A little over three hundred years ago there was a Pope of Rome whose
name was Gregory XIII. He was greatly interested in learning and
science, and when the scholars and wise men of his day showed him that a
mistake in reckoning time had long before been made he set about to make
it right. At that time the Pope of Rome had great influence with the
kings and queens of Europe, and whatever he wished them to do they
generally did.
So they all agreed to his plan of renumbering the days of the year, and
a new reckoning of time was made upon the rule that most of you know by
heart in the old rhyme:
Thirty days hath September, April, June and November; All the rest have
thirty-one, Excepting February which alone Hath twenty-eight--and this,
in fine, One year in four hath twenty-nine.
And the order of the days of the months and the year is what is called,
after Pope Gregory, the Gregorian Calendar.
This change in reckoning time made, of course, all past dates wrong.
The old dates, which were called Old Style, had to be made to correspond
with the new dates which were called New Style.
Now, according to the Old Style, Columbus discovered the islands he
thought to be the Indies (and which have ever since been called the
West Indies) on the twelfth of October, 1492. But, according to the New
Style, adopted nearly one hundred years after his discovery, the right
date would be the twenty-first of October. And this is why, in the
Columbian memorial year of 1892, the world celebrated the four hundredth
anniversary of the discovery of America on the twenty-first of October;
which, as you see, is the same as the twelfth under the Old Style of
reckoning time.
But did Columbus discover America? What was this land that greeted his
eyes as the daylight came on that Friday morning, and he saw the low
green shores that lay ahead of his caravels.
As far as Columbus was concerned he was sure that he had found some one
of the outermost islands of Cipango or Japan. So he dropped his anchors,
ordered out his rowboat, and prepared to take possession of the land in
the name of the queen of Spain, who had helped him in his enterprise.
Just why or by what right a man from one country could sail up to the
land belonging to another country and, planting in the ground the
flag of his king, could say, "This land belongs to my king!" is a hard
question to answer. But there is an old saying that tells us, Might
makes right; and the servants of the kings and queens--the adventurers
and explorers of old--used to go sailing about the world with this idea
in their heads, and as soon as they came to a land they, had never seen
before, up would go their flag, and they would say, This land is mine
and my king's! They would not of course do this in any of the well-known
or "Christian lands" of Europe; but they believed that all "pagan
lands" belonged by right to the first European king whose sailors should
discover and claim them.
So Columbus lowered a boat from the Santa Maria, and with two of his
chief men and some sailors for rowers he pulled off toward the island.
But before he did so, he had to listen to the cheers and congratulations
of the very sailors who, only a few days before, were ready to kill him.
But, you see, this man whom they thought crazy had really brought them
to the beautiful land, just as he had promised. It does make such a
difference, you know, in what people say whether a thing turns out right
or not.
Columbus, as I say, got into his rowboat with his chief inspector and
his lawyer. He wore a crimson cloak over his armor, and in his hand he
held the royal banner of Spain. Following him came Captain Alonso Pinzon
in a rowboat from the Pinta, and in a rowboat from the Nina Captain
Vincent Pinzon. Each of these captains carried the "banner of the green
cross" on which were to be seen the initials of the king and queen of
Spain.
As they rowed toward the land they saw some people on the shore. They
were not dressed in the splendid clothes the Spaniards expected to find
the people of Cathay wearing. In fact, they did not have on much of
anything but grease and paint. And the land showed no signs of the
marble temples and gold-roofed palaces the sailors expected to find. It
was a little, low, flat green island, partly covered with trees and with
what looked like a lake in the center.
This land was, in fact, one of the three thousand keys or coral islands
that stretch from the capes of Florida to the island of Hayti, and are
known as the Bahama Islands. The one upon which Columbus landed was
called by the natives Guanahani, and was either the little island now
marked on the map as Cat Island or else the one called Watling's Island.
Just which of these it was has been discussed over and over again, but
careful scholars have now but little doubt that it was the one known
to-day as Watling's Island. To see no sign of glittering palaces and
gayly dressed people was quite a disappointment to Columbus. But then,
he said, this, is probably the island farthest out to sea, and the
people who live here are not the real Cathay folks. We shall see them
very soon.
So with the royal banner and the green-cross standards floating above
him, with his captains and chief officers and some of the sailors
gathered about him, while all the others watched him from the decks of
his fleet, Columbus stepped upon the shore. Then he took off his hat,
and holding the royal banner in one hand and his sword in the other
he said aloud: I take possession of this island, which I name San
Salvador,(*) and of all the islands and lands about it in the name of my
patron and sovereign lady, Isabella, and her kingdom of Castile. This,
or something like it, he said, for the exact words are not known to us.
(*) The island of San Salvador means the island of the Holy
Saviour. Columbus and the Spanish explorers who followed him
gave Bible or religious names to very much of the land they
discovered.
And when he had done this the captains and sailors fell at his feet
in wonder and admiration, begging him to forgive them for all the hard
things they had said about him. For you have found Cathay, they cried.
You are our leader. You will make us rich and powerful. Hurrah for the
great Admiral!
And when the naked and astonished people of the island saw all this--the
canoes with wings, as they called the ships, the richly-dressed men with
white and bearded faces, the flags and swords, and the people kneeling
about this grand-looking old man in the crimson cloak--they said to one
another: These men are gods; they have come from Heaven to see us. And
then, they, too, fell on the ground and worshiped these men from Heaven,
as they supposed Columbus and his sailors to be.
And when they found that the men from Heaven did not offer to hurt them,
they came nearer; and the man in the crimson cloak gave them beads and
pieces of bright cloth and other beautiful things they had never seen
before. And this made them feel all the more certain that these men
who had come to see them in the canoes with wings must really be from
Heaven. So they brought them fruits and flowers and feathers and birds
as presents; and both parties, the men with clothes and the men without
clothes, got on very well together.
But Columbus, as we know, had come across the water for one especial
reason. He was to find Cathay, and he was to find it so that he could
carry back to Spain the gold and jewels and spices of Cathay. The first
thing, therefore, that he tried to find out from the people of the
island--whom he called "Indians," because he thought he had come to a
part of the coast of India was where Cathay might be.
Of course they did not understand him. Even Louis, the interpreter, who
knew a dozen languages and who tried them all, could not make out what
these "Indians" said. But from their signs and actions and from the
sound of the words they spoke, Columbus understood that Cathay was off
somewhere to the southwest, and that the gold he was bound to find came
from there. The "Indians" had little bits of gold hanging in their ears
and noses. So Columbus supposed that among the finer people he hoped
soon to meet in the southwest, he should find great quantities of the
yellow metal. He was delighted. Success, he felt, was not far off. Japan
was near, China was near, India was near. Of this he was certain; and
even until he died Columbus did not have any idea that he had found a
new world--such as America really was. He was sure that he had simply
landed upon the eastern coasts of Asia and that he had found what he set
out to discover--the nearest route to the Indies.
The next day Columbus pulled up his anchors, and having seized and
carried off to his ships some of the poor natives who had welcomed him
so gladly, he commenced a cruise among the islands of the group he had
discovered.
Day after day he sailed among these beautiful tropic islands, and of
them and of the people who lived upon them he wrote to the king and
queen of Spain: "This country excels all others as far as the day
surpasses the night in splendor. The natives love their neighbors as
themselves; their conversation is the sweetest imaginable; their faces
smiling; and so gentle and so affectionate are they, that I swear to
Your Highness there is not a better people in the world."
Does it not seem a pity that so great a man should have acted so meanly
toward these innocent people who loved and trusted him so? For it was
Columbus who first stole them away from their island homes and who first
thought of making them slaves to the white men.