
+      requests a further licence for two years for the capture and despatch of
+      slaves to Spain. So the vessels sail back on October 18, 1498, and the
+      Admiral turns wearily to the task of disentangling the web of difficulty
+      that has woven itself about him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carvajal and Ballester&mdash;another loyal captain&mdash;were sent with a
+      letter to Roldan urging him to come to terms, and Carvajal and Ballester
+      added their own honest persuasions. But Roldan was firm; he wished to be
+      quit of the Admiral and his rule, and to live independently in the island;
+      and of his followers, although some here and there showed signs of
+      submission, the greater number were so much in love with anarchy that they
+      could not be counted upon. For two months negotiations of a sort were
+      continued, Roldan even presenting himself under a guarantee of safety at
+      San Domingo, where he had a fruitless conference with the Admiral; where
+      also he had an opportunity of observing what a sorry state affairs in the
+      capital were in, and what a mess Columbus was making of it all. Roldan,
+      being a simple man, though a rascal, had only to remain firm in order to
+      get his way against a mind like the Admiral's, and get his way he
+      ultimately did. The Admiral made terms of a kind most humiliating to him,
+      and utterly subversive of his influence and authority. The mutineers were
+      not only to receive a pardon but a certificate (good Heavens!) of good
+      conduct. Caravels were to be sent to convey them to Spain; and they were
+      to be permitted to carry with them all the slaves that they had collected
+      and all the native young women whom they had ravished from their homes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Columbus signs this document on the 21st of November, and promises that
+      the ships shall be ready in fifty days; and then, at his wits' end, and
+      hearing of irregularities in the interior of the island, sets off with
+      Bartholomew to inspect the posts and restore them to order. In his absence
+      the see-saw, in due obedience to the laws that govern all see-saws, gives
+      a lurch to the other side, and things go all wrong again in San Domingo.
+      The preparations for the despatch of the caravels are neglected as soon as
+      his back is turned; not fifty days, but nearly one hundred days elapse
+      before they are ready to sail from San Domingo to Xaragua. Even then they
+      are delayed by storms and head-winds; and when they do arrive Roldan and
+      his company will not embark in them. The agreement has been broken; a new
+      one must be made. Columbus, returning to San Domingo after long and
+      harassing struggles on the other end of the see-saw, gets news of this
+      deadlock, and at the same time has news from Fonseca in Spain of a far
+      from agreeable character. His complaints against the people under him have
+      been received by the Sovereigns and will be duly considered, but their
+      Majesties have not time at the moment to go into them. That is the gist of
+      it, and very cold cheer it is for the Admiral, balancing himself on this
+      turbulent see-saw with anxious eyes turned to Spain for encouragement and
+      approval.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the depression that followed the receipt of this letter he was no match
+      for Roldan. He even himself took a caravel and sailed towards Xaragua,
+      where he was met by Roldan, who boarded his ship and made his new
+      proposals. Their impudence is astounding; and when we consider that the
+      Admiral had in theory absolute powers in the island, the fact that such
+      proposals could be made, not to say accepted, shows how far out of
+      relation were his actual with his nominal powers. Roldan proposed that he
+      should be allowed to give a number of his friends a free passage to Spain;
+      that to all who should remain free grants of land should be given; and (a
+      free pardon and certificate of good conduct contenting him no longer) that
+      a proclamation should be made throughout the island admitting that all the
+      charges of disloyalty and mutiny which had been brought against him and
+      his followers were without foundation; and, finally, that he should be
+      restored to his office of Alcalde Mayor or chief magistrate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here was a bolus for Christopher to swallow; a bolus compounded of his own
+      words, his own acts, his hope, dignity, supremacy. In dismal humiliation
+      he accepted the terms, with the addition of a clause more scandalous still&mdash;to
+      the effect that the mutineers reserved the right, in case the Admiral
+      should fail in the exact performance of any of his promises, to enforce
+      them by compulsion of arms or any other method they might think fit. This
+      precious document was signed on September 28, 1499 just twelve months
+      after the agreement which it was intended to replace; and the Admiral,
+      sailing dismally back to San Domingo, ruefully pondered on the fruits of a
+      year's delay. Even then he was trying to make excuses for himself, such as
+      he made afterwards to the Sovereigns when he tried to explain that this
+      shameful capitulation was invalid. That he signed under compulsion; that
+      he was on board a ship, and so was not on his viceregal territory; that
+      the rebels had already been tried, and that he had not the power to revoke
+      a sentence which bore the authority of the Crown; that he had not the
+      power to dispose of the Crown property&mdash;desperate, agonised shuffling
+      of pride and self-esteem in the coils of trial and difficulty. Enough of
+      it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="ch6c" id="ch6c"></a>CHAPTER VI.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      AN INTERLUDE
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A breath of salt air again will do us no harm as a relief from these
+      perilous balancings of Columbus on the see-saw at Espanola. His true work
+      in this world had indeed already been accomplished. When he smote the rock
+      of western discovery many springs flowed from it, and some were destined
+      to run in mightier channels than that which he himself followed. Among
+      other men stirred by the news of Columbus's first voyage there was one
+      walking the streets of Bristol in 1496 who was fired to a similar
+      enterprise&mdash;a man of Venice, in boyhood named Zuan Caboto, but now
+      known in England, where he has some time been settled, as Captain John
+      Cabot. A sailor and trader who has travelled much through the known
+      sea-roads of this world, and has a desire to travel upon others not so
+      well known. He has been in the East, has seen the caravans of Mecca and
+      the goods they carried, and, like Columbus, has conceived in his mind the
+      roundness of the world as a practical fact rather than a mere mathematical
+      theory. Hearing of Columbus's success Cabot sets what machinery in England
+      he has access to in motion to secure for him patents from King Henry VII.;
+      which patents he receives on March 5, 1496. After spending a long time in
+      preparation, and being perhaps a little delayed by diplomatic protests
+      from the Spanish Ambassador in London, he sails from Bristol in May 1497.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After sailing west two thousand leagues Cabot found land in the
+      neighbourhood of Cape Breton, and was thus in all probability the first
+      discoverer, since the Icelanders, of the mainland of the New World. He
+      turned northward, sailed through the strait of Belle Isle, and came home
+      again, having accomplished his task in three months. Cabot, like Columbus,
+      believed he had seen the territory of the Great Khan, of whom he told the
+      interested population of Bristol some strange things. He further told them
+      of the probable riches of this new land if it were followed in a southerly
+      direction; told them some lies also, it appears, since he said that the
+      waters there were so dense with fish that his vessels could hardly move in
+      them. He received a gratuity of L10 and a pension, and made a great
+      sensation in Bristol by walking about the city dressed in fine silk
+      garments. He took other voyages also with his son Sebastian, who followed
+      with him the rapid widening stream of discovery and became Pilot Major of
+      Spain, and President of the Congress appointed in 1524 to settle the
+      conflicting pretensions of various discoverers; but so far as our
+      narrative is concerned, having sailed across from Bristol and discovered
+      the mainland of the New World some years before Columbus discovered it,
+      John Cabot sails into oblivion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Another great conquest of the salt unknown taken place a few days before
+      Columbus sailed on his third voyage. The accidental discovery of the Cape
+      by Bartholomew Diaz in 1486 had not been neglected by Portugal; and the
+      achievements of Columbus, while they cut off Portuguese enterprise from
+      the western ocean, had only stimulated it to greater activity within its
+      own spheres. Vasco da Gama sailed from Lisbon in July 1497; by the end of
+      November he had rounded the Cape of Good Hope; and in May 1498, after a
+      long voyage full of interest, peril, and hardship he had landed at Calicut
+      on the shores of the true India. He came back in 1499 with a battered
+      remnant, his crew disabled by sickness and exhaustion, and half his ships
+      lost; but he had in fact discovered a road for trade and adventure to the
+      East that was not paved with promises, dreams, or mad affidavits, but was
+      a real and tangible achievement, bringing its reward in commerce and
+      wealth for Portugal. At that very moment Columbus was groping round the
+      mainland of South America, thinking it to be the coast of Cathay, and the
+      Garden of Eden, and God knows what other cosmographical&mdash;theological
+      abstractions; and Portugal, busy with her arrangements for making money,
+      could afford for the moment to look on undismayed at the development of
+      the mine of promises discovered by the Spanish Admiral.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The anxiety of Columbus to communicate the names of things before he had
+      made sure of their substance received another rude chastisement in the
+      events that followed the receipt in Spain of his letter announcing the
+      discovery of the Garden of Eden and the land of pearls. People in Spain
+      were not greatly interested in his theories of the terrestrial Paradise;
+      but more than one adventurer pricked up his ears at the name of pearls,
+      and among the first was our old friend Alonso de Ojeda, who had returned
+      some time before from Espanola and was living in Spain. His position as a
+      member of Columbus's force on the second voyage and the distinction he had
+      gained there gave him special opportunities of access to the letters and
+      papers sent home by Columbus; and he found no difficulty in getting
+      Fonseca to show him the maps and charts of the coast of Paria sent back by
+      the Admiral, the veritable pearls which had been gathered, and the
+      enthusiastic descriptions of the wealth of this new coast. Knowing
+      something of Espanola, and of the Admiral also, and reading in the
+      despatches of the turbulent condition of the colony, he had a shrewd idea
+      that Columbus's hands would be kept pretty full in Espanola itself, and
+      that he would have no opportunity for some time to make any more voyages
+      of discovery. He therefore represented to Fonseca what a pity it would be
+      if all this revenue should remain untapped just because one man had not
+      time to attend to it, and he proposed that he should take out an
+      expedition at his own cost and share the profits with the Crown.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This proposal was too tempting to be refused; unlike the expeditions of
+      Columbus, which were all expenditure and no revenue, it promised a chance
+      of revenue without any expenditure at all. The Paria coast, having been
+      discovered subsequent to the agreement made with Columbus, was considered
+      by Fonseca to be open to private enterprise; and he therefore granted
+      Ojeda a licence to go and explore it. Among those who went with him were
+      Amerigo Vespucci and Columbus's old pilot, Juan de la Cosa, as well as
+      some of the sailors who had been with the Admiral on the coast of Paria
+      and had returned in the caravels which had brought his account of it back
+      to Spain. Ojeda sailed on May 20, 1499; made a landfall some hundreds of
+      miles to the eastward of the Orinoco, coasted thence as far as the island
+      of Trinidad, and sailed along the northern coast of the peninsula of Paria
+      until he came to a country where the natives built their hots on piles in
+      the water, and to which he gave the name of Venezuela. It was by his
+      accidental presence on this voyage that Vespucci, the meat-contractor,
+      came to give his name to America&mdash;a curious story of international
+      jealousies, intrigues, lawsuits, and lies which we have not the space to
+      deal with here. After collecting a considerable quantity of pearls Ojeda,
+      who was beginning to run short of provisions, turned eastward again and
+      sought the coast of Espanola, where we shall presently meet with him
+      again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Ojeda was not the only person in Spain who was enticed by Columbus's
+      glowing descriptions to go and look for the pearls of Paria. There was in
+      fact quite a reunion of old friends of his and ours in the western ocean,
+      though they went thither in a spirit far different from that of ancient
+      friendship. Pedro Alonso Nino, who had also been on the Paria coast with
+      Columbus, who had come home with the returning ships, and whose patience
+      (for he was an exceedingly practical man) had perhaps been tried by the
+      strange doings of the Admiral in the Gulf of Paria, decided that he as
+      well as any one else might go and find some pearls. Nino is a poor man,
+      having worked hard in all his voyagings backwards and forwards across the
+      Atlantic; but he has a friend with money, one Luis Guerra, who provides
+      him with the funds necessary for fitting out a small caravel about the
+      size of his old ship the Nifta. Guerra, who has the money, also has a
+      brother Christoval; and his conditions are that Christoval shall be given
+      the command of the caravel. Practical Niflo does not care so long as he
+      reaches the place where the pearls are. He also applies to Fonseca for
+      licence to make discoveries; and, duly receiving it, sails from Palos in
+      the beginning of June 1499, hot upon the track of Ojeda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They did a little quiet discovery, principally in the domain of human
+      nature, caroused with the friendly natives, but attended to business all
+      the time; with the result that in the following April they were back in
+      Spain with a treasure of pearls out of which, after Nifio had been made
+      independent for life and Guerra, Christoval, and the rest of them had
+      their shares, there remained a handsome sum for the Crown. An extremely
+      practical, businesslike voyage this; full of lessons for our poor
+      Christopher, could he but have known and learned them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet another of our old friends profited by the Admiral's discovery. What
+      Vincenti Yafiez Pinzon has been doing all these years we have no record;
+      living at Palos, perhaps, doing a little of his ordinary coasting
+      business, administering the estates of his brother Martin Alonso, and,
+      almost for a certainty, talking pretty big about who it was that really
+      did all the work in the discovery of the New World. Out of the obscurity
+      of conjecture he emerges into fact in December 1499, when he is found at
+      Palos fitting out four caravels for the purpose of exploring farther along
+      the coast of the southern mainland. That he also was after pearls is
+      pretty certain; but on the other hand he was more of a sailor than an
+      adventurer, was a discoverer at heart, and had no small share of the
+      family taste for sea travel. He took a more southerly course than any of
+      the others and struck the coast of America south of the equator on January
+      20, 1500. He sailed north past the mouths of the Amazon and Orinoco
+      through the Gulf of Paria, and reached Espanola in June 1500. He only
+      paused there to take in provisions, and sailed to the west in search of
+      further discoveries; but he lost two of his caravels in a gale and had to
+      put back to Espanola.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He sailed thence for Palos, and reached home in September 1500, having
+      added no inconsiderable share to the mass of new geographical knowledge
+      that was being accumulated. In later years he took a high place in the
+      maritime world of Spain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And finally, to complete the account of the chief minor discoveries of
+      these two busy years, we must mention Pedro Alvarez Cabral of Portugal,
+      who was despatched in March 1, 1500 from Lisbon to verify the discoveries
+      of Da Gama. He reached Calicut six months later, losing on the voyage four
+      of his caravels and most of his company. Among the lost was Bartholomew
+      Diaz, the first discoverer of the Cape of Good Hope, who was on this
+      voyage in a subordinate capacity, and whose bones were left to dissolve in
+      the stormy waters that beat round the Cape whose barrier he was the first
+      to pass. The chief event of this voyage, however, was not the reaching of
+      Calicut nor the drowning of Diaz (which was chiefly of importance to
+      himself, poor soul!) but the discovery of Brazil, which Cabral made in
+      following the southerly course too far to the west. He landed there, in
+      the Bay of Porto Seguro, on May 1, 1500, and took formal possession of the
+      land for the Crown of Portugal, naming it Vera Cruz, or the Land of the
+      True Cross.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the assumption of Columbus and his contemporaries all these doings were
+      held to detract from the glory of his own achievements, and were the
+      subject of endless affidavits, depositions, quarrels, arguments, proofs
+      and claims in the great lawsuit that was in after years carried on between
+      the Crown of Spain and the heirs of Columbus concerning his titles and
+      revenues. We, however, may take a different view. With the exception of
+      the discoveries of the Cape of Good Hope and the coast of Brazil all these
+      enterprises were directly traceable to Columbus's own achievements and
+      were inspired by his example. The things that a man can do in his own
+      person are limited by the laws of time and space; it is only example and
+      influence that are infinite and illimitable, and in which the spirit of
+      any achievement can find true immortality.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="ch7c" id="ch7c"></a>CHAPTER VII.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE THIRD VOYAGE-(continued)
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It may perhaps be wearisome to the reader to return to the tangled and
+      depressing situation in Espanola, but it cannot be half so wearisome as it
+      was for Columbus, whom we left enveloped in that dark cloud of error and
+      surrender in which he sacrificed his dignity and good faith to the
+      impudent demands of a mutinous servant. To his other troubles in San
+      Domingo the presence of this Roldan was now added; and the reinstated
+      Alcalde was not long in making use of the victory he had gained. He bore
+      himself with intolerable arrogance and insolence, discharging one of
+      Columbus's personal bodyguard on the ground that no one should hold any
+      office on the island except with his consent. He demanded grants of land
+      for himself and his followers, which Columbus held himself obliged to
+      concede; and the Admiral, further to pacify him, invented a very
+      disastrous system of repartimientos, under which certain chiefs were
+      relieved from paying tribute on condition of furnishing feudal service to
+      the settlers&mdash;a system which rapidly developed into the most cruel
+      and oppressive kind of slavery. The Admiral at this time also, in despair
+      of keeping things quiet by his old methods of peace and conciliation,
+      created a kind of police force which roamed about the island, exacting
+      tribute and meting out summary punishment to all defaulters. Among other
+      concessions weakly made to Roldan at this time was the gift of the Crown
+      estate of Esperanza, situated in the Vega Real, whither he betook himself
+      and embarked on what was nothing more nor less than a despotic reign,
+      entirely ignoring the regulations and prerogatives of the Admiral, and
+      taking prisoners and administering punishment just as he pleased. The
+      Admiral was helpless, and thought of going back to Spain, but the
+      condition of the island was such that he did not dare to leave it.
+      Instead, he wrote a long letter to the Sovereigns, full of complaints
+      against other people and justifications of himself, in the course of which
+      he set forth those quibbling excuses for his capitulation to Roldan which
+      we have already heard. And there was a pathetic request at the end of the
+      letter that his son Diego might be sent out to him. As I have said,
+      Columbus was by this time a prematurely old man, and feeling the clouds
+      gathering about him, and the loneliness and friendlessness of his position
+      at Espanola, he instinctively looked to the next generation for help, and
+      to the presence of his own son for sympathy and comfort.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was at this moment (September 5, 1499) that a diversion arose in the
+      rumour that four caravels had been seen off the western end of Espanola
+      and duly reported to the Admiral; and this announcement was soon followed
+      by the news that they were commanded by Ojeda, who was collecting dye-wood
+      in the island forests. Columbus, although he had so far as we know had no
+      previous difficulties with Ojeda, had little cause now to credit any
+      adventurer with kindness towards himself; and Ojeda's secrecy in not
+      reporting himself at San Domingo, and, in fact, his presence on the island
+      at all without the knowledge of the Admiral, were sufficient evidence that
+      he was there to serve his own ends. Some gleam of Christopher's old
+      cleverness in handling men was&mdash;now shown by his instructing Roldan
+      to sally forth and bring Ojeda to order. It was a case of setting a thief
+      to catch a thief and, as it turned out, was not a bad stroke. Roldan,
+      nothing loth, sailed round to that part of the coast where Ojeda's ships
+      were anchored, and asked to see his licence; which was duly shown to him
+      and rather took the wind out of his sails. He heard a little gossip from
+      Ojeda, moreover, which had its own significance for him. The Queen was
+      ill; Columbus was in disgrace; there was talk of superseding him. Ojeda
+      promised to sail round to San Domingo and report himself; but instead, he
+      sailed to the east along the coast of Xaragua, where he got into
+      communication with some discontented Spanish settlers and concocted a
+      scheme for leading them to San Domingo to demand redress for their
+      imagined grievances. Roldan, however, who had come to look for Ojeda,
+      discovered him at this point; and there ensued some very pretty play
+      between the two rascals, chiefly in trickery and treachery, such as
+      capturing each other's boats and emissaries, laying traps for one another,
+      and taking prisoner one another's crews. The end of it was that Ojeda left
+      the island without having reported himself to Columbus, but not before he
+      had completed his business&mdash;which was that of provisioning his ships
+      and collecting dye-wood and slaves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so exit Ojeda from the Columbian drama. Of his own drama only one more
+      act remained to be played; which, for the sake of our past interest in
+      him, we will mention here. Chiefly on account of his intimacy with Fonseca
+      he was some years later given a governorship in the neighbourhood of the
+      Gulf of Darien; Juan de la Cosa accompanying him as unofficial partner.
+      Ojeda has no sooner landed there than he is fighting the natives; natives
+      too many for him this time; Ojeda forced to hide in the forest, where he
+      finds the body of de la Cosa, who has come by a shocking death. Ojeda
+      afterwards tries to govern his colony, but is no good at that; cannot
+      govern his own temper, poor fellow. Quarrels with his crew, is put in
+      irons, carried to Espanola, and dies there (1515) in great poverty and
+      eclipse. One of the many, evidently, who need a strong guiding hand, and
+      perish without it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It really began to seem as though Roldan, having had his fling and secured
+      the excessive privileges that he coveted, had decided that loyalty to
+      Christopher was for the present the most profitable policy; but the
+      mutinous spirit that he had cultivated in his followers for his own ends
+      could not be so readily converted into this cheap loyalty. More trouble
+      was yet to come of this rebellion. There was in the island a young Spanish
+      aristocrat, Fernando de Guevara by name, one of the many who had come out
+      in the hope of enjoying himself and making a fortune quickly, whose more
+      than outrageously dissolute life in San Domingo had caused Columbus to
+      banish him thence; and he was now living near Xaragua with a cousin of
+      his, Adrian de Moxeca, who had been one of the ringleaders in Roldan's
+      conspiracy. Within this pleasant province of Xaragua lived, as we have
+      seen, Anacaona, the sister of Caonabo, the Lord of the House of Gold. She
+      herself was a beautiful woman, called by her subjects Bloom of the Gold;
+      and she had a still more beautiful daughter, Higuamota, who appears in
+      history, like so many other women, on account of her charms and what came
+      of them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of pretty Higuamota, who once lived like a dryad among the groves of
+      Espanola and has been dead now for so long, we know nothing except that
+      she was beautiful, which, although she doubtless did not think so while
+      she lived, turns out to have been the most important thing about her.
+      Young Guevara, coming to stay with his cousin Adrian, becomes a visitor at
+      the house of Anacaona; sees the pretty daughter and falls in love with
+      her. Other people also, it appears, have been in a similar state, but
+      Higuamota is not very accessible; a fact which of course adds to the
+      interest of the chase, and turns dissolute Fernando's idle preference into
+      something like a passion. Roldan, who has also had an eye upon her, and
+      apparently no more than an eye, discovers that Fernando, in order to
+      gratify his passion, is proposing to go the absurd length of marrying the
+      young woman, and has sent for a priest for that purpose. Roldan,
+      instigated thereto by primitive forces, thinks it would be impolitic for a
+      Spanish grandee to marry with a heathen; very well, then, Fernando will
+      have her baptized&mdash;nothing simpler when water and a priest are handy.
+      Roldan, seeing that the young man is serious, becomes peremptory, and
+      orders him to leave Xaragua. Fernando ostentatiously departs, but is
+      discovered a little later actually living in the house of Anacaona, who
+      apparently is sympathetic to Love's young dream. Once more ordered away,
+      this time with anger and threats, Guevara changes his tune and implores
+      Roldan to let him stay, promising that he will give up the marriage
+      project and also, no doubt, the no-marriage project. But Guevara has
+      sympathisers. The mutineers have not forgiven Roldan for deserting them
+      and becoming a lawful instead of an unlawful ruler. They are all on the
+      side of Guevara, who accordingly moves to the next stage of island
+      procedure, and sets on foot some kind of plot to kill Roldan and the
+      Admiral. Fortunately where there is treachery it generally works both
+      ways; this plot came to the ears of the authorities; the conspirators were
+      arrested and sent to San Domingo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This action came near to bringing the whole island about Columbus's ears.
+      Adrian de Moxeca was furious at what he conceived to be the treachery of
+      Roldan, for Roldan was in such a pass that the barest act of duty was
+      necessarily one of treachery to his friends. Moxeca took the place of
+      chief rebel that Roldan had vacated; rallied the mutineers round him, and
+      was on the point of starting for Concepcion, one of the chain of forts
+      across the island where Columbus was at present staying, when the Admiral
+      discovered his plan. All that was strongest and bravest in him rose up at
+      this menace. His weakness and cowardice were forgotten; and with the
+      spirit of an old sea-lion he sallied forth against the mutineers. He had
+      only a dozen men on whom he could rely, but he armed them well and marched
+      secretly and swiftly under cloud of night to the place where Moxeca and
+      his followers were encamped in fond security, and there suddenly fell upon
+      them, capturing Moxeca and the chief ringleaders. The rest scattered in
+      terror and escaped. Moxeca was hurried off to the battlements of San
+      Domingo and there, in the very midst of a longdrawn trembling confession
+      to the priest in attendance, was swung off the ramparts and hanged. The
+      others, although also condemned to death, were kept in irons in the
+      fortress, while Christopher and Bartholomew, roused at last to vigorous
+      action, scoured the island hunting down the remainder, killing some who
+      resisted, hanging others on the spot, and imprisoning the remainder at San
+      Domingo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After these prompt measures peace reigned for a time in the island, and
+      Columbus was perhaps surprised to see what wholesome effects could be
+      produced by a little exemplary severity. The natives, who under the
+      weakness of his former rule had been discontented and troublesome, now
+      settled down submissively to their yoke; the Spaniards began to work in
+      earnest on their farms; and there descended upon island affairs a brief
+      St. Martin's Summer of peace before the final winter of blight and death
+      set in. The Admiral, however, was obviously in precarious health; his
+      ophthalmia became worse, and the stability of his mind suffered. He had
+      dreams and visions of divine help and comfort, much needed by him, poor
+      soul, in all his tribulations and adversities. Even yet the cup was not
+      full.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We must now turn back to Spain and try to form some idea of the way in
+      which the doings of Columbus were being regarded there if we are to
+      understand the extraordinary calamity that was soon to befall him. It must
+      be remembered first of all that his enterprise had never really been
+      popular from the first. It was carried out entirely by the energy and
+      confidence of Queen Isabella, who almost alone of those in power believed
+      in it as a thing which was certain to bring ultimate glory, as well as
+      riches and dominion, to Spain and the Catholic faith. As we have seen,
+      there had been a brief ebullition of popular favour when Columbus returned
+      from his first voyage, but it was a popularity excited solely by the
+      promises of great wealth that Columbus was continually holding forth. When
+      those promises were not immediately fulfilled popular favour subsided; and
+      when the adventurers who had gone out to the new islands on the strength
+      of those promises had returned with shattered health and empty pockets
+      there was less chance than ever of the matter being regarded in its proper
+      light by the people of Spain. Columbus had either found a gold mine or he
+      had found nothing&mdash;that was the way in which the matter was popularly
+      regarded. Those who really understood the significance of his discoveries
+      and appreciated their scientific importance did not merely stay at home in
+      Spain and raise a clamour; they went out in the Admiral's footsteps and
+      continued the work that he had begun. Even King Ferdinand, for all his
+      cleverness, had never understood the real lines on which the colony should
+      have been developed. His eyes were fixed upon Europe; he saw in the
+      discoveries of Columbus a means rather than an end; and looked to them
+      simply as a source of revenue with the help of which he could carry on his
+      ambitious schemes. And when, as other captains made voyages confirming and
+      extending the work of Columbus, he did begin to understand the
+      significance of what had been done, he realised too late that the Admiral
+      had been given powers far in excess of what was prudent or sensible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During all the time that Columbus and his brothers were struggling with
+      the impossible situation at Espanola there was but one influence at work
+      in Spain, and that was entirely destructive to the Admiral. Every caravel
+      that came from the New World brought two things. It brought a crowd of
+      discontented colonists, many of whom had grave reasons for their
+      discontent; and it brought letters from the Admiral in which more and more
+      promises were held out, but in which also querulous complaints against
+      this and that person, and against the Spanish settlers generally, were set
+      forth at wearisome length. It is not remarkable that the people of Spain,
+      even those who were well disposed towards Columbus, began to wonder if
+      these two things were not cause and effect. The settlers may have been a
+      poor lot, but they were the material with which Columbus had to deal; he
+      had powers enough, Heaven knew, powers of life and death; and the problem
+      began to resolve itself in the minds of those at the head of affairs in
+      Spain in the following terms. Given an island, rich and luxuriant beyond
+      the dreams of man; given a native population easily subdued; given
+      settlers of one kind or another; and given a Viceroy with unlimited powers&mdash;could
+      he or could he not govern the island? It was a by no means unfair way of
+      putting the case, and there is little justice in the wild abuse that has
+      been hurled at Ferdinand and Isabella on this ground. Columbus may have
+      been the greatest genius in the world; very possibly they admitted it; but
+      in the meanwhile Spain was resounding with the cries of the impoverished
+      colonists who had returned from his ocean Paradise. No doubt the
+      Sovereigns ignored them as much as they possibly could; but when it came
+      to ragged emaciated beggars coming in batches of fifty at a time and
+      sitting in the very courts of the Alhambra, exhibiting bunches of grapes
+      and saying that that was all they could afford to live upon since they had
+      come back from the New World, some notice had to be taken of it. Even
+      young Diego and Ferdinand, the Admiral's sons, came in for the obloquy
+      with which his name was associated; the colonial vagabonds hung round the
+      portals of the palace and cried out upon them as they passed so that they
+      began to dislike going out. Columbus, as we know, had plenty of enemies
+      who had access to the King and Queen; and never had enemies an easier case
+      to urge. Money was continually being spent on ships and supplies; where
+      was the return for it? What about the Ophir of Solomon? What about the
+      Land of Spices? What about the pearls? And if you want to add a touch of
+      absurdity, what about the Garden of Eden and the Great Khan?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To the most impartial eyes it began to appear as though Columbus were
+      either an impostor or a fool. There is no evidence that Ferdinand and
+      Isabella thought that he was an impostor or that he had wilfully deceived
+      them; but there is some evidence that they began to have an inkling as to
+      what kind of a man he really was, and as to his unfitness for governing a
+      colony. Once more something had to be done. The sending out of a
+      commissioner had not been a great success before, but in the difficulties
+      of the situation it seemed the only thing. Still there was a good deal of
+      hesitation, and it is probable that Isabella was not yet fully convinced
+      of the necessity for this grave step. This hesitation was brought to an
+      end by the arrival from Espanola of the ships bearing the followers of
+      Roldan, who had been sent back under the terms of Columbus's feeble
+      capitulation. The same ships brought a great quantity of slaves, which the
+      colonists were able to show had been brought by the permission of the
+      Admiral; they carried native girls also, many of them pregnant, many with
+      new-born babies; and these also came with the permission of the Admiral.
+      The ships further carried the Admiral's letter complaining of the
+      conspiracy of Roldan and containing the unfortunate request for a further
+      licence to extend the slave trade. These circumstances were probably
+      enough to turn the scale of Isabella's opinion against the Admiral's
+      administration. The presence of the slaves particularly angered her kind
+      womanly heart. "What right has he to give away my vassals?" she exclaimed,
+      and ordered that they should all be sent back, and that in addition all
+      the other slaves who had come home should be traced and sent back;
+      although of course it was impossible to carry out this last order.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At any rate there was no longer any hesitation about sending out a
+      commissioner, and the Sovereigns chose one Francisco de Bobadilla, an
+      official of the royal household, for the performance of this difficult
+      mission. As far as we can decipher him he was a very ordinary official
+      personage; prejudiced, it is possible, against an administration that had
+      produced such disastrous results and which offended his orderly official
+      susceptibilities; otherwise to be regarded as a man exactly honest in the
+      performance of what he conceived to be his duties, and entirely indisposed
+      to allow sentiment or any other extraneous matter to interfere with such
+      due performance. We shall have need to remember, when we see him at work
+      in Espanola, that he was not sent out to judge between Columbus and his
+      Sovereigns or between Columbus and the world, but to investigate the
+      condition of the colony and to take what action he thought necessary. The
+      commission which he bore to the Admiral was in the following terms:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The King and the Queen: Don Christopher Columbus, our Admiral of the
+      Ocean-sea. We have directed Francisco de Bobadilla, the bearer of this, to
+      speak to you for us of certain things which he will mention: we request
+      you to give him faith and credence and to obey him. From Madrid, May 26,
+      '99. I THE KING. I THE QUEEN. By their command. Miguel Perez de Almazan."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In addition Bobadilla bore with him papers and authorities giving him
+      complete control and possession of all the forts, arms, and royal property
+      in the island, in case it should be necessary for him to use them; and he
+      also had a number of blank warrants which were signed, but the substance
+      of which was not filled in. This may seem very dreadful to us, with our
+      friendship for the poor Admiral; but considering the grave state of
+      affairs as represented to the King and Queen, who had their duties to
+      their colonial subjects as well as to Columbus, there was nothing
+      excessive in it. If they were to send out a commissioner at all, and if
+      they were satisfied, as presumably they were, that the man they had chosen
+      was trustworthy, it was only right to make his authority absolute. Thus
+      equipped Francisco de Bobadilla sailed from Spain in July 1500.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="bk4" id="bk4"></a>BOOK IV.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      TOWARDS THE SUNSET
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="ch1d" id="ch1d"></a>CHAPTER I.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      DEGRADATION
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first things seen by Francisco de Bobadilla when he entered the
+      harbour of San Domingo on the morning of the 23rd of August 1500 were the
+      bodies of several Spaniards, hanging from a gibbet near the water-side&mdash;a
+      grim confirmation of what he had heard about the troubled state of the
+      island. While he was waiting for the tide so that he might enter the
+      harbour a boat put off from shore to ascertain who was on board the
+      caravels; and it was thus informally that Bobadilla first announced that
+      he had come to examine into the state of the island. Columbus was not at
+      San Domingo, but was occupied in settling the affairs of the Vega Real;
+      Bartholomew also was absent, stamping out the last smouldering embers of
+      rebellion in Xaragua; and only James was in command to deal with this
+      awkward situation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bobadilla did not go ashore the first day, but remained on board his ship
+      receiving the visits of various discontented colonists who, getting early
+      wind of the purpose of his visit, lost no time in currying favour with
+      him, Probably he heard enough that first day to have damned the
+      administration of a dozen islands; but also we must allow him some
+      interest in the wonderful and strange sights that he was seeing; for
+      Espanola, which has perhaps grown wearisome to us, was new to him. He had
+      brought with him an armed body-guard of twenty-five men, and in the other
+      caravel were the returned slaves, babies and all, under the charge of six
+      friars. On the day following his arrival Bobadilla landed and heard mass
+      in state, afterwards reading out his commission to the assembled people.
+      Evidently he had received a shocking impression of the state of affairs in
+      the island; that is the only explanation of the action suddenly taken by
+      him, for his first public act was to demand from James the release of all
+      the prisoners in the fortress, in order that they and their accusers
+      should appear before him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      James is in a difficulty; and, mule-like, since he does not know which way
+      to turn, stands stock still. He can do nothing, he says, without the
+      Admiral's consent. The next day Bobadilla, again hearing mass in state,
+      causes further documents to be read showing that a still greater degree of
+      power had been entrusted to his hands. Mule-like, James still stands stock
+      still; the greatest power on earth known to him is his eldest brother, and
+      he will not, positively dare not, be moved by anything less than that. He
+      refuses to give up the prisoners on any grounds whatsoever, and Bobadilla
+      has to take the fortress by assault&mdash;an easy enough matter since the
+      resistance is but formal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next act of Bobadilla's is not quite so easy to understand. He
+      quartered himself in Columbus's house; that perhaps was reasonable enough
+      since there may not have been another house in the settlement fit to
+      receive him; but he also, we are told, took possession of all his papers,
+      public and private, and also seized the Admiral's store of money and began
+      to pay his debts with it for him, greatly to the satisfaction of San
+      Domingo. There is an element of the comic in this interpretation of a
+      commissioner's powers; and it seemed as though he meant to wind up the
+      whole Columbus business, lock, stock, and barrel. It would not be in
+      accordance with our modern ideas of honour that a man's private papers
+      should be seized unless he were suspected of treachery or some criminal
+      act; but apparently Bobadilla regarded it as necessary. We must remember
+      that although he had only heard one side of the case it was evidently so
+      positive, and the fruits of misgovernment were there so visibly before his
+      eyes, that no amount of evidence in favour of Columbus would make him
+      change his mind as to his fitness to govern. Poor James, witnessing these
+      things and unable to do anything to prevent them, finds himself suddenly
+      relieved from the tension of the situation. Since inaction is his note, he
+      shall be indulged in it; and he is clapped in irons and cast into prison.
+      James can hardly believe the evidence of his senses. He has been studying
+      theology lately, it appears, with a view to entering the Church and
+      perhaps being some day made Bishop of Espanola, but this new turn of
+      affairs looks as though there were to be an end of all careers for him,
+      military and ecclesiastical alike.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Christopher at Fort Concepcion had early news of the arrival of Bobadilla,
+      but in the hazy state of his mind he did not regard it as an event of
+      sufficient importance to make his immediate presence at San Domingo
+      advisable. The name of Bobadilla conveyed nothing to him; and when he
+      heard that he had come to investigate, he thought that he came to set
+      right some disputed questions between the Admiral and other navigators as
+      to the right of visiting Espanola and the Paria coast. As the days went
+      on, however, he heard more disquieting rumours; grew at last uneasy, and
+      moved to a fort nearer San Domingo in case it should be necessary for him
+      to go there. An officer met him on the road bearing the proclamations
+      issued by Bobadilla, but not the message from the Sovereigns requiring the
+      Admiral's obedience to the commissioner. Columbus wrote to the
+      commissioner a curious letter, which is not preserved, in which he sought
+      to gain time; excusing himself from responsibility for the condition of
+      the island, and assuring Bobadilla that, as he intended to return to Spain
+      almost immediately, he (Bobadilla) would have ample opportunity for
+      exercising his command in his absence. He also wrote to the Franciscan
+      friars who had accompanied Bobadilla asking them to use their influence&mdash;the
+      Admiral having some vague connection with the Franciscan order since his
+      days at La Rabida.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No reply came to any of these letters, and Columbus sent word that he
+      still regarded his authority as paramount in the island. For reply to this
+      he received the Sovereigns' message to him which we have seen, commanding
+      him to put himself under the direction of Bobadilla. There was no
+      mistaking this; there was the order in plain words; and with I know not
+      what sinkings of heart Columbus at last set out for San Domingo. Bobadilla
+      had expected resistance, but the Admiral, whatever his faults, knew how to
+      behave with, dignity in a humiliating position; and he came into the city
+      unattended on August 23, 1500. On the outskirts of the town he was met by
+      Bobadilla's guards, arrested, put in chains, and lodged in the fortress,
+      the tower of which exists to this day. He seemed to himself to be the
+      victim of a particularly petty and galling kind of treachery, for it was
+      his own cook, a man called Espinoza, who riveted his gyves upon him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There remained Bartholomew to be dealt with, and he, being at large and in
+      command of the army, might not have proved such an easy conquest, but that
+      Christopher, at Bobadilla's request, wrote and advised him to submit to
+      arrest without any resistance. Whether Bartholomew acquiesced or not is
+      uncertain; what is certain is that he also was captured and placed in
+      irons, and imprisoned on one of the caravels. James in one caravel,
+      Bartholomew in another, and Christopher in the fortress, and all in chains&mdash;this
+      is what it has come to with the three sons of old Domenico.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The trial was now begun, if trial that can be called which takes place in
+      the absence of the culprit or his representative. It was rather the
+      hearing of charges against Christopher and his brothers; and we may be
+      sure that every discontented feeling in the island found voice and was
+      formulated into some incriminating charge. Columbus was accused of
+      oppressing the Spanish settlers by making them work at harsh and
+      unnecessary labour; of cutting down their allowance of food, and
+      restricting their liberty; of punishing them cruelly and unduly; of waging
+      wars unjustly with the natives; of interfering with the conversion of the
+      natives by hastily collecting them and sending them home as slaves; of
+      having secreted treasures which should have been delivered to the
+      Sovereigns&mdash;this last charge, like some of the others, true. He had
+      an accumulation of pearls of which he had given no account to Fonseca, and
+      the possession of which he excused by the queer statement that he was
+      waiting to announce it until he could match it with an equal amount of
+      gold! He was accused of hating the Spaniards, who were represented as
+      having risen in the late rebellion in order to protect the natives and
+      avenge their own wrongs&mdash;, and generally of having abused his office
+      in order to enrich his own family and gratify his own feelings. Bobadilla
+      appeared to believe all these charges; or perhaps he recognised their
+      nature, and yet saw that there was a sufficient degree of truth in them to
+      disqualify the Admiral in his position as Viceroy. In all these affairs
+      his right-hand man was Roldan, whose loyalty to Columbus, as we foresaw,
+      had been short-lived. Roldan collects evidence; Roldan knows where he can
+      lay his hands on this witness; Roldan produces this and that proof; Roldan
+      is here, there, and everywhere&mdash;never had Bobadilla found such a
+      useful, obliging man as Roldan. With his help Bobadilla soon collected a
+      sufficient weight of evidence to justify in his own mind his sending
+      Columbus home to Spain, and remaining himself in command of the island.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The caravels having been made ready, and all the evidence drawn up and
+      documented, it only remained to embark the prisoners and despatch them to
+      Spain. Columbus, sitting in his dungeon, suffering from gout and
+      ophthalmic as well as from misery and humiliation, had heard no news; but
+      he had heard the shouting of the people in the streets, the beating of
+      drums and blowing of horns, and his own name and that of his brothers
+      uttered in derision; and he made sure that he was going to be executed.
+      Alonso de Villegio, a nephew of Bishop Fonseca's, had been appointed to
+      take charge of the ships returning to Spain; and when he came into the
+      prison the Admiral thought his last hour had come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Villegio," he asked sadly, "where are you taking me?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am taking you to the ship, your Excellency, to embark," replied the
+      other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "To embark?" repeated the Admiral incredulously. "Villegio! are you
+      speaking the truth?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "By the life of your Excellency what I say is true," was the reply, and
+      the news came with a wave of relief to the panic-stricken heart of the
+      Admiral.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the middle of October the caravels sailed from San Domingo, and the
+      last sounds heard by Columbus from the land of his discovery were the
+      hoots and jeers and curses hurled after him by the treacherous, triumphant
+      rabble on the shore. Villegio treated him and his brothers with as much
+      kindness as possible, and offered, when they had got well clear of
+      Espanola, to take off the Admiral's chains. But Columbus, with a fine
+      counterstroke of picturesque dignity, refused to have them removed.
+      Already, perhaps, he had realised that his subjection to this cruel and
+      quite unnecessary indignity would be one of the strongest things in his
+      favour when he got to Spain, and he decided to suffer as much of it as he
+      could. "My Sovereigns commanded me to submit to what Bobadilla should
+      order. By his authority I wear these chains, and I shall continue to wear
+      them until they are removed by order of the Sovereigns; and I will keep
+      them afterwards as reminders of the reward I have received for my
+      services." Thus the Admiral, beginning to pick up his spirits again, and
+      to feel the better for the sea air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The voyage home was a favourable one and in the course of it Columbus
+      wrote the following letter to a friend of his at Court, Dona Juana de la
+      Torre, who had been nurse to Prince Juan and was known by him to be a
+      favourite of the Queen:
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "MOST VIRTUOUS LADY,&mdash;Though my complaint of the world is new, its
+        habit of ill-using is very ancient. I have had a thousand struggles with
+        it, and have thus far withstood them all, but now neither arms nor
+        counsels avail me, and it cruelly keeps me under water. Hope in the
+        Creator of all men sustains me: His help was always very ready; on
+        another occasion, and not long ago, when I was still more overwhelmed,
+        He raised me with His right arm, saying, 'O man of little faith, arise:
+        it is I; be not afraid.'
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "I came with so much cordial affection to serve these Princes, and have
+        served them with such service, as has never been heard of or seen.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "Of the new heaven and earth which our Lord made, when Saint John was
+        writing the Apocalypse, after what was spoken by the mouth of Isaiah, He
+        made me the messenger, and showed me where it lay. In all men there was
+        disbelief, but to the Queen, my Lady, He gave the spirit of
+        understanding, and great courage, and made her heiress of all, as a dear
+        and much loved daughter. I went to take possession of all this in her
+        royal name. They sought to make amends to her for the ignorance they had
+        all shown by passing over their little knowledge and talking of
+        obstacles and expenses. Her Highness, on the other hand, approved of it,
+        and supported it as far as she was able.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "Seven years passed in discussion and nine in execution. During this
+        time very remarkable and noteworthy things occurred whereof no idea at
+        all had been formed. I have arrived at, and am in, such a condition that
+        there is no person so vile but thinks he may insult me: he shall be
+        reckoned in the world as valour itself who is courageous enough not to
+        consent to it.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "If I were to steal the Indies or the land which lies towards them, of
+        which I am now speaking, from the altar of Saint Peter, and give them to
+        the Moors, they could not show greater enmity towards me in Spain. Who
+        would believe such a thing where there was always so much magnanimity?
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "I should have much desired to free myself from this affair had it been
+        honourable towards my Queen to do so. The support of our Lord and of her
+        Highness made me persevere: and to alleviate in some measure the sorrows
+        which death had caused her, I undertook a fresh voyage to the new heaven
+        and earth which up to that time had remained hidden; and if it is not
+        held there in esteem like the other voyages to the Indies, that is no
+        wonder, because it came to be looked upon as my work.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "The Holy Spirit inflamed Saint Peter and twelve others with him, and
+        they all contended here below, and their toils and hardships were many,
+        but last of all they gained the victory.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "This voyage to Paria I thought would somewhat appease them on account
+        of the pearls, and of the discovery of gold in Espanola. I ordered the
+        pearls to be collected and fished for by people with whom an arrangement
+        was made that I should return for them, and, as I understood, they were
+        to be measured by the bushel. If I did not write about this to their
+        Highnesses, it was because I wished to have first of all done the same
+        thing with the gold.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "The result to me in this has been the same as in many other things; I
+        should not have lost them nor my honour, if I had sought my own
+        advantage, and had allowed Espanola to be ruined, or if my privileges
+        and contracts had been observed. And I say just the same about the gold
+        which I had then collected, and [for] which with such great afflictions
+        and toils I have, by divine power, almost perfected [the arrangements].
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "When I went from Paria I found almost half the people from Espanola in
+        revolt, and they have waged war against me until now, as against a Moor;
+        and the Indians on the other side grievously [harassed me]. At this time
+        Hojeda arrived and tried to put the finishing stroke: he said that their
+        Highnesses had sent him with promises of gifts, franchises and pay: he
+        gathered together a great band, for in the whole of Espanola there are
+        very few save vagabonds, and not one with wife and children. This Hojeda
+        gave me great trouble; he was obliged to depart, and left word that he
+        would soon return with more ships and people, and that he had left the
+        Royal person of the Queen, our Lady, at the point of death. Then
+        Vincente Yanez arrived with four caravels; there was disturbance and
+        mistrust but no mischief: the Indians talked of many others at the
+        Cannibals [Caribbee Islands] and in Paria; and afterwards spread the
+        news of six other caravels, which were brought by a brother of the
+        Alcalde, but it was with malicious intent. This occurred at the very
+        last, when the hope that their Highnesses would ever send any ships to
+        the Indies was almost abandoned, nor did we expect them; and it was
+        commonly reported that her Highness was dead.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "A certain Adrian about this time endeavoured to rise in rebellion
+        again, as he had done previously, but our Lord did not permit his evil
+        purpose to succeed. I had purposed in myself never to touch a hair of
+        anybody's head, but I lament to say that with this man, owing to his
+        ingratitude, it was not possible to keep that resolve as I had intended:
+        I should not have done less to my brother, if he had sought to kill me,
+        and steal the dominion which my King and Queen had given me in trust.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "This Adrian, as it appears, had sent Don Ferdinand to Xaragua to
+        collect some of his followers, and there a dispute arose with the
+        Alcalde from which a deadly contest ensued, and he [Adrian] did not
+        effect his purpose. The Alcalde seized him and a part of his band, and
+        the fact was that he would have executed them if I had not prevented it;
+        they were kept prisoners awaiting a caravel in which they might depart.
+        The news of Hojeda which I told them made them lose the hope that he
+        would now come again.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "For six months I had been prepared to return to their Highnesses with
+        the good news of the gold, and to escape from governing a dissolute
+        people Who fear neither God nor their King and Queen, being full of
+        vices and wickedness.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "I could have paid the people in full with six hundred thousand, and for
+        this purpose I had four millions of tenths and somewhat more, besides
+        the third of the gold.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "Before my departure I many times begged their Highnesses to send there,
+        at my expense, some one to take charge of the administration of justice;
+        and after finding the Alcalde in arms I renewed my supplications to have
+        either some troops or at least some servant of theirs with letters
+        patent; for my reputation is such that even if I build churches and
+        hospitals, they will always be called dens of thieves.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "They did indeed make provision at last, but it was the very contrary of
+        what the matter demanded: it may be successful, since it was according
+        to their good pleasure.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "I was there for two years without being able to gain a decree of favour
+        for myself or for those who went there, yet this man brought a coffer
+        full: whether they will all redound to their [Highnesses] service, God
+        knows. Indeed, to begin with, there are exemptions for twenty years,
+        which is a man's lifetime; and gold is collected to such an extent that
+        there was one person who became worth five marks in four hours; whereof
+        I will speak more fully later on.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "If it would please their Highnesses to remove the grounds of a common
+        saying of those who know my labours, that the calumny of the people has
+        done me more harm than much service and the maintenance of their
+        [Highnesses] property and dominion has done me good, it would be a
+        charity, and I should be re-established in my honour, and it would be
+        talked about all over the world: for the undertaking is of such a nature
+        that it must daily become more famous and in higher esteem.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "When the Commander Bobadilla came to Santo Domingo, I was at La Vega,
+        and the Adelantado at Xaragua, where that Adrian had made a stand, but
+        then all was quiet, and the land rich and all men at peace. On the
+        second day after his arrival, he created himself Governor, and appointed
+        officers and made executions, and proclaimed immunities of gold and
+        tenths and in general of everything else for twenty years, which is a
+        man's lifetime, and that he came to pay everybody in full up to that
+        day, even though they had not rendered service; and he publicly gave
+        notice that, as for me, he had charge to send me in irons, and my
+        brothers likewise, as he has done, and that I should nevermore return
+        thither, nor any other of my family: alleging a thousand disgraceful and
+        discourteous things about me. All this took place on the second day
+        after his arrival, as I have said, and while I was absent at a distance,
+        without my knowing either of him or of his arrival.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "Some letters of their Highnesses signed in blank, of which he brought a
+        number, he filled up and sent to the Alcalde and to his company with
+        favours and commendations: to me he never sent either letter or
+        messenger, nor has he done so to this day. Imagine what any one holding
+        my office would think when one who endeavoured to rob their Highnesses,
+        and who has done so much evil and mischief, is honoured and favoured,
+        while he who maintained it at such risks is degraded.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "When I heard this I thought that this affair would be like that of
+        Hojeda or one of the others, but I restrained myself when I learnt for
+        certain from the friars that their Highnesses had sent him. I wrote to
+        him that his arrival was welcome, and that I was prepared to go to the
+        Court and had sold all I possessed by auction; and that with respect to
+        the immunities he should not be hasty, for both that matter and the
+        government I would hand over to him immediately as smooth as my palm.
+        And I wrote to the same effect to the friars, but neither he nor they
+        gave me any answer. On the contrary, he put himself in a warlike
+        attitude, and compelled all who went there to take an oath to him as
+        Governor; and they told me that it was for twenty years.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "Directly I knew of those immunities, I thought that I would repair such
+        a great error and that he would be pleased, for he gave them without the
+        need or occasion necessary in so vast a matter: and he gave to vagabond
+        people what would have been excessive for a man who had brought wife and
+        children. So I announced by word and letters that he could not use his
+        patents because mine were those in force; and I showed them the
+        immunities which John Aguado brought.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "All this was done by me in order to gain time, so that their Highnesses
+        might be informed of the condition of the country, and that they might
+        have an opportunity of issuing fresh commands as to what would best
+        promote their service in that respect.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "It is useless to publish such immunities in the Indies: to the settlers
+        who have taken up residence it is a pure gain, for the best lands are
+        given to them, and at a low valuation they will be worth two-hundred
+        thousand at the end of the four years when the period of residence is
+        ended, without their digging a spadeful in them. I would not speak thus
+        if the settlers were married, but there are not six among them all who
+        are not on the look-out to gather what they can and depart speedily. It
+        would be a good thing if they should go from Castile, and also if it
+        were known who and what they are, and if the country could be settled
+        with honest people.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "I had agreed with those settlers that they should pay the third of the
+        gold, and the tenths, and this at their own request; and they received
+        it as a great favour from their Highnesses. I reproved them when I heard
+        that they ceased to do this, and hoped that the Commander would do
+        likewise, and he did the contrary.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "He incensed them against me by saying that I wanted to deprive them of
+        what their Highnesses had given them; and he endeavoured to set them at
+        variance with me, and did so; and he induced them to write to their
+        Highnesses that they should never again send me back to the government,
+        and I likewise make the same supplication to them for myself and for my
+        whole family, as long as there are not different inhabitants. And he
+        together with them ordered inquisitions concerning me for wickednesses
+        the like whereof were never known in hell. Our Lord, who rescued Daniel
+        and the three children, is present with the same wisdom and power as He
+        had then, and with the same means, if it should please Him and be in
+        accordance with His will.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "I should know how to remedy all this, and the rest of what has been
+        said and has taken place since I have been in the Indies, if my
+        disposition would allow me to seek my own advantage, and if it seemed
+        honourable to me to do so, but the maintenance of justice and the
+        extension of the dominion of her Highness has hitherto kept me down. Now
+        that so much gold is found, a dispute arises as to which brings more
+        profit, whether to go about robbing or to go to the mines. A hundred
+        castellanos are as easily obtained for a woman as for a farm, and it is
+        very general, and there are plenty of dealers who go about looking for
+        girls: those from nine to ten are now in demand, and for all ages a good
+        price must be paid.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "I assert that the violence of the calumny of turbulent persons has
+        injured me more than my services have profited me; which is a bad
+        example for the present and for the future. I take my oath that a number
+        of men have gone to the Indies who did not deserve water in the sight of
+        God and of the world; and now they are returning thither, and leave is
+        granted them.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "I assert that when I declared that the Commander could not grant
+        immunities, I did what he desired, although I told him that it was to
+        cause delay until their Highnesses should, receive information from the
+        country, and should command anew what might be for their service.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "He excited their enmity against me, and he seems, from what took place
+        and from his behaviour, to have come as my enemy and as a very vehement
+        one; or else the report is true that he has spent much to obtain this
+        employment. I do not know more about it than what I hear. I never heard
+        of an inquisitor gathering rebels together and accepting them, and
+        others devoid of credit and unworthy of it, as witnesses against their
+        Governor.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "If their Highnesses were to make a general inquisition there, I assure
+        you that they would look upon it as a great wonder that the island does
+        not founder.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "I think your Ladyship will remember that when, after losing my sails, I
+        was driven into Lisbon by a tempest, I was falsely accused of having
+        gone there to the King in order to give him the Indies. Their Highnesses
+        afterwards learned the contrary, and that it was entirely malicious.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "Although I may know but little, I do not think any one considers me so
+        stupid as not to know that even if the Indies were mine I could not
+        uphold myself without the help of some Prince.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "If this be so, where could I find better support and security than in
+        the King and Queen, our Lords, who have raised me from nothing to such
+        great honour, and are the most exalted Princes of the world on sea and
+        on land, and who consider that I have rendered them service, and who
+        preserve to me my privileges and rewards: and if any one infringes them,
+        their Highnesses increase them still more, as was seen in the case of
+        John Aguado; and they order great honour to be conferred upon me, and,
+        as I have already said, their Highnesses have received service from me,
+        and keep my sons in their household; all which could by no means happen
+        with another prince, for where there is no affection, everything else
+        fails.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "I have now spoken thus in reply to a malicious slander, but against my
+        will, as it is a thing which should not recur to memory even in dreams;
+        for the Commander Bobadilla maliciously seeks in this way to set his own
+        conduct and actions in a brighter light; but I shall easily show him
+        that his small knowledge and great cowardice, together with his
+        inordinate cupidity, have caused him to fail therein.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "I have already said that I wrote to him and to the friars, and
+        immediately set out, as I told him, almost alone, because all the people
+        were with the Adelantado, and likewise in order to prevent suspicion on
+        his part. When he heard this, he seized Don Diego and sent him on board
+        a caravel loaded with irons, and did the same to me upon my arrival, and
+        afterwards to the Adelantado when he came; nor did I speak to him any
+        more, nor to this day has he allowed any one to speak to me; and I take
+        my oath that I cannot understand why I am made a prisoner.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "He made it his first business to seize the gold, which he did without
+        measuring or weighing it and in my absence; he said that he wanted it to
+        pay the people, and according to what I hear he assigned the chief part
+        to himself and sent fresh exchangers for the exchanges. Of this gold I
+        had put aside certain specimens, very big lumps, like the eggs of geese,
+        hens, and pullets, and of many other shapes, which some persons had
+        collected in a short space of time, in order that their Highnesses might
+        be gladdened, and might comprehend the business upon seeing a quantity
+        of large stones full of gold. This collection was the first to be given
+        away, with malicious intent, so that their Highnesses should not hold
+        the matter in any account until he has feathered his nest, which he is
+        in great haste to do. Gold which is for melting diminishes at the fire:
+        some chains which would weigh about twenty marks have never been seen
+        again.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "I have been more distressed about this matter of the gold than even
+        about the pearls, because I have not brought it to her Highness.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "The Commander at once set to work upon anything which he thought would
+        injure me. I have already said that with six hundred thousand I could
+        pay every one without defrauding anybody, and that I had more than four
+        millions of tenths and constabulary [dues] without touching the gold. He
+        made some free gifts which are ridiculous, though I believe that he
+        began by assigning the chief part to himself. Their Highnesses will find
+        it out when they order an account to be obtained from him, especially if
+        I should be present thereat. He does nothing but reiterate that a large
+        sum is owing, and it is what I have said, and even less. I have been
+        much distressed that there should be sent concerning me an inquisitor
+        who is aware that if the inquisition which he returns is very grave he
+        will remain in possession of the government.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "Would that it had pleased our Lord that their Highnesses had sent him
+        or some one else two years ago, for I know that I should now be free
+        from scandal and infamy, and that my honour would not be taken from me,
+        nor should I lose it. God is just, and will make known the why and the
+        wherefore.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "They judge me over there as they would a governor who had gone to
+        Sicily, or to a city or town placed under regular government, and where
+        the laws can be observed in their entirety without fear of ruining
+        everything; and I am greatly injured thereby.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "I ought to be judged as a captain who went from Spain to the Indies to
+        conquer a numerous and warlike people, whose customs and religion are
+        very contrary to ours; who live in rocks and mountains, without fixed
+        settlements, and not like ourselves: and where, by the Divine Will, I
+        have placed under the dominion of the King and Queen, our Sovereigns, a
+        second world, through which Spain, which was reckoned a poor country,
+        has become the richest.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "I ought to be judged as a captain who for such a long time up to this
+        day has borne arms without laying them aside for an hour, and by
+        gentlemen adventurers and by custom, and not by letters, unless they
+        were from Greeks or Romans or others of modern times of whom there are
+        so many and such noble examples in Spain; or otherwise I receive great
+        injury, because in the Indies there is neither town nor settlement.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "The gate to the gold and pearls is now open, and plenty of everything&mdash;precious
+        stones, spices and a thousand other things&mdash;may be surely expected,
+        and never could a worse misfortune befall me: for by the name of our
+        Lord the first voyage would yield them just as much as would the traffic
+        of Arabia Felix as far as Mecca, as I wrote to their Highnesses by
+        Antonio de Tomes in my reply respecting the repartition of the sea and
+        land with the Portuguese; and afterwards it would equal that of Calicut,
+        as I told them and put in writing at the monastery of the Mejorada.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "The news of the gold that I said I would give is, that on the day of
+        the Nativity, while I was much tormented, being harassed by wicked
+        Christians and by Indians, and when I was on the point of giving up
+        everything, and if possible escaping from life, our Lord miraculously
+        comforted me and said, 'Fear not violence, I will provide for all
+        things: the seven years of the term of the gold have not elapsed, and in
+        that and in everything else I will afford thee a remedy.'
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "On that day I learned that there were eighty leagues of land with mines
+        at every point thereof. The opinion now is that it is all one. Some have
+        collected a hundred and twenty castellanos in one day, and others
+        ninety, and even the number of two hundred and fifty has been reached.
+        From fifty to seventy, and in many more cases from fifteen to fifty, is
+        considered a good day's work, and many carry it on. The usual quantity
+        is from six to twelve, and any one obtaining less than this is not
+        satisfied. It seems to me that these mines are like others, and do not
+        yield equally every day. The mines are new, and so are the workers: it
+        is the opinion of everybody that even if all Castile were to go there,
+        every individual, however inexpert he might be, would not obtain less
+        than one or two castellanos daily, and now it is only commencing. It is
+        true that they keep Indians, but the business is in the hands of the
+        Christians. Behold what discernment Bobadilla had, when he gave up
+        everything for nothing, and four millions of tenths, without any reason
+        or even being requested, and without first notifying it to their
+        Highnesses. And this is not the only loss.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "I know that my errors have not been committed with the intention of
+        doing evil, and I believe that their Highnesses regard the matter just
+        as I state it: and I know and see that they deal mercifully even with
+        those who maliciously act to their disservice. I believe and consider it
+        very certain that their clemency will be both greater and more abundant
+        towards me, for I fell therein through ignorance and the force of
+        circumstances, as they will know fully hereafter; and I indeed am their
+        creature, and they will look upon my services, and will acknowledge day
+        by day that they are much profited. They will place everything in the
+        balance, even as Holy Scripture tells us good and evil will be at the
+        day of judgment.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "If, however, they command that another person do judge me, which I
+        cannot believe, and that it be by inquisition in the Indies, I very
+        humbly beseech them to send thither two conscientious and honourable
+        persons at my expense, who I believe will easily, now that gold is
+        discovered, find five marks in four hours. In either case it is needful
+        for them to provide for this matter.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "The Commander on his arrival at San Domingo took up his abode in my
+        house, and just as he found it so he appropriated everything to himself.
+        Well and good; perhaps he was in want of it. A pirate never acted thus
+        towards a merchant. About my papers I have a greater grievance, for he
+        has so completely deprived me of them that I have never been able to
+        obtain a single one from him; and those that would have been most useful
+        in my exculpation are precisely those which he has kept most concealed.
+        Behold the just and honest inquisitor! Whatever he may have done, they
+        tell me that there has been an end to justice, except in an arbitrary
+        form. God, our Lord, is present with His strength and wisdom, as of old,
+        and always punishes in the end, especially ingratitude and injuries."
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      We must keep in mind the circumstances in which this letter was written if
+      we are to judge it and the writer wisely. It is a sad example of querulous
+      complaint, in which everything but the writer's personal point of view is
+      ignored. No one indeed is more terrible in this world than the Man with a
+      Grievance. How rarely will human nature in such circumstances retire into
+      the stronghold of silence! Columbus is asking for pity; but as we read his
+      letter we incline to pity him on grounds quite different from those which
+      he represented. He complains that the people he was sent to govern have
+      waged war against him as against a Moor; he complains of Ojeda and of
+      Vincenti Yanez Pinzon; of Adrian de Moxeca, and of every other person whom
+      it was his business to govern and hold in restraint. He complains of the
+      colonists&mdash;the very people, some of them, whom he himself took and
+      impressed from the gaols and purlieus of Cadiz; and then he mingles pious
+      talk about Saint Peter and Daniel in the den of lions with notes on the
+      current price of little girls and big lumps of gold like the eggs of
+      geese, hens, and pullets. He complains that he is judged as a man would be
+      judged who had been sent out to govern a ready-made colony, and represents
+      instead that he went out to conquer a numerous and warlike people "whose
+      custom and religion are very contrary to ours, and who lived in rocks and
+      mountains"; forgetting that when it suited him for different purposes he
+      described the natives as so peaceable and unwarlike that a thousand of
+      them would not stand against one Christian, and that in any case he was
+      sent out to create a constitution and not merely to administer one. Very
+      sore indeed is Christopher as he reveals himself in this letter, appealing
+      now to his correspondent, now to the King and Queen, now to that God who
+      is always on the side of the complainant. "God our Lord is present with
+      His strength and wisdom, as of old, and always punishes in the end,
+      especially ingratitude and injuries." Not boastfulness and weakness, let
+      us hope, or our poor Admiral will come off badly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="ch2d" id="ch2d"></a>CHAPTER II.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      CRISIS IN THE ADMIRAL'S LIFE
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Columbus was not far wrong in his estimate of the effect likely to be
+      produced by his manacles, and when the ships of Villegio arrived at Cadiz
+      in October, the spectacle of an Admiral in chains produced a degree of
+      commiseration which must have exceeded his highest hopes. He was now in
+      his fiftieth year and of an extremely venerable appearance, his kindling
+      eye looking forth from under brows of white, his hair and beard
+      snow-white, his face lined and spiritualised with suffering and sorrow. It
+      must be remembered that before the Spanish people he had always appeared
+      in more or less state. They had not that intimacy with him, an intimacy
+      which perhaps brought contempt, which the people in Espanola enjoyed; and
+      in Spain, therefore, the contrast between his former grandeur and this
+      condition of shame and degradation was the more striking. It was a fact
+      that the people of Spain could not neglect. It touched their sense of the
+      dramatic and picturesque, touched their hearts also perhaps&mdash;hearts
+      quick to burn, quick to forget. They had forgotten him before, now they
+      burned with indignation at the picture of this venerable and
+      much-suffering man arriving in disgrace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His letter to Dofia Juana, hastily despatched by him, probably through the
+      office of some friendly soul on board, immediately on his arrival at
+      Cadiz, was the first news from the ship received by the King and Queen,
+      and naturally it caused them a shock of surprise. It was followed by the
+      despatches from Bobadilla and by a letter from the Alcalde of Cadiz
+      announcing that Columbus and his brothers were in his custody awaiting the
+      royal orders. Perhaps Ferdinand and Isabella had already repented their
+      drastic action and had entertained some misgivings as to its results; but
+      it is more probable that they had put it out of their heads altogether,
+      and that their hasty action now was prompted as much by the shock of being
+      recalled to a consciousness of the troubled state of affairs in the New
+      World as by any real regret for what they had done. Moreover they had sent
+      out Bobadilla to quiet things down; and the first result of it was that
+      Spain was ringing with the scandal of the Admiral's treatment. In that
+      Spanish world, unsteadfast and unstable, when one end of the see-saw was
+      up the other must be down; and it was Columbus who now found himself high
+      up in the heavens of favour, and Bobadilla who was seated in the dust.
+      Equipoise any kind was apparently a thing impossible; if one man was right
+      the other man must be wrong; no excuses for Bobadilla; every excuse for
+      the Admiral.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first official act, therefore, was an order for the immediate release
+      of the Admiral and his brothers, followed by an invitation for him to
+      proceed without delay to the Court at Granada, and an order for the
+      immediate payment to him of the sum of 2000 ducats [perhaps $250,000 in
+      the year 2000 D.W.] this last no ungenerous gift to a Viceroy whose pearl
+      accounts were in something less than order. Perhaps Columbus had cherished
+      the idea of appearing dramatically before the very Court in his rags and
+      chains; but the cordiality of their letter as well as the gift of money
+      made this impossible. Instead, not being a man to do things by halves, he
+      equipped himself in his richest and most splendid garments, got together
+      the requisite number of squires and pages, and duly presented himself at
+      Granada in his full dignity. The meeting was an affecting one, touched
+      with a humanity which has survived the intervening centuries, as a touch
+      of true humanity will when details of mere parade and etiquette have long
+      perished. Perhaps the Admiral, inspired with a deep sense of his wrongs,
+      meant to preserve a very stiff and cold demeanour at the beginning of this
+      interview; but when he looked into the kind eyes of Isabella and saw them
+      suffused with tears at the thought of his sorrows all his dignity broke
+      down; the tears came to his own eyes, and he wept there naturally like a
+      child. Ferdinand looking on kind but uncomfortable; Isabella unaffectedly
+      touched and weeping; the Admiral, in spite of his scarlet cloak and golden
+      collar and jewelled sword, in spite of equerries, squires, pages and
+      attendants, sobbing on his knees like a child or an old man-these were the
+      scenes and kindly emotions of this historic moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The tears were staunched by kindly royal words and handkerchiefs supplied
+      by attendant pages; sobbings breaking out again, but on the whole soon
+      quieted; King and Queen raising the gouty Christopher from his knees,
+      filling the air with kind words of sympathy, praise, and encouragement;
+      the lonely worn heart, somewhat arid of late, and parched from want of
+      human sympathy, much refreshed by this dew of kindness. The Admiral was
+      soon himself again, and he would not have been himself if upon recovering
+      he had not launched out into what some historians call a "lofty and
+      dignified vindication of his loyalty and zeal." No one, indeed, is better
+      than the Admiral at such lofty and dignified vindications. He goes into
+      the whole matter and sets forth an account of affairs at Espanola from his
+      own point of view; and can even (so high is the thermometer of favour)
+      safely indulge in a little judicious self-depreciation, saying that if he
+      has erred it has not been from want of zeal but from want of experience in
+      dealing with the kind of material he has been set to govern. All this is
+      very human, natural, and understandable; product of that warm emotional
+      atmosphere, bedewed with tears, in which the Admiral finds himself; and it
+      is not long before the King and Queen, also moved to it by the emotional
+      temperature, are expressing their unbroken and unbounded confidence in him
+      and repudiating the acts of Bobadilla, which they declare to have been
+      contrary to their instructions; undertaking also that he shall be
+      immediately dismissed from his post. Poor Bobadilla is not here in the
+      warm emotional atmosphere; he had his turn of it six months ago, when no
+      powers were too high or too delicate to be entrusted to him; he is out in
+      the cold at the other end of the see-saw, which has let him down to the
+      ground with a somewhat sudden thump.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Columbus, relying on the influence of these emotions, made bold to ask
+      that his property in the island should be restored to him, which was
+      immediately granted; and also to request that he should be reinstated in
+      his office of Viceroy and allowed to return at once in triumph to
+      Espanola. But emotions are unstable things; they present a yielding
+      surface which will give to any extent, but which, when it has hardened
+      again after the tears have evaporated, is often found to be in much the
+      same condition as before. At first promises were made that the whole
+      matter should be fully gone into; but when it came to cold fact, Ferdinand
+      was obliged to recognise that this whole business of discovery and
+      colonisation had become a very different thing to what it had been when
+      Columbus was the only discoverer; and he was obviously of opinion that, as
+      Columbus's office had once been conveniently withdrawn from him, it would
+      only be disastrous to reinstate him in it. Of course he did not say so at
+      once; but reasons were given for judicious delay in the Admiral's
+      reappointment. It was represented to him that the colony, being in an
+      extremely unsettled state, should be given a short period of rest, and
+      also that it would be as well for him to wait until the people who had
+      given him so much trouble in the island could be quietly and gradually
+      removed. Two years was the time mentioned as suitable for an interregnum,
+      and it is probable that it was the intention of Isabella, although not of
+      Ferdinand, to restore Columbus to his office at the end of that time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the meantime it became necessary to appoint some one to supersede
+      Bobadilla; for the news that arrived periodically from Espanola during the
+      year showed that he had entirely failed in his task of reducing the island
+      to order. For the wholesome if unequal rigours of Columbus Bobadilla had
+      substituted laxness and indulgence, with the result that the whole colony
+      was rapidly reduced to a state of the wildest disorder. Vice and cruelty
+      were rampant; in fact the barbarities practised upon the natives were so
+      scandalous that even Spanish opinion, which was never very sympathetic to
+      heathen suffering, was thoroughly shocked and alarmed. The Sovereigns
+      therefore appointed Nicholas de Ovando to go out and take over the
+      command, with instructions to use very drastic means for bringing the
+      colony to order. How he did it we shall presently see; in the meantime all
+      that was known of him (the man not having been tried yet) was that he was
+      a poor knight of Calatrava, a man respected in royal circles for the
+      performance of minor official duties, but no very popular favourite;
+      honest according to his lights&mdash;lights turned rather low and dim, as
+      was often the case in those days. A narrow-minded man also, without
+      sympathy or imagination, capable of cruelty; a tough, stiff-necked stock
+      of a man, fit to deal with Bobadilla perhaps, but hardly fit to deal with
+      the colony. Spain in those days was not a nursery of administration. Of
+      all the people who were sent out successively to govern Espanola and
+      supersede one another, the only one who really seems to have had the
+      necessary natural ability, had he but been given the power, was
+      Bartholomew Columbus; but unfortunately things were in such a state that
+      the very name of Columbus was enough to bar a man from acceptance as a
+      governor of Espanola.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was not for any lack of powers and equipment that this procession of
+      governors failed in their duties. We have seen with what authority
+      Bobadilia had been entrusted; and Ovando had even greater advantages. The
+      instructions he received showed that the needs of the new colonies were
+      understood by Ferdinand and Isabella, if by no one else. Ovando was not
+      merely appointed Governor of Espanola but of the whole of the new
+      territory discovered in the west, his seat of government being San
+      Domingo. He was given the necessary free hand in the matters of
+      punishment, confiscation, and allotment of lands. He was to revoke the
+      orders which had been made by Bobadilla reducing the proportion of gold
+      payable to the Crown, and was empowered to take over one-third of the.
+      gold that was stored on the island, and one-half of what might be found in
+      the future. The Crown was to have a monopoly of all trade, and ordinary
+      supplies were only to be procured through the Crown agent. On the other
+      hand, the natives were to be released from slavery, and although forced to
+      work in the mines, were to be paid for their labour&mdash;a distinction
+      which in the working out did not produce much difference. A body of
+      Franciscan monks accompanied Ovando for the purpose of tackling the
+      religious question with the necessary energy; and every regulation that
+      the kind heart of Isabella could think of was made for the happiness and
+      contentment of the Indians.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Unhappily the real mischief had already been done. The natives, who had
+      never been accustomed to hard and regular work under the conditions of
+      commerce and greed, but had only toiled for the satisfaction of their own
+      simple wants, were suffering cruelly under the hard labour in the mines,
+      and the severe driving of their Spanish masters. Under these unnatural
+      conditions the native population was rapidly dying off, and there was some
+      likelihood that there would soon be a scarcity of native labour. These
+      were the circumstances in which the idea of importing black African labour
+      to the New World was first conceived&mdash;a plan which was destined to
+      have results so tremendous that we have probably not yet seen their full
+      and ghastly development. There were a great number of African negro slaves
+      at that time in Spain; a whole generation of them had been born in slavery
+      in Spain itself; and this generation was bodily imported to Espanola to
+      relieve and assist the native labour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These preparations were not made all at once; and it was more than a year
+      after the return of Columbus before Ovando was ready to sail. In the
+      meantime Columbus was living in Granada, and looking on with no very
+      satisfied eye at the plans which were being made to supersede him, and
+      about which he was probably not very much consulted; feeling very sore
+      indeed, and dividing his attention between the nursing of his grievances
+      and other even less wholesome occupations. There was any amount of smiling
+      kindness for him at Court, but very little of the satisfaction that his
+      vanity and ambition craved; and in the absence of practical employment he
+      fell back on visionary speculations. He made great friends at this time
+      with a monk named Gaspar Gorricio, with whose assistance he began to make
+      some kind of a study of such utterances of the Prophets and the Fathers as
+      he conceived to have a bearing on his own career.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Columbus was in fact in a very queer way at this time; and what with his
+      readings and his meditatings and his grievances, and his visits to his
+      monkish friend in the convent of Las Cuevas, he fell into a kind of
+      intellectual stupor, of which the work called 'Libro de las Profecias,' or
+      Book of the Prophecies, in which he wrote down such considerations as
+      occurred to him in his stupor, was the result. The manuscript of this work
+      is in existence, although no human being has ever ventured to reprint the
+      whole of it; and we would willingly abstain from mentioning it here if it
+      were not an undeniable act of Columbus's life. The Admiral, fallen into
+      theological stupor, puts down certain figures upon paper; discovers that
+      St. Augustine said that the world would only last for 7000 years; finds
+      that some other genius had calculated that before the birth of Christ it
+      had existed for 5343 years and 318 days; adds 1501 years from the birth of
+      Christ to his own time; adds up, and finds that the total is 6844 years;
+      subtracts, and discovers that this earthly globe can only last 155 years
+      longer. He remembers also that, still according to the Prophets, certain
+      things must happen before the end of the world; Holy Sepulchre restored to
+      Christianity, heathen converted, second coming of Christ; and decides that
+      he himself is the man appointed by God and promised by the Prophets to
+      perform these works. Good Heavens! in what an entirely dark and sordid
+      stupor is our Christopher now sunk&mdash;a veritable slough and quag of
+      stupor out of which, if he does not manage to flounder himself, no human
+      hand can pull him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But amid his wallowings in this slough of stupor, when all else, in him
+      had been well-nigh submerged by it, two dim lights were preserved towards
+      which, although foundered up to the chin, he began to struggle; and by
+      superhuman efforts did at last extricate himself from the theological
+      stupor and get himself blown clean again by the salt winds before he died.
+      One light was his religion; not to be confounded with theological stupor,
+      but quite separate from it in my belief; a certain steadfast and consuming
+      faith in a Power that could see and understand and guide him to the
+      accomplishment of his purpose. This faith had been too often a good friend
+      and help to Christopher for him to forget it very long, even while he was
+      staggering in the quag with Isaiah, Jeremiah, and the Fathers; and
+      gradually, as I say, he worked himself out into the region of activity
+      again. First, thinking it a pity that his flounderings in the slough
+      should be entirely wasted, he had a copy of his precious theological work
+      made and presented it to the Sovereigns, with a letter urging them (since
+      he himself was unable to do it) to undertake a crusade for the recovery of
+      the Holy Sepulchre&mdash;not an altogether wild proposal in those days.
+      But Ferdinand had other uses for his men and his money, and contented
+      himself with despatching Peter Martyr on a pacific mission to the Grand
+      Soldan of Egypt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The other light left unquenched in Columbus led him back to the firm
+      ground of maritime enterprise; he began to long for the sea again, and for
+      a chance of doing something to restore his reputation. An infinitely
+      better and more wholesome frame of mind this; by all means let him mend
+      his reputation by achievement, instead of by writing books in a
+      theological trance or stupor, and attempting to prove that he was chosen
+      by the Almighty. He now addressed himself to the better task of getting
+      himself chosen by men to do something which should raise him again in
+      their esteem.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His maritime ambition was no doubt stimulated at this time by witnessing
+      the departure of Ovando, in February 1502, with a fleet of thirty-five
+      ships and a company of 2500 people. It was not in the Admiral's nature to
+      look on without envy at an equipment the like of which he himself had
+      never been provided with, and he did not restrain his sarcasms at its pomp
+      and grandeur, nor at the ease with which men could follow a road which had
+      once been pointed out to them. Ovando had a great body-guard such as
+      Columbus had never had; and he also carried with him a great number of
+      picked married men with their families, all with knowledge of some trade
+      or craft, whose presence in the colony would be a guarantee of permanence
+      and steadiness. He perhaps remembered his own crowd of ruffians and
+      gaol-birds, and realised the bitterness of his own mistakes. It was a very
+      painful moment for him, and he was only partially reconciled to it by the
+      issue of a royal order to Ovando under which he was required to see to the
+      restoration of the Admiral's property. If it had been devoted to public
+      purposes it was to be repaid him from the royal funds; but if it had been
+      merely distributed among the colonists Bobadilla was to be made
+      responsible for it. The Admiral was also allowed to send out an agent to
+      represent him and look after his interests; and he appointed Alonso de
+      Carvajal to this office.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ovando once gone, the Admiral could turn again to his own affairs. It is
+      true there were rumours that the whole fleet had perished, for it
+      encountered a gale very soon after leaving Cadiz, and a great quantity of
+      the deck hamper was thrown overboard and was washed on the shores of
+      Spain; and the Sovereigns were so bitterly distressed that, as it is said,
+      they shut them selves up for eight days. News eventually came, however,
+      that only one ship had been lost and that the rest had proceeded safely to
+      San Domingo. Columbus, much recovered in body and mind, now began to apply
+      for a fleet for himself. He had heard of the discovery by the Portuguese
+      of the southern route to India; no doubt he had heard also much gossip of
+      the results of the many private voyages of discovery that were sailing
+      from Spain at this time; and he began to think seriously about his own
+      discoveries and the way in which they might best be extended. He thought
+      much of his voyage to the west of Trinidad and of the strange pent-up seas
+      and currents that he had discovered there. He remembered the continual
+      westward trend of the current, and how all the islands in that sea had
+      their greatest length east and west, as though their shores had been worn
+      into that shape by the constant flowing of the current; and it was not an
+      unnatural conclusion for him to suppose that there was a channel far to
+      the west through which these seas poured and which would lead him to the
+      Golden Chersonesus. He put away from him that nightmare madness that he
+      transacted on the coast of Cuba. He knew very well that he had not yet
+      found the Golden Chersonesus and the road to India; but he became
+      convinced that the western current would lead him there if only he
+      followed it long enough. There was nothing insane about this theory; it
+      was in fact a very well-observed and well-reasoned argument; and the fact
+      that it happened to be entirely wrong is no reflection on the Admiral's
+      judgment. The great Atlantic currents at that time had not been studied;
+      and how could he know that the western stream of water was the northern
+      half of a great ocean current which sweeps through the Caribbean Sea, into
+      and round the Gulf of Mexico, and flows out northward past Florida in the
+      Gulf Stream?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His applications for a fleet were favourably received by the King and
+      Queen, but much frowned upon by certain high officials of the Court. They
+      were beginning to regard Columbus as a dangerous adventurer who, although
+      he happened to have discovered the western islands, had brought the
+      Spanish colony there to a dreadful state of disorder; and had also, they
+      alleged, proved himself rather less than trustworthy in matters of
+      treasure. Still in the summer days of 1501 he was making himself very
+      troublesome at Court with constant petitions and letters about his rights
+      and privileges; and Ferdinand was far from unwilling to adopt a plan by
+      which they would at least get rid of him and keep him safely occupied at
+      the other side of the world at the cost of a few caravels. There was,
+      besides, always an element of uncertainty. His voyage might come to
+      nothing, but on the other hand the Admiral was no novice at this game of
+      discovery, and one could not tell but that something big might come of it.
+      After some consideration permission was given to him to fit out a fleet of
+      four ships, and he proceeded to Seville in the autumn of 1501 to get his
+      little fleet ready. Bartholomew was to come with him, and his son
+      Ferdinand also, who seems to have much endeared himself to the Admiral in
+      these dark days, and who would surely be a great comfort to him on the
+      voyage. Beatriz Enriquez seems to have passed out of his life; certainly
+      he was not living with her either now or on his last visit to Spain; one
+      way or another, that business is at an end for him. Perhaps poor Beatriz,
+      seeing her son in such a high place at Court, has effaced herself for his
+      sake; perhaps the appointment was given on condition of such effacement;
+      we do not know.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Columbus was in no hurry over his preparations. In the midst of them he
+      found time to collect a whole series of documents relating to his titles
+      and dignities, which he had copied and made into a great book which he
+      called his "Book of Privileges," and the copies of which were duly
+      attested before a notary at Seville on January 5, 1502. He wrote many
+      letters to various friends of his, chiefly in relation to these
+      privileges; not interesting or illuminating letters to us, although very
+      important to busy Christopher when he wrote them. Here is one written to
+      Nicolo Oderigo, a Genoese Ambassador who came to Spain on a brief mission
+      in the spring of 1502, and who, with certain other residents in Spain, is
+      said to have helped Columbus in his preparations for his fourth voyage:
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "Sir,&mdash;The loneliness in which you have left us cannot be
+        described. I gave the book containing my writings to Francisco de
+        Rivarol that he may send it to you with another copy of letters
+        containing instructions. I beg you to be so kind as to write Don Diego
+        in regard to the place of security in which you put them. Duplicates of
+        everything will be completed and sent to you in the same manner and by
+        the same Francisco. Among them you will find a new document. Their
+        Highnesses promised to give all that belongs to me and to place Don
+        Diego in possession of everything, as you will see. I wrote to Senor
+        Juan Luis and to Sefora Catalina. The letter accompanies this one. I am
+        ready to start in the name of the Holy Trinity as soon as the weather is
+        good. I am well provided with everything. If Jeronimo de Santi Esteban
+        is coming, he must await me and not embarrass himself with anything, for
+        they will take away from him all they can and silently leave him. Let
+        him come here and the King and the Queen will receive him until I come.
+        May our Lord have you in His holy keeping.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "Done at Seville, March 21, 1502.<br /> "At your command.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        .S.<br /> .S.A.S.<br /> Xpo FERENS."
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      His delays were not pleasing to Ferdinand, who wanted to get rid of him,
+      and he was invited to hurry his departure; but he still continued to go
+      deliberately about his affairs, which he tried to put in order as far as
+      he was able, since he thought it not unlikely that he might never see
+      Spain again. Thinking thus of his worldly duties, and his thoughts turning
+      to his native Genoa, it occurred to him to make some benefaction out of
+      the riches that were coming to him by which his name might be remembered
+      and held in honour there. This was a piece of practical kindness the
+      record of which is most precious to us; for it shows the Admiral in a
+      truer and more human light than he often allowed to shine upon him. The
+      tone of the letter is nothing; he could not forbear letting the people of
+      Genoa see how great he was. The devotion of his legacy to the reduction of
+      the tax on simple provisions was a genuine charity, much to be appreciated
+      by the dwellers in the Vico Dritto di Ponticello, where wine and provision
+      shops were so very necessary to life. The letter was written to the
+      Directors of the famous Bank of Saint George at Genoa.
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "VERY NOBLE LORDS,&mdash;Although my body is here, my heart is
+        continually yonder. Our Lord has granted me the greatest favour he has
+        granted any one since the time of David. The results of my undertaking
+        already shine, and they would make a great light if the obscurity of the
+        Government did not conceal them. I shall go again to the Indies in the
+        name of the Holy Trinity, to return immediately. And as I am mortal, I
+        desire my son Don Diego to give to you each year, for ever, the tenth
+        part of all the income received, in payment of the tax on wheat, wine,
+        and other provisions. If this tenth amounts to anything, receive it, and
+        if not, receive my will for the deed. I beg you as a favour to have this
+        son of mine in your charge. Nicolo de Oderigo knows more about my
+        affairs than I myself. I have sent him the copy of my privileges and
+        letters, that he may place them in safe keeping. I would be glad if you
+        could see them. The King and the Queen, my Lords, now wish to honour me
+        more than ever. May the Holy Trinity guard your noble persons, and
+        increase the importance of your very magnificent office. "Done in
+        Seville, April a, 1502.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "The High-Admiral of the Ocean-Sea and Viceroy and Governor-General of
+        the islands and mainland of Asia and the Indies, belonging to the King
+        and Queen, my Lords, and the Captain-General of the Sea, and a Member of
+        their Council.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        .S.<br /> .S.A.S.<br /> X M Y<br /> Xpo FERENS."
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      Columbus was anxious to touch at Espanola on his voyage to the West; but
+      he was expressly forbidden to do so, as it was known that his presence
+      there could not make for anything but confusion; he was to be permitted,
+      however, to touch there on his return journey. The Great Khan was not out
+      of his mind yet; much in it apparently, for he took an Arabian interpreter
+      with him so that he could converse with that monarch. In fact he did not
+      hesitate to announce that very big results indeed were to come of this
+      voyage of his; among other things he expected to circumnavigate the globe,
+      and made no secret of his expectation. In the meantime he was expected to
+      find some pearls in order to pay for the equipment of his fleet; and in
+      consideration of what had happened to the last lot of pearls collected by
+      him, an agent named Diego de Porras was sent along with him to keep an
+      account of the gold and precious stones which might be discovered. Special
+      instructions were issued to Columbus about the disposal of these
+      commodities. He does not seem to have minded these somewhat humiliating
+      precautions; he had a way of rising above petty indignities and refusing
+      to recognise them which must have been of great assistance to his
+      self-respect in certain troubled moments in his life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His delays, however, were so many that in March 1502 the Sovereigns were
+      obliged to order him to depart without any more waiting. Poor Christopher,
+      who once had to sue for the means with which to go, whose departures were
+      once the occasion of so much state and ceremony, has now to be hustled
+      forth and asked to go away. Still he does not seem to mind; once more, as
+      of old, his gaze is fixed beyond the horizon and his mind is filled with
+      one idea. They may not think much of him in Spain now, but they will when
+      he comes back; and he can afford to wait. Completing his preparations
+      without undignified haste he despatched Bartholomew with his four little
+      vessels from Seville to Cadiz, where the Admiral was to join them. He took
+      farewell of his son Diego and of his brother James; good friendly James,
+      who had done his best in a difficult position, but had seen quite enough
+      of the wild life of the seas and was now settled in Seville studying hard
+      for the Church. It had always been his ambition, poor James; and, studying
+      hard in Seville, he did in time duly enter the sacred pale and become a
+      priest&mdash;by which we may see that if our ambitions are only modest
+      enough we may in time encompass them. Sometimes I think that James,
+      enveloped in priestly vestments, nodding in the sanctuary, lulled by the
+      muttering murmur of the psalms or dozing through a long credo, may have
+      thought himself back amid the brilliant sunshine and strange perfumes of
+      Espanola; and from a dream of some nymph hiding in the sweet groves of the
+      Vega may have awakened with a sigh to the strident Alleluias of his
+      brother priests. At any rate, farewell to James, safely seated beneath the
+      Gospel light, and continuing to sit there until, in the year 1515, death
+      interrupts him. We are not any more concerned with James in his priestly
+      shelter, but with those elder brothers of his who are making ready again
+      to face the sun and the surges.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Columbus's ships were on the point of sailing when word came that the
+      Moors were besieging a Portuguese post on the coast of Morocco, and, as
+      civility was now the order of the day between Spain and Portugal, the
+      Admiral was instructed to call on his way there and afford some relief.
+      This he did, sailing from Cadiz on the 9th or 10th of May to Ercilla on
+      the Morocco coast, where he anchored on the 13th. But the Moors had all
+      departed and the siege was over; so Columbus, having sent Bartholomew and
+      some of his officers ashore on a civil visit, which was duly returned, set
+      out the same day on his last voyage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="ch3d" id="ch3d"></a>CHAPTER III.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE LAST VOYAGE
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The four ships that made up the Admiral's fleet on his fourth and last
+      voyage were all small caravels, the largest only of seventy tons and the
+      smallest only of fifty. Columbus chose for his flagship the Capitana,
+      seventy tons, appointing Diego Tristan to be his captain. The next best
+      ship was the Santiago de Palos under the command of Francisco Porras;
+      Porras and his brother Diego having been more or less foisted on to
+      Columbus by Morales, the Royal Treasurer, who wished to find berths for
+      these two brothers-in-law of his. We shall hear more of the Porras
+      brothers. The third ship was the Gallega, sixty tons, a very bad sailer
+      indeed, and on that account entrusted to Bartholomew Columbus, whose skill
+      in navigation, it was hoped, might make up for her bad sailing qualities.
+      Bartholomew had, to tell the truth, had quite enough of the New World, but
+      he was too loyal to Christopher to let him go alone, knowing as he did his
+      precarious state of health and his tendency to despondency. The captain of
+      the Gallega was Pedro de Terreros, who had sailed with the Admiral as
+      steward on all his other voyages and was now promoted to a command. The
+      fourth ship was called the Vizcaina, fifty tons, and was commanded by
+      Bartolome Fieschi, a friend of Columbus's from Genoa, and a very sound,
+      honourable man. There were altogether 143 souls on board the four
+      caravels.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The fleet as usual made the Canary Islands, where they arrived on the 20th
+      of May, and stopped for five days taking in wood and water and fresh
+      provisions. Columbus was himself again&mdash;always more himself at sea
+      than anywhere else; he was following a now familiar road that had no
+      difficulties or dangers for him; and there is no record of the voyage out
+      except that it was quick and prosperous, with the trade wind blowing so
+      steadily that from the time they left the Canaries until they made land
+      twenty days later they had hardly to touch a sheet or a halliard. The
+      first land they made was the island of Martinique, where wood and water
+      were taken in and the men sent ashore to wash their linen. To young
+      Ferdinand, but fourteen years old, this voyage was like a fairy tale come
+      true, and his delight in everything that he saw must have added greatly to
+      Christopher's pleasure and interest in the voyage. They only stayed a few
+      days at Martinique and then sailed westward along the chain of islands
+      until they came to Porto Rico, where they put in to the sunny harbour
+      which they had discovered on a former voyage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was at this point that Columbus determined, contrary to his precise
+      orders, to stand across to Espanola. The place attracted him like a
+      magnet; he could not keep away from it; and although he had a good enough
+      excuse for touching there, it is probable that his real reason was a very
+      natural curiosity to see how things were faring with his old enemy
+      Bobadilla. The excuse was that the Gallega, Bartholomew's ship, was so
+      unseaworthy as to be a drag on the progress of the rest of the fleet and a
+      danger to her own crew. In the slightest sea-way she rolled almost gunwale
+      under, and would not carry her sail; and Columbus's plan was to exchange
+      her for a vessel out of the great fleet which he knew had by this time
+      reached Espanola and discharged its passengers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He arrived off the harbour of San Domingo on the 29th of June in very
+      threatening weather, and immediately sent Pedro de Terreros ashore with a
+      message to Ovando, asking to be allowed to purchase or exchange one of the
+      vessels that were riding in the harbour, and also leave to shelter his own
+      vessels there during the hurricane which he believed to be approaching. A
+      message came back that he was neither permitted to buy a ship nor to enter
+      the harbour; warning him off from San Domingo, in fact.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With this unfavourable message Terreros also brought back the news of the
+      island. Ovando had been in San Domingo since the 15th of April, and had
+      found the island in a shocking state, the Spanish population having to a
+      man devoted itself to idleness, profligacy, and slave-driving. The only
+      thing that had prospered was the gold-mining; for owing to the licence
+      that Bobadilla had given to the Spaniards to employ native labour to an
+      unlimited extent there had been an immense amount of gold taken from the
+      mines. But in no other respect had island affairs prospered, and Ovando
+      immediately began the usual investigation. The fickle Spaniards, always
+      unfaithful to whoever was in authority over them, were by this time tired
+      of Bobadilla, in spite of his leniency, and they hailed the coming of
+      Ovando and his numerous equipment with enthusiasm. Bobadilla had also by
+      this time, we may suppose, had enough of the joys of office; at any rate
+      he showed no resentment at the coming of the new Governor, and handed over
+      the island with due ceremony. The result of the investigation of Ovando,
+      however, was to discover a state of things requiring exemplary treatment;
+      friend Roldan was arrested, with several of his allies, and put on board
+      one of the ships to be sent back to Spain for trial. The cacique
+      Guarionex, who had been languishing in San Domingo in chains for a long
+      time, was also embarked on one of the returning ships; and about eighteen
+      hundred-weights of gold which had been collected were also stowed into
+      cases and embarked. Among this gold there was a nugget weighing 35 lbs.
+      which had been found by a native woman in a river, and which Ovando was
+      sending home as a personal offering to his Sovereigns; and some further 40
+      lbs. of gold belonging to Columbus, which Carvajal had recovered and
+      placed in a caravel to be taken to Spain for the Admiral. The ships were
+      all ready to sail, and were anchored off the mouth of the river when
+      Columbus arrived in San Domingo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he found that he was not to be allowed to enter the harbour himself
+      Columbus sent a message to Ovando warning him that a hurricane was coming
+      on, and begging him to take measures for the safety of his large fleet.
+      This, however, was not done, and the fleet put to sea that evening. It had
+      only got so far as the eastern end of Espanola when the hurricane, as
+      predicted by Columbus, duly came down in the manner of West Indian
+      hurricanes, a solid wall of wind and an advancing wave of the sea which
+      submerged everything in its path. Columbus's little fleet, finding shelter
+      denied them, had moved a little way along the coast, the Admiral standing
+      close in shore, the others working to the south for sea-room; and although
+      they survived the hurricane they were scattered, and only met several days
+      later, in an extremely battered condition, at the westerly end of the
+      island. But the large home-going fleet had not survived. The hurricane,
+      which was probably from the north-east, struck them just as they lost the
+      lee of the island, and many of them, including the ships with the treasure
+      of gold and the caravels bearing Roldan, Bobadilla, and Guarionex, all
+      went down at once and were never seen or heard of again. Other ships
+      survived for a little while only to founder in the end; a few, much
+      shattered, crept back to the shelter of San Domingo; but only one, it is
+      said, survived the hurricane so well as to be able to proceed to Spain;
+      and that was the one which carried Carvajal and Columbus's little property
+      of gold. The Admiral's luck again; or the intervention of the Holy Trinity&mdash;whichever
+      you like.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After the shattering experience of the storm, Columbus, although he did
+      not return to San Domingo, remained for some time on the coast of Espanola
+      repairing his ships and resting his exhausted crews. There were
+      threatenings of another storm which delayed them still further, and it was
+      not until the middle of July that the Admiral was able to depart on the
+      real purpose of his voyage. His object was to strike the mainland far to
+      the westward of the Gulf of Paria, and so by following it back eastward to
+      find the passage which he believed to exist. But the winds and currents
+      were very baffling; he was four days out of sight of land after touching
+      at an island north of Jamaica; and finally, in some bewilderment, he
+      altered his course more and more northerly until he found his whereabouts
+      by coming in sight of the archipelago off the south-western end of Cuba
+      which he had called the Gardens. From here he took a departure south-west,
+      and on the 30th of July came in sight of a small island off the northern
+      coast of Honduras which he called Isla de Pinos, and from which he could
+      see the hills of the mainland. At this island he found a canoe of immense
+      size with a sort of house or caboose built amidships, in which was
+      established a cacique with his family and dependents; and the people in
+      the canoe showed signs of more advanced civilisation than any seen by
+      Columbus before in these waters. They wore clothing, they had copper
+      hatchets, and bells, and palm-wood swords in the edges of which were set
+      sharp blades of flint. They had a fermented liquor, a kind of maize beer
+      which looked like English ale; they had some kind of money or medium of
+      exchange also, and they told the Admiral that there was land to the west
+      where all these things existed and many more. It is strange and almost
+      inexplicable that he did not follow this trail to the westward; if he had
+      done so he would have discovered Mexico. But one thing at a time always
+      occupied him to the exclusion of everything else; his thoughts were now
+      turned to the eastward, where he supposed the Straits were; and the
+      significance of this canoe full of natives was lost upon him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They crossed over to the mainland of Honduras on August 15th, Bartholomew
+      landing and attending mass on the beach as the Admiral himself was too ill
+      to go ashore. Three days later the cross and banner of Castile were duly
+      erected on the shores of the Rio Tinto and the country was formally
+      annexed. The natives were friendly, and supplied the ships with
+      provisions; but they were very black and ugly, and Columbus readily
+      believed the assertion of his native guide that they were cannibals. They
+      continued their course to the eastward, but as the gulf narrowed the force
+      of the west-going current was felt more severely. Columbus, believing that
+      the strait which he sought lay to the eastward, laboured against the
+      current, and his difficulties were increased by the bad weather which he
+      now encountered. There were squalls and hurricanes, tempests and
+      cross-currents that knocked his frail ships about and almost swamped them.
+      Anchors and gear were lost, the sails were torn out of the bolt-ropes,
+      timbers were strained; and for six weeks this state of affairs went on to
+      an accompaniment of thunder and lightning which added to the terror and
+      discomfort of the mariners.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was in August and the first half of September&mdash;six weeks of the
+      worst weather that Columbus had ever experienced. It was the more
+      unfortunate that his illness made it impossible for him to get actively
+      about the ship; and he had to have a small cabin or tent rigged up on
+      deck, in which he could lie and direct the navigation. It is bad enough to
+      be as ill as he was in a comfortable bed ashore; it is a thousand times
+      worse amid the discomforts of a small boat at sea; but what must it have
+      been thus to have one's sick-bed on the deck of a cockle-shell which was
+      being buffeted and smashed in unknown seas, and to have to think and act
+      not for oneself alone but for the whole of a suffering little fleet! No
+      wonder the Admiral's distress of mind was great; but oddly enough his
+      anxieties, as he recorded them in a letter, were not so much on his own
+      account as on behalf of others. The terrified seamen making vows to the
+      Virgin and promises of pilgrimages between their mad rushes to the sheets
+      and furious clinging and hauling; his son Ferdinand, who was only
+      fourteen, but who had to endure the same pain and fatigue as the rest of
+      them, and who was enduring it with such pluck that "it was as if he had
+      been at sea eighty years"; the dangers of Bartholomew, who had not wanted
+      to come on this voyage at all, but was now in the thick of it in the worst
+      ship of the squadron, and fighting for his life amid tempests and
+      treacherous seas; Diego at home, likely to be left an orphan and at the
+      mercy of fickle and doubtful friends&mdash;these were the chief causes of
+      the Admiral's anxiety. All he said about himself was that "by my
+      misfortune the twenty years of service which I gave with so much fatigue
+      and danger have profited me so little that to-day I have in Castile no
+      roof, and if I wished to dine or sup or sleep I have only the tavern for
+      my last refuge, and for that, most of the time, I would be unable to pay
+      the score." Not cheerful reflections, these, to add to the pangs of acute
+      gout and the consuming anxieties of seamanship under such circumstances.
+      Dreadful to him, these things, but not dreadful to us; for they show us an
+      Admiral restored to his true temper and vocation, something of the old sea
+      hero breaking out in him at last through all these misfortunes, like the
+      sun through the hurrying clouds of a stormy afternoon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Forty days of passage through this wilderness of water were endured before
+      the sea-worn mariners, rounding a cape on September 12th, saw stretching
+      before them to the southward a long coast of plain and mountain which they
+      were able to follow with a fair wind. Gradually the sea went down; the
+      current which had opposed them here aided them, and they were able to
+      recover a little from the terrible strain of the last six weeks. The cape
+      was called by Columbus 'Gracios de Dios'; and on the 16th of September
+      they landed at the entrance to a river to take in water. The boat which
+      was sent ashore, however, capsized on the sandy bar of the entrance, two
+      men being drowned, and the river was given the name of Rio de Desastre.
+      They found a better anchorage, where they rested for ten days, overhauled
+      their stores, and had some intercourse with the natives and exploration on
+      shore. Some incidents occurred which can best be described in the
+      Admiral's own language as he recorded them in his letter to the
+      Sovereigns.
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        " . . . When I reached there, they immediately sent me two young girls
+        dressed in rich garments. The older one might not have been more than
+        eleven years of age and the other seven; both with so much experience,
+        so much manner, and so much appearance as would have been sufficient if
+        they had been public women for twenty years. They bore with them magic
+        powder and other things belonging to their art. When they arrived I gave
+        orders that they should be adorned with our things and sent them
+        immediately ashore. There I saw a tomb within the mountain as large as a
+        house and finely worked with great artifice, and a corpse stood thereon
+        uncovered, and, looking within it, it seemed as if he stood upright. Of
+        the other arts they told me that there was excellence. Great and little
+        animals are there in quantities, and very different from ours; among
+        which I saw boars of frightful form so that a dog of the Irish breed
+        dared not face them. With a cross-bow I had wounded an animal which
+        exactly resembles a baboon only that it was much larger and has a face
+        like a human being. I had pierced it with an arrow from one side to the
+        other, entering in the breast and going out near the tail, and because
+        it was very ferocious I cut off one of the fore feet which rather seemed
+        to be a hand, and one of the hind feet. The boars seeing this commenced
+        to set up their bristles and fled with great fear, seeing the blood of
+        the other animal. When I saw this I caused to be thrown them the
+        'uegare,'&mdash;[Peccary]&mdash;certain animals they call so, where it
+        stood, and approaching him, near as he was to death, and the arrow still
+        sticking in his body, he wound his tail around his snout and held it
+        fast, and with the other hand which remained free, seized him by the
+        neck as an enemy. This act, so magnificent and novel, together with the
+        fine country and hunting of wild beasts, made me write this to your
+        Majesties."
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      The natives at this anchorage of Cariari were rather suspicious, but
+      Columbus seized two of them to act as guides in his journey further down
+      the coast. Weighing anchor on October 5th he worked along the Costa Rica
+      shore, which here turns to the eastward again, and soon found a tribe of
+      natives who wore large ornaments of gold. They were reluctant to part with
+      the gold, but as usual pointed down the coast and said that there was much
+      more gold there; they even gave a name to the place where the gold could
+      be found&mdash;Veragua; and for once this country was found to have a real
+      existence. The fleet anchored there on October 17th, being greeted by
+      defiant blasts of conch shells and splashing of water from the indignant
+      natives. Business was done, however: seventeen gold discs in exchange for
+      three hawks' bells.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Still Columbus went on in pursuit of his geographical chimera; even gold
+      had no power to detain him from the earnest search for this imaginary
+      strait. Here and there along the coast he saw increasing signs of
+      civilisation&mdash;once a wall built of mud and stone, which made him
+      think of Cathay again. He now got it into his head that the region he was
+      in was ten days' journey from the Ganges, and that it was surrounded by
+      water; which if it means anything means that he thought he was on a large
+      island ten days' sail to the eastward of the coast of India. Altogether at
+      sea as to the facts, poor Admiral, but with heart and purpose steadfast
+      and right enough.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They sailed a little farther along the coast, now between narrow islands
+      that were like the streets of Genoa, where the boughs of trees on either
+      hand brushed the shrouds of the ships; now past harbours where there were
+      native fairs and markets, and where natives were to be seen mounted on
+      horses and armed with swords; now by long, lonely stretches of the coast
+      where there was nothing to be seen but the low green shore with the
+      mountains behind and the alligators basking at the river mouths. At last
+      (November 2nd) they arrived at the cape known as Nombre de Dios, which
+      Ojeda had reached some time before in his voyage to the West.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The coast of the mainland had thus been explored from the Bay of Honduras
+      to Brazil, and Columbus was obliged to admit that there was no strait.
+      Having satisfied himself of that he decided to turn back to Veragua, where
+      he had seen the natives smelting gold, in order to make some arrangement
+      for establishing a colony there. The wind, however, which had headed him
+      almost all the way on his easterly voyage, headed him again now and began
+      to blow steadily from the west. He started on his return journey on the
+      5th of December, and immediately fell into almost worse troubles than he
+      had been in before. The wood of the ships had been bored through and
+      through by seaworms, so that they leaked very badly; the crews were sick,
+      provisions were spoilt, biscuits rotten. Young Ferdinand Columbus, if he
+      did not actually make notes of this voyage at the time, preserved a very
+      lively recollection of it, and it is to his Historie, which in its earlier
+      passages is of doubtful authenticity, that we owe some of the most human
+      touches of description relating to this voyage. Any passage in his work
+      relating to food or animals at this time has the true ring of boyish
+      interest and observation, and is in sharp contrast to the second-hand and
+      artificial tone of the earlier chapters of his book. About the incident of
+      the howling monkey, which the Admiral's Irish hound would not face,
+      Ferdinand remarks that it "frighted a good dog that we had, but frighted
+      one of our wild boars a great deal more"; and as to the condition of the
+      biscuits when they turned westward again, he says that they were "so full
+      of weevils that, as God shall help me, I saw many that stayed till night
+      to eat their sop for fear of seeing them."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After experiencing some terrible weather, in the course of which they had
+      been obliged to catch sharks for food and had once been nearly overwhelmed
+      by a waterspout, they entered a harbour where, in the words of young
+      Ferdinand, "we saw the people living like birds in the tops of the trees,
+      laying sticks across from bough to bough and building their huts upon
+      them; and though we knew not the reason of the custom we guessed that it
+      was done for fear of their enemies, or of the griffins that are in this
+      island." After further experiences of bad weather they made what looked
+      like a suitable harbour on the coast of Veragua, which harbour, as they
+      entered it on the day of the Epiphany (January 9, 1503), they named Belem
+      or Bethlehem. The river in the mouth of which they were anchored, however,
+      was subject to sudden spouts and gushes of water from the hills, one of
+      which occurred on January 24th and nearly swamped the caravels. This spout
+      of water was caused by the rainy season, which had begun in the mountains
+      and presently came down to the coast, where it rained continuously until
+      the 14th of February. They had made friends with the Quibian or chief of
+      the country, and he had offered to conduct them to the place where the
+      gold mines were; so Bartholomew was sent off in the rain with a boat party
+      to find this territory. It turned out afterwards that the cunning Quibian
+      had taken them out of his own country and showed them the gold mined of a
+      neighbouring chief, which were not so rich as his own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /> <a name="veragua" id="veragua"></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
+      <img alt="veragua.jpg (121K)" src="images/veragua.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <a href="images/veragua.jpg"> <img alt="Full Size" src="images/enlarge.jpg" />
+      </a> <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Columbus, left idle in the absence of Bartholomew, listening to the
+      continuous drip and patter of the rain on the leaves and the water, begins
+      to dream again&mdash;to dream of gold and geography. Remembers that David
+      left three thousand quintals of gold from the Indies to Solomon for the
+      decoration of the Temple; remembers that Josephus said it came from the
+      Golden Chersonesus; decides that enough gold could never have been got
+      from the mines of Hayna in Espanola; and concludes that the Ophir of
+      Solomon must be here in Veragua and not there in Espanola. It was always
+      here and now with Columbus; and as he moved on his weary sea pilgrimages
+      these mythical lands with their glittering promise moved about with him,
+      like a pillar of fire leading him through the dark night of his quest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The rain came to an end, however, the sun shone out again, and activity
+      took the place of dreams with Columbus and with his crew. He decided to
+      found a settlement in this place, and to make preparations for seizing and
+      working the gold mines. It was decided to leave a garrison of eighty men,
+      and the business of unloading the necessary arms and provisions and
+      building houses ashore was immediately begun. Hawks' bells and other
+      trifles were widely distributed among the natives, with special toys and
+      delicacies for the Quibian, in order that friendly relations might be
+      established from the beginning; and special regulations were framed to
+      prevent the possibility of any recurrence of the disasters that overtook
+      the settlers of Isabella.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such are the orderly plans of Columbus; but the Quibian has his plans too,
+      which are found to be of quite a different nature. The Quibian does not
+      like intruders, though he likes their hawks' bells well enough; he is not
+      quite so innocent as poor Guacanagari and the rest of them were; he knows
+      that gold is a thing coveted by people to whom it does not belong, and
+      that trouble follows in its train. Quibian therefore decides that Columbus
+      and his followers shall be exterminated&mdash;news of which intention
+      fortunately came to the ears of Columbus in time, Diego Mendez and Rodrigo
+      de Escobar having boldly advanced into the Quibian's village and seen the
+      warlike preparations. Bartholomew, returning from his visit to the gold
+      mines, was informed of this state of affairs. Always quick to strike,
+      Bartholomew immediately started with an armed force, and advanced upon the
+      village so rapidly that the savages were taken by surprise, their
+      headquarters surrounded, and the Quibian and fifty of his warriors
+      captured. Bartholomew triumphantly marched the prisoners back, the Quibian
+      being entrusted to the charge of Juan Sanchez, who was rowing him in a
+      little boat. The Quibian complained that his bonds were hurting him, and
+      foolish Sanchez eased them a little; Quibian, with a quick movement,
+      wriggled overboard and dived to the bottom; came up again somewhere and
+      reached home alive. No one saw him come up, however, and they thought had
+      had been drowned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Columbus now made ready to depart, and the caravels having been got over
+      the shallow bar, their loading was completed and they were ready to sail.
+      On April 6th Diego Tristan was sent in charge of a boat with a message to
+      Bartholomew, who was to be left in command of the settlement; but when
+      Tristan had rounded the point at the entrance to the river and come in
+      sight of the shore he had an unpleasant surprise; the settlement was being
+      savagely attacked by the resurrected Quibian and his followers. The fight
+      had lasted for three hours, and had been going badly against the
+      Spaniards, when Bartholomew and Diego Mendes rallied a little force round
+      them and, calling to Columbus's Irish dog which had been left with them,
+      made a rush upon the savages and so terrified them that they scattered.
+      Bartholomew with eight of the other Spaniards was wounded, and one was
+      killed; and it was at this point that Tristan's boat arrived at the
+      settlement. Having seen the fight safely over, he went on up the river to
+      get water, although he was warned that it was not safe; and sure enough,
+      at a point a little farther up the river, beyond some low green arm of the
+      shore, he met with a sudden and bloody death. A cloud of yelling savages
+      surrounded his boat hurling javelins and arrows, and only one seaman, who
+      managed to dive into the water and crawl ashore, escaped to bring the evil
+      tidings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Spaniards under Bartholomew's command broke into a panic, and taking
+      advantage of his wounded condition they tried to make sail on their
+      caravel and join the ships of Columbus outside; but since the time of the
+      rains the river had so much gone down that she was stuck fast in the sand.
+      They could not even get a boat over the bar, for there was a heavy cross
+      sea breaking on it; and in the meantime here they were, trapped inside
+      this river, the air resounding with dismal blasts of the natives'
+      conch-shells, and the natives themselves dancing round and threatening to
+      rush their position; while the bodies of Tristan and his little crew were
+      to be seen floating down the stream, feasted upon by a screaming cloud of
+      birds. The position of the shore party was desperate, and it was only by
+      the greatest efforts that the wounded Adelantado managed to rally his crew
+      and get them to remove their little camp to an open place on the shore,
+      where a kind of stockade was made of chests, casks, spars, and the
+      caravel's boat. With this for cover, the Spanish fire-arms, so long as
+      there was ammunition for them, were enough to keep the natives at bay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Outside the bar, in his anchorage beyond the green wooded point, the
+      Admiral meanwhile was having an anxious time. One supposes the entrance to
+      the river to have been complicated by shoals and patches of broken water
+      extending some considerable distance, so that the Admiral's anchorage
+      would be ten or twelve miles away from the camp ashore, and of course
+      entirely hidden from it. As day after day passed and Diego Tristan did not
+      return, the Admiral's anxiety increased. Among the three caravels that now
+      formed his little squadron there was only one boat remaining, the others,
+      not counting one taken by Tristan and one left with Bartholomew, having
+      all been smashed in the late hurricanes. In the heavy sea that was running
+      on the bar the Admiral dared not risk his last remaining boat; but in the
+      mean time he was cut off from all news of the shore party and deprived of
+      any means of finding out what had happened to Tristan. And presently to
+      these anxieties was added a further disaster. It will be remembered that
+      when the Quibian had been captured fifty natives had been taken with him;
+      and these were confined in the forecastle of the Capitana and covered by a
+      large hatch, on which most of the crew slept at night. But one night the
+      natives collected a heap of big stones from the ballast of the ship, and
+      piled them up to a kind of platform beneath the hatch; some of the
+      strongest of them got upon the platform and set their backs horizontally
+      against the hatch, gave a great heave and, lifted it off. In the confusion
+      that followed, a great many of the prisoners escaped into the sea, and
+      swam ashore; the rest were captured and thrust back under the hatch, which
+      was chained down; but when on the following morning the Spaniards went to
+      attend to this remnant it was found that they had all hanged themselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was a great disaster, since it increased the danger of the garrison
+      ashore, and destroyed all hope of friendship with the natives. There was
+      something terrible and powerful, too, in the spirit of people who could
+      thus to a man make up their minds either to escape or die; and the Admiral
+      must have felt that he was in the presence of strange, powerful elements
+      that were far beyond his control. At any moment, moreover, the wind might
+      change and put him on a lee shore, or force him to seek safety in
+      sea-room; in which case the position of Bartholomew would be a very
+      critical one. It was while things were at this apparent deadlock that a
+      brave fellow, Pedro Ledesma, offered to attempt to swim through the surf
+      if the boat would take him to the edge of it. Brave Pedro, his offer
+      accepted, makes the attempt; plunges into the boiling surf, and with
+      mighty efforts succeeds in reaching the shore; and after an interval is
+      seen by his comrades, who are waiting with their boat swinging on the edge
+      of the surf, to be returning to them; plunges into the sea, comes safely
+      through the surf again, and is safely hauled on board, having accomplished
+      a very real and satisfactory bit of service.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The story he had to tell the Admiral was as we know not a pleasant one&mdash;Tristan
+      and his men dead, several of Bartholomew's force, including the Adelantado
+      himself, wounded, and all in a state of panic and fear at the hostile
+      natives. The Spaniards would do nothing to make the little fortress safer,
+      and were bent only on escaping from the place of horror. Some of them were
+      preparing canoes in which to come out to the ships when the sea should go
+      down, as their one small boat was insufficient; and they swore that if the
+      Admiral would not take them they would seize their own caravel and sail
+      out themselves into the unknown sea as soon as they could get her floated
+      over the bar, rather than remain in such a dreadful situation. Columbus
+      was in a very bad way. He could not desert Bartholomew, as that would
+      expose him to the treachery of his own men and the hostility of the
+      savages. He could not reinforce him, except by remaining himself with the
+      whole of his company; and in that case there would be no means of sending
+      the news of his rich discovery to Spain. There was nothing for it,
+      therefore, but to break up the settlement and return some other time with
+      a stronger force sufficient to occupy the country. And even this course
+      had its difficulties; for the weather continued bad, the wind was blowing
+      on to the shore, the sea was&mdash;so rough as to make the passage of the
+      bar impossible, and any change for the worse in the weather would probably
+      drive his own crazy ships ashore and cut off all hope of escape.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Admiral, whose health was now permanently broken, and who only had
+      respite from his sufferings in fine weather and when he was relieved from
+      a burden of anxieties such as had been continually pressing on him now for
+      three months, fell into his old state of sleeplessness, feverishness, and
+      consequent depression; and it, these circumstances it is not wonderful
+      that the firm ground of fact began to give a little beneath him and that
+      his feet began to sink again into the mire or quag of stupor. Of these
+      further flounderings in the quag he himself wrote an account to the King
+      and Queen, so we may as well have it in his own words.
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "I mounted to the top of the ship crying out with a weak voice, weeping
+        bitterly, to the commanders of your Majesties' army, and calling again
+        to the four winds to help; but they did not answer me. Tired out, I fell
+        asleep and sighing I heard a voice very full of pity which spoke these
+        words: O fool! and slow to believe and to serve Him, thy God and the God
+        of all. What did He more for Moses? and for David His servant? Since
+        thou wast born He had always so great care for thee. When He saw thee in
+        an age with which He was content He made thy name sound marvellously
+        through the world. The Indies, which are so rich apart of the world, He
+        has given to thee as thine. Thou hast distributed them wherever it has
+        pleased thee; He gave thee power so to do. Of the bonds of the ocean
+        which were locked with so strong chains He gave thee the keys, and thou
+        wast obeyed in all the land, and among the Christians thou hast acquired
+        a good and honourable reputation. What did He more for the people of
+        Israel when He brought them out of Egypt? or yet for David, whom from
+        being a shepherd He made King of Judea? Turn to Him and recognise thine
+        error, for His mercy is infinite. Thine old age will be no hindrance to
+        all great things. Many very great inheritances are in His power. Abraham
+        was more than one hundred years old when he begat Isaac and also Sarah
+        was not young. Thou art calling for uncertain aid. Answer me, who has
+        afflicted thee so much and so many times&mdash;God or the world? The
+        privileges and promises which God makes He never breaks to any one; nor
+        does He say after having received the service that His intention was not
+        so and it is to be understood in another manner: nor imposes martyrdom
+        to give proof of His power. He abides by the letter of His word. All
+        that He promises He abundantly accomplishes. This is His way. I have
+        told thee what the Creator hath done for thee and does for all. Now He
+        shows me the reward and payment of thy suffering and which thou hast
+        passed in the service of others. And thus half dead, I heard everything;
+        but I could never find an answer to make to words so certain, and only I
+        wept for my errors. He, who ever he might be, finished speaking, saying:
+        Trust and fear not, for thy tribulations are written in marble and not
+        without reason."
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      Mere darkness of stupor; not much to be deciphered from it, nor any
+      profitable comment to be made on it, except that it was our poor
+      Christopher's way of crying out his great suffering and misery. We must
+      not notice it, much as we should like to hold out a hand of sympathy and
+      comfort to him; must not pay much attention to this dark eloquent nonsense&mdash;merely
+      words, in which the Admiral never does himself justice. Acts are his true
+      conversation; and when he speaks in that language all men must listen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="ch4d" id="ch4d"></a>CHAPTER IV.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      HEROIC ADVENTURES BY LAND AND SEA
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No man ever had a better excuse for his superstitions than the Admiral; no
+      sooner had he got done with his Vision than the wind dropped, the sun came
+      out, the sea fell, and communication with the land was restored. While he
+      had been sick and dreaming one of his crew, Diego Mendez, had been busy
+      with practical efforts in preparation for this day of fine weather; he had
+      made a great raft out of Indian canoes lashed together, with mighty sacks
+      of sail cloth into which the provisions might be bundled; and as soon as
+      the sea had become calm enough he took this raft in over the bar to the
+      settlement ashore, and began the business of embarking the whole of the
+      stores and ammunition of Bartholomew's garrison. By this practical method
+      the whole establishment was transferred from the shore to the ships in the
+      space of two days, and nothing was left but the caravel, which it was
+      found impossible to float again. It was heavy work towing the raft
+      constantly backwards and forwards from the ships to the shore, but Diego
+      Mendez had the satisfaction of being the last man to embark from the
+      deserted settlement, and to see that not an ounce of stores or ammunition
+      had been lost.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Columbus, always quick to reward the services of a good man, kissed Diego
+      Mendez publicly&mdash;on both cheeks, and (what doubtless pleased him much
+      better) gave him command of the caravel of which poor Tristan had been the
+      captain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With a favourable wind they sailed from this accursed shore at the end of
+      April 1503. It is strange, as Winsor points out, that in the name of this
+      coast should be preserved the only territorial remembrance of Columbus,
+      and that his descendant the Duke of Veragua should in his title
+      commemorate one of the most unfortunate of the Admiral's adventures. And
+      if any one should desire a proof of the utterly misleading nature of most
+      of Columbus's writings about himself, let him know that a few months later
+      he solemnly wrote to the Sovereigns concerning this very place that "there
+      is not in the world a country whose inhabitants are more timid; and the
+      whole place is capable of being easily put into a state of defence. Your
+      people that may come here, if they should wish to become masters of the
+      products of other lands, will have to take them by force or retire
+      empty-handed. In this country they will simply have to trust their persons
+      in the hands of the savages." The facts being that the inhabitants were
+      extremely fierce and warlike and irreconcilably hostile; that the river
+      was a trap out of which in the dry season there was no escape, and the
+      harbour outside a mere shelterless lee shore; that it would require an
+      army and an armada to hold the place against the natives, and that any one
+      who trusted himself in their hands would share the fate of the unhappy
+      Diego Tristan. One may choose between believing that the Admiral's memory
+      had entirely failed him (although he had not been backward in making a
+      minute record, of all his sufferings) or that he was craftily attempting
+      to deceive the Sovereigns. My own belief is that he was neither trying to
+      deceive anybody nor that he had forgotten anything, but that he was simply
+      incapable of uttering the bare truth when he had a pen in his hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From their position on the coast of Veragua Espanola bore almost due
+      north; but Columbus was too good a seaman to attempt to make the island by
+      sailing straight for it. He knew that the steady west-going current would
+      set him far down on his course, and he therefore decided to work up the
+      coast a long way to the eastward before standing across for Espanola. The
+      crew grumbled very much at this proceeding, which they did not understand;
+      in fact they argued from it that the Admiral was making straight for
+      Spain, and this, in the crazy condition of the vessels, naturally alarmed
+      them. But in his old high-handed, secret way the Admiral told them
+      nothing; he even took away from the other captains all the charts that
+      they had made of this coast, so that no one but himself would be able to
+      find the way back to it; and he took a kind of pleasure in the complete
+      mystification thus produced on his fellow-voyagers. "None of them could
+      explain whither I went nor whence I came; they did not know the way to
+      return thither," he writes, somewhat childishly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But he was not back in Espanola yet, and his means for getting there were
+      crumbling away beneath his feet. One of the three remaining caravels was
+      entirely riddled by seaworms and had to be abandoned at the harbour called
+      Puerto Bello; and the company was crowded on to two ships. The men now
+      became more than ever discontented at the easterly course, and on May 1st,
+      when he had come as far east as the Gulf of Darien, Columbus felt obliged
+      to bear away to the north, although as it turned out he had not nearly
+      made enough easting. He stood on this course, for nine days, the
+      west-going current setting him down all the time; and the first land that
+      he made, on May 10th, was the group of islands off the western end of Cuba
+      which he had called the Queen's Gardens.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He anchored for six days here, as the crews were completely exhausted; the
+      ships' stores were reduced to biscuits, oil, and vinegar; the vessels
+      leaked like sieves, and the pumps had to be kept going continually. And no
+      sooner had they anchored than a hurricane came on, and brought up a sea so
+      heavy that the Admiral was convinced that his ships could not live within
+      it. We have got so accustomed to reading of storms and tempests that it
+      seems useless to try and drive home the horror and terror of them; but
+      here were these two rotten ships alone at the end of the world, far beyond
+      the help of man, the great seas roaring up under them in the black night,
+      parting their worn cables, snatching away their anchors from them, and
+      finally driving them one upon the other to grind and strain and prey upon
+      each other, as though the external conspiracy of the elements against them
+      both were not sufficient! One writes or reads the words, but what does it
+      mean to us? and can we by any conceivable effort of imagination realise
+      what it meant to this group of human beings who lived through that night
+      so many hundred years ago&mdash;men like ourselves with hearts to sink and
+      faint, capable of fear and hunger, capable of misery, pain, and endurance?
+      Bruised and battered, wet by the terrifying surges, and entirely
+      uncomforted by food or drink, they did somehow endure these miseries; and
+      were to endure worse too before they were done with it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Their six days' sojourn amid the Queen's Gardens, then, was not a great
+      success; and as soon as they were able they set sail again, standing
+      eastward when the wind permitted them. But wind and current were against
+      them and all through the month of May and the early part of June they
+      struggled along the south coast of Cuba, their ships as full of holes as a
+      honeycomb, pumps going incessantly, and in addition the worn-out seamen
+      doing heroic labour at baling with buckets and kettles. Lee helm! Down go
+      the buckets and kettles and out run the wretched scarecrows of seamen to
+      the weary business of tacking ship, letting go, brailing up, hauling in,
+      and making fast for the thousandth time; and then back to the pumps and
+      kettles again. No human being could endure this for an indefinite time;
+      and though their diet of worms represented by the rotten biscuit was
+      varied with cassava bread supplied by friendly natives, the Admiral could
+      not make his way eastward further than Cape Cruz. Round that cape his
+      leaking, strained vessels could not be made to look against the wind and
+      the tide. Could hardly indeed be made to float or swim upon the water at
+      all; and the Admiral had now to consider, not whether he could sail on a
+      particular point of the compass, but whether he could by any means avoid
+      another course which the fates now proposed to him&mdash;namely, a
+      perpendicular course to the bottom of the sea. It was a race between the
+      water and the ships, and the only thing the Admiral could think of was to
+      turn southward across to Jamaica, which he did on June 23rd, putting into
+      Puerto Bueno, now called Dry Harbour. But there was no food there, and as
+      his ships were settling deeper and deeper in the water he had to make sail
+      again and drive eastwards as far as Puerto Santa Gloria, now called Don
+      Christopher's Cove. He was just in time. The ships were run ashore side by
+      side on a sandy beach, the pumps were abandoned, and in one tide the ships
+      were full of water. The remaining anchor cables were used to lash the two
+      ships together so that they would not move; although there was little fear
+      of that, seeing the weight of water that was in them. Everything that
+      could be saved was brought up on deck, and a kind of cabin or platform
+      which could be fortified was rigged on the highest part of the ships. And
+      so no doubt for some days, although their food was almost finished, the
+      wretched and exhausted voyagers could stretch their cramped limbs, and
+      rest in the warm sun, and listen, from their safe haven on the firm sands,
+      to the hated voice of the sea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thanks to careful regulations made by the Admiral, governing the
+      intercourse between the Spaniards and the natives ashore, friendly
+      relations were soon established, and the crews were supplied with cassava
+      bread and fruit in abundance. Two officials superintended every purchase
+      of provisions to avoid the possibility of any dispute, for in the event of
+      even a momentary hostility the thatched-roof structures on the ships could
+      easily have been set on fire, and the position of the Spaniards, without
+      shelter amid a hostile population, would have been a desperate one. This
+      disaster, however, was avoided; but the Admiral soon began to be anxious
+      about the supply of provisions from the immediate neighbourhood, which
+      after the first few days began to be irregular. There were a large number
+      of Spaniards to be fed, the natives never kept any great store of
+      provisions for themselves, and the Spaniards were entirely at their mercy
+      for, provisions from day to day. Diego Mendez, always ready for active and
+      practical service, now offered to take three men and make a journey
+      through the island to arrange for the purchase of provisions from
+      different villages, so that the men on the ships would not be dependent
+      upon any one source. This offer was gratefully accepted; and Mendez, with
+      his lieutenants well supplied with toys and trinkets, started eastward
+      along the north coast of Jamaica. He made no mistakes; he was quick and
+      clever at ingratiating himself with the caciques, and he succeeded in
+      arranging with three separate potentates to send regular supplies of
+      provisions to the men on the ships. At each place where he made this
+      arrangement he detached one of his assistants and sent him back with the
+      first load of provisions, so that the regular line of carriage might be
+      the more quickly established; and when they had all gone he borrowed a
+      couple of natives and pushed on by himself until he reached the eastern
+      end of the island. He made friends here with a powerful cacique named
+      Amerro, from whom he bought a large canoe, and paid for it with some of
+      the clothing off his back. With the canoe were furnished six Indians to
+      row it, and Mendez made a triumphant journey back by sea, touching at the
+      places where his depots had been established and seeing that his
+      commissariat arrangements were working properly. He was warmly received on
+      his return to the ships, and the result of his efforts was soon visible in
+      the daily supplies of food that now regularly arrived.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus was one difficulty overcome; but it was not likely that either
+      Columbus himself or any of his people would be content to remain for ever
+      on the beach of Jamaica. It was necessary to establish communication with
+      Espanola, and thence with Spain; but how to do it in the absence of ships
+      or even boats? Columbus, pondering much upon this matter, one day calls
+      Diego Mendez aside; walks him off, most likely, under the great rustling
+      trees beyond the beach, and there tells him his difficulty. "My son," says
+      he, "you and I understand the difficulties and dangers of our position
+      here better than any one else. We are few; the Indians are many; we know
+      how fickle and easily irritated they are, and how a fire-brand thrown into
+      our thatched cabins would set the whole thing ablaze. It is quite true
+      that you have very cleverly established a provision supply, but it is
+      dependent entirely upon the good nature of the natives and it might cease
+      to-morrow. Here is my plan: you have a good canoe; why should some one not
+      go over to Espanola in it and send back a ship for us?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Diego Mendez, knowing very well what is meant, looks down upon the ground.
+      His spoken opinion is that such a journey is not merely difficult but
+      impossible journey in a frail native canoe across one hundred and fifty
+      miles of open and rough sea; although his private opinion is other than
+      that. No, he cannot imagine such a thing being done; cannot think who
+      would be able to do it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Long silence from the Admiral; eloquent silence, accompanied by looks no
+      less eloquent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Admiral," says Mendez again, "you know very well that I have risked my
+      life for you and the people before and would do it again. But there are
+      others who have at least as good a right to this great honour and peril as
+      I have; let me beg of you, therefore, to summon all the company together,
+      make this proposal to them, and see if any one will undertake it. If not,
+      I will once more risk my life."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The proposal being duly made to the assembled crews, every one, as cunning
+      Mendez had thought, declares it impossible; every one hangs back. Upon
+      which Diego Mendez with a fine gesture comes forward and volunteers; makes
+      his little dramatic effect and has his little ovation. Thoroughly Spanish
+      this, significant of that mixture of vanity and bravery, of swagger and
+      fearlessness, which is characteristic of the best in Spain. It was a
+      desperately brave thing to venture upon, this voyage from Jamaica to
+      Espanola in a native canoe and across a sea visited by dreadful
+      hurricanes; and the volunteer was entitled to his little piece of heroic
+      drama.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While Mendez was making his preparations, putting a false keel on the
+      canoe and fixing weather boards along its gunwales to prevent its shipping
+      seas, fitting a mast and sail and giving it a coat of tar, the Admiral
+      retired into his cabin and busied himself with his pen. He wrote one
+      letter to Ovando briefly describing his circumstances and requesting that
+      a ship should be sent for his relief; and another to the Sovereigns, in
+      which a long rambling account was given of the events of the voyage, and
+      much other matter besides, dismally eloquent of his floundering in the
+      quag. Much in it&mdash;about Solomon and Josephus, of the Abbot Joachim,
+      of Saint Jerome and the Great Khan; more about the Holy Sepulchre and the
+      intentions of the Almighty in that matter; with some serious practical
+      concern for the rich land of Veragua which he had discovered, lest it
+      should share the fate of his other discoveries and be eaten up by idle
+      adventurers. "Veragua," he says, "is not a little son which may be given
+      to a stepmother to nurse. Of Espanola and Paria and all the other lands I
+      never think without the tears falling from my eyes; I believe that the
+      example of these ought to serve for the others." And then this passage:
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "The good and sound purpose which I always had to serve your Majesties,
+        and the dishonour and unmerited ingratitude, will not suffer the soul to
+        be silent although I wished it, therefore I ask pardon of your
+        Majesties. I have been so lost and undone; until now I have wept for
+        others that your Majesties might have compassion on them; and now may
+        the heavens weep for me and the earth weep for me in temporal affairs; I
+        have not a farthing to make as an offering in spiritual affairs. I have
+        remained here on the Indian islands in the manner I have before said in
+        great pain and infirmity, expecting every day death, surrounded by
+        innumerable savages full of cruelty and by our enemies, and so far from
+        the sacraments of the Holy Mother Church that I believe the soul will be
+        forgotten when it leaves the body. Let them weep for me who have
+        charity, truth and justice. I did not undertake this voyage of
+        navigation to gain honour or material things, that is certain, because
+        the hope already was entirely lost; but I did come to serve your
+        Majesties with honest intention and with good charitable zeal, and I do
+        not lie."
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      Poor old heart, older than its years, thus wailing out its sorrows to ears
+      none too sympathetic; sad old voice, uplifted from the bright shores of
+      that lonely island in the midst of strange seas! It will not come clear to
+      the head alone; the echoes of this cry must reverberate in the heart if
+      they are to reach and animate the understanding.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this time also the Admiral wrote to his friend Gaspar Gorricio and the
+      reader may look upon a facsimile of the faded leaf upon which the trivial
+      document still exists. For the benefit of those who may be interested I
+      give the letter in Spanish and English.
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        REVEREND AND VERY DEVOUT FATHER:
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "If my voyage should be as conducive to my personal health and the
+        repose of my house as it seems likely to be conducive to the
+        aggrandisement of the royal Crown of the King and Queen, my Lords, I
+        might hope to live more than a hundred years. I have not time to write
+        more at length. I hope that the bearer of this letter may be a person of
+        my house who will tell you verbally more than can be told in a thousand
+        papers, and also Don Diego will supply information. I beg as a favour of
+        the Father Prior and all the members of your religious house, that they
+        remember me in all their prayers.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "Done on the island of Jamaica, July 7, 1503. "I am at the command of
+        your Reverence.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        .S.<br /> .S.A.S. XMY<br /> Xpo FERENS."
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /> <a name="facsimile" id="facsimile"></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
+      <img alt="facsimile.jpg (55K)" src="images/facsimile.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <a href="images/facsimile.jpg"> <img alt="Full Size"
+      src="images/enlarge.jpg" /></a> <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Diego Mendez found some one among the Spaniards to accompany him, but his
+      name is not recorded. The six Indians were taken to row the canoe. They
+      had to make their way at first against the strong currents along the
+      northern coast of Jamaica, so as to reach its eastern extremity before
+      striking across to Espanola. At one point they met a flotilla of Indian
+      canoes, which chased them and captured them, but they escaped. When they
+      arrived at the end of the easterly point of Jamaica, now known as Morant
+      Point, they had to wait two or three days for calm weather and a
+      favourable wind to waft them across to Espanola, and while thus waiting
+      they were suddenly surrounded and captured by a tribe of hostile natives,
+      who carried them off some nine or ten miles into the island, and signified
+      their intention of killing them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But they began to quarrel among themselves as to how they should divide
+      the spoils which they had captured with the canoe, and decided that the
+      only way of settling the dispute was by some elaborate trial of hazard
+      which they used. While they were busy with their trial Diego Mendez
+      managed to escape, got back to the canoe, and worked his way back in it
+      alone to the harbour where the Spaniards were encamped. The other Spaniard
+      who was with him probably perished, for there is no record of what became
+      of him&mdash;an obscure life lost in a brave enterprise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One would have thought that Mendez now had enough of canoe voyages, but he
+      had no sooner got back than he offered to set out again, only stipulating
+      that an armed force should march along the coast by land to secure his
+      safety until he could stand across to Espanola. Bartholomew Columbus
+      immediately put himself at the head of a large and well-armed party for
+      this purpose, and Bartolomeo Fieschi, the Genoese captain of one of the
+      lost caravels, volunteered to accompany Mendez in a second canoe. Each
+      canoe was now manned by six Spanish volunteers and ten Indians to row;
+      Fieschi, as soon as they had reached the coast of Espanola, was to bring
+      the good news to the Admiral; while Mendez must go on to San Domingo,
+      procure a ship, and himself proceed to Spain with the Admiral's letters.
+      The canoes were provisioned with water, cassava bread, and fish; and they
+      departed on this enterprise some time in August 1503.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Their passage along the coast was protected by Bartholomew Columbus, who
+      marched along with them on the shore. They waited a few days at the end of
+      the island for favourable weather, and finally said farewell to the good
+      Adelantado, who we may be sure stood watching them until they were well
+      out of sight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was not a cloud in the sky when the canoes stood out to sea; the
+      water was calm, and reflected the blistering heat of the sun. It was not a
+      pleasant situation for people in an open boat; and Mendez and Fieschi were
+      kept busy, as Irving says, "animating the Indians who navigated their
+      canoes, and who frequently paused at their labour." The poor Indians,
+      evidently much in need of such animation, would often jump into the water
+      to escape the intolerable heat, and after a short immersion there would
+      return to their task. Things were better when the sun went down, and the
+      cool night came on; half the Indians then slept and half rowed, while half
+      of the Spaniards also slept and the other half, I suppose, "animated."
+      Irving also says that the animating half "kept guard with their weapons in
+      hand, ready to defend themselves in the case of any perfidy on the part of
+      their savage companions"; such perfidy being far enough from the thoughts
+      of the savage companions, we may imagine, whose energies were entirely
+      occupied with the oars.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next day was the same: savage companions rowing, Spaniards animating;
+      Spaniards and savage companions alike drinking water copiously without
+      regard for the smallness of their store. The second night was very hot,
+      and the savage companions finished the water, with the result that on the
+      third day the thirst became a torment, and at mid-day the poor companions
+      struck work. Artful Mendez, however, had concealed two small kegs of water
+      in his canoe, the contents of which he now administered in small doses, so
+      that the poor Indians were enabled to take to their oars again, though
+      with vigour much abated. Presumably the Spaniards had put up their weapons
+      by this time, for the only perfidy shown on the part of the savage
+      companions was that one of them died in the following night and had to be
+      thrown overboard, while others lay panting on the bottom of the canoes;
+      and the Spaniards had to take their turn at the oars, although they were
+      if anything in a worse case than the Indians.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Late in the night, however, the moon rose, and Mendez had the joy of
+      seeing its lower disc cut by a jagged line which proved to be the little
+      islet or rock of Navassa, which lies off the westerly end of Espanola. New
+      hope now animated the sufferers, and they pushed on until they were able
+      to land on this rock, which proved to be without any vegetation
+      whatsoever, but on the surface of which there were found some precious
+      pools of rain-water. Mendez was able to restrain the frantic appetites of
+      his fellow-countrymen, but the savage companions were less wise, and drank
+      their fill; so that some of them died in torment on the spot, and others
+      became seriously ill. The Spaniards were able to make a fire of driftwood,
+      and boil some shell-fish, which they found on shore, and they wisely spent
+      the heat of the day crouching in the shade of the rocks, and put off their
+      departure until the evening. It was then a comparatively easy journey for
+      them to cross the dozen miles that separated them from Espanola, and they
+      landed the next day in a pleasant harbour near Cape Tiburon. Fieschi, true
+      to his promise, was then ready to start back for Jamaica with news of the
+      safe accomplishment of the voyage; but the remnant of the crews, Spaniards
+      and savage companions alike, had had enough of it, and no threats or
+      persuasions would induce them to embark again. Mendez, therefore, left his
+      friends to enjoy some little repose before continuing their journey to San
+      Domingo, and, taking six natives of Espanola to row his canoe; set off
+      along the coast towards the capital. He had not gone half-way when he
+      learned that Ovando was not there, but was in Xaragua, so he left his
+      canoe and struck northward through the forest until he arrived at the
+      Governor's camp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ovando welcomed Mendez cordially, praised him for his plucky voyage, and
+      expressed the greatest concern at the plight of the Admiral; but he was
+      very busy at the moment, and was on the point of transacting a piece of
+      business that furnished a dismal proof of the deterioration which had
+      taken place in him. Anacaona&mdash;the lady with the daughter whom we
+      remember&mdash;was now ruling over the province of Xaragua, her brother
+      having died; and as perhaps her native subjects had been giving a little
+      trouble to the Governor, he had come to exert his authority. The narrow
+      official mind, brought into contact with native life, never develops in
+      the direction of humanity; and Ovando had now for some time made the great
+      discovery that it was less trouble to kill people than to try to rule over
+      them wisely. There had evidently always been a streak of Spanish cruelty
+      in him, which had been much developed by his residence in Espanola; and to
+      cruelty and narrow officialdom he now added treachery of a very monstrous
+      and horrible kind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He announced his intention of paying a state visit to Anacaona, who
+      thereupon summoned all her tributary chiefs to a kind of levee held in his
+      honour. In the midst of the levee, at a given signal, Ovando's soldiers
+      rushed in, seized the caciques, fastened them to the wooden pillars of the
+      house, and set the whole thing on fire; the caciques being thus miserably
+      roasted alive. While this was going on the atrocious work was completed by
+      the soldiers massacring every native they could see&mdash;children, women,
+      and old men included&mdash;and Anacaona herself was taken and hanged.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All these things Diego Mendez had to witness; and when they were over,
+      Ovando still had excuses for not hurrying to the relief of the Admiral. He
+      had embarked on a campaign of extermination against the natives, and he
+      followed up his atrocities at Xaragua by an expedition to the eastern end
+      of Espanola, where very much the same kind of business was transacted.
+      Weeks and months passed in this bloody cruelty, and there was always an
+      excuse for putting off Mendez. Now it was because of the operations which
+      he dignified by the name of wars, and now because he had no ship suitable
+      for sending to Jamaica; but the truth was that Ovando, the springs of
+      whose humanity had been entirely dried up during his disastrous reign in
+      Espanola, did not want Columbus to see with his own eyes the terrible
+      state of the island, and was callous enough to leave him either to perish
+      or to find his own way back to the world. It was only when news came that
+      a fleet of caravels was expected from Spain that Ovando could no longer
+      prevent Mendez from going to San Domingo and, purchasing one of them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ovando had indeed lost all but the outer semblance of a man; the soul or
+      animating part of him had entirely gone to corruption. He had no interest
+      in rescuing the Admiral; he had, on the contrary, great interest in
+      leaving him unrescued; but curiosity as to his fate, and fear as to his
+      actions in case he should return to Espanola, induced the Governor to make
+      some effort towards spying cut his condition. He had a number of trained
+      rascals under his command&mdash;among them Diego de Escobar, one of
+      Roldan's bright brigade; and Ovando had no sooner seen Mendez depart on
+      his journey to San Domingo than he sent this Escobar to embark in a small
+      caravel on a visit to Jamaica in order to see if the Admiral was still
+      alive. The caravel had to be small, so that there could be no chance of
+      bringing off the 130 men who had been left to perish there; and various
+      astute instructions were given to Escobar in order to prevent his arrival
+      being of any comfort or assistance to the shipwrecked ones. And so Escobar
+      sailed; and so, in the month of March 1504, eight months after the
+      vanishing of Mendez below the eastern horizon, the miserable company
+      encamped on the two decaying ships on the sands at Puerto Santa Gloria
+      descried with joyful excitement the sails of a Spanish caravel standing in
+      to the shore.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="ch5d" id="ch5d"></a>CHAPTER V.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE ECLIPSE OF THE MOON
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We must now return to the little settlement on the coast of Jamaica&mdash;those
+      two wornout caravels, lashed together with ropes and bridged by an
+      erection of wood and thatch, in which the forlorn little company was
+      established. In all communities of men so situated there are alternate
+      periods of action and reaction, and after the excitement incidental to the
+      departure of Mendez, and the return of Bartholomew with the news that he
+      had got safely away, there followed a time of reaction, in which the
+      Spaniards looked dismally out across the empty sea and wondered when, if
+      ever, their salvation would come. Columbus himself was now a confirmed
+      invalid, and could hardly ever leave his bed under the thatch; and in his
+      own condition of pain and depression his influence on the rest of the crew
+      must inevitably have been less inspiriting than it had formerly been. The
+      men themselves, moreover, began to grow sickly, chiefly on account of the
+      soft vegetable food, to which they were not accustomed, and partly because
+      of their cramped quarters and the moist, unhealthy climate, which was the
+      very opposite of what they needed after their long period of suffering and
+      hardship at sea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the days and weeks passed, with no occupation save the daily business
+      of collecting food that gradually became more and more nauseous to them,
+      and of straining their eyes across the empty blue of the sea in an anxious
+      search for the returning canoes of Fieschi, the spirits of the castaways
+      sank lower and lower. Inevitably their discontent became articulate and
+      broke out into murmurings. The usual remedy for this state of affairs is
+      to keep the men employed at some hard work; but there was no work for them
+      to do, and the spirit of dissatisfaction had ample opportunity to spread.
+      As usual it soon took the form of hostility to the Admiral. They seem to
+      have borne him no love or gratitude for his masterly guiding of them
+      through so many dangers; and now when he lay ill and in suffering his
+      treacherous followers must needs fasten upon him the responsibility for
+      their condition. After a month or two had passed, and it became certain
+      that Fieschi was not coming back, the castaways could only suppose that he
+      and Mendez had either been captured by natives or had perished at sea, and
+      that their fellow-countrymen must still be without news of the Admiral's
+      predicament. They began to say also that the Admiral was banished from
+      Spain; that there was no desire or intention on the part of the Sovereigns
+      to send an expedition to his relief; even if they had known of his
+      condition; and that in any case they must long ago have given him up for
+      lost.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the pot boils the scum rises to the surface, and the first result of
+      these disloyal murmurings and agitations was to bring into prominence the
+      two brothers, Francisco and Diego de Porras, who, it will be remembered,
+      owed their presence with the expedition entirely to the Admiral's good
+      nature in complying with the request of their brother-in-law Morales, who
+      had apparently wished to find some distant occupation for them. They had
+      been given honourable posts as officers, in which they had not proved
+      competent; but the Admiral had always treated them with kindness and
+      courtesy, regarding them more as guests than as servants. Who or what
+      these Porras brothers were, where they came from, who were their father
+      and mother, or what was their training, I do not know; it is enough for us
+      to know that the result of it all had been the production of a couple of
+      very mean scoundrels, who now found an opportunity to exercise their
+      scoundrelism.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When they discovered the nature of the murmuring and discontent among the
+      crew they immediately set them to work it up into open mutiny. They
+      represented that, as Mendez had undoubtedly perished, there was no hope of
+      relief from Espanola; that the Admiral did not even expect such relief,
+      knowing that the island was forbidden ground to him. They insinuated that
+      he was as well content to remain in Jamaica as anywhere else, since he had
+      to undergo a period of banishment until his friends at Court could procure
+      his forgiveness. They were all, said the Porras brothers, being made tools
+      for the Admiral's convenience; as he did not wish to leave Jamaica
+      himself, he was keeping them all there, to perish as likely as not, and in
+      the meantime to form a bodyguard, and establish a service for himself. The
+      Porras brothers suggested that, under these circumstances, it would be as
+      well to take a fleet of native canoes from the Indians and make their own
+      way to Espanola; the Admiral would never undertake the voyage himself,
+      being too helpless from the gout; but it would be absurd if the whole
+      company were to be allowed to perish because of the infirmities of one
+      man. They reminded the murmurers that they would not be the first people
+      who had rebelled with success against the despotic rule of Columbus, and
+      that the conduct of the Sovereigns on a former occasion afforded them some
+      promise that those who rebelled again would receive something quite
+      different from punishment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Christmas passed, the old year went out in this strange, unhomelike place,
+      and the new year came in. The Admiral, as we have seen, was now almost
+      entirely crippled and confined to his bed; and he was lying alone in his
+      cabin on the second day of the year when Francisco de Porras abruptly
+      entered. Something very odd and flurried about Porras; he jerks and
+      stammers, and suddenly breaks out into a flood of agitated speech, in
+      which the Admiral distinguishes a stream of bitter reproach and
+      impertinence. The thing forms itself into nothing more or less than a
+      hurried, gabbling complaint; the people are dissatisfied at being kept
+      here week after week with no hope of relief; they accuse the Admiral of
+      neglecting their interests; and so on. Columbus, raising himself in his
+      bed, tries to pacify Porras; gives him reasons why it is impossible for
+      them to depart in canoes; makes every endeavour, in short, to bring this
+      miserable fellow back to his duties. He is watching Porras's eye all the
+      time; sees that he is too excited to be pacified by reason, and suspects
+      that he has considerable support behind him; and suggests that the crew
+      had better all be assembled and a consultation held as to the best course
+      to pursue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is no good to reason with mutineers; and the Admiral has no sooner made
+      this suggestion than he sees that it was a mistake. Porras scoffs at it;
+      action, not consultation, is what he demands; in short he presents an
+      ultimatum to the Admiral&mdash;either to embark with the whole company at
+      once, or stay behind in Jamaica at his own pleasure. And then, turning his
+      back on Columbus and raising his voice, he calls out, "I am for Castile;
+      those who choose may follow me!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The shout was a signal, and immediately from every part of the vessel
+      resounded the voices of the Spaniards, crying out that they would follow
+      Porras. In the midst of the confusion Columbus hobbled out of his bed and
+      staggered on to the deck; Bartholomew seized his weapons and prepared for
+      action; but the whole of the crew was not mutinous, and there was a large
+      enough loyal remnant to make it unwise for the chicken-hearted mutineers
+      to do more for the moment than shout: Some of them, it is true, were heard
+      threatening the life of the Admiral, but he was hurried back to his bed by
+      a few of the faithful ones, and others of them rushed up to the fierce
+      Bartholomew, and with great difficulty persuaded him to drop his lance and
+      retire to Christopher's cabin with him while they dealt with the
+      offenders. They begged Columbus to let the scoundrels go if they wished
+      to, as the condition of those who remained would be improved rather than
+      hurt by their absence, and they would be a good riddance. They then went
+      back to the deck and told Porras and his followers that the sooner they
+      went the better, and that nobody would interfere with their going as long
+      as they offered no one any violence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Admiral had some time before purchased some good canoes from the
+      natives, and the mutineers seized ten of these and loaded them with native
+      provisions. Every effort was made to add to the number of the disloyal
+      ones; and when they saw their friends making ready to depart several of
+      these did actually join. There were forty-eight who finally embarked with
+      the brothers Porras; and there would have been more, but that so many of
+      them were sick and unable to face the exposure of the voyage. As it was,
+      those who remained witnessed with no very cheerful emotions the departure
+      of their companions, and even in some cases fell to tears and
+      lamentations. The poor old Admiral struggled out of his bed again, went
+      round among the sick and the loyal, cheering them and comforting them, and
+      promising to use every effort of the power left to him to secure an
+      adequate reward for their loyalty when he should return to Spain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We need only follow the career of Porras and his deserters for the present
+      far enough to see them safely off the premises and out of the way of the
+      Admiral and our narrative. They coasted along the shore of Jamaica to the
+      eastward as Mendez had done, landing whenever they had a mind to, and
+      robbing and outraging the natives; and they took a particularly mean and
+      dirty revenge on the Admiral by committing all their robbings and
+      outragings as though under his authority, assuring the offended Indians
+      that what they did they did by his command and that what they took he
+      would pay for; so that as they went along they sowed seeds of grievance
+      and hostility against the Admiral. They told the natives, moreover, that
+      Columbus was an enemy of all Indians, and that they would be very well
+      advised to kill him and get him out of the way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They had not managed very well with the navigation of the canoes; and
+      while they were waiting for fine weather at the eastern end of the island
+      they collected a number of natives to act as oarsmen. When they thought
+      the weather suitable they put to sea in the direction of Espanola. They
+      were only about fifteen miles from the shore, however, when the wind began
+      to head them and to send up something of a sea; not rough, but enough to
+      make the crank and overloaded canoes roll heavily, for they had not been
+      prepared, as those of Mendez were, with false keels and weather-boards.
+      The Spaniards got frightened and turned back to Jamaica; but the sea
+      became rougher, the canoes rolled more and more, they often shipped a
+      quantity of water, and the situation began to look serious. All their
+      belongings except arms and provisions were thrown overboard; but still, as
+      the wind rose and the sea with it, it became obvious that unless the
+      canoes were further lightened they would not reach the shore in safety.
+      Under these circumstances the Spaniards forced the natives to leap into
+      the water, where they swam about like rats as well as they could, and then
+      came back to the canoes in order to hold on and rest themselves. When they
+      did this the Spaniards slashed at them with their swords or cut off their
+      hands, so that one by one they fell back and, still swimming about feebly
+      as well as they could with their bleeding hands or stumps of arms, the
+      miserable wretches perished and sank at last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By this dreadful expedient the Spaniards managed to reach Jamaica again,
+      and when they landed they immediately fell to quarrelling as to what they
+      should do next. Some were for trying to make the island of Cuba, the wind
+      being favourable for that direction; others were for returning and making
+      their submission to the Admiral; others for going back and seizing the
+      remainder of his arms and stores; others for staying where they were for
+      the present, and making another attempt to reach Espanola when the weather
+      should be more favourable. This last plan, being the counsel of present
+      inaction, was adopted by the majority of the rabble; so they settled
+      themselves at a neighbouring Indian village, behaving in: the manner with
+      which we are familiar. A little later, when the weather was calm, they
+      made another attempt at the voyage, but were driven back in the same way;
+      and being by this time sick of canoe voyages, they abandoned the attempt,
+      and began to wander back westward through the island, maltreating the
+      natives as before, and sowing seeds of bitter rancour and hostility
+      against the Admiral; in whose neighbourhood we shall unfortunately hear of
+      them again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the meantime their departure had somewhat relieved the condition of
+      affairs on board the hulks. There were more provisions and there was more
+      peace; the Admiral, rising above his own infirmities to the necessities of
+      the occasion, moved unweariedly among the sick, cheering them and nursing
+      them back into health and good humour, so that gradually the condition of
+      the little colony was brought into better order and health than it had
+      enjoyed since its establishment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But now unfortunately the evil harvest sown by the Porras gang in their
+      journey to the east of the island began to ripen. The supplies of
+      provisions, which had hitherto been regularly brought by the natives,
+      began to appear with less punctuality, and to fall off both in quantity
+      and quality. The trinkets with which they were purchased had now been
+      distributed in such quantities that they began to lose their novelty and
+      value; sometimes the natives demanded a much higher price for the
+      provisions they brought, and (having by this time acquired the art of
+      bargaining) would take their stores away again if they did not get the
+      price they asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But even of this device they soon grew weary; from being irregular, the
+      supplies of provisions from some quarters ceased altogether, and the
+      possibilities of famine began to stare the unhappy castaways in the face.
+      It must be remembered that they were in a very weak physical condition,
+      and that among the so-called loyal remnant there were very few who were
+      not invalids; and they were unable to get out into the island and forage
+      for themselves. If the able-bodied handful were to sally forth in search
+      of provisions, the hulks would be left defenceless and at the mercy of the
+      natives, of whose growing hostility the Admiral had by this time
+      discovered abundant evidence. Thus little by little the food supply
+      diminished until there was practically nothing left, and the miserable
+      company of invalids were confronted with the alternative of either dying
+      of starvation or desperately attempting a canoe voyage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was from this critical situation that the spirit and resource of
+      Columbus once more furnished a way of escape, and in these circumstances
+      that he invented and worked a device that has since become famous&mdash;the
+      great Eclipse Trick. Among his small library in the cabin of the ship was
+      the book containing the astronomical tables of Regiomontanus; and from his
+      study of this work he was aware that an eclipse of the moon was due on a
+      certain date near at hand. He sent his Indian interpreter to visit the
+      neighbouring caciques, summoning them to a great conference to be held on
+      the evening of the eclipse, as the Admiral had matters of great importance
+      to reveal to them. They duly arrived on the evening appointed; not the
+      caciques alone, but large numbers of the native population, well prepared
+      for whatever might take place. Columbus then addressed them through his
+      interpreter, informing him that he was under the protection of a God who
+      dwelt in the skies and who rewarded all who assisted him and punished all
+      his enemies. He made an effective use of the adventures of Mendez and
+      Porras, pointing out that Mendez, who took his voyage by the Admiral's
+      orders, had got away in safety, but that Porras and his followers, who had
+      departed in disobedience and mutiny, had been prevented by the heavenly
+      power from achieving their object. He told them that his God was angry
+      with them for their hostility and for their neglect to supply him with
+      provisions; and that in token of his anger he was going to send them a
+      dreadful punishment, as a sign of which they would presently see the moon
+      change colour and lose its light, and the earth become dark.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This address was spun out as long as possible; but even so it was followed
+      by an interval in which, we may be sure, Columbus anxiously eyed the
+      serene orb of night, and doubtless prayed that Regiomontanus might not
+      have made a mistake in his calculations. Some of the Indians were alarmed,
+      some of them contemptuous; but it was pretty clearly realised on both
+      sides that matters between them had come to a head; and probably if
+      Regiomontanus, who had worked out these tables of figures and calculations
+      so many years ago in his German home, had done his work carelessly or made
+      a mistake, Columbus and his followers would have been massacred on the
+      spot. But Regiomontanus, God bless him! had made no mistake. Sure enough,
+      and punctually to the appointed time, the dark shadow began to steal over
+      the moon's disc; its light gradually faded, and a ghostly darkness crept
+      over the face of the world. Columbus, having seen that all was right with
+      the celestial machinery, had retired to his cabin; and presently he found
+      himself besieged there in the dark night by crowds of natives frantically
+      bringing what provisions they had and protesting their intention of
+      continuing to bring them for the rest of their lives. If only the Admiral
+      would ask his God to forgive them, there was no limit to the amount of
+      provisions that he might have! The Admiral, piously thankful, and perhaps
+      beginning to enjoy the situation a little, kept himself shut up in his
+      cabin as though communing with the implacable deity, while the darkness
+      deepened over the land and the shore resounded with the howling and
+      sobbing of the terrified natives. He kept a look-out on the sky; and when
+      he saw that the eclipse was about to pass away, he came out and informed
+      the natives that God had decided to pardon them on condition of their
+      remaining faithful in the matter of provisions, and that as a sign of His
+      mercy He would restore the light. The beautiful miracle went on through
+      its changing phases; and, watching in the darkness, the terrified natives
+      saw the silver edge of the moon appearing again, the curtain that had
+      obscured it gradually rolling away, and land and sea lying visible to them
+      and once more steeped in the serene light which they worshipped. It is
+      likely that Christopher slept more soundly that night than he had slept
+      for many nights before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="ch6d" id="ch6d"></a>CHAPTER VI.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      RELIEF OF THE ADMIRAL
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no further difficulty about provisions, which were punctually
+      brought by the natives on the old terms; but the familiar, spirit of
+      sedition began to work again among the unhappy Spaniards, and once more a
+      mutiny, led this time by the apothecary Bernardo, took form&mdash;the
+      intention being to seize the remaining canoes and attempt to reach
+      Espanola. This was the point at which matters had arrived, in March 1504,
+      when as the twilight was falling one evening a cry was raised that there
+      was a ship in sight; and presently a small caravel was seen standing in
+      towards the shore. All ideas of mutiny were forgotten, and the crew
+      assembled in joyful anticipation to await, as they thought, the coming of
+      their deliverers. The caravel came on with the evening breeze; but while
+      it was yet a long way off the shore it was seen to be lying to; a boat was
+      lowered and rowed towards the harbour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the boat drew near Columbus could recognise in it Diego de Escobar,
+      whom he remembered having condemned to death for his share in the
+      rebellion of Roldan. He was not the man whom Columbus would have most
+      wished to see at that moment. The boat came alongside the hulks, and a
+      barrel of wine and a side of bacon, the sea-compliment customary on such
+      occasions, was handed up. Greatly to the Admiral's surprise, however,
+      Escobar did not come on board, but pushed his boat off and began to speak
+      to Columbus from a little distance. He told him that Ovando was greatly
+      distressed at the Admiral's misfortunes; that he had been much occupied by
+      wars in Espanola, and had not been able to send a message to him before;
+      that he greatly regretted he had no ship at present large enough to bring
+      off the Admiral and his people, but that he would send one as soon as he
+      had it. In the meantime the Admiral was to be assured that all his affairs
+      in Espanola were being attended to faithfully, and that Escobar was
+      instructed to bring back at once any letters which the Admiral might wish
+      to write.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The coolness and unexpectedness of this message completely took away the
+      breath of the unhappy Spaniards, who doubtless stood looking in
+      bewilderment from Escobar to Columbus, unable to believe that the caravel
+      had not been sent for their relief. Columbus, however, with a
+      self-restraint which cannot be too highly praised, realised that Escobar
+      meant what he said, and that by protesting against his action or trying to
+      interfere with it he would only be putting himself in the wrong. He
+      therefore retired immediately to his cabin and wrote a letter to Ovando,
+      in which he drew a vivid picture of the distress of his people, reported
+      the rebellion of the Porras brothers, and reminded Ovando that he relied
+      upon the fulfilment of his promise to send relief. The letter was handed
+      over to Escobar, who rowed back with it to his caravel and immediately
+      sailed away with it into the night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before he could retire to commune with his own thoughts or to talk with
+      his faithful brother, Columbus had the painful duty of speaking to his
+      people, whose puzzled and disappointed faces must have cost him some extra
+      pangs. He told them that he was quite satisfied with the message from
+      Ovando, that it was a sign of kindness on his part thus to send them news
+      in advance that relief was coming, that their situation was now known in
+      San Domingo, and that vessels would soon be here to take them away. He
+      added that he himself was so sure of these things that he had refused to
+      go back with Escobar, but had preferred to remain with them and share
+      their lot until relief should come. This had the desired effect of
+      cheering the Spaniards; but it was far from representing the real
+      sentiments of Columbus on the subject. The fact that Escobar had been
+      chosen to convey this strange empty message of sympathy seemed to him
+      suspicious, and with his profound distrust of Ovando Columbus began to
+      wonder whether some further scheme might not be on foot to damage him in
+      the eyes of the Sovereigns. He was convinced that Ovando had meant to let
+      him starve on the island, and that the real purpose of Escobar's visit had
+      been to find out what condition the Admiral was in, so that Ovando might
+      know how to act. It is very hard to get at the truth of what these two men
+      thought of each other. They were both suspicious, each was playing for his
+      own hand, and Ovando was only a little more unscrupulous than Columbus;
+      but there can be no doubt that whatever his motives may have been Ovando
+      acted with abominable treachery and cruelty in leaving the Admiral
+      unrelieved for nearly nine months.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Columbus now tried to make use of the visit of Escobar to restore to
+      allegiance the band of rebels that were wandering about in the
+      neighbourhood under the leadership of the Porras brothers. Why he should
+      have wished to bring them back to the ships is not clear, for by all
+      accounts he was very well rid of them; but probably his pride as a
+      commander was hurt by the thought that half of his company had defied his
+      authority and were in a state of mutiny. At any rate he sent out an
+      ambassador to Porras, offering to receive the mutineers back without any
+      punishment, and to give them a free passage to Espanola in the vessels
+      which were shortly expected, if they would return to their allegiance with
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The folly of this overture was made manifest by the treatment which it
+      received. It was bad enough to make advances to the Porras brothers, but
+      it was still worse to have those advances repulsed, and that is what
+      happened. The Porras brothers, being themselves incapable of any
+      single-mindedness, affected not to believe in the sincerity of the
+      Admiral's offer; they feared that he was laying some kind of trap for
+      them; moreover, they were doing very well in their lawless way, and living
+      very comfortably on the natives; so they told Columbus's ambassadors that
+      his offer was declined. At the same time they undertook to conduct
+      themselves in an amicable and orderly manner on condition that, when the
+      vessels arrived, one of them should be apportioned to the exclusive use of
+      the mutineers; and that in the meantime the Admiral should share with them
+      his store of provisions and trinkets, as theirs were exhausted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was the impertinent decision of the Porras brothers; but it did not
+      quite commend itself to their followers, who were fearful of the possible
+      results if they should persist in their mutinous conduct. They were very
+      much afraid of being left behind in the island, and in any case, having
+      attempted and failed in the main object of their mutiny, they saw no
+      reason why they should refuse a free pardon. But the Porras brothers lied
+      busily. They said that the Admiral was merely laying a trap in order to
+      get them into his power, and that he would send them home to Spain in
+      chains; and they even went so far as to assure their fellow-rebels that
+      the story of a caravel having arrived was not really true; but that
+      Columbus, who was an adept in the arts of necromancy, had really made his
+      people believe that they had seen a caravel in the dusk; and that if one
+      had really arrived it would not have gone away so suddenly, nor would the
+      Admiral and his brother and son have failed to take their passage in it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To consolidate the effect of these remarkable statements on the still
+      wavering mutineers, the Porras brothers decided to commit them to an open
+      act of violence which would successfully alienate them from the Admiral.
+      They formed them, therefore, into an armed expedition, with the idea of
+      seizing the stores remaining on the wreck and taking the Admiral
+      personally. Columbus fortunately got news of this, as he nearly always did
+      when there was treachery in the wind; and he sent Bartholomew to try to
+      persuade them once more to return to their duty&mdash;a vain and foolish
+      mission, the vanity and folly of which were fully apparent to Bartholomew.
+      He duly set out upon it; but instead of mild words he took with him fifty
+      armed men&mdash;the whole available able-bodied force, in fact-and drew
+      near to the position occupied by the rebels.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The exhortation of the Porras brothers had meanwhile produced its effect,
+      and it was decided that six of the strongest men among the mutineers
+      should make for Bartholomew himself and try to capture or kill him. The
+      fierce Adelantado, finding himself surrounded by six assailants, who
+      seemed to be directing their whole effort against his life, swung his
+      sword in a berserk rage and slashed about him, to such good purpose that
+      four or five of his assailants soon lay round him killed or wounded. At
+      this point Francisco de Porras rushed in and cleft the shield held by
+      Bartholomew, severely wounding the hand that held it; but the sword. stuck
+      in the shield, and while Porras was endeavouring to draw it out
+      Bartholomew and some others closed upon him, and after a sharp struggle
+      took him prisoner. The battle, which was a short one, had been meanwhile
+      raging fiercely among the rest of the forces; but when the mutineers saw
+      their leader taken prisoner, and many of their number lying dead or
+      wounded, they scattered and fled, but not before Bartholomew's force had
+      taken several prisoners. It was then found that, although the rebels had
+      suffered heavily, none of Bartholomew's men were killed, and only one
+      other besides himself was wounded. The next day the mutineers all came in
+      to surrender, submitting an abject oath of allegiance; and Columbus,
+      always strangely magnanimous to rebels and insurgents, pardoned them all
+      with the exception of Francisco de Porras, who, one is glad to know, was
+      confined in irons to be sent to Spain for trial.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /> <a name="westindies" id="westindies"></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
+      <img alt="westindies.jpg (214K)" src="images/westindies.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <a href="images/westindies.jpg"> <img alt="Full Size"
+      src="images/enlarge.jpg" /> </a> <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This submission, which was due to the prompt action of Bartholomew rather
+      than to the somewhat feeble diplomacy of the Admiral, took place on March
+      20th, and proved somewhat embarrassing to Columbus. He could put no faith
+      in the oaths and protestations of the mutineers; and he was very doubtful
+      about the wisdom of establishing them once more on the wrecks with the
+      hitherto orderly remnant. He therefore divided them up into several bands,
+      and placing each under the command of an officer whom he could trust, he
+      supplied them with trinkets and despatched them to different parts of the
+      island, for the purpose of collecting provisions and carrying on barter
+      with the natives. By this means the last month or two of this most trying
+      and exciting sojourn on the island of Jamaica were passed in some measure
+      of peace; and towards the end of June it was brought to an end by the
+      arrival of two caravels. One of them was the ship purchased by Diego
+      Mendez out of the three which had arrived from Spain; and the other had
+      been despatched by Ovando in deference, it is said, to public feeling in
+      San Domingo, which had been so influenced by Mendez's account of the
+      Admiral's heroic adventures that Ovando dared not neglect him any longer.
+      Moreover, if it had ever been his hope that the Admiral would perish on
+      the island of Jamaica, that hope was now doomed to frustration, and, as he
+      was to be rescued in spite of all, Ovando no doubt thought that he might
+      as well, for the sake of appearances, have a hand in the rescue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two caravels, laden with what was worth saving from the two abandoned
+      hulks, and carrying what was left of the Admiral's company, sailed from
+      Jamaica on June 28, 1504. Columbus's joy, as we may imagine, was deep and
+      heartfelt. He said afterwards to Mendez that it was the happiest day of
+      his life, for that he had never hoped to leave the place alive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The mission of Mendez, then, had been successful, although he had had to
+      wait for eight months to fulfil it. He himself, in accordance with
+      Columbus's instructions, had gone to Spain in another caravel of the fleet
+      out of which he had purchased the relieving ship; and as he passes out of
+      our narrative we may now take our farewell of him. Among the many men
+      employed in the Admiral's service no figure stands out so brightly as that
+      of Diego Mendez; and his record, almost alone of those whose service of
+      the Admiral earned them office and distinction, is unblotted by any stain
+      of crime or treachery. He was as brave as a lion and as faithful as a dog,
+      and throughout his life remained true to his ideal of service to the
+      Admiral and his descendants. He was rewarded by King Ferdinand for his
+      distinguished services, and allowed to bear a canoe on his coat-of-arms;
+      he was with the Admiral at his death-bed at Valladolid, and when he
+      himself came to die thirty years afterwards in the same place he made a
+      will in which he incorporated a brief record of the events of the
+      adventurous voyage in which he had borne the principal part, and also
+      enshrined his devotion to the name and family of Columbus. His demands for
+      himself were very modest, although there is reason to fear that they were
+      never properly fulfilled. He was curiously anxious to be remembered
+      chiefly by his plucky canoe voyage; and in giving directions for his tomb,
+      and ordering that a stone should be placed over his remains, he wrote: "In
+      the centre of the said stone 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 three hundred leagues, and let some letters be placed above it
+      saying: Canoa." The epitaph that he chose for himself was in the following
+      sense:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here lies the Honourable Gentleman
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      DIEGO MENDEZ
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He greatly served the royal crown of Spain in<br /> the discovery and
+      conquest of the Indies with<br /> the Admiral Don Christopher Columbus of<br />
+      glorious memory who discovered them, and<br /> afterwards by himself, with
+      his own ships,<br /> at his own expense.<br /> He died, etc.<br /> He begs
+      from charity a PATERNOSTER<br /> and an AVE MARIA.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Surely he deserves them, if ever an honourable gentleman did.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="ch7d" id="ch7d"></a>CHAPTER VII.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE HERITAGE OF HATRED
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Although the journey from Jamaica to Espanola had been accomplished in
+      four days by Mendez in his canoe, the caravels conveying the party rescued
+      from Puerto Santa Gloria were seven weary weeks on this short voyage; a
+      strong north-west wind combining with the west-going current to make their
+      progress to the north-west impossible for weeks at a time. It was not
+      until the 13th of August 1503 that they anchored in the harbour of San
+      Domingo, and Columbus once more set foot, after an absence of more than
+      two years, on the territory from the governorship of which he had been
+      deposed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was well enough received by Ovando, who came down in state to meet him,
+      lodged him in his own house, and saw that he was treated with the
+      distinction suitable to his high station. The Spanish colony, moreover,
+      seemed to have made something of a hero of Columbus during his long
+      absence, and they received him with enthusiasm. But his satisfaction in
+      being in San Domingo ended with that. He was constantly made to feel that
+      it was Ovando and not he who was the ruler there;&mdash;and Ovando
+      emphasised the difference between them by numerous acts of highhanded
+      authority, some of them of a kind calculated to be extremely mortifying to
+      the Admiral. Among these things he insisted upon releasing Porras, whom
+      Columbus had confined in chains; and he talked of punishing those faithful
+      followers of Columbus who had taken part in the battle between Bartholomew
+      and the rebels, because in this fight some of the followers of Porras had
+      been killed. Acts like these produced weary bickerings and arguments
+      between Ovando and Columbus, unprofitable to them, unprofitable to us. The
+      Admiral seems now to have relapsed into a condition in which he cared only
+      for two things, his honours and his emoluments. Over every authoritative
+      act of Ovando's there was a weary squabble between him and the Admiral,
+      Ovando claiming his right of jurisdiction over the whole territory of the
+      New World, including Jamaica, and Columbus insisting that by his
+      commission and letters of authority he had been placed in sole charge of
+      the members of his own expedition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then, as regards his emoluments, the Admiral considered himself (and
+      not without justice) to have been treated most unfairly. By the
+      extravagant terms of his original agreement he was, as we know, entitled
+      to a share of all rents and dues, as well as of the gold collected; but it
+      had been no one's business to collect these for him, and every one's
+      business to neglect them. No one had cared; no one had kept any accounts
+      of what was due to the Admiral; he could not find out what had been paid
+      and what had not been paid. He accused Ovando of having impeded his agent
+      Carvajal in his duty of collecting the Admiral's revenues, and of
+      disobeying the express orders of Queen Isabella in that matter; and so
+      on-a state of affairs the most wearisome, sordid, and unprofitable in
+      which any man could be involved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And if Columbus turned his eyes from the office in San Domingo inland to
+      that Paradise which he had entered twelve years before, what change and
+      ruin, dreary, horrible and complete, did he not discover! The birds still
+      sang, and the nights were still like May in Cordova; but upon that happy
+      harmony the sound of piteous cries and shrieks had long since broken, and
+      along and black December night of misery had spread its pall over the
+      island. Wherever he went, Columbus found the same evidence of ruin and
+      desolation. Where once innumerable handsome natives had thronged the
+      forests and the villages, there were now silence and smoking ruin, and the
+      few natives that he met were emaciated, terrified, dying. Did he reflect,
+      I wonder, that some part of the responsibility of all this horror rested
+      on him? That many a system of island government, the machinery of which
+      was now fed by a steady stream of human lives, had been set going by him
+      in ignorance, or greed of quick commercial returns? It is probable that he
+      did not; for he now permanently regarded himself as a much-injured man,
+      and was far too much occupied with his own wrongs to realise that they
+      were as nothing compared with the monstrous stream of wrong and suffering
+      that he had unwittingly sent flowing into the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the island under Ovando's rule Columbus saw the logical results of his
+      own original principles of government, which had recognised the right of
+      the Christians to possess the persons and labours of the heathen natives.
+      Las Casas, who was living in Espanola as a young priest at this time, and
+      was destined by long residence there and in the West Indies to qualify
+      himself as their first historian, saw what Columbus saw, and saw also the
+      even worse things that happened in after years in Cuba and Jamaica; and it
+      is to him that we owe our knowledge of the condition of island affairs at
+      this time. The colonists whom Ovando had brought out had come very much in
+      the spirit that in our own day characterised the rush to the north-western
+      goldfields of America. They brought only the slightest equipment, and were
+      no sooner landed at San Domingo than they set out into the island like so
+      many picnic parties, being more careful to carry vessels in which to bring
+      back the gold they were to find than proper provisions and equipment to
+      support them in the labour of finding it. The roads, says Las Casas,
+      swarmed like ant-hills with these adventurers rushing forth to the mines,
+      which were about twenty-five miles distant from San Domingo; they were in
+      the highest spirits, and they made it a kind of race as to who should get
+      there first. They thought they had nothing to do but to pick up shining
+      lumps of gold; and when they found that they had to dig and delve in the
+      hard earth, and to dig systematically and continuously, with a great deal
+      of digging for very little gold, their spirits fell. They were not used to
+      dig; and it happened that most of them began in an unprofitable spot,
+      where they digged for eight days without finding any gold. Their
+      provisions were soon exhausted; and in a week they were back again in San
+      Domingo, tired, famished, and bitterly disappointed. They had no genius
+      for steady labour; most of them were virtually without means; and although
+      they lived in San Domingo, on what they had as long as possible, they were
+      soon starving there, and selling the clothes off their backs to procure
+      food. Some of them took situations with the other settlers, more fell
+      victims to the climate of the island and their own imprudences and
+      distresses; and a thousand of them had died within two years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ovando had revived the enthusiasm for mining by two enactments. He reduced
+      the share of discovered gold payable to the Crown, and he developed
+      Columbus's system of forced labour to such an extent that the mines were
+      entirely worked by it. To each Spaniard, whether mining or farming, so
+      many natives were allotted. It was not called slavery; the natives were
+      supposed to be paid a minute sum, and their employers were also expected
+      to teach them the Christian religion. That was the plan. The way in which
+      it worked was that, a body of native men being allotted to a Spanish
+      settler for a period, say, of six or eight months&mdash;for the enactment
+      was precise in putting a period to the term of slavery&mdash;the natives
+      would be marched off, probably many days' journey from their homes and
+      families, and set to work under a Spanish foreman. The work, as we have
+      already seen, was infinitely harder than that to which they were
+      accustomed; and most serious of all, it was done under conditions that
+      took all the heart out of the labour. A man will toil in his own garden or
+      in tilling his own land with interest and happiness, not counting the
+      hours which he spends there; knowing in fact that his work is worth doing,
+      because he is doing it for a good reason. But put the same man to work in
+      a gang merely for the aggrandisement of some other over-man; and the heart
+      and cheerfulness will soon die out of him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was so with these children of the sun. They were put to work ten times
+      harder than any they had ever done before, and they were put to it under
+      the lash. The light diet of their habit had been sufficient to support
+      them in their former existence of happy idleness and dalliance, and they
+      had not wanted anything more than their cassava bread and a little fish
+      and fruit; now, however, they were put to work at a pressure which made a
+      very different kind of feeding necessary to them, and this they did not
+      get. Now and then a handful of pork would be divided among a dozen of
+      them, but they were literally starved, and were accustomed to scramble
+      like dogs for the bones that were thrown from the tables of the Spaniards,
+      which bones they ground up and mixed with their, bread so that no portion
+      of them might be lost. They died in numbers under these hard conditions,
+      and, compared with their lives, their deaths must often have been happy.
+      When the time came for them to go home they were generally utterly worn
+      out and crippled, and had to face a long journey of many days with no food
+      to support them but what they could get on the journey; and the roads were
+      strewn with the dead bodies of those who fell by the way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And far worse things happened to them than labour and exhaustion. It
+      became the custom among the Spaniards to regard the lives of the natives
+      as of far less value than those of the dogs that were sometimes set upon
+      them in sport. A Spaniard riding along would make a wager with his fellow
+      that he would cut the head off a native with one stroke of his sword; and
+      many attempts would be laughingly made, and many living bodies hideously
+      mutilated and destroyed, before the feat would be accomplished. Another
+      sport was one similar to pigsticking as it is practised in India, except
+      that instead of pigs native women and children were stuck with the lances.
+      There was no kind of mutilation and monstrous cruelty that was not
+      practised. If there be any powers of hell, they stalked at large through
+      the forests and valleys of Espanola. Lust and bloody cruelty, of a kind
+      not merely indescribable but unrealisable by sane men and women, drenched
+      the once happy island with anguish and terror. And in payment for it the
+      Spaniards undertook to teach the heathen the Christian religion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The five chiefs who had ruled with justice and wisdom over the island of
+      Espanola in the early days of Columbus were all dead, wiped out by the
+      wave of wild death and cruelty that had swept over the island. The gentle
+      Guacanagari, when he saw the desolation that was beginning to overwhelm
+      human existence, had fled into the mountains, hiding his face in shame
+      from the sons of men, and had miserably died there. Caonabo, Lord of the
+      House of Gold, fiercest and bravest of them all, who first realised that
+      the Spaniards were enemies to the native peace, after languishing in
+      prison in the house of Columbus at Isabella for some time, had died in
+      captivity during the voyage to Spain. Anacaona his wife, the Bloom of the
+      Gold, that brave and beautiful woman, whose admiration of the Spaniards
+      had by their bloody cruelties been turned into detestation, had been
+      shamefully betrayed and ignominiously hanged. Behechio, her brother, the
+      only cacique who did not sue for peace after the first conquest of the
+      island by Christopher and Bartholomew Columbus, was dead long ago of
+      wounds and sorrow. Guarionex, the Lord of the Vega Real, who had once been
+      friendly enough, who had danced to the Spanish pipe and learned the
+      Paternoster and Ave Maria, and whose progress in conversion to
+      Christianity the seduction of his wives by those who were converting him
+      had interrupted, after wandering in the mountains of Ciguay had been
+      imprisoned in chains, and drowned in the hurricane of June 30, 1502.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The fifth chief, Cotabanama, Lord of the province of Higua, made the last
+      stand against Ovando in defence of the native right to existence, and was
+      only defeated after severe battles and dreadful slaughters. His territory
+      was among the mountains, and his last insurrection was caused, as so many
+      others had been, by the intolerable conduct of the Spaniards towards the
+      wives and daughters of the Indians. Collecting all his warriors,
+      Cotabanama attacked the Spanish posts in his neighbourhood. At every
+      engagement his troops were defeated and dispersed, but only to collect
+      again, fight again with even greater fury, be defeated and dispersed
+      again, and rally again against the Spaniards. They literally fought to the
+      death. After every battle the Spaniards made a massacre of all the natives
+      they could find, old men, children, and pregnant women being alike put to
+      the sword or burned in their houses. When their companions fell beside
+      them, instead of being frightened they became more furious; and when they
+      were wounded they would pluck the arrows out of their bodies and hurl them
+      back at the Spaniards, falling dead in the very act. After one such severe
+      defeat and massacre the natives scattered for many months, hiding among
+      the mountains and trying to collect and succour their decimated families;
+      but the Spaniards, who with their dogs grew skilful at tracking the
+      Indians and found it pleasant sport, came upon them in the places of
+      refuge where little groups of them were sheltering their women and
+      children, and there slowly and cruelly slaughtered them, often with the
+      addition of tortures and torments in order to induce them to reveal the
+      whereabouts of other bands. When it was possible the Spaniards sometimes
+      hanged thirteen of them in a row in commemoration of their Blessed Saviour
+      and the Twelve Apostles; and while they were hanging, and before they had
+      quite died, they would hack at them with their swords in order to test the
+      edge of the steel. At the last stand, when the fierceness and bitterness
+      of the contest rose to a height on both sides, Cotabanama was captured and
+      a plan made to broil him slowly to death; but for some reason this plan
+      was not carried out, and the brave chief was taken to San Domingo and
+      publicly hanged like a thief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After that there was never any more resistance; it was simply a case of
+      extermination, which the Spaniards easily accomplished by cutting of the
+      heads of women as they passed by, and impaling infants and little children
+      on their lances as they rode through the villages. Thus, in the twelve
+      years since the discovery of Columbus, between half a million and a
+      million natives, perished; and as the Spanish colonisation spread
+      afterwards from island to island, and the banner of civilisation and
+      Christianity was borne farther abroad throughout the Indies, the same
+      hideous process was continued. In Cuba, in Jamaica, throughout the
+      Antilles, the cross and the sword, the whip-lash and the Gospel advanced
+      together; wherever the Host was consecrated, hideous cries of agony and
+      suffering broke forth; until happily, in the fulness of time, the dire
+      business was complete, and the whole of the people who had inhabited this
+      garden of the world were exterminated and their blood and race wiped from
+      the face of the earth . . . . Unless, indeed, blood and race and hatred be
+      imperishable things; unless the faithful Earth that bred and reared the
+      race still keeps in her soil, and in the waving branches of the trees and
+      the green grasses, the sacred essences of its blood and hatred; unless in
+      the full cycle of Time, when that suffering flesh and blood shall have
+      gone through all the changes of substance and condition, from corruption
+      and dust through flowers and grasses and trees and animals back into the
+      living body of mankind again, it shall one day rise up terribly to avenge
+      that horror of the past. Unless Earth and Time remember, O Children of the
+      Sun! for men have forgotten, and on the soil of your Paradise the African
+      negro, learned in the vices of Europe, erects his monstrous effigy of
+      civilisation and his grotesque mockery of freedom; unless it be through
+      his brutish body, into which the blood and hatred with which the soil of
+      Espanola was soaked have now passed, that they shall dreadfully strike at
+      the world again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="ch8d" id="ch8d"></a>CHAPTER VIII.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE ADMIRAL COMES HOME
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On September 12, 1504., Christopher Columbus did many things for the last
+      time. He who had so often occupied himself in ports and harbours with the
+      fitting out of ships and preparations for a voyage now completed at San
+      Domingo the simple preparations for the last voyage he was to take. The
+      ship he had come in from Jamaica had been refitted and placed under the
+      command of Bartholomew, and he had bought another small caravel in which
+      he and his son were to sail. For the last time he superintended those
+      details of fitting out and provisioning which were now so familiar to him;
+      for the last time he walked in the streets of San Domingo and mingled with
+      the direful activities of his colony; he looked his last upon the place
+      where the vital scenes of his life had been set, for the last time weighed
+      anchor, and took his last farewell of the seas and islands of his
+      discovery. A little steadfast looking, a little straining of the eyes, a
+      little heart-aching no doubt, and Espanola has sunk down into the sea
+      behind the white wake of the ships; and with its fading away the span of
+      active life allotted to this man shuts down, and his powerful
+      opportunities for good or evil are withdrawn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was something great and heroic about the Admiral's last voyage. Wind
+      and sea rose up as though to make a last bitter attack upon the man who
+      had disclosed their mysteries and betrayed their secrets. He had hardly
+      cleared the island before the first gale came down upon him and dismasted
+      his ship, so that he was obliged to transfer himself and his son to
+      Bartholomew's caravel and send the disabled vessel back to Espanola. The
+      shouting sea, as though encouraged by this triumph, hurled tempest after
+      tempest upon the one lonely small ship that was staggering on its way to
+      Spain; and the duel between this great seaman and the vast elemental power
+      that he had so often outwitted began in earnest. One little ship, one
+      enfeebled man to be destroyed by the power of the sea: that was the
+      problem, and there were thousands of miles of sea-room, and two months of
+      time to solve it in! Tempest after tempest rose and drove unceasingly
+      against the ship. A mast was sprung and had to be cut away; another, and
+      the woodwork from the forecastles and high stern works had to be stripped
+      and lashed round the crazy mainmast to preserve it from wholesale
+      destruction. Another gale, and the mast had to be shortened, for even
+      reinforced as it was it would not bear the strain; and so crippled, so
+      buffeted, this very small ship leapt and staggered on her way across the
+      Atlantic, keeping her bowsprit pointed to that region of the foamy
+      emptiness where Spain was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Admiral lay crippled in his cabin listening to the rush and bubble of
+      the water, feeling the blows and recoils of the unending battle,
+      hearkening anxiously to the straining of the timbers and the vessel's
+      agonised complainings under the pounding of the seas. We do not know what
+      his thoughts were; but we may guess that they looked backward rather than
+      forward, and that often they must have been prayers that the present
+      misery would come somehow or other to an end. Up on deck brother
+      Bartholomew, who has developed some grievous complaint of the jaws and
+      teeth&mdash;complaint not known to us more particularly, but dreadful
+      enough from that description&mdash;does his duty also, with that heroic
+      manfulness that has marked his whole career; and somewhere in the ship
+      young Ferdinand is sheltering from the sprays and breaking seas, finding
+      his world of adventure grown somewhat gloomy and sordid of late, and
+      feeling that he has now had his fill of the sea . . . . Shut your eyes and
+      let the illusions of time and place fade from you; be with them for a
+      moment on this last voyage; hear that eternal foaming and crashing of
+      great waves, the shrieking of wind in cordage, the cracking and slatting
+      of the sails, the mad lashing of loose ropes; the painful swinging, and
+      climbing up and diving down, and sinking and staggering and helpless
+      strivings of the small ship in the waste of water. The sea is as empty as
+      chaos, nothing for days and weeks but that infinite tumbling surface and
+      heaven of grey storm-clouds; a world of salt surges encircled by horizons
+      of dim foam. Time and place are nothing; the agony and pain of such
+      moments are eternal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the two brothers, grim and gigantic in their sea power, subtle as the
+      wind itself in their sea wit, win the battle. Over the thousands of miles
+      of angry surges they urge that small ship towards calm and safety; until
+      one day the sea begins to abate a little, and through the spray and tumult
+      of waters the dim loom of land is seen. The sea falls back disappointed
+      and finally conquered by Christopher Columbus, whose ship, battered,
+      crippled, and strained, comes back out of the wilderness of waters and
+      glides quietly into the smooth harbour of San Lucar, November 7, 1504.
+      There were no guns or bells to greet the Admiral; his only salute was in
+      the thunder of the conquered seas; and he was carried ashore to San Lucar,
+      and thence to Seville, a sick and broken man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="ch9d" id="ch9d"></a>CHAPTER IX.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE LAST DAYS
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Columbus, for whom rest and quiet were the first essentials, remained in
+      Seville from November 1504 to May 1505, when he joined the Court at
+      Segovia and afterwards at Salamanca and Valladolid, where he remained till
+      his death in May 1506. During this last period, when all other activities
+      were practically impossible to him, he fell into a state of letter-writing&mdash;for
+      the most part long, wearisome complainings and explainings in which he
+      poured out a copious flood of tears and self-pity for the loss of his
+      gold.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It has generally been claimed that Columbus was in bitter penury and want
+      of money, but a close examination of the letters and other documents
+      relating to this time show that in his last days he was not poor in any
+      true sense of the word. He was probably a hundred times richer than any of
+      his ancestors had ever been; he had, money to give and money to spend; the
+      banks honoured his drafts; his credit was apparently indisputable. But
+      compared with the fabulous wealth to which he would by this time have been
+      entitled if his original agreement with the Crown of Spain had been
+      faithfully carried out he was no doubt poor. There is no evidence that he
+      lacked any comfort or alleviation that money could buy; indeed he never
+      had any great craving for the things that money can buy&mdash;only for
+      money itself. There must have been many rich people in Spain who would
+      gladly have entertained him in luxury and dignity; but he was not the kind
+      of man to set much store by such things except in so far as they were a
+      decoration and advertisement of his position as a great man. He had set
+      himself to the single task of securing what he called his rights; and in
+      these days of sunset he seems to have been illumined by some glimmer of
+      the early glory of his first inspiration. He wanted the payment of his
+      dues now, not so much for his own enrichment, but as a sign to the world
+      that his great position as Admiral and Viceroy was recognised, so that his
+      dignities and estates might be established and consolidated in a form
+      which he would be able to transmit to his remote posterity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Since he wrote so copiously and so constantly in these last days, the best
+      picture of his mood and condition is afforded in his letters to his son
+      Diego; letters which, in spite of their infinitely wearisome
+      recapitulation and querulous complaint, should be carefully read by those
+      who wish to keep in touch with the Admiral to the end.
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        Letter written by CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS to DON DIEGO, his Son, November
+        21, 1504.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "VERY DEAR SON,&mdash;I received your letter by the courier. You did
+        well in remaining yonder to remedy our affairs somewhat and to employ
+        yourself now in our business. Ever since I came to Castile, the Lord
+        Bishop of Palencia has shown me favour and has desired that I should be
+        honoured. Now he must be entreated that it may please him to occupy
+        himself in remedying my many grievances and in ordering that the
+        agreement and letters of concession which their Highnesses gave me be
+        fulfilled, and that I be indemnified for so many damages. And he may be
+        certain that if their Highnesses do this, their estate and greatness
+        will be multiplied to them in an incredible degree. And it must not
+        appear to him that forty thousand pesos in gold is more than a
+        representation of it; because they might have had a much greater
+        quantity if Satan had not hindered it by impeding my design; for, when I
+        was taken away from the Indies, I was prepared to give them a sum of
+        gold incomparable to forty thousand pesos. I make oath, and this may be
+        for thee alone, that the damage to me in the matter of the concessions
+        their Highnesses have made to me, amounts to ten millions each year, and
+        never can be made good. You see what will be, or is, the injury to their
+        Highnesses in what belongs to them, and they do not perceive it. I write
+        at their disposal and will strive to start yonder. My arrival and the
+        rest is in the hands of our Lord. His mercy is infinite. What is done
+        and is to be done, St. Augustine says is already done before the
+        creation of the world. I write also to these other Lords named in the
+        letter of Diego Mendez. Commend me to their mercy and tell them of my
+        going as I have said above. For certainly I feel great fear, as the cold
+        is so inimical to this, my infirmity, that I may have to remain on the
+        road.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "I was very much pleased to hear the contents of your letter and what
+        the King our Lord said, for which you kissed his royal hands. It is
+        certain that I have served their Highnesses with as much diligence and
+        love as though it had been to gain Paradise, and more, and if I have
+        been at fault in anything it has been because it was impossible or
+        because my knowledge and strength were not sufficient. God, our Lord, in
+        such a case, does not require more from persons than the will.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "At the request of the Treasurer Morales, I left two brothers in the
+        Indies, who are called Porras. The one was captain and the other
+        auditor. Both were without capacity for these positions: and I was
+        confident that they could fill them, because of love for the person who
+        sent them to me. They both became more vain than they had been. I
+        forgave them many incivilities, more than I would do with a relation,
+        and their offences were such that they merited another punishment than a
+        verbal reprimand. Finally they reached such a point that even had I
+        desired, I could not have avoided doing what I did. The records of the
+        case will prove whether I lie or not. They rebelled on the island of
+        Jamaica, at which I was as much astonished as I would be if the sun's
+        rays should cast darkness. I was at the point of death, and they
+        martyrised me with extreme cruelty during five months and without cause.
+        Finally I took them all prisoners, and immediately set them free, except
+        the captain, whom I was bringing as a prisoner to their Highnesses. A
+        petition which they made to me under oath, and which I send you with
+        this letter, will inform you at length in regard to this matter,
+        although the records of the case explain it fully. These records and the
+        Notary are coming on another vessel, which I am expecting from day to
+        day. The Governor in Santo Domingo took this prisoner.&mdash;His
+        courtesy constrained him to do this. I had a chapter in my instructions
+        in which their Highnesses ordered all to obey me, and that I should
+        exercise civil and criminal justice over all those who were with me: but
+        this was of no avail with the Governor, who said that it was not
+        understood as applying in his territory. He sent the prisoner to these
+        Lords who have charge of the Indies without inquiry or record or
+        writing. They did not receive him, and both brothers go free. It is not
+        wonderful to me that our Lord punishes. They went there with shameless
+        faces. Such wickedness or such cruel treason were never heard of. I
+        wrote to their Highnesses about this matter in the other letter, and
+        said that it was not right for them to consent to this offence. I also
+        wrote to the Lord Treasurer that I begged him as a favour not to pass
+        sentence on the testimony given by these men until he heard me. Now it
+        will be well for you to remind him of it anew. I do, not know how they
+        dare to go before him with such an undertaking. I have written to him
+        about it again and have sent him the copy of the oath, the same as I
+        send to you and likewise to Doctor Angulo and the Licentiate Zapata. I
+        commend myself to the mercy of all, with the information that my
+        departure yonder will take place in a short time.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "I would be glad to receive a letter from their Highnesses and to know
+        what they order. You must procure such a letter if you see the means of
+        so doing. I also commend myself to the Lord Bishop and to Juan Lopez,
+        with the reminder of illness and of the reward for my services.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "You must read the letters which go with this one in order to act in
+        conformity with what they say. Acknowledge the receipt of his letter to
+        Diego Mendez. I do not write him as he will learn everything from you,
+        and also because my illness prevents it.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "It would be well for Carbajal and Jeronimo&mdash;[Jeronimo de Aguero, a
+        landowner in Espanola and a friend of Columbus]&mdash;to be at the Court
+        at this time, and talk of our affairs with these Lords and with the
+        Secretary.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "Done in Seville, November 21.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "Your father who loves you more than himself.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        .S.<br /> .S.A.S.<br /> XMY<br /> Xpo FERENS."
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "I wrote again to their Highnesses entreating them to order that these
+        people who went with me should be paid, because they are poor and it is
+        three years since they left their homes. The news which they bring is
+        more than extraordinary. They have endured infinite dangers and
+        hardships. I did not wish to rob the country, so as not to cause
+        scandal, because reason advises its being populated, and then gold will
+        be obtained freely without scandal. Speak of this to the Secretary and
+        to the Lord Bishop and to Juan Lopez and to whomever you think it
+        advisable to do so."
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      The Bishop of Palencia referred to in this letter is probably Bishop
+      Fonseca&mdash;probably, because it is known that he did become Bishop of
+      Palencia, although there is a difference of opinion among historians as to
+      whether the date of his translation to that see was before or after this
+      letter. No matter, except that one is glad to think that an old enemy&mdash;for
+      Fonseca and Columbus had bitter disagreements over the fitting out of
+      various expeditions&mdash;had shown himself friendly at last.
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        Letter written by CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS to DON DIEGO, November 28, 1504.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "VERY DEAR SON,&mdash;I received your letters of the 15th of this month.
+        It is eight days since I wrote you and sent the letter by a courier. I
+        enclosed unsealed letters to many other persons, in order that you might
+        see them, and having read them, seal and deliver them. Although this
+        illness of mine troubles me greatly, I am preparing for my departure in
+        every way. I would very much like to receive the reply from their
+        Highnesses and wish you might procure it: and also I wish that their
+        Highnesses would provide for the payment of these poor people, who have
+        passed through incredible hardships and have brought them such great
+        news that infinite thanks should be given to God, our Lord, and they
+        should rejoice greatly over it. If I [lie ?] the 'Paralipomenon'&mdash;[
+        The Book of Chronicles]&mdash;and the Book of Kings and the Antiquities
+        of Josephus, with very many others, will tell what they know of this. I
+        hope in our Lord to depart this coming week, but you must not write less
+        often on that account. I have not heard from Carbajal and Jeronimo. If
+        they are there, commend me to them. The time is such that both Carbajals
+        ought to be at Court, if illness does not prevent them. My regards to
+        Diego Mendez.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "I believe that his truth and efforts will be worth as much as the lies
+        of the Porras brothers. The bearer of this letter is Martin de Gamboa. I
+        am sending by him a letter to Juan Lopez and a letter of credit. Read
+        the letter to Lopez and then give it to him. If you write me, send the
+        letters to Luis de Soria that he may send them wherever I am, because if
+        I go in a litter, I believe it will be by La Plata.&mdash;[The old Roman
+        road from Merida to Salamanca.]&mdash;May our Lord have you in His holy
+        keeping. Your uncle has been very sick and is now, from trouble with his
+        jaws and his teeth.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "Done in Seville, November 28.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "Your father who loves you more than himself.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        .S.<br /> .S.A.S.<br /> XMY<br /> Xpo FERENS."
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      Bartholomew Columbus and Ferdinand were remaining with Christopher at
+      Seville; Bartholomew probably very nearly as ill as the Admiral, although
+      we do not hear so many complaints about it. At any rate Diego, being ay
+      Court, was the great mainstay of his father; and you can see the sick man
+      sitting there alone with his grievances, and looking to the next
+      generation for help in getting them redressed. Diego, it is to be feared,
+      did not receive these letters with so much patience and attention as he
+      might have shown, nor did he write back to his invalid father with the
+      fulness and regularity which the old man craved. It is a fault common to
+      sons. Those who are sons will know that it does not necessarily imply lack
+      of affection on Diego's part; those who are fathers will realise how much
+      Christopher longed for verbal assurance of interest and affection, even
+      though he did not doubt their reality. News of the serious illness of
+      Queen Isabella had evidently reached Columbus, and was the chief topic of
+      public interest.
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        Letter written by CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS to DON DIEGO, his Son, December
+        1, 1504.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "VERY DEAR SON,&mdash;Since I received your letter of November 15 I have
+        heard nothing from you. I wish that you would write me more frequently.
+        I would like to receive a letter from you each hour. Reason must tell
+        you that now I have no other repose. Many couriers come each day, and
+        the news is of such a nature and so abundant that on hearing it all my
+        hair stands on end; it is so contrary to what my soul desires. May it
+        please the Holy Trinity to give health to the Queen, our Lady, that she
+        may settle what has already been placed under discussion. I wrote you by
+        another courier Thursday, eight days ago. The courier must already be on
+        his way back here. I told you in that letter that my departure was
+        certain, but that the hope of my arrival there, according to experience,
+        was very uncertain, because my sickness is so bad, and the cold is so
+        well suited to aggravate it, that I could not well avoid remaining in
+        some inn on the road. The litter and everything were ready. The weather
+        became so violent that it appeared impossible to every one to start when
+        it was getting so bad, and that it was better for so well-known a person
+        as myself to take care of myself and try to regain my health rather than
+        place myself in danger. I told you in those letters what I now say, that
+        you decided well in remaining there (at such a time), and that it was
+        right to commence occupying yourself with our affairs; and reason
+        strongly urges this. It appears to me that a good copy should be made of
+        the chapter of that letter which their Highnesses wrote me where they
+        say they will fulfil their promises to me and will place you in
+        possession of everything: and that this copy should be given to them
+        with another writing telling of my sickness, and that it is now
+        impossible for me to go and kiss their Royal feet and hands, and that
+        the Indies are being lost, and are on fire in a thousand places, and
+        that I have received nothing, and am receiving nothing, from the
+        revenues derived from them, and that no one dares to accept or demand
+        anything there for me, and I am living upon borrowed funds. I spent the
+        money which I got there in bringing those people who went with me back
+        to their homes, for it would be a great burden upon my conscience to
+        have left them there and to have abandoned them. This must be made known
+        to the Lord Bishop of Palencia, in whose favour I have so much
+        confidence, and also to the Lord Chamberlain. I believed that Carbajal
+        and Jeronimo would be there at such a time. Our Lord is there, and He
+        will order everything as He knows it to be best for us.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "Carbajal reached here yesterday. I wished to send him immediately with
+        this same order, but he excused himself profusely, saying that his wife
+        was at the point of death. I shall see that he goes, because he knows a
+        great deal about these affairs. I will also endeavour to have your
+        brother and your uncle go to kiss the hands of Their Highnesses, and
+        give them an account of the voyage if my letters are not sufficient.
+        Take good care of your brother. He has a good disposition, and is no
+        longer a boy. Ten brothers would not be too many for you. I never found
+        better friends to right or to left than my brothers. We must strive to
+        obtain the government of the Indies and then the adjustment of the
+        revenues. I gave you a memorandum which told you what part of them
+        belongs to me. What they gave to Carbajal was nothing and has turned to
+        nothing. Whoever desires to do so takes merchandise there, and so the
+        eighth is nothing, because, without contributing the eighth, I could
+        send to trade there without rendering account or going in company with
+        any one. I said a great many times in the past that the contribution of
+        the eighth would come to nothing. The eighth and the rest belongs to me
+        by reason of the concession which their Highnesses made to me, as set
+        forth in the book of my Privileges, and also the third and the tenth. Of
+        the tenth I received nothing, except the tenth of what their Highnesses
+        receive; and it must be the tenth of all the gold and other things which
+        are found and obtained, in whatever manner it may be, within this
+        Admiralship, and the tenth of all the merchandise which goes and comes
+        from there, after the expenses are deducted. I have already said that in
+        the Book of Privileges the reason for this and for the rest which is
+        before the Tribunal of the Indies here in Seville, is clearly set forth.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "We must strive to obtain a reply to my letter from their Highnesses,
+        and to have them order that these people be paid. I wrote in regard to
+        this subject four days ago, and sent the letter by Martin de Gamboa, and
+        you must have seen the letter of Juan Lopez with your own.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "It is said here that it has been ordered that three or four Bishops of
+        the Indies shall be sent or created, and that this matter is referred to
+        the Lord Bishop of Palencia. After having commended me to his Worship,
+        tell him that I believe it will best serve their Highnesses for me to
+        talk with him before this matter is settled.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "Commend me to Diego Mendez, and show him this letter. My illness
+        permits me to write only at night, because in the daytime my hands are
+        deprived of strength. I believe that a son of Francisco Pinelo will
+        carry this letter. Entertain him well, because he does everything for me
+        that he can, with much love and a cheerful goodwill. The caravel which
+        broke her mast in starting from Santo Domingo has arrived in the
+        Algarves. She brings the records of the case of the Porras brothers.
+        Such ugly things and such grievous cruelty as appear in this matter
+        never were seen. If their Highnesses do not punish it, I do not know who
+        will dare to go out in their service with people.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "To-day is Monday. I will endeavour to have your uncle and brother start
+        to-morrow. Remember to write me very often, and tell Diego Mendez to
+        write at length. Each day messengers go from here yonder. May our Lord
+        have you in His Holy keeping.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "Done in Seville, December 1.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "Your father who loves you as himself.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        .S.<br /> .S.A.S.<br /> XMY<br /> Xpo FERENS."
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      The gout from which the Admiral suffered made riding impossible to him,
+      and he had arranged to have himself carried to Court on a litter when he
+      was able to move. There is a grim and dismal significance in the
+      particular litter that had been chosen: it was no other than the funeral
+      bier which belonged to the Cathedral of Seville and had been built for
+      Cardinal Mendoza. A minute of the Cathedral Chapter records the granting
+      to Columbus of the use of this strange conveyance; but one is glad to
+      think that he ultimately made his journey in a less grim though more
+      humble method. But what are we to think of the taste of a man who would
+      rather travel in a bier, so long as it had been associated with the
+      splendid obsequies of a cardinal, than in the ordinary litter of every-day
+      use? It is but the old passion for state and splendour thus dismally
+      breaking out again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He speaks of living on borrowed funds and of having devoted all his
+      resources to the payment of his crew; but that may be taken as an
+      exaggeration. He may have borrowed, but the man who can borrow easily from
+      banks cannot be regarded as a poor man. One is nevertheless grateful for
+      these references, since they commemorate the Admiral's unfailing loyalty
+      to those who shared his hardships, and his unwearied efforts to see that
+      they received what was due to them. Pleasant also are the evidences of
+      warm family affection in those simple words of brotherly love, and the
+      affecting advice to Diego that he should love his brother Ferdinand as
+      Christopher loved Bartholomew. It is a pleasant oasis in this dreary,
+      sordid wailing after thirds and tenths and eighths. Good Diego Mendez,
+      that honourable gentleman, was evidently also at Court at this time,
+      honestly striving, we may be sure, to say a good word for the Admiral.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some time after this letter was written, and before the writing of the
+      next, news reached Seville of the death of Queen Isabella. For ten years
+      her kind heart had been wrung by many sorrows. Her mother had died in
+      1496; the next year her only son and heir to the crown had followed; and
+      within yet another year had died her favourite daughter, the Queen of
+      Portugal. Her other children were all scattered with the exception of
+      Juana, whose semi-imbecile condition caused her parents an anxiety greater
+      even than that caused by death. As Isabella's life thus closed sombrely
+      in, she applied herself more closely and more narrowly to such pious
+      consolations as were available. News from Flanders of the scandalous
+      scenes between Philip and Juana in the summer of 1504 brought on an
+      illness from which she really never recovered, a kind of feverish distress
+      of mind and body in which her only alleviation was the transaction of such
+      business as was possible for her in the direction of humanity and
+      enlightenment. She still received men of intellect and renown, especially
+      travellers. But she knew that her end was near, and as early as October
+      she had made her will, in which her wishes as to the succession and
+      government of Castile were clearly laid down. There was no mention of
+      Columbus in this will, which afterwards greatly mortified him; but it is
+      possible that the poor Queen had by this time, even against her wish, come
+      to share the opinions of her advisers that the rule of Columbus in the
+      West Indies had not brought the most humane and happy results possible to
+      the people there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During October and November her life thus beat itself away in a succession
+      of duties faithfully performed, tasks duly finished, preparations for the
+      great change duly made. She died, as she would have wished to die,
+      surrounded by friends who loved and admired her, and fortified by the last
+      rites of the Church for her journey into the unknown. Date, November 26,
+      1504, in the fifty-fourth year of her age.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /> <a name="isabella" id="isabella"></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
+      <img alt="isabella.jpg (43K)" src="images/isabella.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Columbus had evidently received the news from a public source, and felt
+      mortified that Diego should not have written him a special letter.
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        Letter written by CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS to DON DIEGO, his Son, December
+        3, 1504.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "VERY DEAR SON,&mdash;I wrote you at length day before yesterday and
+        sent it by Francisco Pinelo, and with this letter I send you a very full
+        memorandum. I am very much astonished not to receive a letter from you
+        or from any one else, and this astonishment is shared by all who know
+        me. Every one here has letters, and I, who have more reason to expect
+        them, have none. Great care should be taken about this matter. The
+        memorandum of which I have spoken above says enough, and on this account
+        I do not speak more at length here. Your brother and your uncle and
+        Carbajal are going yonder. You will learn from them what is not said
+        here. May our Lord have you in His Holy keeping.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "Done in Seville, December 3.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "Your father who loves you more than himself.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        .S.<br /> .S.A.S.<br /> XMY<br /> Xpo FERENS."
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      Document of COLUMBUS addressed to his Son, DIEGO, and intended to
+      accompany the preceding letter.
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "A memorandum for you, my very dear son, Don Diego, of what occurs to me
+        at the present time which must be done:&mdash;The principal thing is,
+        affectionately and with great devotion to commend the soul of the Queen,
+        our Lady, to God. Her life was always Catholic and Holy and ready for
+        all the things of His holy service, and for this reason it must be
+        believed that she is in His holy glory and beyond the desires of this
+        rough and wearisome world. Then the next thing is to be watchful and
+        exert one's self in the service of the King, our Lord, and to strive to
+        keep him from being troubled. His Highness is the head of Christendom.
+        See the proverb which says that when the head aches, all the members
+        ache. So that all good Christians should entreat that he may have long
+        life and health: and those of us who are obliged to serve him more than
+        others must join in this supplication with great earnestness and
+        diligence. This reason prompts me now with my severe illness to write
+        you what I am writing here, that his Highness may dispose matters for
+        his service: and for the better fulfilment I am sending your brother
+        there, who, although he is a child in days, is not a child in
+        understanding; and I am sending your uncle and Carbajal, so that if
+        this, my writing, is not sufficient, they, together with yourself, can
+        furnish verbal evidence. In my opinion there is nothing so necessary for
+        the service of his Highness as the disposition and remedying of the
+        affair of the Indies.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "His Highness must now have there more than 40,000 or 50,000 gold
+        pieces. I learned when I was there that the Governor had no desire to
+        send it to him. It is believed among the other people as well that there
+        will be 150,000 pesos more, and the mines are very rich and productive.
+        Most of the people there are common and ignorant, and care very little
+        for the circumstances. The Governor is very much hated by all of them,
+        and it is to be feared that they may at some time rebel. If this should
+        occur, which God forbid, the remedy for the matter would then be
+        difficult: and so it would be if injustice were used toward them, either
+        here or in other places, with the great fame of the gold. My opinion is
+        that his Highness should investigate this affair quickly and by means of
+        a person who is interested and who can go there with 150 or 200 people
+        well equipped, and remain there until it is well settled and without
+        suspicion, which cannot be done in less than three months: and that an
+        endeavour be made to raise two or three forces there. The gold there is
+        exposed to great risk, as there are very few people to protect it. I say
+        that there is a proverb here which says that the presence of the owner
+        makes the horse fat. Here and wherever I may be, I shall serve their
+        Highnesses with joy, until my soul leaves this body.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "Above I said that his Highness is the head of the Christians, and that
+        it is necessary for him to occupy himself in preserving them and their
+        lands. For this reason people say that he cannot thus provide a good
+        government for all these Indies, and that they are being lost and do not
+        yield a profit, neither are they being handled in a reasonable manner.
+        In my opinion it would serve him to intrust this matter to some one who
+        is distressed over the bad treatment of his subjects.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "I wrote a very long letter to his Highness as soon as I arrived here,
+        fully stating the evils which require a prompt and efficient remedy at
+        once. I have received no reply, nor have I seen any provision made in
+        the matter. Some vessels are detained in San Lucar by the weather. I
+        have told these gentlemen of the Board of Trade that they must order
+        them held until the King, our Lord, makes provision in the matter,
+        either by some person with other people, or by writing. This is very
+        necessary and I know what I say. It is necessary that the authorities
+        should order all the ports searched diligently, to see that no one goes
+        yonder to the Indies without licence. I have already said that there is
+        a great deal of gold collected in straw houses without any means of
+        defence, and there are many disorderly people in the country, and that
+        the Governor is hated, and that little punishment is inflicted and has
+        been inflicted upon those who have committed crimes and have come out
+        with their treasonable conduct approved.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "If his Highness decides to make some provision, it must be done at
+        once, so that these vessels may not be injured.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "I have heard that three Bishops are to be elected and sent to Espanola.
+        If it pleases his Highness to hear me before concluding this matter, I
+        will tell in what manner God our Lord may be well served and his
+        Highness served and satisfied.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "I have given lengthy consideration to the provision for Espanola:"
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      Yes, the Queen is in His Holy Glory, and beyond the desires of this rough
+      and wearisome world; but we are not; we are still in a world where fifty
+      thousand gold pieces can be of use to us, and where a word spoken in
+      season, even in such a season of darkness, may have its effect with the
+      King. A strange time to talk to the King about gold; and perhaps Diego was
+      wiser and kinder than his father thought in not immediately taking this
+      strange document to King Ferdinand.
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        Letter written by CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS to DON DIEGO, his Son, December
+        13, 1504
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "VERY DEAR SON,&mdash;It is now eight days since your uncle and your
+        brother and Carbajal left here together, to kiss the royal hands of his
+        Highness, and to give an account of the voyage, and also to aid you in
+        the negotiation of whatever may prove to be necessary there.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "Don Ferdinand took from here 150 ducats to be expended at his
+        discretion. He will have to spend some of it, but he will give you what
+        he has remaining. He also carries a letter of credit for these
+        merchants. You will see that it is very necessary to be careful in
+        dealing with them, because I had trouble there with the Governor, as
+        every one told me that I had there 11,000 or 12,000 castellanos, and I
+        had only 4000. He wished to charge me with things for which I am not
+        indebted, and I, confiding in the promise of their Highnesses, who
+        ordered everything restored to me, decided to leave these charges in the
+        hope of calling him to account for them. If any one has money there,
+        they do not dare ask for it, on account of his haughtiness. I very well
+        know that after my departure he must have received more than 5000
+        castellanos. If it were possible for you to obtain from his Highness an
+        authoritative letter to the Governor, ordering him to send the money
+        without delay and a full account of what belongs to me, by the person I
+        might send there with my power of attorney, it would be well; because he
+        will not give it in any other manner, neither to my friend Diaz or
+        Velasquez, and they dare not even speak of it to him. Carbajal will very
+        well know how this must be done. Let him see this letter. The 150 ducats
+        which Luis de Soria sent you when I came are paid according to his
+        desire.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "I wrote you at length and sent the letter by Don Ferdinand, also a
+        memorandum. Now that I have thought over the matter further, I say that,
+        since at the time of my departure their Highnesses said over their
+        signature and verbally, that they would give me all that belongs to me,
+        according to my privileges&mdash;that the claim for the third or the
+        tenth and eighth mentioned in the memorandum must be relinquished, and
+        instead the chapter of their letter must be shown where they write what
+        I have said, and all that belongs to me must be required, as you have it
+        in writing in the Book of Privileges, in which is also set forth the
+        reason for my receiving the third, eighth, and tenth; as there is always
+        an opportunity to reduce the sum desired by a person, although his
+        Highness says in his letter that he wishes to give me all that belongs
+        to me. Carbajal will understand me very well if he sees this letter, and
+        every one else as well, as it is very clear. I also wrote to his
+        Highness and finally reminded him that he must provide at once for this
+        affair of the Indies, that the people there may not be disturbed, and
+        also reminding him of the promise stated above. You ought to see the
+        letter.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "With this letter I send you another letter of credit for the said
+        merchants. I have already explained to you the reasons why expenses
+        should be moderated. Show your uncle due respect, and treat your brother
+        as an elder brother should treat a younger. You have no other brother,
+        and praised be our Lord, he is such a one as you need very much. He has
+        proved and proves to be very intelligent. Honour Carbajal and Jeronimo
+        and Diego Mendez. Commend me to them all. I do not write them as there
+        is nothing to write and this messenger is in haste. It is frequently
+        rumoured here that the Queen, whom God has, has left an order that I be
+        restored to the possession of the Indies. On arrival, the notary of the
+        fleet will send you the records and the original of the case of the
+        Porras brothers. I have received no news from your uncle and brother
+        since they left. The water has been so high here that the river entered
+        the city.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "If Agostin Italian and Francisco de Grimaldo do not wish to give you
+        the money you need, look for others there who are willing to give it to
+        you. On the arrival here of your signature I will at once pay them all
+        that you have received: for at present there is not a person here by
+        whom I can send you money.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "Done to-day, Friday, December 13, 1504
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "Your father who loves you more than himself.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        .S.<br /> .S.A.S.<br /> XMY<br /> Xpo FERENS."
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br /><br />
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        Letter written by CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS to his Son, DON DIEGO, December
+        21, 1504.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "VERY DEAR SON, The Lord Adelantado and your brother and Carbajal left
+        here sixteen days ago to go to the Court. They have not written me
+        since. Don Ferdinand carried 150 ducats. He must spend what is
+        necessary, and he carries a letter, that the merchants may furnish you
+        with money. I have sent you another letter since, with the endorsement
+        of Francisco de Ribarol, by Zamora, the courier, and told you that if
+        you had made provision for yourself by means of my letter, not to use
+        that of Francisco de Ribarol. I say the same now in regard to another
+        letter which I send you with this one, for Francisco Doria, which letter
+        I send you for greater security that you may not fail to be provided
+        with money. I have already told you how necessary it is to be careful in
+        the expenditure of the money, until their Highnesses give us law and
+        justice. I also told you that I had spent 1200 castellanos in bringing
+        these people to Castile, of which his Highness owes me the greater part,
+        and I wrote him in regard to it asking him to order the account settled.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "If possible I should like to receive letters here each day. I complain
+        of Diego Mendez and of Jeronimo, as they do not write me: and then of
+        the others who do not write when they arrive there. We must strive to
+        learn whether the Queen, whom God has in His keeping, said anything
+        about me in her will, and we must hurry the Lord Bishop of Palencia, who
+        caused the possession of the Indies by their Highnesses and my remaining
+        in Castile, for I was already on my way to leave it. And the Lord
+        Chamberlain of his Highness must also be hurried. If by chance the
+        affair comes to discussion, you must strive to have them see the writing
+        which is in the Book of Privileges, which shows the reason why the
+        third, eighth, and tenth are owing me, as I told you in another letter.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "I have written to the Holy Father in regard to my voyage, as he
+        complained of me because I did not write him. I send you a copy of the
+        letter. I would like to have the King, our Lord, or the Lord Bishop of
+        Palencia see it before I send the letter, in order to avoid false
+        representations.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "Camacho has told a thousand falsehoods about me. To my regret I ordered
+        him arrested. He is in the church. He says that after the Holidays are
+        past, he will go there if he is able. If I owe him, he must show by what
+        reason; for I make oath that I do not know it, nor is it true.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "If without importunity a licence can be procured for me to go on
+        mule-back, I will try to leave for the Court after January, and I will
+        even go without this licence. But haste must be made that the loss of
+        the Indies, which is now imminent, may not take place. May our Lord have
+        you in His keeping.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "Done to-day, December 21.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "Your father who loves you more than himself.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        .S.<br /> .S.A.S.<br /> XMY<br /> Xpo FERENS."
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "This tenth which they give me is not the tenth which was promised me.
+        The Privileges tell what it is, and there is also due me the tenth of
+        the profit derived from merchandise and from all other things, of which
+        I have received nothing. Carbajal understands me well. Also remind
+        Carbajal to obtain a letter from his Highness for the Governor,
+        directing him to send his accounts and the money I have there, at once.
+        And it would be well that a Repostero of his Highness should go there to
+        receive this money, as there must be a large amount due me. I will
+        strive to have these gentlemen of the Board of Trade send also to say to
+        the Governor that he must send my share together with the gold belonging
+        to their Highnesses. But the remedy for the other matter must not be
+        neglected there on this account. I say that 7000 or 8000 pesos must have
+        passed to my credit there, which sum has been received since I left,
+        besides the other money which was not given to me.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "To my very dear son Don Diego at the Court."
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      All this struggling for the due payment of eighths and tenths makes
+      wearisome reading, and we need not follow the Admiral into his
+      distinctions between one kind of tenth and another. There is something to
+      be said on his side, it must be remembered; the man had not received what
+      was due to him; and although he was not in actual poverty, his only
+      property in this world consisted of these very thirds and eighths and
+      tenths. But if we are inclined to think poorly of the Admiral for his
+      dismal pertinacity, what are we to think of the people who took advantage
+      of their high position to ignore consistently the just claims made upon
+      them?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is no end to the Admiral's letter-writing at this time. Fortunately
+      for us his letter to the Pope has been lost, or else we should have to
+      insert it here; and we have had quite enough of his theological stupors.
+      As for the Queen's will, there was no mention of the Admiral in it; and
+      her only reference to the Indies showed that she had begun to realise some
+      of the disasters following his rule there, for the provisions that are
+      concerned with the New World refer exclusively to the treatment of the
+      natives, to whose succour, long after they were past succour, the hand of
+      Isabella was stretched out from the grave. The licence to travel on
+      mule-back which the Admiral asked for was made necessary by a law which
+      had been passed forbidding the use of mules for this purpose throughout
+      Spain. There had been a scarcity of horses for mounting the royal cavalry,
+      and it was thought that the breeding of horses had been neglected on
+      account of the greater cheapness and utility of mules. It was to encourage
+      the use and breeding of horses that an interdict was laid on the use of
+      mules, and only the very highest persons in the land were allowed to
+      employ them.
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        Letter written by CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS to his Son, DON DIEGO, December
+        29, 1504.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "VERY DEAR SON,&mdash;I wrote you at length and sent it by Don
+        Ferdinand, who left to go yonder twenty-three days ago to-day, with the
+        Lord Adelantado and Carbajal, from whom I have since heard nothing.
+        Sixteen days ago to-day I wrote you and sent it by Zamora, the courier,
+        and I sent you a letter of credit for these merchants endorsed by
+        Francisco de Ribarol, telling them to give you the money you might ask
+        for. And then, about eight days ago, I sent you by another courier a
+        letter endorsed by Francisco Soria, and these letters are directed to
+        Pantaleon and Agostin Italian, that they may give it to you. And with
+        these letters goes a copy of a letter which I wrote to the Holy Father
+        in regard to the affairs of the Indies, that he might not complain of me
+        any more. I sent this copy for his Highness to see, or the Lord Bishop
+        of Palencia, so as to avoid false representations. The payment of the
+        people who went with me has been delayed. I have provided for them here
+        what I have been able. They are poor and obliged to go in order to earn
+        a living. They decided to go yonder. They have been told here that they
+        will be dealt with as favourably as possible, and this is right,
+        although among them there are some who merit punishment more than
+        favours. This is said of the rebels. I gave these people a letter for
+        the Lord Bishop of Palencia. Read it, and if it is necessary for them to
+        go and petition his Highness, urge your uncle and brother and Carbajal
+        to read it also, so that you can all help them as much as possible. It
+        is right and a work of mercy, for no one ever earned money with so many
+        dangers and hardships and no one has ever rendered such great service as
+        these people. It is said that Camacho and Master Bernal wish to go there&mdash;two
+        creatures for whom God works few miracles: but if they go, it will be to
+        do harm rather than good. They can do little because the truth always
+        prevails, as it did in Espanola, from which wicked people by means of
+        falsehoods have prevented any profit being received up to the present
+        time. It is said that this Master Bernal was the beginning of the
+        treason. He was taken and accused of many misdemeanours, for each one of
+        which he deserved to be quartered. At the request of your uncle and of
+        others he was pardoned, on condition that if he ever said the least word
+        against me and my state the pardon should be revoked and he should be
+        under condemnation. I send you a copy of the case in this letter. I send
+        you a legal document about Camacho. For more than eight days he has not
+        left the church on account of his rash statements and falsehoods. He has
+        a will made by Terreros, and other relatives of the latter have another
+        will of more recent date, which renders the first will null, as far as
+        the inheritance is concerned: and I am entreated to enforce the latter
+        will, so that Camacho will be obliged to restore what he has received. I
+        shall order a legal document drawn up and served upon him, because I
+        believe it is a work of mercy to punish him, as he is so unbridled in
+        his speech that some one must punish him without the rod: and it will
+        not be so much against the conscience of the chastiser, and will injure
+        him more. Diego Mendez knows Master Bernal and his works very well. The
+        Governor wished to imprison him at Espanola and left him to my
+        consideration. It is said that he killed two men there with medicines in
+        revenge for something of less account than three beans. I would be glad
+        of the licence to travel on muleback and of a good mule, if they can be
+        obtained without difficulty. Consult all about our affairs, and tell
+        them that I do not write them in particular on account of the great pain
+        I feel when writing. I do not say that they must do the same, but that
+        each one must write me and very often, for I feel great sorrow that all
+        the world should have letters from there each day, and I have nothing,
+        when I have so many people there. Commend me to the Lord Adelantado in
+        his favour, and give my regards to your brother and to all the others.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "Done at Seville, December 29.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "Your father who loves you more than himself.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        .S.<br /> .S.A.S.<br /> XMY<br /> Xpo FERENS."
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      "I say further that if our affairs are to be settled according to
+      conscience, that the chapter of the letter which their Highnesses wrote me
+      when I departed, in which they say they will order you placed in
+      possession, must be shown; and the writing must also be shown which is in
+      the Book of Privileges, which shows how in reason and in justice the third
+      and eighth and the tenth are mine. There will always be opportunity to
+      make reductions from this amount."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Columbus's requests were not all for himself; nothing could be more
+      sincere or generous than the spirit in which he always strove to secure
+      the just payment of his mariners.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Otherwise he is still concerned with the favour shown to those who were
+      treasonable to him. Camacho was still hiding in a church, probably from
+      the wrath of Bartholomew Columbus; but Christopher has more subtle ways of
+      punishment. A legal document, he considers, will be better than a rod; "it
+      will not be so much against the conscience of the chastiser, and will
+      injure him (the chastised) more."
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        Letter written by CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS to DON DIEGO, his Son, January
+        18, 1505.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "VERY DEAR SON,&mdash;I wrote you at length by the courier who will
+        arrive there to-day, and sent you a letter for the Lord Chamberlain. I
+        intended to inclose in it a copy of that chapter of the letter from
+        their Highnesses in which they say they will order you placed in
+        possession; but I forgot to do it here. Zamora, the courier, came. I
+        read your letter and also those of your uncle and brother and Carbajal,
+        and felt great pleasure in learning that they had arrived well, as I had
+        been very anxious about them. Diego Mendez will leave here in three or
+        four days with the order of payment prepared. He will take a long
+        statement of everything and I will write to Juan Velasquez. I desire his
+        friendship and service. I believe that he is a very honourable
+        gentleman. If the Lord Bishop of Palencia has come, or comes, tell him
+        how much pleased I have been with his prosperity, and that if I go there
+        I must stop with his Worship even if he does not wish it, and that we
+        must return to our first fraternal love. And that he could not refuse it
+        because my service will force him to have it thus. I said that the
+        letter for the Holy Father was sent that his Worship might see it if he
+        was there, and also the Lord Archbishop of Seville, as the King might
+        not have opportunity to read it. I have already told you that the
+        petition to their Highnesses must be for the fulfilment of what they
+        wrote me about the possession and of the rest which was promised me. I
+        said that this chapter of the letter must be shown them and said that it
+        must not be delayed, and that this is advisable for an infinite number
+        of reasons. His Highness may believe that, however much he gives me, the
+        increase of his exalted dominions and revenue will be in the proportion
+        of 100 to 1, and that there is no comparison between what has been done
+        and what is to be done. The sending of a Bishop to Espanola must be
+        delayed until I speak to his Highness. It must not be as in the other
+        cases when it was thought to mend matters and they were spoiled. There
+        have been some cold days here and they have caused me great fatigue and
+        fatigue me now. Commend me to the favour of the Lord Adelantado. May our
+        Lord guard and bless you and your brother. Give my regards to Carbajal
+        and Jeronimo. Diego Mendez will carry a full pouch there. I believe that
+        the affair of which you wrote can be very easily managed. The vessels
+        from the Indies have not arrived from Lisbon. They brought a great deal
+        of gold, and none for me. So great a mockery was never seen, for I left
+        there 60,000 pesos smelted. His Highness should not allow so great an
+        affair to be ruined, as is now taking place. He now sends to the
+        Governor a new provision. I do not know what it is about. I expect
+        letters each day. Be very careful about expenditures, for it is
+        necessary.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "Done January 18. "Your father who loves you more than himself.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      There is playful reference here to Fonseca, with whom Columbus was
+      evidently now reconciled; and he was to be buttonholed and made to read
+      the Admiral's letter to the Pope. Diego Mendez is about to start, and is
+      to make a "long statement"; and in the meantime the Admiral will write as
+      many long letters as he has time for. Was there no friend at hand, I
+      wonder, with wit enough to tell the Admiral that every word he wrote about
+      his grievances was sealing his doom, so far as the King was concerned? No
+      human being could have endured with patience this continuous heavy firing
+      at long range to which the Admiral subjected his friends at Court; every
+      post that arrived was loaded with a shrapnel of grievances, the dull echo
+      of which must have made the ears of those who heard it echo with
+      weariness. Things were evidently humming in Espanola; large cargoes of
+      negroes had been sent out to take the place of the dead natives, and under
+      the harsh driving of Ovando the mines were producing heavily. The vessels
+      that arrived from the Indies brought a great deal of gold; "but none for
+      me."
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        Letter written by CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS to his Son, DON DIEGO, February
+        5, 1505.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "VERY DEAR SON,&mdash;Diego Mendez left here Monday, the 3rd of this
+        month. After his departure I talked with Amerigo Vespucci, the bearer of
+        this letter, who is going yonder, where he is called in regard to
+        matters of navigation. He was always desirous of pleasing me. He is a
+        very honourable man. Fortune has been adverse to him as it has been to
+        many others. His labours have not profited him as much as reason
+        demands. He goes for me, and is very desirous of doing something to
+        benefit me if it is in his power. I do not know of anything in which I
+        can instruct him to my benefit, because I do not know what is wanted of
+        him there. He is going with the determination to do everything for me in
+        his power. See what he can do to profit me there, and strive to have him
+        do it; for he will do everything, and will speak and will place it in
+        operation: and it must all be done secretly so that there may be no
+        suspicion.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "I have told him all that could be told regarding this matter, and have
+        informed him of the payment which has been made to me and is being made.
+        This letter is for the Lord Adelantado also, that he may see how Amerigo
+        Vespucci can be useful, and advise him about it. His Highness may
+        believe that his ships went to the best and richest of the Indies, and
+        if anything remains to be learned more than has been told, I will give
+        the information yonder verbally, because it is impossible to give it in
+        writing. May our Lord have you in his Holy keeping.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "Done in Seville, February 5.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "Your father who loves you more than himself.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      This letter has a significance which raises it out of the ruck of this
+      complaining correspondence. Amerigo Vespucci had just returned from his
+      long voyage in the West, when he had navigated along an immense stretch of
+      the coast of America, both north and south, and had laid the foundations
+      of a fame which was, for a time at least, to eclipse that of Columbus.
+      Probably neither of the two men realised it at this interview, or Columbus
+      would hardly have felt so cordially towards the man who was destined to
+      rob him of so much glory. As a matter of fact the practical Spaniards were
+      now judging entirely by results; and a year or two later, when the fame of
+      Columbus had sunk to insignificance, he was merely referred to as the
+      discoverer of certain islands, while Vespucci, who after all had only
+      followed in his lead, was hailed as the discoverer of a great continent.
+      Vespucci has been unjustly blamed for this state of affairs, although he
+      could no more control the public estimate of his services than Columbus
+      could. He was a more practical man than Columbus, and he made a much
+      better impression on really wise and intelligent men; and his discoveries
+      were immediately associated with trade and colonial development, while
+      Columbus had little to show for his discoveries during his lifetime but a
+      handful of gold dust and a few cargoes of slaves. At any rate it was a
+      graceful act on the part of Vespucci, whose star was in the ascendant, to
+      go and seek out the Admiral, whose day was fast verging to night; it was
+      one of those disinterested actions that live and have a value of their
+      own, and that shine out happily amid the surrounding murk and confusion.
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        Letter signed by CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS to DON DIEGO, his Son, February
+        25, 1505.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "VERY DEAR SON,&mdash;The Licientiate de Zea is a person whom I desire
+        to honour. He has in his charge two men who are under prosecution at the
+        hands of justice, as shown by the information which is inclosed in this
+        letter. See that Diego Mendez places the said petition with the others,
+        that they may be given to his Highness during Holy Week for pardon. If
+        the pardon is granted, it is well, and if not, look for some other
+        manner of obtaining it. May our Lord have you in His Holy keeping. Done
+        in Seville, February 25, 1505. I wrote you and sent it by Amerigo
+        Vespucci. See that he sends you the letter unless you have already
+        received it.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        "Your father.
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        .S.<br /> .S.A.S.<br /> XMY<br /> Xpo FERENS."
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      This is the last letter of Columbus known to us otherwise an entirely
+      unimportant document, dealing with the most transient affairs. With it we
+      gladly bring to an end this exposure of a greedy and querulous period,
+      which speaks so eloquently for itself that the less we say and comment on
+      it the better.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /> <a name="ferdinand" id="ferdinand"></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
+      <img alt="ferdinand.jpg (58K)" src="images/ferdinand.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the month of May the Admiral was well enough at last to undertake the
+      journey to Segovia. He travelled on a mule, and was accompanied by his
+      brother Bartholomew and his son Ferdinand. When he reached the Court he
+      found the King civil and outwardly attentive to his recitals, but
+      apparently content with a show of civility and outward attention. Columbus
+      was becoming really a nuisance; that is the melancholy truth. The King had
+      his own affairs to attend to; he was already meditating a second marriage,
+      and thinking of the young bride he was to bring home to the vacant place
+      of Isabella; and the very iteration of Columbus's complaints and demands
+      had made them lose all significance for the King. He waved them aside with
+      polite and empty promises, as people do the demands of importunate
+      children; and finally, to appease the Admiral and to get rid of the
+      intolerable nuisance of his applications, he referred the whole question,
+      first to Archbishop DEA, and then to the body of councillors which had
+      been appointed to interpret Queen Isabella's will. The whole question at
+      issue was whether or not the original agreement with Columbus, which had
+      been made before his discoveries, should be carried out. The King, who had
+      foolishly subscribed to it simply as a matter of form, never believing
+      that anything much could come of it, was determined that it should not be
+      carried out, as it would give Columbus a wealth and power to which no mere
+      subject of a crown was entitled. The Admiral held fast to his privileges;
+      the only thing that he would consent to submit to arbitration was the
+      question of his revenues; but his titles and territorial authorities he
+      absolutely stuck to. Of course the council did exactly what the King had
+      done. They talked about the thing a great deal, but they did nothing.
+      Columbus was an invalid and broken man, who might die any day, and it was
+      obviously to their interest to gain time by discussion and delay&mdash;a
+      cruel game for our Christopher, who knew his days on earth to be numbered,
+      and who struggled in that web of time in which mortals try to hurry the
+      events of the present and delay the events of the future. Meanwhile Philip
+      of Austria and his wife Juana, Isabella's daughter, had arrived from
+      Flanders to assume the crown of Castile, which Isabella had bequeathed to
+      them. Columbus saw a chance for himself in this coming change, and he sent
+      Bartholomew as an envoy to greet the new Sovereigns, and to enlist their
+      services on the Admiral's behalf. Bartholomew was very well received, but
+      he was too late to be of use to the Admiral, whom he never saw again; and
+      this is our farewell to Bartholomew, who passes out of our narrative here.
+      He went to Rome after Christopher's death on a mission to the Pope
+      concerning some fresh voyages of discovery; and in 1508 he made, so far as
+      we know, his one excursion into romance, when he assisted at the
+      production of an illegitimate little girl&mdash;his only descendant. He
+      returned to Espanola under the governorship of his nephew Diego, and died
+      there in 1514&mdash;stern, valiant, brotherly soul, whose devotion to
+      Christopher must be for ever remembered and honoured with the name of the
+      Admiral.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From Segovia Columbus followed the Court to Salamanca and thence to
+      Valladolid, where his increasing illness kept him a prisoner after the
+      Court had left to greet Philip and Juana. He had been in attendance upon
+      it for nearly a year, and without any results: and now, as his infirmity
+      increased, he turned to the settling of his own affairs, and drawing up of
+      wills and codicils&mdash;all very elaborate and precise. In these
+      occupations his worldly affairs were duly rounded off; and on May 19,
+      1506, having finally ratified a will which he had made in Segovia a year
+      before, in which the descent of his honours was entailed upon Diego and
+      his heirs, or failing him Ferdinand and his heirs, or failing him
+      Bartholomew and his heirs, he turned to the settlement of his soul.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His illness had increased gradually but surely, and he must have known
+      that he was dying. He was not without friends, among them the faithful
+      Diego Mendez, his son Ferdinand, and a few others. His lodging was in a
+      small house in an unimportant street of Valladolid, now called the "Calle
+      de Colon"; the house, .No. 7, still standing, and to be seen by curious
+      eyes. As the end approached, the Admiral, who was being attended by
+      Franciscan monks, had himself clothed in a Franciscan habit; and so, on
+      the 20th May 1506, he lay upon his bed, breathing out his life.
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        . . . And as strange thoughts<br /> Grow with a certain humming in my
+        ears,<br /> About the life before I lived this life,<br /> And this life
+        too, Popes, Cardinals, and priests,<br /> Your tall pale mother with her
+        talking eyes<br /> And new-found agate urns fresh as day . . .
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      . . . we do not know what his thoughts were, as the shadows grew deeper
+      about him, as the sounds of the world, the noises from the sunny street,
+      grew fainter, and the images and sounds of memory clearer and louder.
+      Perhaps as he lay there with closed eyes he remembered things long
+      forgotten, as dying people do; sounds and smells of the Vico Dritto di
+      Ponticelli, and the feel of the hot paving-stones down which his childish
+      feet used to run to the sea; noises of the sea also, the drowning swish of
+      waters and sudden roar of breakers sounding to anxiously strained ears in
+      the still night; bright sunlit pictures of faraway tropical shores, with
+      handsome olive figures glistening in the sun; the sight of strange faces,
+      the sound of strange speech, the smell of a strange land; the glitter of
+      gold; the sudden death-shriek breaking the stillness of some sylvan glade;
+      the sight of blood on the grass . . . . The Admiral's face undergoes a
+      change; there is a stir in the room; some one signs to the priest Gaspar,
+      who brings forth his sacred wafer and holy oils and administers the last
+      sacraments. The wrinkled eyelids flutter open, the sea-worn voice feebly
+      frames the responses; the dying eyes are fixed on the crucifix; and&mdash;"In
+      manus tuas Domine commendo spiritum meum." The Admiral is dead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /> <a name="deathplace" id="deathplace"></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
+      <img alt="deathplace.jpg (47K)" src="images/deathplace.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <a href="images/deathplace.jpg"> <img alt="Full Size"
+      src="images/enlarge.jpg" /></a> <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was in his fifty-sixth year, already an old man in body and mind; and
+      his death went entirely unmarked except by his immediate circle of
+      friends. Even Peter Martyr, who was in Valladolid just before and just
+      after it, and who was writing a series of letters to various
+      correspondents giving all the news of his day, never thought it worth
+      while to mention that Christopher Columbus was dead. His life flickered
+      out in the completest obscurity. It is not even known where he was first
+      buried; but probably it was in the Franciscan convent at Valladolid. This,
+      however, was only a temporary resting-place; and a few years later his
+      body was formally interred in the choir of the monastery of Las Cuevas at
+      Seville, there to lie for thirty years surrounded by continual chauntings.
+      After that it was translated to the cathedral in San Domingo; rested there
+      for 250 years, and then, on the cession of that part of the island to
+      France, the body was removed to Cuba. But the Admiral was by this time
+      nothing but a box of bones and dust, as also were brother Bartholomew and
+      son Diego, and Diego's son, all collected together in that place. There
+      were various examinations of the bone-boxes; one, supposed to be the
+      Admiral's, was taken to Cuba and solemnly buried there; and lately, after
+      the conquest of the island in the Spanish-American War, this box of bones
+      was elaborately conveyed to Seville, where it now rests.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But in the meanwhile the Chapter of the cathedral in San Domingo had made
+      new discoveries and examinations; had found another box of bones, which
+      bore to them authentic signs that the dust it contained was the Admiral's
+      and not his grandson's; and in spite of the Academy of History at Madrid,
+      it is indeed far from unlikely that the Admiral's dust does not lie in
+      Spain or Cuba, but in San Domingo still. Whole books have been written
+      about these boxes of bones; learned societies have argued about them,
+      experts have examined the bones and the boxes with microscopes; and
+      meantime the dust of Columbus, if we take the view that an error was
+      committed in the transference to Cuba, is not even collected all in one
+      box. A sacrilegious official acquired some of it when the boxes were
+      opened, and distributed it among various curiosity-hunters, who have
+      preserved it in caskets of crystal and silver. Thus a bit of him is worn
+      by an American lady in a crystal locket; a pinch of him lies in a glass
+      vial in a New York mansion; other pinches in the Lennox Library, New York,
+      in the Vatican, and in the University of Pavia. In such places, if the
+      Admiral should fail to appear at the first note of their trumpets, must
+      the Angels of the Resurrection make search.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="ch10d" id="ch10d"></a>CHAPTER X.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE MAN COLUMBUS
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is not in any leaden box or crystal vase that we must search for the
+      true remains of Christopher Columbus. Through these pages we have traced,
+      so far as has been possible, the course of his life, and followed him in
+      what he did; all of which is but preparation for our search for the true
+      man, and just estimate of what he was. We have seen, dimly, what his youth
+      was; that he came of poor people who were of no importance to the world at
+      large; that he earned his living as a working man; that he became
+      possessed of an Idea; that he fought manfully and diligently until he had
+      realised it; and that then he found himself in a position beyond his
+      powers to deal with, not being a strong enough swimmer to hold his own in
+      the rapid tide of events which he himself had set flowing; and we have
+      seen him sinking at last in that tide, weighed down by the very things for
+      which he had bargained and stipulated. If these pages had been devoted to
+      a critical examination of the historical documents on which his life-story
+      is based we should also have found that he continually told lies about
+      himself, and misrepresented facts when the truth proved inconvenient to
+      him; that he was vain and boastful to a degree that can only excite our
+      compassion. He was naturally and sincerely pious, and drew from his
+      religion much strength and spiritual nourishment; but he was also capable
+      of hypocrisy, and of using the self-same religion as a cloak for his greed
+      and cruelty. What is the final image that remains in our minds of such a
+      man? To answer this question we must examine his life in three dimensions.
+      There was its great outline of rise, zenith, and decline; there was its
+      outward history in minute detail, and its conduct in varying
+      circumstances; and there was the inner life of the man's soul, which was
+      perhaps simpler than some of us think. And first, as to his life as a
+      single thing. It rose in poverty, it reached a brief and dazzling zenith
+      of glory, it set in clouds and darkness; the fame of it suffered a long
+      night of eclipse, from which it was rescued and raised again to a height
+      of glory which unfortunately was in sufficiently founded on fact; and as a
+      reaction from this, it has been in danger of becoming entirely
+      discredited, and the man himself denounced as a fraud. The reason for
+      these surprising changes is that in those fifty-five years granted to
+      Columbus for the making of his life he did not consistently listen to that
+      inner voice which alone can hold a man on any constructive path. He
+      listened to it at intervals, and he drew his inspiration from it; but he
+      shut his ears when it had served him, when it had brought him what he
+      wanted. In his moments of success he guided himself by outward things; and
+      thus he was at one moment a seer and ready to be a martyr, and at the next
+      moment he was an opportunist, watching to see which way the wind would
+      blow, and ready to trim his sails in the necessary direction. Such conduct
+      of a man's life does not make for single light or for true greatness;
+      rather for dim, confused lights, and lofty heights obscured in cloud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If we examine his life in detail we find this alternating principle of
+      conduct revealed throughout it. He was by nature clever, kind-hearted,
+      rather large-souled, affectionate, and not very honest; all the acts
+      prompted by his nature bear the stamp of these qualities. To them his
+      early years had probably added little except piety, sharp practice, and
+      that uncomfortable sense, often bred amid narrow and poor surroundings,
+      that one must keep a sharp look-out for oneself if one is to get a share
+      of the world's good things. Something in his blood, moreover, craved for
+      dignity and the splendour of high-sounding titles; craved for power also,
+      and the fulfilment of an arrogant pride. All these things were in his
+      Ligurian blood, and he breathed them in with the very air of Genoa. His
+      mind was of the receptive rather than of the constructive kind, and it was
+      probably through those long years spent between sea voyages and brief
+      sojourns with his family in Genoa or Savona that he conceived that vague
+      Idea which, as I have tried to show, formed the impulse of his life during
+      its brief initiative period. Having once received this Idea of discovery
+      and like all other great ideas, it was in the air at the time and was
+      bound to take shape in some human brain&mdash;he had all his native and
+      personal qualities to bring to its support. The patience to await its
+      course he had learned from his humble and subordinate life. The ambition
+      to work for great rewards was in his blood and race; and to belief in
+      himself, his curious vein of mystical piety was able to add the support of
+      a ready belief in divine selection. This very time of waiting and
+      endurance of disappointments also helped to cultivate in his character two
+      separate qualities&mdash;an endurance or ability to withstand infinite
+      hardship and disappointment; and also a greedy pride that promised itself
+      great rewards for whatever should be endured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In all active matters Columbus was what we call a lucky man. It was luck
+      that brought him to Guanahani; and throughout his life this element of
+      good luck continually helped him. He was lucky, that is to say, in his
+      relation with inanimate things; but in his relations with men he was
+      almost as consistently unlucky. First of all he was probably a bad judge
+      of men. His humble origin and his lack of education naturally made him
+      distrustful. He trusted people whom he should have regarded with
+      suspicion, and he was suspicious of those whom he ought to have known he
+      could trust. If people pleased him, he elevated them with absurd rapidity
+      to stations far beyond their power to fill, and then wondered that they
+      sometimes turned upon him; if they committed crimes against him, he either
+      sought to regain their favour by forgiving them, or else dogged them with
+      a nagging, sulky resentment, and expected every one else to punish them
+      also. He could manage men if he were in the midst of them; there was
+      something winning as well as commanding about his actual presence, and
+      those who were devoted to him would have served him to the death. But when
+      he was not on the spot all his machineries and affairs went to pieces; he
+      had no true organising ability; no sooner did he take his hand off any
+      affair for which he was responsible than it immediately came to confusion.
+      All these defects are to be attributed to his lack of education and
+      knowledge of the world. Mental discipline is absolutely necessary for a
+      man who would discipline others; and knowledge of the world is essential
+      for one who would successfully deal with men, and distinguish those whom
+      he can from those whom he cannot trust. Defects of this nature, which
+      sometimes seem like flaws in the man's character, may be set down to this
+      one disability&mdash;that he was not educated and was not by habit a man
+      of the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All his sins of misgovernment, then, may be condoned on the ground that
+      governing is a science, and that Columbus had never learned it. What we do
+      find, however, is that the inner light that had led him across the seas
+      never burned clearly for him again, and was never his guide in the later
+      part of his life. Its radiance was quenched by the gleam of gold; for
+      there is no doubt that Columbus was a victim of that baleful influence
+      which has caused so much misery in this world. He was greedy of gold for
+      himself undoubtedly; but he was still more greedy of it for Spain. It was
+      his ambition to be the means of filling the coffers of the Spanish
+      Sovereigns and so acquiring immense dignity and glory for himself. He
+      believed that gold was in itself a very precious and estimable thing; he
+      knew that masses and candles could be bought for it, and very real
+      spiritual privileges; and as he made blunder after blunder, and saw evil
+      after evil heaping itself on his record in the New World, he became the
+      more eager and frantic to acquire such a treasure of gold that it would
+      wipe out the other evils of his administration. And once involved in that
+      circle, there was no help for him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man himself was a simple man; capable, when the whole of his various
+      qualities were directed upon one single thing, of that greatness which is
+      the crown of simplicity. Ambition was the keynote of his life; not an
+      unworthy keynote, by any means, if only the ambition be sound; but one
+      serious defect of Columbus's ambition was that it was retrospective rather
+      than perspective. He may have had, before he sailed from Palos, an
+      ambition to be the discoverer of a New World; but I do not think he had.
+      He believed there were islands or land to be discovered in the West if
+      only he pushed on far enough; and he was ambitious to find them and
+      vindicate his belief. Afterwards, when he had read a little more, and when
+      he conceived the plan of pretending that he had all along meant to
+      discover the Indies and a new road to the East, he acted in accordance
+      with that pretence; he tried to make his acts appear retrospectively as
+      though they had been prompted by a design quite different from that by
+      which they had really been prompted. When he found that his discovery was
+      regarded as a great scientific feat, he made haste to pretend that it had
+      all along been meant as such, and was in fact the outcome of an elaborate
+      scientific theory. In all this there is nothing for praise or admiration.
+      It indicates the presence of moral disease; but fortunately it is
+      functional rather than organic disease. He was right and sound at heart;
+      but he spread his sails too readily to the great winds of popular favour,
+      and the result was instability to himself, and often danger of shipwreck
+      to his soul.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The ultimate test of a man's character is how he behaves in certain
+      circumstances when there is no great audience to watch him, and when there
+      is no sovereign close at hand with bounties and rewards to offer. In a
+      word, what matters most is a man's behaviour, not as an admiral, or a
+      discoverer, or a viceroy, or a courtier, but as a man. In this respect
+      Columbus's character rings true. If he was little on little occasions, he
+      was also great on great occasions. The inner history of his fourth voyage,
+      if we could but know it and could take all the circumstances into account,
+      would probably reveal a degree of heroic endurance that has never been
+      surpassed in the history of mankind. Put him as a man face to face with a
+      difficulty, with nothing but his wits to devise with and his two hands to
+      act with, and he is never found wanting. And that is the kind of man of
+      whom discoverers are made. The mere mathematician may work out the facts
+      with the greatest accuracy and prove the existence of land at a certain
+      point; but there is great danger that he may be knocked down by a club on
+      his first landing on the beach, and never bring home any news of his
+      discovery. The great courtier may do well for himself and keep smooth and
+      politic relations with kings; the great administrator may found a
+      wonderful colony; but it is the man with the wits and the hands, and some
+      bigness of heart to tide him over daunting passages, that wins through the
+      first elementary risks of any great discovery. Properly considered,
+      Columbus's fame should rest simply on the answer to the single question,
+      "Did he discover new lands as he said he would?" That was the greatest
+      thing he could do, and the fact that he failed to do a great many other
+      things afterwards, failed the more conspicuously because his attempts were
+      so conspicuous, should have no effect on our estimate of his achievement.
+      The fame of it could no more be destroyed by himself than it can be
+      destroyed by us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      True understanding of a man and estimate of his character can only be
+      arrived at by methods at once more comprehensive and more subtle than
+      those commonly employed among men. Everything that he sees, does, and
+      suffers has its influence on the moulding of his character; and he must be
+      considered in relation to his physical environment, no less than to his
+      race and ancestry. Christopher Columbus spent a great part of his active
+      life on the sea; it was sea-life which inspired him with his great Idea,
+      it was by the conquest of the sea that he realised it; it was on the sea
+      that all his real triumphs over circumstance and his own weaker self were
+      won. The influences at work upon a man whose life is spent on the sea are
+      as different from those at work upon one who lives on the fields as the
+      environment of a gannet is different from the environment of a skylark:
+      and yet how often do we really attempt to make due allowance for this
+      great factor and try to estimate the extent of its moulding influence?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To live within sound or sight of the sea is to be conscious of a voice or
+      countenance that holds you in unyielding bonds. The voice, being
+      continuous, creeps into the very pulses and becomes part of the pervading
+      sound or silence of a man's environment; and the face, although it never
+      regards him, holds him with its changes and occupies his mind with its
+      everlasting riddle. Its profound inattention to man is part of its power
+      over his imagination; for although it is so absorbed and busy, and has
+      regard for sun and stars and a melancholy frowning concentration upon the
+      foot of cliffs, it is never face to face with man: he can never come
+      within the focus of its great glancing vision. It is somewhere beyond time
+      and space that the mighty perspective of those focal rays comes to its
+      point; and they are so wide and eternal in their sweep that we should find
+      their end, could we but trace them, in a condition far different from that
+      in which our finite views and ethics have place. In the man who lives much
+      on the sea we always find, if he be articulate, something of the dreamer
+      and the mystic; that very condition of mind, indeed, which we have traced
+      in Columbus, which sometimes led him to such heights, and sometimes
+      brought him to such variance with the human code.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A face that will not look upon you can never give up its secret to you;
+      and the face of the sea is like the face of a picture or a statue round
+      which you may circle, looking at it from this point and from that, but
+      whose regard is fixed on something beyond and invisible to you; or it is
+      like the face of a person well known to you in life, a face which you
+      often see in various surroundings, from different angles, now unconscious,
+      now in animated and smiling intercourse with some one else, but which
+      never turns upon you the light of friendly knowledge and recognition; in a
+      word, it is unconscious of you, like all elemental things. In the legend
+      of the Creation it is written that when God saw the gathering together of
+      the waters which he called the Seas, he saw that it was good; and he
+      perhaps had the right to say so. But the man who uses the sea and whose
+      life's pathway is laid on its unstable surface can hardly sum up his
+      impressions of it so simply as to say that it is good. It is indeed to him
+      neither good nor bad; it is utterly beyond and outside all he knows or
+      invents of good and bad, and can never have any concern with his good or
+      his bad. It remains the pathway and territory of powers and mysteries,
+      thoughts and energies on a gigantic and elemental scale; and that is why
+      the mind of man can never grapple with the unconsciousness of the sea or
+      his eye meet its eye. Yet it is the mariner's chief associate, whether as
+      adversary or as ally; his attitude to things outside himself is beyond all
+      doubt influenced by his attitude towards it; and a true comprehension of
+      the man Columbus must include a recognition of this constant influence on
+      him, and of whatever effect lifelong association with so profound and
+      mysterious an element may have had on his conduct in the world of men.
+      Better than many documents as an aid to our understanding of him would be
+      intimate association with the sea, and prolonged contemplation of that
+      face with which he was so familiar. We can never know the heart of it, but
+      we can at least look upon the face, turned from us though it is, upon
+      which he looked. Cloud shadows following a shimmer of sunlit ripples;
+      lines and runes traced on the surface of a blank calm; salt laughter of
+      purple furrows with the foam whipping off them; tides and eddies, whirls,
+      overfalls, ripples, breakers, seas mountains high-they are but movements
+      and changing expressions on an eternal countenance that once held his gaze
+      and wonder, as it will always hold the gaze and wonder of those who follow
+      the sea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So much of the man Christopher Columbus, who once was and no longer is;
+      perished, to the last bone and fibre of him, off the face of the earth,
+      and living now only by virtue of such truth as there was in him; who once
+      manfully, according to the light that he had, bore Christ on his shoulders
+      across stormy seas, and found him often, in that dim light, a heavy and
+      troublesome burden; who dropped light and burden together on the shores of
+      his discovery, and set going in that place of peace such a conflagration
+      as mankind is not likely to see again for many a generation, if indeed
+      ever again, in this much-tortured world, such ancient peace find place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
+
+
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