Up the Orinoco and down the Magdalena

by J. A. Zahm

It was to the Pearl Coast that Las Casas came, after he found, by sad experience, that his efforts in behalf of the Indians in Cuba, Española and Puerto Rico were frustrated by influences he was unable to control. It was here, aided by Franciscans and Dominicans, who had preceded him by only a few years, that he purposed laying the corner stone of that vast Indian commonwealth, for which he had secured letters patent from Charles V.

For this great experiment in colonization, the greatest the world has ever known, he had received a grant of land extending from Paria to Santa Marta, and from the Caribbean Sea to Peru. In his colossal undertaking he planned to have the coöperation of an order of knights—the Knights of the Golden Spur—specially created to aid him in the work of civilizing and christianizing the Indians. It was his dream to bring within the fold of the Church all the Indians of Central and South America, and to establish for their behoof and benefit an ideal Christian state such as a century and a half later was realized in the fertile basins of the Parana and Paraguay.[41]

If the noble philanthropist had been properly supported by the rich and the powerful, the entire course of subsequent events in South America would have been altered, and the historian would have been spared the task of penning those dark annals of injustice and iniquity which, for long centuries, were such a foul blot on humanity. But from the time he set foot on the Pearl Coast, in pursuance of his noble plan, he found himself beset by untold difficulties, and his designs thwarted at every turn, and that, too, by his own countrymen. Blinded by lust of gold and pleasure, they left nothing undone to insure the failure of his project, and in the end succeeded in their nefarious purpose.

Abandoned by those on whose coöperation he fully relied, he was, in its very inception, forced to relinquish his heroic enterprise, and return to Española. Discomfited and heartsick, but not crushed, he sought an asylum in the monastery of Santo Domingo. There for eight years he devoted himself to prayer and study, and, true Christian athlete that he was, he was always preparing himself for a final struggle in a new arena. When his enemies least expected it, he came forth from his retirement, and, clad in the habit of a Dominican, proclaimed himself again the champion of the downtrodden Indian. And from that moment until the day of his death, at the advanced age of ninety-two, whether as a simple monk or as the bishop of Chiapa,[42] his voice was always raised in behalf of the children of the forest, and against their enslavement by cruel, soulless seekers after fortune.[43]

He was, if not the first, the world’s greatest abolitionist, and if there are still many millions of red men in the New World to-day who have escaped the bond of servitude, it is mainly due to their illustrious protector, Bartolomé de Las Casas.[44]

THE PEARL ISLANDS

Within sight of the land where Las Casas went to lay the first foundation-stone of his ideal commonwealth is a group of islands which had a special claim on our attention—islands which, during four centuries, have been the scene of many a romance and have been stained, no one can tell how often, by the blood of tragedy.

These islands are Coche, Cubagua and Margarita. They were discovered by Columbus during his third voyage, and the larger of the two was called Margarita—pearl—from the number and beauty of the pearls found in the waters that wash its shore. Even before he had left the Gulf of Paria, between Trinidad and the mainland, he had observed that the aborigines of Tierra Firme were decked with bracelets and necklaces of pearl, and soon discovered, to his great satisfaction, that these much-prized gems could be obtained in great abundance, and that many of them were of extraordinary size and beauty. Peter Martyr, as translated by Eden, tells us, “Many of these pearls were as bygge as hasellnuttes, and oriente (as we caule it), that is lyke unto them of the Easte partes.”[45] During the first third of the sixteenth century the value of the pearls sent to Europe was equal to nearly one-half of the output of all the mines in America.[46] In one year—1587—after the pearl fisheries of the Gulf of Panama had been discovered, nearly seven hundred pounds weight of pearls was sent to the markets of Europe, some of them rivaling in beauty of sheen and perfection of form the rarest gems ever found in the waters of Persia or Ceylon. It was from these fisheries of the New World that Philip II obtained the famous pearl, weighing two hundred and fifty carats, of the size and shape of a pigeon’s egg, mentioned by the early chroniclers.

So great was the commercial activity among these little islands, especially in Cubagua, that the Spaniards built a town there, which they called New Cadiz, although the site chosen was without water, and so sterile that the Indians had never lived on it. Toward the end of the sixteenth century the pearl fishery in these parts diminished rapidly, and in the early part of the century following, the industry, according to Laet, had died out altogether, and the islands of Coche and Cubagua fell into oblivion. But while it lasted, sad to say, it meant untold misery for the thousands of Indian and Negro slaves who were forced, at the sacrifice of their health and often of their lives, to enrich their cruel masters by work that was almost as fatal as that in the mines of Española.