"INTO PORT"
The merciless storm that had beaten Columbus across the ocean swept over
Spain after he landed. He had gone as far north as Sevilla, intending to
proceed from there to court, which was being held at Medina del Campo,
in Old Castile; but illness overcame him, and for three months he lay
bedridden in the Sevillan monastery called Las Cuevas.
Besides his rheumatism, and all the other ills that might arise from two
and a half years of exposure and bad food, an event happened, a few days
after his return to Spain, that crushed him utterly. This was the death
of his best friend, the only one to whom he could look for securing his
rights in "the Indies," where Ovando and other enemies had conspired to
rob him of his share of profits in the colonies. The great Queen
Isabella had passed away on November 26, 1504, in the lonely castle at
Medina del Campo. In these two lives, though they had walked such
different paths, there was much resemblance. The queen, like Columbus,
had known a life of unceasing hard work and anxiety; like Columbus she
had striven for a great purpose and had triumphed; her purpose being the
driving out of the Moor, and the establishment of Spain as a world
power; like Columbus, she had made mistakes, and like Columbus, she had
known much sorrow. There was a strong bond of sympathy between these
two, and the news of the queen's death was a great blow to the bedridden
old man in Sevilla.
Isabella had asked to be buried in Granada, the city she had labored so
hard to win for Christianity, and from the day the little funeral party
set out from Medina to the day they arrived at Granada, three weeks
later, a frightful tempest raged that swept away bridges, flooded
rivers, and made roads impassable. All the time poor Columbus, as he lay
ill in the monastery, listened to the storm and thought of that mournful
party tramping with their solemn burden down to the city where he and
Isabella had both gained a victory. Maybe he envied the worker who had
passed away first, for he sadly wrote to his son Diego, "Our tired lady
now lies beyond the desires of this rough and wearisome world."
But Columbus himself was not yet out of this "wearisome world," and was
troubling his weary brain far too much about its petty details. From his
fourth voyage he had returned much poorer than he ever expected to be at
the end of his sea-going life. The little money he had been able to
collect from his plantation in Espanola had been used to equip the ships
that brought him home, and to pay his sailors; for this was a point on
which he was always most scrupulous. When his ready money was thus used
up, the good monks of Las Cuevas had to provide for his necessities
until finally the banks advanced money on the strength of his claims
against the Crown. After the death of Isabella these claims had small
chance of being considered to his full satisfaction, for Ferdinand
argued that the contract of Granada was, owing to the vast extent of the
new lands, impossible for either the Crown on the one hand or Columbus
on the other to fulfill. That rascally Porras, who had caused so much
trouble during the Jamaica days, was at court, filling everybody's ears
with slanderous stories about the Admiral during the days when the
Admiral himself was wearying Ferdinand with a constant stream of
letters. Every day that he was able to sit up he wrote long appeals for
"his rights" and his property. Not only did he present his claims for
recognition and reward, but he told how badly things had been going in
San Domingo under Ovando; how the comendador was hated by all for his
tyranny and for the favoritism he showed; and how things would soon come
to a sorry pass in the colony unless a better governor were quickly
appointed; and then, poor man, deluded with the idea that he could set
things right, he asked to be reinstated as governor! Good Christopher!
can you not realize that your work is done now, for better or worse? Can
you not let others solve the great problems across the ocean? Can you
not see that you have been greatest of them all, and that nothing more
is required of you? And as for all the dignities and titles and
properties that should be yours, according to the Granada contract, we
know you want them only to pass them on to your boy, Diego; but never
mind him; you are leaving him a name that will grow greater and greater
through the coming ages; a name that is a magnificent inheritance for
any child.
About this time the sick man received a visit which brightened him a
great deal, a visit from the man who, never intending any harm, was
destined to soon assume the greatest honor which the world could have
given Columbus--the honor of naming the newly discovered lands Columbia,
instead of America.
Americo Vespucci was an Italian from Florence who, in 1492 or 1493, came
to Sevilla to carry on a commercial business. Here he learned of
Columbus's first voyage and became eager to make a trip himself to the
new lands. It was a Florentine friend of Americo's who fitted out
Columbus's second expedition; but this Florentine died before the
vessels were ready, and Americo continued the work. More than this;
seeing, when the king canceled Columbus's monopoly, a chance for himself
to win glory, he hastened off with one of the new expeditions. He
claimed that they reached a continental coast on June 16, 1497, which
was earlier than Columbus had reached Para, and eight days before Cabot
touched at the northern edge of the new continent. We have only
Americo's own account of the voyage, and his statements are so
inaccurate that many students refuse to believe him the real discoverer
of South America.
Of Americo's second voyage, however, we have reliable information, for
it was made in the company of Alonzo de Ojeda, that one-time friend of
Columbus who later rebelled against him at Espanola. Vespucci sent a
letter to a friend in Florence describing his voyages and saying that
the continent he had reached "ought to be considered a new world because
it had never before been seen by European eyes." His second letter,
written from Portugal in September, 1504, to another friend, was used by
Martin Waldseemuller, a German professor who was then collecting all the
information he could gather to make up a book on geography.
Martin Waldseemuller divided the globe into four large parts or
continents--Europe, Asia, Africa, and the newly discovered fourth part,
which he suggested "ought to be called America, because Americus
discovered it." This professor, like most learned men of his time, wrote
in Latin; and in Latin the Italian name Americo is Americus; the
feminine form of Americus is America, which was used because it was
customary to christen countries with feminine names. As nobody else had
yet suggested a name for the vast new lands in the west, the German's
christening of 1507 was adopted for the country which should have been
called Columbia, in justice to the man who first had the splendid
courage to sail to it across the untraveled waters and reveal its
existence to Europe. Had Columbus lived to know that this was going to
happen, it would have been one more grievance and one more act of
ingratitude added to his already long list; but at the time that Americo
Vespucci visited his countryman who lay ill in Sevilla, neither one of
them was thinking about a name for the far-away lands. They merely
talked over their voyages as any two sailors might. As Vespucci was now
looked up to as a practical, new-world traveler and trader, and the
Admiral was lonely and forgotten, it shows a kind feeling on the
visitor's part to have looked him up. When Americo left to go to court,
Columbus gave him this letter to carry to Diego, who was still in the
royal service:--
* * * * *
My dear son:
Within two days I have talked with Vespucci. He has always manifested a
friendly disposition towards me. Fortune has not always favored him and
in this he is not different from many others. He left me full of kindest
purposes towards me and will do anything he can (at court). I did not
know what to tell him to do to help me, because I knew not why he had
been called there.
* * * * *
In February, 1505, a royal order was issued to the effect that Don
Cristobal Colon be furnished with a mule to ride to court, then being
held in Segovia. To ride a mule in those days necessitated a royal
permit, for every Spaniard preferred mules to horses. The government
hoped that horses would be in more general use if the use of mules was
restricted.
The Admiral's long rest with the monks of Las Cuevas had apparently
improved his health, for, as this royal permit proves, he applied for a
mule and went to Segovia; from there, that same year, he followed the
king to Salamanca and later to Valladolid. Segovia, Salamanca,
Valladolid! All bleak, harsh places in winter, and fiery hot ones in
summer. Our poor Admiral left pleasant Sevilla and exposed his worn old
body to icy blasts and burning suns all for naught; for, as Las Casas
writes:--
"The more he petitioned, the more the king was bland in avoiding any
conclusion; he hoped, by wearing out the patience of the Admiral, to
induce him to accept some estates in Castile instead of his powers in
the Indies; but Columbus rejected these offers with indignation."
The Admiral could not be made to see that the Granada contract was
impossible; that Ferdinand had signed it only because he never expected
the voyage to be successful; and that now, when men were beginning to
believe Americo's assertion that a whole continent lay off in the west,
it was preposterous that one family should hope to be its governor and
viceroy and to control its trade. No, Columbus could only go on
reiterating that it was so written down in Granada, away back in April,
1492.
So King Ferdinand merely shrugged his shoulders and referred the matter
to a learned council who talked about it a long, long time, hoping the
sick old man might meanwhile die; and at last the sick, tired,
troublesome old man obliged them, and left all the business of "shares"
and "profits" for his son Diego to settle several years after by
bringing suit against the Crown. Toward the end of 1505 and the
beginning of 1506 the Admiral became very ill. He was in Valladolid, and
he realized that he could travel no more; so he secured for himself, or
perhaps Diego secured for him, as comfortable a lodging as possible in a
street now called the Calle Colon, and determined not to move about any
more. We, accustomed to heat and a dozen other comforts in our
dwellings, would not consider the house in the Calle Colon, with its
cold stone floors and walls, a suitable place for a rheumatic, broken-
down old man; but it was the typical solid, substantial residence of its
day; and the only pity is that the city of Valladolid permitted it to be
torn down a few years ago to make room for a row of flats.
Even in icy Valladolid, winter with its discomfort comes to an end at
last. One May day, when spring sunshine was warming up the stone chamber
where the old Admiral lay, he called for a pen and put the last touches
to his will. All the titles he still hoped to get back were for Diego;
and should Diego die without a son, Fernando was to be Admiral; and if
Fernando should have no son, the loyal brother Bartholomew, who had
shared those horrible days of disappointment and disaster off in the
Indies, was to be Admiral. (Brother Diego had no need of an inheritance,
for he had become a monk.) Part of the moneys due Columbus, if ever
collected, were to be spent on that long-dreamed-of Crusade to recover
the Holy Sepulchre. His remains were to be taken out to San Domingo.
These were a few of the instructions he left.
The next day, May 20, 1506, came another whisper of springtide, and the
faithful Diego Mendez, who "navigated three hundred leagues in a canoe,"
came to see him; his sons, Diego and Fernando, too, and his brother
Bartholomew; and as the dim old eyes saw these affectionate faces
bending over him, he counseled Diego always to love his younger brother
Fernando, as he had always loved Bartholomew; and Diego pressed his hand
and promised. Then the old man rested quietly for a time. He was clad in
the frock of a Franciscan monk, the same sort of frock that good Friar
Juan Perez wore when he welcomed him to La Rabida.
They opened the window to let in the May warmth, and Christopher sniffed
feebly. Did he recall the beautiful climate of Haiti which he said was
"like May in Cordova"? Let us hope, at least, that it was peaceful
recollections like this that flitted through his vanishing senses, and
not recollections of the horrible hurricanes and insurrections and
shipwrecks and prisons that made up part of his eventful life. He made
no sound, not even a whisper, so we will never know what thoughts the
May warmth brought to him. We only know that after a while he crossed
his hands peacefully on his breast and murmured, "Into thy hands, O
Lord, I commit my spirit." A moment later and the great Admiral passed
forth on his last voyage into the unknown.
The event on May 20, 1506, passed unheeded. A life had ended whose
results were more stupendous than those of any other human life ever
lived. Yet Valladolid took no notice of Columbus's death; neither did
Spain. The nation was too busy watching the men who had practical plans
for colonizing the new lands, and turning them into profit, to concern
itself with the death of the one brave soul who had found the path.
Indeed, Cristobal Colon was really forgotten before his death; yet he
was living on, as every great spirit lives on, in the ambitions of the
men who were endeavoring to push his work still further. When, a few
years after his death, Balboa first saw the Pacific stretching far, far
off to Asia, and when in another few years the whole globe had been
circumnavigated, from Spain back again to Spain, only then did the
vastness of Columbus's discovery begin to be appreciated. Europe at last
realized that, during all her centuries of civilization, when she had
thought herself mistress of the world, she had in fact known but half of
it. As this truth took shape in men's minds, the humble, forgotten
Genoese began to come into his own. They saw that he had done more than
risk his life on the western ocean; he had sent a thrill through every
brave, adventurous heart, and this at a moment of the world's
development when such seed was sure to take root. Christopher Columbus,
one of the greatest products of the Renaissance, had carried that
Renaissance to a glorious climax.