Produced by Don Kostuch
Transcribers Notes:
Several non-English proper names have been rendered in ASCI, omitting the
proper accents.
Page headers have been moved to the beginning of the appropriate paragraph
and several very long paragraphs have been split to correspond to the page
headers. See the DOC or PDF versions for the original pagination and map
images.
The following glossary provides references and definitions of unfamiliar
(to me) terms and names.
Adelantado
Governor or commander. Refers to Don Bartholomew Columbus (brother of
Christopher) in this volume.
Angelic Doctor:
Thomas Aquinas
Arroba
In Spanish-speaking countries, a weight of about 25 pounds.
In Portuguese-speaking countries, about 32 pounds.
Aught
Anything whatever.
Bartholomew Columbus
Brother of Christopher Columbus.
Cacique
Title for an Indian chief in the Spanish West Indies.
Ca da Mosto or Cadamosto
Alvise Ca' da Mosto, (1432-1488) Venetian explorer and trader who wrote
early accounts of western African exploration.
Caonabo
Cacique (chief) who destroyed Columbus's first garrison at La Navidad.
Cave of Adullam
About 13 miles west of Bethlehem where David gathered "every one that
was in distress, and every one that was in debt, and every one that was
discontented" (1 Sam. 22:2).
Cipango
Japan.
Compeer
Person of equal status; a peer.
Contumely
Contempt arising from arrogance; insolence.
Cosmography
Study of the universe, including geography and astronomy.
Diego Columbus
Son of Columbus and Donna Felipa
Don Diego Columbus
Brother of Columbus
Donna Felipa Munnis Perestrelo
Wife of Christopher Columbus. Daughter of the first governor of Porto
Santo. Only issue was Diego.
Dragon's blood
Thick red liquid from a palm (Daemonorops draco) in tropical Asia;
formerly used in varnishes and lacquers.
Encomienda
A grant entitling Spaniards to land plus the Native American inhabitants
of that land. The land and its inhabitants.
Fernando Columbus
Son of Christopher Columbus and Beatrice.
Friesland
Located in Europe on the North Sea between the Scheldt and Weser rivers.
Now a province of the northern Netherlands.
Galliot
Light, swift galley.
Gyve
Shackle for the leg.
Las Casas
Bartlome de las Casas is the chief source of information about the
islands after Columbus arrived. Other historians overlooked the Indian
slave trade, begun by Columbus; Las Casas denounced it as "among the
most unpardonable offenses ever committed against God and mankind."
Machiavelli: Nicolo Machiavelli (1469-1527)
Political philosopher, author of The Prince, that focuses on problems of
a monarch, the foundation of political authority and how to retain
power, rather than pursue ideals.
Maravedis
Spanish currency. One million Maravedis (one cuentos) in 1490 is
equivalent to about 308 English Pounds in 1860, or US$ 48,000 in 2005.
Martyr, Peter
Peter Martyr d'Anghera wrote early accounts of Columbus, Ojeda, Cortes,
and other Spanish explorers.
An Italian humanist from Florence.
Served as tutor in the Spanish court and had direct access to Columbus.
Author of "De Orbe Novo" describing the first European contacts with
native Americans.
Moors
Arabs
Provence
Province of southeast France bordering on the Mediterranean.
Pinzon, Martin Alonzo
Chief shipowner of Palos. Accompanied Columbus as a captain.
Paria, Gulf of
Between Trinidad and Venezuela.
Repartimiento
Spanish, from repartir, to divide.
Distribution of slaves or assessment of taxes.
Tagus
River on the Iberian Peninsula flowing westward
through central Portugal into the Atlantic.
Ultima Thule
Ancient name for northern-most region of the habitable world.
End of Transcribers Note
The Life of Columbus
GEORGE BELL & SONS,
LONDON: YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN
NEW YORK: 66, FIFTH AVENUE, AND
BOMBAY: 53, ESPLANADE ROAD
CAMBRIDGE: DEIGHTON, BELL & CO.
THE LIFE OF COLUMBUS
CHIEFLY BY
SIR ARTHUR HELPS K.C.B.
AUTHOR OF "THE SPANISH CONQUEST IN AMERICA"
"FRIENDS IN COUNCIL" ETC.
LONDON
GEORGE BELL AND SONS
1897
First published 1868.
Reprinted 1869, 1873, 1874, 1877, 1878, 1881,
1883, 1887, 1890, 1892.
Included in Bohn's Standard Library, 1896,
Reprinted 1897.
TO
WILLIAM HENRY STONE,
THIS LIFE OF COLUMBUS
IS DEDICATED
WITH SINCERE ESTEEM AND REGARD
BY HIS AFFECTIONATE.
FRIEND,
ARTHUR HELPS.
London, October, 1868
PREFACE.
This Life of Columbus is one of a series of biographies prepared under my
superintendence, and for the most part taken verbatim from my "History of
the Spanish Conquest in America."
That work was written chiefly with a view to illustrate the history of
slavery, and not to give full accounts of the deeds of the discoverers and
conquerors of the New World, much less to give a condensed memoir of each
of them.
It has, therefore, been necessary to rearrange and add considerably to
these materials, and for this assistance I am indebted to the skill and
research of Mr. Herbert Preston Thomas.
Perhaps there are few of the great personages in history who have been
more talked about and written about than Christopher Columbus, the
discoverer of America. It might seem, therefore, that there is very little
that is new to be said about him. I do not think, however, that this is
altogether the case. Absorbed in, and to a certain extent overcome by the
contemplation of the principal event, we have sometimes, perhaps, been
mistaken as to the causes which led to it. We are apt to look upon
Columbus as a person who knew that there existed a great undiscovered
continent, and who made his way directly to the discovery of that
continent--springing at one bound from the known to the unknown. Whereas,
the dream of Columbus's life was to make his way by an unknown route to
what was known, or to what he considered to be known. He wished to find
out an easy pathway to the territories of Kublai Khan, or Prester-John.
Neither were his motives such as have been generally supposed. They were,
for the most part, purely religious. With the gold gained from potentates
such as Kublai Khan, the Holy Sepulchre was to be rebuilt, and the
Catholic Faith was to be spread over the remotest parts of the earth.
Columbus had all the spirit of a crusader, and, at the same time, the
investigating nature of a modern man of science. The Arabs have a proverb
that a man is more the son of the age in which he lives than of his own
father. This was not so with Columbus; he hardly seems to belong at all to
his age. At a time when there was never more of worldliness and
self-seeking; when Alexander Borgia was Pope; when Louis the Eleventh
reigned in France, Henry the Seventh in England, and Ferdinand the
Catholic in Arragon and Castille--about the three last men in the world to
become crusaders--Columbus was penetrated with the ideas of the twelfth
century, and would have been a worthy companion of Saint Louis in that
pious king's crusade.
Again, at a time when Aristotle and "the Angelic Doctor" ruled the minds
of men with an almost unexampled tyranny: when science was more dogmatic
than theology; when it was thought a sufficient and satisfactory
explanation to say that bodies falling to the earth descended because it
is their nature to descend--Columbus regarded natural phenomena with the
spirit of inductive philosophy that would belong to a follower of Lord
Bacon.
Perhaps it will be found that a very great man seldom does belong to his
period, as other men do to theirs. Machiavelli [1] says that the way to
renovate states is always to go back to first principles, especially to
the first principles upon which those states were founded. The same law,
if law it be, may hold good as regards the renovation of any science, art,
or mode of human action. The man who is too closely united in thought and
feeling with his own age, is seldom the man inclined to go back to these
first principles.
[Footnote 1: Machiavelli was contemporary with Columbus. No two men
could have been more dissimilar; and Machiavelli was thoroughly a
product of his age, and a man who entirely belonged to it.]
It is very noticeable in Columbus that he was it most dutiful, unswerving,
and un-inquiring son of the Church. The same man who would have taken
nothing for granted in scientific research, and would not have held
himself bound by the authority of the greatest names in science, never
ventured for a moment to trust himself as a discoverer on the perilous sea
of theological investigation.
In this respect Las Casas, though a churchman, was very different from
Columbus. Such doctrines as that the Indians should be somewhat civilized
before being converted, and that even baptism might be postponed to
instruction,--doctrines that would have found a ready acceptance from the
good bishop--would have met with small response from the soldierly
theology of Columbus.
The whole life of Columbus shows how rarely men of the greatest insight
and foresight, and also of the greatest perseverance, attain the exact
ends they aim at. In this respect all such men partake the career of the
alchemists, who did not transmute other metals into gold, but made
valuable discoveries in chemistry. So, with Columbus. He did not rebuild
the Holy Sepulchre; he did not lead a new crusade; he did not find his
Kublai Khan, or his Prester John; but he brought into relation the New
World and the Old.
It is impossible to read without the deepest interest the account from day
to day of his voyages. It has always been a favourite speculation with
historians, and, indeed, with all thinking men, to consider what would
have happened from a slight change of circumstances in the course of
things which led to great events. This may be an idle and a useless
speculation, but it is an inevitable one. Never was there such a field for
this kind of speculation as in the voyages, especially the first one, of
Columbus. The first point of land that he saw, and landed at, is as nearly
as possible the central point of what must once have been the United
Continent of North and South America. The least change of circumstance
might have made an immense difference in the result. The going to sleep of
the helmsman, the unshipping of the rudder, (which did occur in the case
of "The Pinzon,") the slightest mistake in taking an observation, might
have made, and probably did make, considerable change in the event. During
that memorable first voyage of Columbus, the gentlest breeze carried with
it the destinies of future empires. Had he made his first discovery of
land at a point much southward of that which he did discover, South
America might have been colonized by the Spaniards with all the vigour
that belonged to their first efforts at colonization; and, being a
continent, might not afterwards have been so easily wrested from their
sway by the maritime nations.
On the other hand, had some breeze, big with the fate of nations, carried
Columbus northwards, it would hardly have been left for the English, more
than a century afterwards, to found those Colonies which have proved to be
the seeds of the greatest nation that the world is likely to behold.
It was, humanly speaking, singularly unfortunate for Spanish dominion in
America, that the earliest discoveries of the Spaniards were those of the
West India Islands. A multiplicity of governors introduced confusion,
feebleness, and want of system, into colonial government. The numbers,
comparatively few, of the original inhabitants in each island, were
rapidly removed from the scene of action; and the Spaniards lacked, at the
beginning, that compressing force which would have been found in the
existence of a body of natives who could not have been removed by the
outrages of Spanish cruelty, the strength of Spanish liquors, or the
virulence of Spanish diseases.[Footnote 2]
[Footnote 2: The smallpox, for instance, was a disease introduced by the
Spaniards, which the comparatively feeble constitution of the Indians
could not withstand.]
The Monarchs of Spain, too, would have been compelled to treat their new
discoveries and conquests more seriously. To have held the country at all,
they must have held it well. It would not have been Ovandos, Bobadillas,
Nicuesas and Ojedas who could have been employed to govern, discover,
conquer, colonize--and ruin by their folly--the Spanish possessions in the
Indies. The work of discovery and conquest, begun by Columbus, must then
have been entrusted to men like Cortes, the Pizarros, Vasco Nunez, or the
President Gasca; and a colony or a kingdom founded by any of these men
might well have remained a great colony, or a great kingdom, to the
present day.
ARTHUR HELPS.
London, October, 1868.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
Early Discoveries in the Fifteenth Century