with them,” all painted, chiefly in black, wearing nothing but plumes on
their heads and aprons of leaves round their waists. Wishing to assert
his authority and instil a fear for the arms of Castile into the hearts
of the natives, Columbus, as the caravels could not reach the shore
owing to the shallowness of the water, sent three boatloads of men, who,
aided by the pioneer of those hounds which afterwards did fearful
execution amongst the poor Indians, drove them off so that there was not
a man or woman left in the neighbourhood. On the following day six
Indians came as ambassadors from the caciques or chiefs, begging
Columbus not to go away; and later on the caciques themselves and many
followers came and brought provisions, which probably consisted of
cassava, arrowroot, guavas, naseberries, cocoa-plums and star-apples.
During the time they were there the Spaniards had everything in
abundance, and the Indians were very pleased with the objects (hawks’
bells, beads and the like) which the admiral gave them. When the vessels
had been repaired and the crews were rested, Columbus left Puerto Bueno
after a three days’ stay, and skirted the northern shore, being visited
from each village by canoes full of Indians, who exchanged native
products for hawks’ bells and beads, till he came to Point Negril, which
he named “Cabo del Buen Tiempo.”
Owing partly to contrary winds and partly to the impression that there
was “no gold in it, or any other metal, although the island was
otherwise a paradise and worth more than gold,” Columbus now left
Jamaica and returned to Cuba.
The historians of Jamaica and the West Indies generally have thrown but
little light on the subject of the Jamaica landing. For a time the
honour was about equally divided between St. Ann’s Bay and Port Maria.
So far, however, as the somewhat scanty information warrants one in
coming to a conclusion, it may be assumed that Columbus’s Santa Gloria
was probably St. Ann’s Bay and that his Puerto Bueno was what is now
known as Dry Harbour, for it is said that he called the first port he
touched at Santa Gloria; that he stayed at Santa Gloria in 1504; that
Sevilla arose near Santa Gloria, and Sevilla, we are told, was near St.
Ann’s Bay. The horseshoe shape of Puerto Bueno, as well as other
evidence, points to Dry Harbour as the place of Columbus’s first landing
in Jamaica. It may be mentioned that the identification of Puerto Bueno
with Dry Harbour was dealt with by the present writer at greater length
than is possible here in “The Story of the Life of Columbus and the
Discovery of Jamaica” (Kingston, 1894). There was a Fort Columbus at Dry
Harbour in and about 1783.
It is not here necessary to follow Columbus in his further
voyaging—through “The Queen’s Garden,” as he named the islands off the
southern coast of Cuba, back to Jamaica, where on the south side he had,
as we have seen in the account of St. Catherine, an interview at Old
Harbour with an important cacique, thence to Isabella, on the north
coast of Hispaniola, and so home. But Dry Harbour was once again visited
by the admiral on his fourth and last voyage.
On his way back from the continent of America, which he saw for the last
time on May 1, 1503, while making for Hispaniola for succour, as his two
worm-eaten caravels the _Capitana_ and the _Santiago de Palos_ were in
no fit state to cross the Atlantic, after passing the Cayman Islands,
which he named Las Tortugas, and encountering a storm at the west end of
Cuba, he ran for Jamaica and reached Dry Harbour on June 23, 1503; when,
finding no water there, he went on to Puerto Santa Gloria (St. Ann’s
Bay) and ran his caravels on the beach in a cove, possibly in that which
is still called =Don Christopher’s Cove=. Why another cove in St. Mary
received the same name is not evident.
Being unable to keep the ships afloat any longer he stranded them as
best he could, one near the other, and propped them up on both sides so
that they could not move.
The lower parts soon filled when pumping ceased, and cabins had to be
built on deck thatched with straw to supplement the accommodation now
only found in the cabins under the poops and forecastles. There, in the
words of Mendez, they were “not without considerable danger from the
natives, who were not yet subdued, and who might easily set fire to our
habitation in the night, in spite of the greatest watchfulness.”
[Illustration:
Don Christopher’s Cove
]
The natives, however, soon showed that they were inclined to be
friendly, and Columbus endeavoured to see that nothing was done to abuse
their confidence. They brought in provisions such as cassava, fish and
birds, which they willingly exchanged for cheap ornaments; and we are
told that Columbus’s youthful son, Fernando, took great interest in
these barterings, which were organised on a large scale by Diego Mendez,
who had ever been a good and faithful follower of the admiral.
The following is Mendez’s account[11] of what he did:
It was there that I gave out the last ration of biscuit and wine; I
then took a sword in my hand, three men only accompanying me, and
advanced into the island; for no one else dared go to seek food for
the Admiral and those who were with him. It pleased God that I found
some people who were very gentle and did us no harm, but received us
cheerfully, and gave us food with hearty goodwill. I then made a
stipulation with the Indians, who lived in a village called
Aguacadiba, and with their cacique, that they should make cassava
bread, and that they should hunt and fish to supply the Admiral every
day with a sufficient quantity of provisions, which they were to bring
to the ships, where I promised there should be a person ready to pay
them in blue beads, combs and knives, hawks’-bells and fish hooks, and
other such articles which we had with us for that purpose. With this
understanding, I dispatched one of the Spaniards, whom I brought with
me, to the Admiral, in order that he might send a person to pay for
the provisions, and secure their being sent. From thence I went to
another village, at three leagues distance from the former, and made a
similar agreement with the natives and their cacique, and dispatched
another Spaniard to the Admiral, begging him to send another person
with a similar object to this village. After this I went further on,
and came to a great cacique named Huareo, living in a place which is
now called Melilla, thirteen leagues from where the ships lay. I was
very well received by him; he gave me plenty to eat, and ordered all
his subjects to bring together in the course of three days a great
quantity of provisions, which they did, and laid them before him,
whereupon I paid him for them to his full satisfaction. I stipulated
with him that they should furnish a constant supply, and engaged that
there should be a person appointed to pay them. Having made this
arrangement, I sent the other Spaniard to the Admiral with the
provisions they had given me, and then begged the cacique to allow me
two Indians to go with me to the extremity of the island, one to carry
the hammock in which I slept, and the other carrying the food.
In this manner I journeyed eastward to the end of the island, and came
to a cacique who was named Ameyro, with whom I entered into close
friendship. I gave him my name and took his, which amongst these
people is regarded as a pledge of brotherly attachment. I bought of
him a very good canoe, and gave him in exchange an excellent brass
helmet that I carried in a bag, a frock, and one of the two shirts
that I had with me; I then put out to sea in this canoe, in search of
the place that I had left, the cacique having given me six Indians to
assist in guiding the canoe. When I reached the spot to which I had
dispatched the provisions, I found there the Spaniards whom the
Admiral had sent, and I loaded them with the victuals that I had
brought with me, and went myself to the Admiral who gave me a very
cordial reception. He was not satisfied with seeing and embracing me,
but asked me respecting everything that had occurred in the voyage,
and offered up thanks to God for having delivered me in safety from so
barbarous a people. The men rejoiced greatly at my arrival, for there
was not a loaf left in the ships when I returned to them with the
means of allaying their hunger; this and every day after that, the
Indians came to the ships loaded with provisions from the places where
I had made the agreements; so that there was enough for the two
hundred and thirty people who were with the Admiral.
Footnote 11:
Mendez wrote in 1536.
In spite of Mendez’s efforts, it was evident to Columbus that the
present state of affairs was highly unsatisfactory. Neither of the
caravels could be made fit for sea, and it became necessary to seek aid
from Hispaniola. After a conversation with the admiral, and when no
response had been made to an appeal for volunteers for such a risky
journey, which appeal Columbus had made publicly at Mendez’s suggestion,
Mendez offered to go, saying:
“I have but one life, and I am willing to sacrifice it in the service of
your lordship, and for the welfare of all those who are here with us;
for I trust in God, that in consideration of the motive which actuates
me, he will give me deliverance, as he has done on many other
occasions.”
It was decided that he should be accompanied by Bartolomé Fiesco, in a
second canoe, who was to return and announce Mendez’s safe arrival in
Hispaniola, while the latter was to go on to Spain and let the
sovereigns know of the results of the voyage, and for that purpose
Columbus entrusted Mendez with a long letter descriptive of the voyage.
In the meantime hope of assistance deferred, their crowded quarters on
shipboard, and want of occupation and exercise began to have their
effects upon the health and spirits of the little settlement at Santa
Gloria. Discontent led to open rebellion. The brothers Porras (Francisco
the captain of the _Santiago_, and Diego the accountant) led the revolt,
followed by Juan Sanchez, the pilot Ledesma, Barba the gunner, and some
fifty others, who were moved to rebellion by Porras’s false
representations. On January 2, 1504, when Columbus was confined in bed
by gout, Francisco de Porras burst into his small cabin and accused the
admiral of having no intention of returning to Spain. Remonstrances were
useless, and, to quote the “Historie”:
“Porras replied, that it was not now time to talk, and that the Admiral
must either embark immediately or stay there by himself; and turning his
back upon the Admiral he called out in a loud voice, ‘I am bound for
Spain with those that are willing to follow me.’ On this all his
followers who were present shouted out, ‘We will go with you! we will go
with you!’ and running about in great confusion crying, ‘Let them die!
let them die! For Spain! for Spain!’ while others called on the captain
for his orders, they took possession of the poop, forecastle, and round
tops.
“Though the Admiral was then so lame of the gout that he could not
stand, he yet endeavoured to rise and come out upon deck on hearing this
uproar; but two or three worthy persons, his attendants, laid hold upon
him and forcibly laid him again in bed, that the mutineers might not
murder him; they then ran to his brother, who was going out courageously
with a half-pike, and wresting it from his hands, they forced him into
the cabin beside the admiral, desiring Captain Porras to go where he
liked, and not commit a crime for which they might all suffer; that he
might be satisfied in meeting no opposition to his going away, but if he
killed the Admiral he must lay his account with being severely punished
for what could not possibly be of the least benefit to his views.”
The rebels seized some stores and ten canoes which Columbus had
purchased at Maima, a native village near where the caravels were
grounded, and which perhaps stood by Mammee Bay, and made several futile
attempts to follow Mendez to Hispaniola; proving themselves such
wretches, it is said, as to force into the sea when the waves ran high,
in order to lighten the canoes, those poor Indians whom they had taken
with them to navigate their canoes.
Foiled by their own cowardice and want of enterprise from leaving
Jamaica, they ran riot throughout the island, ill-treating the natives,
and thereby upsetting the reputation for kindness and fair dealing which
the admiral had carefully been building up. The result was that the
natives, not able to distinguish between the followers of Columbus and
his renegades, began to change their regard for their visitors; the
consistent and steady labour necessary for the due supply of food also
was unusual and proved irksome to them, and the Spanish trinkets with
their loss of novelty lost much of their value in their eyes. Supplies
therefore were not now forthcoming, and Columbus found himself and his
companions, many of whom were with him owing rather to sickness than to
loyalty, in danger of starvation. Once again his resourceful nature
stood him in good stead, and he made use of an approaching eclipse to
bring them to reason in the manner related by Mendez.
But Columbus’s troubles were by no means over. In March, just as
discontent amongst his followers was again becoming formidable, a
caravel hove in sight, and all hearts were raised in thanksgiving in
anticipation of being removed from their disagreeable position. Bitter
must have been the disappointment when, the ship anchoring outside the
bay, a boat put off, and Escobar, the messenger sent by Ovanda, handed a
letter to Columbus, with a present of a bottle of wine and a piece of
bacon; and it was found that the letter contained merely condolences for
their sufferings, and regret that no vessels could be spared for the
purpose of bringing them from Jamaica. It was a sorry jest on Ovanda’s
part, and there seems reason for believing that Escobar had been sent
rather in the hope of finding that the admiral was dead, than to render
succour. Still Columbus’s dignity and courage did not desert him. He
sent an answer asking for assistance, consoling himself with the
reflection that Mendez was safe, and that sooner or later succour would
come: and Escobar left that same night.
At this time Columbus endeavoured to pacify the rebel party by sending
to tell them of the arrival of Escobar, giving them a piece of the bacon
as token; and he offered, if they returned to obedience, to give them a
free pardon and a passage to Spain. Porras persuaded his followers to
decline this offer and to demand permission to reside where they liked
in the island and a promise of half the room on ship board and half the
stores when help should arrive. On being told that these demands would
not be complied with, they said they would take them by force.
Hearing that Porras and his mutineers were marching in open rebellion
upon Maima, Columbus entrusted to the adelantado the task of pacifying
them or defying them. Bartolomé gathered together what men he could,
about fifty in all, and, after overtures had been rejected by Porras,
who calculated on his superior numbers to gain him an easy victory,
prepared to receive attack on May 19. Porras and six others made a dead
set at the adelantado, for they thought if they could kill him, the rest
would be easy. But the bold Bartolomé was not dismayed. His first three
blows disposed of the powerful Sanchez the pilot, Barba the gunner, and
Ledesma, who, however, recovered from his wounds in spite of the fact
that he fell into a ravine and was not discovered till the next day.
Then he received on his shield a fierce blow from Francisco de Porras,
who, his sword sticking in the shield, was overpowered and bound. His
followers fled, and the formidable revolt was quelled by the courage and
strength of one man. The adelantado lost but one soldier. This miniature
battle had been witnessed by the natives drawn up in battle array, and
after the fight was over they marvelled to find that the strangers from
the skies were but mortal like themselves. Columbus, with his usual
clemency, granted the pardon asked for by the rebels, and even spared
the lives of the two Porrases, whom he, however, kept in custody.
At last, about the end of June, the long looked for help arrived in the
shape of two caravels, one sent by Mendez under the command of Diego
Salcedo, and a second sent as an ostensible aid to Columbus by Ovando,
who, now that he found that the admiral could get assistance without
him, thought it well to take part in the relief.
On June 28, 1504, after a sojourn of twelve months and four days in the
island, Columbus and his followers, accompanied by Salcedo, left
Jamaica, which could have had but unhappy memories for the great
mariner.
Four years later the town of =Sevilla Nueva=, later known as Sevilla
d’Oro, was founded under the authority of the admiral’s son and
successor Diego, near the spot occupied by the wrecked caravels.
Sloane on his expedition to the north side visited Sevilla Nueva. He
says:
I observed the ruins of the town called Sevilla, among which a church
built by Peter Martyr of Angleria, of a sort of freestone (to be had
near this city) and bricks. A pavement was found two miles from this
church; the city was so large it had a fortified castle, the walls of
pebbles and bricks, four feet thick; it was and is a good port....
This town is now Captain Hemmings’ plantation. The church was not
finished; it was thirty paces broad and thirty paces long. There were
two rows of pillars within; over the place where the altar was to be
were some carvings under the ends of the arches. It was built out of a
sort of stone between freestone and marble, taken out of a quarry
about a mile up in the hills; the houses and foundations stand for
several miles along. The ground towards the country is rising. Captain
Hemmings told me he sometimes found pavements under his canes, three
feet covered with earth, and several times wells, and sometimes
burialstones finely cut. There are the beginnings of a great house
called a monastery, but I suppose the house was designed for the
Governor. There were two coats-of-arms not set up—a ducal one, and
that of a count, I suppose belonging to Columbus’s family, the
proprietors of the island. There had been raised a tower, part brick
and part hewn stones, as also several battlements on it, and other
lower buildings not finished. At the church lie several arched stones
to complete it, which had never been put up, but lay among the canes.
The rows of pillars within were for the most part plain. In the time
of the Spaniards it was thought the Europeans had been cut off by the
Indians, and so the church left unfinished. When the English took the
island the ruins of this city were so overgrown with wood that they
were all turned black; nay, I saw a mammee, or bastard mammee tree
grow within the walls of the tower, so high that it must have been a
very large gun could kill a bird on the top of it, and most part of
the timber fell’d off this place, when it was planted, was sixty foot
or more long. A great many wells are on this ground.... The west gate
of the church was a very fine work, and stands very entire; it was
seven feet wide, and as high before the arch began. Over the door in
the middle was our Saviour’s head with a crown of thorns between two
angels; on the right side a small round figure of some saint with a
knife struck into his head; on the left a Virgin Mary or Madonna, her
arm tied in three places, Spanish fashion. Over the gate, under a coat
of arms, this inscription:—Petrus Martir ab Angleria Italvs Civis
Mediolanen. Prothon. Apos. hvivs Insulæ Abbas Senatus Indici
Consiliarivs Ligneam privs Ædem hanc bis Igne consvmptam Latericio et
Quadrato Lapide primus a Fundamentis Extruxit.
This Long thus translates:—
Peter Martir, of Anghiera, an Italian citizen of Milan, chief
missionary and abbot of this island, member of the Council of the
Indies, first raised from its foundation, with brick and square stone,
this edifice, which formerly was built of wood, and twice destroyed by
fire.
This Peter Martyr must not be confounded with his namesake, Pietro
Martire Vermigli (1500–62), of Florence, who at Cranmer’s instance went
to England, and for six years occupied a professor’s chair of theology
at Oxford. Our Peter Martyr was Pietro Martire of Anghiera (1455–1526),
a native of Arona in Italy, apostolic protonotary, and a member of the
Council of the Indies to Charles V. and first abbot of Jamaica. He was a
prototype of the absentee proprietor; he never set foot in the island.
He is best known by his work entitled “De Orbe Novo,” commonly called
“The Decades.” The “some saint with a knife struck into his head,”
mentioned by Sloane, was the Dominican saint of the thirteenth century,
well known to students of mediæval Christian art, especially by reason
of Titian’s world-famous painting of his martyrdom, and the saint after
whom the two sixteenth-century Peter Martyrs were named.
At the time that Long wrote (1774), nearly a century later than Sloane,
several fragments of carved work in stone “that would be thought no mean
ornaments in an European church” were still to be seen there, and the
ruins of two edifices, one said to have been a castle and the other
probably the collegiate church, were still remaining, separated by about
half a mile. The walls were compacted with a very hard cement, and were
several feet in thickness. But he mentions that these walls were being
every day diminished for the sake of the materials, which were used in
repairing the buildings on the estate, so much so that the remains of
the castle were then below the surface of the earth. In 1764 he tells us
there were dug up two pilasters of about seven feet in length, “of no
particular order, but somewhat resembling the Ionic,” on which were
“some carvings in alto-relievo.” Four or five coarse images were
likewise found, one of which resembled a sphinx, another an alligator,
and the rest creatures of the mason’s fancy. Long says that the
Spaniards abandoned Sevilla Nueva because the south side ports were more
convenient for the galleons and other vessels passing between St.
Domingo and Cartagena.
The usual derivation of the name of =Ocho Rios=, one of the most
beautiful spots in the beautiful parish of St. Ann, as meaning eight
rivers, is probably wrong. The word is most likely a corruption of
_chorréra_, a spout, having reference to the waterfall near by. In
Long’s time it was called Chareiras, and as late as 1841 William Rob
wrote: “Ocho Rios called to this day by the old inhabitants ‘Cheireras,’
its early and appropriate name, ‘the bay of waterfalls.’” It is
interesting to note that there is a Chorréra River in Cuba, near
Havannah.
In 1657 a letter from Bayona, the governor of Cuba, to a certain Spanish
serjeant-major in Jamaica, making arrangements for an attack on Jamaica
to be aided by the whilom Spanish slaves in the island, was intercepted.
Immediate steps were taken by the resourceful Doyley; and Arnoldo Sasi,
the Spanish governor, who having yielded up Jamaica to Penn and Venables
had re-landed on the north side from Cuba, was signally defeated by
Doyley in person at Ocho Rios, whither he had sailed round from Passage
Fort.
The following is the account which Doyley himself gave to Cromwell in “A
Narrative of the Great Success God hath been pleased to give his
Highness Forces in Jamaica, against the King of Spain’s Forces.
Published by His Highness Special Command. London, 1658.”
Right Honourable,