While its ejaculatory arguments are not well calculated to impose on the sober historian, there was enough of fervor laid against its background of distressing humility to work on the sympathies of its recipient, and of the Queen, to whom it was early and naturally revealed. "I have now reached that point that there is no man so vile, but thinks it his right to insult me," was the language, almost at its opening, which met their eyes. The further reading of the letter brought up a picture of the manacled Admiral. Very likely the rumor of the rising indignation spreading from Cadiz to Seville, and from Seville elsewhere, as well as the letters of the alcalde of Cadiz, into whose hands Columbus had been delivered, and of Villejo, who had had him in custody, added to the tumult of sensations mutually shared in that little circle of the monarchs and the Doña Juana. If we take the prompt action of the sovereigns in ordering the immediate release of Columbus, their letter of sympathy at the baseness of his treatment, the two thousand ducats put at his disposal to prepare for a visit to the Court, and the cordial royal summons for him to come,—if all these be taken at their apparent value, the candid observer finds himself growing distrustful of Bobadilla's justification through his secret instructions. As the observer goes on in the story and notes the sequel, he is more inclined to believe that the sovereigns, borne on the rising tide of indignant sympathy, had defended themselves at the expense of their commissioner. We may never know the truth.
1500. December 17. Columbus at Court.
That was a striking scene when Columbus, delivered from his irons on the 17th of December, 1500, held his first interview with the Spanish monarchs. Oviedo was an eyewitness of it; but we find more of its accompaniments in the story as told by Herrera than in the scant narrative of the Historie. Humboldt fancies that it was the Admiral's son who wrote it. The author of that book had no heart to record at much length the professions of regret on the part of the King, since they were not easily reconcilable with what, in that writer's judgment, would have been the honorable reception of Bobadilla and Roldan, had they escaped the fate of the tempests which later overwhelmed them. When the first warmth of Columbus's reception had subsided, there would have been no reason to suspect that those absent servants of the Crown would have been denied a suitable welcome.
Herrera tells us of the touching character of this interview of December 17; how the Queen burst into tears, and the emotional Admiral cast himself on the ground at her feet. When Columbus could speak, he began to recall the reasons for which he had been imprisoned, and rehearsed them with humble and exculpatory professions. He forgot that in the letter which so excited their sympathy he had denied that he knew any such reasons, and the sovereigns forgot it too. The meeting had awakened the tenderer parts of their natures, and their hearts went out to him. They made verbal promises of largesses and professions of restitution, but Harrisse could find no written expressions of this kind, till in the instructions of March 14, 1502, when they expressed their directions for his guidance during his next voyage. The Admiral grew confident, as of old, in their presence. He had always reached a coign of vantage in his personal intercourse with the Queen. He had evidently not lost that power. He began to picture his return to Santo Domingo with the triumph that he now enjoyed. It was a hollow hope. He was never again to be Viceroy of the Indies.
Columbus suspended from power.
Other explorers in American waters.
Portuguese claims.
The disorders in Española were but a part of the reasons why it was now decided to suspend the patented rights of the Admiral, if not permanently to deny the further exercise of them. We have seen how the government had committed itself to other discoveries, profiting, as it did, by the maps which Columbus had sent back to Spain. These discoveries were a new source of tribute which could not be neglected. Rival nations too were alert, and ships of the Portuguese and of the English had been found prowling about within the unquestioned limits allowed to Spain by the new treaty line of Tordesillas. At the north and at the south these same powers were pushing their search, to see if perchance portions of the new regions could not be found to project so far east as to bring them on the Portuguese side of that same line. Portugal had already claimed that Cabral had found such territory under the equator and south of it. An eastward projection of Brazil at the south, twenty degrees and more, is very common in the contemporary Portuguese maps.
1501. May 13. Coelho's voyage.
Was Vespucius on this voyage?