He had actually started on his journey, when an officer was despatched after him to induce him to return. The queen had at last listened to the good counsels of Santangel (comptroller of the royal disbursements), who had before shown himself a friend to Columbus. He had pointed out to her majesty that the sum of money required was small, and that she was missing an opportunity that might redound greatly to the honour of her reign, and the credit of which now some foreign monarch would reap. From comparative apathy Isabella rose to enthusiasm, and the treasury being pretty well exhausted by the war with Granada, she offered to pawn her jewels in order to raise the necessary funds. Santangel immediately replied that there was no occasion for this, and that he himself would readily advance his own money in such a service.
All the conditions which the admiral required having been conceded, he set out from Granada on May 21st, 1492, for Palos, that seaport having been bound by the Crown to furnish two caravels. Columbus fitted these and a third vessel with all speed. His own ship was the St. Mary; the second, named the Pinta, was commanded by Martin Alonso Pinzon; and the third, the Nina, by the latter’s brother, Vincent Yanez Pinzon. The united crews comprised a force of ninety men. Columbus set sail on this, his first voyage in the service of Portugal, on the 3rd of August, 1492, making direct for the Canaries.
CARAVELS OF CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS.
(After an Engraving published in 1583.)
The day after leaving, the rudder of the Pinta broke loose, and, after being repaired as well as they were able at sea, the fastenings gave way a second time. Alonzo Pinzon was more than suspected of having caused this damage purposely, as he had endeavoured to avoid proceeding on this voyage before the expedition left Spain. Having again repaired the rudder, they continued the voyage, and successfully came to an anchor at the Canaries on August 12th. The admiral tried in vain to obtain another vessel for Pinzon. At length the Pinta having been patched up, the little squadron set sail. “Now,” says Ferdinand, “losing sight of land, and stretching out into utterly unknown seas, many of the people expressed their anxiety and fear that it might be long before they should see land again; but the admiral used every endeavour to comfort them, with the assurance of soon finding the land he was in search of, and raised their hopes of acquiring wealth and honour by the discovery.” He purposely under-stated the distance made each day, in order to make his people believe that they were not so far from Spain after all; but he carefully recorded the true reckoning in private. On September 12th they discovered in the water the trunk of a large tree; and the people in the Nina, a few days later, observed a heron flying over them, and also a smaller bird. Next, a quantity of yellowish-green sea-weed was observed floating in the water; a small lobster and a number of tunny fish were also [pg 287]noted. These signs of approaching land raised hopes which were not immediately fulfilled; and the crews, being utterly unacquainted with the seas they now traversed, seeing nothing but water and sky, began to mutter among themselves. Later, a number of seagulls and small land birds were seen, the latter settling sometimes in the rigging. Again, a vast floating field of sea-weed was encountered. These appearances gave some assurances of comfort to the men at times; but when the weeds became thick enough to partially impede the progress of the vessels, they became terrified, lest the fabled fate of St. Amaro in the frozen seas, whose vessel could neither move forward nor backward, might be theirs. “Wherefore they steered away from those shoals of weeds as much as they could.”
On the 23rd a brisk WNW. gale, favourable for their course, arose, and on the same day a turtle-dove, a land fowl, and other birds, were seen. The more these tokens were observed, and found not to be followed by the anxiously-looked-for land, the more the crews rebelled; cabals were formed, of which the admiral was only partially aware. “They represented that they had already sufficiently performed their duty in adventuring further from land and all possibility of succour than had ever been done before, and that they ought not to proceed on the voyage to their manifest destruction.” They growlingly remarked that Columbus was a foreigner, who desired to become a great lord at their expense, that he had no favour at court, and that the most learned men had scorned his ideas as visionary and absurd. Some even went so far as to propose cutting the Gordian knot by throwing him overboard. Poor Columbus! He had enough to do, sometimes expostulating and sometimes threatening, and always in danger of a mutiny upsetting all his grand projects. Nor were matters improved on September 25th, when Pinzon, whose vessel was near, shouted out to the admiral, “Land! land, sir! let not my good news miscarry!” Next morning the supposed land resolved itself into sea-clouds.
During the following days the men caught some fish “with gilt backs” with the aid of a line, and numerous birds were observed. Still Columbus persisted in a westerly course, although many on board, thinking that the birds were flying from one unseen island to another, wished him to deviate. About sunrise on Sunday, October 7th, some signs of land appeared to the westward, “but being imperfect, no person would mention the circumstance. This was owing to fear of losing the reward of thirty crowns yearly for life which had been promised by their Catholic majesties to whoever should first discover land; and to prevent them calling out ‘land! land!’ at every turn without just cause, it was made a condition that whoever said he saw land should lose the reward if it were not made out in three days, even if he should afterwards actually prove the first discoverer.” Those on the Nina, however, forgot this provision, and fancying they saw land, fired a gun and hoisted their colours. This time also they were disappointed, but derived some comfort by observing great flights of large fowl and other birds going from the west towards the south-west.
It would have been impossible for the admiral to have much longer withstood the spirit of mutiny which was fast gaining ground, “but,” says the narrative of Ferdinand, “it pleased God that, in the afternoon of Thursday the 11th of October, such manifest tokens of being near the land appeared that the men took courage and rejoiced at [pg 288]their good fortune as much as they had been before distressed.” From the St. Mary a rush was seen to float past, and one of those green fish which are never found far from rocks. Some of the other men noted in the water a branch of a thorn, with red berries, a curiously-carved stick, and other plain indications of being close to land. After the evening prayer, Columbus made a speech to the men, in which “he reminded them of the mercy of God in having brought them so long a voyage with such favourable weather, and in comforting them with so many tokens of a successful issue to their enterprise.” As the admiral was in his cabin that night about ten o’clock he believed that he saw a light on shore; he called two of the men, one only of whom could perceive it. It was again seen by the admiral and the sailor, but only for a very brief space of time. “Being now very much on their guard,” says the narrative, “they still held on their course until about two in the morning of Friday the 12th of October, when the Pinta, which was always far ahead, owing to her superior sailing, made the signal of seeing land, which was first discovered by Roderick de Triana at about two leagues from the ship. But the thirty crowns a year were afterwards granted to the admiral, who had seen the light in the midst of darkness, a type of the spiritual light he was the happy means of spreading in these dark regions of error. Being now so near land, all the ships lay to; every one thinking it long till daylight, that they might enjoy the sight they had so long and anxiously desired.”[47]
COLUMBUS’S FIRST SIGHT OF LAND.