| Queen Isabella, from Castile treasury | $67,500 |
| "loan from Santangel | ? |
| Columbus | ? |
| Town of Palos | rent of two fully equipped caravels for two months, etc. |
| ————— | |
| Total | ? |
(Cf. Harrisse, tom. i. pp. 391-404.) Unsatisfactory, but certain as far as it goes. Alas, how often historical statements are thus reduced to meagreness, after the hypothetical or ill-supported part has been sifted out! The story that the Pinzon brothers advanced to Columbus his portion is told by Las Casas, but he very shrewdly doubts it. The famous story that Isabella pledged her crown jewels (Vita dell' Ammiraglio, cap. xiv.) has also been doubted, but perhaps on insufficient grounds, by M. Harrisse. It is confirmed by Las Casas (tom. i. p. 249). According to one account she pledged them to Santangel in security for his loan,—which seems not altogether improbable. See Pizarro y Orellana, Varones ilustres del Nuevo Mundo, Madrid, 1639, p. 16.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 511: Navarrete, Biblioteca maritima, tom. ii. pp. 208, 209.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 512: The accounts of the armament are well summed up and discussed in Harrisse, tom. i. pp. 405-408. Eighty-seven names, out of the ninety, have been recovered, and the list is given below, Appendix C.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 513: "Para de allí tomar mi derrota, y navegar tanto que yo llegase á las Indias," he says in his journal, Navarrete, Coleccion de viages, tom. i.p. 3.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 514: Martin Behaim was born at Nuremberg in 1436, and is said to have been a pupil of the celebrated astronomer, Regiomontanus, author of the first almanac published in Europe, and of Ephemerides, of priceless value to navigators. He visited Portugal about 1480, invented a new kind of astrolabe, and sailed with it in 1484 as cosmographer in Diego Cam's voyage to the Congo. On his return to Lisbon he was knighted, and presently went to live on the island of Fayal, of which his wife's father was governor. He was a friend of Columbus. Toward 1492 he visited Nuremberg, to look after some family affairs, and while there "he gratified some of his townspeople by embodying in a globe the geographical views which prevailed in the maritime countries; and the globe was finished before Columbus had yet accomplished his voyage. The next year (1493) Behaim returned to Portugal; and after having been sent to the Low Countries on a diplomatic mission, he was captured by English cruisers and carried to England. Escaping finally, and reaching the Continent, he passes from our view in 1494, and is scarcely heard of again." (Winsor, Narr. and Crit. Hist., ii. 104.) He died in May, 1506. A ridiculous story that he anticipated Columbus in the discovery of America originated in the misunderstanding of an interpolated passage in the Latin text of Schedel's Registrum, Nuremberg, 1498, p. 290 (the so-called Nuremberg Chronicle). See Winsor, op. cit. ii. 34; Major's Prince Henry, p. 326; Humboldt, Examen critique, tom. i.p. 256; Murr, Diplomatische Geschichte des Ritters Behaim, Nuremberg, 1778; Cladera, Investigaciones históricas, Madrid, 1794; Harrisse, Bibliotheca Americana Vetustissima, pp. 37-43.—The globe made by Behaim may now be seen in the city hall at Nuremberg. It "is made of papier-maché, covered with gypsum, and over this a parchment surface received the drawing; it is twenty inches in diameter." (Winsor, op. cit. ii. 105.) The portion west of the 330th meridian is evidently copied from Toscanelli's map. I give below (p. [429]) a sketch (from Winsor, after Ruge's Geschichte des Zeitalters der Entdeckungen, p. 230) of Behaim's ocean, with the outline of the American continent superimposed in the proper place.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 515: The situation of this Sargasso region in mid-ocean seems to be determined by its character as a quiet neutral ground between the great ocean-currents that flow past it on every side. Sargasso plants are found elsewhere upon the surface of the waves, but nowhere else do they congregate as here. There are reasons for supposing that in ancient times this region extended nearer to the African coast. Skylax (Periplus, cap. 109) says that beyond Kerne, at the mouth of Rio d' Ouro the sea cannot be navigated on account of the mud and seaweed. Sataspes, on his return to Persia, B. C. 470, told King Xerxes that his voyage failed because his ship stopped or was stuck fast. (Herodotus, iv. 43.) Festus Avienus mentions vast quantities of seaweed in the ocean west of the Pillars of Hercules:—
Exsuperat autem gurgitem fucus frequens
Atque impeditur æstus ex uligine....
Sic nulla late flabra propellunt ratem,
Sic segnis humor æquoris pigri stupet.
Adjicit et illud, plurimum inter gurgites
Exstare fucum, et sæpe virgulti vice
Retinere puppim, etc.
Avienus, Ora Maritima, 108, 117.
See also Aristotle, Meteorol., ii. 1, 14; Pseudo-Aristotle, De Mirab. Auscult., p. 106; Theophrastus, Historia plantarum, iv. 7 Jornandes, De rebus Geticis, apud Muratori, tom. i.p. 191; according to Strabo (iii. 2, § 7) tunny fish were caught in abundance in the ocean west of Spain, and were highly valued for the table on account of their fatness which was due to submarine vegetables on which they fed. Possibly the reports of these Sargasso meadows may have had some share in suggesting to Plato his notion of a huge submerged island Atlantis (Timæus, 25; Kritias, 108; cf. the notion of a viscous sea in Plutarch, De facie in Orbe Luna, 26), Plato's fancy has furnished a theme for much wild speculation. See, for example, Bailly, Lettres sur l'Atlantide de Platon, Paris, 1779. The belief that there can ever have been such an island in that part of the Atlantic is disposed of by the fact that the ocean there is nowhere less than two miles in depth. See the beautiful map of the Atlantic sea-bottom in Alexander Agassiz's Three Cruises of the Blake, Boston, 1888, vol. i.p. 108, and compare chap. vi. of that noble work, on "The Permanence of Continents and of Oceanic Basins;" see also Wallace's Island Life, chap. vi. It was formerly supposed that the Sargasso plants grow on the sea-bottom, and becoming detached rise to the surface (Peter Martyr, De rebus oceanicis, dec. iii. lib. v. p. 53; Humboldt, Personal Narrative, book i. chap, i.); but it is now known that they are simply rooted in the surface water itself. "L'accumulation de ces plantes marines est l'exemple le plus frappant de plantes congénères réunies sur le même point. Ni les forêts colossales de l'Himalaya, ni les graminées qui s'étendent à perte de vue dans les savanes américaines ou les steppes sibériens ne rivalisent avec ces prairies océaniques. Jamais sur un espace aussi étendu, ne se rencontrent de telles masses de plantes semblables. Quand on a vu la mer des Sargasses, on n'oublie point un pareil spectacle." Paul Gaffarel, "La Mer des Sargasses," Bulletin de Géographie, Paris, 1872, 6e série, tom. iv. p. 622.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 516: The often-repeated story that a day or two before the end of the voyage Columbus capitulated with his crew, promising to turn back if land were not seen within three days, rests upon the single and relatively inferior authority of Oviedo. It is not mentioned by Las Casas or Bernaldez or Peter Martyr or Ferdinand Columbus, and it is discredited by the tone of the Admiral's journal, which shows as unconquerable determination on the last day of the voyage as on any previous day. Cf. Irving, vol. i. p. 187.[Back to Main Text]