COLUMBUS IN SPAIN AGAIN; MARCH TO SEPTEMBER, 1493.
Peter Martyr tells us of the common ignorance and dread pervading the
ordinary ranks of society, before and during the absence of Columbus, in
respect to all that part of the earth's circumference which the sun
looked upon beyond Gades, till it again cast its rays upon the Golden
Chersonesus. During this absence from the known and habitable regions of
the globe, that orb was thought to sweep over the ominous and foreboding
Sea of Darkness. No one could tell how wide that sea was. The learned
disagreed in their estimates. A conception, far under the actual
condition, had played no small part in making the voyage of Columbus
possible. Men possessed legends of its mysteries. Fables of its many
islands were repeated; but no one then living was credibly thought to
have tested its glooms except by sailing a little beyond the outermost
of the Azores.
[Sidenote: Palos aroused at the return of Columbus.]
It calls for no stretch of the imagination to picture the public
sentiment in little Palos during the months of anxiety which many
households had endured since that August morning, when in its dim light
Columbus, the Pinzons, and all their companions had been wafted gently
out to sea by the current and the breeze. The winter had been unusually
savage and weird. The navigators to the Atlantic islands had reported
rough passages, and the ocean had broken wildly for long intervals along
the rocks and sands of the peninsular shores. It is a natural movement
of the mind to wrap the absent in the gloom of the present hour; and
while Columbus had been passing along the gentle waters of the new
archipelago, his actual experiences had been in strange contrast to the
turmoil of the sea as it washed the European shores. He had indeed
suffered on his return voyage the full tumultuousness of the elements,
and we can hardly fail to recognize the disquiet of mind and falling of
heart which those savage gales must have given to the kin and friends
of the untraceable wanderers.
The stories, then, which we have of the thanksgiving and jubilation of
the people of Palos, when the "Nina" was descried passing the bar of the
river, fall readily among the accepted truths of history. We can imagine
how despondency vanished amid the acclaims of exultation; how multitudes
hung upon the words of strange revelations; how the gaping populace
wondered at the bedecked Indians; and how throngs of people opened a way
that Columbus might lead the votive procession to the church. The
canonizers of course read between the lines of the records that it was
to the Church of Rabida that Columbus with his men now betook
themselves. It matters little.
There was much to mar the delight of some in the households. Comforting
reports must be told of those who were left at La Navidad. No one had
died, unless the gale had submerged the "Pinta" and her crew. She had
not been seen since the "Nina" parted with her in the gale.
The story of her rescue has already been told. She entered the river
before the rejoicings of the day were over, and relieved the remaining
anxiety.
[Sidenote: The Court at Barcelona.]
The Spanish Court was known to be at this time at Barcelona, the Catalan
port on the Mediterranean. Columbus's first impulse was to proceed
thither in his caravel; but his recent hazards made him prudent, and so
dispatching a messenger to the Court, he proceeded to Seville to wait
their majesties' commands. Of the native prisoners which he had brought
away, one had died at sea, three were too sick to follow him, and were
left at Palos, while six accompanied him on his journey.
[Sidenote: 1493. March 30. Columbus summoned to Court.]
The messenger with such startling news had sped quickly; and Columbus
did not wait long for a response to his letter. The document (March 30)
showed that the event had made a deep impression on the Court. The new
domain of the west dwarfed for a while the conquests from the Moors.
There was great eagerness to complete the title, and gather its wealth.
Columbus was accordingly instructed to set in motion at once measures
for a new expedition, and then to appear at Court and explain to the
monarchs what action on their part was needful. The demand was promptly
answered; and having organized the necessary arrangements in Seville for
the preparation of a fleet, he departed for Barcelona to make homage to
his sovereigns. His Indians accompanied him. Porters bore his various
wonders from the new islands. His story had preceded him, and town after
town vied with each other in welcoming him, and passing him on to new
amazements and honors.
[Sidenote: 1493. April. In Barcelona.]
[Sidenote: Received by the sovereigns.]
By the middle of April he approached Barcelona, and was met by throngs
of people, who conducted him into the city. His Indians, arrayed in
effective if not accustomed ornament of gold, led the line. Bearers of
all the marvels of the Indies followed, with their forty parrots and
other strange birds of liveliest plumage, with the skins of unknown
animals, with priceless plants that would now supplant the eastern
spices, and with the precious ornaments of the dusky kings and princes
whom he had met. Next, on horseback, came Columbus himself, conspicuous
amid the mounted chivalry of Spain. Thus the procession marched on,
through crowded streets, amid the shouts of lookers-on, to the alcazar
of the Moorish kings in the Calle Ancha, at this time the residence of
the Bishop of Urgil, where it is supposed Ferdinand and Isabella had
caused their thrones to be set up, with a canopy of brocaded gold
drooping about them. Here the monarchs awaited the coming of Columbus.
[Sidenote: King Ferdinand.]
[Sidenote: Queen Isabella.]
Ferdinand, as the accounts picture him, was a man whose moderate stature
was helped by his erectness and robes to a decided dignity of carriage.
His expression in the ruddy glow of his complexion, clearness of eye,
and loftiness of brow, grew gracious in any pleasurable excitement. The
Queen was a very suitable companion, grave and graceful in her demeanor.
Her blue eyes and auburn tresses comported with her outwardly benign
air, and one looked sharply to see anything of her firmness and courage
in the prevailing sweetness of her manner. The heir apparent, Prince
Juan, was seated by their side. The dignitaries of the Court were
grouped about.
[Sidenote: Columbus before the Court.]
Las Casas tells us how commanding Columbus looked when he entered the
room, surrounded by a brilliant company of cavaliers. When he approached
the royal dais, both monarchs rose to receive him standing; and when he
stooped to kiss their hands, they gently and graciously lifted him, and
made him sit as they did. They then asked to be told of what he had
seen.
As Columbus proceeded in his narrative, he pointed out the visible
objects of his speech,--the Indians, the birds, the skins, the barbaric
ornaments, and the stores of gold. We are told of the prayer of the
sovereigns at the close, in which all joined; and of the chanted _Te
Deum_ from the choir of the royal chapel, which bore the thoughts of
every one, says the narrator, on the wings of melody to celestial
delights. This ceremony ended, Columbus was conducted like a royal guest
to the lodgings which had been provided for him.
It has been a question if the details of this reception, which are put
by Irving in imaginative fullness, and are commonly told on such a
thread of incidents as have been related, are warranted by the scant
accounts which are furnished us in the _Historie_, in Las Casas, and in
Peter Martyr, particularly since the incident does not seem to have made
enough of an impression at the time to have been noticed at all in the
_Dietaria_ of the city, a record of events embodying those of far
inferior interest as we would now value them. Mr. George Sumner
carefully scanned this record many years ago, and could find not the
slightest reference to the festivities. He fancies that the incidents in
the mind of the recorder may have lost their significance through an
Aragonese jealousy of the supremacy of Leon and Castile.
It is certainly true that in Peter Martyr, the contemporary observer of
this supposed pageantry, there is nothing to warrant the exuberance of
later writers. Martyr simply says that Columbus was allowed to sit in
the sovereigns' presence.
Whatever the fact as to details, it seems quite evident that this season
at Barcelona made the only unalloyed days of happiness, freed of
anxiety, which Columbus ever experienced. He was observed of all, and
everybody was complacent to him. His will was apparently law to King and
subject. Las Casas tells us that he passed among the admiring throngs
with his face wreathed with smiles of content. An equal complacency of
delight and expectation settled upon all with whom he talked of the
wonders of the land which he had found. They dreamed as he did of
entering into golden cities with their hundred bridges, that might
cause new exultations, to which the present were as nothing. It was a
fatal lure to the proud Spanish nature, and no one was doomed to expiate
the folly of the delusion more poignantly than Columbus himself.
[Sidenote: Spread of the news.]
Now that India had been found by the west, as was believed, and
Barcelona was very likely palpitating with the thought, the news spread
in every direction. What were the discoveries of the Phoenicians to
this? What questions of ethnology, language, species, migrations,
phenomena of all sorts, in man and in the natural world, were pressing
upon the mind, as the results were considered? Were not these parrots
which Columbus had exhibited such as Pliny tells us are in Asia?
The great event had fallen in the midst of geographical development, and
was understood at last. Marco Polo and the others had told their marvels
of the east. The navigators of Prince Henry had found new wonders on the
sea. Regiomontanus, Behaim, and Toscanelli had not communed in vain with
cosmographical problems. Even errors had been stepping-stones; as when
the belief in the easterly over-extension of Asia had pictured it near
enough in the west to convince men that the hazard of the Sea of
Darkness was not so great after all.
[Sidenote: Peter Martyr records the event.]
Spain was then the centre of much activity of mind. "I am here," records
Peter Martyr, "at the source of this welcome intelligence from the new
found lands, and as the historian of such events, I may hope to go down
to posterity as their recorder." We must remember this profession when
we try to account for his meagre record of the reception at Barcelona.
That part of the letter of Peter Martyr, dated at Barcelona, on the ides
of May, 1493, which conveyed to his correspondent the first tidings of
Columbus's return, is in these words, as translated by Harrisse: "A
certain Christopher Colonus, a Ligurian, returned from the antipodes. He
had obtained for that purpose three ships from my sovereigns, with much
difficulty, because the ideas which he expressed were considered
extravagant. He came back and brought specimens of many precious things,
especially gold, which those regions naturally produce." Martyr also
tells us that when Pomponius Laetus got such news, he could scarcely
refrain "from tears of joy at so unlooked-for an event." "What more
delicious food for an ingenious mind!" said Martyr to him in return. "To
talk with people who have seen all this is elevating to the mind." The
confidence of Martyr, however, in the belief of Columbus that the true
Indies had been found was not marked. He speaks of the islands as
adjacent to, and not themselves, the East.
[Sidenote: The news in England.]
Sebastian Cabot remembered the time when these marvelous tidings reached
the court of Henry VII. in London, and he tells us that it was accounted
a "thing more divine than human."
[Sidenote: Columbus's first letter.]
A letter which Columbus had written and early dispatched to Barcelona,
nearly in duplicate, to the treasurers of the two crowns was promptly
translated into Latin, and was sent to Italy to be issued in numerous
editions, to be copied in turn by the Paris and Antwerp printers, and a
little more sluggishly by those of Germany.
[Sidenote: Influence of the event.]
There is, however, singularly little commenting on these events that
passed into print and has come down to us; and we may well doubt if the
effect on the public mind, beyond certain learned circles, was at all
commensurate with what we may now imagine the recognition of so
important an event ought to have been. Nordenskiöld, studying the
cartography and literature of the early discoveries in America in his
_Facsimile Atlas_, is forced to the conclusion that "scarcely any
discovery of importance was ever received with so much indifference,
even in circles where sufficient genius and statesmanship ought to have
prevailed to appreciate the changes they foreshadowed in the development
of the economical and political conditions of mankind."
[Sidenote: 1493. June 19. Carjaval's oration.]
It happened on June 19, 1493, but a few weeks after the Pope had made
his first public recognition of the discovery, that the Spanish
ambassador at the Papal Court, Bernardin de Carjaval, referred in an
oration to "the unknown lands, lately found, lying towards the Indies;"
and at about the same time there was but a mere reference to the event
in the _Los Tratados_ of Doctor Alonso Ortis, published at Seville.
[Sidenote: Columbus in favor.]
While this strange bruit was thus spreading more or less, we get some
glimpses of the personal life of Columbus during these days of his
sojourn in Barcelona. We hear of him riding through the streets on
horseback, on one side of the King, with Prince Juan on the other.
[Sidenote: Reward for first seeing land.]
We find record of his being awarded the pension of thirty crowns, as the
first discoverer of land, by virtue of the mysterious light, and Irving
thinks that we may condone this theft from the brave sailor who
unquestionably saw land the first, by remembering that "Columbus's whole
ambition was involved." It seems to others that his whole character was
involved.
[Sidenote: Story of the egg.]
We find him a guest at a banquet given by Cardinal Mendoza, and the
well-known story of his making an egg stand upright, by chipping one end
of it, is associated with this merriment of the table. An impertinent
question of a shallow courtier had induced Columbus to show a table full
of guests that it was easy enough to do anything when the way was
pointed out. The story, except as belonging to a traditional stock of
anecdotes, dating far back of Columbus, always ready for an application,
has no authority earlier than Benzoni, and loses its point in the
destruction of the end on which the aim was to make it stand. This has
been so palpable to some of the repeaters of the story that they have
supposed that the feat was accomplished, not by cracking the end of the
egg, but by using a quick motion which broke the sack which holds the
yolk, so that that weightier substance settled at one end, and balanced
the egg in an upright position.
So passed the time with the new-made hero, in drinking, as Irving
expresses it, "the honeyed draught of popularity before enmity and
detraction had time to drug it with bitterness."
[Sidenote: 1493. May 20. Receives a coat of arms.]
We find the sovereigns bestowing upon him, on the 20th of May, a coat of
arms, which shows a castle and a lion in the upper quarters, and in
those below, a group of golden islands in a sea of waves, on the one
hand, and the arms to which his family had been entitled, on the other.
Humboldt speaks of this archipelago as the first map of America, but he
apparently knew only Oviedo's description of the arms, for the latter
places the islands in a gulf formed by a mainland, and in this fashion
they are grouped in a blazon of the arms which is preserved at the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs at Paris--a duplicate being at Genoa.
Harrisse says that this design is the original water-color, made under
Columbus's eye in 1502. In this picture,--which is the earliest blazonry
which has come down to us,--the other lower quarter has the five golden
anchors on a blue ground, which it is claimed was adjudged to Columbus
as the distinctive badge of an Admiral of Spain. The personal arms are
relegated to a minor overlying shield at the lower point of the
escutcheon. Oviedo also says that trees and other objects should be
figured on the mainland.
[Illustration: THE ARMS OF COLUMBUS.
[From Oviedo's _Cosmica_.]]
The lion and castle of the original grant were simply reminders of the
arms of Leon and Castile; but Columbus seems, of his own motion, so far
as Harrisse can discover, to have changed the blazonry of those objects
in the drawing of 1502 to agree with those of the royal arms. It was by
the same arrogant license, apparently, that he introduced later the
continental shore of the archipelago; and Harrisse can find no record
that the anchors were ever by any authority added to his blazon, nor
that the professed family arms, borne in connection, had any warrant
whatever.
The earliest engraved copy of the arms is in the _Historia General_ of
Oviedo in 1535, where a profile helmet supports a crest made of a globe
topped by a cross. In Oviedo's _Coronica_ of 1547, the helmet is shown
in front view. There seems to have been some wide discrepancies in the
heraldic excursions of these early writers. Las Casas, for instance,
puts the golden lion in a silver field,--when heraldry abhors a
conjunction of metals, as much as nature abhors a vacuum. The discussion
of the family arms which were added by Columbus to the escutcheon made a
significant part of the arguments in the suit, many years later, of
Baldassare (Balthazar) Colombo to possess the Admiral's dignities; and
as Harrisse points out, the emblem of those Italian Colombos of any
pretensions to nobility was invariably a dove of some kind,--a device
quite distinct from those designated by Columbus. This assumption of
family arms by Columbus is held by Harrisse to be simply a concession to
the prejudices of his period, and to the exigencies of his new position.
The arms have been changed under the dukes of Veragua to show
silver-capped waves in the sea, while a globe surmounted by a cross is
placed in the midst of a gulf containing only five islands.
[Sidenote: His alleged motto.]
There is another later accompaniment of the arms, of which the origin
has escaped all search. It is far more familiar than the escutcheon, on
which it plays the part of a motto. It sometimes represents that
Columbus found for the allied crowns a new world, and at other times
that he gave one to them.
Por Castilla é por Leon
Nuevo Mundo halló Colon.
A Castilla, y a Leon
Nuevo Mundo dió Colon.
Oviedo is the earliest to mention this distich in 1535. It is given in
the _Historie_, not as a motto of the arms, but as an inscription placed
by the king on the tomb of Columbus some years after his death. If this
is true, it does away with the claims of Gomara that Columbus himself
added it to his arms.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Diplomacy of the Bull of Demarcation.]
But diplomacy had its part to play in these events. As the Christian
world at that time recognized the rights of the Holy Father to confirm
any trespass on the possessions of the heathen, there was a prompt
effort on the part of Ferdinand to bring the matter to the attention of
the Pope. As early as 1438, bulls of Martin V. and Eugene IV. had
permitted the Spaniards to sail west and the Portuguese south; and a
confirmation of the same had been made by Pope Nicholas the Fifth. In
1479, the rival crowns of Portugal and Spain had agreed to respect their
mutual rights under these papal decisions.
The messengers whom Ferdinand sent to Rome were instructed to intimate
that the actual possession which had been made in their behalf of these
new regions did not require papal sanction, as they had met there no
Christian occupants; but that as dutiful children of the church it would
be grateful to receive such a benediction on their energies for the
faith as a confirmatory bull would imply. Ferdinand had too much of
wiliness in his own nature, and the practice of it was too much a part
of the epoch, wholly to trust a man so notoriously perverse and
obstinate as Alexander VI. was. Though Muñoz calls Alexander the friend
of Ferdinand, and though the Pope was by birth an Aragonese, experience
had shown that there was no certainty of his support in a matter
affecting the interest of Spain.
[Sidenote: 1493. May 3. The Bull issued.]
A folio printed leaf in Gothic characters, of which the single copy sold
in London in 1854 is said to be the only one known to bibliographers,
made public to the world the famous Bull of Demarcation of Alexander
VI., bearing date May 3, 1493. If one would believe Hakluyt, the Pope
had been induced to do this act by his own option, rather than at the
intercession of the Spanish monarchs. Under it, and a second bull of the
day following, Spain was entitled to possess, "on condition of planting
the Catholic faith," all lands not already occupied by Christian powers,
west of a meridian drawn one hundred leagues west of the Azores and Cape
de Verde Islands, evidently on the supposition that these two groups
were in the same longitude, the fact being that the most westerly of the
southern, and the most easterly of the northern, group possessed nearly
the same meridian. Though Portugal was not mentioned in describing this
line, it was understood that there was reserved to her the same
privilege easterly.
[Illustration: POPE ALEXANDER VI.
[A bust in the Berlin Museum.]]
There was not as yet any consideration given to the division which this
great circle meridian was likely to make on the other side of the globe,
where Portugal was yet to be most interested. The Cape of Good Hope had
not then been doubled, and the present effect of the division was to
confine the Portuguese to an exploration of the western African coast
and to adjacent islands. It will be observed that in the placing of this
line the magnetic phenomena which Columbus had observed on his recent
voyage were not forgotten, if the coincidence can be so interpreted.
Humboldt suggests that it can.
[Sidenote: Line of no variation.]
To make a physical limit serve a political one was an obvious recourse
at a time when the line of no variation was thought to be unique and of
a true north and south direction; but within a century the observers
found three other lines, as Acosta tells us in his _Historia Natural de
las Indias_, in 1589; and there proved to be a persistent migration of
these lines, all little suited to terrestrial demarcations. Roselly de
Lorgues and the canonizers, however, having given to Columbus the
planning of the line in his cell at Rabida, think, with a surprising
prescience on his part, and with a very convenient obliviousness on
their part, that he had chosen "precisely the only point of our planet
which science would choose in our day,--a mysterious demarcation made by
its omnipotent Creator," in sovereign disregard, unfortunately, of the
laws of his own universe!
[Sidenote: Suspicious movements in Portugal.]
Meanwhile there were movements in Portugal which Ferdinand had not
failed to notice. An ambassador had come from its king, asking
permission to buy certain articles of prohibited exportation for use on
an African expedition which the Portuguese were fitting out. Ferdinand
suspected that the true purpose of this armament was to seize the new
islands, under a pretense as dishonorable as that which covered the
ostensible voyage to the Cape de Verde Islands, by whose exposure
Columbus had been driven into Spain. The Spanish monarch was alert
enough to get quite beforehand with his royal brother. Before the
ambassador of which mention has been made had come to the Spanish Court,
Ferdinand had dispatched Lope de Herrera to Lisbon, armed with a
conciliatory and a denunciatory letter, to use one or the other, as he
might find the conditions demanded. The Portuguese historian Resende
tells us that João, in order to give a wrong scent, had openly bestowed
largesses on some and had secretly suborned other members of Ferdinand's
cabinet, so that he did not lack for knowledge of the Spanish intentions
from the latter members. He and his ambassadors were accordingly found
by Ferdinand to be inexplicably prepared at every new turn of the
negotiations.
In this way João had been informed of the double mission of Herrera, and
could avoid the issue with him, while he sent his own ambassadors to
Spain, to promise that, pending their negotiations, no vessel should
sail on any voyage of discovery for sixty days. They were also to
propose that instead of the papal line, one should be drawn due west
from the Canaries, giving all new discoveries north to the Spaniards,
and all south to the Portuguese. This new move Ferdinand turned to his
own advantage, for it gave him the opportunity to enter upon a course of
diplomacy which he could extend long enough to allow Columbus to get off
with a new armament. He then sent a fresh embassy, with instructions to
move slowly and protract the discussion, but to resort, when compelled,
to a proposition for arbitration. João was foiled and he knew it. "These
ambassadors," he said, "have no feet to hurry and no head to propound."
The Spanish game was the best played, and the Portuguese king grew
fretful under it, and intimated sometimes a purpose to proceed to
violence, but he was restrained by a better wisdom. We depend mainly
upon the Portuguese historians for understanding these complications,
and it is to be hoped that some time the archives of the Vatican may
reveal the substance of these tripartite negotiations of the papal court
and the two crowns.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: 1493. May. Honors of Columbus confirmed.]
[Sidenote: May 28. Columbus leaves Barcelona.]
[Sidenote: June. In Seville.]
[Sidenote: Fonseca.]
Before Columbus had left Barcelona, a large gratuity had been awarded to
him by his sovereigns; an order had been issued commanding free lodgings
to be given to him and his followers, wherever he went, and the original
stipulations as to honors and authority, made by the sovereigns at Santa
Fé, had been confirmed (May 28). A royal seal was now confided to his
keeping, to be set to letters patent, and to commissions that it might
be found necessary to issue. It might be used even in appointing a
deputy, to act in the absence of Columbus. His appointments were to hold
during the royal pleasure. His own power was defined at the same time,
and in particular to hold command over the entire expedition, and to
conduct its future government and explorations. He left Barcelona, after
leavetakings, on May 28; and his instructions, as printed by Navarrete,
were signed the next day. It is not unlikely they were based on
suggestions of Columbus made in a letter, without date, which has
recently been printed in the _Cartas de Indias_ (1877). Early in June,
he was in Seville, and soon after he was joined by Juan Rodriguez de
Fonseca, archdeacon of Seville, who, as representative of the Crown, had
been made the chief director of the preparations. It is claimed by
Harrisse that this priest has been painted by the biographers of
Columbus much blacker than he really was, on the strength of the
objurgations which the _Historie_ bestows upon him. Las Casas calls him
worldly; and he deserves the epithet if a dominating career of thirty
years in controlling the affairs of the Indies is any evidence of
fitness in such matters. His position placed him where he had purposes
to thwart as well as projects to foster, and the record of this age of
discovery is not without many proofs of selfish and dishonorable
motives, which Fonseca might be called upon to repress. That his
discrimination was not always clear-sighted may be expected; that he was
sometimes perfidious may be true, but he was dealing mainly with those
who could be perfidious also. That he abused his authority might also go
without dispute; but so did Columbus and the rest. In the game of
diamond-cut-diamond, it is not always just to single out a single victim
for condemnation, as is done by Irving and the canonizers.
It was while at Seville, engaged in this work of preparation, that
Fonseca sought to check the demands of Columbus as respects the number
of his personal servitors. That these demands were immoderate, the
character of Columbus, never cautious under incitement, warrants us in
believing; and that the official guardian of the royal treasury should
have views of his own is not to be wondered at. The story goes that the
sovereigns forced Fonseca to yield, and that this was the offense of
Columbus which could neither be forgotten nor forgiven by Fonseca, and
for which severities were visited upon him and his heirs in the years to
come. Irving is confident that Fonseca has escaped the condemnation
which Spanish writers would willingly have put upon him, for fear of the
ecclesiastical censors of the press.
[Sidenote: Council for the Indies.]
The measures which were now taken in accordance with the instructions
given to Columbus, already referred to, to regulate the commerce of the
Indies, with a custom house at Cadiz and a corresponding one in Española
under the control of the Admiral, ripened in time into what was known as
the Council for the Indies. It had been early determined (May 23) to
control all emigration to the new regions, and no one was allowed to
trade thither except under license from the monarchs, Columbus, or
Fonseca.
[Sidenote: New fleet equipped.]
A royal order had put all ships and appurtenances in the ports of
Andalusia at the demand of Fonseca and Columbus, for a reasonable
compensation, and compelled all persons required for the service to
embark in it on suitable pay. Two thirds of the ecclesiastical tithes,
the sequestered property of banished Jews, and other resources were set
apart to meet these expenses, and the treasurer was authorized to
contract a loan, if necessary. To eke out the resources, this last was
resorted to, and 5,000,000 maravedis were borrowed from the Duke of
Medina-Sidonia. All the transactions relating to the procuring and
dispensing of moneys had been confided to a treasurer, Francisco Pinelo;
with the aid of an accountant, Juan de Soria. Everything was hurriedly
gathered for the armament, for it was of the utmost importance that the
preparations should move faster than the watching diplomacy.
Artillery which had been in use on shipboard for more than a century and
a half was speedily amassed. The arquebuse, however, had not altogether
been supplanted by the matchlock, and was yet preferred in some hands
for its lightness. Military stores which had been left over from the
Moorish war and were now housed in the Alhambra, at this time converted
into an arsenal, were opportunely drawn upon.
[Sidenote: Beradi and Vespucius.]
The labor of an intermediary in much of this preparation fell upon
Juonato Beradi, a Florentine merchant then settled in Seville, and it is
interesting to know that Americus Vespucius, then a mature man of two
and forty, was engaged under Beradi in this work of preparation.
[Sidenote: 1493. June 20.]
From the fact that certain horsemen and agriculturists were ordered to
be in Seville on June 20, and to hold themselves in readiness to embark,
it may be inferred that the sailing of some portion of the fleet may at
that time have been expected at a date not much later.
[Illustration: CROSSBOW-MAKER.
[From Jost Amman's _Beschreibung_, 1586.]]
[Sidenote: Isabella's interest.]
[Sidenote: Indians baptized.]
The interest of Isabella in the new expedition was almost wholly on its
emotional and intellectual side. She had been greatly engrossed with the
spiritual welfare of the Indians whom Columbus had taken to Barcelona.
Their baptism had taken place with great state and ceremony, the King,
Queen, and Prince Juan officiating as sponsors. It was intended that
they should reëmbark with the new expedition. Prince Juan, however,
picked out one of these Indians for his personal service, and when the
fellow died, two years later, it was a source of gratification, as
Herrera tells us, that at last one of his race had entered the gates of
heaven! Only four of the six ever reached their native country. We know
nothing of the fate of those left sick at Palos.
[Sidenote: Father Buil.]
The Pope, to further all methods for the extension of the faith, had
commissioned (June 24) a Benedictine monk, Bernardo Buil (Boyle), of
Catalonia, to be his apostolic vicar in the new world, and this priest
was to be accompanied by eleven brothers of the order. The Queen
intrusted to them the sacred vessels and vestments from her own altar.
The instructions which Columbus received were to deal lovingly with the
poor natives. We shall see how faithful he was to the behest.
Isabella's musings were not, however, all so piously confined. She wrote
to Columbus from Segovia in August, requiring him to make provisions for
bringing back to Spain specimens of the peculiar birds of the new
regions, as indications of untried climates and seasons.
[Sidenote: Astronomy and navigation.]
Again, in writing to Columbus, September 5, she urged him not to rely
wholly on his own great knowledge, but to take such a skillful
astronomer on his voyage as Fray Antonio de Marchena,--the same whom
Columbus later spoke of as being one of the two persons who had never
made him a laughing-stock. Muñoz says the office of astronomer was not
filled.
Dealing with the question of longitude was a matter in which there was
at this time little insight, and no general agreement. Columbus, as we
have seen, suspected the variation of the needle might afford the basis
of a system; but he grew to apprehend, as he tells us in the narrative
of his fourth voyage, that the astronomical method was the only
infallible one, but whether his preference was for the opposition of
planets, the occultations of stars, the changes in the moon's
declination, or the comparisons of Jupiter's altitude with the lunar
position,--all of which were in some form in vogue,--does not appear.
The method by conveyance of time, so well known now in the use of
chronometers, seems to have later been suggested by Alonso de Santa
Cruz,--too late for the recognition of Columbus; but the instrumentality
of water-clocks, sand-clocks, and other crude devices, like the timing
of burning wicks, was too uncertain to obtain even transient sanction.
[Sidenote: Astrolabe.]
The astrolabe, for all the improvements of Behaim, was still an awkward
instrument for ascertaining latitude, especially on a rolling or
pitching ship, and we know that Vasco da Gama went on shore at the Cape
de Verde Islands to take observations when the motion of the sea balked
him on shipboard.
[Illustration: THE CLOCK-MAKER.
[From Jost Amman's _Beschreibung_, Frankfort.]]
[Sidenote: Cross-staff and Jackstaff.]
Whether the cross-staff or Jackstaff, a seaboard implement somewhat more
convenient than the astrolabe, was known to Columbus is not very
clear,--probably it was not; but the navigators that soon followed him
found it more manageable on rolling ships than the older instruments. It
was simply a stick, along which, after one end of it was placed at the
eye, a scaled crossbar was pushed until its two ends touched, the lower,
the horizon, and the upper, the heavenly body whose altitude was to be
taken. A scale on the stick then showed, at the point where the bar was
left, the degree of latitude.
[Sidenote: Errors in latitude.]
The best of such aids, however, did not conduce to great accuracy, and
the early maps, in comparison with modern, show sometimes several
degrees of error in scaling from the equator. An error once committed
was readily copied, and different cartographical records put in service
by the professional map makers came sometimes by a process of averages
to show some surprising diversities, with positive errors of
considerable extent. The island of Cuba, for instance, early found place
in the charts seven and eight degrees too far north, with dependent
islands in equally wrong positions.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Seventeen vessels ready.]
As the preparations went on, a fleet of seventeen vessels, large and
small, three of which were called transports, had, according to the best
estimates, finally been put in readiness. Scillacio tells us that some
of the smallest had been constructed of light draft, especially for
exploring service. Horses and domestic animals of all kinds were at last
gathered on board. Every kind of seed and agricultural implement, stores
of commodities for barter with the Indians, and all the appurtenances of
active life were accumulated. Muñoz remarks that it is evident that
sugar cane, rice, and vines had not been discovered or noted by Columbus
on his first voyage, or we would not have found them among the
commodities provided for the second.
[Sidenote: Ojeda.]
[Sidenote: Their companies.]
In making up the company of the adventurers, there was little need of
active measures to induce recruits. Many an Hidalgo and cavalier took
service at their own cost. Galvano, who must have received the reports
by tradition, says that such was the "desire of travel that the men were
ready to leap into the sea to swim, if it had been possible, into these
new found parts." Traffic, adventure, luxury, feats of arms,--all were
inducements that lured one individual or another. Some there were to
make names for themselves in their new fields. Such was Alonso de Ojeda,
a daring youth, expert in all activities, who had served his ambition in
the Moorish wars, and had been particularly favored by the Duke of
Medina-Celi, the friend of Columbus.
[Sidenote: Las Casas, Ponce de Leon, La Cosa, etc.]
We find others whose names we shall again encounter. The younger brother
of Columbus, Diego Colon, had come to Spain, attracted by the success of
Christopher. The father and uncle of Las Casas, from whose conversations
with the Admiral that historian could profit in the future, Juan Ponce
de Leon, the later discoverer of Florida, Juan de la Cosa, whose map is
the first we have of the New World, and Dr. Chanca, a physician of
Seville, who was pensioned by the Crown, and to whom we owe one of the
narratives of the voyage, were also of the company.
[Sidenote: 1,500 souls embark.]
The thousand persons to which the expedition had at first been limited
became, under the pressure of eager cavaliers, nearer 1,200, and this
number was eventually increased by stowaways and other hangers-on, till
the number embarked was not much short of 1,500. This is Oviedo's
statement. Bernaldez and Peter Martyr make the number 1,200, or
thereabouts. Perhaps these were the ordinary hands, and the 300 more
were officers and the like, for the statements do not render it certain
how the enumerations are made. So far as we know their names, but a
single companion of Columbus in his first voyage was now with him. The
twenty horsemen, already mentioned are supposed to be the only mounted
soldiers that embarked. Columbus says, in a letter addressed to their
majesties, that "the number of colonists who desire to go thither
amounts to two thousand," which would indicate that a large number were
denied. The letter is undated, and may not be of a date near the
sailing; if it is, it probably indicates to some degree the number of
persons who were denied embarkation. As the day approached for the
departure there was some uneasiness over a report of a Portuguese
caravel sailing westward from Madeira, and it was proposed to send some
of the fleet in advance to overtake the vessel; but after some
diplomatic fence between Ferdinand and João, the disquiet ended, or at
least nothing was done on either side.
At one time Columbus had hoped to embark on the 15th of August; but it
was six weeks later before everything was ready.