No event of moment happened until the 12th of February, a month afterwards, when a terrible storm burst over the hitherto tranquil waters. Its violence increased to such a degree that nothing remained but a desperate appeal to "Mary, the Mother of God." A quantity of dried peas, equal in number to the number of men on board the Nina, were placed in a sailor's woollen cap, one of them being marked with a cross. He who should draw this pea, was to go on a pilgrimage to the church of Saint Mary at Guadeloupe, bearing a candle weighing five pounds, in case the ship were saved. Columbus was the first to draw, and he drew the marked pea. Other vows of this sort were made, and, finally, one to go in procession, and with bare feet, to the nearest cathedral of whatever land they should first reach. The admiral, fearing that his discovery would perish with him, withdrew to his cabin, during the fiercest period of the tumult, and wrote upon parchment two separate and concise narratives of his discoveries. He enclosed them both in wax, and, placing one in an empty barrel, threw it into the sea. The other, similarly enclosed, he attached to the poop of the Nina, intending to cut it loose at the moment of going down. Happily, the storm subsided; and, on the 17th, the shattered vessels arrived at the southernmost island of the Azores, belonging to the King of Portugal. Here half the crew went in procession to the chapel, to discharge their vow; and, while Columbus was waiting to go with the other half, the Portuguese made a sally, surrounded the first portion, and made them prisoners. After a useless protest, Columbus departed with the men that remained, having with him, in the Nina, but three able-bodied seamen. Another storm now threw him upon the coast of Portugal, at the mouth of the Tagus. Here he narrowly escaped shipwreck a second time, but, with the assistance of the wonder-stricken inhabitants, reached in safety the roads of Rostello. The king, though jealous of the maritime renown he was acquiring for Spain, received him with distinction and dismissed him with presents. Columbus arrived, in the Nina, at Palos on Friday, the 15th of March, seven months and twelve days after his departure. Alonzo Pinzon had already arrived in the Pinta, and, believing Columbus to have perished in the storm, had written to the court, narrating the discoveries made by the fleet, and claiming for himself the merit and the recompense.
RECEPTION OF COLUMBUS BY FERDINAND AND ISABELLA.
It is not our province to relate the history of the career of Columbus upon land, nor have we space so to do. We can only briefly allude to his discharge, by pilgrimages to holy shrines, of the vows, which, three times out of four, had, by lot, devolved upon him: to the week he spent with Marchena, and in the silence of the cloister, at la Rabida; to the princely honors he received in his progress to Barcelona, whither the court had gone; to his reception by the king and queen, in which Ferdinand and Isabella rose as he approached, raised him as he kneeled to kiss their hands, and ordered him to be seated in their presence.
The Spanish sovereigns soon fitted out a new expedition; and, on the 25th of September, 1493, Columbus left the port of Cadiz with seventeen vessels, five hundred sailors, soldiers, citizens and servants, and one thousand colonists, three hundred of whom had smuggled themselves on board. He sailed directly for the Carib or Cannibal Islands, and on the 3d of November arrived in their midst. He named one of them Maria-Galanta, from his flag-ship; another, Guadeloupe, from one of the shrines of Spain where he had discharged a vow. He here found numerous and disgusting evidences of the truth of the story that these people lived on human flesh. The island which he named Montserrat, in honor of the famous sanctuary of that name, had been depopulated by the Caribs. He gave to the next land the name of Santa Maria l'Antigoa; it is now known as Antigoa, simply. Another he called Santa Cruz, in honor of the cross. Returning to Hispaniola, he found the fort destroyed and the garrison massacred. Having founded the city of Isabella upon another part of the island, he sent back twelve of his ships to Spain, and with three of the remaining five, one of which was the famous Nina, started upon a voyage of discovery in the surrounding waters. He touched at Alpha and Omega, and inquired of the savages where he could find gold. They pointed to the south. Two days afterwards, Columbus descried lofty mountains, with blue summits, upon an island to which he gave the name of Jamaica, in honor of St. James. Then returning to Cuba, and following the southern coast a distance sufficient to convince the three crews that it was a continent and not an island, he took possession of it as such. He then wished to revisit the Caribbean Islands and destroy the boats of the inhabitants, that they might no longer prey upon their neighbors, but the direction of the winds would not permit him to sail to the west. Returning to Isabella, he met his brother Bartholomew, who had just arrived from Spain, bearing a letter from the queen. He also found, to his extreme regret, that the officers he had left in charge of the colony had transcended their authority and had abandoned their duties. Margarit, the commander, and Boil, the vicar, had departed in the ship that had brought Bartholomew. Overcome by the toils and privations he had undergone, and sick at heart at the sight of the disasters under which the colony was laboring, he fell into a deep lethargy, and for a long time it was doubtful whether he would ever awake again.
He did awake, however, but only to a poignant consciousness of the miseries the Spanish invasion had brought upon the island. The Spaniards and Indians had become, through the treachery of the former, hostile during his absence, and battles, surprises, and murders were of daily occurrence. Seeing the necessity of a vigorous effort in order to maintain his authority over the natives, he led his two hundred and twenty men against a furious throng of naked, painted savages, whose numbers were declared by the Spaniards to be no less than one hundred thousand. The Indians were defeated with great slaughter, and were subjected to the payment of tribute and to the indignity of taxation. At this period, an officer, named Juan Aguado, sent out by Ferdinand and Isabella upon the malicious representations of Margarit and Father Boil, to inquire into the state of the colony and the conduct of Columbus, arrived in the island. Columbus determined to return himself to Spain, to present in person a justification of his course. A violent storm having destroyed all the vessels except the Nina, Columbus took the command of her, Aguado building a caravel for himself from the wrecks of the others. They both left Isabella on the 10th of March, 1496, taking with them the sick and disappointed, to the number of two hundred and twenty-five, and thirty-two Indians, whom they forced to accompany them. They touched at Guadeloupe for wood and water, and, after repulsing an attack of Caribs, contrived to gain their confidence, and to obtain the articles of which they stood in need. They left again on the 20th of April. After a long and painful voyage, in the course of which it was proposed to throw the Indians overboard in order to lessen the consumption of food, they arrived, without material damage, at the port of Cadiz. Columbus wrote to the king and queen, and during the month that elapsed before their answer was received, allowed his beard to grow, and, disgusted with the world, assumed the garments and the badges of a Franciscan friar. He was soon summoned to Burgos, then the residence of the court, where Isabella, forgetting the calumnies of which he had been the object and the accusations his enemies had heaped upon him, loaded him with favors and kindness.
Numerous circumstances prevented Columbus from requesting the immediate equipment of another expedition. It was not till the 30th of May, 1498, that he sailed again for his discoveries in the West. He left San Lucar with six caravels, three laden with supplies and reinforcements for the colony at Isabella, and three intended to accompany himself upon a search for the mainland, which he believed to exist west of Hispaniola, Cuba, and Jamaica. On the 15th of July, in the latitude of Sierra Leone, they came into the region of calms, where the water seemed like molten silver beneath a tropical sun. Not a breath of air stirred, not a cloud intercepted the fiery rays which fell vertically upon them from the skies. The provisions decayed in the hold, the pitch and tar boiled upon the ropes. The barrels of wine and water opened in wide seams, and scattered their precious contents to waste. The grains of wheat were wrinkled and shrivelled as if roasting before the fire. For eight days this incandescence lasted, till an east wind sprang up and wafted them to a more temperate spot in the torrid zone.
On the 31st of July land was discovered in the west,—three mountain peaks seeming to ascend from one and the same base. Columbus had made a vow to give the name of the Trinity to the first land he should discover, and this singular triune form of the land now before them was noticed as a wonderful coincidence by all on board. It was named, therefore, Trinidad; it lies off the northern coast of Venezuela, in the Continent of South America. The innumerable islands, formed by the forty mouths of the Orinoco, were next discovered, and shortly afterwards the continent to the north, which Columbus judged to be the mainland from the volume of water brought to the sea by the Orinoco. Columbus was not the first to set foot upon the New World he had discovered: being confined to his cabin by an attack of ophthalmia, he sent Pedro de Terreros to take possession in his stead. This discovery of the Southern portion of the Western Continent was, however, as we shall soon have occasion to show, subsequent to that of the Northern portion by John Cabot, who visited Labrador in 1497.