THE DESCENT OF COLUMBUS'S HONORS.
[Sidenote: His kinsfolk.]
Columbus had left behind him, as the natural guardians of his name and
honors, the following relatives: his brother Bartholomew, who in
December, 1508, had issue of an illegitimate daughter, his only child so
far as known; his brother Diego, who, as a priest, was precluded from
having lawful issue; his son Diego, now become the first inheritor of
his honors; his natural son, Ferdinand, the most considerable in
intellectual habit of all Columbus's immediate kin.
[Sidenote: His son Diego.]
The descent of his titles depended in the first instance on such a
marriage as Diego might contract. Within a year or two Diego had had by
different women two bastard children, Francisco and Cristoval, shut off
from heirship by the manner of their birth. Diego was at this time not
far from four and twenty years of age.
Ten or twelve days after Diego succeeded to his inheritance, Philip the
Handsome, now sharing the throne of Castile as husband of Juana,
daughter of Isabella, ordered that what was due to Columbus should be
paid to his successor. This order reached Española in June, 1506, but
was not obeyed promptly; and when Ferdinand of Aragon returned from
Italy in August, 1507, and succeeded to the Castilian throne, he
repeated the order on August 24.
[Sidenote: Diego's income.]
[Sidenote: Diego presses for a restitution of Columbus's honors.]
It would seem that in due time Diego was in receipt of 450,000 ounces of
gold annually from the four foundries in Española. This, with whatever
else there may have been, was by no means satisfactory to the young
aspirant, and he began to press Ferdinand for a restitution of his
inherited honors and powers with all the pertinacity which had
characterized his father's urgency.
[Sidenote: 1508. Suit against the Crown.]
Upon the return of Ferdinand from Naples, Diego determined to push the
matter to an issue, but Ferdinand still evaded it. Diego now asked,
according to Las Casas and Herrera, to be allowed to bring a suit
against the Crown before the Council of the Indies, and the King yielded
to the request, confident, very likely, in his ability to control the
verdict in the public interests. The suit at once began (1508), and
continued for several years before all was accomplished, and in December
of that same year (1508), we find Diego empowering an attorney of the
Duke of Alva to represent his case.
The defense of the Crown was that a transmission of the viceroyalty to
the Admiral's son was against public policy, and at variance with a law
of 1480, which forbade any judicial office under the Crown being held in
perpetuity. It was further argued in the Crown's behalf that Columbus
had not been the chief instrument of the first discovery and had not
discovered the mainland, but that other voyagers had anticipated him. In
response to all allegations, Diego rested his case on the contracts of
the Crown with his father, which assured him the powers he asked for.
Further than this, the Crown had already recognized, he claimed, a part
of the contract in its orders of June 2, 1506, and August 24, 1507,
whereby the revenues due under the contracts had been restored to him.
It was also charged by the defense that Columbus had been relieved of
his powers because he had abused them, and the answer to this was that
the sovereigns' letter of 1502 had acknowledged that Bobadilla acted
without authority. A number of navigators in the western seas were put
on the stand to rebut the allegation of existing knowledge of the coast
before the voyages of Columbus, particularly in substantiating the
priority of the voyage of Columbus to the coast of Paria, and the
evidence was sufficient to show that all the alleged claims were simply
perverted notions of the really later voyage of Ojeda in 1499. It is
from the testimony at this time, as given in Navarrete, that the
biographers of Columbus derive considerable information, not otherwise
attainable, respecting the voyages of Columbus,--testimony, however,
which the historian is obliged to weigh with caution in many respects.
[Sidenote: Diego wins.]
The case was promptly disposed of in Diego's favor, but not without
suspicions of the Crown's influence to that end. The suit is, indeed,
one of the puzzles in the history of Columbus and his fame. If it was a
suit to secure a verdict against the Crown in order to protect the
Crown's rights under the bull of demarcation, we can understand why much
that would have helped the position of the fiscal was not brought
forward. If it was what it purported to be, an effort to relieve the
Crown of obligations fastened upon it under misconceptions or deceits,
we may well marvel at such omission of evidence.
[Sidenote: Diego marries Maria de Toledo.]
[Sidenote: Diego waives his right to the title of Viceroy.]
It was left for the King to act on the decision for restitution. This
might have been by his studied procrastination indefinitely delayed but
for a shrewd movement on the part of Diego, who opportunely aspired to
the hand of Doña Maria de Toledo, the daughter of Fernando de Toledo.
This nobleman was brother of the Duke of Alva, one of the proudest
grandees of Spain, and he was also cousin of Ferdinand, the King. The
alliance, soon effected, brought the young suitor a powerful friend in
his uncle, and the bride's family were not averse to a connection with
the heir to the viceroyalty of the Indies, now that it was confirmed by
the Council of the Indies. Harrisse cannot find that the promised dower
ever came with the wife; but, on the contrary, Diego seems to have
become the financial agent of his wife's family. A demand for the royal
acquiescence in the orders of the Council could now be more easily made,
and Ferdinand readily conceded all but the title of Viceroy. Diego
waived that for the time, and he was accordingly accredited as governor
of Española, in the place of Ovando.
[Sidenote: Ovando recalled.]
Isabella had indeed, while on her death-bed, importuned the King to
recall Ovando, because of the appalling stories of his cruelty to the
Indians. Ferdinand had found that the governor's vigilance conduced to
heavy remittances of gold, and had shown no eagerness to carry out the
Queen's wishes. He had even ordered Ovando to begin that transference of
the poor Lucayan Indians from their own islands to work in the Española
mines which soon resulted in the depopulation of the Bahamas. Now that
he was forced to withdraw Ovando he made it as agreeable for him as
possible, and in the end there was no lack of commendation of his
administration. Indeed, as Spaniards went in those days, Ovando was good
enough to gain the love of Las Casas, "except for some errors of moral
blindness."
[Sidenote: 1509. June 9. Diego sails for Española.]
It was on May 3, 1509, that Ferdinand gave Diego his instructions; and
on June 9, the new governor with his noble wife sailed from San Lucar.
There went with Diego, beside a large number of noble Spaniards who
introduced, as Oviedo says, an infusion of the best Spanish blood into
the colony, his brother Ferdinand, who was specially charged, as Oviedo
further tells us, to found monasteries and churches. His two uncles also
accompanied him. Bartholomew had gone to Rome after Columbus's death,
with the intention of inducing Pope Julius II. to urge upon the King a
new voyage of discovery; and Harrisse thinks that this is proved by some
memoranda attached to an account of the coasts of Veragua, which it is
supposed that Bartholomew gave at this time to a canon of the Lateran,
which is now preserved in the Megliavecchian library, and has been
printed by Harrisse in his _Bibliotheca Americana Vetustissima_. It was
perhaps on this visit that the Adelantado took to Rome that map of
Columbus's voyage to those coasts which it is usually said was carried
there in 1505, when he may possibly have borne thither the letter of
Columbus to the Pope.
[Sidenote: Bartholomew Columbus, and Diego Mendez.]
The position which Bartholomew now went with Diego to assume, that of
the Chief Alguazil of Santo Domingo, caused much complaint from Diego
Mendez, who claimed the credit of bringing about the restitution of
Diego's power, and who had, as he says, been promised both by Columbus
and by his son this office as recompense for his many services.
[Sidenote: 1509. July 10. Diego reaches his government.]
The fleet arrived at its destination July 10, 1509. The wife of the
governor had taken a retinue, which for splendor had never before been
equaled in the New World, and it enabled her to maintain a kind of
viceregal state in the little capital. It all helped Diego to begin his
rule with no inconsiderable consequence. There was needed something of
such attraction to beguile the spirits of the settlers, for, as Benzoni
learned years afterwards, when he visited the region, the coming of the
son of Columbus had not failed to engender jealousies, which attached to
the imposition of another foreigner upon the colony.
[Sidenote: Ojeda and Nicuessa.]
The King was determined that Diego's rule should be confined to
Española, and, much to the governor's annoyance, he parceled out the
coasts which Columbus had tracked near the Isthmus of Panama into two
governments, and installed Ojeda in command of the eastern one, which
was called New Andalusia, while the one beyond the Gulf of Uraba, which
included Veragua, he gave to Diego de Nicuessa, and called it Castilla
del Oro.
[Illustration: POPE JULIUS II.]
[Sidenote: Porto Rico.]
[Sidenote: Faction of Passamonte.]
[Sidenote: 1511. October 5. _Audiencia._]
This action of the King, as well as his effort to put Porto Rico under
an independent governor, incited new expostulations from Diego, and
served to make his rule in the island quite as uncomfortable as its
management had been to his father. There also grew up the same
discouragement from faction. The King's treasurer, Miguel Passamonte,
became the head of the rebellious party, not without suspicion that he
was prompted to much denunciations in his confidential communications
with the King. Reports of Diego's misdeeds and ambitions, threatening
the royal power even, were assiduously conveyed to the King. The
sovereign devised a sort of corrective, as he thought, of this, by
instituting later, October 5, 1511, a court of appeals, or _Audiencia_,
to which the aggrieved colonists could go in their defense against
oppression or extortion. Its natural effect was to undermine the
governor's authority and to weaken his influence. He found himself
thwarted in all efforts to relieve the Indians of their burdens, as
nothing of that sort could be done without disturbing the revenues of
leading colonists. There was no great inducement to undo measures by
which no one profited in receipts more than himself, and the cruel
devastation of the native population ran on as it had done. He certainly
did not show himself averse to continuing the system of _repartimientos_
for the benefit of himself and his friends.
Diego, who had been for a while in Spain, returned in 1512 to Española,
and later new orders were sent out by the King, and these included
commands to reduce the labor of the Indians one third, to import negro
slaves from Guinea as a measure of further relief to the natives, and to
brand Carib slaves, so as to protect other Indians from harsh treatment
intended for the Caribs alone.
[Sidenote: Bartholomew Columbus died.]
Diego was again in Spain in 1513, and the attempts of Ojeda and Nicuessa
having failed, later orders in 1514 so far reinstated Diego in his
viceregal power as to permit him to send his uncle Bartholomew to take
possession of the Veragua coast. But the life of the Adelantado was
drawing to a close, and his death soon occurring nothing was done.
[Sidenote: 1515. Diego in Spain.]
Affairs had come to such a pass that Diego again felt it necessary to
repair to Court to counteract his enemies' intrigues, and once more
getting permission from the King, he sailed for Spain, April 9, 1515,
leaving the Vice-Queen with a council in authority.
Diego found the King open and kindly, and not averse to acknowledging
the merits of his government. He again pressed his bonded
rights with the old fervency. "I would bestow them willingly on you,"
said the King; "but I cannot do so without intrusting them also to your
son and to his successors." "Is it just," said Diego, "that I should
suffer for a son which I may never have?" Las Casas tells us that Diego
repeated this colloquy to him.
[Illustration: CHARLES THE FIFTH.]
[Sidenote: 1516. January 23. Ferdinand died.]
The King found it reasonable to question if Columbus had really sailed
along all the coasts in which Diego claimed a share, and ordered an
examination of the matter to be made. While these claims were in
abeyance, the King died, January 23, 1516.
[Sidenote: Diego again in Española.]
[Sidenote: 1520. Diego in Spain.]
[Sidenote: Diego partially reinstated.]
This event much retarded the settlement of the difficulties. Cardinal
Ximenes, who held power for a while, was not willing to act, and nothing
was done for four years, during part of which period Diego was certainly
in Española. We know also that he was present at the convocation of
Barcelona, presided over by the Emperor, when Las Casas made his urgent
appeals for the Indians and pictured their hardships. Finally, in 1520,
when Charles V. was about to embark for Flanders, Diego was in a
position to advance to the Emperor so large a sum as ten thousand
ducats, which was, as it appears, about a fifth of his annual income
from Española at this time. This financial succor seemed to open the way
for the Emperor to dismiss all charges against Diego, and to reinstate
him in qualified authority as Viceroy over the Indies.
[Sidenote: 1520. September. Diego returns to Española.]
This seeming restitution was not without a disagreeable accompaniment in
the appointment of a supervisor to reside at his viceregal court and
report on the Viceroy's doings. In September, 1520, Diego sailed once
more for his government, and on November 14 we find him in Santo
Domingo, and shortly afterwards engaged in the construction of a lordly
palace, which he was to occupy, and which is seen there to-day. The
substantialness of its structure gave rise to rumors that he was
preparing a fortress for ulterior aims.
[Sidenote: Negro slaves increase.]
Diego soon found that various administrative measures had not gone well
in his absence. Commanders of some of the provinces had exceeded their
powers, and it became necessary to supersede them. This made them
enemies as a matter of course. The raising of sugar-cane had rapidly
developed under the imported African labor, and the revenues now came
for the most part from the plantations rather than from the mines. The
negroes so increased that it was not long before some of them dared to
rise in revolt, but the mischief was stopped by a rapid swoop of armed
horsemen.
[Illustration: RUINS OF DIEGO COLON'S HOUSE.]
[Sidenote: 1523. Diego in Spain.]
[Sidenote: 1526. February 23. Diego dies.]
The jealousies and revengeful accusations of Diego's enemies were not so
easily quelled, and before long he was summoned to Spain to render an
account of his doings, for Lucas Vasquez de Ayllon had presented charges
against him. On September 16, 1523, Diego embarked, and landed at St.
Lucar November 5. He presented himself before the Emperor at Vittoria in
January, 1524, and reviewed his conduct. This he succeeded in doing in a
manner to disarm his foes; and this success encouraged him to press anew
for his inherited rights. The demand ended in the questions in dispute
being referred to a board; and Diego for two years followed the Court in
its migrations, to be in attendance on the sessions of this commission.
His health gave way under the strain, so that, with everything still
unsettled, he died at Montalvan, February 23, 1526, having survived his
father for twenty troublous years. His remains were laid in the
monastery of Las Cuevas by the side of Columbus. Being later conveyed to
the cathedral at Santo Domingo, they were, if one may credit the quite
unproved statements of the priests of the cathedral, mistaken for those
of his father, and taken to Havana in 1795.
[Sidenote: His family.]
[Sidenote: Luis Colon succeeds.]
The Vice-Queen and her family were still in Santo Domingo, and her
children were seven in number, four daughters and three sons. The
descent of the honors came eventually to the descendants of one of these
daughters, Isabel, who married George of Portugal, Count of Gelves. Of
the three sons, Luis succeeded his father, who was in turn succeeded by
Diego, a son of Luis's brother Cristoval.
The Vice-Queen, after making an ineffectual attempt to colonize Veragua,
in which she was thwarted by the royal _Audiencia_ at Española, returned
to Spain in 1529. Her son Luis, the heir, was still a child, having been
born in 1521 or 1522. For fourteen years his mother pressed his claims
upon the Emperor, Charles V., and she was during a part of the time in
such distress that she borrowed money of Ferdinand Columbus and pledged
her jewels. She lived till 1549, and died at Santo Domingo.
[Sidenote: 1536. The Crown's compromise with Luis.]
[Sidenote: Duke of Veragua.]
[Sidenote: 1540. Luis in Española.]
Early in 1536 the Cardinal Garcia de Loyasa, in behalf of the Council of
the Indies, rendered a decision in which he and Ferdinand Columbus had
acted as arbiters, which was confirmed by the Emperor in September of
the same year. This was that, upon the abandonment by Luis of all claims
upon the revenues of the Indies, of the title of Viceroy, and of the
right to appoint the officers of the New World, he should be given the
island of Jamaica in fief, a perpetual annuity of ten thousand ducats,
and the title of Duke of Veragua, with an estate twenty-five leagues
square in that province, to support the title and functions of Admiral
of the Indies. In 1540 Luis returned to Española with the title of
Captain-General, and in 1542 married at Santo Domingo, much against his
mother's wish, Maria de Orozco, who later lived in Honduras and married
another. While she was still living, Luis again espoused at Santo
Domingo Maria de Mosquera. In 1551 he returned to Spain.
[Sidenote: Columbus's privileges gradually abridged.]
[Sidenote: 1556. All Columbus's territorial rights abandoned.]
Whatever remained of the rights which Columbus had sought to transmit to
his heirs had already been modified to their detriment by Charles, under
decrees in 1540, 1541, and 1542; and when Charles was succeeded by
Philip II., early in 1556, one of the first acts of the latter was to
force Luis to abandon his fief of Veragua and to throw up his power as
Admiral. The Council of the Indies took cognizance of the case in July,
1556, and on September 28 following, Philip II., at Ghent, recompensed
the grandson of Columbus, for his submission to the inevitable, by
decreeing to Luis the honorary title of Admiral of the Indies and Duke
of Veragua, with an income of seven thousand ducats. So in fifty years
the dreams of Columbus for territorial magnificence came to naught, and
the confident injunctions of his will were dissipated in the air.
[Sidenote: Luis a polygamist.]
[Sidenote: 1572. Luis dies.]
Immediately after this, Luis furtively married, while his other wives
were still living, Ana de Castro Ossorio. The authorities found in these
polygamous acts a convenient opportunity to get another troublesome
Colon out of the way, and arrested Luis in 1559. He was held in prison
for nearly five years, and when in 1563 judgment was got against him, he
was sentenced to ten years of exile, half of which was to be passed in
Oran, in Africa. While his appeal was pending, his scandalous life added
crime to crime, and finally, in November, 1565, his sentence being
confirmed, he was conducted to Oran, and there he died February 3,
1572.
THE COLUMBUS PEDIGREE.
NOTE. Dotted lines mark illegitimate descents; the dash-and-dot lines
mark pretended descents. The heavy face numerals show the successful
holders of the honors of Columbus. The lines _a a_, _b b_, and _c c_
join respectively.
_Fadrique Enriquez_,
Adm. of Castile.
|
+-----+------+
| |
Alvarez = Maria. Juana = Juan II.
de | |of Aragon.
_Toledo_ | | +----------------------_a_
+-----+------+ +----+----+ |
| | |Ferdinand| = Isabella of Filipe = CRISTOFORO = Beatrix
Duke of Fernando. |of Aragon| Castile. Moniz | =1= ¦ Henriquez,
_Alba_. | +---------+ | ¦ living in 1513.
| +-----------------------------------+ ¦
| | Fernando,
Maria de = DIEGO, b. 1488,
Toledo | =2= d. 1526. d. 1539.
|
+---------+-----------------+---------------+-----------------------+-------------------------_b_
| | | | |
Felipa, Maria Juana Isabel Luisa de = LUIS = Maria de
nun. = Sancho = Luis de = Jorge de Carvajal ¦ =3= | Mosquira.
| de Cardona, | la Cueva. Portogallo. ¦ |
| Adm. of | | ¦ +------------+
| Aragon. | | ¦ | |
+----------+-------+ | | ¦ | |
| | | Maria, =Alvaro.= Cristoval. Maria, Filipa, _c_
=Cristoval=, Luis, Maria = Carlos de | of the d. 1577.
d.s.p. d.s.p. = Fr. | Arellano, | Convent
1583. de Mendoza| d. bef. 1600. +-------+------+ of San
d. 1605. | | | Quirce.
| | Jorge NUÑO DE =5=
| | Alberti, PORTOGALLO,
| | d. 1581. established in
| | 1608.
Maria Juana |
d.s.p. = Fr. Pacheco, |
| d. 1605. ALVARO =6=
+---------+ | JACINTO.
|James II.| = Arabella Carlos. |
|England. | ¦ Churchill. | |
+---------+ ¦ | PEDRO NUÑO. =7=
¦ | |
Duke of Various |
Berwick. lines. |
| PEDRO MANUEL. =8=
| |
| +----------------------------+---+
| | |
James STUART, = Catarina PEDRO NUÑO, =9=
Duke of Liria, | Ventura, d. 1753,
d. 1738. | d. 1740. without legitimate
| issue.
JACOBO EDUARDO.
| =10=
|
CARLOS FERNANDO.
| =11=
|
JACOBO FILIPE, =12=
dispossessed
in 1790;
the decree of
1664 reversed.
|
|
Continued to
our day.
Dominico
Susanna Colombo, of
DOMENICO = Fontanarosa. _Cuccaro_.
| |
_a_---------------+-------------+------------+-------------+ ¦
| | | | |
Bartolomeo. Giovanni Giacomo Blanchinetta ¦
¦ | Pelegrino, or Diego, = Giacomo |
¦ ¦ d. s. p. priest. Paravello. ¦
¦ | |
Maria, ¦ ¦
nun, | |
b. 1508. .----.----.----.----.----.----. ¦
| |
_b_---------------+--------------------+ ¦ ¦
| | | |
Ana = Cristoval = Magdalena Diego ¦ ¦
de | | de = Isabel | |
Pravia | | Guzman. Justenian. ¦ ¦
| | | |
+------+-----+ +---------+ ¦ ¦
| | | | |
_c_ = DIEGO, Francesca Maria ¦ ¦
=4= d.s.p. = Diego = Luis de | |
1578. | Ortegon. Avila. ¦ ¦
| | | |
| | ¦ ¦
Josefa | Bernardo Balthazar
= De Paz de la _Luis de_ Colombo, Colombo,
| Serra. AVILA, of Cogoleto. of Cuccaro.
| d. 1633.
|
Josefa = Martín de
| LARREATEGUI.
|
Diego.
|
|
Francisco.
|
|
Pedro Isidoro.
|
|
MANIANO(1790). =13=
|
|
PEDRO. =14=
|
|
CRISTOVAL. =15=
|
|
Son b.
1878.
[Sidenote: His heirs.]
[Sidenote: His daughter marries her cousin Diego, the male heir.]
[Sidenote: Columbus's male line extinct.]
Luis left two illegitimate children, one a son; but his lawful heirs
were adjudged to be the children of Maria de Mosquera, two daughters,
one a nun and the other Filipa. This last presented a claim for the
titles in opposition to the demands of Diego, the nephew of her father.
She declared this cousin to be the natural, and not the lawful, son of
Luis's brother. It was easy enough to forget such imputations in coming
to the final conclusion, when Filipa and Diego took each other in
marriage (May 15, 1573) to compose their differences, the husband
becoming Duke of Veragua. Filipa died in November, 1577, and her husband
January 27, 1578. As they had no children, the male line of Columbus
became extinct seventy years after his death.
[Sidenote: The long lawsuit and its many contestants.]
The lawsuit which followed for the settlement of the succession was a
famous one. It lasted thirty years. The claimants were at first eight in
number, but they were reduced to five by deaths during the progress of
the trials.
The first was Francesca, own sister of Diego, the late Duke. Her claim
was rejected; but five generations later the dignities returned to her
descendants.
The second was the representative of Maria, the daughter of Luis, and
sister-in-law of Diego. The claim made by her heir, the convent of San
Quirce, was discarded.
The third was Cristoval, the bastard son of Luis, who claimed to be the
fruit of a marriage of Luis, concluded while he was in prison accused of
polygamy. Cristoval died in 1601, before the cause was decided.
The fourth was Alvaro de Portogallo, Count of Gelves, a son of Isabel,
the sister of Luis. He had unsuccessfully claimed the titles when Luis
died, in 1572, and again put forth his claims in 1578, when Diego died,
but he himself died, pending a decision, in 1581. His son, Jorge
Alberto, inherited his rights, but died in 1589, before a decision was
reached, when his younger brother, Nuño de Portogallo, became the
claimant, and his rights were established by the tribunal in 1608, when
he became Duke of Veragua. His enjoyment of the title was not without
unrest, but the attempts to dispossess him failed.
The fifth was Cristoval de Cardona, Admiral of Aragon, son of Maria,
elder sister of Luis. This claimant died in 1583, while his claim,
having once been allowed, was held in abeyance by an appeal of his
rivals. His sister, Maria, was then adjudged inheritor of the honors,
but she died in 1605, before the final decree.
The sixth was Maria de la Cueva, daughter of Juana, sister of Luis, who
died before December, 1600, while her daughter died in 1605, leaving
Carlos Pacheco a claimant, whose rights were disallowed.
The seventh was Balthazar Colombo, a descendant of a Domenico Colombo,
who was, according to the claim, the same Domenico who was the father of
Columbus. His genealogical record was not accepted.
The eighth was Bernardo Colombo, who claimed to be a descendant of
Bartholomew Columbus, the Adelantado, a claim not made good.
These last two contestants rested their title in part on the fact that
their ancestors had always borne the name of Colombo, and this was
required by Columbus to belong to the inheritors of his honors. The
lineal ancestors of the other claimants had borne the names of Cardona,
Portogallo, or Avila.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Nuño de Portogallo succeeds, and the line later changes.]
From Nuño de Portogallo the titles descended to his son Alvaro Jacinto,
and then to the latter's son, Pedro Nuño. His rights were contested by
Luis de Avila (grandson of Cristoval, brother of Luis Colon), who tried
in 1620 to reverse the verdict of 1608, and it was not till 1664 that
Pedro Nuño defeated his adversaries. He was succeeded by his son, Pedro
Manuel, and he by his son, Pedro Nuño, who died in 1733, when this male
line became extinct.
The titles were now illegally assumed by Pedro Nuño's sister, Catarina
Ventura, who by marriage gave them to her husband, James Fitz-James
Stuart, son of the famous Duke of Berwick, and by inheritance in his own
right, Duke of Liria. When he died, in 1738, the titles passed to his
son, Jacobo Eduardo; thence to the latter's son, Carlos Fernando, who
transmitted them to his son, Jacobo Filipe. This last was obliged, by a
verdict in 1790, which reversed the decree of 1664, to yield the titles
to the line of Francesca, sister of Diego, the fourth holder of them.
This Francesca married Diego Ortegon, and their grandchild, Josefa,
married Martin Larreategui, whose great-great-grandson, Mariano (by
decrees 1790-96), became Duke of Veragua, from whom the title descended
to his son, Pedro, and then to his grandson, Cristoval, the present
Duke, born in 1837, whose heir, the next Duke, was born in 1878. The
value of the titles is said to-day to represent about eight or ten
thousand dollars, and this income is chargeable upon the revenues of
Cuba and Porto Rico.
In concluding this rapid sketch of the descent of the blood and honors
of Columbus, two striking thoughts are presented. The Larreateguis are a
Basque family. The blood of Columbus, the Genoese, now mingles with that
of the hardiest race of navigators of western Europe, and of whom it may
be expected that if ever earlier contact of Europe with the New World is
proved, these Basques will be found the forerunners of Columbus. The
blood of the supposed discoverer of the western passage to Asia flows
with that of the earliest stock which is left to us of that Oriental
wave of population which inundated Europe, in the far-away times when
the races which make our modern Christian histories were being disposed
in valleys and on the coasts of what was then the Western World.
APPENDIX.
THE GEOGRAPHICAL RESULTS.
[Sidenote: Progress of discovery.]
There was a struggling effort of the geographical sense of the world for
thirty years and more after the death of Columbus, before the fact began
to be grasped that a great continent was interposed as a substantial and
independent barrier in the track to India. It took nearly a half century
more before men generally recognized that fact, and then in most cases
it was accepted with the reservation of a possible Asiatic connection at
the extreme north. It was something more than two hundred and twenty
years from the death of Columbus before that severance at the north was
incontestably established by the voyage of Bering, and a hundred and
thirty years longer before at last the contour of the northern coast of
the continent was established by the proof of the long-sought northwest
passage in 1850. We must now, to complete the story of the influence of
Columbus, rehearse somewhat concisely the narrative of this progressive
outcome of that wonderful voyage of 1492. The spirit of western
discovery, which Columbus imparted, was of long continuance.
[Sidenote: The influence of Ptolemy and his career.]
"If we wish to make ourselves thoroughly acquainted," says Dr. Kohl,
"with the history of discovery in the New World, we must not only follow
the navigators on their ships, but we must look into the cabinets of
princes and into the counting-houses of merchants, and likewise watch
the scholars in their speculative studies." There was no rallying point
for the scholar of cosmography in those early days of discovery like the
text and influence of Ptolemy.
We know little of this ancient geographer beyond the fact of his living
in the early portion of the second century, and mainly at Alexandria,
the fittest home of a geographer at that time, since this Egyptian city
was peerless for commerce and learning. Here he could do best what he
advises all geographers to do, consult the journals of travelers, and
get information of eclipses, as the same phenomena were observed at
different places; such, for instance, as that of the moon noted at
Arbela in the fifth, and seen at Carthage in the second hour.
[Sidenote: Portolanos.]
The precision of Ptolemy was covered out of sight by graphic fancies
among the cosmographers of succeeding ages, till about the beginning of
the fourteenth century Italy and the western Mediterranean islands began
to produce those atlases of sea-charts, which have come down to us under
the name of "portolanos;" and still later a new impetus was given to
geographical study by the manuscripts of Ptolemy, with his maps, which
began to be common in western Europe in the beginning of the fifteenth
century, largely through the influence of communications with the
Byzantine peoples.
[Illustration: PTOLEMY.
[From Reusner's _Icones_.]]
The portolanos, however, never lost their importance. Nordenskiöld says
that, from the great number of them still extant in Italy, we may deduce
that they had a greater circulation during the sixteenth century than
printed cartographical works. About five hundred of these sea-charts are
known in Italian libraries, and the greater proportion of them are of
Italian origin.
[Sidenote: Latin text of Ptolemy.]
[Sidenote: The Donis maps.]
It is a composite Latin text, brought into final shape by Jacobus
Angelus not far from 1400-1410, which was the basis of the early printed
editions of Ptolemy. This version was for a while circulated in
manuscript, sometimes with copies of the maps of the Old World having a
Latinized nomenclature; and the public libraries of Europe contain here
and there specimens of these early copies, one of which it is thought
was known to Pierre d'Ailly. It is a question if Angelus supplied the
maps which accompanied these early manuscripts, and which got into the
Bologna edition of 1462 (wrongly dated for 1472), and into the metrical
version of Berlingièri. These maps, whether always the same in the early
manuscripts or not, were later superseded by a new set of maps made by a
German cartographer, Nicolaus Donis, which he added to a revision of
Angelus's Latin text. These later maps were close copies of the original
Greek maps, and were accompanied by others of a similar workmanship,
which represented better knowledge than the Greeks had. In 1478 these
Donis maps were first engraved on copper, and were used in the later
editions of 1490, and slightly corrected in those of 1507 and 1508. The
engravers were Schweinheim and Buckinck, and their work, following
copies of it in the edition of 1490, has been admirably reproduced in
_The Facsimile Atlas_ of Nordenskiöld (Stockholm, 1889).
[Illustration: DONIS, 1482.]
[Sidenote: Greenland in maps.]
Meanwhile, editions of the text of Angelus had been issued at Ulm in
1482, and giving additions in 1486, with woodcut maps, the same in both
issues on a different projection, assigned to Dominus Nicolaus Germanus,
who had, according to Nordenskiöld, completed the manuscript fifteen
years earlier. It is significant, perhaps, of the slowness with which
the bruit of Portuguese discoveries to the south had traveled that there
is in the maps of Africa no extension of Ptolemy's knowledge. But if
they are deficient in the south, they are remarkable in the north for
showing the coming America in a delineation of Greenland, which, as we
have already pointed out, was no new object in the manuscript
portolanos, even as far back as the early part of the same century.
[Illustration: RUYSCH, 1508.]
Two years after the death of Columbus, we find in the edition of 1508,
and sometimes in the edition of 1507,--there is no difference between
the two issues except in the title-page,--the first engraved map which
has particular reference to the new geographical developments of the
age.
[Sidenote: 1507-8. The Ruysch map.]
This Ruysch map shows the African coast discoveries of the Portuguese,
with the discoveries of Marco Polo towards the east. In connection with
the latter, the same material which Behaim had used in his globe seems
to have been equally accessible to Ruysch. The latter's map has a legend
on the sea between Iceland and Greenland, saying that an island situated
there was burnt up in 1456. This statement has been connected by some
with another contained in the Sagas, that from an island in this channel
both Greenland and Iceland could be seen.
We also learn from another legend that Portuguese vessels had pushed
down the South American coast to 50° south latitude, and the historians
of these early voyages have been unable to say who the pioneers were who
have left us so early a description of Brazil.
[Sidenote: Columbus and the Ruysch map.]
It is inferred from a reference of Beneventanus, in his Ptolemy,
respecting this map, that some aid had been derived from a map made by
one of the Columbuses, and a statement that Bartholomew Columbus, in
Rome in 1505, gave a map of the new discoveries to a canon of San
Giovanni di Laterano has been thought to refer to such a map, which
would, if it could be established, closely connect the Ruysch map with
Columbus. It is also supposed to have some relation to Cabot, since a
voyage which Ruysch made to the new regions westward from England may
have been, and probably was, with that navigator. In this case, the
reference to that part of the coast of Asia which the English discovered
may record Ruysch's personal experiences. If these things can be
considered as reasonably established, it gives great interest to this
map of Ruysch, and connects Columbus not only with the earliest
manuscript map, La Cosa of 1500, but also with the earliest engraved map
of the New World, as Ruysch's map was.
[Sidenote: Sources of the Ruysch map.]
In speaking of the Ruysch map, Henry Stevens thinks that the
cartographer laid down the central archipelago of America from the
printed letter of Columbus, because it was the only account in print in
1507; but why restrict the sources of information to those in print,
when La Cosa's map might have been copied, or the material which La Cosa
employed might have been used by others, and when the Cantino map is a
familiar copy of Portuguese originals, all of which might well have been
known in the varied circles with which Ruysch is seen by his map to have
been familiar?
[Sidenote: Portuguese geography and maps.]
While it is a fact that central and northern Europe got its
cartographical knowledge of the New World almost wholly from Portugal,
owing, perhaps, to the exertions of Spain to preserve their explorers'
secrets, we do not, at the same time, find a single engraved Portuguese
map of the early years of this period of discovery.
[Sidenote: Portuguese portolano.]
[Sidenote: Pedro Reinel.]
A large map, to show the Portuguese discoveries during years then
recent, was probably made for King Emanuel, and it has come down to us,
being preserved now at Munich. This chart wholly omits the Spanish work
of exploration, and records only the coasts coursed by Cabral in the
south, and by the Cortereals in the north. We have a further and similar
record in the chart of Pedro Reinel, which could not have been made far
from the same time, and which introduces to us the same prominent cape
which in La Cosa's map had been called the English cape as "Cavo Razo,"
a name preserved to us to-day in the Cape Race of Newfoundland.
[Illustration: THE SO-CALLED ADMIRAL'S MAP.]
[Sidenote: Spain and Portugal conceal their geographical secrets.]
There is abundant evidence of the non-communicative policy of Spain.
This secretiveness was understood at the time Robert Thorne, in 1527,
complained, as well as Sir Humphrey Gilbert in his _Discoverie_, that a
similar injunction was later laid by Portugal. In Veitia Linage's
_Norte_ we read of the cabinets in which these maps were preserved, and
how the Spanish pilot major and royal cosmographer alone kept the keys.
There exists a document by which one of the companions of Magellan was
put under a penalty of two thousand ducats not to disclose the route he
traversed in that famous voyage. We know how Columbus endeavored to
conceal the route of his final voyage, in which he reached the coast of
Veragua.
[Illustration: MÜNSTER, 1532.]
[Illustration: GLOBUS MUNDI.]
[Sidenote: A strait to India.]
In the two maps of nearly equal date, being the earliest engraved charts
which we have, the Ruysch map of 1508 and the so-called Admiral's map of
1507 (1513), the question of a strait leading to the Asiatic seas, which
Columbus had spent so much energy in trying to find during his last
voyage, is treated differently. We have seen that La Cosa confessed his
uncertain knowledge by covering the place with a vignette. In the Ruysch
map there is left the possibility of such a passage; in the other there
is none, for the main shore is that of Asia itself, whose coast line
uninterruptedly connects with that of South America. The belief in such
a strait in due time was fixed, and lingered even beyond the time when
Cortes showed there was no ground for it. We find it in Schöner's
globes, in the Tross gores, and even so late as 1532, in the belated map
of Münster.
[Illustration: EDEN.]
[Sidenote: Earliest map to show America made north of the Alps.]
The map of the _Globus Mundi_ (Strassburg, 1509) has some significance
as being the earliest issued north of the Alps, recording both the
Portuguese and Spanish discoveries; though it merely gives the
projecting angle of the South American coast as representing the
developments of the west.
[Sidenote: English references to America.]
[Sidenote: Richard Eden.]
It is doubtful if any reference to the new discoveries had appeared in
English literature before Alexander Barclay produced in 1509 a
translation of Brant's _Ship of Fools_, and for a few years there were
only chance references which made no impression on the literary
instincts of the time. It was not till after the middle of the century,
in 1553, that Richard Eden, translating a section of Sebastian Münster's
_Cosmographia_, published it in London as a _Treatyse of the newe
India_, and English-reading people first saw a considerable account of
what the rest of Europe had been doing in contrast with the English
maritime apathy. Two years later (1555), Eden, drawing this time upon
Peter Martyr, did much in his _Decades of the Newe World_ to enlarge the
English conceptions.
[Sidenote: The naming of America.]
But the most striking and significant of all the literary movements
which grew out of the new oceanic developments was that which gave a
name to the New World, and has left a continent, which Columbus
unwittingly found, the monument of another's fame.
[Sidenote: 1504. September. Letter of Vespucius.]
It was in September, 1504, that Vespucius, remembering an old schoolmate
in Florence, Piero Soderini, who was then the perpetual Gonfalonière of
that city, took what it is supposed he had written out at length
concerning his experiences in the New World, and made an abstract of it
in Italian. Dating this on the 4th of that month, he dispatched it to
Italy. It is a question whether the original of this abridged text of
Vespucius is now known, though Varnhagen, with a confidence few scholars
have shared, has claimed such authenticity for a text which he has
printed.
[Sidenote: St. Dié.]
[Sidenote: Duke René.]
It concerns us chiefly to know that somehow a copy of this condensed
narrative of Vespucius came into the hands of his fellow-townsman, Fra
Giovanni Giocondo, then in Paris at work as an architect constructing a
bridge over the Seine. It is to be allowed that R. H. Major, in tracing
the origin of the French text, assumes something to complete his story,
and that this precise genesis of the narrative which was received by
Duke René of Lorraine is open to some question. The supposition that a
young Alsatian, then in Paris, Mathias Ringmann, had been a friend of
Giocondo, and had been the bearer of this new version to René, is
likewise a conjecture. Whether Ringmann was such a messenger or not
matters little, but the time was fast approaching when this young man
was to be associated with a proposition made in the little village of
St. Dié, in the Vosges, which was one of those obscure but far-reaching
mental premonitions so often affecting the world's history, without the
backing of great names or great events. This almost unknown place was
within the domain of this same Duke René, a wise man, who liked
scholars and scholarly tomes. His patronage had fostered there a small
college and a printing-press. There had been grouped around these
agencies a number of learned men, or those ambitious of knowledge.
Scholars in other parts of Europe, when they heard of this little
coterie, wondered how its members had congregated there. One Walter Lud,
or Gualterus Ludovicus, as they liked to Latinize his name, a dependent
and secretary of Duke René, was now a man not much under sixty, and he
had been the grouper and manager of this body of scholars. There had
lately been brought to join them this same Mathias Ringmann, who came
from Paris with all the learning that he had tried to imbibe under the
tutoring of Dr. John Faber. If we believe the story as Major has worked
it out, Ringmann had come to this sparse community with all the fervor
for the exploits of Vespucius which he got in the French capital from
associating with that Florentine's admirer, the architect Giocondo.
[Illustration: VESPUCIUS.]
Coming to St. Dié, Ringmann had been made a professor of Latin, and with
the usual nominal alternation had become known as Philesius; and as such
he appears a little later in connection with a Latin version of the
French of Giocondo, which was soon made by another of the St. Dié
scholars, a canon of the cathedral there, Jean Bassin de Sandacourt.
Still another young man, Walter Waldseemüller, had not long before been
made a teacher of geography in the college, and his name, as was the
wont, had been classicized into Hylacomylus.
There have now been brought before the reader all the actors in this
little St. Dié drama, upon which we, as Americans, must gaze back
through the centuries as upon the baptismal scene of a continent.
[Sidenote: Waldseemüller.]
[Sidenote: _Cosmographiæ Introductio._]
The Duke had emphasized the cosmographical studies of the age by this
appointment of an energetic young student of geography, who seems to
have had a deft hand at map-making. Waldseemüller had some hand, at
least, in fashioning a map of the new discoveries at the west, and the
Duke had caused the map to be engraved, and we find a stray note of
sales of it singly as early as 1507, though it was not till 1513 that it
fairly got before the world in the Ptolemy of that year. Waldseemüller
had also developed out of these studies a little cosmographical
treatise, which the college press was set to work upon, and to swell it
to the dignity of a book, thin as it still was, the diminutive quarto
was made to include Bassin's Latin version of the Vespucius narrative,
set out with some Latin verses by Ringmann. The little book called
_Cosmographiæ Introductio_ was brought out at this obscure college press
in St. Dié, in April and August, 1507. There were some varieties in each
of these issues, while that part which constituted the Vespucius
narrative was further issued in a separate publication.
[Illustration: TITLE OF THE COSMOGRAPHIÆ INTRODUCTIO.]
It was in this form that Vespucius's narrative was for the first time,
unless Varnhagen's judgment to the contrary is superior to all others,
brought before the world. The most significant quality of the little
book, however, was the proposition which Waldseemüller, with his
anonymous views on cosmography, advanced in the introductory parts. It
is assumed by writers on the subject that it was not Waldseemüller alone
who was responsible for the plan there given to name that part of the
New World which Americus Vespucius had described after the voyager who
had so graphically told his experiences on its shores. The plan, it is
supposed, met with the approval of, or was the outcome of the counsels
of, this little band of St. Dié scholars collectively. It is not the
belief of students generally that this coterie, any more than Vespucius
himself, ever imagined that the new regions were really disjoined from
the Asiatic main, though Varnhagen contends that Vespucius knew they
were.
[Sidenote:_Mundus Novus._]
One thing is certainly true: that there wasno intention to apply the
name which was now proposed to anything more than the continental mass
of the Brazilian shore which Vespucius had coasted, and which was looked
upon as a distinct region from the islands which Columbus had traversed.
It had come to be believed that the archipelago of Columbus was far from
the paradise of luxury and wealth that his extravagant terms called for,
and which the descriptions of Marco Polo had led the world to expect,
supposing the regions of the overland and oceanic discoverers to be the
same. Further than this, a new expectation had been aroused by the
reports which had come to Europe of the vaster proportions and of the
brilliant paroquets--for such trivial aspects gave emphasis--of the more
southern regions. It was an instance of the eagerness with which deluded
minds, to atone for their first disappointment, grasp at the chances of
a newer satisfaction. This was the hope which was entertained of this
_Mundus Novus_ of Vespucius,--not a new world in the sense of a new
continent.
The Española and its neighboring regions of Columbus, and the Baccalaos
of Cabot and Cortereal, clothed in imagination with the descriptions of
Marco Polo, were nothing but the Old World approached from the east
instead of from the west. It was different with the _Mundus Novus_ of
Vespucius. Here was in reality a new life and habitation, doubtless
connected, but how it was not known, with the great eastern world of the
merchants. It corresponded with nothing, so far as understood, in the
Asiatic chorography. It was ready for a new name, and it was alone
associated with the man who had, in the autumn of 1502, so described it,
and from no one else could its name be so acceptably taken. Europe and
Asia were geographically contiguous, and so might be Asia and the new
"America."
[Sidenote: Eclipse of Columbus's name.]
The sudden eclipse which the name of Columbus underwent, as the fame of
Vespucius ran through the popular mind, was no unusual thing in the
vicissitudes of reputations. Factitious prominence is gained without
great difficulty by one or for one, if popular issues of the press are
worked in his interest, and if a great variety of favoring circumstances
unite in giving currency to rumors and reports which tend to invest him
with exclusive interest. The curious public willingly lends itself to
any end that taxes nothing but its credulity and good nature.
[Sidenote: Fame of Vespucius.]
We have associated with Vespucius just the elements of such a success,
while the fame of Columbus was waning to the death, namely: a stretch of
continental coast, promising something more than the scattered trifles
of an insalubrious archipelago; a new southern heavens, offering other
glimpses of immensity; descriptions that were calculated to replace in
new variety and mystery the stale stories of Cipango and Cathay: the
busy yearnings of a group of young and ardent spirits, having all the
apparatus of a press to apply to the making of a public sentiment; and
the enthusiasm of narrators who sought to season their marvels of
discovery with new delights and honors.
The hold which Vespucius had seized upon the imagination of Europe, and
which doubtless served to give him prominence in the popular
appreciation, as it has served many a ready and picturesque writer
since, was that glowing redundancy of description, both of the earth and
the southern constellations, which forms so conspicuous a feature of his
narratives. It was the later voyage of Vespucius, and not his alleged
voyage of 1497, which raised, as Humboldt has pointed out, the great
interest which his name suggested.
[Sidenote: Columbus and Vespucius.]
Just what the notion prevailing at the time was of the respective
exploits of Columbus and Vespucius is easily gathered from a letter
dated May 20, 1506, which appears in a _Dyalogus Johannis Stamler de
diversarum gencium sectis, et mundi regionibus_, published in 1508. In
this treatise a reference is made to the letters of Columbus (1493) and
Vespucius (1503) as concerning an insular and continental space
respectively. It speaks of "Cristofer Colom, the discoverer of _new
islands_, and of Albericus Vespucius concerning the new discovered
_world_, to both of whom our age is most largely indebted." It will be
remembered that an early misnaming of Vespucius by calling him Albericus
instead of Americus, which took place in one of the early editions of
his narrative, remained for some time to confuse the copiers of them.
[Sidenote: Vespucius on gravitation.]
If we may judge from a diagram which Vespucius gives of a globe with two
standing men on it ninety degrees apart, each dropping a line to the
centre of the earth, this navigator had grasped, together with the idea
of the sphericity of the globe, the essential conditions of gravitation.
There could be no up-hill sailing when the zenith was always overhead.
Curiously enough, the supposition of Columbus, when as he sailed on his
third voyage he found the air grow colder, was that he was actually
sailing up-hill, ascending a protuberance of the earth which was like
the stem end of a pear, with the crowning region of the earthly paradise
atop of all! Such contrasts show the lesser navigator to be the greater
physicist, and they go not a small way in accounting for the levelness
of head which gained the suffrages of the wise.
* * * * *
[Illustration: PART OF MAP IN THE PTOLEMY OF 1513.]
[Illustration: PART OF MAP IN THE PTOLEMY OF 1513.]
[Sidenote: 1508. Duke René died.]
[Sidenote: 1509. _Globus Mundi._]
When Duke René, upon whom so much had depended in the little community
at St. Dié, died, in 1508, the geographical printing schemes of
Waldseemüller and his fellows received a severe reverse, and for a few
years we hear nothing more of the edition of Ptolemy which had been
planned. The next year (1509), Waldseemüller, now putting his name to
his little treatise, was forced, because of the failure of the college
press, to go to Strassburg to have a new edition of it printed (1509).
The proposals for naming the continental discoveries of Vespucius seem
not in the interim to have excited any question, and so they are
repeated. We look in vain in the copy of this edition which Ferdinand
Columbus bought at Venice in July, 1521, and which is preserved at
Seville, for any marginal protest. The author of the _Historie_, how far
soever Ferdinand may have been responsible for that book, is equally
reticent. There was indeed no reason why he should take any exception.
The fitness of the appellation was accepted as in no way invalidating
the claim of Columbus to discoveries farther to the north; and in
another little tract, printed at the same time at Grüniger's Strassburg
press, the anonymous _Globus Mundi_, the name "America" is adopted in
the text, though the small bit of the new coast shown in its map is
called by a translation of Vespucius's own designation merely "_Newe
Welt_."
[Sidenote: 1513. The Strassburg Ptolemy.]
The Ptolemy scheme bore fruit at last, and at Strassburg, also, for here
the edition whose maps are associated with the name of Waldseemüller,
and whose text shows some of the influence of a Greek manuscript of the
old geographer which Ringmann had earlier brought from Italy, came out
in 1513. Here was a chance, in a book far more sure to have influence
than the little anonymous tract of 1507, to impress the new name America
upon the world of scholars and observers, and the opportunity was not
seized. It is not easy to divine the cause of such an omission. The
edition has two maps which show this Vespucian continent in precisely
the same way, though but one of them shows also to its full extent the
region of Columbus's explorations. On one of these maps the southern
regions have no designation whatever, and on the other, the "Admiral's
map," there is a legend stretched across it, assigning the discovery of
the region to Columbus.
We do not know, in all the contemporary literature which has come down
to us, that up to 1513 there had been any rebuke at the ignorance or
temerity which appeared in its large bearing to be depriving Columbus of
a rightful honor. That in 1509 Waldseemüller should have enforced the
credit given to Vespucius, and in 1513 revoked it in favor of Columbus,
seems to indicate qualms of conscience of which we have no other trace.
Perhaps, indeed, this reversion of sympathy is of itself an evidence
that Waldseemüller had less to do with the edition than has been
supposed. It is too much to assert that Waldseemüller repented of his
haste, but the facts in one light would indicate it.
[Sidenote: The name America begins to be accepted.]
[Illustration: THE TROSS GORES.]
Like many such headlong projects, however, the purpose had passed beyond
the control of its promoters. The euphony, if not the fitness, of the
name America had attracted attention, and there are several printed and
manuscript globes and maps in existence which at an early date adopted
that designation for the southern continent. Nordenskiöld (_Facsimile
Atlas_, p. 42) quotes from the commentaries of the German Coclæus,
contained in the _Meteorologia Aristotelis_ of Jacobus Faber (Nuremberg,
1512) a passage referring to the "Nova Americi terra."
[Sidenote: 1516-17. First in a map.]
To complicate matters still more, within a few years after this an
undated edition of Waldseemüller's tract appeared at Lyons,--perhaps
without his participation,--which was always found, down to 1881,
without a map, though the copies known were very few; but in that year a
copy with a map was discovered, now owned by an American collector, in
which the proposition of the text is enforced with the name America on
the representation of South America. A section of this map is here given
as the Tross Gores. In the present condition of our knowledge of the
matter, it was thus at a date somewhere about 1516-17 that the name
appeared first in any printed map, unless, indeed, we allow a somewhat
earlier date to two globes in the Hauslab collection at Vienna. On the
date of these last objects there is, however, much difference of
opinion, and one of them has been depicted and discussed in the
_Mittheilungen_ of the Geographische Gesellschaft (1886, p. 364) of
Vienna. Here, as in the descriptive texts, it must be clearly kept in
mind, however, that no one at this date thought of applying the name to
more than the land which Vespucius had found stretching south beyond the
equator on the east side of South America, and which Balboa had shown to
have a similar trend on the west. The islands and region to the north,
which Columbus and Cabot had been the pioneers in discovering, still
remained a mystery in their relations to Asia, and there was yet a long
time to elapse before the truth should be manifest to all, that a
similar expanse of ocean lay westerly at the north, as was shown by
Balboa to extend in the same direction at the south.
[Illustration: THE HAUSLAB GLOBE.]
This Vespucian baptism of South America now easily worked its way to
general recognition. It is found in a contemporary set of gores which
Nordenskiöld has of late brought to light, and was soon adopted by the
Nuremberg globe-maker, Schöner (1515, etc.); by Vadianus at Vienna, when
editing Pomponius Mela (1515); by Apian on a map used in an edition of
Solinus, edited by Camers (1520); and by Lorenz Friess, who had been of
Duke René's coterie and a correspondent of Vespucius, on a map
introduced into the Grüniger Ptolemy, published at Strassburg (1522),
which also reproduced the Waldseemüller map of 1513. This is the
earliest of the Ptolemies in which we find the name accepted on its
maps.
[Sidenote: 1522. The name first in a Ptolemy.]
[Illustration: THE NORDENSKIÖLD GORES.]
[Illustration: APIANUS, 1520.]
[Illustration: SCHÖNER GLOBE, 1515.]
[Illustration: FRIESS (_Frisius_), IN THE PTOLEMY OF 1522.]
There is one significant fact concerning the conflict of the Crown with
the heirs of Columbus, which followed upon the Admiral's death, and in
which the advocates of the government sought to prove that the claim of
Columbus to have discovered the continental shore about the Gulf of
Paria in 1498 was not to be sustained in view of visits by others at an
earlier date. This significant fact is that Vespucius is not once
mentioned during the litigation. It is of course possible, and perhaps
probable, that it was for the interests of both parties to keep out of
view a servant of Portugal trenching upon what was believed to be
Spanish territories. The same impulse could hardly have influenced
Ferdinand Columbus in the silent acquiescence which, as a contemporary
informs us, was his attitude towards the action of the St. Dié
professors. There seems little doubt of his acceptance of a view, then
undoubtedly common, that there was no conflict of the claims of the
respective navigators, because their different fields of exploration had
not brought such claims in juxtaposition.
[Sidenote: Who first landed on the southern main?]
[Sidenote: Vespucius's maps.]
[Sidenote: Vespucius not privy to the naming.]
Following, however, upon the assertion of Waldseemüller, that Vespucius
had "found" this continental tract needing a name, there grew up a
belief in some quarters, and deducible from the very obscure chronology
of his narrative, which formulated itself in a statement that Vespucius
had really been the first to set foot on any part of this extended main.
It was here that very soon the jealousy of those who had the good name
of Columbus in their keeping began to manifest itself, and some time
after 1527,--if we accept that year as the date of his beginning work on
the _Historie_,--Las Casas, who had had some intimate relations with
Columbus, tells us that the report was rife of Vespucius himself being
privy to such pretensions. Unless Las Casas, or the reporters to whom he
referred, had material of which no one now has knowledge, it is certain
that there is no evidence connecting Vespucius with the St. Dié
proposition, and it is equally certain that evidence fails to establish
beyond doubt the publication of any map bearing the name America while
Vespucius lived. He had been made pilot major of Spain March 22, 1508,
and had died February 22, 1512. We have no chart made by Vespucius
himself, though it is known that in 1518 such a chart was in the
possession of Ferdinand, brother of Charles the Fifth. The recovery of
this chart would doubtless render a signal service in illuminating this
and other questions of early American cartography. It might show us how
far, if at all, Vespucius "sinfully failed towards the Admiral," as Las
Casas reports of him, and adds: "If Vespucius purposely gave currency to
this belief of his first setting foot on the main, it was a great
wickedness; and if it was not done intentionally, it looks like it."
With all this predisposition, however, towards an implication of
Vespucius, Las Casas was cautious enough to consider that, after all, it
may have been the St. Dié coterie who were alone responsible for
starting the rumor.
[Sidenote: "America" not used in Spain.]
[Sidenote: 1541. Mercator first applied the name to both North and South
America.]
It is very clear that in Spain there had been no recognition of the name
"America," nor was it ever officially recognized by the Spanish
government. Las Casas understood that it had been applied by
"foreigners," who had, as he says, "called America what ought to be
called Columba." Just what date should attach to this protest of Las
Casas is not determinable. If it was later than the gore-map of Mercator
in 1541, which was the first, so far as is known, to apply the name to
both North and South America, there is certainly good reason for the
disquietude of Las Casas. If it was before that, it was because, with
the progress of discovery, it had become more and more clear that all
parts of the new regions were component parts of an absolutely new
continent, upon which the name of the first discoverer of any part of
it, main or insular, ought to have been bestowed. That it should be left
to "foreign writers," as Las Casas said, to give a name representing a
rival interest to a world that Spanish enterprise had made known was no
less an indignity to Spain than to her great though adopted Admiral.
[Sidenote: Spread of the name in central Europe.]
It happens that the suggestion which sprang up in the Vosges worked
steadily onward through the whole of central Europe. That it had so
successful a propagation is owing, beyond a doubt, as much to the
exclusive spirit of the Spanish government in keeping to itself its
hydrographical progress as to any other cause. We have seen how the name
spread through Germany and Austria. It was taken up by Stobnicza in
Poland in 1512, in a Cracow introduction to Ptolemy; and many other of
the geographical writers of central and southern Europe adopted the
designation. The _New Interlude_, published in England in 1519, had used
it, and towards the middle of the century the fame of Vespucius had
occupied England, so far as Sir Thomas More and William Cunningham
represent it, to the almost total obscuration of Columbus.
It was but a question of time when Vespucius would be charged with
promoting his own glory by borrowing the plumes of Columbus. Whether Las
Casas, in what has been quoted, initiated such accusations or not, the
account of that writer was in manuscript and could have had but small
currency.
[Sidenote: 1533. Schöner accuses Vespucius of participation in the
injustice.]
The first accusation in print, so far as has been discovered, came from
the German geographer, Johann Schöner, who, having already in his
earlier globes adopted the name America, now in a tract called
_Opusculum Geographicum_, which he printed at Nuremberg in 1533, openly
charged Vespucius with attaching his own name to a region of India
Superior. Two years later, Servetus, while he repeated in his Ptolemy of
1535 the earlier maps bearing the name America, entered in his text a
protest against its use by alleging distinctly that Columbus was earlier
than Vespucius in finding the new main.
Within a little more than a year from the death of Vespucius, and while
the maps assigned to Waldseemüller were pressed on the attention of
scholars, the integralness of the great southern continent, to which a
name commemorating Americus had been given, was made manifest, or at
least probable, by the discovery of Balboa.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: A barrier suspected.]
Let us now see how the course of discovery was finding record during
these early years of the sixteenth century in respect to the great but
unsuspected barrier which actually interposed in the way of those who
sought Asia over against Spain.
[Sidenote: Discoveries in the north.]
[Sidenote: 1504. Normans and Bretons.]
In the north, the discoveries of the English under Cabot, and of the
Portuguese under the Cortereals, soon led the Normans and Bretons from
Dieppe and Saint Malo to follow in the wake of such predecessors. As
early as 1504 the fishermen of these latter peoples seem to have been on
the northern coasts, and we owe to them the name of Cape Breton, which
is thought to be the oldest French name in our American geography. It is
the "Gran Capitano" of Ramusio who credits the Bretons with these early
visits at the north, though we get no positive cartographical record of
such visits till 1520, in a map which is given by Kunstmann in his
_Atlas_.
[Sidenote: 1505. Portuguese.]
Again, in 1505, some Portuguese appear to have been on the Newfoundland
coast under the royal patronage of Henry VII. of England, and by 1506
the Portuguese fishermen were regular frequenters of the Newfoundland
banks. We find in the old maps Portuguese names somewhat widely
scattered on the neighboring coast lines, for the frequenting of the
region by the fishermen of that nation continued well towards the close
of the century.
[Sidenote: 1506. Spaniards.]
There are also stories of one Velasco, a Spaniard, visiting the St.
Lawrence in 1506, and Juan de Agramonte in 1511 entered into an
agreement with the Spanish King to pursue discovery in these parts more
actively, but we have no definite knowledge of results.
[Sidenote: 1517. Sebastian Cabot.]
[Sidenote: 1521. Portuguese.]
The death of Ferdinand, January 23, 1516, would seem to have put a stop
to a voyage which had already been planned for Spain by Sebastian Cabot,
to find a northwest passage; but the next year (1517) Cabot, in behalf
of England, had sailed to Hudson's Strait, and thence north to 67° 30',
finding "no night there," and observing extraordinary variations of the
compass. Somewhat later there are the very doubtful claims of the
Portuguese to explorations under Fagundes about the Gulf of St. Lawrence
in 1521.
[Sidenote: 1506. Ango's captains.]
[Sidenote: Denys's map.]
[Sidenote: 1518. Léry.]
By 1506 also there is something like certainty respecting the Normans,
and under the influence of a notable Dieppese, Jean Ango, we soon meet a
class of adventurous mariners tempting distant and marvelous seas. We
read of Pierre Crignon, and Thomas Aubert, both of Dieppe, Jean Denys of
Honfleur, and Jean Parmentier, all of whom have come down to us through
the pages of Ramusio. It is of Jean Denys in 1506, and of Thomas Aubert
a little later, that we find the fullest recitals. To Denys there has
been ascribed a mysterious chart of the Gulf of St. Lawrence; but if the
copy which is preserved represents it, there can be no hesitation in
discarding it as a much later cartographical record. The original is
said to have been found in the archives of the ministry of war in Paris
so late as 1854, but no such map is found there now. The copy which was
made for the Canadian archives is at Ottawa, and I have been favored by
the authorities there with a tracing of it. No one of authority will be
inclined to dispute the judgment of Harrisse that it is apocryphal. We
are accordingly left in uncertainty just how far at this time the
contour of the Golfo Quadrago, as the Gulf of St. Lawrence was called,
was made out. Aubert is said to have brought to France seven of the
natives of the region in 1509. Ten years or more later (1519, etc.), the
Baron de Léry is thought to have attempted a French settlement
thereabouts, of which perhaps the only traces were some European cattle,
the descendants of his small herd landed there in 1528, which were found
on Sable Island many years later.
[Sidenote: 1526. Nicholas Don.]
We know from Herrera that in 1526 Nicholas Don, a Breton, was fishing
off Baccalaos, and Rut tells us that in 1527 Norman and Breton vessels
were pulling fish on the shores of Newfoundland. Such mentions mark the
early French knowledge of these northern coasts, but there is little in
it all to show any contribution to geographical developments.
[Illustration: PETER MARTYR, 1511.]
[Illustration: PONCE DE LEON.
[From Barcia's _Herrera_.]]
[Sidenote: Attempts to connect the northern discoveries with those of
the Spanish.]
[Sidenote: 1511. Peter Martyr's map.]
[Sidenote: 1512. Ponce de Leon.]
[Sidenote: 1513. March.]
[Sidenote: Florida.]
Before this, however, the first serious attempt of which we have
incontrovertible evidence was made to connect these discoveries in the
north with those of the Spanish in the Antilles. As early as 1511 the
map given by Peter Martyr had shown that, from the native reports or
otherwise, a notion had arisen of lands lying north of Cuba. In 1512
Ponce de Leon was seeking a commission to authorize him to go and see
what this reported land was like, with its fountain of youth. He got it
February 23, 1512, when Ferdinand commissioned him "to find and settle
the island of Bimini," if none had already been there, or if Portugal
had not already acquired possession in any part that he sought. Delays
in preparation postponed the actual departure of his expedition from
Porto Rico till March, 1513. On the 23d of that month, Easter Sunday, he
struck the mainland somewhere opposite the Bahamas, and named the
country Florida, from the day of the calendar. He tracked the coast
northward to a little above 30° north latitude. Then he retraced his
way, and rounding the southern cape, went well up the western side of
the peninsula. Whether any stray explorers had been before along this
shore may be a question. Private Spanish or Portuguese adventurers, or
even Englishmen, had not been unknown in neighboring waters some years
earlier, as we have evidence. We find certainly in this voyage of Ponce
de Leon for the first time an unmistakable official undertaking, which
we might expect would soon have produced its cartographical record. The
interdicts of the Council of the Indies were, however, too powerful, and
the old lines of the Cantino map still lingered in the maps for some
years, though by 1520 the Floridian peninsula began to take recognizable
shape in certain Spanish maps.
[Illustration: PONCE DE LEON'S TRACK.]
[Sidenote: Bimini.]
Just what stood for Bimini in the reports of this expedition is not
clear; but there seems to have been a vague notion of its not being the
same as Florida, for when Ponce de Leon got a new patent in September,
1514, he was authorized to settle both "islands," Bimini and Florida,
and Diego Colon as viceroy was directed to help on the expedition. Seven
years, however, passed in delays, so that it was not till 1521 that he
attempted to make a settlement, but just at what point is not known.
Sickness and loss in encounters with the Indians soon discouraged him,
and he returned to Cuba to die of an arrow wound received in one of the
forays of the natives.
[Sidenote: 1519. Pineda.]
It was still a question if Florida connected with any adjacent lands.
Several minor expeditions had added something to the stretch of coast,
but the main problem still stood unsolved. In 1519 Pineda had made the
circuit of the northern shores of the Gulf of Mexico, and at the river
Panuco he had been challenged by Cortes as trenching on his government.
Turning again eastward, Pineda found the mouth of the river named by him
Del Espiritu Santo, which passes with many modern students as the first
indication in history of the great Mississippi, while others trace the
first signs of that river to Cabeça de Vaca in 1528, or to the passage
higher up its current by De Soto in 1541. Believing it at first the
long-looked-for strait to pass to the Indies, Pineda entered it, only to
be satisfied that it must gather the watershed of a continent, which in
this part was now named Amichel. It seemed accordingly certain that no
passage to the west was to be found in this part of the gulf, and that
Florida must be more than an island.
[Sidenote: 1520. Ayllon.]
[Sidenote: Spaniards in Virginia.]
While these explorations were going on in the gulf, others were
conducted on the Atlantic side of Florida. If the Pompey Stone which has
been found in New York State, to the confusion of historical students,
be accepted as genuine, it is evidence that the Spaniard had in 1520
penetrated from some point on the coast to that region. In 1520 we get
demonstrable proof, when Lucas Vasquez de Ayllon sent a caravel under
Gordillo, which joined company on the way with another vessel bound on a
slave-hunting expedition, and the two, proceeding northward, sighted the
main coast at a river which they found to be in thirty-three and a half
degrees of north latitude, on the South Carolina coast. They returned
without further exploration. Ayllon, without great success, attempted
further explorations in 1525; but in 1526 he went again with greater
preparations, and made his landfall a little farther north, near the
mouth of the Wateree River, which he called the Jordan, and sailed on to
the Chesapeake, where, with the help of negro slaves, then first
introduced into this region, he began the building of a town at or near
the spot where the English in the next century founded Jamestown; or at
least this is the conjecture of Dr. Shea. Here Ayllon died of a
pestilential fever October 18, 1526, when the disheartened colonists,
one hundred and fifty out of the original five hundred, returned to
Santo Domingo.
[Illustration: THE AYLLON MAP.]
[Sidenote: 1524. Gomez.]
[Sidenote: Chaves's map.]
[Sidenote: 1529. Ribero's map.]
While these unfortunate experiences were in progress, Estevan Gomez,
sent by the Spanish government, after the close of the conference at
Badajos, to make sure that there was no passage to the Moluccas anywhere
along this Atlantic coast, started in the autumn of 1524, if the data we
have admit of that conclusion as to the time, from Corunna, in the north
of Spain. He proceeded at once, as Charles V. had directed him, to the
Baccalaos region, striking the mainland possibly at Labrador, and then
turned south, carefully examining all inlets. We have no authoritative
narrative sanctioned by his name, or by that of any one accompanying the
expedition; nor has the map which Alonso Chaves made to conform to what
was reported by Gomez been preserved, but the essential features of the
exploration are apparently embodied in the great map of Ribero (1529),
and we have sundry stray references in the later chroniclers. From all
this it would seem that Gomez followed the coast southward to the point
of Florida, and made it certain to most minds that no such passage to
India existed, though there was a lingering suspicion that the Gulf of
St. Lawrence had not been sufficiently explored.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Shores of the Caribbean Sea.]
[Sidenote: Ojeda and Nicuessa.]
Let us turn now to the southern shores of the Caribbean Sea. New efforts
at colonizing here were undertaken in 1508-9. By this time the coast had
been pretty carefully made out as far as Honduras, largely through the
explorations of Ojeda and Juan de la Cosa. The scheme was a dual one,
and introduces us to two new designations of the regions separated by
that indentation of the coast known as the Gulf of Uraba. Here Ojeda and
Nicuessa were sent to organize governments, and rule their respective
provinces of Nueva Andalusia and Castilla del Oro for the period of four
years. Mention has already been made of this in the preceding chapter.
They delayed getting to their governments, quarreled for a while about
their bounds on each other, fought the natives with desperation but not
with much profit, lost La Cosa in one of the encounters, and were
thwarted in their purpose of holding Jamaica as a granary and in getting
settlers from Española by the alertness of Diego Colon, who preferred to
be tributary to no one.
All this had driven Ojeda to great stress in the little colony of San
Sebastian which he had founded. He attempted to return for aid to
Española, and was wrecked on the voyage. This caused him to miss his
lieutenant Enciso, who was on his way to him with recruits. So Ojeda
passes out of history, except so far as he tells his story in the
testimony he gave in the suit of the heirs of Columbus in 1513-15.
[Sidenote: Pizarro.]
[Illustration: BALBOA.
[From Barcia's _Herrera_.]]
New heroes were coming on. A certain Pizarro had been left in command by
Ojeda,--not many years afterwards to be heard of. One Vasco Nuñez de
Balboa, a poor and debt-burdened fugitive, was on board of Enciso's
ship, and had wit enough to suggest that a region like San Sebastian,
inhabited by tribes which used poisoned arrows, was not the place for a
colony struggling for existence and dependent on foraging. So they
removed the remnants of the colony, which Enciso had turned back as they
were escaping, to the other side of the bay, and in this way the new
settlement came within the jurisdiction of Nicuessa, whom a combination
soon deposed and shipped to sea, never to be heard of. It was in these
commotions that Vasco Nuñez de Balboa brought himself into a prominence
that ended in his being commissioned by Diego Colon as governor of the
new colony. He had, meanwhile, got more knowledge of a great sea at the
westward than Columbus had acquired on the coast of Veragua in 1503.
Balboa rightly divined that its discovery, if he could effect it, would
serve him a good purpose in quieting any jealousies of his rule, of
which he was beginning to observe symptoms.
[Sidenote: 1513. Balboa and the South Sea.]
So on the 1st of September, 1513, he set out in the direction which the
natives hadindicated, and by the 24th he had reached a mountain from the
topof which his guides told him he would behold the sea. On the 25th his
party ascended, himself in front, and it was not long before he stood
gazing upon the distant ocean, the first of Europeans to discern the
long-coveted sea. Down the other slope the Spaniards went. The path was
a difficult one, and it was three days before one of his advanced squads
reached the beach. Not till the next day, the 29th, did Vasco Nuñez
himself join those in advance, when, striding into the tide, he took
possession of the sea and its bordering lands in the name of his
sovereigns. It was on Saint Miguel's Day, and the Bay of Saint Miguel
marks the spot to-day. Towards the end of January, 1514, he was again
with the colony at Antigua del Darien. Thence, in March, he dispatched a
messenger to Spain with news of the great discovery.
[Sidenote: Pedrarias.]
[Sidenote: 1517. Balboa executed.]
This courier did not reach Europe till after a new expedition had been
dispatched under Pedrarias, and with him went a number of followers, who
did in due time their part in thridding and designating these new paths
of exploration. We recognize among them Hernando de Soto, Bernal Diaz,
the chronicler of the exploits of Cortes, and Oviedo, the historian. It
was from April till June, 1514, that Pedrarias was on his way, and it
was not long before the new governor with his imposing array of strength
brought the recusant Balboa to trial, out of which he emerged burdened
with heavy fines. The new governor planned at once to reap the fruits of
Balboa's discovery. An expedition was sent along his track, which
embarked on the new sea and gathered spoils where it could. Pedrarias
soon grew jealous of Balboa, for it was not without justice that the
state of the augmented colony was held to compare unfavorably with the
conditions which Balboa had maintained during his rule. But constancy
was never of much prevalence in these days, and Balboa's chains, lately
imposed, were stricken off to give him charge of an exploration of the
sea which he had discovered. Once here, Balboa planned new conquests and
a new independency. Pedrarias, hearing of it through a false friend of
Balboa, enticed the latter into his neighborhood, and a trial was soon
set on foot, which ended in the execution of Balboa and his abettors.
This was in 1517.
It was not long before Pedrarias removed his capital to Panama, and in
1519 and during the few following years his captains pushed their
explorations northerly along the shores of the South Sea, as the new
ocean had been at once called.
[Sidenote: 1515. Biru.]
[Sidenote: 1519. Panama founded.]
As early as 1515 Pizarro and Morales had wandered down the coast
southward to a region called Biru by the natives, and this was as far as
adventure had carried any Spaniard, during the ten years since Balboa's
discovery. They had learned here of a rich region farther on, and it got
to be spoken of by the same name, or by a perversion of it, as Peru. In
this interval the town of Panama had been founded (1519), and Pizarro
and Almagro, with the priest Luque, were among those to whom allotments
were made.
[Sidenote: Peru.]
[Sidenote: Chili.]
[Sidenote: Chiloe.]
It was by these three associates, in 1524 and 1526, that the expeditions
were organized which led to the exploration of the coasts of Peru and
the conquest of the region. The equator was crossed in 1526; in 1527
they reached 9° south. It was not till 1535 that, in the progress of
events, a knowledge of the coast was extended south to the neighborhood
of Lima, which was founded in that year. In the autumn of 1535, Almagro
started south to make conquest of Chili, and the bay of Valparaiso was
occupied in September, 1536. Eight years later, in 1544, explorations
were pushed south to 41°. It was only in 1557 that expeditions reached
the archipelago of Chiloe, and the whole coast of South America on the
Pacific was made out with some detail down to the region which Magellan
had skirted, as will be shortly shown.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: 1508. Ocampo and Cuba.]
It will be remembered that in 1503 Columbus had struck the coast of
Honduras west of Cape Gracias à Dios. He learned then of lands to the
northwest from some Indians whom he met in a canoe, but his eagerness to
find the strait of his dreams led him south. It was fourteen years
before the promise of that canoe was revealed. In 1508 Ocampo had found
the western extremity of Cuba, and made the oath of Columbus ridiculous.
[Sidenote: 1517. Yucatan.]
In 1517 a slave-hunting expedition, having steered towards the west from
Cuba, discovered the shores of Yucatan; and the next year (1518) the
real exploration of that region began when Juan de Grijalva, a nephew of
the governor of Cuba, led thither an expedition which explored the coast
of Yucatan and Mexico.
[Sidenote: 1518. Cortes.]
[Sidenote: 1519.]
When Grijalva returned to Cuba in 1518, it was to find an expedition
already planned to follow up his discoveries, and Hernando Cortes, who
had been in the New World since 1504, had been chosen to lead it, with
instructions to make further explorations of the coast,--a purpose very
soon to become obscured in other objects. He sailed on the 17th of
November, and stopped along the coast of Cuba for recruits, so it was
not till February 18, 1519, that he sunk the shores of Cuba behind him,
and in March he was skirting the Yucatan shore and sailed on to San Juan
de Uloa. In due time, forgetting his instructions, and caring for other
conquests than those of discovery, he began his march inland. The story
of the conquest of Mexico does not help us in the aim now in view, and
we leave it untold.
[Illustration: GRIJALVA.
[From Barcia's _Herrera_.]]
[Sidenote: Quinsay.]
It was not long after this conquest before belated apostles of the
belief of Columbus appeared, urging that the capital of Montezuma was in
reality the Quinsay of Marco Polo, with its great commercial interests,
as was maintained by Schöner in his _Opusculum Geographicum_ in 1533.
[Illustration: GLOBE GIVEN IN SCHÖNER'S _OPUSCULUM GEOGRAPHICUM_, 1533.]
[Sidenote: 1520. Garay.]
[Sidenote: Gulf of Mexico.]
[Sidenote: 1524. Cortes's Gulf of Mexico.]
[Sidenote: Yucatan as an island.]
We have seen how Pineda's expedition to the northern parts of the Gulf
of Mexico in 1519 had improved the knowledge of that shore, and we have
a map embodying these explorations, which was sent to Spain in 1520 by
Garay, then governor of Jamaica. It was now pretty clear that the blank
spaces of earlier maps, leaving it uncertain if there was a passage
westerly somewhere in the northwest corner of the gulf, should be filled
compactly. Still, a belief that such a passage existed somewhere in the
western contour of the gulf was not readily abandoned. Cortes, when he
sent to Spain his sketch of the gulf, which was published there in 1524,
was dwelling on the hope that some such channel existed near Yucatan,
and his insular delineation of that peninsula, with a shadowy strait at
its base, was eagerly grasped by the cartographers. Such a severance
finds a place in the map of Maiollo of 1527, which is preserved in the
Ambrosian library at Milan. Grijalva, some years earlier, had been sent,
as we have seen, to sail round Yucatan; and though there are various
theories about the origin of that name, it seems likely enough that the
tendency to give it an insular form arose from a misconception of the
Indian appellation. At all events, the island of Yucatan lingered long
in the early maps.
[Illustration: GULF OF MEXICO, 1520.]
[Sidenote: 1523. Cortes.]
In 1523 Cortes had sent expeditions up the Pacific, and one up the
Atlantic side of North America, to find the wished-for passage; but in
vain.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Spanish and Portuguese rivalries.]
Meanwhile, important movements were making by the Portuguese beyond that
great sea of the south which Balboa had discovered. These movements were
little suspected by the Spaniards till the development of them brought
into contact these two great oceanic rivals.
[Illustration: GULF OF MEXICO, BY CORTES.]
[Sidenote: 1511. Moluccas.]
[Sidenote: A western passage sought at the south.]
The Portuguese, year after year, had extended farther and farther their
conquests by the African route. Arabia, India, Malacca, Sumatra, fell
under their sway, and their course was still eastward, until in 1511 the
coveted land of spices, the clove and the nutmeg, was reached in the
Molucca Islands. This progress of the Portuguese had been watched with a
jealous eye by Spain. It was a question if, in passing to these islands,
the Portuguese had not crossed the line of demarcation as carried to the
antipodes. If they had, territory neighboring to the Spanish American
discoveries had been appropriated by that rival power wholly
unconfronted. This was simply because the Spanish navigators had not as
yet succeeded in finding a passage through the opposing barrier of what
they were beginning to suspect was after all an intervening land.
Meanwhile, Columbus and all since his day having failed to find such a
passage by way of the Caribbean Sea, and no one yet discovering any at
the north, nothing was left but to seek it at the south. This was the
only chance of contesting with the Portuguese the rights which
occupation was establishing for them at the Moluccas.
[Sidenote: 1508. Pinzon and Solis.]
On the 29th of June, 1508, a new expedition left San Lucar under Pinzon
and Solis. They made their landfall near Cape St. Augustine, and,
passing south along the coast of what had now come to be commonly called
Brazil, they traversed the opening of the broad estuary of the La Plata
without knowing it, and went five degrees beyond (40° south latitude)
without finding the sought-for passage.
[Illustration: MAIOLLO MAP, 1527.]
[Sidenote: 1511. Portuguese at Rio de Janeiro.]
[Sidenote: Ferdinand Columbus and the western passage.]
There is some reason to suppose that as early as 1511 the Portuguese had
become in some degree familiar with the coast about Rio de Janeiro, and
there is a story of one Juan de Braza settling near this striking bay at
this early day. It was during the same year (1511) that Ferdinand
Columbus prepared his _Colon de Concordia_, and in this he maintained
the theory of a passage to be found somewhere beyond the point towards
the south which the explorers had thus far reached.
[Illustration: DE COSTA'S DRAWING FROM THE LENOX GLOBE.]
[Sidenote: 1516. Solis.]
[Illustration: SCHÖNER'S GLOBE, 1520.]
[Illustration: MAGELLAN.]
[Sidenote: 1519. Magellan.]
A few years later (1516) the Spanish King sent Juan Diaz de Solis to
search anew for a passage. He found the La Plata, and for a while hoped
he had discovered the looked-for strait. Magellan, who had taken some
umbrage during his Portuguese service, came finally to the Spanish King,
and, on the plea that the Moluccas fell within the Spanish range under
the line of demarcation, suggested an expedition to occupy them. He
professed to be able to reach them by a strait which he could find
somewhere to the south of the La Plata. It has long been a question if
Magellan's anticipation was based simply on a conjecture that, as Africa
had been found to end in a southern point, America would likewise be
discovered to have a similar southern cape. It has also been a question
if Magellan actually had any tidings from earlier voyages to afford a
ground for believing in such a geographical fact. It is possible that
other early discoverers had been less careful than Solis, and had been
misled by the broad estuary of the La Plata to think that it was really
an interoceanic passage. Some such intelligence would seem to have
instigated the conditions portrayed in one early map, but the general
notion of cartographers at the time terminates the known coast at Cape
Frio, near Rio de Janeiro, as is seen to be the case in the Ptolemy map
of 1513. There is a story, originating with Pigafetta, his historian,
that Magellan had seen a map of Martin Behaim, showing a southern cape;
but if this map existed, it revealed probably nothing more than a
conjectural termination, as shown in the Lenox and earliest Schöner
globes of 1515 and 1520. Still, Wieser and Nordenskiöld are far from
being confident that some definite knowledge of such a cape had not been
attained, probably, as it is thought, from private commercial voyage of
which we may have a record in the _Newe Zeitung_ and in the
_Luculentissima Descriptio_. It is to be feared that the fact, whatever
it may have been, must remain shadowy.
Magellan's fleet was ready in August, 1519. His preparation had been
watched with jealousy by Portugal, and it was even hinted that if the
expedition sailed a matrimonial alliance of Spain and Portugal which was
contemplated must be broken off. Magellan was appealed to by the
Portuguese ambassador to abandon his purpose, as one likely to embroil
the two countries. The stubborn navigator was not to be persuaded, and
the Spanish King made him governor of all countries he might discover on
the "back side" of the New World.
In the late days of 1519, Magellan touched the coast at Rio de Janeiro,
where, remaining awhile, he enjoyed the fruits of its equable climate.
Then, passing on, he crossed the mouth of the La Plata, and soon found
that he had reached a colder climate and was sailing along a different
coast. The verdure which had followed the warm currents from the
equatorial north gave way to the concomitants of an icy flow from the
Antarctic regions which made the landscape sterile. So on he went along
this inhospitable region, seeking the expected strait. His search in
every inlet was so faithful that he neared the southern goal but slowly.
The sternness of winter caught his little barks in a harbor near 50°
south latitude, and his Spanish crews, restless under the command of a
Portuguese, revolted. The rebels were soon more numerous than the
faithful. The position was more threatening than any Columbus had
encountered, but the Portuguese had a hardy courage and majesty of
command that the Genoese never could summon. Magellan confronted the
rebels so boldly that they soon quailed. He was in unquestioned command
of his own vessels from that time forward. The fate of the conquered
rioters, Juan de Carthagena and Sanchez de la Reina, cast on the
inhospitable shore of Patagonia in expiation of their offense, is in
strong contrast to the easy victory which Columbus too often yielded, to
those who questioned his authority. The story of Magellan's pushing his
fleet southward and through the strait with a reluctant crew is that of
one of the royally courageous acts of the age of discovery.
[Sidenote: 1520. October. Magellan enters the strait.]
On October 21, 1520, the ships entered the longed-for strait, and on the
28th of November they sailed into the new sea; then stretching their
course nearly north, keeping well in sight of the coast till the Chiloe
Archipelago was passed, the ships steered west of Juan Fernandez without
seeing it, and subsequently gradually turned their prows towards the
west.
[Illustration: MAGELLAN'S STRAITS BY PIZAFETTA.
[The north is at the bottom.]]
[Sidenote: The western way discovered.]
It is not necessary for our present purpose to follow the incidents of
the rest of this wondrous voyage,--the reaching the Ladrones and the
Asiatic islands, Magellan's own life sacrificed, all his ships but one
abandoned or lost, the passing of the Cape of Good Hope by the
"Victoria," and her arrival on September 6, 1522, under Del Cano, at the
Spanish harbor from which the fleet had sailed. The Emperor bestowed on
this lucky first of circumnavigators the proud motto, inscribed on a
globe, "Primus circumdedisti me." The Spaniards' western way to the
Moluccas was now disclosed.
[Illustration: MAGELLAN'S STRAIT.]
[Sidenote: Pacific Ocean.]
The South Sea of Balboa, as soon as Magellan had established its
extension farther south, took from Magellan's company the name Pacific,
though the original name which Balboa had applied to it did not entirely
go out of vogue for a long time in those portions contiguous to the
waters bounding the isthmus and its adjacent lands.
[Sidenote: North America and Asia held to be one.]
For a long time after it was known that South America was severed, as
Magellan proved, from Asia, the belief was still commonly held that
North America and Asia were one and continuous. While no one ventures to
suspect that Columbus had any prescience of these later developments,
there are those like Varnhagen who claim a distinct insight for
Vespucius; but it is by no means clear, in the passages which are cited,
that Vespucius thought the continental mass of South America more
distinct from Asia than Columbus did, when the volume of water poured
out by the Orinoco convinced the Admiral that he was skirting a
continent, and not an island. That Columbus thought to place there the
region of the Biblical paradise shows that its continental features did
not dissociate it from Asia. The New World of Vespucius was established
by his own testimony as hardly more than a new part of Asia.
[Sidenote: 1525. Loyasa.]
[Sidenote: De Hoces discovers Cape Horn.]
In 1525 Loyasa was sent to make further examination of Magellan's
Strait. It was at this time that one of his ships, commanded by
Francisco de Hoces, was driven south in February, 1526, and discovered
Cape Horn, rendering the insular character of Tierra del Fuego all but
certain. The fact was kept secret, and the map makers were not generally
made aware of this terminal cape till Drake saw it, fifty-two years
later. It was not till 1615-17 that Schouten and Lemaire made clear the
eastern limits of Tierra del Fuego when they discovered the passage
between that island and Staten Island, and during the same interval
Schouten doubled Cape Horn for the first time. It was in 1618-19 that
the observations of Nodal first gave the easterly bend to the southern
extremity of the continent.
[Sidenote: 1535. Chili.]
The last stretch of the main coast of South America to be made out was
that on the Pacific side from the point where Magellan turned away from
it up to the bounds of Peru, where Pizarro and his followers had mapped
it. This trend of the coast began to be understood about 1535; but it
was some years before its details got into maps. The final definition of
it came from Camargo's voyage in 1540, and was first embodied with
something like accuracy in Juan Freire's map of 1546, and was later
helped by explorations from the north. But this proximate precision gave
way in 1569 to a protuberant angle of the Chili coast, as drawn by
Mercator, which in turn lingered on the chart till the next century.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Cartographical views.]
We need now to turn from these records of the voyagers to see what
impression their discoveries had been making upon the cartographers and
geographers of Europe.
[Sidenote: Sylvanus's Ptolemy. 1511.]
Bernardus Sylvanus Ebolensis, in a new edition of Ptolemy which was
issued at Venice in 1511, paid great attention to the changes necessary
to make Ptolemy's descriptions correspond to later explorations in the
Old World, but less attention to the more important developments of the
New World. Nordenskiöld thinks that this condition of Sylvanus's mind
shows how little had been the impression yet made at Venice by the
discoveries of Columbus and Da Gama. The maps of this Ptolemy are
woodcuts, with type let in for the names, which are printed in red, in
contrast with the black impressed from the block.
[Sidenote: Nordenskiöld gores.]
Sylvanus's map is the second engraved map showing the new discoveries,
and the earliest of the heart-shaped projections. It has in "Regalis
Domus" the earliest allusion to the Cortereal voyage in a printed map.
Sylvanus follows Ruysch in making Greenland a part of Asia. The rude map
gores of about the same date which Nordenskiöld has brought to the
attention of scholars, and which he considers to have been made at
Ingolstadt, agree mainly with this map of Sylvanus, and in respect to
the western world both of these maps, as well as the Schöner globe of
1515, seem to have been based on much the same material.
[Illustration: FREIRE'S MAP, 1546.]
[Illustration: SYLVANUS'S PTOLEMY OF 1511.]
[Illustration: STOBNICZA'S MAP.]
[Sidenote: 1512. Stobnicza map.]
We find in 1512, where we might least expect it, one of the most
remarkable of the early maps, which was made for an introduction to
Ptolemy, published at this date at Cracow, in Poland, by Stobnicza. This
cartographer was the earliest to introduce into the plane delineation of
the globe the now palpable division of its surface into an eastern and
western hemisphere. His map, for some reason, is rarely found in the
book to which it belongs. Nordenskiöld says he has examined many copies
of the book in the libraries of Scandinavia, Russia, and Poland, without
finding a copy with it; but it is found in other copies in the great
libraries at Vienna and Munich. He thinks the map may have been excluded
from most of the editions because of its rudeness, or "on account of its
being contrary to the old doctrines of the Church." Its importance in
the growth of the ideas respecting the new discoveries in the western
hemisphere is, however, very great, since for the first time it gives a
north and south continent connected by an isthmus, and represents as
never before in an engraved map the western hemisphere as an entirety.
This is remarkable, as it was published a year before Balboa made his
discovery of the Pacific Ocean. It is not difficult to see the truth of
Nordenskiöld's statement that the map divides the waters of the globe
into two almost equal oceans, "communicating only in the extreme south
and in the extreme north," but the south communication which is
unmistakable is by the Cape of Good Hope. The extremity of South America
is not reached because of the marginal scale, and because of the same
scale it is not apparent that there is any connection between the
Pacific and Indian oceans, and for similar reasons connection is not
always clear at the north. There must have been information at hand to
the maker of this map of which modern scholars can find no other trace,
or else there was a wild speculative spirit which directed the pencil in
some singular though crude correspondence to actual fact. This is
apparent in its straight conjectural lines on the west coast of South
America, which prefigure the discoveries following upon the enterprise
of Balboa and the voyage of Magellan.
[Sidenote: The Lenox globe.]
[Sidenote: Da Vinci globe.]
If Stobnicza, apparently, had not dared to carry the southern extremity
of South America to a point, there had been no such hesitancy in the
makers of two globes of about the same date,--the little copper sphere
picked up by Richard M. Hunt, the architect, in an old shop in Paris,
and now in the Lenox Library in New York, and the rude sketch, giving
quartered hemispheres separated on the line of the equator, which is
preserved in the cabinet of Queen Victoria, at Windsor, among the papers
of Leonardo da Vinci. This little draft has a singular interest both
from its association with so great a name as Da Vinci's, and because it
bears at what is, perhaps, the earliest date to be connected with such
cartographical use the name America lettered on the South American
continent. Major has contended for its being the work of Da Vinci
himself, but Nordenskiöld demurs. This Swedish geographer is rather
inclined to think it the work of a not very well informed copier working
on some Portuguese prototype.
[Sidenote: 1507-13. Admiral's map.]
[Sidenote: 1515. Reisch's map.]
It is worthy of remark that, in the same year with the discovery of the
South Sea by Balboa, an edition of Ptolemy made popular a map which had
indeed been cut in its first state as early as 1507, but which still
preserved the contiguity of the Antilles to the region of the Ganges and
its three mouths. This was the well-known "Admiral's map," usually
associated with the name of Waldseemüller, and if this same
cartographer, as Franz Wieser conjectures, is responsible for the map in
Reisch's _Margarita philosophica_ (1515), a sort of cyclopædia, he had
in the interim awaked to the significance of the discovery of Balboa,
for the Ganges has disappeared, and Cipango is made to lie in an ocean
beyond the continental Zoana Mela (America), which has an undefined
western limit, as it had already been depicted in the Stobnicza map of
1512.
[Illustration: THE ALLEGED DA VINCI SKETCH.
[_Combination._]]
[Sidenote: First modern atlas.]
It was in this Strassburg Ptolemy of 1513 that Ringmann, who had been
concerned in inventing the name of America, revised the Latin of
Angelus, using a Greek manuscript of Ptolemy for the purpose.
Nordenskiöld speaks of this edition as the first modern atlas of the
world, extended so as to give in two of its maps--that known as the
"Admiral's map," and another of Africa--the results following upon the
discoveries of Columbus and Da Gama. This "Admiral's map," which has
been so often associated with Columbus, is hardly a fair representation
of the knowledge that Columbus had attained, and seems rather to be the
embodiment of the discoveries of many, as the description of it, indeed,
would leave us to infer; while the other American chart of the volume
is clearly of Portuguese rather than of Spanish origin, as may be
inferred by the lavish display of the coast connected with the
descriptions by Vespucius. On the other hand, nothing but the islands of
Española and Cuba stand in it for the explorations of Columbus. Both of
these maps are given elsewhere in this Appendix.
[Illustration: REISCH, 1515.]
[Illustration: THE WORLD OF POMPONIUS MELA.
[From Bunbury's _Ancient Geography_.]]
[Sidenote: Asiatic connection of North America.]
We could hardly expect, indeed, to find in these maps of the Ptolemy of
1513 the results of Balboa's discovery at the isthmus; but that the maps
were left to do service in the edition of 1520 indicates that the
discovery of the South Sea had by no means unsettled the public mind as
to the Asiatic connection of the regions both north and south of the
Antilles. Within the next few years several maps indicate the enduring
strength of this conviction. A Portuguese portolano of 1516-20, in the
Royal Library at Munich, shows Moslem flags on the coasts of Venezuela
and Nicaragua. A map of Ayllon's discoveries on the Atlantic coast in
1520, preserved in the British Museum, has a Chinaman and an elephant
delineated on the empty spaces of the continent. Still, geographical
opinions had become divided, and the independent continental masses of
Stobnicza were having some ready advocates.
[Illustration: VADIANUS.]
[Illustration: APIANUS.
[From Reusner's _Icones_.]]
[Sidenote: Vienna geographers.]
[Sidenote: Pomponius Mela.]
[Sidenote: Solinus.]
[Sidenote: Vadianus.]
[Sidenote: 1520. Apianus.]