CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS 27 account of his adventures, calling it The Book of Ser Marco Polo. Before this time China was believed to be bordered by immense marshes, but he declared that it was washed by a vast ocean and that within this ocean lay Cipango, or Japan, a great island rich in gold and cities. The book fired the imagination of Europe, heightened the charm of the East, and stimulated the hope of reaching the East by sea. If the earth were a globe, why might not the ocean west of the Straits of Gibraltar be the same as that east of Cipango? Thus through the merchants' desire for a western way to the East, through improvements in navigation, through the slowly evolved conviction that the world was round, and through the better acquaintance with the geography of China, the time was come when some adventurous man would compass the unknown by making a path from the Straits of Gibraltar to fabled Cipango. The scholars believed this possible but had not the courage to attempt it. Navigators had courage to accomplish it but had not the mind to believe in it. Christopher Columbus had the requisite skill and faith. He had also the persistence and endurance necessary to carry him successfully through the initial stages of an enterprise which the world could not understand. THE ACHIEVEMENT OF COLUMBUS tion of Columbus's father was a wool-worker, but the boy early became a navigator. An age which knows as ours how poor boys of mind become prominent will understand how he turned to the most progressive vocation then open to him. He learned The EducaLatin and read diligently the geographical books of the Columbus. day. He was attracted to Portugal, where he married into the family of a prominent navigator. He sailed as far north as England, possibly to Iceland; and he lived for a time on the island of Porto Santo, north of Madeira. We do not know how he came to believe he could reach China by the west, but we know he mastered all available knowledge on the subject. When he read in a book that the frigid and torrid zones were uninhabitable, he confuted it in the margin on the ground that the Portuguese sailed through the torrid zone and found it inhabited, while the English and the Norse visited the frigid zone. It was sound reasoning to set observation against tradition. But when tradition favored him he accepted it. He saw in the apocryphal book of Esdras that only one seventh of the surface of the earth was water: had he been an equally sound reasoner he would have withheld judgment until some one observed the quantity of earth and water. But Esdras suited his theory, and he accepted the statement without question. The error tended to make him think it was but a short distance from Europe to his goal. While in Portugal, about ten years before his famous voyage, Columbus learned that Toscanelli, a noted Florentine astronomer, had announced the possibility of sailing from the west to the east. He wrote to the Italian, asking for instructions, and received in reply a Columbus and Toscanelli. copy of a former letter by the astronomer in which the possibility of the fact in question was asserted, but no directions for making the journey were given. In fact, they could not have been given in the existing state of information about the western seas, for these seas were not explored. Toscanelli perhaps gave Columbus confidence in his ideas, but all the information in his letter was to be found elsewhere. Efforts to get Assist ance. Whatever the source, Columbus, when in Portugal, had the conviction that his project was feasible. He talked so much about it that he got the reputation of a boaster, and when he applied to King John II for a ship to test his idea, he was turned aside as a dreamer. It was then 1484, and he betook himself to Spain, where for seven years he urged his plans with little prospect of success. In the interval he sent his brother, Bartholomew, to London to see if help could be secured there. It has been said that Bartholomew gained a promise from Henry VII, but it was given after the king and queen of Spain relented. It was really the queen who gave the assistance. She was induced to do so by her former confessor, Juan Perez, and by the treasurer of Aragon, Luis de Santangel. To make his voyage, Columbus had three ships fully manned. The expense was assumed by Isabella, who in her own right was sovereign of Castile. The money, 1,000,000 maravedis, $59,000, seems to have been borrowed on the queen's security. old story that she pledged her jewels is now generally discredited. Columbus was made an hereditary grandee and admiral of Castile, with the right to govern the new lands he should discover. He and his heirs were to have one tenth of all the gold and silver he should find, and they might pay one eighth of the expenses of fitting out any expedition and take a similar portion of the profits thus secured. Letters of introduction to the rulers of the East were also furnished, and with these in his pocket the stern discoverer, raised from the rank of adventurer to that of great lord and friend of sovereign princes, embarked his unwilling crew of less than one hundred men. August 3, 1492, in the early morning, the three ships, the Santa Maria, Columbus's Ships. The Departure. The Pinta, and the Niña, stood out to sea from the port of Palos, sailing first to the Canaries. The first was the largest, and alone, of the three, had a deck. Her tonnage is estimated at one hundred to two hundred and eighty, and that of her companions at one hundred and forty and one hundred respectively. A great event never depended on frailer agencies. Stopping at the Canaries to refit, the fleet sailed again on September 6. Fear seized the hearts of the crew as they saw the land The Voyage. disappear on the eastern horizon. They were steering into seas hitherto unexplored, under the orders of a visionary, and AMERICA DISCOVERED 29 were full of dismay. Columbus kept a diary of all that happened, reporting it to the queen; but for the sailors he kept another log in which he shortened the distance sailed. No storms were encountered, and the trade winds blew him steadily westward. Scowling at first, the crew at length became sullen, and finally, October 10, threatened to throw the admiral overboard. To none of these difficulties would he yield: "He had come to go to the Indies," he said, "and he would keep on till he had found them with the aid of our Lord." It is well to remember that Columbus's greatness consisted, not so much in his original idea, as in the determined spirit in which he risked his life to execute it. The Dis covery. On the evening of October 11 lights were seen in the darkness and soon the roar of the surf was heard. At dawn a low green shore was before them, an island which the natives called Guanahani, and which the pious Columbus renamed San Salvador. Its identity is lost, but the best guess is that it was Watling's Island, one of the Bahamas. It was inhabited by naked savages with whom the admiral conversed by signs. They reported a great kingdom to the south, and he turned in that direction, discovering Cuba, which he thought the mainland of India. The natives he called Indians, and the term has persisted to this day. He was impressed by seeing them drawing smoke through tubes made from the leaves of a certain plant, and noted that the natives called these tubes tobaccos. Sailing along the eastern half of the north coast of Cuba he came at length to Hayti, which he called La Isla Española, whence Hispaniola. It proved an ill-fated country, for on its shores he lost his best ship, the Santa Maria. Return to Spain. Columbus's thoughts now turned to Spain, and leaving forty-four men to establish a Spanish post, learn the language of the natives, and plant food crops, he departed early in 1493. Storms harrassed his return, but March 15 he cast anchor at Palos. All Spain echoed with his praise, and news of the discovery quickly ran throughout Europe. Many people doubted if the new lands were really India - among them the king of Portugal, who said plainly they were only a part of Guinea, discovered by the Portuguese and confirmed to his crown by papal bulls and by a treaty with Spain in 1480. A serious quarrel might have followed, but Spain appealed to the Pope, Alexander VI, a Spaniard, and May 3 and 4 he issued two bulls dividing the new lands between the two countries. An imaginary line was authorized one hundred leagues west of the Azores and Cape Verde Islands, all the lands discovered east of it being given to Portugal and all west and south of it going to Spain. The arrangement was not satisfactory, and it was modified The Papal by another bull, September, 1493, and by a treaty between Spain and Portugal, 1494, by which the line of demarcation was fixed at three hundred and seventy leagues west of Cape Verde Islands. Bull. Treatment Columbus's reports occasioned great enthusiasm in Spain, and many expeditions were planned. Most of them ended in disappointment, but the work of exploration was forwarded. The Second king and queen were delighted with their admiral and sent Expedition. him forth in September, 1493, with seventeen ships and thirteen hundred persons, gentlemen adventurers, laborers, soldiers, and missionaries, to plant a Spanish colony. The settlement was to be under the admiral's absolute authority. A town was laid out in Hayti and called Isabella. Gold mines were found in the interior, and the neighboring natives, always submissive, were ordered to work them and bring in a certain amount of gold each month. A native chieftain, despairing of complying with the order, offered instead to cultivate a large tract of land for the benefit of the whites; but Columbus rejected the plan because he knew that gold alone would be valued in Spain. He saw that if he could not satisfy this desire he would have no support at home. The harsh measures he took with the Indians reduced the native population of the island by two-thirds in three years. When he went to Spain in 1496 many of his returned companions declared that there was no gold in Columbus's Indies; but the admiral managed to produce enough of the precious stuff to satisfy the sovereigns that explorations should continue. A portion of the natives were cannibals, and Columbus suggested that permission be granted to take these to Spain for slaves. He probably hoped by this means to support the explorations, as the negroes from Guinea supported the Portuguese enterprise; but Ferdinand the Catholic was not willing to authorize the enslavement of the natives. Nevertheless Columbus and others sent Indian slaves to Spain, where they were generally liberated. Spite of the efforts of the government, enslavement was practiced in the colonies, until most of the natives of the West Indies disappeared. of the Natives. After 1496 Columbus made two voyages, one in 1498 and another in 1502. On the former he steered far southward, hoping to pass all Fourth obstructions, reach the Indian ocean, and circumnavigate Third and the globe. To his surprise he encountered a great body of land, about which Marco Polo said nothing, sailing past it for days in a westward direction. A sailor let down a bucket at one point and found the water fresh. It was from the mouths of the Orinoco river, and Columbus rightly concluded that so great a river must flow out of a vast continent. He spoke of it as another world, never doubting, however, that the land discovered to the northward was part of India. His fourth voyage was made to find a passage between this new continent and the old. The journey was delayed by great storms, but steering a more northerly course, he came at length to the coast of Honduras. He sailed south about twelve hundred miles past the Isthmus of Panama, whose narrowness he did |