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LITTLE MASTERPIECES OF SCIENCE
[Illustration: Christopher Columbus.]
Little Masterpieces
of Science
Edited by George Iles
EXPLORERS
Christopher Columbus Charles Wilkes
Lewis and Clarke Clarence King
Zebulon M. Pike John Wesley Powell
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
1902
Copyright, 1902, by Doubleday, Page & Co.
Copyright, 1891, by Justin Winsor
Copyright, 1871, by Oliver Wendell Holmes
PREFACE
"Peace hath her victories
No less renown'd than war."
The love of adventure, the expectation of the unexpected, have ever
prompted men stout of heart, and ready of resource, to brave the perils
of wilderness and sea that they might set their feet where man never
trod before. The world owes much to the explorers who have faced hostile
savages, stood in jeopardy from the cobra and the lion, the foes as
deadly which lurk in the brook which quenches thirst. A traveller like
Clarke takes his life in his hands. He breaks a path which leads he
knows not whither: it may bring him to a shore whence he has no ship to
sail from; it may end in an abyss he cannot bridge. The thickets rend
and sting him, poison may colour a tempting grain or berry, frost may
deaden his energies and lull him to the sleep that knows no waking. He
has but little aid from science: beyond food and medicine he carries
little more than a watch, a compass, a rifle, and a cartridge belt.
Beyond all instruments and weapons are his skill, agility, gumption,
diplomacy. And these resources in no mean measure are shared by the man
for whom he prepares the way, the immigrant, who, in the early days of
settlement, requires a constancy even higher than the explorer's own.
It is one thing to traverse a wilderness under the excitement of hourly
adventure; it is another thing to stay there for a lifetime and convert
it to a home.
The race of American explorers is not extinct. Major Powell is with us
to-day, hale and hearty still. Peary, in the prime of his powers, is as
capital an example of courage and resource as ever threw themselves upon
the riddle of the frozen north. Beyond the Arctic and Antarctic circles
little remains unknown on earth. When at last every rood of ground and
knot of sea is mapped and charted, whither shall the explorer direct his
steps? He cannot repeat the conquests of Lewis and Clarke, Pike and
Peary, but he need not on that account fold his hands so long as a brave
heart and a quick wit are wanted in the world.
GEORGE ILES
CONTENTS
WINSOR, JUSTIN
COLUMBUS DISCOVERS AMERICA
Embarks at Palos, August 3, 1492. A mishap befalls the
_Pinta_. Sees the Peak of Teneriffe in eruption. Arrives at
the Canaries. Falsifies his reckoning to conceal from his crew
the length of the voyage. On September 13th his compass points
to the true north, a fact without precedent. Next day a water
wagtail is seen, betokening an approach to land. Two pelicans
alight on board, with the same significance. These promises
fail, and the crew becomes disheartened and discontented. On
October 11th Columbus sees a light, presumably on shore: four
hours later, next day, land is descried and named by Columbus
San Salvador. Discussion as to where this place is: the
balance of probability inclines to Watling's Island. 3
LEWIS AND CLARKE
ARRIVAL AT THE PACIFIC OCEAN, 1805
Descent of the last rapid of the Columbia River, November 2. A
feast of wappatoo root. Meet unfriendly Indians. Observe Mount
St. Helen, of Vancouver, about ninety miles off. The country
fertile and delightful, abounding with game. The ocean suddenly
appears. Rough weather and its effects. Friendly Indians bring
food. Rain ruins merchandise, clothing and food. Thievish
Indians are withstood. The journey comes successfully to an
end. 29
PIKE, ZEBULON M.
THE SOURCES OF THE MISSISSIPPI, 1806
Meets friendly Indians and whites. A serious fire. Deep snow
inflicts severe hardship. A trackless journey ends in safety
and a hospitable welcome. Provisions exorbitant in price. A
march on snowshoes. Sleds of native pattern are made. Delay
through water on the ice. Bitter cold and the curse of solitude.
A dismal swamp. Unfriendly Indians and the purchasing power
of whiskey. The main source of the Mississippi comes into
view. Disabled by excessive exertion. Hoists the flag. Visits
of Indian chiefs. 55
WILKES, CHARLES
MANILA IN 1842
Character of the city Spanish and Oriental: numerous canals. A
strange and motley population, the artisans for the most part
Chinese. Malays and Chinese live apart. Much evidence of
volcanic activity in the Philippines. Natural resources
abundant. Primitive tools cause much waste of labour. The
buffalo as a draught animal. Rice the staple diet: defective
mode of culture. Hemp, its growth and manufacture. Crops of
coffee, sugar and cotton. The ravages of locusts. Geography of
the country and the diverse elements of its population. Its
army of about 6,000. Frequent rebellions among the troops and
tribes. Iron rule of the Government. The market-place a scene
of unending interest. Excellent poultry. The environs of
Manila delightful. 71
KING, CLARENCE
THE ASCENT OF MOUNT TYNDALL
An eight hours' climb over ridges of granite and snow. "Shall
we ascend Mount Tyndall?" "Why not?" At first Professor
Brewer believes the attempt madness, but yields consent at
last. The climb begins and steadily increases in difficulty. A
gulf of 5,000 feet in depth. A night's lodging in a granite
crevice. Rocks of many tons strike near. The galling pain
of heavy burdens. A profound chasm is crossed on a rope.
Exhilaration of utmost peril. A small bush ensures salvation.
A welcome stretch of trees and flowers. A spire, all but
perpendicular, of rock and ice is surmounted, and at last is
reached the crest of Mount Tyndall. 97
POWELL, JOHN WESLEY
THE GRAND CANON OF THE COLORADO IS EXPLORED
Embarkation under cliffs 4,000 feet high. A swift run ends in
a descent of eighty feet in one-third of a mile. Breakers
render a boat unmanageable. Walls more than a mile high. The
baffling waters capsize a boat. Relics of ancient dwelling-places.
Rations destroyed by wet. Clothing lost and blankets scarce.
Grand views not fully enjoyed. A wild run through ten miles
of rapids. In places the rocks so cut by water that it is
impossible to see overhead. Great amphitheatres, half-dome
shaped. Mammoth springs of lime-laden waters. An ancient
lava-bed channelled out. Stolen squashes provide a feast.
Difficulties thicken: is it wise to go on? Three of the party
say no, the remainder proceed. All but lost in a whirlpool.
Emergence from the Grand Canon in safety and joy. 131
EXPLORERS COLUMBUS DISCOVERS AMERICA
Justin Winsor
[Part of Chapter IX., "The Final Agreement and the First
Voyage" from "Christopher Columbus and How He Received and
Imparted the Spirit of Discovery," copyright by Houghton,
Mifflin & Co., Boston and New York, 1892.]
So, everything being ready, on the 3rd of August, 1492, a half-hour
before sunrise, he unmoored his little fleet in the stream, and,
spreading his sails, the vessels passed out of the little river
roadstead of Palos, gazed after, perhaps, in the increasing light, as
the little crafts reached the ocean, by the friar of Rabida, from its
distant promontory of rock.
The day was Friday, and the advocates of Columbus's canonization have
not failed to see a purpose in its choice as the day of our Redemption,
and as that of the deliverance of the Holy Sepulchre by Geoffrey de
Bouillon, and of the rendition of Granada, with the fall of the Moslem
power in Spain. We must resort to the books of such advocates, if we
would enliven the picture with a multitude of rites and devotional
feelings that they gather in the meshes of the story of the departure.
They supply to the embarkation a variety of detail that their holy
purposes readily imagine, and place Columbus at last on his poop, with
the standard of the Cross, the image of the Saviour nailed to the holy
wood, waving in the early breeze that heralded the day. The
embellishments may be pleasing, but they are not of the strictest
authenticity.
In order that his performance of an embassy to the princes of the East
might be duly chronicled, Columbus determined, as his journal says, to
keep an account of the voyage by the west, "by which course," he says,
"unto the present time, we do not know, _for certain_, that any one has
passed." It was his purpose to write down, as he proceeded, everything
he saw and all that he did, and to make a chart of his discoveries, and
to show the directions of his track.
Nothing occurred during those early August days to mar his run to the
Canaries, except the apprehension which he felt that an accident,
happening to the rudder of the _Pinta_,--a steering gear now for some
time in use, in place of the old lateral blades,--was a trick of two
men, her owners, Gomez Rascon and Christopher Quintero, to impede a
voyage in which they had no heart. The Admiral knew the disposition of
these men well enough not to be surprised at the mishap, but he tried to
feel secure in the prompt energy of Pinzon, who commanded the _Pinta_.
As he passed (August 24-25, 1492) the peak of Teneriffe, it was the time
of an eruption, of which he makes bare mention in his journal. It is to
the corresponding passage of the _Historie_, [written by his son,
Fernando,] that we owe the somewhat sensational stories of the terrors
of the sailors, some of whom certainly must long have been accustomed to
like displays in the volcanoes of the Mediterranean.
At the Gran Canarie the _Nina_ was left to have her lateen sails changed
to square ones; and the _Pinta_, it being found impossible to find a
better vessel to take her place, was also left to be overhauled for her
leaks, and to have her rudder again repaired, while Columbus visited
Gomera, another of the islands. The fleet was reunited at Gomera on
September 2. Here he fell in with some residents of the Ferro, the
westermost of the group, who repeated the old stories of land
occasionally seen from its heights, lying towards the setting sun.
Having taken on board wood, water, and provisions, Columbus finally
sailed from Gomera on the morning of Thursday, September 6. He seems to
have soon spoken a vessel from Ferro, and from this he learned that
three Portuguese caravels were lying in wait for him in the
neighbourhood of that island, with a purpose, as he thought, of visiting
in some way upon him, for having gone over to the interests of Spain,
the indignation of the Portuguese king. He escaped encountering them.
Up to Sunday, September 9, they had experienced so much calm weather,
that their progress had been slow. This tediousness soon raised an
apprehension in the mind of Columbus that the voyage might prove too
long for the constancy of his men. He accordingly determined to falsify
his reckoning. This deceit was a large confession of his own timidity
in dealing with his crew, and it marked the beginning of a long struggle
with deceived and mutinous subordinates, which forms so large a part of
the record of his subsequent career.
The result of Monday's sail, which he knew to be sixty leagues, he noted
as forty-eight, so that the distance from home might appear less than it
was. He continued to practise this deceit.
The distances given by Columbus are those of dead reckoning beyond any
question. Lieutenant Murdock, of the United States Navy, who has
commented on this voyage, makes his league the equivalent of three
modern nautical miles, and his mile about three-quarters of our present
estimate for that distance. Navarrete says that Columbus reckoned in
Italian miles, which are a quarter less than Spanish miles. The Admiral
had expected to make land after sailing about seven hundred leagues from
Ferro; and in ordering his vessels in case of separation to proceed
westward, he warned them when they sailed that distance to come to the
wind at night, and only to proceed by day.
The log as at present understood in navigation had not yet been devised.
Columbus depended in judging of his distance on the eye alone, basing
his calculations on the passage of objects or bubbles past the ship,
while the running out of his hour glasses afforded the multiple for long
distances.
On Thursday, the 13th of September, he notes that the ships were
encountering adverse currents. He was now three degrees west of Flores,
and the needle of the compass pointed as it had never been observed
before, directly to the true north. His observation of this fact marks a
significant point in the history of navigation. The polarity of the
magnet, an ancient possession of the Chinese, had been known perhaps for
three hundred years, when this new spirit of discovery awoke in the
fifteenth century. The Indian Ocean and its traditions were to impart,
perhaps through the Arabs, perhaps through the returning Crusaders, a
knowledge of the magnet to the dwellers on the shores of the
Mediterranean, and to the hardier mariners who had pushed beyond the
pillars of Hercules, so that the new route to that same Indian Ocean was
made possible in the fifteenth century. The way was prepared for it
gradually. The Catalans from the port of Barcelona pushed out into the
great Sea of Darkness under the direction of their needles, as early at
least as the twelfth century. The pilots of Genoa and Venice, the hardy
Majorcans and the adventurous Moors, were followers of almost equal
temerity.
A knowledge of the variation of the needle came more slowly to be known
to the mariners of the Mediterranean. It had been observed by Peregrini
as early as 1269, but that knowledge of it which rendered it greatly
serviceable in voyages does not seem to be plainly indicated in any of
the charts of these transition centuries, till we find it laid down on
the maps of Andrea Bianco in 1436.
It was no new thing then when Columbus, as he sailed westward, marked
the variation, proceeding from the northeast more and more westerly; but
it was a revelation when he came to a position where the magnetic north
and the north star stood in conjunction, as they did on this 13th of
September, 1492. As he still moved westerly the magnetic line was found
to move farther and farther away from the pole as it had before the 13th
approached it. To an observer of Columbus's quick perceptions, there was
a ready guess to possess his mind. This inference was that this line of
no variation was a meridian line, and that divergence from it east and
west might have a regularity which would be found to furnish a method of
ascertaining longitude far easier and surer than tables or water clocks.
We know that four years later he tried to sail his ship on observations
of this kind. The same idea seems to have occurred to Sebastian Cabot,
when a little afterwards he approached and passed in a higher latitude,
what he supposed to be the meridian of no variation. Humboldt is
inclined to believe that the possibility of such a method of
ascertaining longitude was that uncommunicable secret, which Sebastian
Cabot many years later hinted at on his death-bed.
The claim was made near a century later by Livio Sanuto in his
_Geographia_, published at Venice, in 1588, that Sebastian Cabot had
been the first to observe this variation, and had explained it to
Edward VI., and that he had on a chart placed the line of no variation
at a point one hundred and ten miles west of the island of Flores in the
Azores.
These observations of Columbus and Cabot were not wholly accepted during
the sixteenth century. Robert Hues, in 1592, a hundred years later,
tells us that Medina, the Spanish grand pilot, was not disinclined to
believe that mariners saw more in it than really existed and that they
found it a convenient way to excuse their own blunders. Nonius was
credited with saying that it simply meant that worn-out magnets were
used, which had lost their power to point correctly to the pole. Others
had contended that it was through insufficient application of the
loadstone to the iron that it was so devious in its work.
What was thought possible by the early navigators possessed the minds of
all seamen in varying experiments for two centuries and a half. Though
not reaching such satisfactory results as were hoped for, the
expectation did not prove so chimerical as was sometimes imagined when
it was discovered that the lines of variation were neither parallel, nor
straight, nor constant. The line of no variation which Columbus found
near the Azores had moved westward with erratic inclinations, until
to-day it is not far from a straight line from Carolina to Guinea.
Science, beginning with its crude efforts at the hands of Alonzo de
Santa Cruz, in 1530, has so mapped the surface of the globe with
observations of its multifarious freaks of variation, and the changes
are so slow, that a magnetic chart is not a bad guide to-day for
ascertaining the longitude in any latitude for a few years neighbouring
to the date of its records. So science has come around in some measure
to the dreams of Columbus and Cabot.
But this was not the only development which came from this ominous day
in the mid-Atlantic in that September of 1492. The fancy of Columbus was
easily excited, and notions of a change of climate, and even aberration
of the stars were easily imagined by him amid the strange phenomena of
that untracked waste.
While Columbus was suspecting that the north star was somewhat wilfully
shifting from the magnetic pole, now to a distance of 5 deg. and then of
10 deg., the calculations of modern astronomers have gauged the polar
distance existing in 1492 at 3 deg. 28', as against the 1 deg. 20' of to-day.
The confusion of Columbus was very like his confounding an old world
with a new, inasmuch as he supposed it was the pole star and not the
needle which was shifting.
He argued from what he saw, or what he thought he saw, that the line of
no variation marked the beginning of a protuberance of the earth, up
which he ascended as he sailed westerly, and that this was the reason of
the cooler weather which he experienced. He never got over some notions
of this kind, and he believed he found confirmation of them in his later
voyages.
Even as early as the reign of Edward III. of England, Nicholas of Lynn,
a voyager to the northern seas, is thought to have definitely fixed the
magnetic pole in the Arctic regions, transmitting his views to Cnoyen,
the master of the later Mercator, in respect to the four circumpolar
islands, which in the sixteenth century made so constant a surrounding
of the north pole.
The next day (September 14), after these magnetic observations, a water
wagtail was seen from the _Nina_,--a bird which Columbus thought
unaccustomed to fly over twenty-five leagues from land, and the ships
were now, according to their reckoning, not far from two hundred leagues
from the Canaries. On Saturday they saw a distant bolt of fire fall into
the sea. On Sunday, they had a drizzling rain, followed by pleasant
weather, which reminded Columbus of the nightingales, gladdening the
climate of Andalusia in April. They found around the ships much green
floatage of weeds, which led them to think some islands must be near.
Navarrete thinks there was some truth in this, inasmuch as the charts of
the early part of this century represent breakers as having been seen in
1802, near the spot where Columbus can be computed to have been at this
time. Columbus was in fact within that extensive _prairie_ of floating
seaweed which is known as the Sargasso Sea, whose principal longitudinal
axis is found in modern times to lie along the parallel of 41 deg. 30', and
the best calculations which can be made from the rather uncertain data
of Columbus's journal seem to point to about the same position.
There is nothing in all these accounts, as we have them abridged by La
Casas, to indicate any great surprise, and certainly nothing of the
overwhelming fear which, the _Historie_ tells us, the sailors
experienced when they found their ships among these floating masses of
weeds, raising apprehension of a perpetual entanglement in their
swashing folds.
The next day (September 17) the currents became favourable, and the
weeds still floated about them. The variation of the needle now became
so great that the seamen were dismayed, as the journal says, and the
observation being repeated Columbus practised another deceit and made it
appear that there had been really no variation, but only a shifting of
the polar star! The weeds were now judged to be river weeds, and a live
crab was found among them,--a sure sign of near land, as Columbus
believed, or affected to believe. They killed a tunny and saw others.
They again observed a water wagtail, "which does not sleep at sea." Each
ship pushed on for the advance, for it was thought the goal was near.
The next day the _Pinta_ shot ahead and saw great flocks of birds
towards the west. Columbus conceived that the sea was growing, fresher.
Heavy clouds hung on the northern horizon, a sure sign of land, it was
supposed.
On the next day two pelicans came on board, and Columbus records that
these birds are not accustomed to go twenty leagues from land. So he
sounded with a line of two hundred fathoms to be sure he was not
approaching land; but no bottom was found. A drizzling rain also
betokened land, which they could not stop to find, but would search for
on their return, as the journal says. The pilots now compared their
reckonings. Columbus said they were 400 leagues, while the _Pinta's_
record showed 420, and the _Nina's_ 440.
On September 20 other pelicans came on board; and the ships were again
among the weeds. Columbus was determined to ascertain if these indicated
shoal water and sounded, but could not reach bottom. The men caught a
bird with feet like a gull; but they were convinced it was a river bird.
Then singing land birds, as was fancied, hovered about as it darkened,
but they disappeared before morning. Then a pelican was observed flying
to the southwest, and as "these birds sleep on shore, and go to sea in
the morning," the men encouraged themselves with the belief that they
could not be far from land. The next day a whale could be but another
indication of land; and the weeds covered the sea all about. On
Saturday, they steered west by northwest, and got clear of the weeds.
This change of course so far to the north, which had begun on the
previous day, was occasioned by a head wind, and Columbus says he
welcomed it, because it had the effect of convincing the sailors that
westerly winds to return by were not impossible. On Sunday (September
23), they found the wind still varying; but they made more westering
than before,--weeds, crabs, and birds still about them. Now there was
smooth water, which again depressed the seamen; then the sea arose,
mysteriously, for there was no wind to cause it. They still kept their
course westerly and continued it till the night of September 25.
Columbus at this time conferred with Pinzon, as to a chart which they
carried, which showed some islands, near where they now supposed the
ships to be. That they had not seen land, they believed was either due
to currents which had carried them too far north, or else their
reckoning was not correct. At sunset Pinzon hailed the Admiral, and said
he saw land, claiming the reward. The two crews were confident that such
was the case, and under the lead of their commanders they all kneeled
and repeated the _Gloria in Excelsis_. The land appeared to lie
southwest, and everybody saw the apparition. Columbus changed the
fleet's course to reach it; and as the vessels went on, in the smooth
sea, the men had the heart, under their expectation, to bathe in its
amber glories. On Wednesday, they were undeceived, and found that the
clouds had played them a trick. On the 27th their course lay more
directly west. So they went on, and still remarked upon all the birds
they saw and weed-drift which they pierced. Some of the fowl they
thought to be such as were common at the Cape Verde Islands, and were
not supposed to go far to sea. On the 30th of September, they still
observed the needles of their compasses to vary, but the journal records
that it was the pole star which moved, and not the needle. On October 1,
Columbus says they were 707 leagues from Ferro; but he had made his crew
believe they were only 584. As they went on, little new for the next few
days is recorded in the journal; but on October 3, they thought they saw
among the weeds something like fruits. By the 6th, Pinzon began to urge
a southwesterly course, in order to find the islands, which the signs
seemed to indicate in that direction. Still the Admiral would not swerve
from his purpose, and kept his course westerly. On Sunday the _Nina_
fired a bombard and hoisted a flag as a signal that she saw land, but it
proved a delusion. Observing towards evening a flock of birds flying to
the southwest, the Admiral yielded to Pinzon's belief, and shifted his
course to follow the birds. He records as a further reason for it that
it was by following the flights of birds that the Portuguese had been so
successful in discovering islands in other seas.
Columbus now found himself two hundred miles and more farther than the
three thousand miles west of Spain, where he supposed Cipango to lie,
and he was 25-1/2 deg. north of the equator, according to his astrolabe. The
true distance of Cipango or Japan was sixty-eight hundred miles still
farther, or beyond both North America and the Pacific. How much beyond
that island, in its supposed geographical position, Columbus expected to
find the Asiatic main we can only conjecture from the restorations which
modern scholars have made of Toscanelli's map, which makes the island
about 10 deg. east of Asia, and from Behaim's globe, which makes it 20 deg.. It
should be borne in mind that the knowledge of its position came from
Marco Polo, and he does not distinctly say how far it was from the
Asiatic coast. In a general way, as to these distances from Spain to
China, Toscanelli and Behaim agreed, and there is no reason to believe
that the views of Columbus were in any noteworthy degree different.
In the trial years afterward, when the Fiscal contested the rights of
Diego Colon, it was put in evidence by one Vallejo, a seaman, that
Pinzon was induced to urge the direction to be changed to the southwest,
because he had in the preceding evening observed a flight of parrots in
that direction, which could have only been seeking land. It was the main
purpose of the evidence in this part of the trial to show that Pinzon
had all along forced Columbus forward against his will.
How pregnant this change of course in the vessels of Columbus was has
not escaped the observation of Humboldt and many others. A day or two
further on his westerly way, and the Gulf Stream would, perhaps,
insensibly have borne the little fleet up the Atlantic coast of the
future United States, so that the banner of Castile might have been
planted at Carolina.
On the 7th of October, Columbus was pretty nearly in latitude 25 deg.
50',--that of one of the Bahama Islands. Just where he was by longitude
there is much more doubt, probably between 65 deg. and 66 deg.. On the next day
the land birds flying along the course of the ships seemed to confirm
their hopes. On the 10th the journal records that the men began to lose
patience; but the Admiral reassured them by reminding them of the
profits in store for them, and of the folly of seeking to return when
they had already gone so far.
It is possible that, in this entry, Columbus conceals the story which
came out later in the recital of Oviedo, with more detail than in the
_Historie_ and Las Casas, that the rebellion of his crew was threatening
enough to oblige him to promise to turn back if land was not discovered
in three days. Most commentators, however, are inclined to think that
this story of a mutinous revolt was merely engrafted from hearsay or
other source by Oviedo upon the more genuine recital, and that the
conspiracy to throw the Admiral into the sea has no substantial basis in
contemporary report. Irving, who has a dramatic tendency throughout his
whole account of the voyage to heighten his recital with touches of the
imagination, nevertheless allows this, and thinks that Oviedo was
misled by listening to a pilot, who was a personal enemy of the Admiral.
The elucidations of the voyage which were drawn out in the famous suit
of Diego with the Crown in 1513 and 1515, afford no ground for any
belief in this story of the mutiny and the concession of Columbus to it.
It is not, however, difficult to conceive the recurrent fears of his men
and the incessant anxiety of Columbus to quiet them. From what Peter
Martyr tells us,--and he may have got it directly from Columbus's
lips,--the task was not an easy one to preserve subordination and to
instil confidence. He represents that Columbus was forced to resort in
turn to argument, persuasion and enticements, and to picture the
misfortunes of the royal displeasure.
The next day, notwithstanding a heavier sea than they had before
encountered, certain signs sufficed to lift them out of their
despondency. These were floating logs, or pieces of wood, one of them
apparently carved by hand, bits of cane, a green rush, a stalk of rose
berries and other drifting tokens.
Their southwesterly course had now brought them down to about the
twenty-fourth parallel, when after sunset on the 11th they shifted their
course to due west, while the crew of the Admiral's ship united, with
more fervour than usual, in the _Salve Regina_. At about ten o'clock
Columbus, peering into the night, thought he saw--if we may believe
him--a moving light, and pointing out the direction to Pero Gutierrez,
this companion saw it too; but another, Rodrigo Sanchez, situated
apparently on another part of the vessel, was not able to see it. It was
not brought to the attention of any others. The Admiral says that the
light seemed to be moving up and down, and he claimed to have got other
glimpses of its glimmer at a later moment. He ordered the _Salve_ to be
chanted, and directed a vigilant watch to be set on the forecastle. To
sharpen their vision he promised a silken jacket, beside the income of
ten thousand maravedis which the King and Queen had offered to the
fortunate man who should first descry the coveted land.
This light has been the occasion of such comment, and nothing will ever,
it is likely, be settled about it, further than that the Admiral, with
an inconsiderate rivalry of a common sailor, who later saw the actual
land, and with an ungenerous assurance, ill-befitting a commander,
pocketed a reward which belonged to another. If Oviedo, with his
prejudices, is to be believed, Columbus was not even the first who
claimed to have seen this dubious light. There is a common story that
the poor sailor, who was defrauded, later turned Mohammedan and went to
live among that juster people. There is a sort of retributive justice in
the fact that the pension of the Crown was made a charge upon the
shambles of Seville, and thence Columbus received it till he died.
Whether the light is to be considered a reality or a fiction will depend
much on the theory each may hold regarding the position of the landfall.
When Columbus claimed to have discovered it, he was twelve or fourteen
leagues away from the island, where four hours later land was
indubitably found. Was the light on a canoe? Was it on some small,
outlying island, as has been suggested? Was it a torch carried from hut
to hut, as Herrera avers? Was it on either of the other vessels? Was it
on the low island on which, the next morning he landed? There was no
elevation on that island sufficient to show even a strong light at a
distance of ten leagues. Was it a fancy or a deceit? No one can say. It
is very difficult for Navarrete, and even for Irving, to rest satisfied
with what after all may have been only an illusion of a fevered mind,
making a record of the incident in the excitement of a wonderful hour,
when his intelligence was not as circumspect as it might have been.
Four hours after the light was seen, at two o'clock in the morning, when
the moon, near its third quarter, was in the east, the _Pinta_, keeping
ahead, one of her sailors, Rodrigo de Triane descried the land two
leagues away, and a gun communicated the joyful intelligence to the
other ships. The fleet took in sail, and each vessel, under backed
canvas, was pointed to the wind. Thus they waited for daybreak. It was a
proud moment of painful suspense for Columbus; and brimming hopes,
perhaps fears of disappointment, must have accompanied that hour of
wavering enchantment. It was Friday, October 12, of the old chronology,
and the little fleet had been thirty-three days on its way from the
Canaries, and we must add ten days more to complete the period since
they left Palos. The land before them was seen, as the day dawned, to be
a small island, "called in the Indian tongue" Guanahani. Some naked
natives were descried. The Admiral and the commanders of the other
vessels prepared to land. Columbus took the royal standard and the
others each a banner of the green cross, which bore the initials of the
sovereign with a cross between, a crown surmounting every letter. Thus,
with the emblems of their power, and accompanied by Rodrigo de Escoveda
and Rodrigo Sanchez and some seamen, the boat rowed to the shore. They
immediately took formal possession of the land, and the notary recorded
it.
The words of the prayer usually given as uttered by Columbus on taking
possession of San Salvador, when he named the island, cannot be traced
farther back than a collection of _Tablas Chronologicas_, got together
at Valencia in 1689, by a Jesuit father, Claudio Clemente. Harrisse
finds no authority for the statement of the French canonizers that
Columbus established a form of prayer which was long in vogue, for such
occupations of new lands.
Las Casas, from whom we have the best account of the ceremonies of the
landing, does not mention it; but we find pictured in his pages the
grave impressiveness of the hour; the form of Columbus, with a crimson
robe over his armour, central and grand; and the humbleness of his
followers in their contrition for the hours of their faint-heartedness.
Columbus now enters in his journal his impressions of the island and its
inhabitants. He says of the land that it bore green trees, was watered
by many streams, and produced divers fruits. In another place he speaks
of the island as flat, without lofty eminence, surrounded by reefs, with
a lake in the interior.
The courses and distances of his sailing both before and on leaving the
island, as well as this description, are the best means we have of
identifying the spot of this portentous landfall. The early maps may
help in a subsidiary way, but with little precision.
There is just enough uncertainty and contradiction respecting the data
and arguments applied in the solution of this question, to render it
probable that men will never quite agree which of the Bahamas it was
upon which these startled and exultant Europeans first stepped. Though
Las Casas reports the journal of Columbus unabridged for a period after
the landfall, he unfortunately condenses it for some time previous.
There is apparently no chance of finding geographical conditions that in
every respect will agree with this record of Columbus, and we must
content ourselves with what offers the fewest disagreements. An obvious
method, if we could depend on Columbus's dead reckoning, would be to see
for what island the actual distance from the Canaries would be nearest
to his computed run; but currents and errors of the eye necessarily
throw this sort of computation out of the question, and Captain G. A.
Fox, who has tried it, finds that Cat Island is three hundred and
seventeen, the Grand Turk six hundred and twenty-four nautical miles,
and the other supposable points at intermediate distances out of the way
as compared with his computation of the distance run by Columbus, three
thousand four hundred and fifty-eight of such miles.
The reader will remember the Bahama group as a range of islands, islets,
and rocks, said to be some three thousand in number, running southeast
from a point part way up the Florida coast, and approaching at the other
end the coast of Hispaniola. In the latitude of the lower point of
Florida, and five degrees east of it, is the island of San Salvador or
Cat Island, which is the most northerly of those claimed to have been
the landfall of Columbus. Proceeding down the group, we encounter
Watling's, Samana, Acklin (with the Plana Cays), Mariguana, and the
Grand Turk,--all of which have their advocates. The three methods of
identification which have been followed are, first, by plotting the
outward track; second, by plotting the track between the landfall and
Cuba, both forward and backward; third, by applying the descriptions,
particularly Columbus's, of the island first seen. In this last test,
Harrisse prefers to apply the description of Las Casas, which is
borrowed in part from that of the _Historie_, and he reconciles
Columbus's apparent discrepancy when he says in one place that the
island was "pretty large," and in another "small," by supposing that he
may have applied these opposite terms, the lesser to the Plana Cays, as
first seen, and the other to the Crooked Group, or Acklin Island, lying
just westerly, on which he may have landed. Harrisse is the only one who
makes this identification; and he finds some confirmation in later maps,
which show thereabout an island, Triango or Triangulo, a name said by
Las Casas to have been applied to Guanahani at a later day. There is no
known map earlier than 1540 bearing this alternative name of Triango.
San Salvador seems to have been the island selected by the earliest of
modern inquirers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and it has
had the support of Irving and Humboldt in later times. Captain Alexander
Slidell Mackenzie of the United States navy worked out the problem for
Irving. It is much larger than any of the other islands, and could
hardly have been called by Columbus in any alternative way a "small"
island, while it does not answer Columbus's description of being level,
having on it an eminence of four hundred feet, and no interior lagoon,
as his Guanahani demands. The French canonizers stand by the old
traditions, and find it meet to say that "the English Protestants not
finding the name of San Salvador fine enough have substituted for it
that of Cat, and in their hydrographical atlases the Island of the Holy
Saviour is nobly called Cat Island."
The weight of modern testimony seems to favour Watling's Island, and it
so far answers Columbus's description that about one-third of its
interior is water, corresponding to his "large lagoon." Munoz first
suggested it in 1793; but the arguments in its favour were first spread
out by Captain Becher of the royal navy in 1856, and he seems to have
induced Oscar Peschel in 1858 to adopt the same views in his history of
the range of modern discovery. Major, the map custodian of the British
Museum, who had previously followed Navarrete in favouring the Grand
Turk, again addressed himself to the problem in 1870, and fell into line
with the adherents of Watling's. No other considerable advocacy of this
island, if we except the testimony of Gerard Stein in 1883, in a book on
voyages of discovery, appeared till Lieutenant J. B. Murdoch, an officer
of the American navy, made a very careful examination of the subject in
the _Proceedings of the United States Naval Institute_ in 1884, which is
accepted by Charles A. Schott in the _Bulletin of the United States
Coast Survey_. Murdoch was the first to plot in a backward way the track
between Guanahani and Cuba, and he finds more points of resemblance in
Columbus's description with Watling's than with any other. The latest
adherent is the eminent geographer, Clements R. Markham, in the bulletin
of the Italian Geographical Society in 1889. Perhaps no cartographical
argument has been so effective as that of Major in comparing modern
charts with the map of Herrera, in which the latter lays Guanahani down.
An elaborate attempt to identity Samana as the landfall was made by the
late Captain Gustavus Vasa Fox, in an appendix to the _Report of the
United States Coast Survey_ for 1880. Varnhagen, in 1864, selected
Mariguana, and defended his choice in a paper. This island fails to
satisfy the physical conditions in being without interior water. Such a
qualification, however, belongs to the Grand Turk Island, which was
advocated first by Navarrete in 1826, whose views have since been
supported by George Gibbs, and for a while by Major.
It is rather curious to note that Caleb Cushing, who undertook to
examine this question in the _North American Review_, under the guidance
of Navarrete's theory, tried the same backward method which has been
later applied to the problem, but with quite different results from
those reached by more recent investigators. He says, "By setting out
from Nipe which is the point where Columbus struck Cuba and proceeding
in a retrograde direction along his course, we may surely trace his
path, and shall be convinced that Guanahani is no other than Turk's
Island."
[Illustration: THE LANDFALL OF COLUMBUS, 1492. [After Ruge.]
_Key:_
-- -- according to Munoz and Becher. ---- Irving and Humboldt.
-+-+ Varnhagen --.--. Navarrete.
]
LEWIS AND CLARKE REACH THE PACIFIC OCEAN
[In 1804-6 Captains Lewis and Clarke, by order of the
Government of the United States, commanded an expedition to
the sources of the Missouri, thence across the Rocky
Mountains and down the River Columbia to the Pacific Ocean.
Chapter IV., which follows, is taken from the second volume
of the History of the Expedition, published by Harper &
Brothers, New York, 1842. The matter of the original journal
is indicated by inverted commas, and where portions of it
embracing minute and uninteresting particulars, have been
omitted, the leading facts have been briefly stated by the
editor, Archibald McVickar, in his own words, so that the
connection of the narrative is preserved unbroken and nothing
of importance is lost to the reader. The History of the
Expedition, edited, with notes by Elliott Coues, was
published in 1893 in four volumes by Francis P. Harper, New
York. This edition surpasses every other in its excellence:
it has passed out of print, but may be found in many public
libraries. In 1901 Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Boston, published
"Lewis and Clark," by Wm. R. Lighton: within one hundred and
fifty-nine small pages the story of the famous expedition is
admirably condensed. Good portraits of Lewis and Clark form
the frontispiece.]
"_November 2, 1805._ We now examined the rapid below more particularly,
and the danger appearing to be too great for the loaded canoes, all
those who could not swim were sent with the baggage by land. The canoes
then passed safely down and were reloaded. At the foot of the rapid we
took a meridian altitude and found our latitude to be 59 deg. 45' 45"."
This rapid forms the last of the descents of the Columbia; and
immediately below it the river widens, and tidewater commences. Shortly
after starting they passed an island three miles in length and to which,
from that plant being seen on it in great abundance, they gave the name
of Strawberry Island. Directly beyond were three small islands, and in
the meadow to the right, at some distance from the hills in the
background was a single perpendicular rock, which they judged to be no
less than eight hundred feet high and four hundred yards at the base,
which they called Beacon Rock. A little farther on they found the river
a mile in breadth, and double this breadth four miles beyond. After
making twenty-nine miles from the foot of the Great Shoot, they halted
for the night at a point where the river was two and a half miles wide.
The character of the country they had passed through during the day was
very different from that they had lately been accustomed to, the hills
being thickly covered with timber, chiefly of the pine species. The tide
rose at their encampment about nine inches, and they saw great numbers
of water-fowl, such as swan, geese, ducks of various kinds, gulls, etc.
The next day, _November 3d_, they set off in company with some Indians
who had joined them the evening before. At the distance of three miles
they passed a river on the left, to which, from the quantity of sand it
bears along with it, they gave the name of Quicksand River. So great,
indeed, was the quantity it had discharged into the Columbia, that the
river was compressed to the width of half a mile, and the whole force of
the current thrown against the right shore. Opposite this was a large
creek, which they called Seal River. The mountain which they had
supposed to be the Mount Hood of Vancouver, now bore S. 85 deg. E., about
forty-seven miles distant. About three miles farther on they passed the
lower mouth of Quicksand River, opposite to which was another large
creek, and near it the head of an island three miles and a half in
extent; and half a mile beyond it was another island, which they called
Diamond Island, opposite to which they encamped, having made but
thirteen miles' distance. Here they met with some Indians ascending the
river, who stated that they had seen three vessels at its mouth.
"Below Quicksand River," says the Journal, "the country is low, rich,
and thickly wooded on each side of the Columbia; the islands have less
timber, and on them are numerous ponds, near which were vast quantities
of fowl, such as swan, geese, brant, cranes, storks, white-gulls,
cormorants, and plover. The river is wide and contains a great number of
sea-otters. In the evening the hunters brought in game for a sumptuous
supper."
In continuing their descent the next day, they found Diamond Island to
be six miles in length and three broad; and near its termination were
two other islands. "Just below the last of these," proceeds the
narrative, "we landed on the left bank of the river, at a village of
twenty-five houses, all of which were thatched with straw, and built of
bark except one, which was about fifty feet long and constructed of
boards, in the form of those higher up the river, from which it
differed, however, in being completely above ground, and covered with
broad, split boards. This village contained about two hundred men of the
Skilloot nation, who seemed well provided with canoes, of which there
were at least fifty-two, and some of them very large, drawn up in front
of the village. On landing, we found an Indian from above, who had left
us this morning, and who now invited us into a lodge of which he
appeared to be part owner. Here he treated us with a root, round in
shape and about the size of a small Irish potato, which they call
_wappatoo_: it is the common arrow-head or _sagittifolia_ so much
cultivated by the Chinese, and, when roasted in the embers till it
becomes soft, has an agreeable taste, and is a very good substitute for
bread. After purchasing some of this root we resumed our journey, and at
seven miles' distance came to the head of a large island near the left
bank. On the right shore was a fine open prairie for about a mile, back
of which the country rises, and is well supplied with timber, such as
white oak, pine of different kinds, wild crab, and several species of
undergrowth, while along the borders of the river there were only a few
cottonwood and ash trees. In this prairie were also signs of deer and
elk.