AN INTERLUDE
A breath of salt air again will do us no harm as a relief from these
perilous balancings of Columbus on the see-saw at Espanola. His true
work in this world had indeed already been accomplished. When he smote
the rock of western discovery many springs flowed from it, and some were
destined to run in mightier channels than that which he himself followed.
Among other men stirred by the news of Columbus's first voyage there was
one walking the streets of Bristol in 1496 who was fired to a similar
enterprise--a man of Venice, in boyhood named Zuan Caboto, but now known
in England, where he has some time been settled, as Captain John Cabot.
A sailor and trader who has travelled much through the known sea-roads
of this world, and has a desire to travel upon others not so well known.
He has been in the East, has seen the caravans of Mecca and the goods
they carried, and, like Columbus, has conceived in his mind the roundness
of the world as a practical fact rather than a mere mathematical theory.
Hearing of Columbus's success Cabot sets what machinery in England he has
access to in motion to secure for him patents from King Henry VII.; which
patents he receives on March 5, 1496. After spending a long time in
preparation, and being perhaps a little delayed by diplomatic protests
from the Spanish Ambassador in London, he sails from Bristol in May 1497.
After sailing west two thousand leagues Cabot found land in the
neighbourhood of Cape Breton, and was thus in all probability the first
discoverer, since the Icelanders, of the mainland of the New World. He
turned northward, sailed through the strait of Belle Isle, and came home
again, having accomplished his task in three months. Cabot, like
Columbus, believed he had seen the territory of the Great Khan, of whom
he told the interested population of Bristol some strange things. He
further told them of the probable riches of this new land if it were
followed in a southerly direction; told them some lies also, it appears,
since he said that the waters there were so dense with fish that his
vessels could hardly move in them. He received a gratuity of L10 and a
pension, and made a great sensation in Bristol by walking about the city
dressed in fine silk garments. He took other voyages also with his son
Sebastian, who followed with him the rapid widening stream of discovery
and became Pilot Major of Spain, and President of the Congress appointed
in 1524 to settle the conflicting pretensions of various discoverers; but
so far as our narrative is concerned, having sailed across from Bristol
and discovered the mainland of the New World some years before Columbus
discovered it, John Cabot sails into oblivion.
Another great conquest of the salt unknown taken place a few days before
Columbus sailed on his third voyage. The accidental discovery of the
Cape by Bartholomew Diaz in 1486 had not been neglected by Portugal; and
the achievements of Columbus, while they cut off Portuguese enterprise
from the western ocean, had only stimulated it to greater activity within
its own spheres. Vasco da Gama sailed from Lisbon in July 1497; by the
end of November he had rounded the Cape of Good Hope; and in May 1498,
after a long voyage full of interest, peril, and hardship he had landed
at Calicut on the shores of the true India. He came back in 1499 with a
battered remnant, his crew disabled by sickness and exhaustion, and half
his ships lost; but he had in fact discovered a road for trade and
adventure to the East that was not paved with promises, dreams, or mad
affidavits, but was a real and tangible achievement, bringing its reward
in commerce and wealth for Portugal. At that very moment Columbus was
groping round the mainland of South America, thinking it to be the coast
of Cathay, and the Garden of Eden, and God knows what other
cosmographical--theological abstractions; and Portugal, busy with her
arrangements for making money, could afford for the moment to look on
undismayed at the development of the mine of promises discovered by the
Spanish Admiral.
The anxiety of Columbus to communicate the names of things before he had
made sure of their substance received another rude chastisement in the
events that followed the receipt in Spain of his letter announcing the
discovery of the Garden of Eden and the land of pearls. People in Spain
were not greatly interested in his theories of the terrestrial Paradise;
but more than one adventurer pricked up his ears at the name of pearls,
and among the first was our old friend Alonso de Ojeda, who had returned
some time before from Espanola and was living in Spain. His position as
a member of Columbus's force on the second voyage and the distinction he
had gained there gave him special opportunities of access to the letters
and papers sent home by Columbus; and he found no difficulty in getting
Fonseca to show him the maps and charts of the coast of Paria sent back
by the Admiral, the veritable pearls which had been gathered, and the
enthusiastic descriptions of the wealth of this new coast. Knowing
something of Espanola, and of the Admiral also, and reading in the
despatches of the turbulent condition of the colony, he had a shrewd idea
that Columbus's hands would be kept pretty full in Espanola itself, and
that he would have no opportunity for some time to make any more voyages
of discovery. He therefore represented to Fonseca what a pity it would
be if all this revenue should remain untapped just because one man had
not time to attend to it, and he proposed that he should take out an
expedition at his own cost and share the profits with the Crown.
This proposal was too tempting to be refused; unlike the expeditions of
Columbus, which were all expenditure and no revenue, it promised a chance
of revenue without any expenditure at all. The Paria coast, having been
discovered subsequent to the agreement made with Columbus, was considered
by Fonseca to be open to private enterprise; and he therefore granted
Ojeda a licence to go and explore it. Among those who went with him were
Amerigo Vespucci and Columbus's old pilot, Juan de la Cosa, as well as
some of the sailors who had been with the Admiral on the coast of Paria
and had returned in the caravels which had brought his account of it back
to Spain. Ojeda sailed on May 20, 1499; made a landfall some hundreds of
miles to the eastward of the Orinoco, coasted thence as far as the island
of Trinidad, and sailed along the northern coast of the peninsula of
Paria until he came to a country where the natives built their hots on
piles in the water, and to which he gave the name of Venezuela. It was
by his accidental presence on this voyage that Vespucci, the
meat-contractor, came to give his name to America--a curious story of
international jealousies, intrigues, lawsuits, and lies which we have not
the space to deal with here. After collecting a considerable quantity of
pearls Ojeda, who was beginning to run short of provisions, turned
eastward again and sought the coast of Espanola, where we shall presently
meet with him again.
And Ojeda was not the only person in Spain who was enticed by Columbus's
glowing descriptions to go and look for the pearls of Paria. There was
in fact quite a reunion of old friends of his and ours in the western
ocean, though they went thither in a spirit far different from that of
ancient friendship. Pedro Alonso Nino, who had also been on the Paria
coast with Columbus, who had come home with the returning ships, and
whose patience (for he was an exceedingly practical man) had perhaps been
tried by the strange doings of the Admiral in the Gulf of Paria, decided
that he as well as any one else might go and find some pearls. Nino is a
poor man, having worked hard in all his voyagings backwards and forwards
across the Atlantic; but he has a friend with money, one Luis Guerra, who
provides him with the funds necessary for fitting out a small caravel
about the size of his old ship the Nifta. Guerra, who has the money,
also has a brother Christoval; and his conditions are that Christoval
shall be given the command of the caravel. Practical Niflo does not care
so long as he reaches the place where the pearls are. He also applies to
Fonseca for licence to make discoveries; and, duly receiving it, sails
from Palos in the beginning of June 1499, hot upon the track of Ojeda.
They did a little quiet discovery, principally in the domain of human
nature, caroused with the friendly natives, but attended to business all
the time; with the result that in the following April they were back in
Spain with a treasure of pearls out of which, after Nifio had been made
independent for life and Guerra, Christoval, and the rest of them had
their shares, there remained a handsome sum for the Crown. An extremely
practical, businesslike voyage this; full of lessons for our poor
Christopher, could he but have known and learned them.
Yet another of our old friends profited by the Admiral's discovery. What
Vincenti Yafiez Pinzon has been doing all these years we have no record;
living at Palos, perhaps, doing a little of his ordinary coasting
business, administering the estates of his brother Martin Alonso, and,
almost for a certainty, talking pretty big about who it was that really
did all the work in the discovery of the New World. Out of the obscurity
of conjecture he emerges into fact in December 1499, when he is found at
Palos fitting out four caravels for the purpose of exploring farther
along the coast of the southern mainland. That he also was after pearls
is pretty certain; but on the other hand he was more of a sailor than an
adventurer, was a discoverer at heart, and had no small share of the
family taste for sea travel. He took a more southerly course than any of
the others and struck the coast of America south of the equator on
January 20, 1500. He sailed north past the mouths of the Amazon and
Orinoco through the Gulf of Paria, and reached Espanola in June 1500.
He only paused there to take in provisions, and sailed to the west in
search of further discoveries; but he lost two of his caravels in a gale
and had to put back to Espanola.
He sailed thence for Palos, and reached home in September 1500, having
added no inconsiderable share to the mass of new geographical knowledge
that was being accumulated. In later years he took a high place in the
maritime world of Spain.
And finally, to complete the account of the chief minor discoveries of
these two busy years, we must mention Pedro Alvarez Cabral of Portugal,
who was despatched in March 1, 1500 from Lisbon to verify the discoveries
of Da Gama. He reached Calicut six months later, losing on the voyage
four of his caravels and most of his company. Among the lost was
Bartholomew Diaz, the first discoverer of the Cape of Good Hope, who was
on this voyage in a subordinate capacity, and whose bones were left to
dissolve in the stormy waters that beat round the Cape whose barrier he
was the first to pass. The chief event of this voyage, however, was not
the reaching of Calicut nor the drowning of Diaz (which was chiefly of
importance to himself, poor soul!) but the discovery of Brazil, which
Cabral made in following the southerly course too far to the west.
He landed there, in the Bay of Porto Seguro, on May 1, 1500, and took
formal possession of the land for the Crown of Portugal, naming it Vera
Cruz, or the Land of the True Cross.
In the assumption of Columbus and his contemporaries all these doings
were held to detract from the glory of his own achievements, and were the
subject of endless affidavits, depositions, quarrels, arguments, proofs
and claims in the great lawsuit that was in after years carried on
between the Crown of Spain and the heirs of Columbus concerning his
titles and revenues. We, however, may take a different view. With the
exception of the discoveries of the Cape of Good Hope and the coast of
Brazil all these enterprises were directly traceable to Columbus's own
achievements and were inspired by his example. The things that a man can
do in his own person are limited by the laws of time and space; it is
only example and influence that are infinite and illimitable, and in
which the spirit of any achievement can find true immortality.