6. The "Life of the Discoverer," by Ferdinand Columbus, first published
in 1571 at Venice, in Italian.
The last five writers had personal knowledge or intercourse with
Columbus, while Las Casas, Oviedo, and Ferdinand had the advantage of
residence in America, and intimate knowledge of the aborigines, and of
the men and events of the period.
Almost every item involved in the checkered and eventful life of
Columbus has afforded a fruitful theme for controversy. His birth, even,
is disputed, under stress of evidence, as falling anywhere between 1435
and 1447--a discrepancy of twelve years. His birthplace is claimed by
more towns than that of Homer, although his own statement, that he was a
native of Genoa, has met general concurrence. His knowledge of
geography, astronomy, and navigation is asserted and denied with various
degrees of pertinacity. His treatment by the sovereigns of Portugal,
Castile, and Aragon is so far in question that irreconcilable
differences of opinion exist. How much Columbus really owed to the aid
of the crown, and how much to private enterprise, in fitting out his
expeditions of discovery, cannot be definitely ascertained. How far he
was hindered by the bigotry, or helped by the enlightenment of powerful
ecclesiastics, as at the council of Salamanca, is a theme of perennial
controversy.
The island where he first landed is so far from being identified, that
many books have been written to prove the claims of this, that, or the
other gem of the sea to be the true land-fall of Columbus. His treatment
of the natives has been made the subject of unsparing denunciation and
of undiscriminating eulogy. His conduct toward his own, often mutinous,
crews is alternately lauded as humane and generous, or denounced as
arrogant and cruel, according to the sympathies or the point of view of
the critic. His imprisonment and attempted disgrace have been made the
theme of indignant comment and of extenuating apology. His moral
character and marital relations are subjects of irreconcilable
differences of judgment. His deep religious bias, so manifest in nearly
all his writings, has been praised as a mark of exalted merit by some
writers, and stigmatized by others as cant and superstition. The last
resting-place of his bones, even, is in doubt, which it required an
elaborate investigation by the Royal Academy of History of Madrid to
solve in favor of Havana, as against the cathedral of Santo Domingo;
though its report is still controverted, and M. A. Pinart has proved to
the satisfaction of many that a misprision took place and that the true
remains of Columbus still rest at Santo Domingo. The movement to
canonize the great discoverer has been championed with more zeal than
discretion by some over-ardent churchmen, while the too-evident human
frailties of the proposed candidate for the honors of sainthood have
inspired an abundant caution in the councils of the Vatican.
On a subject fraught with so much inherent difficulty, contradictory
evidence, and conflict of opinion, he is on the safest ground who
candidly holds his judgment in reserve. In the light of the
keenly-sifted evidence which modern critical study has brought to bear,
the laudatory judgments of Irving and Prescott, rendered sixty years
ago, cannot stand wholly approved.
Neither can a discerning reader accept the fulsome laudations of his
principal French biographer, Roselly de Lorgues, whose rhetorical
panegyrics and pious eulogies place its author in the front rank of the
canonizers.
On the other hand, those who have taken the unfavorable view of
Columbus, have done their utmost to divest him of most of the honors
which the general voice of history has assigned him as America's
greatest discoverer. The established fact that parts of North America
were seen centuries before, though no permanent settlement nor
continuity of intercourse ensued, has been used to discredit him, though
he was undeniably the pioneer who set out with a plan to discover, and
did discover by design, what others found only by accident. His
geographical ideas were derived, they say, from Behaim and Toscanelli;
his nautical skill from Pinzon; his certainty of finding new lands from
Alonzo Sanchez; his courage and daring from some of his fellow-voyagers.
We are pointed to his double reckoning on his first voyage, by which he
deceived his sailors as to their true distance from Spain, as evidence
of a false nature. He is charged with ambition, cupidity, and arrogance,
in demanding titles, dignities, and money as fruits of his discoveries.
He was, we are told, a fanatic, a visionary, a tyrant, a buccaneer, a
liar, and a slave-trader. He was proud, cruel, and vindictive.
What manner of man, then, was this Columbus, with whose name the trump
of fame has been busy so long? As to his person, we have no verified
portrait, while the likenesses (of all periods) claiming to represent
his features, present irreconcilable differences. But here is the
description of him given by Herrera: "Columbus was tall of stature,
long-visaged, of a majestic aspect, his nose hooked, his eyes gray, of a
clear complexion, somewhat ruddy. He was witty and pleasant, well-spoken
and eloquent, moderately grave, affable to strangers, to his own family
mild. His conversation was discreet, which gained him the affection of
those he had to deal with, and his presence attracted respect, having an
air of authority and grandeur. He was a man of undaunted courage and
high thoughts, patient, unmoved in the many troubles and adversities
that attended him, ever relying on the Divine Providence." Gomara
describes him as "a man of good height, strong-limbed, with a long
countenance, fresh and rosy in aspect, somewhat given to anger, hardy in
exposure to fatigues."
Benzoni says that Columbus was "a man of exalted intellect, of a
pleasant and ingenuous countenance."
Bernaldez, the historian of Ferdinand and Isabella, who knew him
intimately in his later years, says "he was a man of very lofty genius,
and of marvellously honored memory."
[Illustration: Columbus ridiculed at the Council of Salamanca.]
With these personal characteristics, Columbus united a restless spirit,
a firm will, and a singularly enthusiastic temperament. The latter
faculty gave him a consuming zeal for his undertakings, which was as
rare as it proved ultimately successful in compassing his great
discovery. He was discouraged by no rebuffs, would take no denials. His
motto seemed to be never to despair, and never to let go. His spiritual
nature was as remarkable as his intellectual. Here, his imagination was
the predominant faculty. He firmly believed himself divinely
commissioned to find out the Indies, and to bring their inhabitants into
the fold of the true faith. He had early vowed to devote the profits of
his enterprise, if successful, to rescue the tomb of Christ from the
infidels. Himself a devout son of the Church, he fervently believed that
he had miraculous aid on many perilous occasions of his life. Humble
before God, he was sufficiently proud and independent before men. He
insisted upon conditions with the haughty sovereigns of Spain which they
deemed exacting, but the high views and tenacity of Columbus carried the
day, and his own terms were granted at last. He never forgot, in all his
subsequent trials and humiliations, that he was a Spanish admiral, and
Viceroy of the Indies.
Such was the character of Columbus. Let us now look at his environment,
which in all men contributes so much to make or modify character. Born
in Genoa, the headquarters in that day of navigation, Columbus early
imbibed a passion for maritime affairs. His youthful days and nights
were given to the study of astronomy and of navigation. He was a trained
sailor and map-maker from his boyhood. He brooded over the problems
involved in the spherical form of the earth. He caught up all the hints
and allusions in classical and mediæval writers that came in his way, of
other lands than those already known. The Atlantis of Plato, and the
clear prediction in Seneca of another world in the west, fired his
imagination. He himself tells us that he voyaged to the Ultima Thule of
his day, which was Iceland, besides various expeditions in the Atlantic
and Mediterranean.
The early fancies of isles in the western sea loomed up before his eyes,
and repeated themselves in his dreams. These visions were heightened by
that vague sense of wonder that is linked with the unknown. No wonder,
then, that Columbus, with a bent almost preternatural toward the
undiscovered regions of the globe, should dream of new lands, new men,
new scenery, and new wealth. But to his vivid imagination dreams became
realities, until he believed with all the force of his ardent nature
that he was divinely commissioned to be a discoverer. Hitherto the
Portuguese voyages familiar to Columbus had only skirted the coast of
Africa, and discovered the Cape Verde Islands and the Azores. It was not
till 1486, years after the idea of his western voyage took firm root in
his mind, that the Cape of Good Hope was at last doubled by Vasco da
Gama. All voyages prior to his had been only tentative and brief, slowly
creeping from headland to headland, or else finding new islands by being
drifted out of courses long familiar to mariners.
It was the supreme merit of Columbus that he was the first to cut loose
from one continent to find another, and to steer boldly across an
unknown sea, in search of an unknown world. We need not belittle (still
less need we deny) the finding of Greenland and of other parts of North
America by the Norsemen in the ninth and tenth centuries. We may hail
Eric the Red and his stout son, Leif Ericson, as pioneers in what may be
termed coasting voyages of discovery. But the story of America gains as
little from these shadowy and abortive voyages as civilization has
gained from their fruitless results.
On the first voyage of Columbus, he was more fortunate in the uncertain
elements which always affect sea voyages so overpoweringly than in some
of his later ones. His own vessel, with single deck, was about ninety
feet long, by a breadth of twenty feet. The Pinta, a faster sailer, and
the Nina (or "baby") were smaller caravels, and without decks, commanded
respectively by the brothers Martin and Vicente Pinzon. The three
vessels carried ninety persons, sailing September 6, 1492, running first
south to the Canaries, and then stretching straight westward on the
twenty-eighth parallel for what the admiral believed to be the coast of
Japan. Delightful weather favored the voyagers, but when, on the tenth
day out from Spain, the caravels struck into that wonderful stretch of
seaweed and grass, known as the Sargasso Sea, fear lest they should run
aground or soon be unable to sail in either direction took possession of
the crews. In five days the caravels ran into smooth water again. But as
their distance from Spain grew greater, the spirit of protest and mutiny
grew louder. Columbus needed all of his invincible constancy and
firmness of purpose to quell and to animate his despairing crews. At
last, October 21, 1492--day ever memorable in the annals of this
world--the unknown land rose from the bosom of the water. It was named
by its pious discoverer San Salvador--Holy Saviour. The charm of climate
and of landscape enchanted all, and fear and despondency gave way to
delight and joy and the most extravagant anticipations. The subsequent
history of this first voyage, the wreck of the admiral's flag-ship Santa
Maria, the base desertion of Pinzon, and his baffled attempt to
forestall Columbus in the credit of the discovery, the triumphal honors
paid to the successful admiral, and the pope's bull conferring upon
Spain all lands west of a meridian one hundred leagues from the
Azores--all this is familiar to most readers. The actual discoveries of
the first voyage included Cuba and Hispaniola (or Haiti), with some
little islands of the Bahama group, of small importance.
On his second voyage Columbus found no difficulty in collecting
seventeen ships and 1,500 adventurers, so popular had the new way to the
Indies become when the way was once found. He set sail six months after
his return to Spain, or on September 15, 1493. He returned in June,
1496, after three years of explorations, interrupted by a long illness,
and having discovered Jamaica, Porto Rico, Santa Cruz, Antigua,
Montserrat, Dominica, and Guadaloupe.
The third voyage began May 30, 1498, and embraced six vessels and 200
men. Columbus struck southwestward from the Cape Verde Islands and ran
nearly to the equator, into a region of torrid heat, discovering
Trinidad, Tobago, Grenada, and the Gulf of Paria, and making his first
landing on the continent, at the Pearl Coast, near the mouth of the
Orinoco, in what is now Venezuela. This voyage witnessed many
disasters--the rebellion of Roldan, the severe prostration of the
admiral by fever, and his seizure and imprisonment in chains by the
infamous Bobadilla.
The fourth and last voyage of Columbus, with four small caravels and 150
men, was begun May 11, 1502. On this voyage he discovered Martinique and
the coasts of Honduras, Nicaragua, and Veragua, on the mainland,
returning to Spain, after untold disasters and miseries, on November 7,
1504. Then followed the weary struggle of the infirm old voyager to
secure justice and a part of his hard-earned benefits from the crown.
But Isabella had died, and Ferdinand, under the influence of the
hard-hearted and cruel bigot, Fonseca, postponed all the claims of
Columbus. He who had given a world died in poverty, a suppliant for the
means of an honorable existence.
It is easy enough for the writers of the nineteenth century to criticise
the actors of the fifteenth; and learned scholars, sitting in luxurious
easy-chairs in great libraries, can pass swift and severe judgment upon
the acts and motives of Columbus. But let them go back four hundred
years, and divest themselves of the bias which the science of to-day
unconsciously inspires; let them quit the age of steam-engines,
telegraphs, democratic governments, printing-presses, and
Sunday-schools; let them orient themselves, and become Spaniards of
1492, instead of Americans of 1892; let them take the place of
Columbus--if they are gifted with imagination enough among their
manifold endowments to do it; let them think his thoughts, endure his
trials, cherish his resolves, encounter his rebuffs, overcome his
obstacles, launch out on his voyage, govern his mutinous crew, deal with
his savage and hostile tribes, combat the traitors in his camp, suffer
his shipwrecks, struggle with his disappointments, bear the ignominy of
his chains, see his visions, and pray his prayers.
Behold him, launched on his uncertain voyage across the "sea of
darkness," in three little caravels, no larger than the modern yacht,
and far less seaworthy. Watch his devoted and anxious look, his solitary
self-communings, his all-night vigils under the silent stars. See his
motley crew, picked up at random in Palos streets, ignorant,
superstitious, and full of fears, dreading every added mile of the
voyage, and alarmed at the prevalent east winds which they thought would
never permit them to sail back to Spain; so that Columbus, on a contrary
head-wind springing up, thanked God with all the fervency of his pious
soul. Pursue his career in his later expeditions, hampered by the
mutinous vagabonds whom fate had thrust upon him as followers, many of
them desperadoes just out of jail. See his baffled endeavors to maintain
order and discipline among such a crew; to restrain their excesses, curb
their lawless acts of violence, and secure some semblance of decency in
their conduct toward the natives. Many of them, we read, were so given
over to idleness and sloth, that they actually made the islanders beasts
of burden, to carry them on their backs. It is a most unhappy fact that
the missionaries of the cross were often accompanied by bands of
miscreants, who wantonly broke every commandment in the decalogue and
trampled upon every precept of the gospel. See him in his last voyage,
beating about the rocks and shoals of an unknown archipelago, overtaken
by West India hurricanes, almost engulfed in waterspouts, scudding under
bare poles amid perilous breakers, blinded by lightning, deafened by
incessant peals of thunder, his crazy little barks tossed about like
cockle-shells in the raging waves, his anchors lost, his worm-eaten
vessels as full of holes as a honey-comb, two caravels abandoned, and
the two remaining run ashore at Jamaica, where Columbus built huts on
their decks to shelter his forlorn crew. See him stranded here, pressed
by hunger and want, visited by sickness and almost blindness, burning
with fever under the wilting, fiery heat of the tropics, desolate,
forsaken, infirm, and old. There he lay a whole year without relief,
until the cup of his misery was full.
If Columbus was sometimes harsh and cruel, we are to remember that he
lived in an age when the most cruel and barbarous punishments were
common. There are numerous instances of his clemency both to natives and
to his revolted Spaniards, and he more than once jeopardized his own
life by sparing theirs. Among a treacherous and vindictive race, many of
whom were continually plotting for his overthrow, the admiral, endowed
with full power over the lives and acts of his followers, was compelled
to make examples of the worst, many of whom were criminals released from
the prisons of Spain. Like other fighters, he met treachery with
treachery, cruelty with cruelty. He had never learned to love his
enemies, nor to turn his cheek for the second blow. Show us the man
invested with absolute power, in that or in any former age, who abused
it less. Try him by the moral standards, not of our humane and
enlightened age, but by those of his own. Compared with the deeds of
darkness that were done by Bobadilla and Ovando, the governors who
replaced him, the reign of Columbus appears, even at its worst, to have
been mild and merciful.
By the side of the atrocities and cruel massacres perpetrated under
Cortes in Mexico, and Pizarro in Peru, the few deeds of blood under
Columbus appear slight indeed. While we have no right to extenuate his
errors and his abuses, we have as little right to hold him to a standard
nowhere set up in his day. He had learned his ethics in a school which
taught that, for great and pious objects, the end justified the means.
In the ardor of his zeal for what he deemed the Christian faith,
Columbus committed many glaring mistakes and errors; but what
over-zealous apostle or reformer has failed to do the same? Columbus was
unduly eager after gold, they say; but in our advanced age, when that
which Virgil called "the accursed hunger for gold" pervades all ranks,
and our cities are nothing but great encampments of fortune-hunters,
does it lie in our mouths to condemn him?
The age of Columbus took him as he was--all full of human imperfections
and frailties, but full also to overflowing with a great idea, and with
a will, a perseverance, a constancy, and a faith so sublime, as fairly
to conquer every obstacle, after a weary struggle of eighteen years, and
to carry forward his arduous enterprise to triumphant success. That the
great discoverer failed as a governor and administrator makes nothing
against his merits as a discoverer. That his light at last went out in
darkness--that the world he discovered brought nothing to Spain but
disappointment and Dead Sea ashes--that he dragged out a miserable old
age in rotten and unseaworthy ships, lying ill in the torrid heats of
the West Indies, racked with excruciating pain, and in absolute penury
and want--all this but adds point to a life so full of paradox that we
may almost pardon him for believing in miracles. After so much glory and
so much fame, his life darkened down to its dreary and pathetic close.
His ardent soul went at last where wicked governments cease from
troubling, and weary mariners are at rest. On May 20, 1506, worn out by
disease, anxieties, and labors, the great discoverer launched forth on
his last voyage of discovery, beyond the border of that unknown land
whose boundaries are hid from mortal ken.
His place among the immortals is secure. By the power of the
unconquerable mind with which nature had endowed him, he achieved a fame
so imperishable that neither the arrows of malice, nor the shafts of
envy, nor the keenest pens of critics, nor the assaults of iconoclasts
can avail to destroy it.
[Signature: A. R. Spofford.]