Ancient And Modern Science--Art Of Navigation--Maritime Discovery--
Spirit Of The Spaniards--Possessions In The New World-
Rumors Concerning Peru
Whatever difference of opinion may exist as to the comparative merits of
the ancients and the moderns in the arts, in poetry, eloquence, and all
that depends on imagination, there can be no doubt that in science the
moderns have eminently the advantage. It could not be otherwise. In the
early ages of the world, as in the early period of life, there was the
freshness of a morning existence, when the gloss of novelty was on every
thing that met the eye; when the senses, not blunted by familiarity, were
more keenly alive to the beautiful, and the mind, under the influence of a
healthy and natural taste, was not perverted by philosophical theory;
when the simple was necessarily connected with the beautiful, and the
epicurean intellect, sated by repetition, had not begun to seek for
stimulants in the fantastic and capricious. The realms of fancy were all
untravelled, and its fairest flowers had not been gathered, nor its beauties
despoiled, by the rude touch of those who affected to cultivate them.
The wing of genius was not bound to the earth by the cold and
conventional rules of criticism, but was permitted to take its flight far
and wide over the broad expanse of creation.
But with science it was otherwise. No genius could suffice for the
creation of facts,--hardly for their detection. They were to be gathered in
by painful industry; to be collected from careful observation and
experiment. Genius, indeed, might arrange and combine these facts into
new forms, and elicit from their combinations new and important
inferences; and in this process might almost rival in originality the
creations of the poet and the artist. But if the processes of science are
necessarily slow, they are sure. There is no retrograde movement in her
domain. Arts may fade, the Muse become dumb, a moral lethargy may
lock up the faculties of a nation, the nation itself may pass away and
leave only the memory of its existence but the stores of science it has
garnered up will endure for ever. As other nations come upon the stage,
and new forms of civilization arise. the monuments of art and of
imagination, productions of an older time, will lie as an obstacle in the
path of improvement. They cannot be built upon; they occupy the
ground which the new aspirant for immortality would cover. The whole
work is to be gone over again, and other forms of beauty--whether higher
or lower in the scale of merit, but unlike the past--must arise to take a
place by their side. But, in science, every stone that has been laid
remains as the foundation for another. The coming generation takes up
the work where the preceding left it. There is no retrograde movement.
The individual nation may recede, but science still advances. Every step
that has been gained makes the ascent easier for those who come after.
Every step carries the patient inquirer after truth higher and higher
towards heaven, and unfolds to him, as he rises, a wider horizon, and
new and more magnificent views of the universe.
Geography partook of the embarrassments which belonged to every other
department of science in the primitive ages of the world. The knowledge
of the earth could come only from an extended commerce; and
commerce is founded on artificial wants or an enlightened curiosity,
hardly compatible with the earlier condition of society. In the infancy of
nations, the different tribes, occupied with their domestic feuds, found
few occasions to wander beyond the mountain chain or broad stream that
formed the natural boundary of their domains. The Phoenicians, it is
true, are said to have sailed beyond the Pillars of Hercules, and to have
launched out on the great western ocean. But the adventures of these
ancient voyagers belong to the mythic legends of antiquity, and ascend
far beyond the domain of authentic record.
The Greeks, quick and adventurous. skilled in mechanical art, had many
of the qualities of successful navigators, and within the limits of their
little inland sea ranged fearlessly and freely. But the conquests of
Alexander did more to extend the limits of geographical science, and
opened an acquaintance with the remote countries of the East. Yet the
march of the conqueror is slow in comparison with the movements of the
unencumbered traveller. The Romans were still less enterprising than
the Greeks, were less commercial in their character. The contributions to
geographical knowledge grew with the slow acquisitions of empire. But
their system was centralizing in its tendency; and instead of taking an
outward direction and looking abroad for discovery, every part of the
vast imperial domain turned towards the capital at its head and central
point of attraction. The Roman conqueror pursued his path by land, not
by sea. But the water is the great highway between nations, the true
element for the discoverer. The Romans were not a maritime people. At
the close of their empire, geographical science could hardly be said to
extend farther than to an acquaintance with Europe,--and this not its
more northern division,--together with a portion of Asia and Africa;
while they had no other conception of a world beyond the western waters
than was to be gathered from the fortunate prediction of the poet.1
Then followed the Middle Ages; the dark ages, as they are called, though
in their darkness were matured those seeds of knowledge, which, in
fulness of time, were to spring up into new and more glorious forms of
civilization. The organization of society became more favorable to
geographical science. Instead of one overgrown, lethargic empire,
oppressing every thing by its colossal weight, Europe was broken up into
various independent communities, many of which, adopting liberal forms
of government, felt all the impulses natural to freemen; and the petty
republics on the Mediterranean and the Baltic sent forth their swarms of
seamen in a profitable commerce, that knit together the different
countries scattered along the great European waters.
But the improvements which took place in the art of navigation, the more
accurate measurement of time, and, above all, the discovery of the
polarity of the magnet, greatly advanced the cause of geographical
knowledge. Instead of creeping timidly along the coast, or limiting his
expeditions to the narrow basins of inland waters, the voyager might now
spread his sails boldly on the deep, secure of a guide to direct his bark
unerringly across the illimitable waste. The consciousness of this power
led thought to travel in a new direction; and the mariner began to look
with earnestness for another path to the Indian Spice-islands than that by
which the Eastern caravans had traversed the continent of Asia. The
nations on whom the spirit of enterprise, at this crisis, naturally
descended, were Spain and Portugal, placed, as they were, on the
outposts of the European continent, commanding the great theatre of
future discovery.
Both countries felt the responsibility of their new position. The crown of
Portugal was constant in its efforts, through the fifteenth century, to find
a passage round the southern point of Africa into the Indian Ocean;
though so timid was the navigation, that every fresh headland became a
formidable barrier; and it was not till the latter part of the century that
the adventurous Diaz passed quite round the Stormy Cape, as he termed
it, but which John the Second, with happier augury, called the Cape of
Good Hope. But, before Vasco de Gama had availed himself of this
discovery to spread his sails in the Indian seas, Spain entered on her
glorious career, and sent Columbus across the western waters.
The object of the great navigator was still the discovery of a route to
India, but by the west instead of the east. He had no expectation of
meeting with a continent in his way, and, after repeated voyages, he
remained in his original error, dying, as is well known, in the conviction
that it was the eastern shore of Asia which he had reached. It was the
same object which directed the nautical enterprises of those who
followed in the Admiral's track; and the discovery of a strait into the
Indian Ocean was the burden of every order from the government, and
the design of many an expedition to different points of the new continent,
which seemed to stretch its leviathan length along from one pole to the
other. The discovery of an Indian passage is the true key to the maritime
movements of the fifteenth and the first half of the sixteenth centuries. It
was the great leading idea that gave the character to the enterprise of the
age.
It is not easy at this time to comprehend the impulse given to Europe by
the discovery of America. It was not the gradual acquisition of some
border territory, a province or a kingdom that had been gained, but a
New World that was now thrown open to the Europeans. The races of
animals, the mineral treasures, the vegetable forms, and the varied
aspects of nature, man in the different phases of civilization, filled the
mind with entirely new sets of ideas, that changed the habitual current of
thought and stimulated it to indefinite conjecture. The eagerness to
explore the wonderful secrets of the new hemisphere became so active,
that the principal cities of Spain were, in a manner, depopulated, as
emigrants thronged one after another to take their chance upon the
deep.2 It was a world of romance that was thrown open; for, whatever
might be the luck of the adventurer, his reports on his return were tinged
with a coloring of romance that stimulated still higher the sensitive
fancies of his countrymen, and nourished the chimerical sentiments of an
age of chivalry. They listened with attentive ears to tales of Amazons
which seemed to realize the classic legends of antiquity, to stories of
Patagonian giants, to flaming pictures of an El Dorado, where the sands
sparkled with gems, and golden pebbles as large as birds' eggs were
dragged in nets out of the rivers.
Yet that the adventurers were no impostors, but dupes, too easy dupes of
their own credulous fancies, is shown by the extravagant character of
their enterprises; by expeditions in search of the magical Fountain of
Health, of the golden Temple of Doboyba, of the golden sepulchres of
Zenu; for gold was ever floating before their distempered vision, and the
name of Castilla del Oro, Golden Castile, the most unhealthy and
unprofitable region of the Isthmus, held out a bright promise to the
unfortunate settler, who too frequently, instead of gold, found there only
his grave.
In this realm of enchantment, all the accessories served to maintain the
illusion. The simple natives, with their defenceless bodies and rude
weapons, were no match for the European warrior armed to the teeth in
mail. The odds were as great as those found in any legend of chivalry,
where the lance of the good knight overturned hundreds at a touch. The
perils that lay in the discoverer's path, and the sufferings he had to
sustain, were scarcely inferior to those that beset the knight-errant.
Hunger and thirst and fatigue, the deadly effluvia of the morass with its
swarms of venomous insects, the cold of mountain snows, and the
scorching sun of the tropics, these were the lot of every cavalier who
came to seek his fortunes in the New World. It was the reality of
romance. The life of the Spanish adventurer was one chapter more--and
not the least remarkable --in the chronicles of knight-errantry.
The character of the warrior took somewhat of the exaggerated coloring
shed over his exploits. Proud and vainglorious, swelled with lofty
anticipations of his destiny, and an invincible confidence in his own
resources, no danger could appall and no toil could tire him. The greater
the danger, indeed, the higher the charm; for his soul revelled in
excitement, and the enterprise without peril wanted that spur of romance
which was necessary to rouse his energies into action. Yet in the motives
of action meaner influences were strangely mingled with the loftier, the
temporal with the spiritual. Gold was the incentive and the recompense,
and in the pursuit of it his inflexible nature rarely hesitated as to the
means. His courage was sullied with cruelty, the cruelty that flowed
equally--strange as it may seem--from his avarice and his religion;
religion as it was understood in that age,--the religion of the Crusader. It
was the convenient cloak for a multitude of sins, which covered them
even from himself. The Castilian, too proud for hypocrisy, committed
more cruelties in the name of religion than were ever practised by the
pagan idolater or the fanatical Moslem. The burning of the infidel was a
sacrifice acceptable to Heaven, and the conversion of those who survived
amply atoned for the foulest offences. It is a melancholy and mortifying
consideration, that the most uncompromising spirit of intolerance--the
spirit of the Inquisitor at home, and of the Crusader abroad-should have
emanated from a religion which preached peace upon earth and good-
will towards man!
What a contrast did these children of Southern Europe present to the
Anglo-Saxon races who scattered themselves along the great northern
division of the western hemisphere! For the principle of action with these
latter was not avarice, nor the more specious pretext of proselytism; but
independence---independence religious and political. To secure this,
they were content to earn a bare subsistence by a life of frugality and toil.
They asked nothing from the soil, but the reasonable returns of their own
labor. No golden visions threw a deceitful halo around their path and
beckoned them onwards through seas of blood to the subversion of an
unoffending dynasty. They were content with the slow but steady
progress of their social polity. They patiently endured the privations of
the wilderness, watering the tree of liberty with their tears and with the
sweat of their brow, till it took deep root in the land and sent up its
branches high towards the heavens; while the communities of the
neighboring continent, shooting up into the sudden splendors of a
tropical vegetation, exhibited, even in their prime, the sure symptoms of
decay.
It would seem to have been especially ordered by Providence that the
discovery of the two great divisions of the American hemisphere should
fall to the two races best fitted to conquer and colonize them. Thus the
northern section was consigned to the Anglo-Saxon race, whose orderly,
industrious habits found an ample field for development under its colder
skies and on its more rugged soil; while the southern portion, with its
rich tropical products and treasures of mineral wealth, held out the most
attractive bait to invite the enterprise of the Spaniard. How different
might have been the result, if the bark of Columbus had taken a more
northerly direction, as he at one time meditated, and landed its band of
adventurers on the shores of what is now Protestant America!
Under the pressure of that spirit of nautical enterprise which filled the
maritime communities of Europe in the sixteenth century, the whole
extent of the mighty continent, from Labrador to Terra del Fuego, was
explored in less than thirty years after its discovery; and in 1521, the
Portuguese Maghellan, sailing under the Spanish flag, solved the
problem of the strait, and found a westerly way to the long sought Spice-
islands of India,--greatly to the astonishment of the Portuguese, who,
sailing from the opposite direction, there met their rivals, face to face, at
the antipodes. But while the whole eastern coast of the American
continent had been explored, and the central portion of it colonized,--
even after the brilliant achievement of the Mexican conquest,---the veil
was not yet raised that hung over the golden shores of the Pacific.
Floating rumors had reached the Spaniards, from time to time, of
countries in the far west, teeming with the metal they so much coveted;
but the first distinct notice of Peru was about the year 1511, when Vasco
Nunez de Balboa, the discoverer of the Southern Sea, was weighing
some gold which he had collected from the natives. A young barbarian
chieftain, who was present, struck the scales with his fist, and, scattering
the glittering metal around the apartment, exclaimed,---"If this is what
you prize so much that you are willing to leave your distant homes, and
risk even life itself for it, I can tell you of a land where they eat and drink
out of golden vessels, and gold is as cheap as iron is with you." It was
not long after this startling intelligence that Balboa achieved the
formidable adventure of scaling the mountain rampart of the Isthmus
which divides the two mighty oceans from each other; when, armed with
sword and buckler, he rushed into the waters of the Pacific, and cried
out, in the true chivalrous vein, that "he claimed this unknown sea with
all that it contained for the king of Castile, and that he would make good
the claim against all, Christian or infidel, who dared to gainsay it!"3 All
the broad continent and sunny isles washed by the waters of the Southern
Ocean! Little did the bold cavalier comprehend the full import of his
magnificent vaunt.
On this spot he received more explicit tidings of the Peruvian empire,
heard proofs recounted of its civilization, and was shown drawings of the
llama, which, to the European eye, seemed a species of the Arabian
camel. But, although he steered his caravel for these golden realms, and
even pushed his discoveries some twenty leagues south of the Gulf of St.
Michael, the adventure was not reserved for him. The illustrious
discoverer was doomed to fall a victim to that miserable jealousy with
which a little spirit regards the achievements of a great one.
The Spanish colonial domain was broken up into a number of petty
governments, which were dispensed sometimes to court favorites,
though, as the duties of the post, at this early period, were of an arduous
nature, they were more frequently reserved for men of some practical
talent and enterprise. Columbus, by virtue of his original contract with
the Crown, had jurisdiction over the territories discovered by himself,
embracing some of the principal islands, and a few places on the
continent. This jurisdiction differed from that of other functionaries,
inasmuch as it was hereditary; a privilege found in the end too
considerable for a subject, and commuted, therefore, for a title and a
pension. These colonial governments were multiplied with the increase
of empire, and by the year 1524, the period at which our narrative
properly commences, were scattered over the islands, along the Isthmus
of Darien, the broad tract of Terra Firma, and the recent conquests of
Mexico. Some of these governments were of no great extent. Others,
like that of Mexico, were of the dimensions of a kingdom; and most had
an indefinite range for discovery assigned to them in their immediate
neighborhood, by which each of the petty potentates might enlarge his
territorial sway, and enrich his followers and himself. This politic
arrangement best served the ends of the Crown, by affording a perpetual
incentive to the spirit of enterprise. Thus living on their own little
domains at a long distance from the mother country, these military rulers
held a sort of vice-regal sway, and too frequently exercised it in the most
oppressive and tyrannical manner; oppressive to the native, and
tyrannical towards their own followers. It was the natural consequence,
when men, originally low in station, and unprepared by education for
office, were suddenly called to the possession of a brief, but in its nature
irresponsible, authority. It was not till after some sad experience of these
results, that measures were taken to hold these petty tyrants in check by
means of regular tribunals, or Royal Audiences, as they were termed,
which, composed of men of character and learning, might interpose the
arm of the law, or, at least, the voice of remonstrance, for the protection
of both colonist and native.
Among the colonial governors, who were indebted for their situation to
their rank at home, was Don Pedro Arias de Avila, or Pedrarias, as
usually called. He was married to a daughter of Dona Beatriz de
Bobadilla, the celebrated Marchioness of Moya, best known as the friend
of Isabella the Catholic. He was a man of some military experience and
considerable energy of character. But, as it proved, he was of a
malignant temper; and the base qualities, which might have passed
unnoticed in the obscurity of private life, were made conspicuous, and
perhaps created in some measure, by sudden elevation to power; as the
sunshine, which operates kindly on a generous soil, and stimulates it to
production, calls forth from the unwholesome marsh only foul and
pestilent vapors. This man was placed over the territory of Castilla del
Oro, the ground selected by Nunez de Balboa for the theatre of his
discoveries. Success drew on this latter the jealousy of his superior, for
it was crime enough in the eyes of Pedrarias to deserve too well. The
tragical history of this cavalier belongs to a period somewhat earlier than
that with which we are to be occupied. It has been traced by abler hands
than mine, and, though brief, forms one of the most brilliant passages in
the annals of the American conquerors.4
But though Pedrarias was willing to cut short the glorious career of his
rival, he was not insensible to the important consequences of his
discoveries. He saw at once the unsuitableness of Darien for prosecuting
expeditions on the Pacific, and, conformably to the original suggestion of
Balboa, in 1519, he caused his rising capital to be transferred from the
shores of the Atlantic to the ancient site of Panama, some distance east of
the present city of that name.5 This most unhealthy spot, the cemetery of
many an unfortunate colonist, was favorably situated for the great object
of maritime enterprise; and the port, from its central position, afforded
the best point of departure for expeditions, whether to the north or south,
along the wide range of undiscovered coast that lined the Southern
Ocean. Yet in this new and more favorable position, several years were
suffered to elapse before the course of discovery took the direction of
Peru. This was turned exclusively towards the north, or rather west, in'
obedience to the orders of government, which had ever at heart the
detection of a strait that, as was supposed, must intersect some part or
other of the long-extended Isthmus. Armament after armament was
fitted out with this chimerical object; and Pedrarias saw his domain
extending every year farther and farther without deriving any
considerable advantage from his acquisitions. Veragua, Costa Rica,
Nicaragua, were successively occupied; and his brave cavaliers forced a
way across forest and mountain and warlike tribes of savages, till, at
Honduras, they came in collision with the companions of Cortes, the
Conquerors of Mexico, who had descended from the great northern
plateau on the regions of Central America, and thus completed the
survey of this wild and mysterious land.
It was not till 1522 that a regular expedition was despatched in the
direction south of Panama, under the conduct of Pascual de Andagoya, a
cavalier of much distinction in the colony. But that officer penetrated
only to the Puerto de Pinas, the limit of Balboa's discoveries, when the
bad state of his health compelled him to reembark and abandon his
enterprise at its commencement.6
Yet the floating rumors of the wealth and civilization of a mighty nation
at the South were continually reaching the ears and kindling the dreamy
imaginations of the colonists; and it may seem astonishing that an
expedition in that direction should have been so long deferred. But the
exact position and distance of this fairy realm were matter of conjecture.
The long tract of intervening country was occupied by rude and warlike
races; and the little experience which the Spanish navigators had already
had of the neighboring coast and its inhabitants, and still more, the
tempestuous character of the seas--for their expeditions had taken place
at the most unpropitious seasons of the year--enhanced the apparent
difficulties of the undertaking, and made even their stout hearts shrink
from it.
Such was the state of feeling in the little community of Panama for
several years after its foundation. Meanwhile, the dazzling conquest of
Mexico gave a new impulse to the ardor of discovery, and, in 1524, three
men were found in the colony, in whom the spirit of adventure triumphed
over every consideration of difficulty and danger that obstructed the
prosecution of the enterprise. One among them was selected as fitted by
his character to conduct it to a successful issue. That man was Francisco
Pizarro; and as he held the same conspicuous post in the Conquest of
Peru that was occupied by Cortes in that of Mexico it will be necessary
to take a brief review of his early history.