THE LAST VOYAGE
Fernando Columbus, though only a lad of fourteen, noted every new
experience with intelligent delight. He had his father's passion for
writing things down. As it was the result of personal observation,
Fernando's account of the fourth voyage may be accepted as more reliable
than many other items he has left us concerning the Admiral's history.
Among other things, Fernando says that the little fleet intended
starting its search at the outlet of the Gulf of Paria, and then
following the land west until they came to the straits leading into the
Indian Ocean; but while approaching the Caribbean Islands, his father
discovered that one of the vessels was in need of repairs; for which
reason he headed for San Domingo, where he hoped to purchase a better
caravel.
As Columbus had been told _not_ to stop there till his return trip,
he sent one of the faster ships ahead with a letter to Governor Ovando,
explaining that he wanted to buy another ship, and also that he was
seeking protection from a hurricane that he saw approaching. Knowing the
peculiarities of weather in those regions, he was so sure of the storm
that he advised Ovando to hold back any vessels that might be about to
depart for Spain.
Our weather-wise old Admiral was not mistaken in his prophecy. A furious
West Indian hurricane broke on the last day of June; but his poor little
ships, instead of lying safe in the shelter of San Domingo harbor, were
exposed to all the ravages of the storm. Why? Because Ovando had refused
to let him enter the port! A cruel insult; but the Admiral was too busy
just then to brood over it. He must hastily draw in under the lee of the
land and wait for the hurricane to pass.
It was not the sort that passed, for it stayed and stayed till it was
worn out by its own fury. "Eighty-eight days," Columbus wrote to his
sovereign, "did this fearful tempest continue, during which I was at sea
and saw neither sun nor stars. My ships lay exposed with sails torn; and
anchors, cables, rigging, boats, and a quantity of provisions lost....
Other tempests have I experienced, but none of so long duration or so
frightful as this."
And all this perilous time, when men and vessels narrowly escaped going
to the bottom, the discoverer of the New World was denied the privilege
of the only seaport in it! It makes one's blood boil, even to-day, to
think that at San Domingo the Comendador Ovando and the whole group of
ungrateful landsmen went safely to bed every night in the very houses
that they had hated Columbus for making them build, while he was lashing
about on the furious waves, thinking his other three ships lost, and
expecting every minute a similar fate for his own!
The eighty-eight days, fortunately, were not continuously stormy; there
were occasional lulls. It was the end of June when Columbus had asked
for shelter; not till the middle of July did the first clear weather
come. Then the scattered, battered boats reunited as by a miracle, and
found themselves near the "Queen's Garden" islands south of Cuba. Let us
leave them there patching their boats and enjoying a bit of sunshine
while we see what has been happening at ungrateful San Domingo.
Ovando had been on the island a month and a half when Columbus came
along asking permission to land. Whether this was refused through the
new governor's ugly nature alone, or whether he believed Columbus's
prophecy of bad weather merely an excuse to land, is not known. Certain
it is that, although the Spanish monarchs thought San Domingo could get
along better without the Admiral, they never intended him to be turned
off when a violent hurricane was pending. Ovando evidently did not
believe in the hurricane; besides, he did not want Columbus to find out
that the new governors were managing no better than he had managed. In
this respect there was nothing to be proud of, else Ovando would surely
have believed in the hurricane. Bobadilla had been a miserable failure;
and he himself had not been there long enough to make any improvements,
except the detestable one of sending for African negroes to replace
Indian slaves!
One thing, however, had turned out a little better than any one
expected, and that was the gold mine near which the town of San Domingo
had been built. When Columbus's warning about the storm came, eighteen
caravels lay in the harbor ready to start for Spain with eighteen
hundredweight of gold. One nugget alone, Las Casas tells us, weighed
thirty-five pounds. Out of all this treasure, Columbus's share was forty
pounds, and that was set aside and loaded on the poorest, leakiest
caravel of the lot, called _The Needle_, to be sent to Spain and to
remain there until he should appear to claim it.
Ovando, like Columbus, wanted the colony to appear profitable in the
eyes of the monarchs, and was eager to start off this first golden
cargo, also all the spoils he had filched from the natives since his
arrival. Then, too, the Comendador Bobadilla was already aboard, and
Ovando was eager to be rid of him and also of Francisco Roldan, who
never had been, and never could be, of use in any colony; so Ovando,
when he read Columbus's warning, threw back his head and exclaimed,
"Nonsense! Let them start just the same!"
And start they did; and scarcely were the vessels out of sight when the
hurricane broke. Of the eighteen ships only one ever got to Spain. Three
returned much damaged to San Domingo. The others went down. The one
vessel that reached Spain was the leaky little tub called _The
Needle_, laden with the Admiral's gold! Thus the same storm that sent
many of his San Domingo enemies to a watery grave saved for him the
first profits he received from the island. It would be some satisfaction
to learn that Ovando was rebuked for his cruelty and stupidity; but
there is no record of such a reprimand. Perhaps no one even knew that
Ovando had been warned. As for the wholesale shipwreck, people merely
looked at such things piously in those days, and said, "It is the will
of Heaven!"
When the first lull came in that devastating storm, Columbus found
himself south of Cuba among the little "Garden" group. It was the third
time he had had a chance to sail along the Cuban coast and discover
whether it really was an island, as the natives said, or whether it was
the mainland, as he had forced his sailors to swear while on the Cuban
voyage when his brain was full of fever. Again he let the problem go
unsolved; the object of this fourth voyage was to find the straits
leading into the Indian Ocean. Having failed to begin his search from
Trinidad by following South America westward, as originally planned, he
expected he would come to the straits by following Cuba's southern shore
in the same direction, if Cuba, as he hoped, was a great strip of land
projecting eastward from the continent. And yet, instead of sailing
along Cuba, or returning to the Gulf of Paria and hugging the land
westward, he suddenly decided to put out southwest into the open sea.
This seems to us a foolish course, for no matter at what point he struck
land, how would he know whether to explore to the left or right for his
straits? Why this least desirable of three courses was taken neither the
Admiral nor his son explained in their diaries. Of course he found
land,--the Honduras coast; but of course he had no means of knowing what
relation it had either to Cuba or to the land around the Gulf of Paria.
Thus the poor Admiral lost his last chance of arriving at any just
conclusions of the magnitude of his discovery.
Before reaching this Honduras coast they stopped at the Isle of Pines,
where they saw natives in comfortable-looking house boats; that is, huge
canoes sixty feet long, cut from a single mahogany tree, and with a
roofed caboose amidships. These natives wore plenty of gold ornaments
and woven clothing; they had copper hatchets and sharp blades of flint;
and they used a sort of money for buying and selling. In other words, it
was the nearest approach to civilization that Columbus had ever seen in
his new lands. He tried by signs to ask about all these things, and the
natives pointed west as the place from which their house boat had come.
But so keen was Columbus for "the straits" to the Indian Ocean that even
gold could not divert him this time; he refused to proceed due west, and
thus failed to discover Mexico, the richest region the Spaniards were
ever to find on the North American continent.
From the Isle of Pines, the Admiral put out again into the open sea,
southwest, and the moment he had cleared land terrific storms were
encountered. Worse still, when he neared the coast which he named
Honduras, the currents were so violent that his boats could hardly make
headway against them. All July and August thunder and lightning were
incessant. Timbers creaked and strained till each minute it appeared as
if they must have reached the breaking point. Meanwhile the Admiral was
enduring the tortures of rheumatism and could not leave his bed; and so,
up on deck where the gales and the waves swept free, he ordered them to
rig a little cabin of sailcloth; there he lay and directed every move of
his crew. One minute he saw his terrified seamen clinging to masts or
slipping over wet decks; another, hauling in the mere shreds of sails
that were left. One minute he heard them vowing pilgrimages and penances
if only they might be saved; another, denouncing the madman who brought
them to these terrible waters.
But the sick man did not heed all this; his business was to bring them
out alive if possible; so he kept a clear head and issued his orders.
Whenever he became discouraged, he looked across the wave-washed decks
to the comforting sight of a slender lad of fourteen, brought up
delicately at court, but now turning to with a will and helping the
sailors with every rough, heavy task. How proud the Admiral must have
felt when he wrote in his journal, "It was as if Fernando had been at
sea eighty years!"
At last they rounded a point where better weather greeted them, and in
thankfulness Columbus called it Cape Gracias a Dios (Thanks to God). But
straightway came another blow. On the very first day when they could
catch their breath and cease struggling against wind and current and
rain, their spirits were again dashed. A rowboat went near the mouth of
a river to take on fresh water, and the river came out with a gush,
upset the boat, and drowned the men in it. So our sick Admiral, who was
drawing a map of the coast, and had just finished writing "Thanks to
God," marks down the rushing river and names it "Rio de Desastre" (River
of Disaster).
Just below Gracias Cape the current divided into two, one part flowing
west, the other south; this latter was followed. Sailing down the
Mosquito Coast they came, toward the end of September, to a pleasant
spot which Columbus called "The Garden," or El Jardin (pronounced Khar-
deen'), and where the natives appeared to be more intelligent than any
he had yet seen. Continuing south, he came to Caribaro Bay, where the
people wore many flat ornaments of beaten gold. As if they could detect,
from afar, the gold lust in the European eye, the poor creatures
brandished their weapons to keep the strange-looking visitors from
landing; but it was of no avail. Land they did, and traded seventeen
gold disks for just three tinkly bells! The voyagers asked, of course,
where the gold came from, and were told from Veragua, a little farther
south. For once the sign language was correctly understood. Veragua
actually existed. The Spaniards found it just west of the Isthmus of
Darien.
Here plenty more gold was seen. "In two days," wrote Columbus, "I saw
more indications of near-by gold mines than I had seen in four years in
Hispaniola." Not only did he see the precious metal, but he heard that
"ten days inland" lived tribes who possessed quantities of gold and
silver. And then the natives spoke of something far more wonderful, had
Columbus but known it, than gold; for they said, also, that ten days'
tramp westward lay a vast sea. This, Columbus concluded, must be the
immense river Ganges; and his tired brain began figuring how, by a
little "tramping west," and a little river boating, and then some more
tramping, a Spaniard could get from Darien back to Spain, provided the
Moslems did not murder him on the way!
But he was not seeking for gold on this trip. He did not march ten days
inland. He turned a deaf ear to it and to all his importuning crew and
went searching for his "strait"; by which steadfastness of purpose he
just missed discovering the Pacific Ocean. It has been said that Fate
was always a little niggardly with Columbus, and never was it truer than
at this moment when she at last deafened his ear to the tale of gold and
sent him south.
All November and December he continued coasting along South America. But
his greedy crew could never forget the sight of those Veragua natives
actually smelting gold. The men became sulky and clamored to go back;
and furthermore, the ships were too worm-eaten and too covered with
barnacles to proceed. On December 5, in order to take the gold-seekers
back to Darien, he reluctantly gave over his search for the passage to
the Indian Ocean. But the minute he turned north new gales began to
blow. These continued so furiously that in a whole month they progressed
barely a hundred miles. All this time they were nearly starved; about
the only provisions left were their rotten biscuits and these were, as
Fernando tells us, so disgusting to look upon that "many waited till
night to eat their sop."
At last the famished party got back to Veragua. Eighty men landed with
the idea of forming a settlement under Bartolome Colon. They had the
good sense to act in the friendliest manner to the native chief; but he
was not the simple-minded creature that Guacanagari was, over in Haiti.
He saw at once that they wanted gold, so he nodded obligingly, and
indicated by signs that he would lead them to the gold mines. And he
did; but they proved to be the small, worked-out mines of a neighboring
chief who drove the intruders off. Back they went to the first chief's
land and began to build a stockade. The first chief still appeared
friendly enough, but a very clever young Spaniard named Diego Mendez
happened to prowl through the undergrowth to the Indian village and saw
the warriors sharpening their knives and making ready to attack the
uninvited settlers. Off rushed Diego to tell Don Bartolome; and he,
believing that "the best defense is a sharp attack," rushed to the
village, captured the chief and many warriors, and sent them captive
aboard the waiting caravels. The chief, however, succeeded in jumping
over the side, diving to the bottom, and swimming ashore.
It was then quite dark and none saw him come to the surface, but the
next day he had another force ready to defy them. Of his fellow-
prisoners who had been thrust into the hold, some managed to throw open
a hatchway, overpower the guard, and likewise plunge into the sea. The
sailors hurriedly pushed back the hatchway so that no more might climb
out on deck; but next morning it was discovered that all those who had
not escaped were dead. They had committed suicide rather than be carried
off by the ruthless strangers.
All this time there was such a rough sea that no small boats could get
ashore from the caravels to obtain news of the eighty colonists under
Bartolome. At last a sailor offered to swim to land; when he came back,
it was with the news that this settlement had gone the way of Isabella
and San Domingo, for half its men had mutinied. The gold did not seem
worth fighting for where natives were so hostile that a man could not
even pick fruit from a tree and eat it! Columbus saw that there was
nothing to do but get the men back on the boats and abandon all thought
of colonizing what he had already named Costa Rica (Rich Coast).
But to carry out this decision for a while appeared impossible; the
waves were too high for any boat to venture out; but at last the clever
Diego Mendez, by lashing two canoes together into a sort of raft, got
near enough to shore to rescue Don Bartolome and his men and stores.
When Diego had succeeded in this perilous task, his Admiral was so
grateful that, in the presence of all the men, he kissed him on both
cheeks, a mark of great respect in those days. Ah, if only Christopher
had found such a stanch, capable friend earlier in his career!
Ever since they reached the mainland Columbus had been suffering
torments with rheumatism. Now to add to his agonies a fever attacked
him. Along with these ills, and the murmurings of his hungry men, one of
the ships was wrecked; and after they had rescued its men and
provisions, and were about to find room for them on another ship, this
other ship was discovered to be too worm-eaten and disabled to continue
the voyage. Columbus, in all his pain, directed the removal of men and
goods to the best two caravels. This done, he started for San Domingo,
turning his back on his last chance to find the passage to India--the
broad Pacific Ocean--if only he had crossed the isthmus between!