In the month of April, 1493, he returned to the Spanish Court. The City of Barcelona was ablaze with flags and the air was vocal with the roar of artillery, while all the bells of the churches rang peals of triumph in his honor. Years before Columbus had come thither on foot and in rags, begging his bread. Now he rode the streets in more than royal pomp, crowned with the admiration and acclaim of all the populace. Seven natives of the Western World marched in his train, and there was an almost endless display of gold and gems, of carven idols and sculptured masks, of birds and beasts and reptiles, of trees and plants and fruits. Above all waved two banners, one that of Spain which he had unfurled above the new continent, and the other the admiral’s flag bearing in golden letters the inscription,
Por Castilla y por Leon
Nuevo Mundo hallo Colon,[A]
or, For Castile and Leon Columbus has discovered a new world.
Thus he came to the Court where the King and Queen awaited him, and was greeted by them as their equal. There, seated among the nobles of Spain, he gave a brief account of the most striking events of his voyage. The sovereigns listened to him with profound emotion and then fell on their knees to give thanks to God for so great an achievement. For the time being no honor was too great to bestow upon Columbus. He was commissioned to make other voyages to the New World and to take possession of all lands there in the name of Spain. Yet it was only a few years after that that the memory of his splendid services was outweighed by the malice of his foes. He was actually arrested, imprisoned and loaded with irons, and at the end died in disgrace and neglect, at Valladolid, May 20th, 1506.
The discovery made by Columbus was followed up by the Spaniards with the greatest enthusiasm. Within twenty years the four largest of the West Indian Islands were the seats of flourishing colonies, while as yet other nations were contenting themselves with occasional voyages of discovery along the coasts of the continent. The great fertility of the soil, the mildness of the climate, but above all the finding of gold and precious stones, kept the Spaniards alive to the importance of their new possessions and encouraged immigration. Columbus himself made four voyages to the New World, discovering, in his third voyage, the South American continent near the mouth of the Orinoco River, and reaching in his fourth, Honduras and the coast to the south of this region. He never knew what a great discovery he had made and to his death rested under the delusion that he had found the eastern shore of Asia.
In 1499 Alonzo de Ojeda, who had previously accompanied Columbus to the new country, made a voyage on his own account and explored four hundred leagues of the coast of South America. With him sailed Amerigo Vespucci, who afterward made three independent voyages to America and wrote the first account of it; this was published in 1507, and popular prejudice has supposed that his name came thus to be given to the New World.
At the recent Congress of Americanists in Paris, this point was discussed with much warmth. M. Jules Marcon asserted that Vespucci’s name was Alberico instead of Amerigo, and that he changed it after the new continent was named. The true derivation of the name America is Amerique, that being the Indian name of a range of mountains in Central America. Still, some historians declare that very range of mountains to have been called Amerisque, and it is true that in the Florentine language Alberico and Amerigo are identical. Then there is extant a map of the world prepared by one Vallescu of Majorca in 1490, on the back of which is a note to the effect that the map was purchased for one hundred and twenty ducats in gold by Amerigo Vespucci, the merchant. This proves that even if his name was not Amerigo, he sometimes wrote it so.
Other voyagers were Pedro Alonzo Nigno and Vincent Pinzon, the latter being the first Spaniard to cross the equinoctial line. He discovered the mouth of the Amazon River and from there sailed north to the Carribean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico. In the same year (1499), Diego Lope explored the coast of South America far to the southwest.
The discovery and conquest of Mexico and Peru followed. The New World became the Mecca of every reckless and adventurous spirit in Europe. Ojeda sailed under a grant from the King of Spain to found a colony at San Sebastian, and with him went Francisco Pizarro, who thus made the first step in his adventurous career. The colony at San Sebastian was abandoned, and on the return voyage one vessel foundered. The other, commanded by Pizarro, reached Carthagena, where it was met by a fleet conveying men and provisions to the colony. On one of these ships was the adventurer Balboa, who had smuggled himself on board to escape his creditors. Learning that the colony toward which they were sailing had been deserted, Balboa proposed going to Darien, which coast he had already visited. The proposal met with favor and a new town was founded under the name of Santa Maria de la Antigua del Darien. Trouble began immediately, as usual. The man who had brought the fleet thither, Encisco, a lawyer of San Domingo, was imprisoned and Balboa was made alcade of the colony.
The natives of Darien viewed their visitors with anything but favor, and endeavored by strategy to induce them to move on. They represented the neighboring district of Coyba to be much richer in gold and provisions than their own, and Pizarro, with only six men, went on an exploring expedition. The natives were found to be hostile, and on one occasion the Spaniards were surrounded by four hundred warriors, with whom they had a very bloody battle. One hundred and fifty natives were killed, many more wounded, while the Spaniards all escaped with their lives, one man only being too badly hurt to fly. Retreating to Santa Maria, they reported their misfortune, and it is to the credit of Balboa that he obliged them to return and bring back their wounded companion. Coyba was conquered, and an alliance formed with its ruler. Adjacent to it was a range of mountains, at the foot of which was a very rich and highly civilized country called Comagre. The chief invited the Spaniards to his domain, treated them with hospitality, and astonished them with the splendor of his possessions. His palace was a wonderful structure of wood, divided into many apartments. In one of these chambers, the dried and embalmed bodies of the chieftain’s ancestors, clothed in cotton robes, richly embroidered with gold and precious stones, were suspended from the walls. A large amount of gold and seventy slaves were presented to the Spaniards. One-fifth of the gold was set apart for the King, and over the remainder the Christians held such a dispute that the savages were aghast. Finally the young chieftain scornfully remarked that if they were so greedy for gold, he could direct them to a country where it was more common than iron was in their land. “When you have passed this range of mountains,” he continued, “you will behold another ocean, on which are vessels only inferior to those which brought you hither, equipped with sails and oars, but navigated by people naked like ourselves.” Undoubtedly the chief alluded to Peru. This certain proof of the existence of another ocean filled Balboa with delight. He imagined that the country described formed a part of the vast region of the East Indies. Preparations for the enterprise were immediately begun, but in the midst of it all Balboa was summoned to court to answer the charges brought against him by Encisco. Instead of obeying the command, however, he determined to effect the passage to the South Sea before his successor could arrive from Spain. The Isthmus of Darien is only sixty miles in breadth, but a chain of mountains, a continuation of the Andes, runs through its whole extent. Its valleys are marshy and unhealthy, being inundated by rains which prevail nearly two-thirds of the year. These marshes are even more impenetrable than the forests which cover the mountains, and to this day the crossing is not much easier than it was then.