The latter made no attempt to pursue the discovery; but Ayllon, adhering to his original purpose, proceeded to Spain with Francisco,—one of the Indians, who told of a giant king and many provinces,[818]—and on the 12th of June, 1523, obtained a royal cédula.[819] Under this he was to send out vessels in 1524, to run eight hundred leagues along the coast, or till he reached lands already discovered; and if he discovered any strait leading to the west, he was to explore it. No one was to settle within the limits explored by him the first year, or within two hundred leagues beyond the extreme points reached by him north and south; the occupancy of the territory was to be effected within four years; and as the conversion of the natives was one of the main objects, their enslavement was forbidden, and Ayllon was required to take out religious men of some Order to instruct them in the doctrines of Christianity. He obtained a second cédula to demand from Matienzo the Indians in his hands in order to restore them to their native country.[820]
On his return to the West Indies, Ayllon was called on the King’s service to Porto Rico; and finding it impossible to pursue his discovery, the time for carrying out the asiento was, by a cédula of March 23, 1524, extended to the year 1525.[821]
To secure his rights under the asiento, he despatched two caravels under Pedro de Quexos to the newly discovered land early in 1525. They regained the good-will of the natives and explored the coast for two hundred and fifty leagues, setting up stone crosses with the name of Charles V. and the date of the act of taking possession. They returned to Santo Domingo in July, 1525, bringing one or two Indians from each province, who might be trained to act as interpreters.[822]
Meanwhile Matienzo began legal proceedings to vacate the asiento granted by the King to Ayllon, on the ground that it was obtained surreptitiously, and in fraud of his own rights as joint discoverer. His witnesses failed to show that his caravel had any license to make a voyage of exploration, or that he took any steps to follow up the discovery made; but the suit embarrassed Ayllon, who was fitting out four vessels to sail in 1526, in order to colonize the territory granted to him. The armada from Spain was greatly delayed; and as he expected by it a store of artillery and muskets, as well as other requisites, he was at great loss. At last, however, he sailed from Puerto de la Plata with three large vessels,—a caravel, a breton, and a brigantine,—early in June, 1526.[823] As missionaries he took the famous Dominican, Antonio de Montesinos, the first to denounce Indian slavery, with Father Antonio de Cervantes and Brother Pedro de Estrada, of the same Order. The ships carried six hundred persons of both sexes, including clergymen and physicians, besides one hundred horses.
They reached the coast, not at the San Juan Bautista, but at another river, at 33° 40´, says Navarrete, to which they gave the name of Jordan.[824] Their first misfortune was the loss of the brigantine; but Ayllon immediately set to work to replace it, and built a small vessel such as was called a gavarra,—the first instance of ship-building on our coast. Francisco, his Indian guide, deserted him; and parties sent to explore the interior brought back such unfavorable accounts that Ayllon resolved to seek a more fertile district. That he sailed northward there can be little doubt; his original asiento required him to run eight hundred leagues along the coast, and he, as well as Gomez, was to seek a strait or estuary leading to the Spice Islands. The Chesapeake was a body of water which it would be imperative on him to explore, as possibly the passage sought. The soil of the country bordering on the bay, superior to that of the sandy region south of it, would seem better suited for purposes of a settlement. He at last reached Guandape, and began the settlement of San Miguel, where the English in the next century founded Jamestown.[825]
Here he found only a few scattered Indian dwellings of the communal system, long buildings, formed of pine posts at the side, and covered with branches, capable of holding, in their length of more than a hundred feet, a vast number of families. Ayllon selected the most favorable spot on the bank, though most of the land was low and swampy. Then the Spaniards began to erect houses for their shelter, the negro slaves—first introduced here—doing the heaviest portion of the toil. Before the colonists were housed, winter came on. Men perished of cold on the caravel “Catalina,” and on one of the other vessels a man’s legs were frozen so that the flesh fell off. Sickness broke out among the colonists, and many died. Ayllon himself had sunk under the pestilential fevers, and expired on St. Luke’s Day, Oct. 18, 1526.
He made his nephew, John Ramirez, then in Porto Rico, his successor as head of the colony, committing the temporary administration to Francis Gomez. Troubles soon began. Gines Doncel and Pedro de Bazan, at the head of some malcontents, seized and confined Gomez and the alcaldes, and began a career of tyranny. The Indians were provoked to hostility, and killed several of the settlers; the negroes, cruelly oppressed, fired the house of Doncel. Then two settlers, Oliveros and Monasterio, demanded the release of the lawful authorities. Swords were drawn; Bazan was wounded and taken, Doncel fled, but was discovered near his blazing house. Gomez and his subordinates, restored to power, tried and convicted Bazan, who was put to death.
Such were the stormy beginnings of Spanish rule in Virginia. It is not to be wondered at that with one consent the colonists soon resolved to abandon San Miguel de Guandape. The body of Ayllon was placed on board a tender, and they set sail; but it was not destined to reach a port and receive the obsequies due his rank. The little craft foundered; and of the five hundred who sailed from Santo Domingo only one hundred and fifty returned to that island.
Contemporaneous with the explorations made by and under Ayllon was an expedition in a single vessel sent out by the Spanish Government in 1524 under Stephen Gomez, a Portuguese navigator who had sailed under Magallanes, but had returned in a somewhat mutinous manner. He took part in a congress of Spanish and Portuguese pilots held at Badajoz to consider the probability of finding a strait or channel north of Florida by which vessels might reach the Moluccas. To test the question practically, Charles V. ordered Gomez to sail to the coast of Bacallaos, or Newfoundland and Labrador, and examine the coast carefully, in order to ascertain whether any such channel existed. Gomez fitted out a caravel at Corunna, in northern Spain, apparently in the autumn of 1524, and sailed across. After examining the Labrador coast, he turned southward and leisurely explored the whole coast from Cape Race to Florida, from which he steered to Santiago de Cuba, and thence to Corunna, entering that port after ten months’ absence. He failed to discover the desired channel, and no account in detail of his voyage is known; but the map of Ribeiro,[826] drawn up in 1529, records his discoveries, and on its coast-line gives names which were undoubtedly bestowed by him, confirming the statement that he sailed southerly. From this map and the descriptions of the coast in Spanish writers soon after, in which descriptions mention is made of his discoveries, we can see that he noted and named in his own fashion what we now know as Massachusetts Bay, Cape Cod, Narragansett Bay, the Connecticut, Hudson, and Delaware rivers.