FINDING NEW ISLANDS
With the departure of this second expedition for the "western lands"
Columbus's brief season of glory ended. Neither home-comings nor
departures would ever be the same for him again; for behind him he left
a few jealous enemies, potent to do him harm, and with him he took men
of such unstable character that more enmity was sure to spring up. These
last he held with a firm hand as long as the voyage lasted; Christopher
could always control men at sea, but on land it was another matter. Even
though _he_ might have clear notions of the difficulty of planting
a colony in new territory, how would these adventurers, and these high-
born young gentlemen who had never worked, and these hundred wretched
stowaways who, after Columbus had refused to take them, had hidden in
the vessels until well out to sea--how would all these behave when it
was time to fell trees, build houses, dig ditches, and cut roads? And
then again, good Admiral, why did you make the great mistake of bringing
no women colonists with you? How could men found homes and work when
there were no wives and little ones to be housed and fed?
Of the better sort who accompanied this second expedition there were a
few, but only a few, solid, reliable individuals whose society must have
been a comfort to the Admiral; among them, the faithful Juan de la Cosa,
the Palos pilot; James Columbus, or as the Spaniards called him, Diego
Colon, faithful to his celebrated brother, but unfortunately somewhat
stupid; Antonio de las Casas, father of the young priest who later
became the champion of the Indians and who wrote Columbus's biography;
Juan Ponce de Leon, an intrepid aristocrat who was destined to discover
Florida; and Doctor Chanca, a physician and botanist who was to write an
account of the vegetables and fruits of the western lands. These
vegetables included the "good tasting roots either boiled or baked"
which we know as potatoes. Most daring of all the company was a young
nobleman named Alonzo de Ojeda. Alonzo was a real adventurer, willing to
face any danger or hazard.
Columbus, on leaving Spain, again headed for the Canaries, this time for
the purpose of taking on sheep, goats, swine, and other domestic animals
to stock the new lands; then off again for the real business of crossing
the Atlantic. Gold being the thought uppermost in every mind--even in
the mind of the Admiral--the rudders were set southwest for the
Caribbean Islands.
These, the natives of Haiti had told him, were full of gold; at least,
that is how Columbus interpreted the signs the Haitians made when he
asked for gold; and so, instead of hurrying to cheer up those forty men
he left at La Navidad, he steered to a point considerably south of Haiti
and reached the Caribbeans precisely; which, it will be seen, was a far
greater test of nautical skill than merely to sail anywhere into the
west, as he had done on the first voyage.
The sea nearly all the way across was deliciously smooth and the trade
wind soft and steady; only once was there bad weather; very bad while it
lasted and very terrifying to those who had never before been at sea;
but it happened that, during the storm, the electric phenomenon known as
the Light of St. Elmo was seen over the rigging of the _Mari-ga-
lan'te_, the Admiral's ship, and all that horde of superstitious men
were reassured and considered it a sign that the expedition was divine
protection.
Yet a little later, when the water supply ran low, and when there were
so many leaks in the vessels that the pumps were working constantly,
they began to grumble. But Columbus, who was a magician at reckoning sea
distance, laughed at their alarm and said to them, "Drink all the water
you like; we shall reach land in forty-eight hours." Next day no land
appeared, but still he spoke confidently and ordered them to take in
sail and slow down. That was at sunset, on Saturday, November 2; Sunday
morning, November 3, the sun rose on a beautiful verdant island only a
few leagues ahead of them. The magician had fairly scented land from
afar!
This little island, Dominica he called it, had no harbor; but what did
that matter since another island lay alongside it, to the north. Here
they landed and took possession in the name of Spain--not only of the
one island but of five or six more which were visible from a little
hill. On this spot, which they christened Marigalante, there were no
inhabitants; so, after waiting only long enough to feast on new,
luscious fruits, they sailed to the next island, which they called
Guadaloupe.
And here the Spaniards began to learn what real savagery meant. Only
women and children appeared to inhabit the island, and these fled inland
at the strangers' approach. This afforded an excellent opportunity for
the visitors to look into the native huts and see how these wild people
lived. Hammocks of netting, earthenware dishes, and woven cotton cloth
were found; but along with these rudiments of civilization something
else was found that made the Europeans look at each other in horror--
human bones left from a recent feast!
The next day they landed at a different island, for these Caribbeans all
lie close together. Here the deplorable business of kidnapping began
again, and quite legitimately, the Spaniards thought, for were not the
miserable creatures cannibals? A young boy and three women were
captured, and from these Columbus learned that the people of the two
islands he first visited, along with a third he had not yet come to, had
formed a league among themselves to make war on the remainder of the
islands. That was why all the men happened to be absent at the time of
the Spanish landing. They had gone off in their canoes to capture women
as wives, and men and children to be killed and eaten!
The fact that the warriors of this island were absent emboldened a party
of nine Spaniards to penetrate inland in search of gold; secretly, too,
without the Admiral's knowledge or consent. Night came and the nine men
had not returned. The crew were naturally anxious to leave the island
before its man-eating population returned, but the majority were willing
to await their lost companions. Next day Alonzo de Ojeda, who said he
was not afraid of cannibals, led a search party clear across the island,
but without success; not until the third anxious day had passed did the
gold seekers get back to the ship. They had paid dearly for their
adventure, having been utterly lost in a tangled forest, without food,
torn and scratched by brambles, and fearing all the time that the fleet
would give them up for dead and sail without them.
A week having now been passed among the cannibals, Columbus decided to
give up gold-hunting and go and greet the colony at La Navidad. His
captives told him that the mainland lay south, and had he not grown
anxious about the men he had left the year before, he might have sailed
south and found South America; but instead he headed north, stopping
sometimes at intermediate islands. Once again they tried capturing some
natives whom they saw on the shore, but these Carib women were wonderful
archers, and a number of them who managed to upset their canoe and swim
for liberty shot arrows as they swam. Two of the Spaniards were thus
wounded.
Not until the 22d of November did the fleet come in sight of Haiti--
about a month later than if they had come direct from the Canaries. Many
islands, including Porto Rico, had been discovered and named before they
finally touched Espanola and began sailing along its northern coast to
where the _Santa Maria_ had been wrecked. Although no gold had been
found, all the men on the boats were confident that quantities of it
would have been collected during the year by the men at La Navidad; and
so great content reigned on all the ships.
While the fleet was still some distance away, one of the captured Haiti
Indians who had made the voyage to Spain and back was sent ashore to
tell Chief Guacanagari and the colony of the Admiral's return. This
Indian messenger, having been converted to Christianity and having
learned to speak Spanish, was expected to be of great use in the present
expedition. Before sending him ashore they dressed him handsomely and
covered him with showy trinkets that would impress his countrymen. But
the real impression was to come from his telling his tribe what a
powerful people the Spaniards were and how advisable it would be to
receive them kindly. This attended to, the converted Indian was to
rejoin the ship at La Navidad, where Columbus would richly reward him
for his services. Our simple Columbus, who loved Spain's civilization
and power, entertained great hopes of the Indian's mission, and never
suspected that this savage preferred his native island; and that, once
he set foot on it, he would never again risk himself in the presence of
white men!
The Admiral next stopped at the mouth of a stream where, on his previous
voyage, he had heard of gold. The party who went ashore to search for it
soon came back aghast. They had found, instead, two bodies lashed to a
stake in the form of a cross. The men were hardly recognizable, but the
scraps of clothing looked Spanish. The ominous news ran from ship to
ship and gloom began to settle over the entire expedition.
Columbus, much disturbed, hastened on to La Navidad. On approaching the
spot his crew fired a cannon and shouted, but no response came. They
landed; but it was to find the fortress a blackened ruin and the whole
settlement destroyed. Even the stout-hearted Admiral was now utterly
dejected.
After a spell of grieving came a ray of hope. Perhaps Diego de Arana and
his other friends were not all dead; perhaps the treacherous natives had
merely driven them off. He had told Diego to keep the gold they gathered
hidden in a well, so that, in case of attack, it would be safe; and off
Columbus started to hunt for the well. No amount of searching revealed
it; instead, another painful sight, a few dead Spaniards; that was all.
Inland, far away from his original abode, the king was found who had so
kindly helped Columbus when the _Santa Maria_ was wrecked--King
Guacanagari. From him came the only account ever obtained of the fate of
the colony; a true account apparently, for later investigations
confirmed it. The Spaniards, with the exception of their leader, Arana,
had behaved very badly toward each other and toward the natives. They
wanted wives, and had stolen all the young women from Guacanagari's
village and then had fought with each other for the prettiest. Having
obtained wives, some deserted the little European colony and went to
live as savages among the Indians. Others had gone to find the gold
mines, which quest took them to the eastern part of the island where the
fierce chief Caonabo ruled. So enraged was this chief at their invasion
that he not only killed _them_, but descended upon their
compatriots at La Navidad, and attacked them one night when all was
still and peaceful. Guacanagari heard the savage war whoops, and out of
friendship for the Admiral he tried to drive off the assailants, but he
himself was wounded and his house was burned. The Spanish fort was
fired; the inmates rushed out, only to be butchered or driven into the
sea and drowned. Not one man escaped.
Thus ended Columbus's second trip westward across the Atlantic. What a
landing! Blackened ruins, dead bodies, the enmity of the natives, and--
no gold; all this where he had hoped to be greeted by happy, prosperous
men. Here were the first fruits of his great discovery; here the first
sample of Spanish ability at colonizing; here the first specimen of what
the white man could do in a new and peaceful land; and our great
Admiral, thinking of the mixed band he had brought out from Spain to
colonize, dropped his head and covered his face with his hands.
All were anxious to leave the scene of this tragedy; but before they
left, the native king, Guacanagari, who appeared as friendly as ever,
expressed a desire to visit Columbus's ship. While on it he managed to
talk with the Caribbean Indians who were aboard. That night the
captives, including a woman whom the Spaniards had named Catalina, made
their escape and were picked up in waiting canoes. Next day when
Columbus sent to Guacanagari to demand their return, the king and his
whole village had disappeared. It would appear that this simple savage
had grown into a far shrewder person than his European host since that
Christmas night when the _Santa Maria_ ran aground.
La Navidad having disappeared, the next concern was to found another
settlement. A point some distance east was chosen, where a beautiful
green vega, or plain, stretched far back from the shore. The city was to
be called Isabella, in honor of the queen who had made possible the
discovery of the new lands. Streets were laid out, a fine church and a
storehouse were planned to be built of stone, and many private houses,
to be built of wood or adobe or any convenient material, were to be
constructed. All this was very fine in plan; but when the men were
called upon to do the hard manual labor that is required for building a
town and planting gardens and fields in an utter wilderness, many of
them murmured. They had not come to do hard work, they had come to pick
up nuggets of gold. Besides, many were ill after the long diet of salted
food and musty bread; even Columbus himself fell ill upon landing, and
could not rise from his bed for weeks; and although all this time he
continued to direct the work of town building, it progressed but slowly.
So there lay the great Christopher Columbus, bedridden and empty-handed,
at the moment when he hoped to be sending back to Spain the gold and
other precious substances collected by the men of his first settlement.
What should he write to the sovereigns waiting for news? He could not
bear to write the sad truth and tell them how all his hopes, and theirs,
had come to naught. If only he could have known, or surmised, that his
islands fringed a magnificent new continent that had never even been
dreamed of by civilized man, his worry might have ceased; for surely a
man who had found a new world for Spain need not have found gold
besides; but he knew nothing of the continent as yet; and remembering
the extravagant promises made in Barcelona, he decided to postpone
writing the letter home to Spain until he should make another attempt to
find gold.
Accordingly, he sent two expeditions to different parts of the island to
find the mines which, according to his understanding of the natives'
sign language, must exist. Alonzo de Ojeda and the other captain he sent
out returned each with a little gold; and this slight find was
sufficient to set Columbus's fervid imagination at work again. He sent a
rosy account of the island to the monarchs, and repeated his former
promise to soon send home shiploads of gold and other treasures. And no
wonder that he and so many others wished for gold; for it is written in
his journal, "Gold is the most precious of all substances; gold
constitutes treasure; he who possesses it has all the needs of this
world as well as the price for rescuing souls from Purgatory and
introducing them into Paradise." If gold could do all that, who would
not try to possess it?
But so far as his letter to the monarchs went, Columbus knew, even while
writing it, that real gold and the promise of gold were two very
different things. His promises could never fill up the empty hold of the
ship that was going back to Spain; and so, failing the rich cargo which
the men of La Navidad were to have gathered, Columbus bethought himself
of some other way in which his discoveries might bring money to the
Spanish Crown. The plan he hit upon was the plan of a sick,
disappointed, desperate man, as will be seen from a portion of his
letter. The letter, intended for the sovereigns, was addressed, as was
the custom, to their secretary.
"Considering what need we have for cattle and beasts of burden ... their
Highnesses might authorize a suitable number of caravels to come here
every year to bring over said cattle and provisions. These cattle might
be paid for with _slaves_ taken from among the Caribbeans, who are
a wild people fit for any work, well built and very intelligent; and
who, when they have got rid of the cruel habits to which they have been
accustomed, will be better than any other kind of slaves."
Horrible, all this, we say, but it was the fifteenth century. Slavery
had existed for ages, and many still believed in it, for men like the
good Las Casas were few. Moreover, Columbus was tormented by a feeling
of not having "made good." He had promised his sovereigns all sorts of
wealth, and instead he had been able to collect only an insignificant
amount of gold trinkets on Haiti. Desperate for some other source of
wealth, in an evil moment he advised slave-catching.
Besides considering himself to have fallen short in the royal eyes, he
was hounded by the complaints and taunts of the men who had accompanied
him. They hated work, so he tried to appease them by giving them
authority to enslave the natives; and, as our good Las Casas wisely
remarks, "Since men never fall into a single error ... without a greater
one by and by following," so it fell out that the Spaniards were cruel
masters and the natives revolted; to subdue them harsher and harsher
measures were used; not till most of them had been killed did the
remaining ones yield submissively.