Christopher Columbus and the New World - Book 7



BOOK 7 - TOWARDS THE SUNSET

CHAPTER I.
DEGRADATION 

The first things seen by Francisco de Bobadilla when he entered the 
harbour of San Domingo on the morning of the 23rd of August 1500 were the 
bodies of several Spaniards, hanging from a gibbet near the water-side-- a 
grim confirmation of what he had heard about the troubled state of the 
island. While he was waiting for the tide so that he might enter the 
harbour a boat put off from shore to ascertain who was on board the 
caravels; and it was thus informally that Bobadilla first announced that 
he had come to examine into the state of the island. Columbus was not at 
San Domingo, but was occupied in settling the affairs of the Vega Real; 
Bartholomew also was absent, stamping out the last smouldering embers of 
rebellion in Xaragua; and only James was in command to deal with this 
awkward situation. 

Bobadilla did not go ashore the first day, but remained on board his ship 
receiving the visits of various discontented colonists who, getting early 
wind of the purpose of his visit, lost no time in currying favour with 
him, Probably he heard enough that first day to have damned the 
administration of a dozen islands; but also we must allow him some 
interest in the wonderful and strange sights that he was seeing; for 
Espanola, which has perhaps grown wearisome to us, was new to him. He had 
brought with him an armed body-guard of twenty-five men, and in the other 
caravel were the returned slaves, babies and all, under the charge of six 
friars. On the day following his arrival Bobadilla landed and heard mass 
in state, afterwards reading out his commission to the assembled people. 
Evidently he had received a shocking impression of the state of affairs in 
the island; that is the only explanation of the action suddenly taken by 
him, for his first public act was to demand from James the release of all 
the prisoners in the fortress, in order that they and their accusers 
should appear before him. 

James is in a difficulty; and, mule-like, since he does not know which way 
to turn, stands stock still. He can do nothing, he says, without the 
Admiral's consent. The next day Bobadilla, again hearing mass in state, 
causes further documents to be read showing that a still greater degree of 
power had been entrusted to his hands. Mule-like, James still stands stock 
still; the greatest power on earth known to him is his eldest brother, and 
he will not, positively dare not, be moved by anything less than that. He 
refuses to give up the prisoners on any grounds whatsoever, and Bobadilla 
has to take the fortress by assault--an easy enough matter since the 
resistance is but formal. 

The next act of Bobadilla's is not quite so easy to understand. He 
quartered himself in Columbus's house; that perhaps was reasonable enough 
since there may not have been another house in the settlement fit to 
receive him; but he also, we are told, took possession of all his papers, 
public and private, and also seized the Admiral's store of money and began 
to pay his debts with it for him, greatly to the satisfaction of San 
Domingo. There is an element of the comic in this interpretation of a 
commissioner's powers; and it seemed as though he meant to wind up the 
whole Columbus business, lock, stock, and barrel. It would not be in 
accordance with our modern ideas of honour that a man's private papers 
should be seized unless he were suspected of treachery or some criminal 
act; but apparently Bobadilla regarded it as necessary. We must remember 
that although he had only heard one side of the case it was evidently so 
positive, and the fruits of misgovernment were there so visibly before his 
eyes, that no amount of evidence in favour of Columbus would make him 
change his mind as to his fitness to govern. Poor James, witnessing these 
things and unable to do anything to prevent them, finds himself suddenly 
relieved from the tension of the situation. Since inaction is his note, he 
shall be indulged in it; and he is clapped in irons and cast into prison. 
James can hardly believe the evidence of his senses. He has been studying 
theology lately, it appears, with a view to entering the Church and 
perhaps being some day made Bishop of Espanola, but this new turn of 
affairs looks as though there were to be an end of all careers for him, 
military and ecclesiastical alike. 

Christopher at Fort Concepcion had early news of the arrival of Bobadilla, 
but in the hazy state of his mind he did not regard it as an event of 
sufficient importance to make his immediate presence at San Domingo 
advisable. The name of Bobadilla conveyed nothing to him; and when he 
heard that he had come to investigate, he thought that he came to set 
right some disputed questions between the Admiral and other navigators as 
to the right of visiting Espanola and the Paria coast. As the days went 
on, however, he heard more disquieting rumours; grew at last uneasy, and 
moved to a fort nearer San Domingo in case it should be necessary for him 
to go there. An officer met him on the road bearing the proclamations 
issued by Bobadilla, but not the message from the Sovereigns requiring the 
Admiral's obedience to the commissioner. Columbus wrote to the 
commissioner a curious letter, which is not preserved, in which he sought 
to gain time; excusing himself from responsibility for the condition of 
the island, and assuring Bobadilla that, as he intended to return to Spain 
almost immediately, he (Bobadilla) would have ample opportunity for 
exercising his command in his absence. He also wrote to the Franciscan 
friars who had accompanied Bobadilla asking them to use their influence--
the Admiral having some vague connection with the Franciscan order since 
his days at La Rabida. 

No reply came to any of these letters, and Columbus sent word that he 
still regarded his authority as paramount in the island. For reply to this 
he received the Sovereigns' message to him which we have seen, commanding 
him to put himself under the direction of Bobadilla. There was no 
mistaking this; there was the order in plain words; and with I know not 
what sinkings of heart Columbus at last set out for San Domingo. Bobadilla 
had expected resistance, but the Admiral, whatever his faults, knew how to 
behave with, dignity in a humiliating position; and he came into the city 
unattended on August 23, 1500. On the outskirts of the town he was met by 
Bobadilla's guards, arrested, put in chains, and lodged in the fortress, 
the tower of which exists to this day. He seemed to himself to be the 
victim of a particularly petty and galling kind of treachery, for it was 
his own cook, a man called Espinoza, who riveted his gyves upon him. 

There remained Bartholomew to be dealt with, and he, being at large and in 
command of the army, might not have proved such an easy conquest, but that 
Christopher, at Bobadilla's request, wrote and advised him to submit to 
arrest without any resistance. Whether Bartholomew acquiesced or not is 
uncertain; what is certain is that he also was captured and placed in 
irons, and imprisoned on one of the caravels. James in one caravel, 
Bartholomew in another, and Christopher in the fortress, and all in 
chains--this is what it has come to with the three sons of old Domenico. 

The trial was now begun, if trial that can be called which takes place in 
the absence of the culprit or his representative. It was rather the 
hearing of charges against Christopher and his brothers; and we may be 
sure that every discontented feeling in the island found voice and was 
formulated into some incriminating charge. Columbus was accused of 
oppressing the Spanish settlers by making them work at harsh and 
unnecessary labour; of cutting down their allowance of food, and 
restricting their liberty; of punishing them cruelly and unduly; of waging 
wars unjustly with the natives; of interfering with the conversion of the 
natives by hastily collecting them and sending them home as slaves; of 
having secreted treasures which should have been delivered to the 
Sovereigns--this last charge, like some of the others, true. He had an 
accumulation of pearls of which he had given no account to Fonseca, and 
the possession of which he excused by the queer statement that he was 
waiting to announce it until he could match it with an equal amount of 
gold! He was accused of hating the Spaniards, who were represented as 
having risen in the late rebellion in order to protect the natives and 
avenge their own wrongs--, and generally of having abused his office in 
order to enrich his own family and gratify his own feelings. Bobadilla 
appeared to believe all these charges; or perhaps he recognised their 
nature, and yet saw that there was a sufficient degree of truth in them to 
disqualify the Admiral in his position as Viceroy. In all these affairs 
his right-hand man was Roldan, whose loyalty to Columbus, as we foresaw, 
had been short-lived. Roldan collects evidence; Roldan knows where he can 
lay his hands on this witness; Roldan produces this and that proof; Roldan 
is here, there, and everywhere--never had Bobadilla found such a useful, 
obliging man as Roldan. With his help Bobadilla soon collected a 
sufficient weight of evidence to justify in his own mind his sending 
Columbus home to Spain, and remaining himself in command of the island. 

The caravels having been made ready, and all the evidence drawn up and 
documented, it only remained to embark the prisoners and despatch them to 
Spain. Columbus, sitting in his dungeon, suffering from gout and 
ophthalmic as well as from misery and humiliation, had heard no news; but 
he had heard the shouting of the people in the streets, the beating of 
drums and blowing of horns, and his own name and that of his brothers 
uttered in derision; and he made sure that he was going to be executed. 
Alonso de Villegio, a nephew of Bishop Fonseca's, had been appointed to 
take charge of the ships returning to Spain; and when he came into the 
prison the Admiral thought his last hour had come. 

"Villegio," he asked sadly, "where are you taking me?" 

"I am taking you to the ship, your Excellency, to embark," replied the 
other. 

"To embark?" repeated the Admiral incredulously. "Villegio! are you 
speaking the truth?" 

"By the life of your Excellency what I say is true," was the reply, and 
the news came with a wave of relief to the panic-stricken heart of the 
Admiral. 

In the middle of October the caravels sailed from San Domingo, and the 
last sounds heard by Columbus from the land of his discovery were the 
hoots and jeers and curses hurled after him by the treacherous, triumphant 
rabble on the shore. Villegio treated him and his brothers with as much 
kindness as possible, and offered, when they had got well clear of 
Espanola, to take off the Admiral's chains. But Columbus, with a fine 
counterstroke of picturesque dignity, refused to have them removed. 
Already, perhaps, he had realised that his subjection to this cruel and 
quite unnecessary indignity would be one of the strongest things in his 
favour when he got to Spain, and he decided to suffer as much of it as he 
could. "My Sovereigns commanded me to submit to what Bobadilla should 
order. By his authority I wear these chains, and I shall continue to wear 
them until they are removed by order of the Sovereigns; and I will keep 
them afterwards as reminders of the reward I have received for my 
services." Thus the Admiral, beginning to pick up his spirits again, and 
to feel the better for the sea air. 

The voyage home was a favourable one and in the course of it Columbus 
wrote the following letter to a friend of his at Court, Dona Juana de la 
Torre, who had been nurse to Prince Juan and was known by him to be a 
favourite of the Queen: 

"MOST VIRTUOUS LADY,--Though my complaint of the world is new, its habit 
of ill-using is very ancient. I have had a thousand struggles with it, and 
have thus far withstood them all, but now neither arms nor counsels avail 
me, and it cruelly keeps me under water. Hope in the Creator of all men 
sustains me: His help was always very ready; on another occasion, and not 
long ago, when I was still more overwhelmed, He raised me with His right 
arm, saying, 'O man of little faith, arise: it is I; be not afraid.' 

"I came with so much cordial affection to serve these Princes, and have 
served them with such service, as has never been heard of or seen. 

"Of the new heaven and earth which our Lord made, when Saint John was 
writing the Apocalypse, after what was spoken by the mouth of Isaiah, He 
made me the messenger, and showed me where it lay. In all men there was 
disbelief, but to the Queen, my Lady, He gave the spirit of understanding, 
and great courage, and made her heiress of all, as a dear and much loved 
daughter. I went to take possession of all this in her royal name. They 
sought to make amends to her for the ignorance they had all shown by 
passing over their little knowledge and talking of obstacles and expenses. 
Her Highness, on the other hand, approved of it, and supported it as far 
as she was able. 

"Seven years passed in discussion and nine in execution. During this time 
very remarkable and noteworthy things occurred whereof no idea at all had 
been formed. I have arrived at, and am in, such a condition that there is 
no person so vile but thinks he may insult me: he shall be reckoned in the 
world as valour itself who is courageous enough not to consent to it. 

"If I were to steal the Indies or the land which lies towards them, of 
which I am now speaking, from the altar of Saint Peter, and give them to 
the Moors, they could not show greater enmity towards me in Spain. Who 
would believe such a thing where there was always so much magnanimity? 

"I should have much desired to free myself from this affair had it been 
honourable towards my Queen to do so. The support of our Lord and of her 
Highness made me persevere: and to alleviate in some measure the sorrows 
which death had caused her, I undertook a fresh voyage to the new heaven 
and earth which up to that time had remained hidden; and if it is not held 
there in esteem like the other voyages to the Indies, that is no wonder, 
because it came to be looked upon as my work. 

"The Holy Spirit inflamed Saint Peter and twelve others with him, and they 
all contended here below, and their toils and hardships were many, but 
last of all they gained the victory. 

"This voyage to Paria I thought would somewhat appease them on account of 
the pearls, and of the discovery of gold in Espanola. I ordered the pearls 
to be collected and fished for by people with whom an arrangement was made 
that I should return for them, and, as I understood, they were to be 
measured by the bushel. If I did not write about this to their Highnesses, 
it was because I wished to have first of all done the same thing with the 
gold. 

"The result to me in this has been the same as in many other things; I 
should not have lost them nor my honour, if I had sought my own advantage, 
and had allowed Espanola to be ruined, or if my privileges and contracts 
had been observed. And I say just the same about the gold which I had then 
collected, and [for] which with such great afflictions and toils I have, 
by divine power, almost perfected [the arrangements]. 

"When I went from Paria I found almost half the people from Espanola in 
revolt, and they have waged war against me until now, as against a Moor; 
and the Indians on the other side grievously [harassed me]. At this time 
Hojeda arrived and tried to put the finishing stroke: he said that their 
Highnesses had sent him with promises of gifts, franchises and pay: he 
gathered together a great band, for in the whole of Espanola there are 
very few save vagabonds, and not one with wife and children. This Hojeda 
gave me great trouble; he was obliged to depart, and left word that he 
would soon return with more ships and people, and that he had left the 
Royal person of the Queen, our Lady, at the point of death. Then Vincente 
Yanez arrived with four caravels; there was disturbance and mistrust but 
no mischief: the Indians talked of many others at the Cannibals [Caribbee 
Islands] and in Paria; and afterwards spread the news of six other 
caravels, which were brought by a brother of the Alcalde, but it was with 
malicious intent. This occurred at the very last, when the hope that their 
Highnesses would ever send any ships to the Indies was almost abandoned, 
nor did we expect them; and it was commonly reported that her Highness was 
dead. 

"A certain Adrian about this time endeavoured to rise in rebellion again, 
as he had done previously, but our Lord did not permit his evil purpose to 
succeed. I had purposed in myself never to touch a hair of anybody's head, 
but I lament to say that with this man, owing to his ingratitude, it was 
not possible to keep that resolve as I had intended: I should not have 
done less to my brother, if he had sought to kill me, and steal the 
dominion which my King and Queen had given me in trust. 

"This Adrian, as it appears, had sent Don Ferdinand to Xaragua to collect 
some of his followers, and there a dispute arose with the Alcalde from 
which a deadly contest ensued, and he [Adrian] did not effect his purpose. 
The Alcalde seized him and a part of his band, and the fact was that he 
would have executed them if I had not prevented it; they were kept 
prisoners awaiting a caravel in which they might depart. The news of 
Hojeda which I told them made them lose the hope that he would now come 
again. 

"For six months I had been prepared to return to their Highnesses with the 
good news of the gold, and to escape from governing a dissolute people Who 
fear neither God nor their King and Queen, being full of vices and 
wickedness. 

"I could have paid the people in full with six hundred thousand, and for 
this purpose I had four millions of tenths and somewhat more, besides the 
third of the gold. 

"Before my departure I many times begged their Highnesses to send there, 
at my expense, some one to take charge of the administration of justice; 
and after finding the Alcalde in arms I renewed my supplications to have 
either some troops or at least some servant of theirs with letters patent; 
for my reputation is such that even if I build churches and hospitals, 
they will always be called dens of thieves. 

"They did indeed make provision at last, but it was the very contrary of 
what the matter demanded: it may be successful, since it was according to 
their good pleasure. 

"I was there for two years without being able to gain a decree of favour 
for myself or for those who went there, yet this man brought a coffer 
full: whether they will all redound to their [Highnesses] service, God 
knows. Indeed, to begin with, there are exemptions for twenty years, which 
is a man's lifetime; and gold is collected to such an extent that there 
was one person who became worth five marks in four hours; whereof I will 
speak more fully later on. 

"If it would please their Highnesses to remove the grounds of a common 
saying of those who know my labours, that the calumny of the people has 
done me more harm than much service and the maintenance of their 
[Highnesses] property and dominion has done me good, it would be a 
charity, and I should be re-established in my honour, and it would be 
talked about all over the world: for the undertaking is of such a nature 
that it must daily become more famous and in higher esteem. 

"When the Commander Bobadilla came to Santo Domingo, I was at La Vega, and 
the Adelantado at Xaragua, where that Adrian had made a stand, but then 
all was quiet, and the land rich and all men at peace. On the second day 
after his arrival, he created himself Governor, and appointed officers and 
made executions, and proclaimed immunities of gold and tenths and in 
general of everything else for twenty years, which is a man's lifetime, 
and that he came to pay everybody in full up to that day, even though they 
had not rendered service; and he publicly gave notice that, as for me, he 
had charge to send me in irons, and my brothers likewise, as he has done, 
and that I should nevermore return thither, nor any other of my family: 
alleging a thousand disgraceful and discourteous things about me. All this 
took place on the second day after his arrival, as I have said, and while 
I was absent at a distance, without my knowing either of him or of his 
arrival. 

"Some letters of their Highnesses signed in blank, of which he brought a 
number, he filled up and sent to the Alcalde and to his company with 
favours and commendations: to me he never sent either letter or messenger, 
nor has he done so to this day. Imagine what any one holding my office 
would think when one who endeavoured to rob their Highnesses, and who has 
done so much evil and mischief, is honoured and favoured, while he who 
maintained it at such risks is degraded. 

"When I heard this I thought that this affair would be like that of Hojeda 
or one of the others, but I restrained myself when I learnt for certain 
from the friars that their Highnesses had sent him. I wrote to him that 
his arrival was welcome, and that I was prepared to go to the Court and 
had sold all I possessed by auction; and that with respect to the 
immunities he should not be hasty, for both that matter and the government 
I would hand over to him immediately as smooth as my palm. And I wrote to 
the same effect to the friars, but neither he nor they gave me any answer. 
On the contrary, he put himself in a warlike attitude, and compelled all 
who went there to take an oath to him as Governor; and they told me that 
it was for twenty years. 

"Directly I knew of those immunities, I thought that I would repair such a 
great error and that he would be pleased, for he gave them without the 
need or occasion necessary in so vast a matter: and he gave to vagabond 
people what would have been excessive for a man who had brought wife and 
children. So I announced by word and letters that he could not use his 
patents because mine were those in force; and I showed them the immunities 
which John Aguado brought. 

"All this was done by me in order to gain time, so that their Highnesses 
might be informed of the condition of the country, and that they might 
have an opportunity of issuing fresh commands as to what would best 
promote their service in that respect. 

"It is useless to publish such immunities in the Indies: to the settlers 
who have taken up residence it is a pure gain, for the best lands are 
given to them, and at a low valuation they will be worth two-hundred 
thousand at the end of the four years when the period of residence is 
ended, without their digging a spadeful in them. I would not speak thus if 
the settlers were married, but there are not six among them all who are 
not on the look-out to gather what they can and depart speedily. It would 
be a good thing if they should go from Castile, and also if it were known 
who and what they are, and if the country could be settled with honest 
people. 

"I had agreed with those settlers that they should pay the third of the 
gold, and the tenths, and this at their own request; and they received it 
as a great favour from their Highnesses. I reproved them when I heard that 
they ceased to do this, and hoped that the Commander would do likewise, 
and he did the contrary. 

"He incensed them against me by saying that I wanted to deprive them of 
what their Highnesses had given them; and he endeavoured to set them at 
variance with me, and did so; and he induced them to write to their 
Highnesses that they should never again send me back to the government, 
and I likewise make the same supplication to them for myself and for my 
whole family, as long as there are not different inhabitants. And he 
together with them ordered inquisitions concerning me for wickednesses the 
like whereof were never known in hell. Our Lord, who rescued Daniel and 
the three children, is present with the same wisdom and power as He had 
then, and with the same means, if it should please Him and be in 
accordance with His will. 

"I should know how to remedy all this, and the rest of what has been said 
and has taken place since I have been in the Indies, if my disposition 
would allow me to seek my own advantage, and if it seemed honourable to me 
to do so, but the maintenance of justice and the extension of the dominion 
of her Highness has hitherto kept me down. Now that so much gold is found, 
a dispute arises as to which brings more profit, whether to go about 
robbing or to go to the mines. A hundred castellanos are as easily 
obtained for a woman as for a farm, and it is very general, and there are 
plenty of dealers who go about looking for girls: those from nine to ten 
are now in demand, and for all ages a good price must be paid. 

"I assert that the violence of the calumny of turbulent persons has 
injured me more than my services have profited me; which is a bad example 
for the present and for the future. I take my oath that a number of men 
have gone to the Indies who did not deserve water in the sight of God and 
of the world; and now they are returning thither, and leave is granted 
them. 

"I assert that when I declared that the Commander could not grant 
immunities, I did what he desired, although I told him that it was to 
cause delay until their Highnesses should, receive information from the 
country, and should command anew what might be for their service. 

"He excited their enmity against me, and he seems, from what took place 
and from his behaviour, to have come as my enemy and as a very vehement 
one; or else the report is true that he has spent much to obtain this 
employment. I do not know more about it than what I hear. I never heard of 
an inquisitor gathering rebels together and accepting them, and others 
devoid of credit and unworthy of it, as witnesses against their Governor. 

"If their Highnesses were to make a general inquisition there, I assure 
you that they would look upon it as a great wonder that the island does 
not founder. 

"I think your Ladyship will remember that when, after losing my sails, I 
was driven into Lisbon by a tempest, I was falsely accused of having gone 
there to the King in order to give him the Indies. Their Highnesses 
afterwards learned the contrary, and that it was entirely malicious. 

"Although I may know but little, I do not think any one considers me so 
stupid as not to know that even if the Indies were mine I could not uphold 
myself without the help of some Prince. 

"If this be so, where could I find better support and security than in the 
King and Queen, our Lords, who have raised me from nothing to such great 
honour, and are the most exalted Princes of the world on sea and on land, 
and who consider that I have rendered them service, and who preserve to me 
my privileges and rewards: and if any one infringes them, their Highnesses 
increase them still more, as was seen in the case of John Aguado; and they 
order great honour to be conferred upon me, and, as I have already said, 
their Highnesses have received service from me, and keep my sons in their 
household; all which could by no means happen with another prince, for 
where there is no affection, everything else fails. 

"I have now spoken thus in reply to a malicious slander, but against my 
will, as it is a thing which should not recur to memory even in dreams; 
for the Commander Bobadilla maliciously seeks in this way to set his own 
conduct and actions in a brighter light; but I shall easily show him that 
his small knowledge and great cowardice, together with his inordinate 
cupidity, have caused him to fail therein. 

"I have already said that I wrote to him and to the friars, and 
immediately set out, as I told him, almost alone, because all the people 
were with the Adelantado, and likewise in order to prevent suspicion on 
his part. When he heard this, he seized Don Diego and sent him on board a 
caravel loaded with irons, and did the same to me upon my arrival, and 
afterwards to the Adelantado when he came; nor did I speak to him any 
more, nor to this day has he allowed any one to speak to me; and I take my 
oath that I cannot understand why I am made a prisoner. 

"He made it his first business to seize the gold, which he did without 
measuring or weighing it and in my absence; he said that he wanted it to 
pay the people, and according to what I hear he assigned the chief part to 
himself and sent fresh exchangers for the exchanges. Of this gold I had 
put aside certain specimens, very big lumps, like the eggs of geese, hens, 
and pullets, and of many other shapes, which some persons had collected in 
a short space of time, in order that their Highnesses might be gladdened, 
and might comprehend the business upon seeing a quantity of large stones 
full of gold. This collection was the first to be given away, with 
malicious intent, so that their Highnesses should not hold the matter in 
any account until he has feathered his nest, which he is in great haste to 
do. Gold which is for melting diminishes at the fire: some chains which 
would weigh about twenty marks have never been seen again. 

"I have been more distressed about this matter of the gold than even about 
the pearls, because I have not brought it to her Highness. 

"The Commander at once set to work upon anything which he thought would 
injure me. I have already said that with six hundred thousand I could pay 
every one without defrauding anybody, and that I had more than four 
millions of tenths and constabulary [dues] without touching the gold. He 
made some free gifts which are ridiculous, though I believe that he began 
by assigning the chief part to himself. Their Highnesses will find it out 
when they order an account to be obtained from him, especially if I should 
be present thereat. He does nothing but reiterate that a large sum is 
owing, and it is what I have said, and even less. I have been much 
distressed that there should be sent concerning me an inquisitor who is 
aware that if the inquisition which he returns is very grave he will 
remain in possession of the government. 

"Would that it had pleased our Lord that their Highnesses had sent him or 
some one else two years ago, for I know that I should now be free from 
scandal and infamy, and that my honour would not be taken from me, nor 
should I lose it. God is just, and will make known the why and the 
wherefore. 

"They judge me over there as they would a governor who had gone to Sicily, 
or to a city or town placed under regular government, and where the laws 
can be observed in their entirety without fear of ruining everything; and 
I am greatly injured thereby. 

"I ought to be judged as a captain who went from Spain to the Indies to 
conquer a numerous and warlike people, whose customs and religion are very 
contrary to ours; who live in rocks and mountains, without fixed 
settlements, and not like ourselves: and where, by the Divine Will, I have 
placed under the dominion of the King and Queen, our Sovereigns, a second 
world, through which Spain, which was reckoned a poor country, has become 
the richest. 

"I ought to be judged as a captain who for such a long time up to this day 
has borne arms without laying them aside for an hour, and by gentlemen 
adventurers and by custom, and not by letters, unless they were from 
Greeks or Romans or others of modern times of whom there are so many and 
such noble examples in Spain; or otherwise I receive great injury, because 
in the Indies there is neither town nor settlement. 

"The gate to the gold and pearls is now open, and plenty of everything--
precious stones, spices and a thousand other things--may be surely 
expected, and never could a worse misfortune befall me: for by the name of 
our Lord the first voyage would yield them just as much as would the 
traffic of Arabia Felix as far as Mecca, as I wrote to their Highnesses by 
Antonio de Tomes in my reply respecting the repartition of the sea and 
land with the Portuguese; and afterwards it would equal that of Calicut, 
as I told them and put in writing at the monastery of the Mejorada. 

"The news of the gold that I said I would give is, that on the day of the 
Nativity, while I was much tormented, being harassed by wicked Christians 
and by Indians, and when I was on the point of giving up everything, and 
if possible escaping from life, our Lord miraculously comforted me and 
said, 'Fear not violence, I will provide for all things: the seven years 
of the term of the gold have not elapsed, and in that and in everything 
else I will afford thee a remedy.' 

"On that day I learned that there were eighty leagues of land with mines 
at every point thereof. The opinion now is that it is all one. Some have 
collected a hundred and twenty castellanos in one day, and others ninety, 
and even the number of two hundred and fifty has been reached. From fifty 
to seventy, and in many more cases from fifteen to fifty, is considered a 
good day's work, and many carry it on. The usual quantity is from six to 
twelve, and any one obtaining less than this is not satisfied. It seems to 
me that these mines are like others, and do not yield equally every day. 
The mines are new, and so are the workers: it is the opinion of everybody 
that even if all Castile were to go there, every individual, however 
inexpert he might be, would not obtain less than one or two castellanos 
daily, and now it is only commencing. It is true that they keep Indians, 
but the business is in the hands of the Christians. Behold what 
discernment Bobadilla had, when he gave up everything for nothing, and 
four millions of tenths, without any reason or even being requested, and 
without first notifying it to their Highnesses. And this is not the only 
loss. 

"I know that my errors have not been committed with the intention of doing 
evil, and I believe that their Highnesses regard the matter just as I 
state it: and I know and see that they deal mercifully even with those who 
maliciously act to their disservice. I believe and consider it very 
certain that their clemency will be both greater and more abundant towards 
me, for I fell therein through ignorance and the force of circumstances, 
as they will know fully hereafter; and I indeed am their creature, and 
they will look upon my services, and will acknowledge day by day that they 
are much profited. They will place everything in the balance, even as Holy 
Scripture tells us good and evil will be at the day of judgment. 

"If, however, they command that another person do judge me, which I cannot 
believe, and that it be by inquisition in the Indies, I very humbly 
beseech them to send thither two conscientious and honourable persons at 
my expense, who I believe will easily, now that gold is discovered, find 
five marks in four hours. In either case it is needful for them to provide 
for this matter. 

"The Commander on his arrival at San Domingo took up his abode in my 
house, and just as he found it so he appropriated everything to himself. 
Well and good; perhaps he was in want of it. A pirate never acted thus 
towards a merchant. About my papers I have a greater grievance, for he has 
so completely deprived me of them that I have never been able to obtain a 
single one from him; and those that would have been most useful in my 
exculpation are precisely those which he has kept most concealed. Behold 
the just and honest inquisitor! Whatever he may have done, they tell me 
that there has been an end to justice, except in an arbitrary form. God, 
our Lord, is present with His strength and wisdom, as of old, and always 
punishes in the end, especially ingratitude and injuries." 

We must keep in mind the circumstances in which this letter was written if 
we are to judge it and the writer wisely. It is a sad example of querulous 
complaint, in which everything but the writer's personal point of view is 
ignored. No one indeed is more terrible in this world than the Man with a 
Grievance. How rarely will human nature in such circumstances retire into 
the stronghold of silence! Columbus is asking for pity; but as we read his 
letter we incline to pity him on grounds quite different from those which 
he represented. He complains that the people he was sent to govern have 
waged war against him as against a Moor; he complains of Ojeda and of 
Vincenti Yanez Pinzon; of Adrian de Moxeca, and of every other person whom 
it was his business to govern and hold in restraint. He complains of the 
colonists--the very people, some of them, whom he himself took and 
impressed from the gaols and purlieus of Cadiz; and then he mingles pious 
talk about Saint Peter and Daniel in the den of lions with notes on the 
current price of little girls and big lumps of gold like the eggs of 
geese, hens, and pullets. He complains that he is judged as a man would be 
judged who had been sent out to govern a ready-made colony, and represents 
instead that he went out to conquer a numerous and warlike people "whose 
custom and religion are very contrary to ours, and who lived in rocks and 
mountains"; forgetting that when it suited him for different purposes he 
described the natives as so peaceable and unwarlike that a thousand of 
them would not stand against one Christian, and that in any case he was 
sent out to create a constitution and not merely to administer one. Very 
sore indeed is Christopher as he reveals himself in this letter, appealing 
now to his correspondent, now to the King and Queen, now to that God who 
is always on the side of the complainant. "God our Lord is present with 
His strength and wisdom, as of old, and always punishes in the end, 
especially ingratitude and injuries." Not boastfulness and weakness, let 
us hope, or our poor Admiral will come off badly.



CHAPTER II.
CRISIS IN THE ADMIRAL'S LIFE 

Columbus was not far wrong in his estimate of the effect likely to be 
produced by his manacles, and when the ships of Villegio arrived at Cadiz 
in October, the spectacle of an Admiral in chains produced a degree of 
commiseration which must have exceeded his highest hopes. He was now in 
his fiftieth year and of an extremely venerable appearance, his kindling 
eye looking forth from under brows of white, his hair and beard snow- 
white, his face lined and spiritualised with suffering and sorrow. It must 
be remembered that before the Spanish people he had always appeared in 
more or less state. They had not that intimacy with him, an intimacy which 
perhaps brought contempt, which the people in Espanola enjoyed; and in 
Spain, therefore, the contrast between his former grandeur and this 
condition of shame and degradation was the more striking. It was a fact 
that the people of Spain could not neglect. It touched their sense of the 
dramatic and picturesque, touched their hearts also perhaps--hearts quick 
to burn, quick to forget. They had forgotten him before, now they burned 
with indignation at the picture of this venerable and much-suffering man 
arriving in disgrace. 

His letter to Dofia Juana, hastily despatched by him, probably through the 
office of some friendly soul on board, immediately on his arrival at 
Cadiz, was the first news from the ship received by the King and Queen, 
and naturally it caused them a shock of surprise. It was followed by the 
despatches from Bobadilla and by a letter from the Alcalde of Cadiz 
announcing that Columbus and his brothers were in his custody awaiting the 
royal orders. Perhaps Ferdinand and Isabella had already repented their 
drastic action and had entertained some misgivings as to its results; but 
it is more probable that they had put it out of their heads altogether, 
and that their hasty action now was prompted as much by the shock of being 
recalled to a consciousness of the troubled state of affairs in the New 
World as by any real regret for what they had done. Moreover they had sent 
out Bobadilla to quiet things down; and the first result of it was that 
Spain was ringing with the scandal of the Admiral's treatment. In that 
Spanish world, unsteadfast and unstable, when one end of the see-saw was 
up the other must be down; and it was Columbus who now found himself high 
up in the heavens of favour, and Bobadilla who was seated in the dust. 
Equipoise any kind was apparently a thing impossible; if one man was right 
the other man must be wrong; no excuses for Bobadilla; every excuse for 
the Admiral. 

The first official act, therefore, was an order for the immediate release 
of the Admiral and his brothers, followed by an invitation for him to 
proceed without delay to the Court at Granada, and an order for the 
immediate payment to him of the sum of 2000 ducats [perhaps $250,000 in 
the year 2000 D.W.] this last no ungenerous gift to a Viceroy whose pearl 
accounts were in something less than order. Perhaps Columbus had cherished 
the idea of appearing dramatically before the very Court in his rags and 
chains; but the cordiality of their letter as well as the gift of money 
made this impossible. Instead, not being a man to do things by halves, he 
equipped himself in his richest and most splendid garments, got together 
the requisite number of squires and pages, and duly presented himself at 
Granada in his full dignity. The meeting was an affecting one, touched 
with a humanity which has survived the intervening centuries, as a touch 
of true humanity will when details of mere parade and etiquette have long 
perished. Perhaps the Admiral, inspired with a deep sense of his wrongs, 
meant to preserve a very stiff and cold demeanour at the beginning of this 
interview; but when he looked into the kind eyes of Isabella and saw them 
suffused with tears at the thought of his sorrows all his dignity broke 
down; the tears came to his own eyes, and he wept there naturally like a 
child. Ferdinand looking on kind but uncomfortable; Isabella unaffectedly 
touched and weeping; the Admiral, in spite of his scarlet cloak and golden 
collar and jewelled sword, in spite of equerries, squires, pages and 
attendants, sobbing on his knees like a child or an old man-these were the 
scenes and kindly emotions of this historic moment. 

The tears were staunched by kindly royal words and handkerchiefs supplied 
by attendant pages; sobbings breaking out again, but on the whole soon 
quieted; King and Queen raising the gouty Christopher from his knees, 
filling the air with kind words of sympathy, praise, and encouragement; 
the lonely worn heart, somewhat arid of late, and parched from want of 
human sympathy, much refreshed by this dew of kindness. The Admiral was 
soon himself again, and he would not have been himself if upon recovering 
he had not launched out into what some historians call a "lofty and 
dignified vindication of his loyalty and zeal." No one, indeed, is better 
than the Admiral at such lofty and dignified vindications. He goes into 
the whole matter and sets forth an account of affairs at Espanola from his 
own point of view; and can even (so high is the thermometer of favour) 
safely indulge in a little judicious self- depreciation, saying that if he 
has erred it has not been from want of zeal but from want of experience in 
dealing with the kind of material he has been set to govern. All this is 
very human, natural, and understandable; product of that warm emotional 
atmosphere, bedewed with tears, in which the Admiral finds himself; and it 
is not long before the King and Queen, also moved to it by the emotional 
temperature, are expressing their unbroken and unbounded confidence in him 
and repudiating the acts of Bobadilla, which they declare to have been 
contrary to their instructions; undertaking also that he shall be 
immediately dismissed from his post. Poor Bobadilla is not here in the 
warm emotional atmosphere; he had his turn of it six months ago, when no 
powers were too high or too delicate to be entrusted to him; he is out in 
the cold at the other end of the see-saw, which has let him down to the 
ground with a somewhat sudden thump. 

Columbus, relying on the influence of these emotions, made bold to ask 
that his property in the island should be restored to him, which was 
immediately granted; and also to request that he should be reinstated in 
his office of Viceroy and allowed to return at once in triumph to 
Espanola. But emotions are unstable things; they present a yielding 
surface which will give to any extent, but which, when it has hardened 
again after the tears have evaporated, is often found to be in much the 
same condition as before. At first promises were made that the whole 
matter should be fully gone into; but when it came to cold fact, Ferdinand 
was obliged to recognise that this whole business of discovery and 
colonisation had become a very different thing to what it had been when 
Columbus was the only discoverer; and he was obviously of opinion that, as 
Columbus's office had once been conveniently withdrawn from him, it would 
only be disastrous to reinstate him in it. Of course he did not say so at 
once; but reasons were given for judicious delay in the Admiral's 
reappointment. It was represented to him that the colony, being in an 
extremely unsettled state, should be given a short period of rest, and 
also that it would be as well for him to wait until the people who had 
given him so much trouble in the island could be quietly and gradually 
removed. Two years was the time mentioned as suitable for an interregnum, 
and it is probable that it was the intention of Isabella, although not of 
Ferdinand, to restore Columbus to his office at the end of that time. 

In the meantime it became necessary to appoint some one to supersede 
Bobadilla; for the news that arrived periodically from Espanola during the 
year showed that he had entirely failed in his task of reducing the island 
to order. For the wholesome if unequal rigours of Columbus Bobadilla had 
substituted laxness and indulgence, with the result that the whole colony 
was rapidly reduced to a state of the wildest disorder. Vice and cruelty 
were rampant; in fact the barbarities practised upon the natives were so 
scandalous that even Spanish opinion, which was never very sympathetic to 
heathen suffering, was thoroughly shocked and alarmed. The Sovereigns 
therefore appointed Nicholas de Ovando to go out and take over the 
command, with instructions to use very drastic means for bringing the 
colony to order. How he did it we shall presently see; in the meantime all 
that was known of him (the man not having been tried yet) was that he was 
a poor knight of Calatrava, a man respected in royal circles for the 
performance of minor official duties, but no very popular favourite; 
honest according to his lights--lights turned rather low and dim, as was 
often the case in those days. A narrow-minded man also, without sympathy 
or imagination, capable of cruelty; a tough, stiff- necked stock of a man, 
fit to deal with Bobadilla perhaps, but hardly fit to deal with the 
colony. Spain in those days was not a nursery of administration. Of all 
the people who were sent out successively to govern Espanola and supersede 
one another, the only one who really seems to have had the necessary 
natural ability, had he but been given the power, was Bartholomew 
Columbus; but unfortunately things were in such a state that the very name 
of Columbus was enough to bar a man from acceptance as a governor of 
Espanola. 

It was not for any lack of powers and equipment that this procession of 
governors failed in their duties. We have seen with what authority 
Bobadilia had been entrusted; and Ovando had even greater advantages. The 
instructions he received showed that the needs of the new colonies were 
understood by Ferdinand and Isabella, if by no one else. Ovando was not 
merely appointed Governor of Espanola but of the whole of the new 
territory discovered in the west, his seat of government being San 
Domingo. He was given the necessary free hand in the matters of 
punishment, confiscation, and allotment of lands. He was to revoke the 
orders which had been made by Bobadilla reducing the proportion of gold 
payable to the Crown, and was empowered to take over one-third of the. 
gold that was stored on the island, and one-half of what might be found in 
the future. The Crown was to have a monopoly of all trade, and ordinary 
supplies were only to be procured through the Crown agent. On the other 
hand, the natives were to be released from slavery, and although forced to 
work in the mines, were to be paid for their labour-- a distinction which 
in the working out did not produce much difference. A body of Franciscan 
monks accompanied Ovando for the purpose of tackling the religious 
question with the necessary energy; and every regulation that the kind 
heart of Isabella could think of was made for the happiness and 
contentment of the Indians. 

Unhappily the real mischief had already been done. The natives, who had 
never been accustomed to hard and regular work under the conditions of 
commerce and greed, but had only toiled for the satisfaction of their own 
simple wants, were suffering cruelly under the hard labour in the mines, 
and the severe driving of their Spanish masters. Under these unnatural . 
conditions the native population was rapidly dying off, and there was some 
likelihood that there would soon be a scarcity of native labour. These 
were the circumstances in which the idea of importing black African labour 
to the New World was first conceived--a plan which was destined to have 
results so tremendous that we have probably not yet seen their full and 
ghastly development. There were a great number of African negro slaves at 
that time in Spain; a whole generation of them had been born in slavery in 
Spain itself; and this generation was bodily imported to Espanola to 
relieve and assist the native labour. 

These preparations were not made all at once; and it was more than a year 
after the return of Columbus before Ovando was ready to sail. In the 
meantime Columbus was living in Granada, and looking on with no very 
satisfied eye at the plans which were being made to supersede him, and 
about which he was probably not very much consulted; feeling very sore 
indeed, and dividing his attention between the nursing of his grievances 
and other even less wholesome occupations. There was any amount of smiling 
kindness for him at Court, but very little of the satisfaction that his 
vanity and ambition craved; and in the absence of practical employment he 
fell back on visionary speculations. He made great friends at this time 
with a monk named Gaspar Gorricio, with whose assistance he began to make 
some kind of a study of such utterances of the Prophets and the Fathers as 
he conceived to have a bearing on his own career. 

Columbus was in fact in a very queer way at this time; and what with his 
readings and his meditatings and his grievances, and his visits to his 
monkish friend in the convent of Las Cuevas, he fell into a kind of 
intellectual stupor, of which the work called 'Libro de las Profecias,' or 
Book of the Prophecies, in which he wrote down such considerations as 
occurred to him in his stupor, was the result. The manuscript of this work 
is in existence, although no human being has ever ventured to reprint the 
whole of it; and we would willingly abstain from mentioning it here if it 
were not an undeniable act of Columbus's life. The Admiral, fallen into 
theological stupor, puts down certain figures upon paper; discovers that 
St. Augustine said that the world would only last for 7000 years; finds 
that some other genius had calculated that before the birth of Christ it 
had existed for 5343 years and 318 days; adds 1501 years from the birth of 
Christ to his own time; adds up, and finds that the total is 6844 years; 
subtracts, and discovers that this earthly globe can only last 155 years 
longer. He remembers also that, still according to the Prophets, certain 
things must happen before the end of the world; Holy Sepulchre restored to 
Christianity, heathen converted, second coming of Christ; and decides that 
he himself is the man appointed by God and promised by the Prophets to 
perform these works. Good Heavens! in what an entirely dark and sordid 
stupor is our Christopher now sunk--a veritable slough and quag of stupor 
out of which, if he does not manage to flounder himself, no human hand can 
pull him. 

But amid his wallowings in this slough of stupor, when all else, in him 
had been well-nigh submerged by it, two dim lights were preserved towards 
which, although foundered up to the chin, he began to struggle; and by 
superhuman efforts did at last extricate himself from the theological 
stupor and get himself blown clean again by the salt winds before he died. 
One light was his religion; not to be confounded with theological stupor, 
but quite separate from it in my belief; a certain steadfast and consuming 
faith in a Power that could see and understand and guide him to the 
accomplishment of his purpose. This faith had been too often a good friend 
and help to Christopher for him to forget it very long, even while he was 
staggering in the quag with Isaiah, Jeremiah, and the Fathers; and 
gradually, as I say, he worked himself out into the region of activity 
again. First, thinking it a pity that his flounderings in the slough 
should be entirely wasted, he had a copy of his precious theological work 
made and presented it to the Sovereigns, with a letter urging them (since 
he himself was unable to do it) to undertake a crusade for the recovery of 
the Holy Sepulchre--not an altogether wild proposal in those days. But 
Ferdinand had other uses for his men and his money, and contented himself 
with despatching Peter Martyr on a pacific mission to the Grand Soldan of 
Egypt. 

The other light left unquenched in Columbus led him back to the firm 
ground of maritime enterprise; he began to long for the sea again, and for 
a chance of doing something to restore his reputation. An infinitely 
better and more wholesome frame of mind this; by all means let him mend 
his reputation by achievement, instead of by writing books in a 
theological trance or stupor, and attempting to prove that he was chosen 
by the Almighty. He now addressed himself to the better task of getting 
himself chosen by men to do something which should raise him again in 
their esteem. 

His maritime ambition was no doubt stimulated at this time by witnessing 
the departure of Ovando, in February 1502, with a fleet of thirty-five 
ships and a company of 2500 people. It was not in the Admiral's nature to 
look on without envy at an equipment the like of which he himself had 
never been provided with, and he did not restrain his sarcasms at its pomp 
and grandeur, nor at the ease with which men could follow a road which had 
once been pointed out to them. Ovando had a great body-guard such as 
Columbus had never had; and he also carried with him a great number of 
picked married men with their families, all with knowledge of some trade 
or craft, whose presence in the colony would be a guarantee of permanence 
and steadiness. He perhaps remembered his own crowd of ruffians and gaol-
birds, and realised the bitterness of his own mistakes. It was a very 
painful moment for him, and he was only partially reconciled to it by the 
issue of a royal order to Ovando under which he was required to see to the 
restoration of the Admiral's property. If it had been devoted to public 
purposes it was to be repaid him from the royal funds; but if it had been 
merely distributed among the colonists Bobadilla was to be made 
responsible for it. The Admiral was also allowed to send out an agent to 
represent him and look after his interests; and he appointed Alonso de 
Carvajal to this office. 

Ovando once gone, the Admiral could turn again to his own affairs. It is 
true there were rumours that the whole fleet had perished, for it 
encountered a gale very soon after leaving Cadiz, and a great quantity of 
the deck hamper was thrown overboard and was washed on the shores of 
Spain; and the Sovereigns were so bitterly distressed that, as it is said, 
they shut them selves up for eight days. News eventually came, however, 
that only one ship had been lost and that the rest had proceeded safely to 
San Domingo. Columbus, much recovered in body and mind, now began to apply 
for a fleet for himself. He had heard of the discovery by the Portuguese 
of the southern route to India; no doubt he had heard also much gossip of 
the results of the many private voyages of discovery that were sailing 
from Spain at this time; and he began to think seriously about his own 
discoveries and the way in which they might best be extended. He thought 
much of his voyage to the west of Trinidad and of the strange pent-up seas 
and currents that he had discovered there. He remembered the continual 
westward trend of the current, and how all the islands in that sea had 
their greatest length east and west, as though their shores had been worn 
into that shape by the constant flowing of the current; and it was not an 
unnatural conclusion for him to suppose that there was a channel far to 
the west through which these seas poured and which would lead him to the 
Golden Chersonesus. He put away from him that nightmare madness that he 
transacted on the coast of Cuba. He knew very well that he had not yet 
found the Golden Chersonesus and the road to India; but he became 
convinced that the western current would lead him there if only he 
followed it long enough. There was nothing insane about this theory; it 
was in fact a very well-observed and well-reasoned argument; and the fact 
that it happened to be entirely wrong is no reflection on the Admiral's 
judgment. The great Atlantic currents at that time had not been studied; 
and how could he know that the western stream of water was the northern 
half of a great ocean current which sweeps through the Caribbean Sea, into 
and round the Gulf of Mexico, and flows out northward past Florida in the 
Gulf Stream? 

His applications for a fleet were favourably received by the King and 
Queen, but much frowned upon by certain high officials of the Court. They 
were beginning to regard Columbus as a dangerous adventurer who, although 
he happened to have discovered the western islands, had brought the 
Spanish colony there to a dreadful state of disorder; and had also, they 
alleged, proved himself rather less than trustworthy in matters of 
treasure. Still in the summer days of 1501 he was making himself very 
troublesome at Court with constant petitions and letters about his rights 
and privileges; and Ferdinand was far from unwilling to adopt a plan by 
which they would at least get rid of him and keep him safely occupied at 
the other side of the world at the cost of a few caravels. There was, 
besides, always an element of uncertainty. His voyage might come to 
nothing, but on the other hand the Admiral was no novice at this game of 
discovery, and one could not tell but that something big might come of it. 
After some consideration permission was given to him to fit out a fleet of 
four ships, and he proceeded to Seville in the autumn of 1501 to get his 
little fleet ready. Bartholomew was to come with him, and his son 
Ferdinand also, who seems to have much endeared himself to the Admiral in 
these dark days, and who would surely be a great comfort to him on the 
voyage. Beatriz Enriquez seems to have passed out of his life; certainly 
he was not living with her either now or on his last visit to Spain; one 
way or another, that business is at an end for him. Perhaps poor Beatriz, 
seeing her son in such a high place at Court, has effaced herself for his 
sake; perhaps the appointment was given on condition of such effacement; 
we do not know. 

Columbus was in no hurry over his preparations. In the midst of them he 
found time to collect a whole series of documents relating to his titles 
and dignities, which he had copied and made into a great book which he 
called his "Book of Privileges," and the copies of which were duly 
attested before a notary at Seville on January 5, 1502. He wrote many 
letters to various friends of his, chiefly in relation to these 
privileges; not interesting or illuminating letters to us, although very 
important to busy Christopher when he wrote them. Here is one written to 
Nicolo Oderigo, a Genoese Ambassador who came to Spain on a brief mission 
in the spring of 1502, and who, with certain other residents in Spain, is 
said to have helped Columbus in his preparations for his fourth voyage: 

"Sir,--The loneliness in which you have left us cannot be described. I 
gave the book containing my writings to Francisco de Rivarol that he may 
send it to you with another copy of letters containing instructions. I beg 
you to be so kind as to write Don Diego in regard to the place of security 
in which you put them. Duplicates of everything will be completed and sent 
to you in the same manner and by the same Francisco. Among them you will 
find a new document. Their Highnesses promised to give all that belongs to 
me and to place Don Diego in possession of everything, as you will see. I 
wrote to Senor Juan Luis and to Sefora Catalina. The letter accompanies 
this one. I am ready to start in the name of the Holy Trinity as soon as 
the weather is good. I am well provided with everything. If Jeronimo de 
Santi Esteban is coming, he must await me and not embarrass himself with 
anything, for they will take away from him all they can and silently leave 
him. Let him come here and the King and the Queen will receive him until I 
come. May our Lord have you in His holy keeping. 

"Done at Seville, March 21, 1502.

"At your command. 
.S.
.S.A.S.
Xpo FERENS." 

His delays were not pleasing to Ferdinand, who wanted to get rid of him, 
and he was invited to hurry his departure; but he still continued to go 
deliberately about his affairs, which he tried to put in order as far as 
he was able, since he thought it not unlikely that he might never see 
Spain again. Thinking thus of his worldly duties, and his thoughts turning 
to his native Genoa, it occurred to him to make some benefaction out of 
the riches that were coming to him by which his name might be remembered 
and held in honour there. This was a piece of practical kindness the 
record of which is most precious to us; for it shows the Admiral in a 
truer and more human light than he often allowed to shine upon him. The 
tone of the letter is nothing; he could not forbear letting the people of 
Genoa see how great he was. The devotion of his legacy to the reduction of 
the tax on simple provisions was a genuine charity, much to be appreciated 
by the dwellers in the Vico Dritto di Ponticello, where wine and provision 
shops were so very necessary to life. The letter was written to the 
Directors of the famous Bank of Saint George at Genoa. 

"VERY NOBLE LORDS,--Although my body is here, my heart is continually 
yonder. Our Lord has granted me the greatest favour he has granted any one 
since the time of David. The results of my undertaking already shine, and 
they would make a great light if the obscurity of the Government did not 
conceal them. I shall go again to the Indies in the name of the Holy 
Trinity, to return immediately. And as I am mortal, I desire my son Don 
Diego to give to you each year, for ever, the tenth part of all the income 
received, in payment of the tax on wheat, wine, and other provisions. If 
this tenth amounts to anything, receive it, and if not, receive my will 
for the deed. I beg you as a favour to have this son of mine in your 
charge. Nicolo de Oderigo knows more about my affairs than I myself. I 
have sent him the copy of my privileges and letters, that he may place 
them in safe keeping. I would be glad if you could see them. The King and 
the Queen, my Lords, now wish to honour me more than ever. May the Holy 
Trinity guard your noble persons, and increase the importance of your very 
magnificent office. "Done in Seville, April a, 1502. 

"The High-Admiral of the Ocean-Sea and Viceroy and Governor-General of the 
islands and mainland of Asia and the Indies, belonging to the King and 
Queen, my Lords, and the Captain-General of the Sea, and a Member of their 
Council. 
.S.
.S.A.S.
X M Y Xpo FERENS." 

Columbus was anxious to touch at Espanola on his voyage to the West; but 
he was expressly forbidden to do so, as it was known that his presence 
there could not make for anything but confusion; he was to be permitted, 
however, to touch there on his return journey. The Great Khan was not out 
of his mind yet; much in it apparently, for he took an Arabian interpreter 
with him so that he could converse with that monarch. In fact he did not 
hesitate to announce that very big results indeed were to come of this 
voyage of his; among other things he expected to circumnavigate the globe, 
and made no secret of his expectation. In the meantime he was expected to 
find some pearls in order to pay for the equipment of his fleet; and in 
consideration of what had happened to the last lot of pearls collected by 
him, an agent named Diego de Porras was sent along with him to keep an 
account of the gold and precious stones which might be discovered. Special 
instructions were issued to Columbus about the disposal of these 
commodities. He does not seem to have minded these somewhat humiliating 
precautions; he had a way of rising above petty indignities and refusing 
to recognise them which must have been of great assistance to his self-
respect in certain troubled moments in his life. 

His delays, however, were so many that in March 1502 the Sovereigns were 
obliged to order him to depart without any more waiting. Poor Christopher, 
who once had to sue for the means with which to go, whose departures were 
once the occasion of so much state and ceremony, has now to be hustled 
forth and asked to go away. Still he does not seem to mind; once more, as 
of old, his gaze is fixed beyond the horizon and his mind is filled with 
one idea. They may not think much of him in Spain now, but they will when 
he comes back; and he can afford to wait. Completing his preparations 
without undignified haste he despatched Bartholomew with his four little 
vessels from Seville to Cadiz, where the Admiral was to join them. He took 
farewell of his son Diego and of his brother James; good friendly James, 
who had done his best in a difficult position, but had seen quite enough 
of the wild life of the seas and was now settled in Seville studying hard 
for the Church. It had always been his ambition, poor James; and, studying 
hard in Seville, he did in time duly enter the sacred pale and become a 
priest--by which we may see that if our ambitions are only modest enough 
we may in time encompass them. Sometimes I think that James, enveloped in 
priestly vestments, nodding in the sanctuary, lulled by the muttering 
murmur of the psalms or dozing through a long credo, may have thought 
himself back amid the brilliant sunshine and strange perfumes of Espanola; 
and from a dream of some nymph hiding in the sweet groves of the Vega may 
have awakened with a sigh to the strident Alleluias of his brother 
priests. At any rate, farewell to James, safely seated beneath the Gospel 
light, and continuing to sit there until, in the year 1515, death 
interrupts him. We are not any more concerned with James in his priestly 
shelter, but with those elder brothers of his who are making ready again 
to face the sun and the surges. 

Columbus's ships were on the point of sailing when word came that the 
Moors were besieging a Portuguese post on the coast of Morocco, and, as 
civility was now the order of the day between Spain and Portugal, the 
Admiral was instructed to call on his way there and afford some relief. 
This he did, sailing from Cadiz on the 9th or 10th of May to Ercilla on 
the Morocco coast, where he anchored on the 13th. But the Moors had all 
departed and the siege was over; so Columbus, having sent Bartholomew and 
some of his officers ashore on a civil visit, which was duly returned, set 
out the same day on his last voyage.



CHAPTER III.
THE LAST VOYAGE 

The four ships that made up the Admiral's fleet on his fourth and last 
voyage were all small caravels, the largest only of seventy tons and the 
smallest only of fifty. Columbus chose for his flagship the Capitana, 
seventy tons, appointing Diego Tristan to be his captain. The next best 
ship was the Santiago de Palos under the command of Francisco Porras; 
Porras and his brother Diego having been more or less foisted on to 
Columbus by Morales, the Royal Treasurer, who wished to find berths for 
these two brothers-in-law of his. We shall hear more of the Porras 
brothers. The third ship was the Gallega, sixty tons, a very bad sailer 
indeed, and on that account entrusted to Bartholomew Columbus, whose skill 
in navigation, it was hoped, might make up for her bad sailing qualities. 
Bartholomew had, to tell the truth, had quite enough of the New World, but 
he was too loyal to Christopher to let him go alone, knowing as he did his 
precarious state of health and his tendency to despondency. The captain of 
the Gallega was Pedro de Terreros, who had sailed with the Admiral as 
steward on all his other voyages and was now promoted to a command. The 
fourth ship was called the Vizcaina, fifty tons, and was commanded by 
Bartolome Fieschi, a friend of Columbus's from Genoa, and a very sound, 
honourable man. There were altogether 143 souls on board the four 
caravels. 

The fleet as usual made the Canary Islands, where they arrived on the 20th 
of May, and stopped for five days taking in wood and water and fresh 
provisions. Columbus was himself again--always more himself at sea than 
anywhere else; he was following a now familiar road that had no 
difficulties or dangers for him; and there is no record of the voyage out 
except that it was quick and prosperous, with the trade wind blowing so 
steadily that from the time they left the Canaries until they made land 
twenty days later they had hardly to touch a sheet or a halliard. The 
first land they made was the island of Martinique, where wood and water 
were taken in and the men sent ashore to wash their linen. To young 
Ferdinand, but fourteen years old, this voyage was like a fairy tale come 
true, and his delight in everything that he saw must have added greatly to 
Christopher's pleasure and interest in the voyage. They only stayed a few 
days at Martinique and then sailed westward along the chain of islands 
until they came to Porto Rico, where they put in to the sunny harbour 
which they had discovered on a former voyage. 

It was at this point that Columbus determined, contrary to his precise 
orders, to stand across to Espanola. The place attracted him like a 
magnet; he could not keep away from it; and although he had a good enough 
excuse for touching there, it is probable that his real reason was a very 
natural curiosity to see how things were faring with his old enemy 
Bobadilla. The excuse was that the Gallega, Bartholomew's ship, was so 
unseaworthy as to be a drag on the progress of the rest of the fleet and a 
danger to her own crew. In the slightest sea-way she rolled almost gunwale 
under, and would not carry her sail; and Columbus's plan was to exchange 
her for a vessel out of the great fleet which he knew had by this time 
reached Espanola and discharged its passengers. 

He arrived off the harbour of San Domingo on the 29th of June in very 
threatening weather, and immediately sent Pedro de Terreros ashore with a 
message to Ovando, asking to be allowed to purchase or exchange one of the 
vessels that were riding in the harbour, and also leave to shelter his own 
vessels there during the hurricane which he believed to be approaching. A 
message came back that he was neither permitted to buy a ship nor to enter 
the harbour; warning him off from San Domingo, in fact. 

With this unfavourable message Terreros also brought back the news of the 
island. Ovando had been in San Domingo since the 15th of April, and had 
found the island in a shocking state, the Spanish population having to a 
man devoted itself to idleness, profligacy, and slave-driving. The only 
thing that had prospered was the gold-mining; for owing to the licence 
that Bobadilla had given to the Spaniards to employ native labour to an 
unlimited extent there had been an immense amount of gold taken from the 
mines. But in no other respect had island affairs prospered, and Ovando 
immediately began the usual investigation. The fickle Spaniards, always 
unfaithful to whoever was in authority over them, were by this time tired 
of Bobadilla, in spite of his leniency, and they hailed the coming of 
Ovando and his numerous equipment with enthusiasm. Bobadilla had also by 
this time, we may suppose, had enough of the joys of office; at any rate 
he showed no resentment at the coming of the new Governor, and handed over 
the island with due ceremony. The result of the investigation of Ovando, 
however, was to discover a state of things requiring exemplary treatment; 
friend Roldan was arrested, with several of his allies, and put on board 
one of the ships to be sent back to Spain for trial. The cacique 
Guarionex, who had been languishing in San Domingo in chains for a long 
time, was also embarked on one of the returning ships; and about eighteen 
hundred-weights of gold which had been collected were also stowed into 
cases and embarked. Among this gold there was a nugget weighing 35 lbs. 
which had been found by a native woman in a river, and which Ovando was 
sending home as a personal offering to his Sovereigns; and some further 40 
lbs. of gold belonging to Columbus, which Carvajal had recovered and 
placed in a caravel to be taken to Spain for the Admiral. The ships were 
all ready to sail, and were anchored off the mouth of the river when 
Columbus arrived in San Domingo. 

When he found that he was not to be allowed to enter the harbour himself 
Columbus sent a message to Ovando warning him that a hurricane was coming 
on, and begging him to take measures for the safety of his large fleet. 
This, however, was not done, and the fleet put to sea that evening. It had 
only got so far as the eastern end of Espanola when the hurricane, as 
predicted by Columbus, duly came down in the manner of West Indian 
hurricanes, a solid wall of wind and an advancing wave of the sea which 
submerged everything in its path. Columbus's little fleet, finding shelter 
denied them, had moved a little way along the coast, the Admiral standing 
close in shore, the others working to the south for sea-room; and although 
they survived the hurricane they were scattered, and only met several days 
later, in an extremely battered condition, at the westerly end of the 
island. But the large home-going fleet had not survived. The hurricane, 
which was probably from the north-east, struck them just as they lost the 
lee of the island, and many of them, including the ships with the treasure 
of gold and the caravels bearing Roldan, Bobadilla, and Guarionex, all 
went down at once and were never seen or heard of again. Other ships 
survived for a little while only to founder in the end; a few, much 
shattered, crept back to the shelter of San Domingo; but only one, it is 
said, survived the hurricane so well as to be able to proceed to Spain; 
and that was the one which carried Carvajal and Columbus's little property 
of gold. The Admiral's luck again; or the intervention of the Holy 
Trinity--whichever you like. 

After the shattering experience of the storm, Columbus, although he did 
not return to San Domingo, remained for some time on the coast of Espanola 
repairing his ships and resting his exhausted crews. There were 
threatenings of another storm which delayed them still further, and it was 
not until the middle of July that the Admiral was able to depart on the 
real purpose of his voyage. His object was to strike the mainland far to 
the westward of the Gulf of Paria, and so by following it back eastward to 
find the passage which he believed to exist. But the winds and currents 
were very baffling; he was four days out of sight of land after touching 
at an island north of Jamaica; and finally, in some bewilderment, he 
altered his course more and more northerly until he found his whereabouts 
by coming in sight of the archipelago off the south-western end of Cuba 
which he had called the Gardens. From here he took a departure south-west, 
and on the 30th of July came in sight of a small island off the northern 
coast of Honduras which he called Isla de Pinos, and from which he could 
see the hills of the mainland. At this island he found a canoe of immense 
size with a sort of house or caboose built amidships, in which was 
established a cacique with his family and dependents; and the people in 
the canoe showed signs of more advanced civilisation than any seen by 
Columbus before in these waters. They wore clothing, they had copper 
hatchets, and bells, and palm-wood swords in the edges of which were set 
sharp blades of flint. They had a fermented liquor, a kind of maize beer 
which looked like English ale; they had some kind of money or medium of 
exchange also, and they told the Admiral that there was land to the west 
where all these things existed and many more. It is strange and almost 
inexplicable that he did not follow this trail to the westward; if he had 
done so he would have discovered Mexico. But one thing at a time always 
occupied him to the exclusion of everything else; his thoughts were now 
turned to the eastward, where he supposed the Straits were; and the 
significance of this canoe full of natives was lost upon him. 

They crossed over to the mainland of Honduras on August 15th, Bartholomew 
landing and attending mass on the beach as the Admiral himself was too ill 
to go ashore. Three days later the cross and banner of Castile were duly 
erected on the shores of the Rio Tinto and the country was formally 
annexed. The natives were friendly, and supplied the ships with 
provisions; but they were very black and ugly, and Columbus readily 
believed the assertion of his native guide that they were cannibals. They 
continued their course to the eastward, but as the gulf narrowed the force 
of the west-going current was felt more severely. Columbus, believing that 
the strait which he sought lay to the eastward, laboured against the 
current, and his difficulties were increased by the bad weather which he 
now encountered. There were squalls and hurricanes, tempests and cross-
currents that knocked his frail ships about and almost swamped them. 
Anchors and gear were lost, the sails were torn out of the bolt-ropes, 
timbers were strained; and for six weeks this state of affairs went on to 
an accompaniment of thunder and lightning which added to the terror and 
discomfort of the mariners. 

This was in August and the first half of September--six weeks of the worst 
weather that Columbus had ever experienced. It was the more unfortunate 
that his illness made it impossible for him to get actively about the 
ship; and he had to have a small cabin or tent rigged up on deck, in which 
he could lie and direct the navigation. It is bad enough to be as ill as 
he was in a comfortable bed ashore; it is a thousand times worse amid the 
discomforts of a small boat at sea; but what must it have been thus to 
have one's sick-bed on the deck of a cockle-shell which was being buffeted 
and smashed in unknown seas, and to have to think and act not for oneself 
alone but for the whole of a suffering little fleet! No wonder the 
Admiral's distress of mind was great; but oddly enough his anxieties, as 
he recorded them in a letter, were not so much on his own account as on 
behalf of others. The terrified seamen making vows to the Virgin and 
promises of pilgrimages between their mad rushes to the sheets and furious 
clinging and hauling; his son Ferdinand, who was only fourteen, but who 
had to endure the same pain and fatigue as the rest of them, and who was 
enduring it with such pluck that "it was as if he had been at sea eighty 
years"; the dangers of Bartholomew, who had not wanted to come on this 
voyage at all, but was now in the thick of it in the worst ship of the 
squadron, and fighting for his life amid tempests and treacherous seas; 
Diego at home, likely to be left an orphan and at the mercy of fickle and 
doubtful friends--these were the chief causes of the Admiral's anxiety. 
All he said about himself was that "by my misfortune the twenty years of 
service which I gave with so much fatigue and danger have profited me so 
little that to-day I have in Castile no roof, and if I wished to dine or 
sup or sleep I have only the tavern for my last refuge, and for that, most 
of the time, I would be unable to pay the score." Not cheerful 
reflections, these, to add to the pangs of acute gout and the consuming 
anxieties of seamanship under such circumstances. Dreadful to him, these 
things, but not dreadful to us; for they show us an Admiral restored to 
his true temper and vocation, something of the old sea hero breaking out 
in him at last through all these misfortunes, like the sun through the 
hurrying clouds of a stormy afternoon. 

Forty days of passage through this wilderness of water were endured before 
the sea-worn mariners, rounding a cape on September 12th, saw stretching 
before them to the southward a long coast of plain and mountain which they 
were able to follow with a fair wind. Gradually the sea went down; the 
current which had opposed them here aided them, and they were able to 
recover a little from the terrible strain of the last six weeks. The cape 
was called by Columbus 'Gracios de Dios'; and on the 16th of September 
they landed at the entrance to a river to take in water. The boat which 
was sent ashore, however, capsized on the sandy bar of the entrance, two 
men being drowned, and the river was given the name of Rio de Desastre. 
They found a better anchorage, where they rested for ten days, overhauled 
their stores, and had some intercourse with the natives and exploration on 
shore. Some incidents occurred which can best be described in the 
Admiral's own language as he recorded them in his letter to the 
Sovereigns. 

" . . When I reached there, they immediately sent me two young girls 
dressed in rich garments. The older one might not have been more than 
eleven years of age and the other seven; both with so much experience, so 
much manner, and so much appearance as would have been sufficient if they 
had been public women for twenty years. They bore with them magic powder 
and other things belonging to their art. When they arrived I gave orders 
that they should be adorned with our things and sent them immediately 
ashore. There I saw a tomb within the mountain as large as a house and 
finely worked with great artifice, and a corpse stood thereon uncovered, 
and, looking within it, it seemed as if he stood upright. Of the other 
arts they told me that there was excellence. Great and little animals are 
there in quantities, and very different from ours; among which I saw boars 
of frightful form so that a dog of the Irish breed dared not face them. 
With a cross-bow I had wounded an animal which exactly resembles a baboon 
only that it was much larger and has a face like a human being. I had 
pierced it with an arrow from one side to the other, entering in the 
breast and going out near the tail, and because it was very ferocious I 
cut off one of the fore feet which rather seemed to be a hand, and one of 
the hind feet. The boars seeing this commenced to set up their bristles 
and fled with great fear, seeing the blood of the other animal. When I saw 
this I caused to be thrown them the 'uegare,'--[Peccary]--certain animals 
they call so, where it stood, and approaching him, near as he was to 
death, and the arrow still sticking in his body, he wound his tail around 
his snout and held it fast, and with the other hand which remained free, 
seized him by the neck as an enemy. This act, so magnificent and novel, 
together with the fine country and hunting of wild beasts, made me write 
this to your Majesties." 

The natives at this anchorage of Cariari were rather suspicious, but 
Columbus seized two of them to act as guides in his journey further down 
the coast. Weighing anchor on October 5th he worked along the Costa Rica 
shore, which here turns to the eastward again, and soon found a tribe of 
natives who wore large ornaments of gold. They were reluctant to part with 
the gold, but as usual pointed down the coast and said that there was much 
more gold there; they even gave a name to the place where the gold could 
be found--Veragua; and for once this country was found to have a real 
existence. The fleet anchored there on October 17th, being greeted by 
defiant blasts of conch shells and splashing of water from the indignant 
natives. Business was done, however: seventeen gold discs in exchange for 
three hawks' bells. 

Still Columbus went on in pursuit of his geographical chimera; even gold 
had no power to detain him from the earnest search for this imaginary 
strait. Here and there along the coast he saw increasing signs of 
civilisation--once a wall built of mud and stone, which made him think of 
Cathay again. He now got it into his head that the region he was in was 
ten days' journey from the Ganges, and that it was surrounded by water; 
which if it means anything means that he thought he was on a large island 
ten days' sail to the eastward of the coast of India. Altogether at sea as 
to the facts, poor Admiral, but with heart and purpose steadfast and right 
enough. 

They sailed a little farther along the coast, now between narrow islands 
that were like the streets of Genoa, where the boughs of trees on either 
hand brushed the shrouds of the ships; now past harbours where there were 
native fairs and markets, and where natives were to be seen mounted on 
horses and armed with swords; now by long, lonely stretches of the coast 
where there was nothing to be seen but the low green shore with the 
mountains behind and the alligators basking at the river mouths. At last 
(November 2nd) they arrived at the cape known as Nombre de Dios, which 
Ojeda had reached some time before in his voyage to the West. 

The coast of the mainland had thus been explored from the Bay of Honduras 
to Brazil, and Columbus was obliged to admit that there was no strait. 
Having satisfied himself of that he decided to turn back to Veragua, where 
he had seen the natives smelting gold, in order to make some arrangement 
for establishing a colony there. The wind, however, which had headed him 
almost all the way on his easterly voyage, headed him again now and began 
to blow steadily from the west. He started on his return journey on the 
5th of December, and immediately fell into almost worse troubles than he 
had been in before. The wood of the ships had been bored through and 
through by seaworms, so that they leaked very badly; the crews were sick, 
provisions were spoilt, biscuits rotten. Young Ferdinand Columbus, if he 
did not actually make notes of this voyage at the time, preserved a very 
lively recollection of it, and it is to his Historie, which in its earlier 
passages is of doubtful authenticity, that we owe some of the most human 
touches of description relating to this voyage. Any passage in his work 
relating to food or animals at this time has the true ring of boyish 
interest and observation, and is in sharp contrast to the second-hand and 
artificial tone of the earlier chapters of his book. About the incident of 
the howling monkey, which the Admiral's Irish hound would not face, 
Ferdinand remarks that it "frighted a good dog that we had, but frighted 
one of our wild boars a great deal more"; and as to the condition of the 
biscuits when they turned westward again, he says that they were "so full 
of weevils that, as God shall help me, I saw many that stayed till night 
to eat their sop for fear of seeing them." 

After experiencing some terrible weather, in the course of which they had 
been obliged to catch sharks for food and had once been nearly overwhelmed 
by a waterspout, they entered a harbour where, in the words of young 
Ferdinand, "we saw the people living like birds in the tops of the trees, 
laying sticks across from bough to bough and building their huts upon 
them; and though we knew not the reason of the custom we guessed that it 
was done for fear of their enemies, or of the griffins that are in this 
island." After further experiences of bad weather they made what looked 
like a suitable harbour on the coast of Veragua, which harbour, as they 
entered it on the day of the Epiphany (January 9, 1503), they named Belem 
or Bethlehem. The river in the mouth of which they were anchored, however, 
was subject to sudden spouts and gushes of water from the hills, one of 
which occurred on January 24th and nearly swamped the caravels. This spout 
of water was caused by the rainy season, which had begun in the mountains 
and presently came down to the coast, where it rained continuously until 
the 14th of February. They had made friends with the Quibian or chief of 
the country, and he had offered to conduct them to the place where the 
gold mines were; so Bartholomew was sent off in the rain with a boat party 
to find this territory. It turned out afterwards that the cunning Quibian 
had taken them out of his own country and showed them the gold mined of a 
neighbouring chief, which were not so rich as his own. 

Columbus, left idle in the absence of Bartholomew, listening to the 
continuous drip and patter of the rain on the leaves and the water, begins 
to dream again--to dream of gold and geography. Remembers that David left 
three thousand quintals of gold from the Indies to Solomon for the 
decoration of the Temple; remembers that Josephus said it came from the 
Golden Chersonesus; decides that enough gold could never have been got 
from the mines of Hayna in Espanola; and concludes that the Ophir of 
Solomon must be here in Veragua and not there in Espanola. It was always 
here and now with Columbus; and as he moved on his weary sea pilgrimages 
these mythical lands with their glittering promise moved about with him, 
like a pillar of fire leading him through the dark night of his quest. 

The rain came to an end, however, the sun shone out again, and activity 
took the place of dreams with Columbus and with his crew. He decided to 
found a settlement in this place, and to make preparations for seizing and 
working the gold mines. It was decided to leave a garrison of eighty men, 
and the business of unloading the necessary arms and provisions and 
building houses ashore was immediately begun. Hawks' bells and other 
trifles were widely distributed among the natives, with special toys and 
delicacies for the Quibian, in order that friendly relations might be 
established from the beginning; and special regulations were framed to 
prevent the possibility of any recurrence of the disasters that overtook 
the settlers of Isabella. 

Such are the orderly plans of Columbus; but the Quibian has his plans too, 
which are found to be of quite a different nature. The Quibian does not 
like intruders, though he likes their hawks' bells well enough; he is not 
quite so innocent as poor Guacanagari and the rest of them were; he knows 
that gold is a thing coveted by people to whom it does not belong, and 
that trouble follows in its train. Quibian therefore decides that Columbus 
and his followers shall be exterminated--news of which intention 
fortunately came to the ears of Columbus in time, Diego Mendez and Rodrigo 
de Escobar having boldly advanced into the Quibian's village and seen the 
warlike preparations. Bartholomew, returning from his visit to the gold 
mines, was informed of this state of affairs. Always quick to strike, 
Bartholomew immediately started with an armed force, and advanced upon the 
village so rapidly that the savages were taken by surprise, their 
headquarters surrounded, and the Quibian and fifty of his warriors 
captured. Bartholomew triumphantly marched the prisoners back, the Quibian 
being entrusted to the charge of Juan Sanchez, who was rowing him in a 
little boat. The Quibian complained that his bonds were hurting him, and 
foolish Sanchez eased them a little; Quibian, with a quick movement, 
wriggled overboard and dived to the bottom; came up again somewhere and 
reached home alive. No one saw him come up, however, and they thought had 
had been drowned. 

Columbus now made ready to depart, and the caravels having been got over 
the shallow bar, their loading was completed and they were ready to sail. 
On April 6th Diego Tristan was sent in charge of a boat with a message to 
Bartholomew, who was to be left in command of the settlement; but when 
Tristan had rounded the point at the entrance to the river and come in 
sight of the shore he had an unpleasant surprise; the settlement was being 
savagely attacked by the resurrected Quibian and his followers. The fight 
had lasted for three hours, and had been going badly against the 
Spaniards, when Bartholomew and Diego Mendes rallied a little force round 
them and, calling to Columbus's Irish dog which had been left with them, 
made a rush upon the savages and so terrified them that they scattered. 
Bartholomew with eight of the other Spaniards was wounded, and one was 
killed; and it was at this point that Tristan's boat arrived at the 
settlement. Having seen the fight safely over, he went on up the river to 
get water, although he was warned that it was not safe; and sure enough, 
at a point a little farther up the river, beyond some low green arm of the 
shore, he met with a sudden and bloody death. A cloud of yelling savages 
surrounded his boat hurling javelins and arrows, and only one seaman, who 
managed to dive into the water and crawl ashore, escaped to bring the evil 
tidings. 

The Spaniards under Bartholomew's command broke into a panic, and taking 
advantage of his wounded condition they tried to make sail on their 
caravel and join the ships of Columbus outside; but since the time of the 
rains the river had so much gone down that she was stuck fast in the sand. 
They could not even get a boat over the bar, for there was a heavy cross 
sea breaking on it; and in the meantime here they were, trapped inside 
this river, the air resounding with dismal blasts of the natives' conch-
shells, and the natives themselves dancing round and threatening to rush 
their position; while the bodies of Tristan and his little crew were to be 
seen floating down the stream, feasted upon by a screaming cloud of birds. 
The position of the shore party was desperate, and it was only by the 
greatest efforts that the wounded Adelantado managed to rally his crew and 
get them to remove their little camp to an open place on the shore, where 
a kind of stockade was made of chests, casks, spars, and the caravel's 
boat. With this for cover, the Spanish fire-arms, so long as there was 
ammunition for them, were enough to keep the natives at bay. 

Outside the bar, in his anchorage beyond the green wooded point, the 
Admiral meanwhile was having an anxious time. One supposes the entrance to 
the river to have been complicated by shoals and patches of broken water 
extending some considerable distance, so that the Admiral's anchorage 
would be ten or twelve miles away from the camp ashore, and of course 
entirely hidden from it. As day after day passed and Diego Tristan did not 
return, the Admiral's anxiety increased. Among the three caravels that now 
formed his little squadron there was only one boat remaining, the others, 
not counting one taken by Tristan and one left with Bartholomew, having 
all been smashed in the late hurricanes. In the heavy sea that was running 
on the bar the Admiral dared not risk his last remaining boat; but in the 
mean time he was cut off from all news of the shore party and deprived of 
any means of finding out what had happened to Tristan. And presently to 
these anxieties was added a further disaster. It will be remembered that 
when the Quibian had been captured fifty natives had been taken with him; 
and these were confined in the forecastle of the Capitana and covered by a 
large hatch, on which most of the crew slept at night. But one night the 
natives collected a heap of big stones from the ballast of the ship, and 
piled them up to a kind of platform beneath the hatch; some of the 
strongest of them got upon the platform and set their backs horizontally 
against the hatch, gave a great heave and, lifted it off. In the confusion 
that followed, a great many of the prisoners escaped into the sea, and 
swam ashore; the rest were captured and thrust back under the hatch, which 
was chained down; but when on the following morning the Spaniards went to 
attend to this remnant it was found that they had all hanged themselves. 

This was a great disaster, since it increased the danger of the garrison 
ashore, and destroyed all hope of friendship with the natives. There was 
something terrible and powerful, too, in the spirit of people who could 
thus to a man make up their minds either to escape or die; and the Admiral 
must have felt that he was in the presence of strange, powerful elements 
that were far beyond his control. At any moment, moreover, the wind might 
change and put him on a lee shore, or force him to seek safety in sea-
room; in which case the position of Bartholomew would be a very critical 
one. It was while things were at this apparent deadlock that a brave 
fellow, Pedro Ledesma, offered to attempt to swim through the surf if the 
boat would take him to the edge of it. Brave Pedro, his offer accepted, 
makes the attempt; plunges into the boiling surf, and with mighty efforts 
succeeds in reaching the shore; and after an interval is seen by his 
comrades, who are waiting with their boat swinging on the edge of the 
surf, to be returning to them; plunges into the sea, comes safely through 
the surf again, and is safely hauled on board, having accomplished a very 
real and satisfactory bit of service. 

The story he had to tell the Admiral was as we know not a pleasant one-- 
Tristan and his men dead, several of Bartholomew's force, including the 
Adelantado himself, wounded, and all in a state of panic and fear at the 
hostile natives. The Spaniards would do nothing to make the little 
fortress safer, and were bent only on escaping from the place of horror. 
Some of them were preparing canoes in which to come out to the ships when 
the sea should go down, as their one small boat was insufficient; and they 
swore that if the Admiral would not take them they would seize their own 
caravel and sail out themselves into the unknown sea as soon as they could 
get her floated over the bar, rather than remain in such a dreadful 
situation. Columbus was in a very bad way. He could not desert 
Bartholomew, as that would expose him to the treachery of his own men and 
the hostility of the savages. He could not reinforce him, except by 
remaining himself with the whole of his company; and in that case there 
would be no means of sending the news of his rich discovery to Spain. 
There was nothing for it, therefore, but to break up the settlement and 
return some other time with a stronger force sufficient to occupy the 
country. And even this course had its difficulties; for the weather 
continued bad, the wind was blowing on to the shore, the sea was--so rough 
as to make the passage of the bar impossible, and any change for the worse 
in the weather would probably drive his own crazy ships ashore and cut off 
all hope of escape. 

The Admiral, whose health was now permanently broken, and who only had 
respite from his sufferings in fine weather and when he was relieved from 
a burden of anxieties such as had been continually pressing on him now for 
three months, fell into his old state of sleeplessness, feverishness, and 
consequent depression; and it, these circumstances it is not wonderful 
that the firm ground of fact began to give a little beneath him and that 
his feet began to sink again into the mire or quag of stupor. Of these 
further flounderings in the quag he himself wrote an account to the King 
and Queen, so we may as well have it in his own words. 

"I mounted to the top of the ship crying out with a weak voice, weeping 
bitterly, to the commanders of your Majesties' army, and calling again to 
the four winds to help; but they did not answer me. Tired out, I fell 
asleep and sighing I heard a voice very full of pity which spoke these 
words: O fool! and slow to believe and to serve Him, thy God and the God 
of all. What did He more for Moses? and for David His servant? Since thou 
wast born He had always so great care for thee. When He saw thee in an age 
with which He was content He made thy name sound marvellously through the 
world. The Indies, which are so rich apart of the world, He has given to 
thee as thine. Thou hast distributed them wherever it has pleased thee; He 
gave thee power so to do. Of the bonds of the ocean which were locked with 
so strong chains He gave thee the keys, and thou wast obeyed in all the 
land, and among the Christians thou hast acquired a good and honourable 
reputation. What did He more for the people of Israel when He brought them 
out of Egypt? or yet for David, whom from being a shepherd He made King of 
Judea? Turn to Him and recognise thine error, for His mercy is infinite. 
Thine old age will be no hindrance to all great things. Many very great 
inheritances are in His power. Abraham was more than one hundred years old 
when he begat Isaac and also Sarah was not young. Thou art calling for 
uncertain aid. Answer me, who has afflicted thee so much and so many 
times--God or the world? The privileges and promises which God makes He 
never breaks to any one; nor does He say after having received the service 
that His intention was not so and it is to be understood in another 
manner: nor imposes martyrdom to give proof of His power. He abides by the 
letter of His word. All that He promises He abundantly accomplishes. This 
is His way. I have told thee what the Creator hath done for thee and does 
for all. Now He shows me the reward and payment of thy suffering and which 
thou hast passed in the service of others. And thus half dead, I heard 
everything; but I could never find an answer to make to words so certain, 
and only I wept for my errors. He, who ever he might be, finished 
speaking, saying: Trust and fear not, for thy tribulations are written in 
marble and not without reason." 

Mere darkness of stupor; not much to be deciphered from it, nor any 
profitable comment to be made on it, except that it was our poor 
Christopher's way of crying out his great suffering and misery. We must 
not notice it, much as we should like to hold out a hand of sympathy and 
comfort to him; must not pay much attention to this dark eloquent 
nonsense--merely words, in which the Admiral never does himself justice. 
Acts are his true conversation; and when he speaks in that language all 
men must listen.



CHAPTER IV.
HEROIC ADVENTURES BY LAND AND SEA 

No man ever had a better excuse for his superstitions than the Admiral; no 
sooner had he got done with his Vision than the wind dropped, the sun came 
out, the sea fell, and communication with the land was restored. While he 
had been sick and dreaming one of his crew, Diego Mendez, had been busy 
with practical efforts in preparation for this day of fine weather; he had 
made a great raft out of Indian canoes lashed together, with mighty sacks 
of sail cloth into which the provisions might be bundled; and as soon as 
the sea had become calm enough he took this raft in over the bar to the 
settlement ashore, and began the business of embarking the whole of the 
stores and ammunition of Bartholomew's garrison. By this practical method 
the whole establishment was transferred from the shore to the ships in the 
space of two days, and nothing was left but the caravel, which it was 
found impossible to float again. It was heavy work towing the raft 
constantly backwards and forwards from the ships to the shore, but Diego 
Mendez had the satisfaction of being the last man to embark from the 
deserted settlement, and to see that not an ounce of stores or ammunition 
had been lost. 

Columbus, always quick to reward the services of a good man, kissed Diego 
Mendez publicly--on both cheeks, and (what doubtless pleased him much 
better) gave him command of the caravel of which poor Tristan had been the 
captain. 

With a favourable wind they sailed from this accursed shore at the end of 
April 1503. It is strange, as Winsor points out, that in the name of this 
coast should be preserved the only territorial remembrance of Columbus, 
and that his descendant the Duke of Veragua should in his title 
commemorate one of the most unfortunate of the Admiral's adventures. And 
if any one should desire a proof of the utterly misleading nature of most 
of Columbus's writings about himself, let him know that a few months later 
he solemnly wrote to the Sovereigns concerning this very place that "there 
is not in the world a country whose inhabitants are more timid; and the 
whole place is capable of being easily put into a state of defence. Your 
people that may come here, if they should wish to become masters of the 
products of other lands, will have to take them by force or retire empty-
handed. In this country they will simply have to trust their persons in 
the hands of the savages." The facts being that the inhabitants were 
extremely fierce and warlike and irreconcilably hostile; that the river 
was a trap out of which in the dry season there was no escape, and the 
harbour outside a mere shelterless lee shore; that it would require an 
army and an armada to hold the place against the natives, and that any one 
who trusted himself in their hands would share the fate of the unhappy 
Diego Tristan. One may choose between believing that the Admiral's memory 
had entirely failed him (although he had not been backward in making a 
minute record, of all his sufferings) or that he was craftily attempting 
to deceive the Sovereigns. My own belief is that he was neither trying to 
deceive anybody nor that he had forgotten anything, but that he was simply 
incapable of uttering the bare truth when he had a pen in his hand. 

From their position on the coast of Veragua Espanola bore almost due 
north; but Columbus was too good a seaman to attempt to make the island by 
sailing straight for it. He knew that the steady west-going current would 
set him far down on his course, and he therefore decided to work up the 
coast a long way to the eastward before standing across for Espanola. The 
crew grumbled very much at this proceeding, which they did not understand; 
in fact they argued from it that the Admiral was making straight for 
Spain, and this, in the crazy condition of the vessels, naturally alarmed 
them. But in his old high-handed, secret way the Admiral told them 
nothing; he even took away from the other captains all the charts that 
they had made of this coast, so that no one but himself would be able to 
find the way back to it; and he took a kind of pleasure in the complete 
mystification thus produced on his fellow-voyagers. "None of them could 
explain whither I went nor whence I came; they did not know the way to 
return thither," he writes, somewhat childishly. 

But he was not back in Espanola yet, and his means for getting there were 
crumbling away beneath his feet. One of the three remaining caravels was 
entirely riddled by seaworms and had to be abandoned at the harbour called 
Puerto Bello; and the company was crowded on to two ships. The men now 
became more than ever discontented at the easterly course, and on May 1st, 
when he had come as far east as the Gulf of Darien, Columbus felt obliged 
to bear away to the north, although as it turned out he had not nearly 
made enough easting. He stood on this course, for nine days, the west-
going current setting him down all the time; and the first land that he 
made, on May loth, was the group of islands off the western end of Cuba 
which he had called the Queen's Gardens. 

He anchored for six days here, as the crews were completely exhausted; the 
ships' stores were reduced to biscuits, oil, and vinegar; the vessels 
leaked like sieves, and the pumps had to be kept going continually. And no 
sooner had they anchored than a hurricane came on, and brought up a sea so 
heavy that the Admiral was convinced that his ships could not live within 
it. We have got so accustomed to reading of storms and tempests that it 
seems useless to try and drive home the horror and terror of them; but 
here were these two rotten ships alone at the end of the world, far beyond 
the help of man, the great seas roaring up under them in the black night, 
parting their worn cables, snatching away their anchors from them, and 
finally driving them one upon the other to grind and strain and prey upon 
each other, as though the external conspiracy of the elements against them 
both were not sufficient! One writes or reads the words, but what does it 
mean to us? and can we by any conceivable effort of imagination realise 
what it meant to this group of human beings who lived through that night 
so many hundred years ago--men like ourselves with hearts to sink and 
faint, capable of fear and hunger, capable of misery, pain, and endurance? 
Bruised and battered, wet by the terrifying surges, and entirely 
uncomforted by food or drink, they did somehow endure these miseries; and 
were to endure worse too before they were done with it. 

Their six days' sojourn amid the Queen's Gardens, then, was not a great 
success; and as soon as they were able they set sail again, standing 
eastward when the wind permitted them. But wind and current were against 
them and all through the month of May and the early part of June they 
struggled along the south coast of Cuba, their ships as full of holes as a 
honeycomb, pumps going incessantly, and in addition the worn-out seamen 
doing heroic labour at baling with buckets and kettles. Lee helm! Down go 
the buckets and kettles and out run the wretched scarecrows of seamen to 
the weary business of tacking ship, letting go, brailing up, hauling in, 
and making fast for the thousandth time; and then back to the pumps and 
kettles again. No human being could endure this for an indefinite time; 
and though their diet of worms represented by the rotten biscuit was 
varied with cassava bread supplied by friendly natives, the Admiral could 
not make his way eastward further than Cape Cruz. Round that cape his 
leaking, strained vessels could not be made to look against the wind and 
the tide. Could hardly indeed be made to float or swim upon the water at 
all; and the Admiral had now to consider, not whether he could sail on a 
particular point of the compass, but whether he could by any means avoid 
another course which the fates now proposed to him--namely, a 
perpendicular course to the bottom of the sea. It was a race between the 
water and the ships, and the only thing the Admiral could think of was to 
turn southward across to Jamaica, which he did on June 23rd, putting into 
Puerto Bueno, now called Dry Harbour. But there was no food there, and as 
his ships were settling deeper and deeper in the water he had to make sail 
again and drive eastwards as far as Puerto Santa Gloria, now called Don 
Christopher's Cove. He was just in time. The ships were run ashore side by 
side on a sandy beach, the pumps were abandoned, and in one tide the ships 
were full of water. The remaining anchor cables were used to lash the two 
ships together so that they would not move; although there was little fear 
of that, seeing the weight of water that was in them. Everything that 
could be saved was brought up on deck, and a kind of cabin or platform 
which could be fortified was rigged on the highest part of the ships. And 
so no doubt for some days, although their food was almost finished, the 
wretched and exhausted voyagers could stretch their cramped limbs, and 
rest in the warm sun, and listen, from their safe haven on the firm sands, 
to the hated voice of the sea. 

Thanks to careful regulations made by the Admiral, governing the 
intercourse between the Spaniards and the natives ashore, friendly 
relations were soon established, and the crews were supplied with cassava 
bread and fruit in abundance. Two officials superintended every purchase 
of provisions to avoid the possibility of any dispute, for in the event of 
even a momentary hostility the thatched-roof structures on the ships could 
easily have been set on fire, and the position of the Spaniards, without 
shelter amid a hostile population, would have been a desperate one. This 
disaster, however, was avoided; but the Admiral soon began to be anxious 
about the supply of provisions from the immediate neighbourhood, which 
after the first few days began to be irregular. There were a large number 
of Spaniards to be fed, the natives never kept any great store of 
provisions for themselves, and the Spaniards were entirely at their mercy 
for, provisions from day to day. Diego Mendez, always ready for active and 
practical service, now offered to take three men and make a journey 
through the island to arrange for the purchase of provisions from 
different villages, so that the men on the ships would not be dependent 
upon any one source. This offer was gratefully accepted; and Mendez, with 
his lieutenants well supplied with toys and trinkets, started eastward 
along the north coast of Jamaica. He made no mistakes; he was quick and 
clever at ingratiating himself with the caciques, and he succeeded in 
arranging with three separate potentates to send regular supplies of 
provisions to the men on the ships. At each place where he made this 
arrangement he detached one of his assistants and sent him back with the 
first load of provisions, so that the regular line of carriage might be 
the more quickly established; and when they had all gone he borrowed a 
couple of natives and pushed on by himself until he reached the eastern 
end of the island. He made friends here with a powerful cacique named 
Amerro, from whom he bought a large canoe, and paid for it with some of 
the clothing off his back. With the canoe were furnished six Indians to 
row it, and Mendez made a triumphant journey back by sea, touching at the 
places where his depots had been established and seeing that his 
commissariat arrangements were working properly. He was warmly received on 
his return to the ships, and the result of his efforts was soon visible in 
the daily supplies of food that now regularly arrived. 

Thus was one difficulty overcome; but it was not likely that either 
Columbus himself or any of his people would be content to remain for ever 
on the beach of Jamaica. It was necessary to establish communication with 
Espanola, and thence with Spain; but how to do it in the absence of ships 
or even boats? Columbus, pondering much upon this matter, one day calls 
Diego Mendez aside; walks him off, most likely, under the great rustling 
trees beyond the beach, and there tells him his difficulty. "My son," says 
he, "you and I understand the difficulties and dangers of our position 
here better than any one else. We are few; the Indians are many; we know 
how fickle and easily irritated they are, and how a fire- brand thrown 
into our thatched cabins would set the whole thing ablaze. It is quite 
true that you have very cleverly established a provision supply, but it is 
dependent entirely upon the good nature of the natives and it might cease 
to-morrow. Here is my plan: you have a good canoe; why should some one not 
go over to Espanola in it and send back a ship for us?" 

Diego Mendez, knowing very well what is meant, looks down upon the ground. 
His spoken opinion is that such a journey is not merely difficult but 
impossible journey in a frail native canoe across one hundred and fifty 
miles of open and rough sea; although his private opinion is other than 
that. No, he cannot imagine such a thing being done; cannot think who 
would be able to do it. 

Long silence from the Admiral; eloquent silence, accompanied by looks no 
less eloquent. 

"Admiral," says Mendez again, "you know very well that I have risked my 
life for you and the people before and would do it again. But there are 
others who have at least as good a right to this great honour and peril as 
I have; let me beg of you, therefore, to summon all the company together, 
make this proposal to them, and see if any one will undertake it. If not, 
I will once more risk my life." 

The proposal being duly made to the assembled crews, every one, as cunning 
Mendez had thought, declares it impossible; every one hangs back. Upon 
which Diego Mendez with a fine gesture comes forward and volunteers; makes 
his little dramatic effect and has his little ovation. Thoroughly Spanish 
this, significant of that mixture of vanity and bravery, of swagger and 
fearlessness, which is characteristic of the best in Spain. It was a 
desperately brave thing to venture upon, this voyage from Jamaica to 
Espanola in a native canoe and across a sea visited by dreadful 
hurricanes; and the volunteer was entitled to his little piece of heroic 
drama. 

While Mendez was making his preparations, putting a false keel on the 
canoe and fixing weather boards along its gunwales to prevent its shipping 
seas, fitting a mast and sail and giving it a coat of tar, the Admiral 
retired into his cabin and busied himself with his pen. He wrote one 
letter to Ovando briefly describing his circumstances and requesting that 
a ship should be sent for his relief; and another to the Sovereigns, in 
which a long rambling account was given of the events of the voyage, and 
much other matter besides, dismally eloquent of his floundering in the 
quag. Much in it--about Solomon and Josephus, of the Abbot Joachim, of 
Saint Jerome and the Great Khan; more about the Holy Sepulchre and the 
intentions of the Almighty in that matter; with some serious practical 
concern for the rich land of Veragua which he had discovered, lest it 
should share the fate of his other discoveries and be eaten up by idle 
adventurers. "Veragua," he says, "is not a little son which may be given 
to a stepmother to nurse. Of Espanola and Paria and all the other lands I 
never think without the tears falling from my eyes; I believe that the 
example of these ought to serve for the others." And then this passage: 

"The good and sound purpose which I always had to serve your Majesties, 
and the dishonour and unmerited ingratitude, will not suffer the soul to 
be silent although I wished it, therefore I ask pardon of your Majesties. 
I have been so lost and undone; until now I have wept for others that your 
Majesties might have compassion on them; and now may the heavens weep for 
me and the earth weep for me in temporal affairs; I have not a farthing to 
make as an offering in spiritual affairs. I have remained here on the 
Indian islands in the manner I have before said in great pain and 
infirmity, expecting every day death, surrounded by innumerable savages 
full of cruelty and by our enemies, and so far from the sacraments of the 
Holy Mother Church that I believe the soul will be forgotten when it 
leaves the body. Let them weep for me who have charity, truth and justice. 
I did not undertake this voyage of navigation to gain honour or material 
things, that is certain, because the hope already was entirely lost; but I 
did come to serve your Majesties with honest intention and with good 
charitable zeal, and I do not lie." 

Poor old heart, older than its years, thus wailing out its sorrows to ears 
none too sympathetic; sad old voice, uplifted from the bright shores of 
that lonely island in the midst of strange seas! It will not come clear to 
the head alone; the echoes of this cry must reverberate in the heart if 
they are to reach and animate the understanding. 

At this time also the Admiral wrote to his friend Gaspar Gorricio. For the 
benefit of those who may be interested I give the letter in English. 

REVEREND AND VERY DEVOUT FATHER: 

"If my voyage should be as conducive to my personal health and the repose 
of my house as it seems likely to be conducive to the aggrandisement of 
the royal Crown of the King and Queen, my Lords, I might hope to live more 
than a hundred years. I have not time to write more at length. I hope that 
the bearer of this letter may be a person of my house who will tell you 
verbally more than can be told in a thousand papers, and also Don Diego 
will supply information. I beg as a favour of the Father Prior and all the 
members of your religious house, that they remember me in all their 
prayers. 

"Done on the island of Jamaica, July 7, 1503.
"I am at the command of your Reverence. 
.S.
.S.A.S.
XMY Xpo FERENS." 

Diego Mendez found some one among the Spaniards to accompany him, but his 
name is not recorded. The six Indians were taken to row the canoe. They 
had to make their way at first against the strong currents along the 
northern coast of Jamaica, so as to reach its eastern extremity before 
striking across to Espanola. At one point they met a flotilla of Indian 
canoes, which chased them and captured them, but they escaped. When they 
arrived at the end of the easterly point of Jamaica, now known as Morant 
Point, they had to wait two or three days for calm weather and a 
favourable wind to waft them across to Espanola, and while thus waiting 
they were suddenly surrounded and captured by a tribe of hostile natives, 
who carried them off some nine or ten miles into the island, and signified 
their intention of killing them. 

But they began to quarrel among themselves as to how they should divide 
the spoils which they had captured with the canoe, and decided that the 
only way of settling the dispute was by some elaborate trial of hazard 
which they used. While they were busy with their trial Diego Mendez 
managed to escape, got back to the canoe, and worked his way back in it 
alone to the harbour where the Spaniards were encamped. The other Spaniard 
who was with him probably perished, for there is no record of what became 
of him--an obscure life lost in a brave enterprise. 

One would have thought that Mendez now had enough of canoe voyages, but he 
had no sooner got back than he offered to set out again, only stipulating 
that an armed force should march along the coast by land to secure his 
safety until he could stand across to Espanola. Bartholomew Columbus 
immediately put himself at the head of a large and well-armed party for 
this purpose, and Bartolomeo Fieschi, the Genoese captain of one of the 
lost caravels, volunteered to accompany Mendez