The discovery of these mines led to the transfer of the headquarters of the colony to the mouth of the Founding of San Domingo, 1496. Ozema river, where, in the summer of 1496, Bartholomew Columbus made a settlement which became the city of San Domingo.[584] Meanwhile Aguado and the Admiral sailed for Spain early in March, in two caravels overloaded with more than two hundred homesick passengers. In choosing his course Columbus did not show so much sagacity as on his first return voyage. Instead of working northward till clear of the The return voyage. belt of trade-winds, he kept straight to the east, and so spent a month in beating and tacking before getting out of the Caribbean Sea. Scarcity of food was imminent, and it became necessary to stop at Guadaloupe and make a quantity of cassava bread.[585] It was well that this was done, for as the ships worked slowly across the Atlantic, struggling against perpetual head-winds, the provisions were at length exhausted, and by the first week in June the famine was such that Columbus had some difficulty in preventing the crews from eating their Indian captives, of whom there were thirty or more on board.[586]
At length, on the 11th of June, the haggard and starving company arrived at Cadiz, and Columbus, while awaiting orders from the sovereigns, stayed at the house of his good friend Bernaldez, the curate of Los Palacios.[587] After a month he attended court at Burgos, and was kindly received. No allusion was made to the complaints against him, and the sovereigns promised to furnish ships for a third voyage of discovery. For the moment, however, other things interfered with this enterprise. One was the marriage of the son and daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella to the daughter and son of the Emperor Maximilian. The war with France was at the same time fast draining the treasury. Indeed, for more than twenty years, Castile had been at war nearly all the time, first with Portugal, next with Granada, then with France; and the crown never found it easy to provide money for maritime enterprises. Accordingly, at the earnest solicitation of Vicente Yañez Pinzon and other enterprising mariners, the sovereigns had issued a proclamation, Edicts of 1495 and 1497. April 10, 1495, granting to all native Spaniards the privilege of making, at their own risk and expense, voyages of discovery or traffic to the newly found coasts. As the crown was to take a pretty heavy tariff out of the profits of these expeditions, while all losses were to be borne by the adventurers, a fairly certain source of revenue, be it great or small, seemed likely to be opened.[588] Columbus protested against this edict, inasmuch as he deemed himself entitled to a patent or monopoly in the work of conducting expeditions to Cathay. The sovereigns evaded the difficulty by an edict of June 2, 1497, declaring that it was never their intention "in any way to affect the rights of the said Don Christopher Columbus." This declaration was, doubtless, intended simply to pacify the Admiral. It did not prevent the authorization of voyages conducted by other persons a couple of years later; and, as I shall show in the next chapter, there are strong reasons for believing that on May 10, 1497, three weeks before this edict, an expedition sailed from Cadiz under the especial auspices of King Ferdinand, with Vicente Yañez Pinzon for its chief commander and Americus Vespucius for one of its pilots.
It was not until late in the spring of 1498 that the ships were ready for Columbus. Everything that Columbus loses his temper. Fonseca could do to vex and delay him was done. One of the bishop's minions, a converted Moor or Jew named Ximeno Breviesca, behaved with such outrageous insolence that on the day of sailing the Admiral's indignation, so long restrained, at last broke out, and he drove away the fellow with kicks and cuffs.[589] This imprudent act gave Fonseca the opportunity to maintain that what the Admiral's accusers said about his tyrannical disposition must be true.
The expedition started on May 30, 1498, from the little port of San Lucar de Barrameda. The third voyage. There were six ships, carrying about 200 men besides the sailors. On June 21, at the Isle of Ferro, the Admiral divided his fleet, sending three ships directly to Hispaniola, while with the other three he kept on to the Cape Verde islands, whence he steered southwest on the 4th of July. A week later, after a run of about 900 miles, his astrolabe seemed to show that he was within five degrees of the equator.[590] There were three reasons for going so far to the south:—1, the natives of the islands already visited always pointed in that direction when gold was mentioned; 2, a learned jeweller, who had travelled in the East, had assured Columbus that gold and gems, as well as spices and rare drugs, were to be found for the most part among black people near the equator; 3, if he should not find any rich islands on the way, a sufficiently long voyage would bring him to the coast of Champa (Cochin China) at a lower point than he had reached on the preceding voyage, and nearer to the Golden Chersonese (Malacca), by doubling which he could enter the Indian ocean. It will be remembered that he supposed the southwesterly curve in the Cuban coast, the farthest point reached in his second voyage, to be the beginning of the coast of Cochin China according to Marco Polo.
Once more through ignorance of the atmospheric conditions of the regions within the tropics Columbus encountered needless perils and hardships. If he had steered from Ferro straight across the ocean a trifle south of west-southwest, he might have made a quick and comfortable voyage, with the trade-wind filling his sails, to the spot where he actually struck land.[591] As it was, however, he naturally followed the custom then so common, The belt of calms. of first running to the parallel upon which he intended to sail. This long southerly run brought him into the belt of calms or neutral zone between the northern and southern trade-winds, a little north of the equator.[592] No words can describe what followed so well as those of Irving: "The wind suddenly fell, and a dead sultry calm commenced, which lasted for eight days. The air was like a furnace; the tar melted, the seams of the ship yawned; the salt meat became putrid; the wheat was parched as if with fire; the hoops shrank from the wine and water casks, some of which leaked and others burst, while the heat in the holds of the vessels was so suffocating that no one could remain below a sufficient time to prevent the damage that was taking place. The mariners lost all strength and spirits, and sank under the oppressive heat. It seemed as if the old fable of the torrid zone was about to be realized; and that they were approaching a fiery region where it would be impossible to exist."[593]
Fortunately, they were in a region where the ocean is comparatively narrow. The longitude reached by Columbus on July 13, when the wind died away, must have been about 36° or 37° W., and a run of only 800 miles west from that point would have brought him to Cayenne. His course between the 13th and 21st of July must have intersected the thermal equator, or line of greatest mean annual heat on the globe,—an irregular curve which is here deflected as much as five degrees north of the equinoctial line. But although there was not a breath of wind, the powerful equatorial current was quietly driving the ships, much faster than the Admiral could have suspected, to the northwest and toward land. By the end of that stifling week they were in latitude 7° N., and caught the trade-wind on the starboard quarter. Thence after a brisk run of ten days, in sorry plight, with ugly leaks and scarcely a cask of fresh water left, they arrived within sight of land. Three mountain peaks loomed up in the offing before them, and as they drew nearer it appeared that those peaks belonged to one great mountain; wherefore the pious Admiral named the island Trinidad.
Here some surprises were in store for Columbus. Instead of finding black and woolly-haired natives, he found men of cinnamon hue, like those in Hispaniola, Trinidad and the Orinoco. only—strange to say—lighter in colour. Then in coasting Trinidad he caught a glimpse of land at the delta of the Orinoco, and called it Isla Santa, or Holy Island.[594] But, on passing into the gulf of Paria, through the strait which he named Serpent's Mouth, his ships were in sore danger of being swamped by the raging surge that poured from three or four of the lesser mouths of that stupendous river. Presently, finding that the water in the gulf was fresh to the taste, he gradually reasoned his way to the correct conclusion, that the billows which had so nearly overwhelmed him must have come out from a river greater than any he had ever known or dreamed of, and that so vast a stream of running water could be produced only upon land of continental dimensions.[595] This coast to the south of him was, therefore, the coast of a continent, with indefinite extension toward the south, a land not laid down upon Toscanelli's or any other map, and of which no one had until that time known anything.[596]