Christopher Columbus and the New World - Book 2



BOOK 2

CHAPTER IX.
WANDERINGS WITH AN IDEA 

The man to whom Columbus proposed to address his request for means with 
which to make a voyage of discovery was no less a person than the new King 
of Portugal. Columbus was never a man of petty or small ideas; if he were 
going to do a thing at all, he went about it in a large and comprehensive 
way; and all his life he had a way of going to the fountainhead, and of 
making flights and leaps where other men would only climb or walk, that 
had much to do with his ultimate success. King John, moreover, had shown 
himself thoroughly sympathetic to the spirit of discovery; Columbus, as we 
have seen, had already been employed in a trusted capacity in one of the 
royal expeditions; and he rightly thought that, since he had to ask the 
help of some one in his enterprise, he might as well try to enlist the 
Crown itself in the service of his great Idea. He was not prepared, 
however, to go directly to the King and ask for ships; his proposal would 
have to be put in a way that would appeal to the royal ambition, and would 
also satisfy the King that there was really a destination in view for the 
expedition. In other words Columbus had to propose to go somewhere; it 
would not do to say that he was going west into the Atlantic Ocean to look 
about him. He therefore devoted all his energies to putting his proposal 
on what is called a business footing, and expressing his vague, sublime 
Idea in common and practical terms. 

The people who probably helped him most in this were his brother 
Bartholomew and Martin Behaim, the great authority on scientific 
navigation, who had been living in Lisbon for some time and with whom 
Columbus was acquainted. Behaim, who was at this time about forty eight 
years of age, was born at Nuremberg, and was a pupil of Regiomontanus, the 
great German astronomer. A very interesting man, this, if we could 
decipher his features and character; no mere star-gazing visionary, but a 
man of the world, whose scientific lore was combined with a wide and 
liberal experience of life. He was not only learned in cosmography and 
astronomy, but he had a genius for mechanics and made beautiful 
instruments; he was a merchant also, and combined a little business with 
his scientific travels. He had been employed at Lisbon in adapting the 
astrolabe of Regiomontanus for the use of sailors at sea; and in these 
labours he was assisted by two people who were destined to have a weighty 
influence on the career of Columbus--Doctors Rodrigo and Joseph, 
physicians or advisers to the King, and men of great academic reputation. 
There was nothing known about cosmography or astronomy that Behaim did not 
know; and he had just come back from an expedition on which he had been 
despatched, with Rodrigo and Joseph, to take the altitude of the sun in 
Guinea. 

Columbus was not the man to neglect his opportunities, and there can be no 
doubt that as soon as his purpose had established itself in his mind he 
made use of every opportunity that presented itself for improving his 
meagre scientific knowledge, in order that his proposal might be set forth 
in a plausible form. In other words, he got up the subject. The whole of 
his geographical reading with regard to the Indies up to this time had 
been in the travels of Marco Polo; the others--whose works he quoted from 
so freely in later years were then known to him only by name, if at all. 
Behaim, however, could tell him a good deal about the supposed 
circumference of the earth, the extent of the Asiatic continent, and so 
on. Every new fact that Columbus heard he seized and pressed into the 
service of his Idea; where there was a choice of facts, or a difference of 
opinion between scientists, he chose the facts that were most convenient, 
and the opinions that fitted best with his own beliefs. The very word 
"Indies" was synonymous with unbounded wealth; there certainly would be 
riches to tempt the King with; and Columbus, being a religious man, hit 
also on the happy idea of setting forth the spiritual glory of carrying 
the light of faith across the Sea of Darkness, and making of the heathen a 
heritage for the Christian Church. So that, what with one thing and 
another, he soon had his proposals formally arranged. 

Imagine him, then, actually at Court, and having an audience of the King, 
who could scarcely believe his ears. Here was a man, of whom he knew 
nothing but that his conduct of a caravel had been well spoken of in the 
recent expedition to Guinea, actually proposing to sail out west into the 
Atlantic and to cross the unknown part of the world. Certainly his 
proposals seemed plausible, but still--. The earth was round, said 
Columbus, and therefore there was a way from East to West and from West to 
East. The prophet Esdras, a scientific authority that even His Majesty 
would hardly venture to doubt, had laid it down that only one- seventh of 
the earth was covered by waters. From this fact Columbus deduced that the 
maritime space extending westward between the shores of Europe and eastern 
coast of Asia could not be large; and by sailing westward he proposed to 
reach certain lands of which he claimed to have knowledge. The sailors' 
tales, the logs of driftwood, the dead bodies, were all brought into the 
proposals; in short, if His Majesty would grant some ships, and consent to 
making Columbus Admiral over all the islands that he might discover, with 
full viceregal state, authority, and profit, he would go and discover 
them. 

There are two different accounts of what the King said when this proposal 
was made to him. According to some authorities, John was impressed by 
Columbus's proposals, and inclined to provide him with the necessary 
ships, but he could not assent to all the titles and rewards which 
Columbus demanded as a price for his services. Barros, the Portuguese 
historian, on the other hand, represents that the whole idea was too 
fantastic to be seriously entertained by the King for a moment, and that 
although he at once made up his mind to refuse the request he preferred to 
delegate his refusal to a commission. Whatever may be the truth as to King 
John's opinions, the commission was certainly appointed, and consisted of 
three persons, to wit: Master Rodrigo, Master Joseph the Jew, and the 
Right Reverend Cazadilla, Bishop of Ceuta. 

Before these three learned men must Columbus now appear, a little less 
happy in his mind, and wishing that he knew more Latin. Master Rodrigo, 
Master Joseph the Jew, the Right Reverend Cazadilla: three pairs of cold 
eyes turned rather haughtily on the Genoese adventurer; three brains much 
steeped in learning, directed in judgment on the Idea of a man with no 
learning at all. The Right Reverend Cazadilla, being the King's confessor, 
and a bishop into the bargain, could speak on that matter of converting 
the heathen; and he was of opinion that it could not be done. Joseph the 
Jew, having made voyages, and worked with Behaim at the astrolabe, was 
surely an authority on navigation; and he was of opinion that it could not 
be done. Rodrigo, being also a very learned man, had read many books which 
Columbus had not read; and he was of opinion that it could not be done. 
Three learned opinions against one Idea; the Idea is bound to go. They 
would no doubt question Columbus on the scientific aspect of the matter, 
and would soon discover his grievous lack of academic knowledge. They 
would quote fluently passages from writers that he had not heard of; if he 
had not heard of them, they seemed to imply, no wonder he made such 
foolish proposals. Poor Columbus stands there puzzled, dissatisfied, 
tongue-tied. He cannot answer these wiseacres in their own learned lingo; 
what they say, or what they quote, may be true or it may not; but it has 
nothing to do with his Idea. If he opens his mouth to justify himself, 
they refute him with arguments that he does not understand; there is a 
wall between them. More than a wall; there is a world between them! It is 
his 'credo' against their 'ignoro'; it is, his 'expecto' against their 
'non video'. Yet in his 'credo' there lies a power of which they do not 
dream; and it rings out in a trumpet note across the centuries, saluting 
the life force that opposes its irresistible "I will" to the feeble "Thou 
canst not" of the worldly-wise. Thus, in about the year 1483, did three 
learned men sit in judgment upon our ignorant Christopher. Three learned 
men: Doctors Rodrigo, Joseph the Jew, and the Right Reverend Cazadilla, 
Bishop of Ceuta; three risen, stuffed to the eyes and ears with learning; 
stuffed so full indeed that eyes and ears are closed with it. And three 
men, it would appear, wholly destitute of mother-wit. 

After all his preparations this rebuff must have been a serious blow to 
Columbus. It was not his only trouble, moreover. During the last year he 
had been earning nothing; he was already in imagination the Admiral of the 
Ocean Seas; and in the anticipation of the much higher duties to which he 
hoped to be devoted it is not likely that he would continue at his humble 
task of making maps and charts. The result was that he got into debt, and 
it was absolutely necessary that something should be done. But a darker 
trouble had also almost certainly come to him about this time. Neither the 
day nor the year of Philippa's death is known; but it is likely that it 
occurred soon after Columbus's failure at the Portuguese Court, and 
immediately before his departure into Spain. That anonymous life, 
fulfilling itself so obscurely in companionship and motherhood, as softly 
as it floated upon the page of history, as softly fades from it again. 
Those kind eyes, that encouraging voice, that helping hand and friendly 
human soul are with him no longer; and after the interval of peace and 
restful growth that they afforded Christopher must strike his tent and go 
forth upon another stage of his pilgrimage with a heavier and sterner 
heart. 

Two things are left to him: his son Diego, now an articulate little 
creature with character and personality of his own, and with strange, 
heart-breaking reminiscences of his mother in voice and countenance and 
manner--that is one possession; the other is his Idea. Two things alive 
and satisfactory, amid the ruin and loss of other possessions; two reasons 
for living and prevailing. And these two possessions Columbus took with 
him when he set out for Spain in the year 1485. 

His first care was to take little Diego to the town of Huelva, where there 
lived a sister of Philippa's who had married a Spaniard named Muliartes. 
This done, he was able to devote himself solely to the furtherance of his 
Idea. For this purpose he went to Seville, where he attached himself for a 
little while to a group of his countrymen who were settled there, among 
them Antonio and Alessandro Geraldini, and made such momentary living as 
was possible to him by his old trade. But the Idea would not sleep. He 
talked of nothing else; and as men do who talk of an idea that possesses 
them wholly, and springs from the inner light of faith, he interested and 
impressed many of his hearers. Some of them suggested one thing, some 
another; but every one was agreed that it would be a good thing if he 
could enlist the services of the great Count (afterwards Duke) of Medini 
Celi, who had a palace at Rota, near Cadiz. 

This nobleman was one of the most famous of the grandees of Spain, and 
lived in mighty state upon his territory along the sea-shore, serving the 
Crown in its wars and expeditions with the power and dignity of an ally 
rather than of a subject. His domestic establishment was on a princely 
scale, filled with chamberlains, gentlemen-at-arms, knights, retainers, 
and all the panoply of social dignity; and there was also place in his 
household for persons of merit and in need of protection. To this great 
man came Columbus with his Idea. It attracted the Count, who was a judge 
of men and perhaps of ideas also; and Columbus, finding some hope at last 
in his attitude, accepted the hospitality offered to him, and remained at 
Rota through the winter of 1485-86. He had not been very hopeful when he 
arrived there, and had told the Count that he had thought of going to the 
King of France and asking for help from him; but the Count, who found 
something respectable and worthy of consideration in the Idea of a man who 
thought nothing of a journey in its service from one country to another 
and one sovereign to another, detained him, and played with the Idea 
himself. Three or four caravels were nothing to the Count of Medina Eeli; 
but on the other hand the man was a grandee and a diplomat, with a nice 
sense of etiquette and of what was due to a reigning house. Either there 
was nothing in this Idea, in which case his caravels would be employed to 
no purpose, or there was so much in it that it was an undertaking, not 
merely for the Count of Medina Celi, but for the Crown of Castile. Lands 
across the ocean, and untold gold and riches of the Indies, suggested 
complications with foreign Powers, and transactions with the Pope himself, 
that would probably be a little too much even for the good Count; 
therefore with a curious mixture of far-sighted generosity and shrewd 
security he wrote to Queen Isabella, recommending Columbus to her, and 
asking her to consider his Idea; asking her also, in case anything should 
come of it, to remember him (the Count), and to let him have a finger in 
the pie. Thus, with much literary circumstance and elaboration of 
politeness, the Count of Medina Celi to Queen Isabella. 

Follows an interval of suspense, the beginning of a long discipline of 
suspense to which Columbus was to be subjected; and presently comes a 
favourable reply from the Queen, commanding that Columbus should be sent 
to her. Early in 1486 he set out for Cordova, where the Court was then 
established, bearing another letter from the Count in which his own 
private requests were repeated, and perhaps a little emphasised. Columbus 
was lodged in the house of Alonso de Quintanilla, Treasurer to the Crown 
of Castile, there to await an audience with Queen Isabella. 

While he is waiting, and getting accustomed to his new surroundings, let 
us consider these two monarchs in whose presence he is soon to appear, and 
upon whose decision hangs some part of the world's destiny. Isabella 
first; for in that strange duet of government it is her womanly soprano 
that rings most clearly down the corridors of Time. We discern in her a 
very busy woman, living a difficult life with much tact and judgment, and 
exercising to some purpose that amiable taste for "doing good" that marks 
the virtuous lady of station in every age. This, however, was a woman who 
took risks with her eyes open, and steered herself cleverly in perilous 
situations, and guided others with a firm hand also, and in other ways 
made good her claim to be a ruler. The consent and the will of her people 
were her great strength; by them she dethroned her niece and ascended the 
throne of Castile. She had the misfortune to be at variance with her 
husband in almost every matter of policy dear to his heart; she opposed 
the expulsion of the Jews and the establishment of the Inquisition; but 
when she failed to get her way, she was still able to preserve her 
affectionate relations with her husband without disagreement and with 
happiness. If she had a fault it was the common one of being too much 
under the influence of her confessors; but it was a fault that was rarely 
allowed to disturb the balance of her judgment. She liked clever people 
also; surrounded herself with men of letters and of science, fostered all 
learned institutions, and delighted in the details of civil 
administration. A very dignified and graceful figure, that could equally 
adorn a Court drawing-room or a field of battle; for she actually went 
into the field, and wore armour as becomingly as silk and ermine. Firm, 
constant, clever, alert, a little given to fussiness perhaps, but 
sympathetic and charming, with some claims to genius and some approach to 
grandeur of soul: so much we may say truly of her inner self. Outwardly 
she was a woman well formed, of medium height, a very dignified and 
graceful carriage, eyes of a clear summer blue, and the red and gold of 
autumn in her hair--these last inherited from her English grandmother. 

Ferdinand of Aragon appears not quite so favourably in our pages, for he 
never thought well of Columbus or of his proposals; and when he finally 
consented to the expedition he did so with only half a heart, and against 
his judgment. He was an extremely enterprising, extremely subtle, 
extremely courageous, and according to our modern notions, an extremely 
dishonest man; that is to say, his standards of honour were not those 
which we can accept nowadays. He thought nothing of going back on a 
promise, provided he got a priestly dispensation to do so; he juggled with 
his cabinets, and stopped at nothing in order to get his way; he had a 
craving ambition, and was lacking in magnanimity; he loved dominion, and 
cared very little for glory. A very capable man; so capable that in spite 
of his defects he was regarded by his subjects as wise and prudent; so 
capable that he used his weaknesses of character to strengthen and further 
the purposes of his reign. A very cold man also, quick and sure in his 
judgments, of wide understanding and grasp of affairs; simple and austere 
in dress and diet, as austerity was counted in that period of splendour; 
extremely industrious, and close in his observations and judgments of men. 
To the bodily eye he appeared as a man of middle size, sturdy and 
athletic, face burned a brick red with exposure to the sun and open air; 
hair and eyebrows of a bright chestnut; a well-formed and not unkindly 
mouth; a voice sharp and unmelodious, issuing in quick fluent speech. This 
was the man that earned from the Pope, for himself and his successors, the 
title of "Most Catholic Majesty." 

The Queen was very busy indeed with military preparations; but in the 
midst of her interviews with nobles and officers, contractors and state 
officials, she snatched a moment to receive the person Christopher 
Columbus. With that extreme mental agility which is characteristic of busy 
sovereigns all the force of this clever woman's mind was turned for a 
moment on Christopher, whose Idea had by this time invested him with a 
dignity which no amount of regal state could abash. There was very little 
time. The Queen heard what Columbus had to say, cutting him short, it is 
likely, with kindly tact, and suppressing his tendency to launch out into 
long-winded speeches. What she saw she liked; and, being too busy to give 
to this proposal the attention that it obviously merited, she told 
Columbus that the matter would be fully gone into and that in the meantime 
he must regard himself as the guest of the Court. And so, in the 
countenance of a smile and a promise, Columbus bows himself out. For the 
present he must wait a little and his hot heart must contain itself while 
other affairs, looming infinitely larger than his Idea on the royal 
horizon, receive the attention of the Court. 

It was not the happiest moment, indeed, in which to talk of ships and 
charts, and lonely sea-roads, and faraway undiscovered shores. Things at 
home were very real and lively in those spring days at Cordova. The war 
against the Moors had reached a critical stage; King Ferdinand was away 
laying siege to the city of Loxa, and though the Queen was at Cordova she 
was entirely occupied with the business of collecting and forwarding 
troops and supplies to his aid. The streets were full of soldiers; nobles 
and grandees from all over the country were arriving daily with their 
retinues; glitter and splendour, and the pomp of warlike preparation, 
filled the city. Early in June the Queen herself went to the front and 
joined her husband in the siege of Moclin; and when this was victoriously 
ended, and they had returned in triumph to Cordova, they had to set out 
again for Gallicia to suppress a rebellion there. When that was over they 
did not come back to Cordova at all, but repaired at once to Salamanca to 
spend the winter there. 

At the house of Alonso de Quintanilla, however, Columbus was not 
altogether wasting his time. He met there some of the great persons of the 
Court, among them the celebrated Pedro Gonzalez de Mendoza, Archbishop of 
Toledo and Grand Cardinal of Spain. This was far too great a man to be at 
this time anything like a friend of Columbus; but Columbus had been 
presented to him; the Cardinal would know his name, and what his business 
was; and that is always a step towards consideration. Cabrero, the royal 
Chamberlain, was also often a fellow-guest at the Treasurer's table; and 
with him Columbus contracted something like a friendship. Every one who 
met him liked him; his dignity, his simplicity of thought and manner, his 
experience of the sea, and his calm certainty and conviction about the 
stupendous thing which. he proposed to do, could not fail to attract the 
liking and admiration of those with whom he came in contact. In the 
meantime a committee appointed by the Queen sat upon his proposals. The 
committee met under the presidentship of Hernando de Talavera, the prior 
of the monastery of Santa Maria del Prado, near Valladolid, a pious 
ecclesiastic, who had the rare quality of honesty, and who was therefore a 
favourite with Queen Isabella; she afterwards created him Archbishop of 
Granada. He was not, however, poor honest soul! quite the man to grasp and 
grapple with this wild scheme for a voyage across the ocean. Once more 
Columbus, as in Portugal, set forth his views with eloquence and 
conviction; and once more, at the tribunal of learning, his unlearned 
proposals were examined and condemned. Not only was Columbus's Idea 
regarded as scientifically impossible, but it was also held to come 
perilously near to heresy, in its assumption of a state of affairs that 
was clearly at variance with the writings of the Fathers and the sacred 
Scriptures themselves. 

This new disappointment, bitter though it was, did not find Columbus in 
such friendless and unhappy circumstances as those in which he left 
Portugal. He had important friends now, who were willing and anxious to 
help him, and among them was one to whom he turned, in his profound 
depression, for religious and friendly consolation. This was Diego de DEA, 
prior of the Dominican convent of San Estevan at Salamanca, who was also 
professor of theology in the university there and tutor to the young 
Prince Juan. Of all those who came in contact with Columbus at this time 
this man seems to have understood him best, and to have realised where his 
difficulty lay. Like many others who are consumed with a burning idea 
Columbus was very probably at this time in danger of becoming possessed 
with it like a monomaniac; and his new friends saw that if he were to make 
any impression upon the conservative learning of the time to which a 
decision in such matters was always referred he must have some opportunity 
for friendly discussion with learned men who were not inimical to him, and 
who were not in the position of judges examining a man arraigned before 
them and pleading for benefits. 

When the Court went to Salamanca at the end of 1486, DEA arranged that 
Columbus should go there too, and he lodged him in a country farm called 
Valcuebo, which belonged to his convent and was equi-distant from it and 
the city. Here the good Dominican fathers came and visited him, bringing 
with them professors from the university, who discussed patiently with 
Columbus his theories and ambitions, and, himself all conscious, 
communicated new knowledge to him, and quietly put him right on many a 
scientific point. There were professors of cosmography and astronomy in 
the university, familiar with the works of Alfraganus and Regiomontanus. 
It is likely that it was at this time that Columbus became possessed of 
d'Ailly's 'Imago Mundi', which little volume contained a popular resume of 
the scientific views of Strabo, Pliny, Ptolemy, and others, and was from 
this time forth Columbus's constant companion. 

Here at Valcuebo and later, when winter came, in the great hall of the 
Dominican convent at Salamanca, known as the "De Profundis" hall, where 
the monks received guests and held discussions, the Idea of Columbus was 
ventilated and examined. He heard what friendly sceptics had to say about 
it; he saw the kind of argument that he would have to oppose to the 
existing scientific and philosophical knowledge on cosmography. There is 
no doubt that he learnt a good deal at this time; and more important even 
than this, he got his project known and talked about; and he made powerful 
friends, who were afterwards to be of great use to him. The Marquesa de 
Moya, wife of his friend Cabrera, took a great liking to him; and as she 
was one of the oldest and closest friends of the Queen, it is likely that 
she spoke many a good word for Columbus in Isabella's ear. 

By the time the Court moved to Cordova early in 1487, Columbus was once 
more hopeful of getting a favourable hearing. He followed the Court to 
Cordova, where he received a gracious message from the Queen to the effect 
that she had not forgotten him, and that as soon as her military 
preoccupations permitted it, she would go once more, and more fully, into 
his proposals. In the meantime he was attached to the Court, and received 
a quarterly payment of 3000 maravedis. It seemed as though the 
unfavourable decision of Talavera's committee had been forgotten. 

In the meantime he was to have a change of scene. Isabella followed 
Ferdinand to the siege of Malaga, where the Court was established; and as 
there were intervals in which other than military business might be 
transacted, Columbus was ordered to follow them in case his affairs should 
come up for consideration. They did not; but the man himself had an 
experience that may have helped to keep his thoughts from brooding too 
much on his unfulfilled ambition. Years afterwards, when far away on 
lonely seas, amid the squalor of a little ship and the staggering buffets 
of a gale, there would surely sometimes leap into his memory a brightly 
coloured picture of this scene in the fertile valley of Malaga: the silken 
pavilions of the Court, the great encampment of nobility with its arms and 
banners extending in a semicircle to the seashore, all glistening and 
moving in the bright sunshine. There was added excitement at this time at 
an attempt to assassinate Ferdinand and Isabella, a fanatic Moor having 
crept up to one of the pavilions and aimed a blow at two people whom he 
mistook for the King and Queen. They turned out to be Don Alvaro de 
Portugal, who was dangerously wounded, and Columbus's friend, the Marquesa 
de Moya, who was unhurt; but it was felt that the King and Queen had had a 
narrow escape. The siege was raised on the 18th of August, and the 
sovereigns went to spend the winter at Zaragoza; and Columbus, once more 
condemned to wait, went back to Cordova. 

It was here that he contracted his second and, so far as we know, his last 
romantic attachment. The long idle days of summer and autumn at Cordova, 
empty of all serious occupation, gave nature an opportunity for indulging 
her passion for life and continuity. Among Christopher's friends at 
Cordova was the family of Arana, friendly hospitable souls, by some 
accounts noble and by others not noble, and certainly in somewhat poor 
circumstances, who had welcomed him to their house, listened to his plans 
with enthusiasm, and formed a life-long friendship with him. Three members 
of this family are known to us--two brothers, Diego and Pedro, both of 
whom commanded ships in Columbus's expeditions, and a sister Beatriz. 
Columbus was now a man of six-and-thirty, while she was little more than a 
girl; he was handsome and winning, distinguished by the daring and 
importance of his scheme, full of thrilling and romantic talk of distant 
lands; a very interesting companion, we may be sure. No wonder she fell in 
love with Christopher; no wonder that he, feeling lonely and depressed by 
the many postponements of his suit at Court, and in need of sympathy and 
encouragement, fell in these blank summer days into an intimacy that 
flamed into a brief but happy passion. Why Columbus never married Beatriz 
de Arana we cannot be sure, for it is almost certain that his first wife 
had died some time before. Perhaps he feared to involve himself in any new 
or embarrassing ties; perhaps he loved unwillingly, and against his 
reason; perhaps--although the suggestion is not a happy one--he by this 
time did not think poor Beatriz good enough for the Admiral-elect of the 
Ocean Seas; perhaps (and more probably) Beatriz was already married and 
deserted, for she bore the surname of Enriquez; and in that case, there 
being no such thing as a divorce in the Catholic Church, she must either 
sin or be celibate. But however that may be, there was an uncanonical 
alliance between them which evidently did not in the least scandalise her 
brothers and which resulted in the birth of Ferdinand Columbus in the 
following year. Christopher, so communicative and discursive upon some of 
his affairs, is as reticent about Beatriz as he was about Philippa. 
Beatriz shares with his legitimate wife the curious distinction of being 
spoken of by Columbus to posterity only in his will, which was executed at 
Valladolid the day before he died. In the dry ink and vellum of that 
ancient legal document is his only record of these two passions. The 
reference to Beatriz is as follows: 

"And I direct him [Diego] to make provision for Beatriz Enriquez, mother 
of D. Fernando, my son, that she may be able to live honestly, being a 
person to whom I am under very great obligation. And this shall be done 
for the satisfaction of my conscience, because this matter weighs heavily 
upon my soul. The reason for which it is not fitting to write here." 

About the condition of Beatriz, temporal and spiritual, there has been 
much controversy; but where the facts are all so buried and inaccessible 
it is unseemly to agitate a veil which we cannot lift, and behind which 
Columbus himself sheltered this incident of his life. "Acquainted with 
poverty" is one fragment of fact concerning her that has come down to us; 
acquainted also with love and with happiness, it would seem, as many poor 
persons undoubtedly are. Enough for us to know that in the city of Cordova 
there lived a woman, rich or poor, gentle or humble, married or not 
married, who brought for a time love and friendly companionship into the 
life of Columbus; that she gave what she had for giving, without stint or 
reserve, and that she became the mother of a son who inherited much of 
what was best in his father, and but for whom the world would be in even 
greater darkness than it is on the subject of Christopher himself. And so 
no more of Beatriz Enriquez de Arana, whom "God has in his keeping"--and 
has had now these many centuries of Time. 

Thus passed the summer and autumn of 1487; precious months, precious years 
slipping by, and the great purpose as yet unfulfilled and seemingly no 
nearer to fulfilment. It is likely that Columbus kept up his applications 
to the Court, and received polite and delaying replies. The next year 
came, and the Court migrated from Zaragoza to Murcia, from Murcia to 
Valladolid, from Valladolid to Medina del Campo. Columbus attended it in 
one or other of these places, but without result. In August Beatriz gave 
birth to a son, who was christened Ferdinand, and who lived to be a great 
comfort to his father, if not to her also. But the miracle of paternity 
was not now so new and wonderful as it had been; the battle of life, with 
its crosses and difficulties, was thick about him; and perhaps he looked 
into this new-comer's small face with conflicting thoughts, and memories 
of the long white beach and the crashing surf at Porto Santo, and regret 
for things lost--so strangely mingled and inconsistent are the threads of 
human thought. At last he decided to turn his face elsewhere. In September 
1488 he went to Lisbon, for what purpose it is not certain; possibly in 
connection with the affairs of his dead wife; and probably also in the 
expectation of seeing his brother Bartholomew, to whom we may now turn our 
attention for a moment. 

After the failure of Columbus's proposals to the King of Portugal in 1486, 
and the break-up of his home there, Bartholomew had also left Lisbon. 
Bartholomew Diaz, a famous Portuguese navigator, was leaving for the 
African coast in August, and Bartholomew Columbus is said to have joined 
his small expedition of three caravels. As they neared the latitude of the 
Cape which he was trying to make, he ran into a gale which drove him a 
long way out of his course, west and south. 

The wind veered round from north-east to north-west, and he did not strike 
the land again until May 1487. When he did so his crew insisted upon his 
returning, as they declined to go any further south. He therefore turned 
to the west, and then made the startling discovery that in the course of 
the tempest he had been blown round the Cape, and that the land he had 
made was to the eastward of it; and he therefore rounded it on his way 
home. He arrived back in Lisbon in December 1488, when Columbus met his 
brother again, and was present at the reception of Diaz by the King of 
Portugal. They had a great deal to tell each other, these two brothers; in 
the two years and a half that had gone since they had parted a great deal 
had happened to them; and they both knew a good deal more about the great 
question in which they, were interested than they had known when last they 
talked. 

It is to this period that I attribute the inception, if not the execution, 
of the forgery of the Toscanelli correspondence, if, as I believe, it was 
a forgery. Christopher's unpleasant experiences before learned committees 
and commissions had convinced him that unless he were armed with some 
authoritative and documentary support for his theories they had little 
chance of acceptance by the learned. The, Idea was right; he knew that; 
but before he could convince the academic mind, he felt that it must have 
the imprimatur of a mind whose learning could not be impugned. Therefore 
it is not an unfair guess--and it can be nothing more than a guess--that 
Christopher and Bartholomew at this point laid their heads together, and 
decided that the next time Christopher had to appear before a commission 
he would, so to speak, have something "up his sleeve." It was a risky 
thing to do, and must in any case be used only as a very last resource; 
which would account for the fact that the Toscanelli correspondence was 
never used at all, and is not mentioned in any document known to men 
written until long after Columbus's death. 

But these summers and winters of suspense are at last drawing to a close, 
and we must follow Christopher rapidly through them until the hour of his 
triumph. He was back in Spain in the spring of 1489, his travelling 
expenses being defrayed out of the royal purse; and a little later he was 
once more amid scenes of war at the siege of Baza, and, if report is true, 
taking a hand himself, not without distinction. It was there that he saw 
the two friars from the convent of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, who 
brought a message from the Grand Soldan of Egypt, threatening the 
destruction of the Sepulchre if the Spanish sovereigns did not desist from 
the war against Granada; and it was there that in his simple and pious 
mind he formed the resolve that if ever his efforts should be crowned with 
success, and he himself become rich and powerful, he would send a crusade 
for the rescue of the Holy Sepulchre. And it was there that, on the 22nd 
of December, he saw Boabdil, the elder of the two rival Kings of Granada, 
surrender all his rights and claims to Spain. Surely now there will be a 
chance for him? No; there is another interruption, this time occasioned by 
the royal preparations for the marriage of the Princess Isabella to the 
heir of Portugal. Poor Columbus, sickened and disappointed by these 
continual delays, irritated by a sense of the waste of his precious time, 
follows the Court about from one place to another, raising a smile here 
and a scoff there, and pointed at by children in the street. There, is 
nothing so ludicrous as an Idea to those who do not share it. 

Another summer, another winter, lost out of a life made up of a limited 
number of summers and winters; a few more winters and summers, thinks 
Christopher, and I shall be in a world where Ideas are not needed, and 
where there is nothing left to discover! Something had to be done. In the 
beginning of 1491 there was only one thing spoken of at Court--the 
preparations for the siege of Granada, which did not interest Columbus at 
all. The camp of King Ferdinand was situated at Santa Fe, a few miles to 
the westward of Granada, and Columbus came here late in the year, 
determined to get a final answer one way or the other to his question. He 
made his application, and the busy monarchs once more adopted their usual 
polite tactics. They appointed a junta, which was presided over by no less 
a person than the Cardinal of Spain, Gonzales de Mendoza: Once more the 
weary business was gone through, but Columbus must have had some hopes of 
success, since he did not produce his forged Toscanelli correspondence. It 
was no scruple of conscience that held him back, we may be sure; the 
crafty Genoese knew nothing about such scruples in the attainment of a 
great object; he would not have hesitated to adopt any means to secure an 
end which he felt to be so desirable. So it is probable that either he was 
not quite sure of his ground and his courage failed him, or that he had 
hopes, owing to his friendship with so many of the members of the junta, 
that a favourable decision would at last be arrived at. In this he was 
mistaken. The Spanish prelates again quoted the Fathers of the Church, and 
disposed of his proposals simply on the ground that they were heretical. 
Much talk, and much wagging of learned heads; and still no mother-wit or 
gleam of light on this obscurity of learning. The junta decided against 
the proposals, and reported its decision to the King and Queen. The 
monarchs, true to their somewhat hedging methods when there was anything 
to be gained by hedging, informed Columbus that at present they were too 
much occupied with the war to grant his requests; but that, when the 
preoccupations and expenses of the campaign were a thing of the past, they 
might again turn their attention to his very interesting suggestion. 

It was at this point that the patience of Columbus broke down. Too many 
promises had been made to him, and hope had been held out to him too often 
for him to believe any more in it. Spain, he decided, was useless; he 
would try France; at least he would be no worse off there. But he had 
first of all to settle his affairs as well as possible. Diego, now a 
growing boy nearly eleven years old, had been staying with Beatriz at 
Cordova, and going to school there; Christopher would take him back to his 
aunt's at Huelva before he went away. He set out with a heavy heart, but 
with purpose and determination unimpaired.



CHAPTER X.
OUR LADY OF LA RABIDA 

It is a long road from Santa Fe to Huelva, a long journey to make on foot, 
and the company of a sad heart and a little talking boy, prone to sudden 
weariness and the asking of innumerable difficult questions, would not 
make it very much shorter. Every step that Christopher took carried him 
farther away from the glittering scene where his hopes had once been so 
bright, and were now fallen to the dust; and every step brought him nearer 
that unknown destiny as to which he was in great darkness of mind, and 
certain only that there was some small next thing constantly to be done: 
the putting down of one foot after another, the request for food and 
lodging at the end of each short day's march, the setting out again in the 
morning. That walk from Santa Fe, so real and painful and wearisome and 
long a thing to Christopher and Diego, is utterly blank and obliterated 
for us. What he thought and felt and suffered are things quite dead; what 
he did-namely, to go and do the immediate thing that it seemed possible 
and right for him to do--is a living fact to-day, for it brought him, as 
all brave and honest doing will, a little nearer to his destiny, a little 
nearer to the truthful realisation of what was in him. 

At about a day's journey from Huelva, where the general slope of the land 
begins to fall towards the sea, two small rivers, the Odiel and the Tinto, 
which have hitherto been making music each for itself through the pleasant 
valleys and vineyards of Andalusia, join forces, and run with a deeper 
stream towards the sea at Palos. The town of Palos lay on the banks of the 
river; a little to the south of it, and on the brow of a rocky promontory 
dark with pine trees, there stood the convent of Our Lady of La Rabida. 
Stood, on this November evening in the year 1491; had stood in some form 
or other, and used for varying purposes, for many years and centuries 
before that, even to the time of the Romans; and still stands, a silent 
and neglected place, yet to be visited and seen by such as are curious. To 
the door of this place comes Christopher as darkness falls, urged thereto 
by the plight of Diego, who is tired and hungry. Christopher rings the 
bell, and asks the porter for a little bread and water for the child, and 
a lodging for them both. There is some talk at the door; the Franciscan 
lay brother being given, at all times in the history of his order, to the 
pleasant indulgence of gossiping conversation, when that is lawful; and 
the presence of a stranger, who speaks with a foreign accent, being at all 
times a incident of interest and even of excitement in the quiet life of a 
monastery. The moment is one big with import to the human race; it marks a 
period in the history of our man; the scene is worth calling up. Dark 
night, with sea breezes moaning in the pine trees, outside; raying light 
from within falling on the lay brother leaning in the doorway and on the 
two figures standing without: on Christopher, grave, subdued, weary, yet 
now as always of pleasant and impressive address, and on the small boy who 
stands beside him round-eyed and expectant, his fatigue for the moment 
forgotten in curiosity and anticipation. 

While they are talking comes no less a person than the Prior of the 
monastery, Friar Juan Perez, bustling round, good-natured busybody that he 
is, to see what is all this talk at the door. The Prior, as is the habit 
of monks, begins by asking questions. What is the stranger's name? Where 
does he come from? Where is he going to? What is his business? Is the 
little boy his son? He has actually come from Santa Fe? The Prior, loving 
talk after the manner of his kind, sees in this grave and smooth-spoken 
stranger rich possibilities of talk; possibilities that cannot possibly be 
exhausted to-night, it being now hard on the hour of Compline; the 
stranger must come in and rest for tonight at least, and possibly for 
several nights. There is much bustle and preparation; the travellers are 
welcomed with monkish hospitality; Christopher, we may be sure, goes and 
hears the convent singing Compline, and offers up devout prayers for a 
quiet night and for safe conduct through this vale of tears; and goes 
thankfully to bed with the plainsong echoing in his ears, and some stoic 
sense that all days, however hard, have an evening, and all journeys an 
end. 

Next morning the talk begins in earnest, and Christopher, never a very 
reserved man, finds in the friendly curiosity of the monks abundant 
encouragement to talk; and before very long he is in full swing with his 
oft-told story. The Prior is delighted with it; he has not heard anything 
so interesting for a long time. Moreover, he has not always been in a 
convent; he was not so long ago confessor to Queen Isabella herself, and 
has much to communicate and ask concerning that lady. Columbus's proposal 
does not strike him as being unreasonable at all; but he has a friend in 
Palos, a very learned man indeed, Doctor Garcia Hernandez, who often comes 
and has a talk with him; he knows all about astronomy and cosmography; the 
Prior will send for him. And meanwhile there must be no word of Columbus's 
departure for a few days at any rate. 

Presently Doctor Garcia Hernandez arrives, and the whole story is gone 
over again. They go at it hammer and tongs, arguments and counter- 
arguments, reasons for and against, encouragements, and objections. The 
result is that Doctor Garcia Hernandez, whose learning seems not yet quite 
to have blinded or deafened him, thinks well of the scheme; thinks so well 
of it that he protests it will be a thousand pities if the chance of 
carrying it out is lost to Spain. The worthy Prior, who has been somewhat 
out of it while the talk about degrees and latitudes has been going on, 
here strikes in again; he will use his influence. Perhaps the good man, 
living up here among the pine trees and the sea winds, and involved in the 
monotonous round of Prime, Lauds, Nones, Vespers, has a regretful thought 
or two of the time when he moved in the splendid intricacy of Court life; 
at any rate he is not sorry to have an opportunity of recalling himself to 
the attention of Her Majesty, for the spiritual safety of whose soul he 
was once responsible; perhaps, being (in spite of his Nones and Vespers) a 
human soul, he is glad of an opportunity of opposing the counsels of his 
successor, Talavera. In a word, he will use his Influence. Then follow 
much drafting of letters, and laying of heads together, and clatter of 
monkish tongues; the upshot of which is that a letter is written in which 
Perez urges his daughter in the Lord in the strongest possible terms not 
to let slip so glorious an opportunity, not only of fame and increment to 
her kingdom, but of service to the Church and the kingdom of Heaven 
itself. He assures her that Columbus is indeed about to depart from the 
country, but that he (Perez) will detain him at La Rabida until he has an 
answer from the Queen. 

A messenger to carry the letter was found in the person of Sebastian 
Rodriguez, a pilot of the port, who immediately set off to Santa Fe. It is 
not likely that Columbus, after so many rebuffs, was very hopeful; but in 
the meantime, here he was amid the pious surroundings in which the 
religious part of him delighted, and in a haven of rest after all his 
turmoils and trials. He could look out to sea over the flecked waters of 
that Atlantic whose secrets he longed to discover; or he could look down 
into the busy little port of Palos, and watch the ships sailing in and out 
across the bar of Saltes. He could let his soul, much battered and torn of 
late by trials and disappointments, rest for a time on the rock of 
religion; he could snuff the incense in the chapel to his heart's content, 
and mingle his rough top-gallant voice with the harsh croak of the monks 
in the daily cycle of prayer and praise. He could walk with Diego through 
the sandy roads beneath the pine trees, or through the fields and 
vineyards below; and above all he could talk to the company that good 
Perez invited to meet him--among them merchants and sailors from Palos, of 
whom the chief was Martin Alonso Pinzon, a wealthy landowner and 
navigator, whose family lived then at Palos, owning the vineyards round 
about, and whose descendants live there to this day. Pinzon was a listener 
after Columbus's own heart; he not only believed in his project, but 
offered to assist it with money, and even to accompany the expedition 
himself. Altogether a happy and peaceful time, in which hopes revived, and 
the inner light that, although it had now and then flickered, had never 
gone out, burned up again in a bright and steady flame. 

At the end of a fortnight, and much sooner than had been expected, the 
worthy pilot returned with a letter from the Queen. Eager hands seized it 
and opened it; delight beamed from the eyes of the good Prior. The Queen 
was most cordial to him, thanked him for his intervention, was ready to 
listen to him and even to be convinced by him; and in the meantime 
commanded his immediate appearance at the Court, asking that Columbus 
would be so good as to wait at La Rabida until he should hear further from 
her. Then followed such a fussing and fuming, such a running hither and 
thither, and giving and taking of instructions and clatter of tongues as 
even the convent of La Rabida had probably never known. Nothing will serve 
the good old busybody, although it is now near midnight, but that he must 
depart at once. He will not wait for daylight; he will not, the good 
honest soul! wait at all. He must be off at once; he must have this, he 
must have that; he will take this, he will leave that behind; or no, he 
will take that, and leave this behind. He must have a mule, for his old 
feet will not bear him fast enough; ex- confessors of Her Majesty, 
moreover, do not travel on foot; and after more fussing and running hither 
and thither a mule is borrowed from one Juan Rodriguez Cabezudo of Moguer; 
and with a God-speed from the group standing round the lighted doorway, 
the old monk sets forth into the night. 

It is a strange thing to consider what unimportant flotsam sometimes 
floats visibly upon the stream of history, while the gravest events are 
sunk deep beneath its flood. We would give a king's ransom to know events 
that must have taken place in any one of twenty years in the life of 
Columbus, but there is no sign of them on the surface of the stream, nor 
will any fishing bring them to light. Yet here, bobbing up like a cork, 
comes the name of Juan Rodriguez Cabezudo of Moguer, doubtless a good 
worthy soul, but, since he has been dead these four centuries and more, of 
no interest or importance to any human being; yet of whose life one 
trivial act, surviving the flood of time which has engulfed all else that 
he thought important, falls here to be recorded: that he did, towards 
midnight of a day late in December 1491 lend a mule to Friar Juan Perez. 

Of that heroic mule journey we have no record; but it brought results 
enough to compensate the good Prior for all his aching bones and rheumatic 
joints. He was welcomed by the Queen, who had never quite lost her belief 
in Columbus, but who had hitherto deferred to the apathy of Ferdinand and 
the disapproval--of her learned advisers. Now, however, the matter was 
reopened. She, who sometimes listened to priests with results other than 
good, heard this worthy priest to good purpose. The feminine friends of 
Columbus who remembered him at Court also spoke up for him, among them the 
Marquesa de Moya, with whom he had always been a favourite; and it was 
decided that his request should be granted and three vessels equipped for 
the expedition, "that he might go and make discoveries and prove true the 
words he had spoken."--Moreover, the machinery that had been so hard to 
move before, turned swiftly now. Diego Prieto, one of the magistrates of 
Palos, was sent to Columbus at La Rabida, bearing 20,000 maravedis with 
which he was to buy a mule and decent clothing for himself, and repair 
immediately to the Court at Santa Fe. Old Perez was in high feather, and 
busy with his pen. He wrote to Doctor Garcia Hernandez, and also to 
Columbus, in whose letter the following pleasant passage occurs: 

"Our Lord has listened to the prayers of His servant. The wise and 
virtuous Isabella, touched by the grace of Heaven, gave a favourable 
hearing to the words of this poor monk. All has turned out well. Far from 
despising your project, she has adopted it from this time, and she has 
summoned you to Court to propose the means which seem best to you for the 
execution of the designs of Providence. My heart swims in a sea of 
comfort, and my spirit leaps with joy in the Lord. Start at once, for the 
Queen waits for you, and I much more than she. Commend me to the prayers 
of my brethren, and of your little Diego. The grace of God be with you, 
and may Our Lady of La Rabida accompany you." 

The news of that day must have come upon Columbus like a burst of sunshine 
after rain. I like to think how bright must have seemed to him the broad 
view of land and sea, how deeply the solemn words of the last office which 
he attended must have sunk into his soul, how great and glad a thing life 
must have been to him, and how lightly the miles must have passed beneath 
the feet of his mule as he jogged out on the long road to Santa Fe. 


CHAPTER XI.
THE CONSENT OF SPAIN 

Once more; in the last days of the year 1491, Columbus rode into the 
brilliant camp which he had quitted a few weeks before with so heavy a 
heart. Things were changed now. Instead of being a suitor, making a 
nuisance of himself, and forcing his affairs on the attention of unwilling 
officials, he was now an invited and honoured guest; much more than that, 
he was in the position of one who believed that he had a great service to 
render to the Crown, and who was at last to be permitted to render it. 

Even now, at the eleventh hour, there was one more brief interruption. On 
the 1st of January 1492 the last of the Moorish kings sent in his 
surrender to King Ferdinand, whom he invited to come and take possession 
of the city of Granada; and on the next day the Spanish army marched into 
that city, where, in front of the Alhambra, King Ferdinand received the 
keys of the castle and the homage of the Moorish king. The wars of eight 
centuries were at an end, and the Christian banner of Spain floated at 
last over the whole land. Victory and success were in the air, and the 
humble Genoese adventurer was to have his share in them. Negotiations of a 
practical nature were now begun; old friends--Talavera, Luis de Santangel, 
and the Grand Cardinal himself--were all brought into consultation with 
the result that matters soon got to the documentary stage. Here, however, 
there was a slight hitch. It was not simply a matter of granting two, or 
three ships. The Genoese was making a bargain, and asking an impossible 
price. Even the great grandees and Court officials, accustomed to the 
glitter and dignity of titles, rubbed their eyes with astonishment, when 
they saw what Columbus was demanding. He who had been suing for privileges 
was now making conditions. And what conditions! He must be created Admiral 
of all the Ocean Seas and of the new lands, with equal privileges and 
prerogatives as those appertaining to the High Admiral of Castile, the 
supreme naval officer of Spain. Not content with sea dignities, he was 
also to be Viceroy and Governor- General in all islands or mainlands that 
he might acquire; he wanted a tenth part of the profits resulting from his 
discoveries, in perpetuity; and he must have the permanent right of 
contributing an eighth part of the cost of the equipment and have an 
additional eighth part of the profits; and all his heirs and descendants 
for ever were to have the same privileges. These conditions were on such a 
scale as no sovereign could readily approve. Columbus's lack of pedigree, 
and the fact also that he was a foreigner, made them seem the more 
preposterous; for although he might receive kindness and even friendship 
from some of the grand Spaniards with whom he associated, that friendship 
and kindness were given condescendingly and with a smile. He was 
delightful when he was merely proposing as a mariner to confer additional 
grandeur and glory on the Crown; but when it came to demanding titles and 
privileges which would make him rank with the highest grandees in, the 
land, the matter took on quite a different colour. It was nonsense; it 
could not be allowed; and many were the friendly hints that Columbus 
doubtless received at this time to relinquish his wild demands and not to 
overreach himself. 

But to the surprise and dismay of his friends, who really wished him to 
have a chance of distinguishing himself, and were shocked at the 
impediments he was now putting in his own way, the man from Genoa stood 
firm. What he proposed to do, he said, was worthy of the rewards that he 
asked; they were due to the importance and grandeur of his scheme, and so 
on. Nor did he fail to point out that the bestowal of them was a matter 
altogether contingent on results; if there were no results, there would be 
no rewards; if there were results, they would be worthy of the rewards. 
This action of Columbus's deserves close study. He had come to a turning-
point in his life. He had been asking, asking, asking, for six years; he 
had been put off and refused over and over again; people were beginning to 
laugh at him for a madman; and now, when a combination of lucky chances 
had brought him to the very door of success, he stood outside the 
threshold bargaining for a preposterous price before he would come in. It 
seemed like the densest stupidity. What is the explanation of it? 

The only explanation of it is to be found in the character of Columbus. We 
must try to see him as he is in this forty-second year of his life, 
bargaining with notaries, bishops, and treasurers; we must try to see 
where these forty years have brought him, and what they have made of him. 
Remember the little boy that played in the Vico Dritto di Ponticello, 
acquainted with poverty, but with a soul in him that could rise beyond it 
and acquire something of the dignity of that Genoa, arrogant, splendid and 
devout, which surrounded him during his early years. Remember his long 
life of obscurity at sea, and the slow kindling of the light of faith in 
something beyond the familiar horizons; remember the social inequality of 
his marriage, his long struggle with poverty, his long familiarity with 
the position of one who asked and did not receive; the many rebuffs and 
indignities which his Ligurian pride must have received at the hands of 
all those Spanish dignitaries and grandees--remember all this, and then 
you will perhaps not wonder so much that Columbus, who was beginning to 
believe himself appointed by Heaven to this task of discovery, felt that 
he had much to pay himself back for. One must recognise him frankly for 
what he was, and for no conventional hero of romance; a man who would 
reconcile his conscience with anything, and would stop at nothing in the 
furtherance of what he deemed a good object; and a man at the same time 
who had a conscience to reconcile, and would, whenever it was necessary, 
laboriously and elaborately perform the act of reconciliation. When he 
made these huge demands in Granada he was gambling with his chances; but 
he was a calculating gambler, just about as cunning and crafty in the 
weighing of one chance against another as a gambler with a conscience can 
be; and he evidently realised that his own valuation of the services he 
proposed to render would not be without its influence on his sovereign's 
estimate of them. At any rate he was justified by the results, for on the 
17th of April 1492, after a deal of talk and bargaining, but apparently 
without any yielding on Columbus's part, articles of capitulation were 
drawn up in which the following provisions were made:-- 

First, that Columbus and his heirs for ever should have the title and 
office of Admiral in all the islands and continents of the ocean that he 
or they might discover, with similar honours and prerogatives to those 
enjoyed by the High Admiral of Castile. 

Second, that he and his heirs should be Viceroys and Governors-General 
over all the said lands and continents, with the right of nominating three 
candidates for the governing of each island or province, one of whom 
should be appointed by the Crown. 

Third, that he end his heirs should be entitled to one-tenth of all 
precious stones, metals, spices, and other merchandises, however acquired, 
within his Admiralty, the cost of acquisition being first deducted. 

Fourth, that he or his lieutenants in their districts, and the High 
Admiral of Castile in his district, should be the sole judge in all 
disputes arising out of traffic between Spain and the new countries. 

Fifth, that he now, and he and his heirs at all times, should have the 
right to contribute the eighth part of the expense of fitting out 
expeditions, and receive the eighth part of the profits. 

In addition to these articles there was another document drawn up on the 
30th of April, which after an infinite preamble about the nature of the 
Holy Trinity, of the Apostle Saint James, and of the Saints of God 
generally in their relations to Princes, and with a splendid trailing of 
gorgeous Spanish names and titles across the page, confers upon our 
hitherto humble Christopher the right to call himself "Don," and finally 
raises him, in his own estimation at any rate, to a social level with his 
proud Spanish friends. It is probably from this time that he adopted the 
Spanish form of his name, Christoval Colon; but in this narrative I shall 
retain the more universal form in which it has become familiar to the 
English-speaking world. 

He was now upon a Pisgah height, from which in imagination he could look 
forth and see his Land of Promise. We also may climb up with him, and 
stand beside him as he looks westward. We shall not see so clearly as he 
sees, for we have not his inner light; and it is probable that even he 
does not see the road at all, but only the goal, a single point of light 
shining across a gulf of darkness. But from Pisgah there is a view 
backward as well as forward, and, we may look back for a moment on this 
last period of Christopher's life in Spain, inwardly to him so full of 
trouble and difficulty and disappointment, outwardly so brave and 
glittering, musical with high-sounding names and the clash of arms; gay 
with sun and shine and colour. The brilliant Court moving from camp to 
camp with its gorgeous retinues and silken pavilions and uniforms and 
dresses and armours; the excitement of war, the intrigues of the 
antechamber--these are the bright fabric of the latter years; and against 
it, as against a background, stand out the beautiful names of the Spanish 
associates of Columbus at this time--Medina Celi, Alonso de Quintanilla, 
Cabrero, Arana, DEA, Hernando de Talavera, Gonzales de Mendoza, Alonso de 
Cardenas, Perez, Hernandez, Luis de Santangel, and Rodriguez de Maldonado--
names that now, in his hour of triumph, are like banners streaming in the 
wind against a summer sky.



CHAPTER XII.
THE PREPARATIONS AT PALOS 

The Palos that witnessed the fitting out of the ships of Columbus exists 
no longer. The soul is gone from it; the trade that in those days made it 
great and busy has floated away from it into other channels; and it has 
dwindled and shrunk, until to-day it consists of nothing but a double 
street of poor white houses, such almost as you may see in any sea-coast 
village in Ireland. The slow salt tides of the Atlantic come flooding in 
over the Manto bank, across the bar of Saltes, and, dividing at the tongue 
of land that separates the two rivers, creep up the mud banks of the Tinto 
and the Odiel until they lie deep beside the wharves of Huelva and Palos; 
but although Huelva still has a trade the tides bring nothing to Palos, 
and take nothing away with them again. From La Rabida now you can no 
longer see, as Columbus saw, fleets of caravels lying-to and standing off 
and on outside the bar waiting for the flood tide; only a few poor boats 
fishing for tunny in the empty sunny waters, or the smoke of a steamer 
standing on her course for the Guadalquiver or Cadiz. 

But in those spring days of 1492 there was a great stir and bustle of 
preparation in Palos. As soon as the legal documents had been signed 
Columbus returned there and, taking up his quarters at La Rabida, set 
about fitting out his expedition. The reason Palos was chosen was an 
economical one. The port, for some misdemeanour, had lately been condemned 
to provide two caravels for the service of the Crown for a period of 
twelve months; and in the impoverished state of the royal exchequer this 
free service came in very usefully in fitting out the expedition of 
discovery. Columbus was quite satisfied, since he had such good friends at 
Palos; and he immediately set about choosing the ships. 

This, however, did not prove to be quite such a straightforward business 
as might have been expected. The truth is that, whatever a few monks and 
physicians may have thought of it, the proposed expedition terrified the 
ordinary seafaring population of Palos. It was thought to be the wildest 
and maddest scheme that any one had ever heard of. All that was known 
about the Atlantic west of the Azores was that it was a sea of darkness, 
inhabited by monsters and furrowed by enormous waves, and that it fell 
down the slope of the world so steeply that no ship having once gone down 
could ever climb up it again. And not only was there reluctance on the 
part of mariners to engage themselves for the expedition, but also a great 
shyness on the part of ship-owners to provide ships. This reluctance 
proved so formidable an impediment that Columbus had to communicate with 
the King and Queen; with the result that on the 23rd of May the population 
was summoned to the church of Saint George, where the Notary Public read 
aloud to them the letter from the sovereigns commanding the port to 
furnish ships and men, and an additional order summoning the town to obey 
it immediately. An inducement was provided in the offer of a free pardon 
to all criminals and persons under sentence who chose to enlist. 

Still the thing hung fire; and on June 20 a new and peremptory order was 
issued by the Crown authorising Columbus to impress the vessels and crew 
if necessary. Time was slipping away; and in his difficulty Columbus 
turned to Martin Alonso Pinzon, upon whose influence and power in the town 
he could count. There were three brothers then in this family- Martin 
Alonso, Vincenti Yanez, and Francisco Martin, all pilots themselves and 
owners of ships. These three brothers saw some hope of profit out of the 
enterprise, and they exerted themselves on Christopher's behalf so 
thoroughly that, not only did they afford him help in the obtaining of 
ships, men, and supplies, but they all three decided to go with him. 

There was one more financial question to be settled--a question that 
remains for us in considerable obscurity, but was in all probability 
partly settled by the aid of these brothers. The total cost of the 
expedition, consisting of three ships, wages of the crew, stores and 
provisions, was 1,167,542 maravedis, about L950(in 1900). After all these 
years of pleading at Court, all the disappointments and deferred hopes and 
sacrifices made by Columbus, the smallness of this sum cannot but strike 
us with amazement. Many a nobleman that Columbus must have rubbed 
shoulders with in his years at Court could have furnished the whole sum 
out of his pocket and never missed it; yet Columbus had to wait years and 
years before he could get it from the Crown. Still more amazing, this sum 
was not all provided by the Crown; 167,000 maravedis were found by 
Columbus, and the Crown only contributed one million maravedis. One can 
only assume that Columbus's pertinacity in petitioning the King and Queen 
to undertake the expedition, when he could with comparative ease have got 
the money from some of his noble acquaintance, was due to three things--
his faith and belief in his Idea, his personal ambition, and his personal 
greed. He believed in his Idea so thoroughly that he knew he was going to 
find something across the Atlantic. Continents and islands cannot for long 
remain in the possession of private persons; they are the currency of 
crowns; and he did not want to be left in the lurch if the land he hoped 
to discover should be seized or captured by Spain or Portugal. The result 
of his discoveries, he was convinced, was going to be far too large a 
thing to be retained and controlled by any machinery less powerful than 
that of a kingdom; therefore he was unwilling to accept either preliminary 
assistance or subsequent rewards from any but the same powerful hand. 
Admiralties, moreover, and Governor-Generalships and Viceroyships cannot 
be conferred by counts and dukes, however powerful; the very title Don 
could only be conferred by one power in Spain; and all the other titles 
and dignities that Columbus craved with all his Genoese soul were to be 
had from the hands of kings, and not from plutocrats. It was 
characteristic of him all his life never to deal with subordinates, but 
always to go direct to the head man; and when the whole purpose and 
ambition of his life was to be put to the test it was only consistent in 
him, since he could not be independent, to go forth under the protection 
of the united Crown of Aragon and Castile. Where or how he raised his 
share of the cost is not known; it is possible that his old friend the 
Duke of Medina Celi came to his help, or that the Pinzon family, who 
believed enough in the expedition to risk their lives in it, lent some of 
the necessary money. 

Ever since ships were in danger of going to sea short-handed methods of 
recruiting and manning them have been very much the same; and there must 
have been some hot work about the harbour of Palos in the summer of 1492. 
The place was in a panic. It is highly probable that many of the 
volunteers were a ruffianly riff-raff from the prisons, to whom personal 
freedom meant nothing but a chance of plunder; and the recruiting office 
in Palos must have seen many a picturesque scoundrel coming and taking the 
oath and making his mark. The presence of these adventurers, many of them 
entirely ignorant of the sea, would not be exactly an encouragement to the 
ordinary seaman. It is here very likely that the influence of the Pinzon 
family was usefully applied. I call it influence, since that is a polite 
term which covers the application of force in varying degrees; and it was 
an awkward thing for a Palos sailor to offend the Pinzons, who owned and 
controlled so much of the shipping in the port. Little by little the 
preparations went on. In the purchasing of provisions and stores the 
Pinzons were most helpful to Columbus and, it is not improbable, to 
themselves also. They also procured the ships; altogether, in the whole 
history of the fitting out of expeditions, I know nothing since the voyage 
of the Ark which was so well kept within one family. Moreover it is 
interesting to notice, since we know the names and places of residence of 
all the members of the expedition, that the Pinzons, who personally 
commanded two of the caravels, had them almost exclusively manned by 
sailors from Palos, while the Admiral's ship was manned by a miscellaneous 
crew from other places. To be sure they gave the Admiral the biggest ship, 
but (in his own words) it proved "a dull sailer and unfit for discovery"; 
while they commanded the two caravels, small and open, but much faster and 
handier. Clearly these Pinzons will take no harm from a little watching. 
They may be honest souls enough, but their conduct is just a little 
suspicious, and we cannot be too careful. 

Three vessels were at last secured. The first, named the Santa Maria, was 
the largest, and was chosen to be the flagship of Columbus. She was of 
about one hundred tons burden, and would be about ninety feet in length by 
twenty feet beam. She was decked over, and had a high poop astern and a 
high forecastle in the bows. She had three masts, two of them square-
rigged, with a latine sail on the mizzen mast; and she carried a crew of 
fifty-two persons. Where and how they all stowed themselves away is a 
matter upon which we can only make wondering guesses; for this ship was 
about the size of an ordinary small coasting schooner, such as is worked 
about the coasts of these islands with a crew of six or eight men. The 
next largest ship was the Pinta, which was commanded by Martin Alonso 
Pinzon, who took his brother Francisco with him as sailing-master. The 
Pinta was of fifty tons burden, decked only at the bow and stern, and the 
fastest of the three ships; she also had three masts. The third ship was a 
caravel of forty tons and called the Nina; she belonged to Juan Nino of 
Palos. She was commanded by Vincenti Pinzon, and had a complement of 
eighteen men. Among the crew of the flagship, whose names and places of 
residence are to be found in the Appendix, were an Englishman and an 
Irishman. The Englishman is entered as Tallarte de Lajes (Ingles), who has 
been ingeniously identified with a possible Allard or AEthelwald of 
Winchelsea, there having been several generations of Allards who were 
sailors of Winchelsea in the fifteenth century. Sir Clements Markham 
thinks that this Allard may have been trading to Coruna and have married 
and settled down at Lajes. There is also Guillermo Ires, an Irishman from 
Galway. 

Allard and William, shuffling into the recruiting office in Palos, 
doubtless think that this is a strange place for them to meet, and rather 
a wild business that they are embarked upon, among all these bloody 
Spaniards. Some how I feel more confidence in Allard than in William, 
knowing, as I do so well, this William of Galway, whether on his native 
heath or in the strange and distant parts of the world to which his 
sanguine temperament leads him. Alas, William, you are but the first of a 
mighty stream that will leave the Old Country for the New World; the world 
destined to be good for the fortunes of many from the Old Country, but for 
the Old Country itself not good. Little does he know, drunken William, 
willing to be on hand where there is adventure brewing, and to be after 
going with the boys and getting his health on the salt water, what a path 
of hope for those who go, and of heaviness for those who stay behind, he 
is opening up . . . . Farewell, William; I hope you were not one of those 
whom they let out of gaol. 

June slid into July, and still the preparations were not complete. Down on 
the mud banks of the Tinto, where at low water the vessels were left high 
and dry, and where the caulking and refitting were in hand, there was 
trouble with the workmen. Gomaz Rascon and Christoval Quintero, the owners 
of the Pinta, who had resented her being pressed into the service, were at 
the bottom of a good deal of it. Things could not be found; gear 
mysteriously gave way after it had been set up; the caulking was found to 
have been carelessly and imperfectly done; and when the caulkers were 
commanded to do it over again they decamped. Even the few volunteers, the 
picked hands upon whom Columbus was relying, gave trouble. In those days 
of waiting there was too much opportunity for talk in the shore-side wine-
shops; some of the volunteers repented and tried to cry off their 
bargains; others were dissuaded by their relatives, and deserted and hid 
themselves. No mild measures were of any use; a reign of terror had to be 
established; and nothing short of the influence of the Pinzons was severe 
enough to hold the company together. To these vigorous measures, however, 
all opposition gradually yielded. By the end of July the provisions and 
stores were on board, the whole complement of eighty-seven persons 
collected and enlisted, and only the finishing touches left for Columbus. 
It is a sign of the distrust and fear evinced with regard to this 
expedition, that no priest accompanied it--something of a sorrow to pious 
Christopher, who would have liked his chaplain. There were two surgeons, 
or barbers, and a physician; there were an overseer, a secretary, a master-
at-arms; there was an interpreter to speak to the natives of the new lands 
in Hebrew, Greek, German, Chaldean or Arabic; and there was an assayer and 
silversmith to test the quality of the precious metals that they were sure 
to find. Up at La Rabida, with the busy and affectionate assistance of the 
old Prior, Columbus made his final preparations. Ferdinand was to stay at 
Cordova with Beatriz, and to go to school there; while Diego was already 
embarked upon his life's voyage, having been appointed a page to the 
Queen's son, Prince Juan, and handed over to the care of some of the Court 
ladies. The course to be sailed was talked over and over again; the 
bearings and notes of the pilot at Porto Santo consulted and discussed; 
and a chart was made by Columbus himself, and copied with his own hands 
for use on the three ships. 

On the 2nd of August everything was ready; the ships moored out in the 
stream, the last stragglers of the crew on board, the last sack of flour 
and barrel of beef stowed away. Columbus confessed himself to the Prior of 
La Rabida--a solemn moment for him in the little chapel up on the pine-
clad hill. His last evening ashore would certainly be spent at the 
monastery, and his last counsels taken with Perez and Doctor Hernandez. We 
can hardly realise the feelings of Christopher on the eve of his departure 
from the land where all his roots were, to a land of mere faith and 
conjecture. Even today, when the ocean is furrowed by crowded highways, 
and the earth is girdled with speaking wires, and distances are so divided 
and reduced that the traveller need never be very long out of touch with 
his home, few people can set out on a long voyage without some emotional 
disturbance, however slight it may be; and to Columbus on this night the 
little town upon which he looked down from the monastery, which had been 
the scene of so many delays and difficulties and vexations, must have 
seemed suddenly dear and familiar to him as he realised that after to-
morrow its busy and well-known scenes might be for ever a thing of the 
past to him. Behind him, living or dead, lay all he humanly loved and 
cared for; before him lay a voyage full of certain difficulties and 
dangers; dangers from the ships, dangers from the crews, dangers from the 
weather, dangers from the unknown path itself; and beyond them, a 
twinkling star on the horizon of his hopes, lay the land of his belief. 
That he meant to arrive there and to get back again was beyond all doubt 
his firm intention; and in the simple grandeur of that determination the 
weaknesses of character that were grouped about it seem unimportant. In 
this starlit hour among the pine woods his life came to its meridian; 
everything that was him was at its best and greatest there. Beneath him, 
on the talking tide of the river, lay the ships and equipment that 
represented years of steady effort and persistence; before him lay the 
pathless ocean which he meant to cross by the inner light of his faith. 
What he had suffered, he had suffered by himself; what he had won, he had 
won by himself; what he was to finish, he would finish by himself. 

But the time for meditations grows short. Lights are moving about in the 
town beneath; there is an unwonted midnight stir and bustle; the whole 
population is up and about, running hither and thither with lamps and 
torches through the starlit night. The tide is flowing; it will be high 
water before dawn; and with the first of the ebb the little fleet is to 
set sail. The stream of hurrying sailors and townspeople sets towards the 
church of Saint George, where mass is to be said and the Sacrament 
administered to the voyagers. The calls and shouts die away; the bell 
stops ringing; and the low muttering voice of the priest is heard 
beginning the Office. The light of the candles shines upon the gaudy roof, 
and over the altar upon the wooden image of Saint George vanquishing the 
dragon, upon which the eyes of Christopher rested during some part of the 
service, and where to-day your eyes may rest also if you make that 
pilgrimage. The moment approaches; the bread and the wine are consecrated; 
there is a shuffling of knees and feet; and then a pause. The clear notes 
of the bell ring out upon the warm dusky silence--once, twice, thrice; the 
living God and the cold presence of dawn enter the church together. Every 
head is bowed; and for once at least every heart of that company beats in 
unison with the rest. And then the Office goes on, and the dark-skinned 
congregation streams up to the sanctuary and receives the Communion, while 
the blue light of dawn increases and the candles pale before the coming 
day. And then out again to the boats with shoutings and farewells, for the 
tide has now turned; hoisting of sails and tripping of anchors and 
breaking out of gorgeous ensigns; and the ships are moving! The Maria 
leads, with the sign of the Redemption painted on her mainsail and the 
standard of Castile flying at her mizzen; and there is cheering from ships 
and from shore, and a faint sound of bells from the town of Huelva. 

Thus, the sea being--calm, and a fresh breeze blowing off the land, did 
Christopher Columbus set sail from Palos at sunrise on Friday the 3rd of 
August 1492.



CHAPTER XIII.
EVENTS OF THE FIRST VOYAGE 

"In nomine D.N. Jesu Christi--Friday, August 3, 1492, at eight o'clock we 
started from the bar of Saltes. We went with a strong sea breeze sixty 
miles,--[Columbus reckoned in Italian miles, of which four = one league.]--
which are fifteen leagues, towards the south, until sunset: afterwards to 
the south-west and to the south, quarter south-west, which was the way to 
the Canaries." 

With these rousing words the Journal* of Columbus's voyage begins; and 
they sound a salt and mighty chord which contains the true diapason of the 
symphony of his voyages. There could not have been a more fortunate 
beginning, with clear weather and a calm sea, and the wind in exactly the 
right quarter. On Saturday and Sunday the same conditions held, so there 
was time and opportunity for the three very miscellaneous ships' companies 
to shake down into something like order, and for all the elaborate 
discipline of sea life to be arranged and established; and we may employ 
the interval by noting what aids to navigation Columbus had at his 
disposal. 

(* The account of Columbus's first voyage is taken from a Journal written 
by himself, but which in its original form does not exist. Las Casas had 
it in his possession, but as he regarded it (no doubt with justice) as too 
voluminous and discursive to be interesting, he made an abridged edition, 
in which the exact words of Columbus were sometimes quoted, but which for 
the most part is condensed into a narrative in the third person. This 
abridged Journal, consisting of seventy-six closely written folios, was 
first published by Navarrette in 1825. When Las Casas wrote his
'Historie,' however, he appears here and there to have restored sections 
of the original Journal into the abridged one; and many of these 
restorations are of importance. If the whole account of his voyage written 
by Columbus himself were available in its exact form I would print it 
here; but as it is not, I think it better to continue my narrative, simply 
using the Journal of Las Casas as a document.)

The chief instrument was the astrolabe, which was an improvement on the 
primitive quadrant then in use for taking the altitude of the sun. The 
astrolabe, it will be remembered, had been greatly improved, by Martin 
Behaim and the Portuguese Commission in 1840--[1440 D.W.]; and it was this 
instrument, a simplification of the astrolabe used in astronomy ashore, 
that Columbus chiefly used in getting his solar altitudes. As will be seen 
from the illustration, its broad principle was that of a metal circle with 
a graduated circumference and two arms pivoted in the centre. It was made 
as heavy as possible; and in using it the observer sat on deck with his 
back against the mainmast and with his left hand held up the instrument by 
the ring at the top. The long arm was moved round until the two sights 
fixed upon it were on with the sun. The point where the other arm then cut 
the circle gave the altitude. In conjunction with this instrument were 
used the tables of solar declination compiled by Regiomontanus, and 
covering the sun's declination between the years 1475 and 1566. 

The compass in Columbus's day existed, so far as all essentials are 
concerned, as it exists to-day. Although it lacked the refinements 
introduced by Lord Kelvin it was swung in double-cradles, and had the 
thirty-two points painted upon a card. The discovery of the compass, and 
even of the lodestone, are things wrapt in obscurity; but the lodestone 
had been known since at least the eleventh century, and the compass 
certainly since the thirteenth. With the compass were used the sea charts, 
which were simply maps on a rather larger and more exact scale than the 
land maps of the period. There were no soundings or currents marked on the 
old charts, which were drawn on a plane projection; and they can have been 
of little--practical use to navigators except in the case of coasts which 
were elaborately charted on a large scale. The chart of Columbus, in so 
far as it was concerned with the ocean westward of the Azores, can of 
course have contained nothing except the conjectured islands or lands 
which he hoped to find; possibly the land seen by the shipwrecked pilot 
may have been marked on it, and his failure to find that land may have 
been the reason why, as we shall see, he changed his course to the 
southward on the 7th of October. It must be remembered that Columbus's 
conception of the world was that of the Portuguese Mappemonde of 1490, a 
sketch of which is here reproduced. This conception of the world excluded 
the Pacific Ocean and the continent of North and South America, and made 
it reasonable to suppose that any one who sailed westward long enough from 
Spain would ultimately reach Cathay and the Indies. Behaim's globe, which 
was completed in the year 1492, represented the farthest point that 
geographical knowledge had reached previous to the discoveries of 
Columbus, and on it is shown the island of Cipango or Japan. 

By far the most important element in the navigation of Columbus, in so far 
as estimating his position was concerned, was what is known as "dead- 
reckoning" that is to say, the computation of the distance travelled by 
the ship through the water. At present this distance is measured by a 
patent log, which in its commonest form is a propeller-shaped instrument 
trailed through the water at the end of a long wire or cord the inboard 
end of which is attached to a registering clock. On being dragged through 
the water the propeller spins round and the twisting action is 
communicated by the cord to the clock-work machinery which counts the 
miles. In the case of powerful steamers and in ordinary weather dead- 
reckoning is very accurately calculated by the number of revolutions of 
the propellers recorded in the engine-room; and a device not unlike this 
was known to the Romans in the time of the Republic. They attached small 
wheels about four feet in diameter to the sides of their ships; the 
passage of the water turned the wheels, and a very simple gearing was 
arranged which threw a pebble into a tallypot at each revolution. This 
device, however, seems to have been abandoned or forgotten in Columbus's 
day, when there was no more exact method of estimating dead-reckoning than 
the primitive one of spitting over the side in calm weather, or at other 
times throwing some object into the water and estimating the rate of 
progress by its speed in passing the ship's side. The hour-glass, which 
was used to get the multiple for long distances, was of course the only 
portable time measurer available for Columbus. These, with a rough 
knowledge of astronomy, and the taking of the altitude of the polar star, 
were the only known means for ascertaining the position of his ship at 
sea. 

The first mishap occurred on Monday, August 6th, when the Pinta carried 
away her rudder. The Pinta, it will be remembered, was commanded by Martin 
Alonso Pinzon, and was owned by Gomaz Rascon and Christoval Quintero, who 
had been at the bottom of some of the troubles ashore; and it was thought 
highly probable that these two rascals had something to do with the 
mishap, which they had engineered in the hope that their vessel would be 
left behind at the Canaries. Martin Alonso, however, proved a man of 
resource, and rigged up a sort of steering gear with ropes. There was a 
choppy sea, and Columbus could not bring his own vessel near enough to 
render any assistance, though he doubtless bawled his directions to 
Pinzon, and looked with a troubled eye on the commotion going on on board 
the Pinta. On the next day the jury-rigged rudder carried away again, and 
was again repaired, but it was decided to try and make the island of 
Lanzarote in the Canaries, and to get another caravel to replace the 
Pinta. All through the next day the Santa Maria and the Nina had to 
shorten sail in order not to leave the damaged Pinta behind; the three 
captains had a discussion and difference of opinion as to where they were; 
but Columbus, who was a genius at dead-reckoning, proved to be right in 
his surmise, and they came in sight of the Canaries on Thursday morning, 
August 9th. 

Columbus left Pinzon on the Grand Canary with orders to try to obtain a 
caravel there, while he sailed on to Gomera, which he reached on Sunday 
night, with a similar purpose. As he was unsuccessful he sent a message by 
a boat that was going back to tell Pinzon to beach the Pinta and repair 
her rudder; and having spent more days in fruitless search for a vessel, 
he started back to join Pinzon on August 23rd. During the night he passed 
the Peak of Teneriffe, which was then in eruption. The repairs to the 
Pinta, doubtless in no way expedited by Messrs. Rascon and Quintera, took 
longer than had been expected; it was found necessary to make an entirely 
new rudder for her; and advantage was taken of the delay to make some 
alterations in the rig of the Nina, which was changed from a latine rig to 
a square rig, so that she might be better able to keep up with the others. 
September had come before these two jobs were completed; and on the 2nd of 
September the three ships sailed for Gomera, the most westerly of the 
islands, where they anchored in the north-east bay. The Admiral was in a 
great hurry to get away from the islands and from the track of merchant 
ships, for he had none too much confidence in the integrity of his crews, 
which were already murmuring and finding every mishap a warning sign from 
God. He therefore only stayed long enough at Gomera to take in wood and 
water and provisions, and set sail from that island on the 6th of 
September. 

The wind fell lighter and lighter, and on Friday the little fleet lay 
becalmed within sight of Ferro. But on Saturday evening north-east airs 
sprang up again, and they were able to make nine leagues of westing. On 
Sunday they had lost sight of land; and at thus finding their ships three 
lonely specks in the waste of ocean the crew lost heart and began to 
lament. There was something like a panic, many of the sailors bursting 
into tears and imploring Columbus to take them home again. To us it may 
seem a rather childish exhibition; but it must be remembered that these 
sailors were unwillingly embarked upon a voyage which they believed would 
only lead to death and disaster. The bravest of us to-day, if he found 
himself press-ganged on board a balloon and embarked upon a journey, the 
object of which was to land upon Mars or the moon, might find it difficult 
to preserve his composure on losing sight of the earth; and the parallel 
is not too extreme to indicate the light in which their present enterprise 
must have appeared to many of the Admiral's crew. 

Columbus gave orders to the captains of the other two ships that, in case 
of separation, they were to sail westward for 700 leagues-that being the 
distance at which he evidently expected to find land--and there to lie-to 
from midnight until morning. On this day also, seeing the temper of the 
sailors, he began one of the crafty stratagems upon which he prided 
himself, and which were often undoubtedly of great use to him; he kept two 
reckonings, one a true one, which he entered in his log, and one a false 
one, by means of which the distance run was made out to be less than what 
it actually was, so that in case he could not make land as soon as he 
hoped the crew would not be unduly discouraged. In other words, he wished 
to have a margin at the other end, for he did not want a mutiny when he 
was perhaps within a few leagues of his destination. On this day he notes 
that the raw and inexperienced seamen were giving trouble in other ways, 
and steering very badly, continually letting the ship's head- fall off to 
the north; and many must have been the angry remonstrances from the 
captain to the man at the wheel. Altogether rather a trying day for 
Christopher, who surely has about as much on his hands as ever mortal had; 
but he knows how to handle ships and how to handle sailors, and so long as 
this ten-knot breeze lasts, he can walk the high poop of the Santa Maria 
with serenity, and snap his fingers at the dirty rabble below. 

On Monday they made sixty leagues, the Admiral duly announcing forty- 
eight; on Tuesday twenty leagues, published as sixteen; and on this day 
they saw a large piece of a mast which had evidently belonged to a ship of 
at least 120 tons burden. This was not an altogether cheerful sight for 
the eighteen souls on board the little Nina, who wondered ruefully what 
was going to happen to them of forty tons when ships three times their 
size had evidently been unable to live in this abominable sea! 

On Thursday, September 13th, when Columbus took his observations, he made 
a great scientific discovery, although he did not know it at the time. He 
noticed that the needle of the compass was declining to the west of north 
instead of having a slight declination to the east of north, as all 
mariners knew it to have. In other words, he had passed the line of true 
north and of no variation, and must therefore have been in latitude 28 
deg. N. and longitude 29 deg. 37' W. of Greenwich. With his usual secrecy 
he said nothing about it; perhaps he was waiting to see if the pilots on 
the other ships had noticed it, but apparently they were not so exact in 
their observations as he was. On the next day, Friday, the wind falling a 
little lighter, they, made only twenty leagues. "Here the persons on the 
caravel Nina said they had seen a jay and a ringtail, and these birds 
never come more than twenty-five leagues from land at most." --Unhappy 
"persons on the Nina"! Nineteen souls, including the captain, afloat in a 
very small boat, and arguing God knows what from the fact that a jay and a 
ringtail never went more than twenty-five leagues from land!--The next day 
also was not without its incident; for on Saturday evening they saw a 
meteor, or "marvellous branch of fire" falling from the serene violet of 
the sky into the sea. 

They were now well within the influence of the trade-wind, which in these 
months blows steadily from the east, and maintains an exquisite and balmy 
climate. Even the Admiral, never very communicative about his sensations, 
deigns to mention them here, and is reported to have said that "it was a 
great pleasure to enjoy the morning; that nothing was lacking except to 
hear the nightingales, and that the weather was like April in Andalusia." 
On this day they saw some green grasses, which the Admiral considered must 
have floated off from some island; "not the continent," says the Admiral, 
whose theories are not to be disturbed by a piece of grass, "because I 
make the continental land farther onward." The crew, ready to take the 
most depressing and pessimistic view of everything, considered that the 
lumps of grass belonged to rocks or submerged lands, and murmured 
disparaging things about the Admiral. As a matter of fact these grasses 
were masses of seaweed detached from the Sargasso Sea, which they were 
soon to enter. 

On Monday, September 17th, four days after Columbus had noted it, the 
other pilots noted the declination of the needle, which they had found on 
taking the position of the North star. They did not like it; and Columbus, 
whose knowledge of astronomy came to his aid, ordered them to take the 
position of the North star at dawn again, which they did, and found that 
the needles were true. He evidently thought it useless to communicate to 
them his scientific speculations, so he explained to them that it was the 
North star which was moving in its circle, and not the compass. One is 
compelled to admit that in these little matters of deceit the Admiral 
always shone. To-day, among the seaweed on the ship's side, he picked up a 
little crayfish, which he kept for several days, presumably in a bottle in 
his cabin; and perhaps afterwards ate. 

So for several days this calm and serene progress westward was maintained. 
The trade-wind blew steady and true, balmy and warm also; the sky was 
cloudless, except at morning and evening dusk; and there were for scenery 
those dazzling expanses of sea and sky, and those gorgeous hues of dawn 
and sunset, which are only to be found in the happy latitudes. The things 
that happened to them, the bits of seaweed and fishes that they saw in the 
water, the birds that flew around them, were observed with a wondering 
attention and wistful yearning after their meaning such as is known only 
to children and to sailors adventuring on uncharted seas. The breezes were 
milder even than those of the Canaries, and the waters always less salt; 
and the men, forgetting their fears of the monsters of the Sea of 
Darkness, would bathe alongside in the limpid blue. The little crayfish 
was a "sure indication of land"; a tunny fish, killed by the company on 
the Nina, was taken to be an indication from the west, "where I hope in 
that exalted God, in whose hands are all victories, that land will very 
soon appear"; they saw another ringtail, "which is not accustomed to sleep 
on the sea"; two pelicans came to the ship, "which was an indication that 
land was near"; a large dark cloud appeared to the north, "which is a sign 
that land is near"; they saw one day a great deal of grass, "although the 
previous day they had not seen any"; they took a bird with their hands 
which was like a jay; "it was a river bird and not a sea bird"; they saw a 
whale, "which is an indication that they are near land, because they 
always remain near it"; afterwards a pelican came from the west-north-west 
and went to the south-east, "which was an indication that it left land to 
the west-north-west, because these birds sleep on land and in the morning 
they come to the sea in search of food, and do not go twenty leagues from 
land." And "at dawn two or three small land birds came singing to the 
ships; and afterwards disappeared before sunrise." 

Such beautiful signs, interpreted by the light of their wishes, were the 
events of this part of the voyage. In the meantime, they have their little 
differences. Martin Alonso Pinzon, on Tuesday, September 18th, speaks from 
the Pinta to the Santa Maria, and says that he will not wait for the 
others, but will go and make the land, since it is so near; but apparently 
he does not get very far out of the way, the wind which wafts him wafting 
also the Santa Maria and the Nina. 

On September the 19th there was a comparison of dead-reckonings. The 
Nina's pilot made it 440 leagues from the Canaries, the Pinta's 420 
leagues, and the Admiral's pilot, doubtless instructed by the Admiral, 
made it 400. On Sunday the 23rd they were getting into the seaweed and 
finding crayfish again; and there being no reasonable cause for complaint 
a scare was got up among the crew on an exceedingly ingenious point. The 
wind having blown steadily from the east for a matter of three weeks, they 
said that it would never blow in any other direction, and that they would 
never be able to get back to Spain; but later in the afternoon the sea got 
up from the westward, as though in answer to their fears, and as if to 
prove that somewhere or other ahead of them there was a west wind blowing; 
and the Admiral remarks that "the high sea was very necessary to me, as it 
came to pass once before in the time when the Jews went out of Egypt with 
Moses, who took them from captivity." And indeed there was something of 
Moses in this man, who thus led his little rabble from a Spanish seaport 
out across the salt wilderness of the ocean, and interpreted the signs for 
them, and stood between them and the powers of vengeance and terror that 
were set about their uncharted path. 

But it appears that the good Admiral had gone just a little too far in 
interpreting everything they saw as a sign that they were approaching 
land; for his miserable crew, instead of being comforted by this fact, now 
took the opportunity to be angry because the signs were not fulfilled. The 
more the signs pointed to their nearness to land, the more they began to 
murmur and complain because they did not see it. They began to form 
together in little groups--always an ominous sign at sea-- and even at 
night those who were not on deck got together in murmuring companies. 
Some, of the things that they said, indeed, were not very far from the 
truth; among others, that it was "a great madness on their part to venture 
their lives in following out the madness of a foreigner who to make 
himself a great lord had risked his life, and now saw himself and all of 
them in great exigency and was deceiving so many people." They remembered 
that his proposition, or "dream" as they not inaptly call it, had been 
contradicted by many great and lettered men; and then followed some very 
ominous words indeed.* They held that "it was enough to excuse them from 
whatever might be done in the matter that they had arrived where man had 
never dared to navigate, and that they were not obliged to go to the end 
of the world, especially as, if they delayed more, they would not be able 
to have provisions to return." In short, the best thing would be to throw 
him into the sea some night, and make a story that he had fallen, into the 
water while taking the position of a star with his astrolabe; and no one 
would ask any questions, as he was a foreigner. They carried this talk to 
the Pinzons, who listened to them; after all, we have not had to wait long 
for trouble with the Pinzons! "Of these Pinzons Christopher Columbus 
complains greatly, and of the trouble they had given him." 

(* The substance of these murmurings is not in the abridged Journal, but 
is given by Las Casas under the date of September 24.)

There is only one method of keeping down mutiny at sea, and of preserving 
discipline. It is hard enough where the mutineers are all on one ship and 
the commander's officers are loyal to him; but when they are distributed 
over three ships, the captains of two of which are willing to listen to 
them, the problem becomes grave indeed. We have no details of how Columbus 
quieted them; but it is probable that his strong personality awed them, 
while his clever and plausible words persuaded them. He was the best 
sailor of them all and they knew it; and in a matter of this kind the best 
and strongest man always wins, and can only in a pass of this kind 
maintain his authority by proving his absolute right to it. So he talked 
and persuaded and bullied and encouraged and cheered them; "laughing with 
them," as Las Casas says, "while he was weeping at heart." 

Probably as a result of this unpleasantness there was on the following 
day, Tuesday, September 25th, a consultation between: Martin Alonso Pinzon 
and the Admiral. The Santa Maria closed up with the Pinta, and a chart was 
passed over on a cord. There were islands marked on the chart in this 
region, possibly the islands reported by the shipwrecked pilot, possibly 
the island of Antilla; and Pinzon said he thought that they were somewhere 
in the region of them, and the Admiral said that he thought so too. There 
was a deal of talk and pricking of positions on charts; and then, just as 
the sun was setting, Martin Alonso, standing on the stern of the Pinta, 
raised a shout and said that he saw land; asking (business- like Martin) 
at the same time for the reward which had been promised to the first one 
who should see land: They all saw it, a low cloud to the southwest, 
apparently about twenty-five leagues distant; and honest Christopher, in 
the emotion of the moment, fell on his knees in gratitude to God. The 
crimson sunset of that evening saw the rigging of the three ships black 
with eager figures, and on the quiet air were borne the sounds of the 
Gloria in Excelsis, which was repeated by each ship's company. 

The course was altered to the south-west, and they sailed in that 
direction seventeen leagues during the night; but in the morning there was 
no land to be seen. The sunset clouds that had so often deceived the 
dwellers in the Canaries and the Azores, and that in some form or other 
hover at times upon all eagerly scanned horizons, had also deceived 
Columbus and every one of his people; but they created a diversion which 
was of help to the Admiral in getting things quiet again, for which in his 
devout soul he thanked the merciful providence of God. 

And so they sailed on again on a westward course. They were still in the 
Sargasso Sea, and could watch the beautiful golden floating mass of the 
gulf-weed, covered with berries and showing, a little way under the clear 
water, bright green leaves. The sea was as smooth as the river in Seville; 
there were frigate pelicans flying about, and John Dorys in the water; 
several gulls were seen; and a youth on board the Nina killed a pelican 
with a stone. On Monday, October 1st, there was a heavy shower of rain; 
and Juan de la Cosa, Columbus's pilot, came up to him with the doleful 
information that they had run 578 leagues from the island of Ferro. 
According to Christopher's doctored reckoning the distance published was 
584 leagues; but his true reckoning, about which he said nothing to a 
soul, showed that they had gone 707 leagues. The breeze still kept steady 
and the sea calm; and day after day, with the temper of the crews getting 
uglier and uglier, the three little vessels forged westward through the 
blue, weed-strewn waters, their tracks lying undisturbed far behind them. 
On Saturday, October 6th, the Admiral was signalled by Alonso Pinzon, who 
wanted to change the course to the south- west. It appears that, having 
failed to find the, islands of the shipwrecked pilot, they were now making 
for the island of Cipango, and that this request of Pinzon had something 
to do with some theory of his that they had better turn to the south to 
reach that island; while Columbus's idea now evidently was--to push 
straight on to the mainland of Cathay. Columbus had his way; but the 
grumbling and murmuring in creased among the crew. 

On the next day, Sunday, and perhaps just in time to avert another 
outbreak, there was heard the sound of a gun, and the watchers on the 
Santa Maria and the Pinta saw a puff of smoke coming from the Nina, which 
was sailing ahead, and hoisting a flag on her masthead. This was the 
signal agreed upon for the discovery of land, and it seemed as though 
their search was at last at an end. But it was a mistake. In the afternoon 
the land that the people of the Nina thought they had seen had 
disappeared, and the horizon was empty except for a great flight of birds 
that was seen passing from the north to the south-west. The Admiral, 
remembering how often birds had guided the Portuguese in the islands in 
their possessions, argued that the birds were either going to sleep on 
land or were perhaps flying from winter, which he assumed to be 
approaching in the land from whence they came. He therefore altered. his 
course from west to west-south-west. This course was entered upon an hour 
before sunset and continued throughout the night and the next day. "The 
sea was like the river of Seville," says the Admiral; "the breezes as soft 
as at Seville in April, and very fragrant." More birds were to be seen, 
and there were many signs of land; but the crew, so often disappointed in 
their hopeful interpretations of the phenomena surrounding them, kept on 
murmuring and complaining. On Tuesday, October 9th, the wind chopped round 
a little and the course was altered, first to south-west and then at 
evening to a point north of west; and the journal records that "all night 
they heard birds passing." The next day Columbus resumed the west-
southwesterly course and made a run of fifty-nine leagues; but the 
mariners broke out afresh in their discontent, and declined to go any 
farther. They complained of the long voyage, and expressed their views 
strongly to the commander. But they had to deal with a man who was 
determined to begin with, and who saw in the many signs of land that they 
had met with only an additional inducement to go on. He told them firmly 
that with or without their consent he intended to go on until he had found 
the land he had come to seek. 

The next day, Thursday, October 11th, was destined to be for ever 
memorable in the history of the world. It began ordinarily enough, with a 
west-south-west wind blowing fresh, and on a sea rather rougher than they 
had had lately. The people on the Santa Maria saw some petrels and a green 
branch in the water; the Pinta saw a reed and two small sticks carved with 
iron, and one or two other pieces of reeds and grasses that had been grown 
on shore, as well as a small board. Most wonderful of all, the people of 
the Nina saw "a little branch full of dog roses"; and it would be hard to 
estimate the sweet significance of this fragment of a wild plant from land 
to the senses of men who had been so long upon a sea from which they had 
thought never to land alive. The day drew to its close; and after 
nightfall, according to their custom, the crew of the ships repeated the 
Salve Regina. Afterwards the Admiral addressed the people and sailors of 
his ship, "very merry and pleasant," reminding them of the favours God had 
shown them with regard to the weather, and begging them, as they hoped to 
see land very soon, within an hour or so, to keep an extra good look-out 
that night from the forward forecastle; and adding to the reward of an 
annuity of 10,000 maravedis, offered by the Queen to whoever should sight 
land first, a gift on his own account of a silk doublet. 

The moon was in its third quarter, and did not rise until eleven o'clock. 
The first part of the night was dark, and there was only a faint starlight 
into which the anxious eyes of the look-out men peered from the 
forecastles of the three ships. At ten o'clock Columbus was walking on the 
poop of his vessel, when he suddenly saw a light right ahead. The light 
seemed to rise and fall as though it were a candle or a lantern held in 
some one's hand and waved up and down. The Admiral called Pedro Gutierrez 
to him and asked him whether he saw anything; and he also saw the light. 
Then he sent for Rodrigo Sanchez and asked him if he saw the light; but he 
did not, perhaps because from where he was standing it was occulted. But 
the others were left in no doubt, for the light was seen once or twice 
more, and to the eyes of the anxious little group standing on the high 
stern deck of the Santa Maria it appeared unmistakably. The Nina was not 
close at hand, and the Pinta had gone on in front hoping to make good her 
mistake; but there was no doubt on board the Santa Maria that the light 
which they had seen was a light like a candle or a torch waved slowly up 
and down. They lost the light again; and as the hours in that night stole 
away and the moon rose slowly in the sky the seamen on the Santa Maria 
must have almost held their breath. 

At about two o'clock in the morning the sound of a gun was heard from the 
Pinta, who could be seen hoisting her flags; Rodrigo de Triana, the look- 
out on board of her, having reported land in sight; and there sure enough 
in the dim light lay the low shores of an island a few miles ahead of 
them. 

Immediately all sails were lowered, except a small trysail which enabled 
the ships to lie-to and stand slowly off and on, waiting for the daylight. 
I suppose there was never a longer night than that; but dawn came at last, 
flooding the sky with lemon and saffron and scarlet and orange, until at 
last the pure gold of the sun glittered on the water. And when it rose it 
showed the sea-weary mariners an island lying in the blue sea ahead of 
them: the island of Guanahani; San Salvador, as it was christened by 
Columbus; or, to give it its modern name, Watling's Island.



CHAPTER XIV.
LANDFALL 

During the night the ships had drifted a little with the current, and 
before the north-east wind. When the look-out man on the Pinta first 
reported land in sight it was probably the north-east corner of the 
island, where the land rises to a height of 120 feet, that he saw. The 
actual anchorage of Columbus was most likely to the westward of the 
island; for there was a strong north-easterly breeze, and as the whole of 
the eastern coast is fringed by a barrier reef, he would not risk his 
ships on a lee shore. Finding himself off the north end of the island at 
sunrise, the most natural thing for him to do, on making sail again, would 
be to stand southward along the west side of the island looking for an 
anchorage. The first few miles of the shore have rocky exposed points, and 
the bank where there is shoal water only extends half a mile from the 
shore. Immediately beyond that the bottom shelves rapidly down to a depth 
of 2000 fathoms, so that if Columbus was sounding as he came south he 
would find no bottom there. Below what are called the Ridings Rocks, 
however, the land sweeps to the south and east in a long sheltered bay, 
and to the south of these rocks there is good anchorage and firm holding-
ground in about eight fathoms of water. 

We may picture them, therefore, approaching this land in the bright 
sunshine of the early morning, their ears, that had so long heard nothing 
but the slat of canvas and the rush and bubble of water under the prows, 
filled at last with the great resounding roar of the breakers on the coral 
reef; their eyes, that had so long looked upon blue emptiness and the star-
spangled violet arch of night, feasting upon the living green of the 
foliage ashore; and the easterly breeze carrying to their eager nostrils 
the perfumes of land. Amid an excitement and joyful anticipation that it 
is exhilarating even to think about the cables were got up and served and 
coiled on deck, and the anchors, which some of them had thought would 
never grip the bottom again, unstopped and cleared. The leadsman of the 
Santa Maria, who has been finding no bottom with his forty-fathom line, 
suddenly gets a sounding; the water shoals rapidly until the nine-fathom 
mark is unwetted, and the lead comes up with its bottom covered with brown 
ooze. Sail is shortened; one after another the great ungainly sheets of 
canvas are clewed up or lowered down on deck; one after another the three 
helms are starboarded, and the three ships brought up to the wind. Then 
with three mighty splashes that send the sea birds whirling and screaming 
above the rocks the anchors go down; and the Admiral stands on his high 
poop-deck, and looks long and searchingly at the fragment of earth, rock-
rimmed, surf-fringed, and tree-crowned, of which he is Viceroy and 
Governor-General. 

Watling's Island, as it is now called, or San Salvador, as Columbus named 
it, or Guanahani, as it was known to the aborigines, is situated in 
latitude 24 deg. 6' N., and longitude 74 deg 26' W., and is an irregularly 
shaped white sandstone islet in about the middle of the great Bahama Bank. 
The space occupied by the whole group is shaped like an irregular triangle 
extending from the Navidad Bank in the Caribbean Sea at the south-east 
corner, to Bahama Island in Florida Strait on the north, about 200 miles. 
The south side trends west by north for 600 miles, and the north side 
north-west by north 720 miles. Most of the islands and small rocks in this 
group, called Keys or Cays, are very low, and rise only a few feet above 
the sea; the highest is about 400 feet high. They are generally situated 
on the edge of coral and sand banks, some of which are of a very dangerous 
character. They are thinly wooded, except in the case of one or two of the 
larger islands which contain timber of moderate dimensions. The climate of 
the Bahamas is mild and temperate, with refreshing sea breezes in the 
hottest months; and there is a mean temperature of 75 deg. from November 
to April. Watling's Island is about twelve miles in length by six in 
breadth, with rocky shores slightly indented. The greater part of its area 
is occupied by salt-water lagoons, separated from one another by small 
wooded hills from too to 140 feet high. There is plenty of grass; indeed 
the island is now considered to be the most fertile in the Bahamas, and 
raises an excellent breed of cattle and sheep. In common with the other 
islands of the group it was orginally settled by the Spaniards, and 
afterwards by the British, who were driven from the Bahamas again by the 
Spanish in the year 1641. After a great deal of changing hands they were 
ceded to Great Britain in 1783, and have remained in her possession ever 
since. In 1897 the population of the whole group was estimated at 52,000 
the whites being in the proportion of one to six of the coloured 
population. Watling's Island contains about 600 inhabitants scattered over 
the surface, with a small settlement called Cockburn Town on the west 
side, nearly opposite the landfall of Columbus. The seat of the local 
government is in the island of New Providence, and the inhabitants of 
Watling's Island and of Rum Cay unite in sending one representative to the 
House of Assembly. It is high water, full and change, at Watling's Island 
at 7 h. 40 m., as it was in the days of Columbus; and these facts form 
about the sum of the world's knowledge of and interest in Watling's Island 
to-day. 

But it was a different matter on Friday morning, October 12, 1492,* when, 
all having been made snug on board the Santa Maria, the Admiral of the 
Ocean Seas put on his armour and his scarlet cloak over it and prepared to 
go ashore. The boat was lowered and manned by a crew well armed, and 
Columbus took with him Rodrigo de Escovedo, the secretary to the 
expedition, and Rodrigo Sanchez his overseer; they also took on board 
Martin Alonso Pinzon and Vincenti Yanez Pinzon, the captains of the other 
two ships. As they rowed towards the shore they saw a few naked 
inhabitants, who hid themselves at their approach. Columbus carried with 
him the royal standard, and the two captains each had a banner of the 
expedition, which was a square flag with an "F" and a "Y" upon either 
side, each letter being surmounted by the crown of the sovereigns and a 
green cross covering the whole. Columbus assembled his little band around 
him and called upon them to bear witness that in the presence of them all 
he was taking possession of the island for the King and Queen of Spain; 
duly making depositions in writing on the spot, and having them signed and 
witnessed. Then he gave the name of San Salvador to the island and said a 
prayer; and while this solemn little ceremony was in progress, the 
astonished natives crept out of their hiding and surrounded the strange 
white men. They gesticulated and grovelled and pointed upwards, as though 
this gang of armed and bearded Spaniards, with the tall white-bearded 
Italian in the midst of them, had fallen from the skies. 

(* This date is reckoned in the old style. The true astronomical date 
would be October 21st, which is the modern anniversary of the discovery)

The first interest of the voyagers was in the inhabitants of this 
delightful land. They found them well built, athletic-looking men, most of 
them young, with handsome bodies and intelligent faces. Columbus, eager to 
begin his missionary work, gave them some red caps and some glass beads, 
with which he found them so delighted that he had good hopes of making 
converts, and from which he argued that "they were a people who would 
better be freed and converted to our Holy Faith by love than by force," 
which sentence of his contains within itself the whole missionary spirit 
of the time. These natives, who were the freest people in the world, were 
to be "freed"; freed or saved from the darkness of their happy innocence 
and brought to the light of a religion that had just evolved the 
Inquisition; freed by love if possible, and by red caps and glass beads; 
if not possible, then freed by force and with guns; but freed they were to 
be at all costs. It is a tragic thought that, at the very first impact of 
the Old World upon this Eden of the West, this dismal error was set on 
foot and the first links in the chain of slavery forged. But for the 
moment nothing of it was perceptible; nothing but red caps and glass 
beads, and trinkets and toys, and freeing by love. The sword that Columbus 
held out to them, in order to find out if they knew the use of weapons, 
they innocently grasped by the blade and so cut their fingers; and that 
sword, extended with knowledge and grasped with fearless ignorance, is 
surely an emblem of the spread of civilisation and of its doubtful 
blessings in the early stages. Let us hear Columbus himself, as he 
recorded his first impression of Guanahani: 

"Further, it appeared to me that they were a very poor people, in 
everything. They all go naked as their mothers gave them birth, and the 
women also, although I only saw one of the latter who was very young, and 
all those whom I saw were young men, none more than thirty years of age. 
They were very well built with very handsome bodies, and very good faces. 
Their hair was almost as coarse as horses' tails, and short, and they wear 
it over the eyebrows, except a small quantity behind, which they wear long 
and never cut. Some paint themselves blackish, and they are of the colour 
of the inhabitants of the Canaries, neither black nor white, and some 
paint themselves white, some red, some whatever colour they find: and some 
paint their faces, some all the body, some only the eyes, and some only 
the nose. They do not carry arms nor know what they are, because I showed 
them swords and they took them by the edge and ignorantly cut themselves. 
They have no iron: their spears are sticks without iron, and some of them 
have a fish's tooth at the