Upheld by his inborn sense of power, he had returned to Court far more a conqueror, ready to grant conditions, than a petitioner oft-refused and eager to snatch the least morsel of favour. The Crown in its clemency was now, after its long apathy, willing to confer on him titles and privileges;—all in moderation of course, for Ferdinand and Isabel were never unnecessarily lavish; but Christopher, valuing himself and his task by the measure of his faith in the future, laughed at their moderation. Either he was great enough to succeed and thus prove worthy of a great reward, or he would fail and his pretensions and demands fade away with his dreams. The sovereigns, skilled in striking bargains, might argue and cajole. The Genoese, though his fate trembled in the balance, never wavered, until at last in April, 1492, caution yielded to greatness, and the terms that he demanded were signed and sealed.
Columbus and his heirs were to have the hereditary title of Admiral of all the islands and continents that he might discover, and should for ever hold the office of Viceroy and Governor-General over them. He and his heirs should receive one-tenth of all the wealth, whether metals, jewels, or spices, that should be acquired from these territories; and he and they should have a perpetual right of providing one-eighth of the expenses of every expedition sent to the West, receiving a corresponding profit from the results. These with extensive judicial and administrative privileges formed the basis of the document, in return for which Columbus promised to sail into the unknown and claim it in the name of Castile and her sovereign.
The actual cost of the expedition was, in comparison to the stakes at issue, trifling; in all less than a thousand pounds of English money, of which the Crown contributed some £850, Columbus himself the rest. Three ships formed his fleet; two provided under compulsion by the town of Palos as punishment for some public offence, and as reluctantly manned by its inhabitants who looked on the proposed voyage with horror. Columbus’s own flagship, the Santa Maria, was a vessel of some hundred tons burden, by modern standards ill-fitted for aught but coasting work; while the Pinta and the Niña, commanded by Martin Alonso Pinzon and his brother Vicente Yañez, noted navigators of the neighbourhood, were mere merchant “caravels” of half its size.
The story of this first voyage to the New World has been often told: the distrust and grumbling of the crew which, beginning before they left Palos on that morning of the 3d of August, 1492, grew ever in volume as they journeyed westwards, leaving the friendly Azores far in their rear; the complaints that the wind steadily driving from the east would never change and thus make any hope of return impossible; the extraordinary variations of the compass and the expanse of sea traversed, far in excess of the Admiral’s calculations, so that, puzzled and anxious at heart himself, he must yet keep a cheerful face and, lying skilfully, hold panic at bay by scientific falsehoods and carefully doctored charts. The many cries of “land! land!” heralding nought save clouds lying low on the horizon; the ever-doomed hopes aroused by birds and floating grass; and then the Sargasso Sea with its leagues of golden gulf-weed lapping against the ship’s side. Was this the impassable ocean where Atlantis had sunk to rest? Were they indeed destined to die here for their folly?
Then, when patience and hope were alike exhausted, and only the Admiral’s faith rose triumphant above the general pessimism, unmistakable signs of land appeared at last; and, on the 12th of October the Spanish squadron came to anchor before the little island of Guanahani, one of the Bahamas.
The details of the landing, the astonishment of the natives, “naked as when their mothers gave them birth,” at the sight of mail- and silk-clad warriors and the sound of cannons; the account of various expeditions made to other islands and of the fort built in Española;—these like the actual voyages may be read at length in the pages of Washington Irving. It is with the triumphant home-coming of the hero not with his adventures that we are here concerned.
Attention you two most wise and venerable men and hear of a new discovery [wrote Peter Martyr to the Archbishop of Granada and Count of Tendilla]. You remember Columbus the Ligurian, who persisted, when in the camps with the sovereigns, that one could pass over by way of the Western Antipodes to a new hemisphere of the globe.... He is returned safe and declares he has found wonderful things.
Wonderful things indeed! Brown-skinned Indians, green and scarlet parrots, golden nuggets and ornaments, cotton fibre and strange roots and seeds; these that he brought with him were but proofs and trophies of the still more wonderful adventures he hastened to relate before the sovereigns and their Court. In his disembarkation at Palos on the 15th of March, 1493, and still more in his “solemn and very beautiful reception” by the sovereigns at Barcelona graphically described by the historian Las Casas, he was to reap at last the meed of honour and enthusiasm so long denied him. Kneeling before his King and Queen to kiss the hands that afterwards raised him in gracious condescension to sit with royalty upon the dais, flattered and fêted by courtiers who had before patronized or mocked, riding through the crowded streets by Ferdinand’s side amid cries of admiration and applause;—in these moments he reached the climax of worldly glory.
Long years stretched before him, when circumstances, his own failings, and the envy and spite of others, were to rob him of ease, popularity, and even royal confidence; but for the time being he was “Don,” “Admiral,” the honoured of Kings, the most discussed and admired man in Spain, perhaps in all Europe. In one country at least, the kingdom of Portugal, the result of his voyage was a subject for poignant regret; and Ferdinand and Isabel, having obtained from Alexander VI. papal recognition of their right to the newly discovered territories, were driven to demand a series of bulls, that would provide them with a definition of their empire, lest Portuguese rivals, too slow to forestall them in the discovery, should now rob them of their gains.
By a bull of May 4, 1493, an imaginary line was drawn through the north and south poles, cutting the Atlantic at one hundred leagues distance from the Cape Verde Islands and Azores. To the east of this line was henceforth to stretch the zone of Portuguese dominion, to the west that of Castile. Later, by the Treaty of Tordesillas, signed by the Spanish sovereigns and King John in June, 1494, the boundary was fixed at three hundred and seventy instead of one hundred leagues distance; and there for the moment national rivalry was checked.