A GREAT NEW WORLD
The departure of Columbus six months later on his second voyage was
a great contrast to the uncertain start of a year ago. The new fleet
was ready by September 1493. The three largest ships were some four
hundred tons' burden, with fourteen smaller craft and crews of fifteen
thousand men. There was no dearth of volunteers this time. High-born
Spaniards, thirsting for the wealth of the Indies, offered their
services, while Columbus took his brother James and a Benedictine monk
chosen by the Pope. They took orange and lemon seeds for planting in
the new islands, horses, pigs, bulls, cows, sheep, and goats, besides
fruit and vegetables.
So, full of hope and joyful expectation, they set sail; and so well
had Columbus calculated his distance and direction with but imperfect
instruments at his disposal, that he arrived at the islands again on
3rd November. It was another new island, which he named Domenica, as
the day was Sunday. Making for the island of Hayti, where he had left
his little Spanish colony, he passed many islands, naming Guadeloupe,
San Martin, Santa Cruz, and others. Porto Rico was also found, but
they arrived at Hayti to find no trace of Spaniards. Disaster had
overtaken the colony, and the deserted men had been killed by the
natives who had apparently been so friendly. Another spot was selected
by Columbus, and a town was soon built to which he gave the name of
Isabella.
[Illustration: THE TOWN OF ISABELLA AND THE COLONY FOUNDED BY COLUMBUS.
From a woodcut of 1494.]
This is not the place to tell of the miserable disputes and squabbles
that befell the little Spanish colony. We are here concerned with the
fuller exploration of the West Indies by Columbus. Taking three ships
provisioned for six months, with a crew of fifty-two, he set out for
the coast of Cathay. Instead of this, he found the island of Jamaica,
with its low, hazy, blue coast of extreme beauty. Still convinced that
he was near the territory of the Great Khan, he explored the coast
of Cuba, not realising that it was an island. He sailed about among
the islands, till he became very ill, fever seized him, and at last
his men carried him ashore at Isabella, thinking that he must die.
He recovered to find a discontented colony, members of which had
already sent back stories to Spain of the misdeeds of their founder.
Columbus made up his mind to return to Spain to carry a true report
of the difficulties of colonisation in the Indies.
"It was June 1496 before he found himself again in the harbour of Cadiz.
People had crowded down to greet the great discoverer, but instead
of a joyous crew, flushed with new success and rich with the spoils
of the golden Indies, a feeble train of wretched men crawled on
shore--thin, miserable, and ill. Columbus himself was dressed as a
monk, in a long gown girded with a cord. His beard was long and unshaven.
The whole man was utterly broken down with all he had been through."
But after a stay of two years in Spain, Columbus again started off
on his third voyage. With six ships he now took a more southerly
direction, hoping to find land to the south of the West Indies. And
this he did, but he never lived to know that it was the great continent
of South America. Through scorching heat, which melted the tar of their
rigging, they sailed onwards till they were rewarded by the sight of
land at last. Columbus had promised to dedicate the first land he saw
to the Holy Trinity. What, then, was his surprise when land appeared
from which arose three distinct peaks, which he at once named La
Trinidad. The luxuriance of the island pleased the Spaniards, and as
they made their way slowly along the shore their eyes rested for the
first time, and unconsciously, on the mainland of South America. It
appeared to the explorer as a large island which he called Isla Santa.
Here oysters abounded and "very large fish, and parrots as large as
hens." Between the island and the mainland lay a narrow channel through
which flowed a mighty current. While the ships were anchoring here
a great flood of fresh water came down with a great roar, nearly
destroying the little Spanish ships and greatly alarming both Columbus
and his men. It was one of the mouths of the river Orinoco, to which
they gave the name of the Dragon's Mouth. The danger over, they sailed
on, charmed with the beautiful shores, the sight of the distant
mountains, and the sweetness of the air.
[Illustration: "THE UNROLLING OF THE CLOUDS"--IV. The world as known
at the end of the fifteenth century after the discoveries of Columbus
and his age.]
Columbus decided that this must be the centre of the earth's surface,
and with its mighty rivers surely it was none other than the earthly
Paradise with the rivers of the Garden of Eden, that "some of the
Fathers had declared to be situated in the extreme east of the Old
World, and in a region so high that the flood had not overwhelmed it."
The world then, said Columbus, could not be a perfect round, but
pear-shaped. With these conclusions he hastened across to Hayti where
his brother was ruling over the little colony in his absence. But
treachery and mutiny had been at work. Matters had gone ill with the
colony, and Columbus did not improve the situation by his presence.
He was a brilliant navigator, but no statesman. Complaints reached
Spain, and a Spaniard was sent out to replace Columbus. This
high-handed official at once put the poor navigator in chains and
placed him on board a ship bound for Spain. Queen Isabella was
overwhelmed with grief when the snowy-haired explorer once again stood
before her, his face lined with suffering. He was restored to royal
favour and provided with ships to sail forth on his fourth and last
voyage. But his hardships and perils had told upon him, and he was
not really fit to undertake the long voyage to the Indies. However,
he arrived safely off the coast of Honduras and searched for the straits
that he felt sure existed, but which were not to be found till some
eighteen years later by Magellan. The natives brought him cocoanuts,
which the Spaniards now tasted for the first time; they also brought
merchandise from a far land denoting some high civilisation. Columbus
believed that he had reached the golden east, whence the gold had been
obtained for Solomon's temple.
Had Columbus only sailed west he might have discovered Mexico with
all its wealth, and "a succession of splendid discoveries would have
shed fresh glory on his declining age, instead of his sinking amidst
gloom, neglect, and disappointment." At the isthmus of Darien,
Columbus gave up the search. He was weary of the bad weather. Incessant
downpours of rain, storms of thunder and lightning with terrific
seas--these discouraged him. Disaster followed disaster. The food was
nearly finished; the biscuit "was so full of maggots that the people
could only eat it in the dark, when they were not visible." Columbus
himself seemed to be at the point of death. "Never," he wrote, "was
the sea seen so high, so terrific, so covered with foam; the waters
from heaven never ceased--it was like a repetition of the deluge."
He reached Spain in 1504 to be carried ashore on a litter, and to learn
that the Queen of Spain was dead. He was friendless, penniless, and
sick unto death.
"After twenty years of toil and peril," he says pitifully, "I do not
own a roof in Spain."
"I, lying here, bedridden and alone,
Cast off, put by, scouted by count and king,
The first discoverer starves."
And so the brilliant navigator, Christopher Columbus, passed away,
all unconscious of the great New World he had reached. Four centuries
have passed away, but--
"When shall the world forget
The glory and the debt,
Indomitable soul,
Immortal Genoese?
Not while the shrewd salt gale
Whines amid shroud and sail,
Above the rhythmic roll
And thunder of the seas."
It has been well said, "injustice was not buried with Columbus," and
soon after his death an attempt was made, and made successfully, to
name the New World after another--a Florentine pilot, Amerigo
Vespucci.
[Illustration: MAP OF THE WORLD, DRAWN IN 1500, THE FIRST TO SHOW
AMERICA. By Juan de la Cosa, who is supposed to have been the pilot
of Columbus. At the top, between the two green masses representing
America, La Cosa has drawn Columbus as St. Christopher carrying the
infant Christ, according to the legend.]
It was but natural that when the first discoveries by Columbus of land
to westward had been made known, that others should follow in the track
of the great navigator. Among these was a handsome young Spaniard--one
Hojeda--who had accompanied Columbus on his second voyage. Soon after,
he fitted out an expedition, 1499, reaching the mainland of the yet
unknown continent near the Trinidad of Columbus. With him was Amerigo
Vespucci. Here they found a native village with houses built on tree
trunks and connected by bridges. It was so like a bit of old Venice
that the explorers named it Little Venice or Venezuela, which name
it bears to-day.
Nothing was publicly known of this voyage till a year after the death
of Columbus, when men had coasted farther to the south of Venezuela
and discovered that this land was neither Asia nor Africa, that it
was not the land of Marco Polo, but a new continent indeed.
"It is proper to call it a New World," says Amerigo Vespucci. "Men
of old said over and over again that there was no land south of the
Equator. But this last voyage of mine has proved them wrong, since
in southern regions I have found a country more thickly inhabited by
people and animals than our Europe or Asia or Africa."
[Illustration: AMERIGO VESPUCCI. From the sculpture by Grazzini in
the Uffizi Gallery, Florence.]
These words among others, and an account of his voyages published in
Paris, 1507, created a deep impression. A letter from Columbus
announcing his discoveries had been published in 1493, but he said
nothing, because he knew nothing, of a New World. Men therefore said
that Amerigo Vespucci had discovered a new continent, "wherefore the
new continent ought to be called America from its discoverer Amerigo,
a man of rare ability, inasmuch as Europe and Asia derived their names
from women."