Christopher Columbus and How He Received and Imparted the Spirit of Discovery

by Justin Winsor

The Voice was, of course, associated in Columbus's mind with the good weather which followed. During this a raft was made of two canoes lashed together beneath a platform, and, using this for ferrying, all the stores were floated off safely to the ships, so that in the end nothing was left behind but the decaying and stranded caravel. This labor was done under the direction of Diego Mendez, whom the Admiral rewarded by kissing him on the cheek, and by giving him command of Tristan's caravel, which was the Admiral's flagship.

1503. April, Columbus sails away.

It is a strange commentary on the career and fame of Columbus that the name of this disastrous coast should represent him to this day in the title of his descendant, the Duke of Veragua. Never a man turned the prow of his ship from scenes which he would sooner forget, with more sorrow and relief, than Columbus, in the latter days of April, 1503, with his enfeebled crews and his crazy hulks, stood away, as he thought, for Española. And yet three months later, and almost in the same breath with which he had rehearsed these miseries, with that obliviousness which so often caught his errant mind, he wrote to his sovereigns that "there is not in the world a country, whose inhabitants are more timid; added to which there is a good harbor, a beautiful river, and the whole place is capable of being easily put into a state of defense. Your people that may come here, if they should wish to become masters of the products of other lands, will have to take them by force, or retire empty-handed. In this country they will simply have to trust their persons in the hands of a savage." The man was mad.

It was easterly that Columbus steered when his ships swung round to their destined course. It was not without fear and even indignation that his crews saw what they thought a purpose to sail directly for Spain in the sorry plight of the ships. Mendez, indeed, who commanded the Admiral's own ship, says "they thought to reach Spain." The Admiral, however, seems to have had two purposes. He intended to run eastward far enough to allow for the currents, when he should finally head for Santo Domingo. He intended also to disguise as much as he could the route back, for fear that others would avail themselves of his crew's knowledge to rediscover these golden coasts. He remembered how the companions of his Paria voyage had led other expeditions to that region of pearls. He is said also to have taken from his crew all their memoranda of the voyage, so that there would be no such aid available to guide others. "None of them can explain whither I went, nor whence I came," he says. "They do not know the way to return thither."

At Puerto Bello.

At the Gulf of Darien.

1503. May 10.

May 30. On the Cuban coast.

1503. June 23. Reaches Jamaica.

By the time he reached Puerto Bello, one of his caravels had become so weakened by the boring worms that he had to abandon her and crowd his men into the two remaining vessels. His crews became clamorous when he reached the Gulf of Darien, where he thought it prudent to abandon his easterly course and steer to the north. It was now May 1. He hugged the wind to overcome the currents, but when he sighted some islands to the westward of Española, on the 10th, it was evident that the currents had been bearing him westerly all the while. They were still drifting him westerly, when he found himself, on May 30, among the islands on the Cuban coast which he had called The Gardens. "I had reached," he says in his old delusion, "the province of Mago, which is contiguous to that of Cathay." Here the ships anchored to give the men refreshment. The labor of keeping the vessels free from water had been excessive, and in a secure roadstead it could now be carried on with some respite of toil, if the weather would only hold good. This was not to be, however. A gale ensued in which they lost their anchors. The two caravels, moreover, sustained serious damage by collision. All the anchors of the Admiral's ship had gone but one, and though that held, the cable nearly wore asunder. After six days of this stormy weather, he dared at last to crawl along the coast. Fortunately, he got some native provisions at one place, which enabled him to feed his famished men. The currents and adverse winds, however, proved too much for the power of his ships to work to windward. They were all the while in danger of foundering. "With three pumps and the use of pots and kettles," he says, "we could scarcely clear the water that came into the ship, there being no remedy but this for the mischief done by the ship worm." He reluctantly, therefore, bore away for Jamaica, where, on June 23, he put into Puerto Buono (Dry Harbor).