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.