Leif the Lucky
From the northwestern coast of Europe projects the rock-ribbed Scandinavian peninsula. The scenery is grand and picturesque, but the soil is sterile and the climate severe. In this bleak, beautiful country and on the adjacent islands of the Baltic Sea, there lived, a thousand years ago, the people called the Norsemen or Northmen.
Their houses were usually long wooden structures a hundred or two hundred feet in length. Sometimes these houses were divided into several rooms, but often the dwelling consisted of only one large hall or living-room. On the floor of stone or hard-trampled earth, was kindled a fire, the smoke from which found its way upward and out through the crevices of the high-pitched roof. On three sides of the room were built beds,—shelf-like structures of boards, with skins for bedding and blankets.
The Norsemen did not even attempt to wrest a living from the reluctant soil. At home their days were given to hunting and fishing, their evenings to feasting in the hall. While they sat at table, the scalds, as their poets were called, sang or recited tales of battles, conquests, voyages,—the daring deeds of the vikings or sea-robbers and the sea-kings of their race. Thus in hunting, fishing, and feasting passed the winter.
When summer unlocked the storm- and ice-bound harbors, the Norsemen put forth in their ships. Their long-ships, or ships of war, were long, narrow vessels; on each side were benches for rowers and over the sides hung the shining shields of the Norsemen. Hundreds of these little vessels pushed off boldly from the shores of Scandinavia every summer. The Norsemen knew nothing of the mariner’s compass, and they directed their course on the pathless seas by means of the stars. This was a dangerous undertaking, and in stormy, foggy weather, many a boat lost its bearings and went down with all on board.
Fleets of the long-boats, however, braved the rough seas and sought distant lands—the coasts of England, France, Spain, Italy, even of Greece and Africa. What was their object? Plunder and always plunder. The fierce, merciless sea-soldiers descended on a land suddenly, like a thunder-cloud from the blue summer sky. They laid it waste; then, with stores of gold and silver, household goods and provisions, they sailed back home. Year after year, century after century, the Norsemen made these summer raids and were a terror to all the western and southern coasts of Europe.
But in the course of time, the character of the Norse invasions changed. The men did not sail forth alone for summer raids. Instead, men, women, and children went together and wintered on the coasts which they plundered. Sometimes they remained summer and winter and made the stolen lands their own. They were so strong and fierce in battle that few people could withstand them.
They overran the coasts of England, and it seemed as if they would take possession of the land. But a brave, wise king, Alfred the Great, defeated them on land, and built boats, the beginning of the English navy, to defend the coasts. Thus the Norse people in England became subjects instead of masters.
France, however, did not have an Alfred the Great. In the ninth century Rolf, a bold Norseman, established himself on the fair coastland of France. In course of time, the people there were called Normans instead of Norsemen, and the land they had seized was known as Normandy. These Normans, like their Norse ancestors, were fond of battle and conquest. One of them, Duke William, went to England, took possession of the land, and made himself King William.
The Norsemen went west as well as south, and in the ninth century, they settled in Iceland. Thence they pushed on to Greenland, where they established a colony. Farther west than Greenland it is said that they went, to the continent of America, hundreds of years before Columbus was born.
Here is the story as the Sagas, or old Scandinavian tales, tell it.
In 985, Bjarni, a merchant and ship-master who was traveling from Iceland to Greenland, was driven out of his course by a storm and foggy weather. “They were borne before the wind for many days, they knew not whither.” When at last calm and sunshine came, they reached a low wooded shore, probably Cape Cod. Leaving this land on the left, Bjarni sailed northward, with a favoring wind. Two days later, he again came near land, low and wooded. This is supposed to have been Nova Scotia. Again Bjarni turned from the coast which he felt sure was not the land that he sought, “because they told me,” he said, “that there are great mountains of ice in Greenland.” Three days later, he reached a rocky, snow-covered shore. He coasted along this till he found that it was an island,—probably Newfoundland,—and then again he turned away. A storm from the south drove him on his course and in four days he reached Greenland.
He told the story of his wanderings on the western seas, but he did not attempt to revisit the lands he had found. At last the tale came to the ears of Leif Eriksen, “a man strong and of great stature, of dignified aspect, wise and moderate in all things.”
Leif bought Bjarni’s ship and in 999 sailed forth with about twenty-five men to find the new land. He reached the snow-covered island—Newfoundland—which he called Helluland, “land of broad stones,” and he went ashore to see its “frozen heights and bare flat rocks.” Next he visited the “low wooded land of white sandy shore”—Nova Scotia—which he called “Markland, land of woods.” At last he reached the third promontory—Cape Cod,—the first which Bjarni had beheld; there he landed and passed the winter. From the wild grapes, then as now plentiful on the coast of Massachusetts Bay, the Norsemen gave the land the name “Vinland,” land of wine. The next spring they returned to Greenland, rescuing on the way a crew of shipwrecked men. From this time Leif was called “Leif the Lucky.”
Two years later Leif said to his brother Thorvald, “Go brother, take my ship to Vinland.” Thorvald with thirty men spent the winter in the dwellings Leif had erected two years before; the next summer they explored the surrounding country and wintered again in “Leif’s booths.” In the summer of 1004, the Norsemen coasted along the shore exploring the country. At one time when they landed, they were attacked by natives, supposed to be Esquimaux, whom they called Skrælings. In the skirmish Thorvald received a fatal wound from an arrow. His followers returned to “Leif’s booths” and in the summer of 1005 went back to Greenland; they gave an enthusiastic description of Vinland, with its vines, wild corn, fish, and game.
A few years later, Thorfinn Karlsefne and his wife Gudrid with three ships and one hundred and sixty persons made a voyage to Vinland. Gudrid’s son Snorri, the ancestor of the famous Danish sculptor Thorwaldsen, is said to have been born in Vinland. At the end of three years, the party returned to Greenland. After the death of her husband, Gudrid made a pilgrimage to Rome, where she described to the pope the fair new land in the west, the Christian settlement in “Vinland the Good.”
From Greenland, we are told, hunters and fishermen made frequent voyages to Vinland. They established settlements there and carried on a fur trade with the Indians. But in course of time, these posts were destroyed by the Indians, and the Norse settlements in Greenland itself were destroyed by war and plague. The western voyages and the memory of them ceased. Only the Scalds, trained to repeat family histories and tales of war and conquest, remembered and related the story of Vinland. In the course of time, these sagas, or stories, were written down, and centuries later men learned about the Norse colony, or “western planting,” in the New World.
Marco Polo
A Famous Traveler
You do not need to be told that the world as known to us to-day is very different from the world as it was known—or misknown—to the people of the thirteenth century. Two great inventions broadened the horizon of Europe; these were the mariner’s compass and the printing press. The mariner’s compass made it possible for men to strike boldly across unknown seas instead of clinging to familiar shores; the printing press spread books abroad and conveyed the knowledge of the few to the masses.
To-day, the steamship and the railway unite countries and destroy distance. Even the parts of the world where these do not penetrate, own, to a greater or less extent, the power of the great nations of the world. A citizen of the United States can cross the deserts of Africa or penetrate the wilds of Asia and be protected by his nation’s flag. There is hardly a place so secluded that some hardy traveler has not visited it, describing and picturing the country, people, and customs so as to make them known to all the world.
Very different was the state of affairs in the thirteenth century. The European who started east had an unblazed trail before him. He had to make his way on foot or on horseback, by sail or row boats, through mountain passes, trackless forests, and vast deserts, and across streams and seas. On the land, he encountered robbers; on the waters, pirates. Everywhere were people with unknown customs and strange languages. The chances were that the adventurous traveler, instead of returning home, would leave his bones to whiten foreign sands.
Yet one traveler encountered and passed through all these dangers, returned safe home, and dictated an account of his travels,—a true story, as wonderful as the tales of the “Arabian Nights.” Perhaps some day you will read the story of Marco Polo’s travels.
Marco Polo began life with three advantages; he was born in the thirteenth century, he was a Venetian, and he was a Polo. Venice, in the Middle Ages, was one of the commercial centers of the world. The great oceans were as yet uncrossed; the Italian cities sent forth merchant-vessels which brought across the Mediterranean the goods conveyed overland by caravans from the East,—the spices, gold, and jewels of Asia. Among the Venetian families made wealthy by commerce—the merchant-princes, as they were called—was the Polo family. About the middle of the thirteenth century, there were three Polo brothers engaged in commerce.
Two of these brothers went to the East, first to the Crimea and thence to Cathay, as China was then called. They were probably the first European travelers who reached China. They went to Cambaluc, or Peking, where they were graciously received by the great emperor, Kublai Khan. He was the grandson of Jenghiz, who had made himself master of northern China. The son and grandson of Jenghiz extended his conquests, so that the kingdom of Kublai Khan embraced China, northern Asia, Persia, Armenia, and parts of Asia Minor and Russia. Under this powerful ruler, the East was not only bound together in one vast empire, it was open to Europeans as it had never been before and has never been since. Kublai Khan welcomed the Polo brothers to his court, and they spent there several years. At last they returned to Venice, where Nicolo had left his wife; his son Marco, born the year of his departure, was now a youth of about eighteen.
The Polo brothers remained in Venice two years and then returned to Cathay. With them went Marco Polo, a brave, intelligent youth. They passed through the country around the sources of the river Oxus and crossed the plateau of Pamir and the great desert of Gobi. Much of this country had never before been visited by Europeans, and we have no record of its being revisited until a few years ago when the Orient was again to some extent opened to the world.
The Polos were welcomed back by Kublai Khan, who was at his winter residence, Cambaluc, where “are to be seen in wonderful abundance the precious stones, the pearls, the silks, and the diverse perfumes of the East.” Marco mastered the four languages most in use at court. The Khan, seeing that he was both intelligent and discreet, sent him on public business to Kara Korum, Cochin-China, India, and other parts of the great empire. When he returned, he was able to give the Khan information stored in his memory and his note books not only about the business of which he had charge but also about the manners, customs, and peculiarities of the peoples he had visited. He became a great favorite with the Khan and was, we are told, made governor of the great city of Yang-Chow.
At the end of fifteen years, the Polos desired to revisit their home, and the Khan consented on condition that they would return to Cathay. Some idea of the difficulty of the return journey may be gathered from the fact that it took twenty-six months. We are told that their kindred did not recognize the long-absent merchants. They gave a grand feast in oriental style; at the end they donned costumes suiting their rank and ripped apart their travel-worn garments, displaying dazzling wealth of rubies, sapphires, and other gems therein concealed.
The Polos had been at home only about three years when there arose war between Genoa and Venice, which were commercial rivals. The hostile fleets met in battle and the Venetians were defeated. Among the seven thousand prisoners was Marco Polo, who was an officer on one of the Venetian galleys. He was put in prison in Genoa and there he remained about a year. One of his fellow-prisoners was Rusticiano of Pisa, an author. The Pisan was much interested in the wonderful adventures of Polo and wrote them down from dictation.
The book consists practically of two parts. The first part, or prologue as it is called, relates the circumstances of the two Polos’ first visit to the Khan’s court, their second voyage accompanied by Marco, and their return home by way of the Indian Seas and of Persia. Polo informed the Europeans, who thought that eastern Asia ended in swamps and fog and darkness, that there was open sea east of Asia and that he, his father, and his uncle had sailed from the southeast coast of Cathay, or China, to the Persian Gulf. The second part of Polo’s “Travels” describes the different states and provinces of Asia, and the court and rule of Kublai Khan. Little is told of the traveler himself, but we gather that he was a brave, shrewd, and prudent man.
After Marco Polo’s release from prison in 1299, he seems to have returned to Venice, married, and lived quietly in his native city until his death in 1324.
“The Book of Marco Polo,” as Rusticiano of Pisa called his work, was read with much interest and was translated into many languages. For many centuries it was the only European description of the far East, written by an eye-witness. Polo was accused of falsehood and exaggeration, but as people learned more about the lands he described, they found that, in the main, he was right; he was truthful and accurate in describing what he had seen, but he was sometimes misled by the tales of others to whom he listened. In the prologue, Rusticiano says that he describes things seen by “Messer Marco Polo, a wise and noble citizen of Venice.... Some things indeed there be therein which he beheld not; but these he heard from men of credit and veracity, and we shall set down things seen as seen, and things heard as heard only, so that no jot of falsehood may mar the truth of our book and that all who shall read it or hear it read may put full faith in the truth of all its contents.”
Marco Polo was the first European traveler to make his way across the whole length of Asia, naming and describing the kingdoms which he visited. He was the first to describe the Pamir plateau, “the roof of the world,” the highest level country on the globe, the deserts and flowery plains of Persia, the wealth and size of China, the manners and customs of its people, and the splendid court of its emperor, the great Kublai Khan. He was the first to describe Tibet, and to tell of Burmah, Cochin-China, Siam, Japan, Java, Sumatra, Ceylon, and India, not merely as names but as places he had seen and known. He gave an account of the secluded Christian empire of Abyssinia, of the tropical luxuriance of the far-off islands, of the negroes and ivory of Zanzibar, of vast and distant Madagascar, of Siberia and the Arctic shores with their dog-sledges, white bears, and reindeer. In brief, he described Asia from Siberia and the Arctic Ocean, to Ceylon, from the Adriatic Sea to the Pacific Ocean, and to him Europe owes its first geographical knowledge of Asia.
In the time of Marco Polo, the Mongolian Empire was probably the largest in the world. He informed Europeans that in the East, which they thought inhabited by savage and ignorant people, was a wealthy and civilized kingdom, swarming with inhabitants and dotted with huge cities. He described the palaces and pleasure grounds of Cambaluc, or Peking, somewhat as they are to-day. He told how “black stones” were dug out of the earth and burnt for fuel, because they “burn better and cost less” than wood,—whereat Polo marveled. He told about the emperor’s granaries for wheat, barley, millet, and rice, about the wool, silk, hemp, spices, sugar, gold, and salt of the country. At first it seems strange that Polo did not mention tea, for hundreds of years the national drink of the Chinese, but we must remember that he was associated with the Tartar ruling classes and so was to a great extent ignorant of the manners and customs of the subject natives.
Cipangu or Cipango—that is, Japan—was made known to Europeans by Polo. He described it as “an island in the high seas,” and said that the sea around it was studded with thousands of islands rich in spices and perfumes. Cipango was the only country attacked by Kublai Khan which was able to resist his power. Its people were civilized and it was rich in gold and in wonderful pearls, white and rose-colored. Polo says “rubies are found on this island and in no other country in the world but this.”
He described India,—the scanty garments of the people and their magnificent jewels. He gave an interesting account of the diamond mines of Golconda, and of the cotton plant—more valuable even than those rich mines—from which fiber is obtained for clothing. He visited and described the places from which are obtained ginger, pepper, cinnamon, camphor, and other gums and spices.
Seilan, or Ceylon, was another place visited by Polo. He described the pearl fisheries there, much as they are to-day.
Christopher Columbus
The Great Admiral
With the name and deeds of Christopher Columbus you are already familiar. You will be interested in a brief sketch of the main facts of his life; some day, it is hoped, you will read the story as told at length by our great American author, Washington Irving.
Careful research has not been able to ascertain the exact year of Christopher Columbus’s birth. It was sometime about the middle of the fifteenth century, probably 1445 or 1446. His father was a wool-comber who lived in a village near the great Italian city of Genoa. Genoa was a rich commercial city,—the rival of Venice, as you learned in the story of Marco Polo.
CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS
Probably Columbus often visited Genoa in boyhood; he early showed his inclination for a seafaring life and became a sailor when he was about fifteen. Seafaring then was very different from what it is now. People knew little of the world beyond Europe, western Asia, and northern Africa. Sailors were beginning to use the mariner’s compass, but old habits were still strong, and they did not often venture far from land. This was not only because they feared that they would lose their way and be unable to return home. They thought that around the known land and sea circled the Sea of Darkness, full of raging monsters and dangerous whirlpools. For centuries some geographers had reasoned that the world was round, but they never went to see if this were true. The majority of people believed that the earth was flat like a floor. Probably that was what Columbus believed in his youth.
We have little record of his early years. “Wherever ship has sailed,” he wrote later, “there have I journeyed.”
When he was about twenty-five years old, he married and settled in Lisbon. There he supported himself and his family by making the maps and charts, so necessary to sailors. He seems to have spent his leisure reading books of geography and travels, studying old papers and charts, and talking with seamen. One of his favorite books was the story of the old Venetian traveler, Polo; as Columbus read about the vast and wealthy country of Cathay and the island of Cipango with its houses roofed with gold, he longed to visit them.
As he pondered the matter, he became convinced that these eastern lands could be reached by sailing west. Old geographers described the earth as a sphere. Columbus was convinced that this was true. It never occurred to him that any land unknown to him lay between Europe and Asia. He thought that the earth was much smaller than it really is and that Asia was much larger. He believed that the sea which Marco Polo described as east of Asia extended eastward to the shores of western Europe. He thought it was about twenty-five hundred or three thousand miles from Spain to China. This was a great mistake. But Columbus was much nearer the truth than most men of the day—who thought the world flat with an edge over which there was danger of falling. And, unlike the old geographers, Columbus resolved to sail westward to prove the truth of his theory.
There was living in Florence at this time a learned old man, a scholar and student, named Toscanelli, who had said he believed that India could be reached by sailing west. Columbus wrote to this scholar in 1474, telling of his intention to attempt the voyage. Toscanelli sent him a chart which unfortunately has been lost and wrote, “I praise your desire to navigate toward the west; the expedition you wish to undertake is not easy, but the route from the west coast of Europe to the Spice Indies is certain, if the tracks I have marked be followed.”
Three years later Columbus made a voyage to Iceland. It has been suggested that he went there because he had heard sailors’ tales of the news carried to Rome by Gudrid of “Vinland the Good”—the western land discovered by Leif the Lucky. It is said that in Iceland Columbus met a learned bishop with whom he conversed in Latin about Greenland and Vinland. But these northern lands were not the ones sought by Columbus. He wanted to reach the southern coast, to visit the Cathay and Cipango of Marco Polo.
Soon after his return from Iceland, it is said that Columbus applied to his native city, Genoa, to fit out an expedition for a voyage of discovery. Meeting refusal there and at Venice, he turned to Portugal. The king of Portugal was not averse to undertaking the expedition but was unwilling to give Columbus the rank and rewards he demanded in case of success. The king secretly sent out an expedition to follow the route indicated by Columbus. But the faint-hearted captain returned after a brief cruise, saying he had seen no signs of land.
Indignant at this bad faith, Columbus took his little son Diego and set out in 1484 to present his project to the Spanish sovereigns. His brother Bartolomeo had gone to plead his cause with the king of England. Columbus reached Spain at an unfavorable time. King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella were engaged in a war against the Moors, which occupied their time and emptied their treasury. However, the matter was laid before a council of scholars who decided that the plan was vain and impracticable.
Seven years Columbus attended the Spanish court, hoping against hope that a decision would be made in his favor. Weary and disappointed, he at last turned away, in 1491, to lay his project before Charles VIII., King of France.
Footsore and dejected, he stopped one evening with his son Diego at the convent of La Rabida to beg a night’s lodging. There he told the prior about the plan on which his heart was set,—his longing to add the rich domains which he was certain lay to the west, to the kingdom of Spain, his desire to win the great Khan and his subjects to the Christian faith and extend the power of the Church. This ambition appealed to the devout prior. At midnight he mounted his mule and rode to the camp to see the queen and persuade her to give Columbus an interview. He was successful and Columbus returned to plead his own cause with the king and queen. The king regarded the project coldly and reminded the queen that war had emptied the royal treasury.
“I undertake the enterprise for my own crown of Castile,” exclaimed Isabella, “and will pledge my jewels to raise the necessary funds.”
Columbus was granted the rank and title of admiral over all lands he might discover and was promised one-tenth of all gold, gems, spices, and other merchandise from these lands. Leaving his son Diego as page to the young Prince John, Columbus set to work to fit out the expedition. It was difficult to secure seamen to venture on the unknown ocean. At last the required number was secured; some were forced into service, some taken from jails, some won by bounties in advance and promises of rewards later.
On Friday, August 3, 1492, Columbus set sail from the port of Palos, Spain, with three little vessels. The Santa Maria was a decked ship, ninety feet long, carrying sixty-six men; the Nina and the Pinta, smaller than the Santa Maria, were boat-like vessels, carrying each about twenty-five men. Columbus had a letter from the King of Spain to the great Khan whose realm, Cathay, he expected to reach.
You have read the story of that wonderful voyage to seek an Old World which ended in the finding of a New. You can in fancy follow the course of Columbus day after day—his struggles with his timorous, ignorant, greedy, turbulent, mutinous crew,—his iron will, and determination to “sail on and on.” Day after day he set his will and courage against their stubborn fears. Like children, the sailors rejoiced at every good sign—birds, reeds, and boughs floating on the waters; and were depressed by every evil omen—calms and contrary winds.
At last one night there was seen the flickering light of a torch, and the next morning revealed the fair shore of a wooded island. As we shut our eyes, we can almost see the Spaniards landing on that October morning. Columbus, richly dressed in scarlet, went ashore, fell upon his knees, kissed the earth, and gave thanks to God. Then, drawing his sword and unfurling the royal banner, he took possession of the land in the name of the king and queen of Spain.
Eyeing the strangers were the natives,—naked, with straight, black hair, and swarthy skins daubed with paint. Columbus, who thought he had reached India, called these people Indians, the name they retain to this day. The island, which he called San Salvador, was one of the Bahamas. In search of gold, Columbus cruised about, touching one island after another, Cuba, Haiti, and others of the West Indies. These he thought were the “thousands of islands rich in spices” which Marco Polo said dotted the sea around Cipango. Cuba, Columbus at first thought was Cipango itself, but afterwards he concluded that it was the mainland of India. Out of the timbers of the Santa Maria, which was wrecked, a fort was built on Haiti, and here thirty-nine sailors were left.
From Haiti, Columbus set sail for Spain, and he reached the port of Palos on the fifteenth of March, 1493. Now indeed, his good fortune was at its height. He was received with almost royal honors. He was bidden to sit in the presence of the king and queen—an unheard-of honor in that formal court—while he described his voyage and displayed the plants and birds and natives he had brought back. Nothing, so thought he and his sovereigns, remained but to take possession of the spices, gems, and gold described by Marco Polo.
Another expedition was planned. Instead of having to seek adventures and criminals to fit out a crew, he had but to choose among the gentlemen and nobles who contended for the privilege of accompanying him. A fleet of seventeen ships and fifteen hundred men was fitted out. With this Columbus sailed away from Cadiz, September 25, 1493. The good fortune for which he had had to wait so many weary years did not long abide with him, and ere this voyage was over it had taken its flight. The colony established on Haiti had by cruelty provoked the Indians and had been destroyed. On this second voyage new islands were discovered,—Jamaica, Porto Rico, and others,—a second colony was established, and one exploring expedition after another was sent out in search of gold, of which small quantities were found. The turbulent, disappointed adventurers quarreled with Columbus, and his enemies at home were active against him. He landed at Cadiz, June 11, 1496, and laid his case before his sovereigns.
He was restored to royal favor, but it was two years before he could get another expedition fitted out, and then, May 30, 1498, only six vessels set sail. This time Columbus followed a southernly course and reached the mainland of South America, which was visited about this time by Amerigo Vespucci, a Florentine, who wrote an account of his voyage. Later, a German geographer spoke of it as “Americi terra,” land discovered by Americus, and so the land came to be called America.
Columbus at first thought that he had reached another island; afterwards he decided that this was the coast of Asia and that the Orinoco was a river in the Garden of Eden. Making his way to the Indies, Columbus found the colony at Santo Domingo in disorder but unwilling to submit to his authority. Each side appealed to Spain, and Bobadilla was sent out to investigate and settle the matter. He listened to but one side—that against Columbus. With harshness uncalled-for, had he been guilty of the charges brought against him, Columbus was sent to Spain, a prisoner, and in chains. The officers of the ship would have removed his fetters, but he proudly forbade, saying that they had been put upon him by the agent of the king and queen and so by their authority.
“I will wear them until my sovereigns order them to be taken off, and I will preserve them afterwards as relics and memorials of the reward of my services,” he said.
This he did. His son Fernando “saw them always hanging in his cabinet, and he requested that when he died they might be buried with him.” The sight, the thought, of the great admiral brought in chains from the lands he had discovered turned all hearts to him with indignant pity. The queen, it is said, was moved to tears. Rewards and satisfaction were promised Columbus, and Bobadilla was deposed.
Another voyage Columbus was to make,—his fourth and last,—in search of a strait or passage by which he might reach Portuguese Asia. On May 9, 1502, he set sail with four ships and one hundred and fifty men. It was a voyage of “horror, peril, sickness, and starvation.” Columbus sailed along the Gulf of Mexico, coming pitifully near lands as rich in gold as the eastern ones which he sought. He missed them and found only savage tribes with a few rings and chains of gold. The story of these months is a sad one of famine, hardship, disease, tempest, mutiny, and quarrels with the natives. It was told in after years by Columbus’s brave young son Fernando, who accompanied him on this voyage. At last the admiral turned homeward and reached Seville in the autumn of 1504. While he lay ill, soon after his return, he received the sad news of the death of his good friend, Queen Isabella.
In vain during the months and years which followed did the admiral strive to win justice from the king. Old and worn out, he had, as he said, “no place to repair to except an inn, and often with nothing to pay for sustenance.” He died, May 20, 1506, thinking to the last that the land which he had discovered was a part of the Old World. The voyages of the great admiral did not end with his life. His body was moved from one tomb to another in Spain, then was carried to the Cathedral in Santo Domingo and, in 1796, to the Cathedral of Havana.
Seven years after his death, king Ferdinand erected in his honor a marble tomb, bearing this inscription, “To Castile and Leon Colon gave a new world.” But the New World slipped from the grasp of the Spaniards, unable to hold the rich prize. Other nations of Europe claimed and sought to share it, but the brave and hardy English overcame one after another of their rivals and established here the colonies which grew into our mighty commonwealth. The land which Columbus discovered is a nation richer and greater than the Cathay of which he dreamed.
Ferdinand De Soto
The Discoverer of the Mississippi River
In Spain and all Europe, men were willing and eager to cross the western ocean to learn more about the lands Columbus had found. The early discoverers and explorers thought that these West Indian islands were the East Indies, off the coast of Asia. They wished to reach the mainland and get the gold, gems, spices, and silks which Polo had told them were to be found there. Wealth, even beyond their dreams, the Spaniards found. Seeking Cathay, they reached Mexico and Peru, rich in mines of gold and silver. Our famous American historian Prescott, tells the story of the conquest of Mexico by the Spaniards under Cortez and the conquest of Peru by the Spaniards under Pizarro. Like a fairy tale is the history of how a handful of men entered the unknown lands and made themselves masters of their wonderful treasures. It is a sad story too, of the greed and cruelty of the conquering white men, of the suffering and ruin of the gentle natives.
Some of the Spaniards, turning a little to the north, reached land on Easter Sunday which they call Pascua Florida, flowery Easter. In honor of the day the Spaniards gave to this land of flowers the name Florida, which was applied to all the country north of Mexico. All the flowers of that fair land, were not so charming to Spanish eyes as one ounce of gold, and for this they roamed the country far and wide. It was not gold, however, which Ponce de Leon sought. His hair was turning white and he listened with eager credulity to tales of a fountain whose waters would give perpetual youth. Landing on the coast of Florida in 1513, he wandered hither and thither in a vain search for this longed-for fountain. Instead of finding it, he received his death wound in a fight with Indians.
A few years later, Narvaez was made governor of Florida, and he came with a force of three hundred men to conquer it. His troops made their way through trackless swamps and forests and among hostile Indian tribes, across the peninsula to the Gulf. Here they constructed rude vessels in which to go to Cuba or Mexico. Through shipwreck, starvation, and disease, the four hundred were reduced to four men who after nine years of hardships and wanderings reached a Spanish settlement in Mexico. There one of them, De Vaca, met and talked with a young Spanish captain, Ferdinand De Soto.
Ferdinand, or Hernando, De Soto belonged to a Spanish family that was both poor and noble. As a youth, he attracted the attention of a gentleman of wealth who took charge of him and educated him. It was not, however, the patron’s wish that De Soto should marry his daughter; when he found that this was the young folks’ plan, in order to separate them he took De Soto on an expedition to the Isthmus of Darien. There De Soto distinguished himself by his courage and his daring coolness.
In 1528 he left the service of his patron and went on a journey of exploration, in search of the passage supposed to connect the ocean west of Spain with that east of Asia. Columbus, Cortez, and others had searched for this water-way which, as you and I know, does not exist. De Soto explored more than seven hundred miles of the coast of Guatemala and Yucatan. As he found no passage between the two oceans, he decided that there was none and gave up the search.
In 1532, De Soto with a band of horsemen joined Francisco Pizarro, the leader of the army which invaded and conquered Peru. He was nominally under the command of Pizarro but was really the master of his brave band of three hundred volunteer horsemen. Some historians say that the brave De Soto did more to secure victory than did the cruel Pizarro. At all events, the higher glory belongs to the young cavalry-man; he displayed more humanity in his dealings with the natives than any other Spanish leader and he endeavored to prevent the murder of the captive Inca, or emperor, of Peru.
The wealth wrested from the conquered Peruvians enriched the Spanish invaders. De Soto, who had landed in America with “nothing else of his own save his sword and shield” became master of a fortune of “an hundred and four score thousand ducats.” He returned to Spain and married Isabella, his patron’s daughter, from whom he had been separated about fifteen years. But he was not content to rest at home. The age’s spirit of adventure and love of wandering was in his veins. Remembering De Vaca’s tales about Florida, he persuaded the emperor Charles V. to appoint him governor of Cuba and to grant him the region of Florida to explore and conquer at his own expense. Adventurers flocked to join him, hoping that in the unexplored land of Florida they would find treasures to equal or surpass those of Mexico and Peru.
De Soto’s wife went with him as far as Cuba, and there he bade her farewell—a final farewell, as events proved—and in May, 1539, he set sail with five vessels for Florida. He landed at Tampa Bay on the west coast. From the first he encountered hardship and opposition. Florida was occupied by Indian tribes naturally fiercer and more warlike than the Mexicans and Peruvians; they had met with cruelty and outrage, the outrage and cruelty of the Spaniards under De Leon and Narvaez. Almost everywhere De Soto found ready-made foes, expert with war club and bow and arrow. For nearly four years he and his men wandered from place to place, through morasses and forests, seeking gold and treasure but finding them not. Disappointed in his search he grew bitter and merciless. “He was much given to the sport of slaying Indians,” says one old historian.
The exact route that De Soto followed is in many places hard to determine. He wandered through Florida and Georgia, probably into South Carolina and Tennessee, and perhaps as far as North Carolina,—then he turned southward and approached Mobile Bay. On this southward march was carried the Indian chief Tuscaloosa. At Mauvila, or Mabila, near Mobile Bay, a desperate battle took place in October, 1540, between Tuscaloosa’s warriors and the Spaniards. The Spaniards bought victory with the loss of eighty men and forty horses, which could ill be spared. They lost not only forces but hope.
From that time De Soto’s wanderings seem to have been animated by a dogged resolution not to return without honor and treasure. He learned that his men planned, as soon as they reached the Bay of Pensacola, then less than a hundred miles away, to give up the expedition. Swiftly he resolved that they should not reach Pensacola. Instead of going toward the coast and the ships containing supplies, he set his face to the wilderness and marched northward. “He determined to send no news of himself until he should have discovered a rich country,” says an old annalist.
“He was an inflexible man and dry of word,” wrote one who knew him, “who, although he liked to know what the others all thought and had to say, after he once said a thing he did not like to be opposed; and as he ever acted as he thought best, all bent to his will.... There was none who would say a thing to him after it became known that he had made up his mind.”
Traveling to the northwest, in May, 1541, he reached “a deep and very furious” river, so wide that “a man standing on the farther shore could not be told whether he was a man or not.” This was the Mississippi, the Father of Waters. The Spaniards made boats and crossed the river and continued their wanderings on the other side, going northward nearly to the Missouri River. Month after month they sought gold; at last they turned southward from the vain search. On the homeward journey, De Soto was taken ill. He faced death as fearlessly as he had met every foe before. He bade farewell to his men, thanked them for their loyalty and faith to him, and advised them as to the choice of a leader to take his place.
The Spaniards did not wish the Indians, to whom they had represented themselves as immortal, to know that death had overtaken their great captain. Therefore, in the dead of night they sunk his body in the Father of Waters, near the junction of the Mississippi and Red Rivers. After wandering about for several months, they constructed frail vessels and trusted themselves to the stream. They reached the mouth of the river and made their way along the coast until the remnant left by disease and warfare arrived at a Spanish settlement in Mexico.
John Cabot
The Discoverer of the Continent of North America
By virtue of the discovery of Columbus, Spain claimed all the land beyond the western ocean. The other countries of Europe, however, refused to recognize its claim to any land except that actually discovered, explored, and possessed. Kings, nations, private individuals even, sent out expeditions to discover and settle lands in the New World, hoping to find treasure and to reach Cathay and Cipango. We are particularly interested in John Cabot, whose discoveries gave England its first claim to the New World.
John Cabot was not, like Columbus, a writer as well as a discoverer; we know little about his life, and the accounts of his discoveries are meager and contradictory. Cabot was born about 1450, so he was a few years younger than Columbus. Like him, he was by birth a native of Genoa. Cabot, however, moved to Venice and became an adopted son of that City of the Sea. He was a good navigator and went East on trading ventures. Having an inquiring turn of mind, when he bought cargoes of spices he tried to learn something about the countries from which they came.
Like most master-navigators of the time, Cabot was a maker of maps and charts. He also believed that the world is round; he thought that Cathay and Cipango and “the spice lands” could be reached by sailing west. He tried in vain to secure the aid of Portugal or of Spain in fitting out an expedition to undertake the westward voyage. Columbus was one of many who were beginning to believe that the world was a sphere; he was bolder and more persistent than most of them, and had the good fortune to prove the truth of his theory.
About 1490 Cabot went to England “to follow the trade of merchandises” and to seek aid in his exploring projects. In 1496 he secured the countenance of Henry VII. of England, who granted John Cabot and his sons, Sebastian, Lewis, and Sanctius permission “for the discovery of new and unknown lands,” “upon their own proper cost and charges.” In return for his countenance the king was to receive one-fifth of all profits. Much uncertainty surrounds Cabot’s first voyage. It is now thought that his son Sebastian did not accompany him, as was long believed to be the case. Some say that Cabot had two ships, some say he had five, but an Italian acquaintance writing at the time says that he made his discovery with only “one little ship of Bristol and eighteen men.”
Cabot set sail from Bristol in May and returned in August. He sailed northwest, and it is supposed that the land which he reached was Labrador. From the time the Norsemen left “Vinland the Good,” Cabot was the first European to touch the mainland of North America. He sailed some distance along the coast of what he thought was “the land of the great Khan.” He saw no inhabitants, but observed that the sea swarmed with fish, and on his return he suggested that England should send fishermen thither instead of depending on the fisheries of Iceland. He noted, too, that “the tides are slack and do not flow as they do here,” that is, in England.
A few days after Cabot’s return, a Venetian who was in England wrote his family an account of the voyage. “His name is Zuan Cabot,” he said, “and he is styled the great Admiral. Vast honor is paid to him; he dresses in silk and the English run after him like mad people.” The Venetian went on to say that Cabot “planted on his New-found land” the flags of England and Venice.
The king was so pleased with Cabot’s first voyage of discovery that it was promised he should have fitted out for a second voyage a fleet of ten ships and to man it he was to have “all prisoners except traitors.” Some merchants of Bristol aided in fitting out the expedition. With these ten ships, Cabot wished to go on westward to the east, hoping to reach Cipango, “where he thinks all the spices of the world and also all the precious stones originate.”
From the time that this second expedition was planned we lose sight of John Cabot. Whether he returned safe or died on the voyage, we do not know. The English did not then attach enough importance to the western world to make records of Cabot’s voyages. They were disappointed at not finding gold and gems nor a direct passage to the East. To England in the early sixteenth century the new-found land was valuable only as a “cod fish coast.”
Sebastian Cabot, the son of the “great Admiral,” was, like his father, a chart-maker and navigator. He is said to have accompanied his father on one or both of his voyages, but there is no proof that he went on either.
The great object of Sebastian Cabot’s ambition was the discovery of a direct route to Asia. He undertook, under authority of the king of Spain, a westward expedition to reach the Pacific. On this voyage he discovered a great river which he named La Plata. Afterwards he returned to England and received from Edward VI. a pension for his services as Great Pilot. In 1553, he took part in the expedition to find a northeast passage to Asia; later, in search of a northwest passage, he sailed along the coast of America as far south, it is said, as Chesapeake Bay.
Sir Francis Drake
A Famous English Adventurer
The first expeditions which came to the New World were bent on discovery, exploration, conquest, and plunder. It was many years before any attempts at settlement were made. The Spaniards, as you know, kept a southernly course and reached the West Indies and the adjacent coasts of North and South America. They reached Mexico and Peru, and made themselves masters of silver, gold, and other treasures.
It never occurred to them that the natives had any rights to be regarded. The only right that they recognized was that of the strongest. Against their war horses and coats of mail and firearms, what were the reed spears and arrows of the natives? The Indians fell before the Spaniards like grain before the scythe.
To the conquered natives, life was a worse fate than death. With brutal cruelty they were driven to labor in the mines for their taskmasters. Ship after ship crossed the ocean, bearing to Spain the treasures taken from these mines, or stolen from the homes and temples of the living and the tombs of the dead.
But the Spaniards were not suffered to possess nor convey in peace their ill-gotten gains. The other nations of Europe took advantage of every pretext to spoil the spoiler. England was foremost in these attacks on Spain. The two countries were not at open war, but they were on unfriendly terms. The expeditions against Spain were undertaken by bold seamen who took as much delight in the damage inflicted on Spain as in the booty gained. They were not openly authorized by the English queen, but it was understood that they would be overlooked and that Elizabeth was not averse to receiving a share of the booty.
Among the freebooters most feared and hated by the Spaniards was Sir Francis Drake. This famous English seamen was born about 1540, in Devonshire, England. He was one of the twelve sons of a poor naval chaplain, and it is said that he was educated at the expense of Sir John Hawkins, a famous naval officer who was his kinsman. At the age of eighteen, Drake had become master of a ship that traded between England and France and Holland. This vessel he sold, “the narrow seas not being large enough for his aspiring mind,” and invested all his savings in Hawkins’s expedition to Mexico. This fleet was defeated by the Spaniards, and Drake, who behaved gallantly in action, lost his all. He “vowed the Spaniards should pay him with interest,” and shortly afterwards he made good his word.
In 1572 with three small ships, he attacked and plundered several Spanish settlements on the Isthmus of Panama and brought away as much silver, gold, and jewels, as he could carry. During this expedition, accompanied by eighteen Englishmen and thirty Indians, he made a journey across the Isthmus. From the top of a tree, he beheld the waters of the Pacific, and expressed his resolve to “sail once in an English ship on that sea.” After his return to England, he served four years in Ireland, but he did not forget either the western ocean or his resolve. Secretly encouraged by Queen Elizabeth, he undertook an expedition “to discomfort the Spanish as far as possible.”
A few days before Christmas in 1577, he set sail from Plymouth, intending to pass through the Straits of Magellan and make the circuit of the globe. Drake’s fleet consisted of five small vessels and a crew of a hundred and sixty-six men. In the end, two of these vessels were left on the coast of Brazil. As Drake passed the western coast of America he stopped to attack the Spanish settlements. We are told that his men “being weary, contented themselves with as many bars and wedges of gold as they could carry, burying above fifteen tons of silver in the sand and under old trees.”
In August, 1578, Drake entered the Straits of Magellan. Adverse currents and storms separated the three vessels and only the Golden Hind, originally called the Pelican, passed through to continue the course. Along the coasts of Chili and Peru the Englishmen sailed, plundering till they were weary of spoils. From one ship they got “a prodigious quantity of gold, silver, and jewels,”—“thirteen chests of coin, eighty pounds of gold, twenty-six tons of silver, besides jewels and plate.” The writers of the time who give an exact list of the captured treasures passed lightly over the natural objects and wonders of the New World. “They saw many strange birds, beasts, fishes, fruits, trees, and plants too tedious to mention,” says one.
Drake coasted along the western shore of America, trying to discover a passage to the Atlantic. He landed and claimed the country, which he called New Albion, for Queen Elizabeth and England. Turning from the severe cold of the northern seas, he sailed across the Pacific and the Indian Ocean, stopping at Java and other islands. Resuming his voyage, he doubled the Cape of Good Hope, and sailed along the coast of Africa.
In November, 1579, he re-entered the harbor of Plymouth, having made the circuit of the globe in two years and ten months. He was the first commander to take his ship around the world; Magellan, who had undertaken the same voyage, died on the route. Drake, “the master thief of the unknown world,” at once became a popular hero. He presented to the queen “great stores of silver, gold, and gems,” and received from her the honor of knighthood.
A few years later, war was openly declared between England and Spain. Drake was sent with a fleet to attack the Spanish colonies in America; he captured and plundered several settlements in the West Indies and in Florida, and burned the fort of St. Augustine. Sailing on north to Sir Walter Raleigh’s colony at Roanoke, he brought away the disheartened colonists. It is said that he carried back to England the potato and the tobacco, two plants contributed by the New World to the Old.
Drake reached England in 1586, and the next year he led a fleet to inflict injury on the great Spanish fleet, proudly called the Invincible Armada, which was being collected to invade England. He entered the harbor of Cadiz and burned about a hundred ships. This he called “singeing the beard of the king of Spain.” The Armada, delayed for a year by this mischance, was refitted and sailed to attack England. It is said that when the news of its approach was brought to Plymouth the commanders of the English fleet were playing bowls. Drake, who served as vice-admiral under Lord Howard, insisted on finishing the game, saying, “There is plenty of time to win the game and thrash the Spaniards, too!” The great Armada was defeated by the brave little English fleet, aided by tempests and contrary winds.
In 1589 Drake made an expedition to Portugal and a few years later he and Sir John Hawkins were sent with a fleet to attack the West Indies. He and his old commander could not agree on the plan of action, and their expedition was unsuccessful. Hawkins died at Porto Rico. A few weeks later, Drake died, “his death being supposed to be hastened by his unsuccessfulness in his voyage; his great spirit always accustomed to victory and success, not being able to bear the least check of fortune.”
Sir Walter Raleigh
The Father of American Colonization
You are not to suppose that the English claimed nothing of the New World except what they could plunder from Spain. They were, on the whole, willing to respect the rights of Spain to the West Indies and to the adjacent parts of the continent which Spaniards had discovered and settled.
More and more the English thought that it would be a good thing to have colonies in the New World to hold the land which they claimed by virtue of Cabot’s discoveries. Reasons for “western planting,” or establishing colonies in America, were given by Hakluyt, an Englishman of the sixteenth century. Among its advantages, he said, were these,—(1) the soil yields products needed for England, (2) the passage was so easy “it may be made twice in the year,” (3) “this enterprise may stay the Spanish king from flowing over all the face of that waste firm of America,” (4) it may enlarge the glory of God and “provide safe and sure place” for religious refugees, (5) poor men and those of evil life may there begin anew, (6) wandering beggars “may there be unladen.”
SIR WALTER RALEIGH
The “Father of American Colonization” was an English gentleman, a soldier, courtier, and author, Sir Walter Raleigh. He was born in 1552 in Devonshire, a fair coastland, the home of Drake and many other bold seamen. In Raleigh’s home were several children, an own brother and three half-brothers, the children of his mother by a former marriage. One of these half-brothers, thirteen years his senior, was Humphrey Gilbert who grew to be a brave and enterprising gentleman.
Walter Raleigh seems to have had little schooling in his youth. He chose war as his profession and spent several years fighting in France and the Netherlands. Meanwhile his half-brother, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, obtained from Queen Elizabeth a grant of land for “planting and inhabiting certain northern parts of America which extended beyond the twenty-fifth degree of north latitude.” Raleigh returned to England and sailed with Gilbert in 1579 to Newfoundland; storms and perhaps an encounter with the Spanish forced them to return without landing.
Raleigh spent two years in Ireland, fighting to suppress the risings there, then returned to England and became a favorite at court. There is a pretty story of the way in which he was first brought to Queen Elizabeth’s notice and favor. It is said that one day the queen was walking with her attendants along the London streets, then rough and unpaved. She came to a mudhole, and hesitated for fear of soiling her shoes. Among the bystanders was Raleigh, a handsome, graceful, gentleman-soldier. He took off his new velvet mantle and spread it upon the ground so that the queen might pass dry-shod.
However he first won the queen’s notice, he had by 1583 become such a favorite that she was not willing for him to join Sir Humphrey Gilbert on a second expedition to Newfoundland. He contributed a large share of the expenses of this expedition, which was even more ill-fated than the former one. Sir Humphrey, it is true, reached Newfoundland and took possession of it, but on the return voyage the fleet was overtaken by storm, and two vessels, in one of which was Sir Humphrey, were lost.
These disasters did not destroy Sir Walter’s interest in discoveries. He got the queen to transfer to him the grant made to his half-brother, giving him for six years the privilege of sending out expeditions “to discover such remote barbarous lands as were not actually possessed by any Christian people,” and to take possession of them in the name of the queen.
Several expeditions were sent out under this grant, or patent, as it was called. The first, in 1584, consisted of two vessels under Captains Philip Amidas and Arthur Barlow. They reached the coast of North Carolina and cast anchor on the island of Roanoke, which they claimed in the queen’s name and for Sir Walter’s use. The name Virginia was given to this land in honor of Elizabeth, the virgin queen. No settlement was made at that time but the next year seven vessels under Sir Richard Grenville were sent out with about a hundred colonists. They entered Chesapeake Bay and James River and explored the country. Homesickness and hardships discouraged these colonists, and when Sir Francis Drake came to the settlement, after his expedition against the Spaniards in the West Indies, they embarked with him and returned to England. A few days after their departure, reinforcements and supplies sent by Raleigh reached the deserted colony.
About this time tobacco, introduced into England by Lane, Hawkins, or Drake, was brought into use by Sir Walter Raleigh. Tytler says, “There is a well-known tradition that Sir Walter first began to smoke it privately in his study, and his servant coming in as he was intent upon his book, seeing the smoke issuing from his mouth, threw all the liquor in his face by way of extinguishing the fire; and running down stairs alarmed the family with piercing cries that his master, before they could get up, would be burnt to ashes.”
In 1587 another colony of two hundred and fifty men under John White was sent by Sir Walter Raleigh. That summer a child was born to Eleanor Dare, John White’s daughter; this girl, the first English child born in America, received the name of Virginia Dare.
Fears of the Spanish invasion which threatened England kept Sir Walter for several years from sending aid to the colony. When at last ships reached Roanoke Island the colonists and all signs of them had disappeared; on a tree was found carved the word “Croatoan,” but what this meant no one ever knew.
Raleigh now gave up his patent to a company in London, from which he was to receive one-fifth of gold and silver found in the lands discovered. He gave up his colonizing plans in order to fight the Spaniards. The queen, however, would not consent to his going, as he wished, on the English expedition to seize the Spanish treasure-fleet. His place was taken by Sir Richard Grenville, the story of whose gallant death is told in Lord Tennyson’s ballad, “The Revenge.”
Later, Raleigh sent out an expedition to the interior of South America; he believed that in Guiana was situated El Dorado, a fabled land of gold and treasure. He himself on a later voyage went four hundred miles up the Orinoco River and brought back some gold and the first mahogany wood seen in England. He wrote an account of his “Discovery of the Large, Rich, and Beautiful Empire of Guiana.”
In 1603 James I. succeeded Elizabeth on the English throne, and from that time Raleigh was in disfavor. He was accused of treason; on the unproved charge he was condemned to death and was kept in prison about thirteen years with the sentence hanging over him. During this time he devoted himself to study and wrote his noble “History of the World.”
He was released in 1616 to lead an expedition to the Orinoco. There he had a skirmish with the Spaniards and brought back no treasure to appease the king for this attack on the enemy with which James was trying to keep on friendly terms. The old charge of treason was revived, and Sir Walter was beheaded in 1618, really as a sacrifice to gain the good will of Spain. “We have not such another head to be cut off,” said a bystander at the execution.