LANDFALL
During the night the ships had drifted a little with the current, and
before the north-east wind. When the look-out man on the Pinta first
reported land in sight it was probably the north-east corner of the
island, where the land rises to a height of 120 feet, that he saw. The
actual anchorage of Columbus was most likely to the westward of the
island; for there was a strong north-easterly breeze, and as the whole of
the eastern coast is fringed by a barrier reef, he would not risk his
ships on a lee shore. Finding himself off the north end of the island at
sunrise, the most natural thing for him to do, on making sail again,
would be to stand southward along the west side of the island looking for
an anchorage. The first few miles of the shore have rocky exposed
points, and the bank where there is shoal water only extends half a mile
from the shore. Immediately beyond that the bottom shelves rapidly down
to a depth of 2000 fathoms, so that if Columbus was sounding as he came
south he would find no bottom there. Below what are called the Ridings
Rocks, however, the land sweeps to the south and east in a long sheltered
bay, and to the south of these rocks there is good anchorage and firm
holding-ground in about eight fathoms of water.
We may picture them, therefore, approaching this land in the bright
sunshine of the early morning, their ears, that had so long heard nothing
but the slat of canvas and the rush and bubble of water under the prows,
filled at last with the great resounding roar of the breakers on the
coral reef; their eyes, that had so long looked upon blue emptiness and
the star-spangled violet arch of night, feasting upon the living green of
the foliage ashore; and the easterly breeze carrying to their eager
nostrils the perfumes of land. Amid an excitement and joyful
anticipation that it is exhilarating even to think about the cables were
got up and served and coiled on deck, and the anchors, which some of them
had thought would never grip the bottom again, unstopped and cleared.
The leadsman of the Santa Maria, who has been finding no bottom with his
forty-fathom line, suddenly gets a sounding; the water shoals rapidly
until the nine-fathom mark is unwetted, and the lead comes up with its
bottom covered with brown ooze. Sail is shortened; one after another the
great ungainly sheets of canvas are clewed up or lowered down on deck;
one after another the three helms are starboarded, and the three ships
brought up to the wind. Then with three mighty splashes that send the
sea birds whirling and screaming above the rocks the anchors go down; and
the Admiral stands on his high poop-deck, and looks long and searchingly
at the fragment of earth, rock-rimmed, surf-fringed, and tree-crowned, of
which he is Viceroy and Governor-General.
Watling's Island, as it is now called, or San Salvador, as Columbus named
it, or Guanahani, as it was known to the aborigines, is situated in
latitude 24 deg. 6' N., and longitude 74 deg 26' W., and is an
irregularly shaped white sandstone islet in about the middle of the great
Bahama Bank. The space occupied by the whole group is shaped like an
irregular triangle extending from the Navidad Bank in the Caribbean Sea
at the south-east corner, to Bahama Island in Florida Strait on the
north, about 200 miles. The south side trends west by north for 600
miles, and the north side north-west by north 720 miles. Most of the
islands and small rocks in this group, called Keys or Cays, are very low,
and rise only a few feet above the sea; the highest is about 400 feet
high. They are generally situated on the edge of coral and sand banks,
some of which are of a very dangerous character. They are thinly wooded,
except in the case of one or two of the larger islands which contain
timber of moderate dimensions. The climate of the Bahamas is mild and
temperate, with refreshing sea breezes in the hottest months; and there
is a mean temperature of 75 deg. from November to April. Watling's
Island is about twelve miles in length by six in breadth, with rocky
shores slightly indented. The greater part of its area is occupied by
salt-water lagoons, separated from one another by small wooded hills from
too to 140 feet high. There is plenty of grass; indeed the island is now
considered to be the most fertile in the Bahamas, and raises an excellent
breed of cattle and sheep. In common with the other islands of the group
it was originally settled by the Spaniards, and afterwards by the British,
who were driven from the Bahamas again by the Spanish in the year 1641.
After a great deal of changing hands they were ceded to Great Britain in
1783, and have remained in her possession ever since. In 1897 the
population of the whole group was estimated at 52,000 the whites being in
the proportion of one to six of the coloured population. Watling's
Island contains about 600 inhabitants scattered over the surface, with a
small settlement called Cockburn Town on the west side, nearly opposite
the landfall of Columbus. The seat of the local government is in the
island of New Providence, and the inhabitants of Watling's Island and of
Rum Cay unite in sending one representative to the House of Assembly. It
is high water, full and change, at Watling's Island at 7 h. 40 m., as it
was in the days of Columbus; and these facts form about the sum of the
world's knowledge of and interest in Watling's Island to-day.
But it was a different matter on Friday morning, October 12, 1492,
[This date is reckoned in the old style. The true astronomical date
would be October 21st, which is the modern anniversary of the
discovery]
when, all having been made snug on board the Santa Maria, the Admiral of
the Ocean Seas put on his armour and his scarlet cloak over it and
prepared to go ashore. The boat was lowered and manned by a crew well
armed, and Columbus took with him Rodrigo de Escovedo, the secretary to
the expedition, and Rodrigo Sanchez his overseer; they also took on board
Martin Alonso Pinzon and Vincenti Yanez Pinzon, the captains of the other
two ships. As they rowed towards the shore they saw a few naked
inhabitants, who hid themselves at their approach. Columbus carried with
him the royal standard, and the two captains each had a banner of the
expedition, which was a square flag with an "F" and a "Y" upon either
side, each letter being surmounted by the crown of the sovereigns and a
green cross covering the whole. Columbus assembled his little band
around him and called upon them to bear witness that in the presence of
them all he was taking possession of the island for the King and Queen of
Spain; duly making depositions in writing on the spot, and having them
signed and witnessed. Then he gave the name of San Salvador to the
island and said a prayer; and while this solemn little ceremony was in
progress, the astonished natives crept out of their hiding and surrounded
the strange white men. They gesticulated and grovelled and pointed
upwards, as though this gang of armed and bearded Spaniards, with the
tall white-bearded Italian in the midst of them, had fallen from the
skies.
The first interest of the voyagers was in the inhabitants of this
delightful land. They found them well built, athletic-looking men, most
of them young, with handsome bodies and intelligent faces. Columbus,
eager to begin his missionary work, gave them some red caps and some
glass beads, with which he found them so delighted that he had good hopes
of making converts, and from which he argued that "they were a people who
would better be freed and converted to our Holy Faith by love than by
force," which sentence of his contains within itself the whole missionary
spirit of the time. These natives, who were the freest people in the
world, were to be "freed"; freed or saved from the darkness of their
happy innocence and brought to the light of a religion that had just
evolved the Inquisition; freed by love if possible, and by red caps and
glass beads; if not possible, then freed by force and with guns; but
freed they were to be at all costs. It is a tragic thought that, at the
very first impact of the Old World upon this Eden of the West, this
dismal error was set on foot and the first links in the chain of slavery
forged. But for the moment nothing of it was perceptible; nothing but
red caps and glass beads, and trinkets and toys, and freeing by love.
The sword that Columbus held out to them, in order to find out if they
knew the use of weapons, they innocently grasped by the blade and so cut
their fingers; and that sword, extended with knowledge and grasped with
fearless ignorance, is surely an emblem of the spread of civilisation and
of its doubtful blessings in the early stages. Let us hear Columbus
himself, as he recorded his first impression of Guanahani:
"Further, it appeared to me that they were a very poor people, in
everything. They all go naked as their mothers gave them birth, and
the women also, although I only saw one of the latter who was very
young, and all those whom I saw were young men, none more than
thirty years of age. They were very well built with very handsome
bodies, and very good faces. Their hair was almost as coarse as
horses' tails, and short, and they wear it over the eyebrows, except
a small quantity behind, which they wear long and never cut. Some
paint themselves blackish, and they are of the colour of the
inhabitants of the Canaries, neither black nor white, and some paint
themselves white, some red, some whatever colour they find: and some
paint their faces, some all the body, some only the eyes, and some
only the nose. They do not carry arms nor know what they are,
because I showed them swords and they took them by the edge and
ignorantly cut themselves. They have no iron: their spears are
sticks without iron, and some of them have a fish's tooth at the end
and others have other things. They are all generally of good
height, of pleasing appearance and well built: I saw some who had
indications of wounds on their bodies, and I asked them by signs if
it was that, and they showed me that other people came there from
other islands near by and wished to capture them and they defended
themselves: and I believed and believe, that they come here from the
continental land to take them captive. They must be good servants
and intelligent, as I see that they very quickly say all that is
said to them, and I believe that they would easily become
Christians, as it appeared to me that they had no sect. If it
please our Lord, at the time of my departure, I will take six of
them from here to your Highnesses that they may learn to speak.
I saw no beast of any kind except parrots on this island."
They very quickly say all that is said to them, and they will very easily
become good slaves; good Christians also it appears, since the Admiral's
research does not reveal the trace of any religious sect. And finally
"I will take six of them"; ostensibly that they may learn to speak the
language, but really that they may form the vanguard of cargo after cargo
of slaves ravished from their happy islands of dreams and sunshine and
plenty to learn the blessings of Christianity under the whip and the
sword. It is all, alas, inevitable; was inevitable from the moment that
the keel of Columbus's boat grated upon the shingle of Guanahani. The
greater must prey upon the less, the stronger must absorb and dominate
the weaker; and the happy gardens of the Golden Cyclades must be spoiled
and wasted for the pleasure and enrichment of a corrupting civilisation.
But while we recognise the inevitable, and enter into the joy and pride
of Columbus and his followers on this first happy morning of their
landing, we may give a moment's remembrance to the other side of the
picture, and admit that for this generation of innocents the discovery
that was to be all gain for the Old World was to be all loss to them.
In the meantime, decrees the Admiral, they are to be freed and converted;
and "I will take six of them that they may learn to speak."
There are no paths or footprints left in the sea, and the water furrowed
on that morning more than four hundred years ago by the keels of
Columbus's little fleet is as smooth and trackless as it was before they
clove it. Yet if you approach Guanahani from the east during the hours
of darkness you also will see a light that waxes and wanes on the
horizon. What the light was that Columbus saw is not certain; it was
probably the light from a torch held by some native woman from the door
of her hut; but the light that you will see is from the lighthouse on
Dixon Hill, where a tower of coral holds a lamp one hundred and sixty
feet above the sea at the north-east point of the island. It was erected
in no sentimental spirit, but for very practical purposes, and at a date
when Watling's Island had not been identified with the Guanahani of
Columbus's landfall; and yet of all the monuments that have been raised
to him I can think of nothing more appropriate than this lonely tower
that stands by day amid the bright sunshine in the track of the trade
wind, and by night throws its powerful double flash every half-minute
across the dark lonely sea. For it was by a light, although not of man's
kindling, that Columbus was guided upon his lonely voyage and through his
many difficulties; amid all his trials and disappointments, dimly as it
must have burned sometimes, it never quite went out. Darkness was the
name of the sea across which he took his way; darkness, from his
religious point of view, was the state of the lands to which he
journeyed; and, whatever its subsequent worth may have been, it was a
burning fragment from the living torch of the Christian religion that he
carried across the world with him, and by which he sought to kindle the
fire of faith in the lands of his discovery. So that there is a profound
symbolism in those raying beams that now, night after night, month by
month, and year after year, shine out across the sea from Watling's
Island in the direction of the Old World.
In the preparations for this voyage, and in the conduct and
accomplishment of it, the personality of the man Columbus stands clearly
revealed. He was seen at his best, as all men are who have a chance of
doing the thing for which they are best fitted. The singleness of aim
that can accomplish so much is made manifest in his dogged search for
means with which to make his voyage; and his Italian quality of
unscrupulousness in the means employed to attain a good end was exercised
to the full. The, practical seaman in him carried him through the
easiest part of his task, which was the actual sailing of his ships from
Palos to Guanahani; Martin Alonso Pinzon could have done as much as that.
But no Martin Alonso Pinzon or any other man of that time known to
history had the necessary combination of defective and effective
qualities that made Columbus, once he had conceived his glorious hazy
idea, spend the best years of his life, first in acquiring the position
that would make him listened to by people powerful enough to help him,
and then in besieging them in the face of every rebuff and
discouragement. Another man, proposing to venture across the unknown
ocean to unknown lands, would have required a fleet for his conveyance,
and an army for his protection; but Columbus asked for what he thought he
had some chance of getting, and for the barest equipment that would carry
him across the water. Another man would at least have had a bodyguard;
but Columbus relied upon himself, and alone held his motley crew in the
bonds of discipline. A Pinzon could have navigated the fleet from Palos
to Guanahani; but only a Columbus, only a man burning with belief is
himself and in his quest, could have kept that superstitious crowd of
loafers and malefactors and gaol-birds to their duties, and bent them to
his will. He was destined in after years for situations which were
beyond his power to deal with, and for problems that were beyond his
grasp; but here at least he was supreme, master of himself and of his
material, and a ruler over circumstances. The supreme thing that he had
professed to be able to do and which he had guaranteed to do was, in the
sublime simplicity of his own phrase, "to discover new lands," and luck
or no luck, help or hindrance, he did it at the very first attempt and in
the space of thirty-five days. And although it was from the Pinta that
the gun was fired, and the first loom of the actual land seen in the
early morning, I am glad to think that, of all the number of eager
watching men, it was Columbus who first saw the dim tossing light that
told him his journey was at an end.
End of Project Gutenberg's Christopher Columbus, Volume 2, by Filson Young