Christopher Columbus (1440-1506)

by W. L. Alden

CHAPTER XIX.
HIS CHARACTER AND ACHIEVEMENTS.

Hitherto we have proceeded upon the assumption that Columbus was a real historical person. It is one of the limitations of biography that the writer must always assume the existence of the subject of his sketch. There are, however, grave reasons for doubting whether Christopher Columbus ever lived. There is the matter of his birthplace. Is it credible that he was born in seven distinct places? Nobody claims that George Washington was born in all our prominent cities, or that Robinson Crusoe, who was perhaps the most absolutely real person to be found in the whole range of biography, was born anywhere except at York. Can we believe that the whole of Columbus was simultaneously buried in two different West Indian cities? If we can accept any such alleged fact as this, we can no longer pretend that one of the two Italian cities which boast the possession of the head of John the Baptist is the victim of misplaced confidence.

And then the character of Columbus as portrayed by his admiring biographers is quite incredible, and his alleged treatment by the King and Queen whom he served is to the last degree improbable. The story of Columbus is without doubt an interesting and even fascinating one; but can we, as fearless and honest philosophers, believe in the reality of that sweet Genoese vision—the heroic and noble discoverer of the New World?

There are strong reasons for believing that the legend of Christopher Columbus is simply a form of the Sun myth. We find the story in the Italian, Spanish, and English languages, which shows, not that Colombo, Colon, and Columbus ever lived, breathed, ate dinner, and went to bed, but that the myth is widely spread among the Indo-Germanic races. Columbus is said to have sailed from the east to the west, and to have disappeared for a time beyond the western horizon, only to be found again in Spain, whence he had originally sailed. Even in Spain, he was said to have had his birthplace in some vague locality farther east, and to have reached Spain only when near his maturity.

This is a beautiful allegorical description of the course of the sun as it would appear to an unlearned and imaginative Spaniard. He would see the sun rising in the distant east, warming Spain with his mature and noonday rays, setting beyond the western horizon in the waters of the Atlantic, and again returning to Spain to begin another voyage, or course, through the heavens. The clouds which at times obscure the sun are vividly represented by the misfortunes which darkened the career of Columbus, and his imprisonment in chains by Bobadilla is but an allegorical method of describing a solar eclipse. The colonists who died of fever under his rule, like the Greeks who fell under the darts of the Sun God, remind us of the unwholesome effects produced by the rays of a tropical sun upon decaying vegetation; and the story that Columbus was buried in different places illustrates the fact that the apparent place of sunset changes at different points of the year.

There is very much to be said in favor of the theory that Columbus is a personification of the Sun, but that theory cannot be accepted either by a biographer or by any patriotic American. The one would have to put his biography of the Great Admiral in the fire, and the other would lose all certainty as to whether America had ever been discovered. We must resolve to believe in the reality of Columbus, no matter what learned sceptics may tell us; and we shall find no difficulty in so doing if we found our belief on a good strong prejudice instead of reasonable arguments.

Let us then permit no man to destroy our faith in Christopher Columbus. We can find fault with him if we choose; we can refuse to accept Smith’s or Brown’s or Jones’s respective estimates of his character and deeds: but let us never doubt that Columbus was a real Italian explorer; that he served an amiable Spanish Queen and a miserable Spanish King; and that he sailed across a virgin ocean to discover a virgin continent.

There prevails to a very large extent the impression that the voyages of Columbus prove that he was a wonderfully skilful navigator, and it is also commonly believed that the compass and the astrolabe were providentially invented expressly in order to assist him in discovering America. There was, of course, a certain amount of practical seamanship displayed in keeping the Santa Maria and her successors from being swamped by the waves of the Atlantic; but it may be safely asserted that only a very slight knowledge of navigation was either exhibited or needed by Columbus. The ships of the period could do nothing except with a fair wind. When the wind was contrary they drifted slowly to leeward, and when the wind was fair a small-boy with a knowledge of the elements of steering could have kept any one of them on her course. The compass was a handy thing to have on board a ship, since it gave to the sailors the comfortable feeling which an ignorant man always has in the presence of any piece of mechanism which he fancies is of assistance to him; but for all practical purposes the sun and the stars were as useful to Columbus as was his compass with its unintelligible freaks of variation. So, too, the astrolabe must have impressed the sailors as a sort of powerful and beneficent fetish, but the log-book of Columbus would have testified that the astrolabe was more ornamental than useful.

The system of navigation followed by Columbus was to steer as nearly west as practicable on the way to America, and to steer as nearly east as possible on his way back to Spain. In the one case he would be sure to hit some part of the New World if he sailed long enough, and in the other case persistent sailing would be sure to bring him within sight of either Europe or Africa. In neither case could he so far overrun his reckoning as to arrive unexpectedly at some point in the interior of a continent. The facts prove that this was precisely the way in which Columbus navigated his ship. When steering for America he never knew where he would find land, and was satisfied if he reached any one of the countless large and small West India islands; and on returning to Spain there was as much probability that he would find himself at the Azores or at the mouth of the Tagus as at any Spanish port.

The truth is, that neither the seamanship of Columbus nor the invention of the compass or the astrolabe made his first voyage successful. Probably any one of the thousands of contemporary Italian sailors could have found the West Indies as easily as Columbus found them, provided the hypothetical sailor had possessed sufficient resolution to sail westward until the land should stop his way. What we should properly be called upon to admire in Columbus as a navigator of unknown seas is the obstinacy with which he adhered to his purpose of sailing due west until land should be found, no matter if it should take all summer. It was an obstinacy akin to that with which our great Union General fought his last campaign. Such obstinacy will sometimes accomplish greater results than the most skilful navigator or the profoundest strategist could accomplish. Had the man who discovered our country or the man who saved it been less obstinate, American history would have been widely different from what it has been.