Columbus begging at the Franciscan Convent.
[1484-1492]
The war for Granada ended, Santangel and others of his converts at court
secured Columbus an interview with Isabella, but his demands seeming to
her arrogant, he was dismissed. Nothing daunted, the hero had started
for France, there to plead as he had pleaded in Portugal and Spain
already, when to his joy a messenger overtook him with orders to come
once more before the queen.
Fuller thought and argument had convinced this eminent woman that the
experiment urged by Columbus ought to be tried and a contract was soon
concluded, by which, on condition that he should bear one-eighth the
expense of the expedition, the public chest of Castile was to furnish
the remainder. The story of the crown jewels having been pledged for
this purpose is now discredited. If such pledging occurred, it was
earlier, in prosecuting the war with the Moors. The whole sum needed for
the voyage was about fifty thousand dollars. Columbus was made admiral,
also viceroy of whatever lands should be discovered, and he was to have
ten per cent of all the revenues from such lands. For his contribution
to the outfit he was indebted to the Pinzons.
This arrangement was made in April or May, 1492, and on the third of the
next August, after the utmost difficulty in shipping crews for this sail
into the sea of darkness, Columbus put out from Palos with one hundred
and twenty men, on three ships. These were the Santa Maria, the Nina,
and the Pinta. The largest, the Santa Maria, was of not over one hundred
tons, having a deck-length of sixty-three feet, a keel of fifty-one
feet, a draft of ten feet six inches, and her mast-head sixty feet above
sea-level. She probably had four anchors, with hemp cables.
Embarkation of Christopher Columbus at Palos. From an old print.
From Palos they first bore southward to the Canary Islands, into the
track of the prevalent east winds, then headed west, for Cipango, as
Columbus supposed, but really toward the northern part of Florida. When
a little beyond what he regarded the longitude of Cipango, noticing the
flight of birds to the southwest, he was induced to follow these, which
accident made his landfall occur at Guanahani (San Salvador), in the
Bahamas, instead of the Florida coast.
Near midnight, between October 11th and 12th, Columbus, being on the
watch, descried a light ahead. About two o'clock on the morning of the
12th the lookout on the Pinta distinctly saw land through the moonlight.
When it was day they went on shore. The 12th of October, 1492,
therefore, was the date on which for the first time, so far as history
attests with assurance, a European foot pressed the soil of this
continent. Adding nine days to this to translate it into New Style, we
have October 21st as the day answering to that on which Columbus first
became sure that his long toil and watching had not been in vain.
[1493-1500]
The admiral having failed to note its latitude and longitude, it is not
known which of the Bahamas was the San Salvador of Columbus, whether
Grand Turk Island, Cat (the present San Salvador), Watling, Mariguana,
Acklin, or Samana, though the last named well corresponds with his
description. Mr. Justin Winsor, however, and with him a majority of the
latest critics, believes that Watling's Island was the place. Before
returning to Spain, Columbus discovered Cuba, and also Hayti or
Espagnola (Hispaniola), on the latter of which islands he built a fort.
In a second voyage, from Cadiz, 1493-1496, the great explorer discovered
the Lesser Antilles and Jamaica. In a third, 1498-1500, he came upon
Trinidad and the mainland of South America, at the mouth of the Orinoco.
This was later by thirteen months and a week than the Cabots' landfall
at Labrador or Nova Scotia, though a year before Amerigo Vespucci saw
the coast of Brazil. It was during this third absence that Columbus,
hated as an Italian and for his undeniable greed, was superseded by
Bobadilla, who sent him and his brother home in chains. Soon free again,
he sets off in 1502 upon a fourth cruise, in which he reaches the coast
of Honduras.
To the day of his death, however, the discoverer of America never
suspected that he had brought to light a new continent. Even during this
his last expedition he maintained that the coast he had touched was that
of Mangi, contiguous to Cathay, and that nineteen days of travel
overland would have taken him to the Ganges. He arrived in Spain on
September 12, 1504, and died at Segovia on May 20th of the next year.
His bones are believed to rest in the cathedral at Santo Domingo,
transported thither in 1541, the Columbus-remains till recently at
Havana being those of his son Diego. The latter, under the belief that
they were the father's, were transferred to Genoa in 1887, and deposited
there on July 2d of that year with the utmost ecclesiastical pomp.
[1500-1507]
As Columbus was ignorant of having found a new continent, so was he
denied the honor of giving it a name, this falling by accident, design,
or carelessness of truth, to Amerigo Vespucci, a native of Florence,
whose active years were spent in Spain and Portugal. Vespucci made three
voyages into the western seas. In the second, 1501, he visited the coast
of Brazil, and pushed farther south than any navigator had yet done,
probably so far as the island of South Georgia, in latitude 54 degrees.
His account of this voyage found its way into print in 1504, at
Augsburg, Germany, the first published narrative of any discovery of the
mainland. Although, as above noted, it was not the earliest discovery of
the main, it was widely regarded such, and caused Vespucci to be named
for many years as the peer, if not the superior of Columbus. The
publication ran through many editions. That of Strassburg, 1505,
mentioned Vespucci on its title-page as having discovered a new
"Southern Land." This is the earliest known utterance hinting at the
continental nature of the new discovery, as separate from Asia, an idea
which grew into a conviction only after Magellan's voyage, described in
the next chapter. In 1507 appeared at St. Die, near Strassburg, a
four-page pamphlet by one Lud, secretary to the Duke of Lorraine,
describing Vespucci's voyages and speaking of the Indians as the
"American race." This pamphlet came out the same year in another form,
as part of a book entitled "Introduction to Cosmography," prepared by
Martin Waldseemuller, under the nom de plume of "Hylacomylus." In this
book the new "part of the world" is distinctly called "THE LAND OF
AMERICUS, OR AMERICA," There is some evidence that Vespucci at least
connived at the misapprehension which brought him his renown--as
undeserved as it has become permanent--but this cannot be regarded as
proved.
Amerigo Vespucci. Fac-simile of an old print.
CHAPTER II.
EARLY SPANISH AMERICA
[1498]
As we have seen, Spain by no means deserves the entire credit of
bringing the western continent to men's knowledge. Columbus himself was
an Italian. So was Marco Polo, his inspirer, and also Toscanelli, his
instructor, by whose chart he sailed his ever-memorable voyage. To
Portugal as well Columbus was much indebted, despite his rebuff there.
Portugal then led the world in the art of navigation and in enthusiasm
for discovery. Nor, probably, would Columbus have asked her aid in vain,
had she not previously committed herself to the enterprise of reaching
India eastward, a purpose brilliantly fulfilled when, in 1498, Vasco da
Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope and sailed to Calicut, on the coast
of Malabar. Already before this Spain and Portugal were rivals in the
search for new lands, and Pope Alexander VI. had had to be appealed to,
to fix their fields. By his bull of May 3, 4, 1493, he ordained as the
separating line the meridian passing through a point one hundred leagues
west of the Azores, where Columbus had observed the needle of his
compass to point without deflection toward the north star. Portugal
objecting to this boundary as excluding her from the longitude of the
newly found Indies, by the treaty of Tordesillas, June 7, 1494, the two
powers, with the Pope's assent, moved the line two hundred and seventy
leagues still farther west. At this time neither party dreamed of the
complications destined subsequently to arise in reference to the
position of this meridian on the other side of the globe.
Vasco da Gama; From an old print.
The meridian of the Tordesillas convention had been supposed still to
give Spain all the American discoveries likely to be made, it being
ascertained only later that by it Portugal had obtained a considerable
part of the South American mainland Brazil, we know, was, till in 1822
it became independent, a Portuguese dependency. Spain, however, retained
both groups of the Antilles with the entire main about the Gulf of
Mexico, and became the earliest great principality in the western world.
[1506-1513]
Before the death of Columbus, Spain had taken firm possession of Cuba,
Porto Rico, and St. Domingo, and she stood ready to seize any of the
adjoining islands or lands so soon as gold, pearls, or aught else of
value should be found there. Cruises of discovery were made in every
direction, first, indeed, in Central and South America. In 1506 de Solis
sailed along the eastern coast of Yucatan. In 1513 the governor of a
colony on the Isthmus of Darien, Vasco Nunez de Balboa, from the top of
a lofty mountain on the isthmus, saw what is now called the Pacific
Ocean. He designated it the South Sea, a name which it habitually bore
till far into the eighteenth century. From this time the exploration and
settlement of the western coast, both up and down, went on with little
interruption, but this history, somewhat foreign to our theme, we cannot
detail.
Balboa discovering the Pacific Ocean.