“We never were very rich,” said Conchita, “although our vineyards and olive orchards formerly brought in a good deal more than they do now, so it was not our money that made my family popular here. No, it is what my ancestor did for Spain that is never forgotten. You see he lived here all his life, while Columbus was only a foreign visitor, who came to find ships and went away again. It is no wonder that the people remember my ancestor better than him.”
The intense pride of my little friend in her family history shone through every word she spoke. She expressed it more openly, perhaps, than an English girl would have done in her place, but I am bound to say I cordially sympathised with her. I am proud enough of my own ancestors, whose deeds made but the faintest mark on the history of their time. If they had helped to discover America there would have been no holding me!
Palos, the once famous port about half-way between La Rabida and Moguer, now lies high and dry, with a strip of pasturage between the village and the estuary. Even the little caravels of 1483 could now not anchor anywhere near the ruined castle, and the whole place seems to sleep away the days, resting on its fame in the past.
“The castle belonged to my ancestor,” said Conchita, pointing out a ruined wall on a slight eminence behind the little church. “There was only a tower left when Columbus came, and my ancestor’s residence was at Moguer. But the Pinzóns kept their vessels here, and it was here that Columbus came to look for Martin Alonso and talk to him about the voyage he wanted to make. He had made Martin Alonso’s acquaintance in Rome, where they were both studying navigation. You know it was a favourite study in those days with rich men who loved the sea. How ridiculous it is to say that Columbus came here by chance! You see what an out-of-the-way place it is. And if he had wanted to get to Huelva to visit his brother-in-law, as Washington Irving says, he would have been a fool to go to La Rabida, to which there is no road at all except this, while Huelva was on the main road. It says in our family papers that Columbus came to look for his friend Martin Alonso Pinzón and discuss with him plans for the voyage, and Martin Alonso went with him to La Rabida. The story of his asking for food and drink at La Rabida is silly. As if my ancestor would have let him leave his house without giving him and his child a good dinner! It makes me angry to see that absurd picture at La Rabida of the porter giving bread and water to his little boy. It is quite modern and not at all well painted, I am glad to say!”
We had climbed up to investigate the ruined wall, melancholy relic of the strong fortress that gave Palos its importance as a frontier town (de la frontera) during the civil war between Moslems and Mozarabs in the ninth century, when all this district was in the hands of descendants of King Witiza, the last legitimate monarch of the Goths, whom for twenty-five years the Sultans of Cordova sought in vain to dislodge. From this eminence I could see that, before it silted up, the little harbour of Palos would have been a safe and convenient shelter from the west winds sweeping up the broad estuary.
“Two of the ships belonged to the Pinzóns,” said Conchita, “but the family were out of favour with the Catholic Kings—we have never found out why—and they could not lend them to Columbus without asking leave of the Queen, who had put an embargo on them by way of punishment for some unknown offence. When Columbus and my ancestor had well talked over the proposed adventure, they went to La Rabida to ask the Prior, Juan Perez de Marchena, to use his influence with Isabella to remove the embargo, so that Martin Alonso and his brothers might lend Columbus their ships. The Pinzóns could not go to the Court themselves, because they were in disgrace. I wish we knew why. The family papers tell us nothing, and there is only a vague tradition that it was something to do with religion. I cannot imagine what it could be, for the Pinzóns have always been good Catholics, and they had not long before restored or rebuilt part of this church, which as you see is very old indeed.”
While we talked we were sitting on a bench in the little church of St. George. On our left was the wrought-iron pulpit whence the call for volunteers was read; on the right was the ancient image of the Virgin which local tradition claims as the one which Columbus took with him on board the Santa Maria.
It is by no means improbable that local tradition is correct, for the image is mediæval, and as such would have been the object of special adoration by the people of Palos then as now. Thus Martin Alonso Pinzón, the lord of Palos, could do no greater honour to his friend Columbus, and find no surer way to calm the fears of the families of their crews, than by taking this venerated image as the patroness of the expedition. The ships were bound to come safe home again, the people of Palos would say, having their beloved Virgin on board.
Traditions about the patron image of a town do not grow up spontaneously, although as the centuries go by the original story becomes adorned and overlaid with the additions made to it by one generation after another. Without some foundation in fact, it is most unlikely that the statement that this was the image in question should have been made and accepted, and thenceforth handed on as a tradition by the people of Palos. Little was seen of Columbus at Palos after his return from his first voyage. The Pinzóns attribute this to the early death of Martin Alonso, said by historians to be due to his disappointment that Columbus should have obtained more honour and rewards than himself after his “base desertion” of the Admiral at Cuba. The family naturally ignore, if indeed they are not now ignorant of, all that was alleged against their ancestor in the lawsuit of Diego Colon. For them Martin Alonso’s death was brought about by the hardships he suffered and the illness he contracted when through stress of weather his ship was separated from that of Columbus, whom he never saw again until both the great navigators returned to Palos, one in the morning and the other in the evening of 15th March 1493, seven months and a half after they had left the little port together. Be this as it may, it must be admitted that Pinzón and his brothers played an important part in the discovery of the New World, and that it was their great misfortune to be under a cloud at Court when favours and rewards were being showered upon the man whom they had so materially aided at the outset.
Perhaps if I had visited Palos with a descendant of Columbus instead of a daughter of the other house, the part played by Pinzón would assume smaller proportions in my retrospect of that far-off time. But as things were, I felt as if I had got the story from the very actors themselves, and I could no more doubt that this was indeed the patron image which watched over the adventurers from the chapel set up on the Santa Maria by her owner, Martin Alonso Pinzón, when he handed his ship over to Columbus as commander of the “fleet,” than I could doubt that Martin Alonso was more sinned against than sinning in the reports that were spread of his disappearance on the coast of Cuba.