TO THE INDIES WESTWARD--THE SPANISH ROUTE--COLUMBUS AND MAGELLAN
While the Portuguese had, with slow persistency, devoted nearly a
century to carrying out Prince Henry's idea of reaching the Indies
by the eastward route, a bold yet simple idea had seized upon a
Genoese sailor, which was intended to achieve the same purpose by
sailing westward. The ancients, as we have seen, had recognised
the rotundity of the earth, and Eratosthenes had even recognised
the possibility of reaching India by sailing westward. Certain
traditions of the Greeks and the Irish had placed mysterious islands
far out to the west in the Atlantic, and the great philosopher
Plato had imagined a country named Atlantis, far out in the Indian
Ocean, where men were provided with all the gifts of nature. These
views of the ancients came once more to the attention of the learned,
owing to the invention of printing and the revival of learning,
when the Greek masterpieces began to be made accessible in Latin,
chiefly by fugitive Greeks from Constantinople, which had been
taken by the Turks in 1453. Ptolemy's geography was printed at
Rome in 1462, and with maps in 1478. But even without the maps
the calculation which he had made of the length of the known world
tended to shorten the distance between Portugal and Farther India
by 2500 miles. Since his time the travels of Marco Polo had added
to the knowledge of Europe the vast extent of Cathay and the distant
islands of Zipangu (Japan), which would again reduce the distance
by another 1500 miles. As the Greek geographers had somewhat
under-estimated the whole circuit of the globe, it would thus seem
that Zipangu was not more than 4000 miles to the west of Portugal.
As the Azores were considered to be much farther off from the coast
than they really were, it might easily seem, to an enthusiastic
mind, that Farther India might be reached when 3000 miles of the
ocean had been traversed.
[Illustration: TOSCANELLI'S MAP (_restored_)]
This was the notion that seized the mind of Christopher Columbus,
born at Genoa in 1446, of humble parentage, his father being a
weaver. He seems to have obtained sufficient knowledge to enable
him to study the works of the learned, and of the ancients in Latin
translations. But in his early years he devoted his attention to
obtaining a practical acquaintance with seamanship. In his day, as
we have seen, Portugal was the centre of geographical knowledge,
and he and his brother Bartolomeo, after many voyages north and
south, settled at last in Lisbon--his brother as a map-maker, and
himself as a practical seaman. This was about the year 1473, and
shortly afterwards he married Felipa Moñiz, daughter of Bartolomeo
Perestrello, an Italian in the service of the King of Portugal,
and for some time Governor of Madeira.
Now it chanced just at this time that there was a rumour in Portugal
that a certain Italian philosopher, named Toscanelli, had put forth
views as to the possibility of a westward voyage to Cathay, or
China, and the Portuguese king had, through a monk named Martinez,
applied to Toscanelli to know his views, which were given in a letter
dated 25th June 1474. It would appear that, quite independently,
Columbus had heard the rumour, and applied to Toscanelli, for in
the latter's reply he, like a good business man, shortened his
answer by giving a copy of the letter he had recently written to
Martinez. What was more important and more useful, Toscanelli sent
a map showing in hours (or degrees) the probable distance between
Spain and Cathay westward. By adding the information given by Marco
Polo to the incorrect views of Ptolemy about the breadth of the
inhabited world, Toscanelli reduced the distance from the Azores
to 52°, or 3120 miles. Columbus always expressed his indebtedness
to Toscanelli's map for his guidance, and, as we shall see, depended
upon it very closely, both in steering, and in estimating the distance
to be traversed. Unfortunately this map has been lost, but from
a list of geographical positions, with latitude and longitude,
founded upon it, modern geographers have been able to restore it
in some detail, and a simplified sketch of it may be here inserted,
as perhaps the most important document in Columbus's career.
Certainly, whether he had the idea of reaching the Indies by a
westward voyage before or not, he adopted Toscanelli's views with
enthusiasm, and devoted his whole life henceforth to trying to
carry them into operation.
He gathered together all the information he could get about the
fabled islands of the Atlantic--the Island of St. Brandan, where
that Irish saint found happy mortals; and the Island of Antilla,
imagined by others, with its seven cities. He gathered together
all the gossip he could hear--of mysterious corpses cast ashore
on the Canaries, and resembling no race of men known to Europe;
of huge canes, found on the shores of the same islands, evidently
carved by man's skill. Curiously enough, these pieces of evidence
were logically rather against the existence of a westward route to
the Indies than not, since they indicated an unknown race, but,
to an enthusiastic mind like Columbus's, anything helped to confirm
him in his fixed idea, and besides, he could always reply that
these material signs were from the unknown island of Zipangu, which
Marco Polo had described as at some distance from the shores of
Cathay.
He first approached, as was natural, the King of Portugal, in whose
land he was living, and whose traditional policy was directed to
maritime exploration. But the Portuguese had for half a century been
pursuing another method of reaching India, and were not inclined
to take up the novel idea of a stranger, which would traverse their
long-continued policy of coasting down Africa. A hearing, however,
was given to him, but the report was unfavourable, and Columbus had
to turn his eyes elsewhere. There is a tradition that the Portuguese
monarch and his advisers thought rather more of Columbus's ideas
at first; and attempted secretly to put them into execution; but
the pilot to whom they entrusted the proposed voyage lost heart
as soon as he lost sight of land, and returned with an adverse
verdict on the scheme. It is not known whether Columbus heard of
this mean attempt to forestall him, but we find him in 1487 being
assisted by the Spanish Court, and from that time for the next
five years he was occupied in attempting to induce the Catholic
monarchs of Spain, Ferdinand and Isabella, to allow him to try his
novel plan of reaching the Indies. The final operations in expelling
the Moors from Spain just then engrossed all their attention and
all their capital, and Columbus was reduced to despair, and was
about to give up all hopes of succeeding in Spain, when one of
the great financiers, a converted Jew named Luis de Santaguel,
offered to find means for the voyage, and Columbus was recalled.
[Illustration: BEHAIM'S GLOBE. 1492.]
On the 19th April 1492 articles were signed, by which Columbus
received from the Spanish monarchs the titles of Admiral and Viceroy
of all the lands he might discover, as well as one-tenth of all the
tribute to be derived from them; and on Friday the 3rd August, of
the same year, he set sail in three vessels, entitled the _Santa
Maria_ (the flagship), the _Pinta_, and the _Nina_. He started from
the port of Palos, first for the Canary Islands. These he left
on the 6th September, and steered due west. On the 13th of that
month, Columbus observed that the needle of the compass pointed due
north, and thus drew attention to the variability of the compass.
By the 21st September his men became mutinous and tried to force him
to return. He induced them to continue, and four days afterwards
the cry of "Land! land!" was heard, which kept up their spirits
for several days, till, on the 1st October, large numbers of birds
were seen. By that time Columbus had reckoned that he had gone
some 710 leagues from the Canaries, and if Zipangu were in the
position that Tostanelli's map gave it, he ought to have been in
its neighbourhood. It was reckoned in those days that a ship on
an average could make four knots an hour, dead reckoning, which
would give about 100 miles a day, so that Columbus might reckon
on passing over the 3100 miles which he thought intervened between
the Azores and Japan in about thirty-three days. All through the
early days of October his courage was kept up by various signs
of the nearness of land--birds and branches--while on the 11th
October, at sunset, they sounded, and found bottom; and at ten
o'clock, Columbus, sitting in the stern of his vessel, saw a light,
the first sure sign of land after thirty-five days, and in near
enough approximation to Columbus's reckoning to confirm him in the
impression that he was approaching the mysterious land of Zipangu.
Next morning they landed on an island, called by the natives Guanahain,
and by Columbus San Salvador. This has been identified as Watling
Island. His first inquiry was as to the origin of the little plates
of gold which he saw in the ears of the natives. They replied that
they came from the West--another confirmation of his impression.
Steering westward, they arrived at Cuba, and afterwards at Hayti
(St. Domingo). Here, however, the _Santa Maria_ sank, and Columbus
determined to return, to bring the good news, after leaving some
of his men in a fort at Hayti. The return journey was made in the
_Nina_ in even shorter time to the Azores, but afterwards severe
storms arose, and it was not till the 15th March 1493 that he reached
Palos, after an absence of seven and a half months, during which
everybody thought that he and his ships had disappeared.
He was naturally received with great enthusiasm by the Spaniards,
and after a solemn entry at Barcelona he presented to Ferdinand
and Isabella the store of gold and curiosities carried by some
of the natives of the islands he had visited. They immediately
set about fitting out a much larger fleet of seven vessels, which
started from Cadiz, 25th September 1493. He took a more southerly
course, but again reached the islands now known as the West Indies.
On visiting Hayti he found the fort destroyed, and no traces of
the men he had left there. It is needless for our purposes to go
through the miserable squabbles which occurred on this and his
subsequent voyages, which resulted in Columbus's return to Spain
in chains and disgrace. It is only necessary for us to say that
in his third voyage, in 1498, he touched on Trinidad, and saw the
coast of South America, which he supposed to be the region of the
Terrestrial Paradise. This was placed by the mediæval maps at the
extreme east of the Old World. Only on his fourth voyage, in 1502,
did he actually touch the mainland, coasting along the shores of
Central America in the neighbourhood of Panama. After many
disappointments, he died, 20th May 1506, at Valladolid, believing,
as far as we can judge, to the day of his death, that what he had
discovered was what he set out to seek--a westward route to the
Indies, though his proud epitaph indicates the contrary:--
A Castilla y á Leon | To Castille and to Leon
Nuevo mondo dió Colon. | A NEW WORLD gave Colon.[1]
[Footnote 1: Columbus's Spanish name was Cristoval Colon.]
To this day his error is enshrined in the name we give to the Windward
and Antilles Islands--West Indies: in other words, the Indies reached
by the westward route. If they had been the Indies at all, they
would have been the most easterly of them.
Even if Columbus had discovered a new route to Farther India, he
could not, as we have seen, claim the merit of having originated
the idea, which, even in detail, he had taken from Toscanelli.
But his claim is even a greater one. He it was who first dared
to traverse unknown seas without coasting along the land, and his
example was the immediate cause of all the remarkable discoveries
that followed his earlier voyages. As we have seen, both Vasco da
Gama and Cabral immediately after departed from the slow coasting
route, and were by that means enabled to carry out to the full
the ideas of Prince Henry; but whereas, by the Portuguese method
of coasting, it had taken nearly a century to reach the Cape of
Good Hope, within thirty years of Columbus's first venture the
whole globe had been circumnavigated.
The first aim of his successors was to ascertain more clearly what it
was that Columbus had discovered. Immediately after Columbus's third,
voyage, in 1498, and after the news of Vasco da Gama's successful
passage to the Indies had made it necessary to discover some strait
leading from the "West Indies" to India itself, a Spanish gentleman,
named Hojeda, fitted out an expedition at his own expense, with
an Italian pilot on board, named Amerigo Vespucci, and tried once
more to find a strait to India near Trinidad. They were, of course,
unsuccessful, but they coasted along and landed on the north coast
of South America, which, from certain resemblances, they termed
Little Venice (Venezuela). Next year, as we have seen, Cabral,
in following Vasco da Gama, hit upon Brazil, which turned out to
be within the Portuguese "sphere of influence," as determined by
the line of demarcation.
But, three months previous to Cabral's touching upon Brazil, one of
Columbus's companions on his first voyage, Vincenta Yanez Pinzon,
had touched on the coast of Brazil, eight degrees south of the
line, and from there had worked northward, seeking for a passage
which would lead west to the Indies. He discovered the mouth of
the Amazon, but, losing two of his vessels, returned to Palos,
which he reached in September 1500.
This discovery of an unknown and unsuspected continent so far south
of the line created great interest, and shortly after Cabral's
return Amerigo Vespucci was sent out in 1501 by the King of Portugal
as pilot of a fleet which should explore the new land discovered
by Cabral and claim it for the Crown of Portugal. His instructions
were to ascertain how much of it was within the line of demarcation.
Vespucci reached the Brazilian coast at Cape St. Roque, and then
explored it very thoroughly right down to the river La Plata, which
was too far west to come within the Portuguese sphere. Amerigo
and his companions struck out south-eastward till they reached
the island of St. Georgia, 1200 miles east of Cape Horn, where
the cold and the floating ice drove them back, and they returned
to Lisbon, after having gone farthest south up to their time.
[Illustration: AMERIGO VESPUCCI.]
This voyage of Amerigo threw a new light upon the nature of the
discovery made by Columbus. Whereas he had thought he had discovered
a route to India and had touched upon Farther India, Amerigo and
his companions had shown that there was a hitherto unsuspected land
intervening between Columbus's discoveries and the long-desired Spice
Islands of Farther India. Amerigo, in describing his discoveries,
ventured so far as to suggest that they constituted a New World;
and a German professor, named Martin Waldseemüller, who wrote an
introduction to Cosmography in 1506, which included an account
of Amerigo's discoveries, suggested that this New World should
be called after him, AMERICA, after the analogy of Asia, Africa,
and Europe. For a long time the continent which we now know as
South America was called simply the New World, and was supposed
to be joined on to the east coast of Asia. The name America was
sometimes applied to it--not altogether inappropriately, since
it was Amerigo's voyage which definitely settled that really new
lands had been discovered by the western route; and when it was
further ascertained that this new land was joined, not to Asia,
but to another continent as large as itself, the two new lands
were distinguished as North and South America.
It was, at any rate, clear from Amerigo's discovery that the westward
route to the Spice Islands would have to be through or round this
New World discovered by him, and a Portuguese noble, named Fernao
Magelhaens, was destined to discover the practicability of this
route. He had served his native country under Almeida and Albuquerque
in the East Indies, and was present at the capture of Malacca in
1511, and from that port was despatched by Albuquerque with three
ships to visit the far-famed Spice Islands. They visited Amboyna
and Banda, and learned enough of the abundance and cheapness of
the spices of the islands to recognise their importance; but under
the direction of Albuquerque, who only sent them out on an exploring
expedition, they returned to him, leaving behind them, however, one
of Magelhaens' greatest friends, Francisco Serrao, who settled in
Ternate and from time to time sent glowing accounts of the Moluccas
to his friend Magelhaens. He in the meantime returned to Portugal,
and was employed on an expedition to Morocco. He was not, however,
well treated by the Portuguese monarch, and determined to leave
his service for that of Charles V., though he made it a condition
of his entering his service that he should make no discoveries
within the boundaries of the King of Portugal, and do nothing
prejudicial to his interests.
[Illustration: FERDINAND MAGELLAN.]
This was in the year 1517, and two years elapsed before Magelhaens
started on his celebrated voyage. He had represented to the Emperor
that he was convinced that a strait existed which would lead into
the Indian Ocean, past the New World of Amerigo, and that the Spice
Islands were beyond the line of demarcation and within the Spanish
sphere of influence. There is some evidence that Spanish merchant
vessels, trading secretly to obtain Brazil wood, had already caught
sight of the strait afterwards named after Magelhaens, and certainly
such a strait is represented upon Schoner's globes dated 1515 and
1520--earlier than Magelhaens' discovery. The Portuguese were fully
aware of the dangers threatened to their monopoly of the spice
trade--which by this time had been firmly established--owing to the
presence of Serrao in Ternate, and did all in their power to dissuade
Charles from sending out the threatened expedition, pointing out
that they would consider it an unfriendly act if such an expedition
were permitted to start. Notwithstanding this the Emperor persisted
in the project, and on Tuesday, 20th September 1519, a fleet of five
vessels, the _Trinidad, St. Antonio, Concepcion, Victoria_, and _St.
Jago_, manned by a heterogeneous collection of Spaniards, Portuguese,
Basques, Genoese, Sicilians, French, Flemings, Germans, Greeks,
Neapolitans, Corfiotes, Negroes, Malays, and a single Englishman
(Master Andrew of Bristol), started from Seville upon perhaps the
most important voyage of discovery ever made. So great was the
antipathy between Spanish and Portuguese that disaffection broke
out almost from the start, and after the mouth of the La Plata
had been carefully explored, to ascertain whether this was not
really the beginning of a passage through the New World, a mutiny
broke out on the 2nd April 1520, in Port St. Julian, where it had
been determined to winter; for of course by this time the sailors
had become aware that the time of the seasons was reversed in the
Southern Hemisphere. Magelhaens showed great firmness and skill in
dealing with the mutiny; its chief leaders were either executed or
marooned, and on the 18th October he resumed his voyage. Meanwhile
the habits and customs of the natives had been observed--their
huge height and uncouth foot-coverings, for which Magelhaens gave
them the name of Patagonians. Within three days they had arrived
at the entrance of the passage which still bears Magelhaens' name.
By this time one of the ships, the _St Jago_, had been lost, and it
was with only four of his vessels--the _Trinidad_, the _Victoria_,
the _Concepcion_. and the _St. Antonio_--that, Magelhaens began
his passage. There are many twists and divisions in the strait,
and on arriving at one of the partings, Magelhaens despatched the
_St. Antonio_ to explore it, while he proceeded with the other
three ships along the more direct route. The pilot of the _St.
Antonio_ had been one of the mutineers, and persuaded the crew
to seize this opportunity to turn back altogether; so that when
Magelhaens arrived at the appointed place of junction, no news
could be ascertained of the missing vessel; it went straight back
to Portugal. Magelhaens determined to continue his search, even,
he said, if it came to eating the leather thongs of the sails.
It had taken him thirty-eight days to get through the Straits,
and for four months afterwards Magelhaens continued his course
through the ocean, which, from its calmness, he called Pacific;
taking a north-westerly course, and thus, by a curious chance,
only hitting upon a couple of small uninhabited islands throughout
their whole voyage, through a sea which we now know to be dotted
by innumerable inhabited islands. On the 6th March 1520 they had
sighted the Ladrones, and obtained much-needed provisions. Scurvy
had broken out in its severest form, and the only Englishman on
the ships died at the Ladrones. From there they went on to the
islands now known as the Philippines, one of the kings of which
greeted them very favourably. As a reward Magelhaens undertook
one of his local quarrels, and fell in an unequal fight at Mactan,
27th April 1521. The three vessels continued their course for the
Moluccas, but the _Concepcion_ proved so unseaworthy that they had
to beach and burn her. They reached Borneo, and here Juan Sebastian
del Cano was appointed captain of the _Victoria_.
At last, on the 6th November 1521, they reached the goal of their
journey, and anchored at Tidor, one of the Moluccas. They traded
on very advantageous terms with the natives, and filled their holds
with the spices and nutmegs for which they had journeyed so far;
but when they attempted to resume their journey homeward, it was
found that the _Trinidad_ was too unseaworthy to proceed at once,
and it was decided that the _Victoria_ should start so as to get
the east monsoon. This she did, and after the usual journey round
the Cape of Good Hope, arrived off the Mole of Seville on Monday
the 8th September 1522--three years all but twelve days from the
date of their departure from Spain. Of the two hundred and seventy
men who had started with the fleet, only eighteen returned in the
_Victoria_. According to the ship's reckoning they had arrived
on Sunday the 7th, and for some time it was a puzzle to account
for the day thus lost.
Meanwhile the _Trinidad_, which had been left behind at the Moluccas,
had attempted to sail back to Panama, and reached as far north as
43°, somewhere about longitude 175° W. Here provisions failed them,
and they had to return to the Moluccas, where they were seized,
practically as pirates, by a fleet of Portuguese vessels sent specially
to prevent interference by the Spaniards with the Portuguese monopoly
of the spice trade. The crew of the _Trinidad_ were seized and made
prisoners, and ultimately only four of them reached Spain again,
after many adventures. Thirteen others, who had landed at the Cape
de Verde Islands from the _Victoria_, may also be included among
the survivors of the fleet, so that a total number of thirty-five
out of two hundred and seventy sums up the number of the first
circumnavigators of the globe.
The importance of this voyage was unique when regarded from the
point of view of geographical discovery. It decisively clinched
the matter with regard to the existence of an entirely New World
independent from Asia. In particular, the backward voyage of the
_Trinidad_ (which has rarely been noticed) had shown that there
was a wide expanse of ocean north of the line and east of Asia,
whilst the previous voyage had shown the enormous extent of sea
south of the line. After the circumnavigation of the _Victoria_
it was clear to cosmographers that the world was much larger than
had been imagined by the ancients; or rather, perhaps one may say
that Asia was smaller than had been thought by the mediæval writers.
The dogged persistence shown by Magelhaens in carrying out his
idea, which turned out to be a perfectly justifiable one, raises
him from this point of view to a greater height than Columbus,
whose month's voyage brought him exactly where he thought he would
find land according to Toscanelli's map. After Magelhaens, as will
be seen, the whole coast lines of the world were roughly known,
except for the Arctic Circle and for Australia.
[Illustration: THE WORLD ACCORDING TO PTOLEMY OF 1548.]
The Emperor was naturally delighted with the result of the voyage.
He granted Del Cano a pension, and a coat of arms commemorating
his services. The terms of the grant are very significant: _or_,
two cinnamon sticks _saltire proper_, three nutmegs and twelve
cloves, a chief _gules_, a castle _or; crest_, a globe, bearing
the motto, "Primus circumdedisti me" (thou wert the first to go
round me); _supporters_, two Malay kings crowned, holding in the
exterior hand a spice branch proper. The castle, of course, refers
to Castile, but the rest of the blazon indicates the importance
attributed to the voyage as resting mainly upon the visit to the
Spice Islands. As we have already seen, however, the Portuguese
recovered their position in the Moluccas immediately after the
departure of the _Victoria_, and seven years later Charles V. gave
up any claims he might possess through Magelhaens' visit.
But for a long time afterwards the Spaniards still cast longing
eyes upon the Spice Islands, and the Fuggers, the great bankers
of Augsburg, who financed the Spanish monarch, for a long time
attempted to get possession of Peru, with the scarcely disguised
object of making it a "jumping-place" from which to make a fresh
attempt at obtaining possession of the Moluccas. A modern parallel
will doubtless occur to the reader.
There are thus three stages to be distinguished in the successive
discovery and delimitation of the New World:--
(i.) At first Columbus imagined that he had actually reached Zipangu
or Japan, and achieved the object of his voyage.
(ii.) Then Amerigo Vespucci, by coasting down South America, ascertained
that there was a huge unknown land intervening even between Columbus'
discoveries and the long-desired Spice Islands.
(iii.) Magelhaens clinches this view by traversing the Southern
Pacific for thousands of miles before reaching the Moluccas.
There is still a fourth stage by which it was gradually discovered
that the North-west of America was not joined on to Asia, but this
stage was only gradually reached and finally determined by the
voyages of Behring and Cook.
[_Authorities:_ Justin Winsor, _Christopher Columbus_, 1894; Guillemard,
_Ferdinand Magellan_, 1894.]