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.