written early in the fifteenth century. It seemed to receive confirmation from the tradition of islands lying out far in the Atlantic, and from drift-wood carried to European shores on the Gulf Stream, and was definitely asserted by Paolo Toscanelli, a Florentine astronomer, in a letter to a monk of Lisbon, dated June 25, 1474. By that time, however, the Portuguese had made a notable advance down the western shores of Africa, and finally the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope by Bartholomew Diaz in 1486, caused them to concentrate their efforts on the eastern route.
The idea thus abandoned by the Portuguese was now to be taken up by Christopher Columbus. To appreciate the exact position of this remarkable citizen of Genoa in the history of discovery, we must remember that he had no idea of discovering a new continent. To find a shorter way to the Indies was his sole aim. His views in this respect were not beyond his age. His knowledge was based on the authorities above mentioned; and he is marked out from his contemporaries only by his determination to sail due west until he should reach the continent of Asia.Columbus approaches various courts, and finally gains the support of Spain. With this intention, and furnished with the treatise of D’Ailly, a copy of Toscanelli’s letter, and a chart given him by the author, he first applied to the court of Lisbon, where he had already settled with his brother Bartholomew. But John II. of Portugal, intent on the circumnavigation of Africa, declined his offer, and, if we may believe some accounts,[28] his attempts to obtain assistance from Venice and Genoa were equally unsuccessful. He now, in 1484, turned to England, and to Spain.
His brother Bartholomew sailed for England, but unfortunately fell among pirates in the English Channel. Returning to Portugal, he accompanied Diaz on his expedition which reached the Cape, and though he subsequently sought the court of Henry VII., where he was well received, it was then too late: Christopher had already entered into negotiations with Ferdinand and Isabella. The affair was indeed long delayed. The Spanish Monarchs listened to his tempting scheme; but the financial strain of the war of Granada, then in progress, was severe, and the terms of Columbus were high. He demanded the hereditary office of royal admiral and viceroy in all the lands and islands he might discover, and the privileges enjoyed by the high admiral of Castile. One-tenth of all treasures—gold, or otherwise—was also to fall to his share. On the conquest of Granada, however, the contract was at last signed (April 1492), and, in the following August, Columbus left the roadstead of Palos on his memorable voyage, with three carracks, one hundred and twenty souls, and provisions for twelve months. He carried with him a letter from the Catholic sovereigns to the Khan of Cathay, and announced his intention, not only of opening the riches of the Indies to Spain, but of leading a new crusade against the infidel. The details of his voyage we must leave to others, and content ourselves with the briefest summary.
In his first expedition, after a sail of five weeks due west from the Canaries, he touched land at one of the islands of the Bahama group,His first expedition, 1492. and shortly after reached Crooked Island and Long Island. Understanding from the signs of the natives that gold was to be found to the south-west, he reached the shores of Cuba, and from thence the island of Hispaniola or Hayti. Here, on the night of Christmas Eve, his ship struck on the sands and became a wreck. Pinzon, one of his subordinates, had deserted him, hoping to be beforehand in announcing the news in Spain; and Columbus, leaving the crew of the wrecked Santa Maria in Hayti, returned to Spain in the Nina, his sole remaining ship.
In his second voyage, 1493, he discovered Jamaica, and some of the Antilles group. In his third voyage, he at last touched the continent, and explored the coast of Venezuela.His later voyages, 1493. This was in 1498, the same year in which Vasco da Gama, rounding the Cape, had reached India by the eastern route. In 1502, Columbus landed on the coast of Honduras. But although Columbus had thus discovered the continent of America, he had been really forestalled in this by his compatriot John Cabot, who started from Bristol in the pay of Henry VII., reached the coast of North America, near the mouth of the St. Lawrence, in 1497, and traced the coast possibly as far south as Cape Cod. Columbus therefore was not the first to touch the continent, and, moreover, to the day of his death believed that Cuba was part of the mainland of Asia, and that Hispaniola and the other islands he had found lay in the Asian Archipelago.
Meantime, his governorship of his colony in Hispaniola was so unsuccessful that he had been removed by the command of his royal masters in 1498.His failure as a Governor. Although Ferdinand and Isabella may be open to the charge of some ingratitude in their treatment of one who had done so much for the cause of Spain, Columbus had certainly shown himself incapable as a ruler, and it was out of the question that they should fulfil all the promises originally made to him. He had, indeed, been the unconscious instrument in the discovery of South America, but the determination he displayed in his first voyage forms his best title to fame, and the true importance of his discovery was left to be appreciated by his successors.
In 1500, Vincent Pinzon, one of the original companions of Columbus, sailing farther southwards reached Cape St. Agostino, at the northern extremity of the future Brazil, and explored the coast to the north-west between that point and Venezuela.Further discoveries. In the same year the Portuguese Cabral, on his way to the Cape, was driven to the westward and again reached Brazil, which was then claimed by Portugal, as falling within the limits of the line drawn by the Treaty of Tordesillas ([p. 86]). In the succeeding year, 1501, the country was more completely explored by Amerigo Vespucci. This Florentine, who was once in the employ of Spain, but had deserted to the service of Portugal, now traced the coast line down as far as Rio de Janeiro—a point far to the southward of any yet reached—and by a curious literary freak was destined to give his name to this New World. The ‘New World,’ however, was still supposed to be either a huge promontory of Asia, or a large island lying in the Atlantic. Five years later, Columbus died in Spain, in obscurity, and almost forgotten. After his death the discoveries continued apace.
In 1512, Ponce de Leon, a colonist of Hispaniola, discovered or explored Florida. Shortly after, the Gulf of Mexico was again entered, and the continuity between North and South America demonstrated. In 1513, Vasco Nuñez de Balboa crossed the Isthmus of Darien, and from the summit of the Cordilleras gazed on the waters of the Pacific. So strong, however, was the belief in the Columbian hypothesis, that this great ocean was still believed by many to be but an inland sea.[29]
The final explosion of this idea was probably due to the Portuguese advance in the East. During the early years of the sixteenth century they had gradually crept America discovered to be a new Continent by Magellan, 1519. round the shores of Asia. Fernan de Andrade explored part of the Asian Archipelago, and, in 1517, reached Canton. In some of these Portuguese expeditions Magellan had taken a part. It was the knowledge thus acquired of a great sea to the east of Asia which led him to conceive his great exploit of seeking a western approach through the newly discovered world of America to Asia. Piqued by the refusal of Emmanuel of Portugal to increase his pay, he entered the service of the young Charles V., and in September 1519, started on his notable voyage. After thirteen months’ sail, he discovered the Straits which are known by his name. It took him three months more to reach the Philippines. On the 27th of April, 1521, the intrepid seaman was unfortunately slain on one of the Ladrone islands in an attempt to aid a native Christian convert against his enemies, and eventually only one of his fleet of five ships returned to Spain (September, 1522). At last the globe had been circumnavigated; and though it took two centuries to work out the precise size of America and its relation to Asia, it had at least been proved to be a ‘New World’ in a sense hitherto never dreamt of. Meanwhile Mexico had been conquered by Cortes (1519–21), and in 1524 Pizarro began the conquest of Peru.
Some twenty days after the return of Columbus from his last voyage, the great Queen of Castile had passed away (November 26, 1504), in the fifty-fourth year of her age,Death of Isabella, Nov. 26, 1504. Her character. and the thirtieth of her reign. No queen of Spain, and few queens in Europe have ever enjoyed such a reputation. She represents in a striking way the virtues and weaknesses of her times. Of genuine and unaffected piety; affable, yet dignified; stern in the execution of her duty; gifted with rare fortitude, magnanimity, and disinterestedness, and with a true insight into the needs of her kingdom, she was admirable as a woman, and every inch a queen. The only blemish in her otherwise fine character is to be found in her persecuting spirit. The establishment of the Inquisition, the expulsion of the Jews, and subsequently the violation of the terms promised the Moors at the capitulation of Granada, these all met with her full approval. But in justice to Isabella it must be remembered that she shared this spirit of intolerance with the best men of the age, and that the time had not yet come when toleration was thought of, or perhaps was possible.