History of the World/History of the World (Bureau Development, Inc.)(1992).BIN/dp/0115/01152.txt

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$Title{Discovery Of America
Part III}
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$Author{Fiske, John}
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$Subject{columbus
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$Date{1892}
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Title:       Discovery Of America
Book:        Chapter VI: The Finding Of Strange Coasts
Author:      Fiske, John
Date:        1892

Part III

     When Columbus, after many days, recovered consciousness, he found his
brother Bartholomew standing by his bedside.  It was six years since they had
last parted company at Lisbon, whence the younger brother started for England,
while the elder returned to Spain.  The news of Christopher's return from his
first voyage found Bartholomew in Paris, whence he started as soon as he could
for Seville, but did not arrive there until just after the second expedition
had started.  Presently the sovereigns sent him with three ships to
Hispaniola, to carry supplies to the colony; and there he arrived while the
Admiral was exploring the coast of Cuba.  The meeting of the two brothers was
a great relief to both.  The affection between them was very strong, and each
was a support for the other.  The Admiral at once proceeded to appoint
Bartholomew to the office of Adelantado, which in this instance was equivalent
to making him governor of Hispaniola under himself, the Viceroy of the Indies.
In making this appointment Columbus seems to have exceeded the authority
granted him by the second article of his agreement of April, 1492, with the
sovereigns; but they mended the matter in 1497 by themselves investing
Bartholomew with the office and dignity of Adelantado. ^1

[Footnote 1: Las Casas, Hist. de las Indias, tom. ii. p. 80.]

     Columbus was in need of all the aid he could summon, for, during his
absence, the island had become a pandemonium.  His brother Diego, a man of
refined and studious habits, who afterwards became a priest, was too mild in
disposition to govern the hot-heads who had come to Hispaniola to get rich
without labour.  They would not submit to the rule of this foreigner. Instead
of doing honest work they roamed about the island, abusing the Indians and
slaying one another in silly quarrels.  Chief among the offenders was King
Ferdinand's favourite, the commander Margarite; and he was aided and abetted
by Friar Boyle.  Some time after Bartholomew's arrival, these two men of
Aragon gathered about them a party of malcontents and, seizing the ships which
had brought that mariner, sailed away to Spain. Making their way to court,
they sought pardon for thus deserting the colony, saying that duty to their
sovereigns demanded that they should bring home a report of what was going on
in the Indies.  They decried the value of Columbus's discoveries, and reminded
the king that Hispaniola was taking money out of the treasury much faster than
it was putting it in; an argument well calculated to influence Ferdinand that
summer, for he was getting ready to go to war with France over the Naples
affair.  Then the two recreants poured forth a stream of accusations against
the brothers Columbus, the general purport of which was that they were gross
tyrants not fit to be trusted with the command of Spaniards.

     No marked effect seems to have been produced by these first complaints,
but when Margarite and Boyle were once within reach of Fonseca, we need not
wonder that mischief was soon brewing.  It was unfortunate for Columbus that
his work of exploration was hampered by the necessity of founding a colony and
governing a parcel of unruly men let loose in the wilderness, far away from
the powerful restraints of civilized society.  Such work required undivided
attention and extraordinary talent for command.  It does not appear that
Columbus was lacking in such talent.  On the con-trary both he and his brother
Bartholomew seem to have possessed it in a high degree.  But the situation was
desperately bad when the spirit of mutiny was fomented by deadly enemies at
court.  I do not find adequate justification for the charges of tyranny
brought against Columbus.  The veracity and fairness of the history of Las
Casas are beyond question; in his divinely beautiful spirit one sees now and
then a trace of tenderness even for Fonseca, whose conduct toward him was
always as mean and malignant as toward Columbus.  One gets from Las Casas the
impression that the Admiral's high temper was usually kept under firm control,
and that he showed far less severity than most men would have done under
similar provocation.  Bartholomew was made of sterner stuff, but his whole
career presents no instance of wanton cruelty; toward both white men and
Indians his conduct was distinguished by clemency and moderation.  Under the
government of these brothers a few scoundrels were hanged in Hispaniola.  Many
more ought to have been.

     Of the attempt of Columbus to collect tribute from the native population,
and its consequences in developing the system of repartimientos out of which
grew Indian slavery, I shall treat in a future chapter.  That attempt, which
was ill-advised and ill-managed, was part of a plan for checking wanton
depredations and regulating the relations between the Spaniards and the
Indians.  The colonists behaved so badly toward the red men that the chieftain
Caonabo, who had destroyed La Navidad the year before, now formed a scheme ^1
for a general alliance among the native tribes, hoping with sufficient numbers
to overwhelm and exterminate the strangers, in spite of their solid-hoofed
monsters and death-dealing thunderbolts.  This scheme was revealed to
Columbus, soon after his return from the coast of Cuba, by the chieftain
Guacanagari, who was an enemy to Caonabo and courted the friendship of the
Spaniards.  Alonso de Ojeda, by a daring stratagem, captured Caonabo and
brought him to Columbus, who treated him kindly but kept him a prisoner until
it should be convenient to send him to Spain.  But this chieftain's scheme was
nevertheless put in operation through the influence of his principal wife
Anacaona.  An Indian was broke out; roaming bands of Spaniards were ambushed
and massacred; and there was fighting in the field, where the natives -
assailed by fire-arms and cross-bows, horses and bloodhounds - were wofully
defeated.

[Footnote 1: The first of a series of such schemes in American history,
including those of Sassacus, Philip, Pontiac, and to some extent Tecumseh.]

     Thus in the difficult task of controlling mutinous white men and
defending the colony against infuriated red men Columbus spent the first
twelvemonth after his return from Cuba.  In October, 1495, there arrived in
the harbour of Isabella four caravels laden with welcome supplies.  In one of
these ships came Juan Aguado, sent by the sovereigns to gather information
respecting the troubles of the colony.  This appointment was doubtless made in
a friendly spirit, for Columbus had formerly recommended Aguado to favour.
But the arrival of such a person created a hope, which quickly grew into a
belief, that the sovereigns were preparing to deprive Columbus of the
government of the island; and, as Irving neatly says, "it was a time of
jubilee for offenders; every culprit started up into an accuser." All the ills
of the colony, many of them inevitable in such an enterprise, many of them due
to the shiftlessness and folly, the cruelty and lust of idle swash-bucklers,
were now laid at the door of Columbus.  Aguado was presently won over by the
malcontents, so that by the time he was ready to return to Spain, early in
1496, Columbus felt it desirable to go along with him and make his own
explanations to the sovereigns.  Fortunately for his purposes, just before he
started, some rich gold mines were discovered on the south side of the island,
in the neighbourhood of the Hayna and Ozema rivers.  Moreover there were
sundry pits in these mines, which looked like excavations and seemed to
indicate that in former times there had been digging done. ^1 This discovery
confirmed the Admiral in a new theory, which he was beginning to form.  If it
should turn out that Hispaniola was not Cipango, as the last voyage seemed to
suggest, perhaps it might prove to be Ophir! ^2 Probably these ancient
excavations were made by A King Solomon's men when they came here to get gold
for the temple at Jerusalem!  If so, one might expect to find silver, ivory,
red sandal-wood, apes, and peacocks at no great distance.  Just where Ophir
was situated no one could exactly tell, ^1 but the things that were carried
thence to Jerusalem certainly came from "the Indies." Columbus conceived it as
probably lying northeastward of the Golden Chersonese (Malacca) and as
identical with the island of Hispaniola.

[Footnote 1: The Indians then living upon the island did not dig, but scraped
up the small pieces of gold that were more or less abundant in the beds of
shallow streams.]

[Footnote 2: Peter Martyr, De Rebus Oceanicis, dec. i. lib. iv.]

[Footnote 1: The original Ophir may be inferred, from Genesis x. 29, to have
been situated where, as Milton says,

     "northeast winds blow
     Sabaean odours from the spicy shore
     of Araby the Blest,"

but the name seems to have become applied indiscriminately to the remote
countries reached by ships that sailed past that coast; chiefly no doubt, to
Hindustan.  See Lassen, Indishe Alterthumskunde, bd. i. p 538.]

     The discovery of these mines led to the transfer of the headquarters of
the colony to the mouth of the Ozema river, where, in the summer of 1496,
Bartholomew Columbus made a settlement which became the city of San Domingo.
^2 Meanwhile Aguado and the Admiral sailed for Spain early in March, in two
caravels overloaded with more than two hundred homesick passengers. In
choosing his course Columbus did not show so much sagacity as on his first
return voyage.  Instead of working northward till clear of the belt of
trade-winds, he kept straight to the east, and so spent a month in beating and
tacking before getting out of the Caribbean Sea.  Scarcity of food was
imminent, and it became necessary to stop at Guadaloupe and make a quantity of
cassava bread. ^1 It was well that this was done, for as the ships worked
slowly across the Atlantic, struggling against perpetual head-winds, the
provisions were at length exhausted, and by the first week in June the famine
was such that Columbus had some difficulty in preventing the crews from eating
their Indian captives, of whom there were thirty or more on board. ^2

[Footnote 2: Bartholomew's town was built on the left side of the river, and
was called New Isabella.  In 1504 it was destroyed by a hurricane, and rebuilt
on the right bank in its present situation.  It was then named San Domingo
after the patron saint of Domenico, the father of Columbus.]

[Footnote 1: While the Spaniards were on this island they encountered a party
of tall and powerful women armed with bows and arrows; so that Columbus
supposed it must be the Asiatic island of Amazons mentioned by Marco Polo.
See Yule's Marco Polo, vol. ii. pp. 338-340.]

[Footnote 2: Among them was Caonabo, who died on the voyage.]

     At length, on the 11th of June, the haggard and starving company arrived
at Cadiz, and Columbus, while awaiting orders from the sovereigns, stayed at
the house of his good friend Bernaldez, the curate of Los Palacios. ^3 After a
month he attended court at Burgos, and was kindly received.  No allusion was
made to the complaints against him, and the sovereigns promised to furnish
ships for a third voyage of discovery.  For the moment, however, other things
interfered with this enterprise.  One was the marriage of the son and daughter
of Ferdinand and Isabella to the daughter and son of the Emperor Maximilian.
The war with France was at the same time fast draining the treasury.  Indeed,
for more than twenty years, Castile had been at war nearly all the time, first
with Portugal, next with Granada, then with France; and the crown never found
it easy to provide money for maritime enterprises.  Accordingly, at the
earnest solicitation of Vicente Yanez Pinzon and other enterprising mariners,
the sovereigns had issued a proclamation, April 10, 1495, granting to all
native Spaniards the privilege of making, at their own risk and expense,
voyages of discovery or traffic to the newly found coasts.  As the crown was
to take a pretty heavy tariff out of the profits of these expeditions, while
all losses were to be borne by the adventures, a fairly certain source of
revenue, be it great or small, seemed likely to be opened. ^1 Columbus
protested against this edict, inasmuch as he deemed himself entitled to a
patent or monopoly in the work of conducting expeditions to Cathay.  The
sovereigns evaded the difficulty by an edict of June 2, 1497, declaring that
it was never their intention "in any way to affect the rights of the said Don
Christopher Columbus." This declaration was, doubtless, intended simply to
pacify the Admiral.  It did not prevent the authorization of voyages conducted
by other persons a couple of years later; and, as I shall show in the next
chapter, there are strong reasons for believing that on May 10, 1497, three
weeks before this edict, an expedition sailed from Cadiz under the especial
auspices of King Ferdinand, with Vicente Yanez Pinzon for its chief commander
and Americus Vespucius for one of its pilots.

[Footnote 3: The curate thus heard the story of the second voyage from
Columbus himself while it was fresh in his mind.  Columbus also left with him
written memoranda, so that for the events of this expedition the Historia de
los Reyes Catolicos is of the highest authority.]

[Footnote 1: "All vessels were to sail exclusively from the port of Cadiz, and
under the inspection of officers appointed by the crown.  Those who embarked
for Hispaniola without pay, and at their own expense, were to have lands
assigned to them, and to be provisioned for one year, with a right to retain
such lands and all houses they might erect upon them.  Of all gold which they
might collect, they were to retain one third for themselves, and pay two
thirds to the crown.  Of all other articles of merchandise, the produce of the
island, they were to pay merely one tenth to the crown. Their purchases were
to be made in the presence of officers appointed by the sovereigns, and the
royal duties paid into the hands of the king's receiver. Each ship sailing on
private enterprise was to take one or two persons named by the royal officers
at Cadiz.  One tenth of the tonnage of the ship was to be at the service of
the crown, free of charge.  One tenth of whatever such ships should procure in
the newly-discovered countries was to be paid to the crown on their return.
These regulations included private ships trading to Hispaniola with
provisions.  For every vessel thus fitted out on private adventure, Columbus,
in consideration of his privilege of an eighth of tonnage, was to have the
right to freight one on his own account." Irving's Columbus, vol. ii. p. 76.]

     It was not until late in the spring of 1498 that the ships were ready for
Columbus.  Everything that Fonseca could do to vex and delay him was done.
One of the bishop's minions, a converted Moor or Jew named Ximeno Breviesca,
behaved with such outrageous insolence that on the day of sailing the
Admiral's indignation, so long restrained, at last broke out, and he drove
away the fellow with kicks and cuffs. ^1 This imprudent act gave Fonseca the
opportunity to maintain that what the Admiral's accusers said about his
tyrannical disposition must be true.

[Footnote 1: "Parece que uno debiera de, en estos reveses, y, por ventura, en
palabras contra el y contra la negociacion destas Indias, mas que otro
senalarse, y segun entendi, no debiera ser cristiano viejo, y creo que se
llamaba Ximeno, contra el cual debio el Almirante gravemente sentirse y
enojarse, y aguardo el dia que se hizo a la vela, y, o en la nao que entro,
por ventura, el dicho oficial, o en tierra quando queria desembarcarse,
arrebatolo el Almirante, y dale muchas coces o remesones, por manera que lo
trato mal; y a mi parecer, por esta causa principalmente, sobre otras quejas
que fueron de aca, y cosas que murmuraron del y contra el los que bien con el
no estaban y le acumularon; los Reyes indignados proveyeron de quitarle la
gobernacion." Las Casas, Historia de las Indias, tom. ii. p. 199.]

     The expedition started on May 30, 1498, from the little port of San Lucar
de Barrameda.  There were six ships, carrying about 200 men besides the
sailors.  On June 21, at the Isle of Ferro, the Admiral divided his fleet,
sending three ships directly to Hispaniola, while with the other three he kept
on to the Cape Verde islands, whence he steered southwest on the 4th of July.
A week later, after a run of about 900 miles, his astrolabe seemed to show
that he was within five degrees of the equator. ^1 There were three reasons
for going so far to the south: - 1, the natives of the islands already visited
always pointed in that direction when gold was mentioned; 2, a learned
jeweller, who had travelled in the East, had assured Columbus that gold and
gems, as well as spices and rare drugs, were to be found for the most part
among black people near the equator; 3, if he should not find any rich islands
on the way, a sufficiently long voyage would bring him to the coast of Champa
(Cochin China) at a lower point than he had reached on the preceding voyage,
and nearer to the Golden Chersonese (Malacca), by doubling which he could
enter the Indian ocean.  It will be remembered that he supposed the
southwesterly curve in the Cuban coast, the farthest point reached in his
second voyage, to be the beginning of the coast of Cochin China according to
Marco Polo.

[Footnote 1: The figure given by Columbus is equivalent only to 360
geographical miles (Navarrete, Coleccion, tom. i. p. 246), but as Las Casas
(Hist. tom. ii. p. 226) already noticed, there must be some mistake here, for
on a S. W. course from the Cape Verde islands it would require a distance of
900 geographical miles to cut the fifth parallel.  From the weather that
followed, it is clear that Columbus stated his latitude pretty correctly; he
had come into the belt of calms.  Therefore his error must be in the distance
run.]

     Once more through ignorance of the atmospheric conditions of the regions
within the tropics Columbus encountered needless perils and hardships.  If he
had steered from Ferro straight across the ocean a trifle south of
west-southwest, he might have made a quick and comfortable voyage, with the
trade-wind filling his sails, to the spot where he actually struck land. ^1 As
it was, however, he naturally followed the custom then so common, of first
running to the parallel upon which he intended to sail.  This long southerly
run brought him into the belt of calms or neutral zone between the northern
and southern trade-winds, a little north of the equator. ^2 No words can
describe what followed so well as those of Irving: "The wind suddenly fell,
and a dead sultry calm commenced, which lasted for eight days.  The air was
like a furnace; the tar melted, the seams of the ship yawned; the salt meat
became putrid; the wheat was parched as if with fire; the hoops shrank from
the wine and water casks, some of which leaked and others burst, while the
heat in the holds of the vessels was so suffocating that no one could remain
below a sufficient time to prevent the damage that was taking place.  The
mariners lost all strength and spirits, and sank under the oppressive heat.
It seemed as if the old fable of the torrid zone was about to be realized; and
that they were approaching a fiery region where it would be impossible to
exist." ^1

[Footnote 1: Humboldt in 1799 did just this thing, starting from Teneriffe and
reaching Trinidad in nineteen days.  See Bruhn's Life of Humboldt, vol. i. p.
263.]

[Footnote 2: "The strength of the trade-winds depends entirely upon the
difference in temperature between the equator and the pole; the greater the
difference, the stronger the wind.  Now, at the present time, the south pole
is much colder than the north pole, and the southern trades are consequently
much stronger than the northern, so that the neutral zone in which they meet
lies some five degrees north of the equator." Excursions of an Evolutionist,
p. 64.]

[Footnote 1: Irving's Columbus, vol. ii. p. 137.  One is reminded of a scene
in the Rime of the Ancient Mariner: -

     "All in a hot and copper sky
     The bloody sun, at noon,
     Right up above the mast did stand,
     No bigger than the moon.

     "Day after day, day after day,
     We stuck, - nor breath nor motion;
     As idle as a painted ship
     Upon a painted ocean."]

     Fortunately, they were in a region where the ocean is comparatively
narrow.  The longitude reached by Columbus on July 13, when the wind died
away, must have been about 36 Degrees or 37 Degrees W., and a run of only 800
miles west from that point would have brought him to Cayenne.  His course
between the 13th and 21st of July must have intersected the thermal equator,
or line of greatest mean annual heat on the globe, - an irregular curve which
is here deflected as much as five degrees north of the equinoctial line.  But
although there was not a breath of wind, the powerful equatorial current was
quietly driving the ships, much faster than the Admiral could have suspected,
to the northwest and toward land.  By the end of that stifling week they were
in latitude 7 Degrees N., and caught the trade-wind on the starboard quarter.
Thence after a brisk run of ten days, in sorry plight, with ugly leaks and
scarcely a cask of fresh water left, they arrived within sight of land.  Three
mountain peaks loomed up in the offing before them, and as they drew nearer it
appeared that those peaks belonged to one great mountain; wherefore the pious
Admiral named the island Trinidad.

     Here some surprises were in store for Columbus.  Instead of finding black
and woolly-haired natives, he found men of cinnamon hue, like those in
Hispaniola, only - strange to say - lighter in colour.  Then in coasting
Trinidad he caught a glimpse of land at the delta of the Orinoco, and called
it Isla Santa, or Holy Island. ^1 But, on passing into the gulf of Paria,
through the strait which he named Serpent's Mouth, his ships were in sore
danger of being swamped by the raging surge that poured from three or four of
the lesser mouths of that stupendous river.  Presently, finding that the water
in the gulf was fresh to the taste, he gradually reasoned his way to the
correct conclusion, that the billows which had so nearly overwhelmed him must
have come out from a river greater than any he had ever known or dreamed of,
and that so vast a stream of running water could be produced only upon land of
continental dimensions. ^1 This coast to the south of him was, therefore, the
coast of a continent, with indefinite extension toward the south, a land not
laid down upon Toscanelli's or any other map, and of which no one had until
that time known anything. ^2

[Footnote 1: He "gave it the name of Isla Santa," says Irving (vol. ii. p.
140), "little imagining that he now, for the first time, beheld that
continent, that Terra Firma, which had been the object of his earnest search."
The reader of this passage should bear in mind that the continent of South
America, which nobody had ever heard of, was not the object of Columbus's
search.  The Terra Firma which was the object of his search was the mainland
of Asia, and that he never beheld, though he felt positively sure that he had
already set foot upon it in 1492 and 1494.]

[Footnote 1: A modern traveller thus describes this river: "Right and left of
us lay, at some distance off, the low banks of the Apure, at this point quite
a broad stream.  But before us the waters spread out like a wide dark flood,
limited on the horizon only by a low black streak, and here and there showing
a few distant hills.  This was the Orinoco, rolling with irrepressible power
and majesty sea-wards, and often upheaving its billows like the ocean when
lashed to fury by the wind.... The Orinoco sends a current of fresh water far
into the ocean, its waters - generally green, but in the shallows milk-white -
contrasting sharply with the indigo blue of the surrounding sea." Bates,
Central America, the West Indies, and South America, 2d ed., London, 1882, pp.
234, 235.  The island of Trinidad forms an obstacle to the escape of this huge
volume of fresh water, and hence the furious commotion at the two outlets, the
Serpent's Mouth and Dragon's Mouth, especially in July and August, when the
Orinoco is swollen with tropical rains.]

[Footnote 2: In Columbus's own words, in his letter to the sovereigns
describing this third voyage, "Y digo que ... viene este rio y procede de
tierra infinita, pues al austro, de la cual fasta agora no se ha habido
noticia." Navarrete, Coleccion, tom. i. p. 262.]

     In spite of the correctness of this surmise, Columbus was still as far
from a true interpretation of the whole situation as when he supposed
Hispaniola to be Ophir.  He entered upon a series of speculations which
forcibly remind us how empirical was the notion of the earth's rotundity
before the inauguration of physical astronomy by Galileo, Kepler, and Newton.
We now know that our planet has the only shape possible for such a rotating
mass that once was fluid or nebulous, the shape of a spheroid slightly
protuberant at the equator and flattened at the poles; but this knowledge is
the outcome of mechanical principles utterly unknown and unsuspected in the
days of Columbus.  He understood that the earth is a round body, but saw no
necessity for its being strictly spherical or spheroidal.  He now suggested
that it was probably shaped like a pear, rather a blunt and corpulent pear,
nearly spherical in its lower part, but with a short, stubby apex in the
equatorial region somewhere beyond the point which he had just reached.  He
fancied he had been sailing up a gentle slope from the burning glassy sea
where his ships had been becalmed to this strange and beautiful coast where he
found the climate enchanting.  If he were to follow up the mighty river just
now revealed, it might lead him to the summit of this apex of the world, the
place where the terrestrial paradise, the Garden which the Lord planted
eastward in Eden, was in all probability situated! ^1

[Footnote 1: Thus would be explained the astounding force with which the water
was poured down.  It was common in the Middle Ages to imagine the terrestial
paradise at the top of a mountain.  See Dante, Purgatorio, canto xxviii.
Columbus quotes many authorities in favour of his opinion.  The whole letter
is worth reading.  See Navarrete, tom. i. pp. 242-264.]

     As Columbus still held to the opinion that by keeping to the west from
that point he should soon reach the coast of Cochin China, his conception of
the position of Eden is thus pretty clearly indicated.  He imagined it as
situated about on the equator, upon a continental mass till then unknown, but
evidently closely connected with the continent of Asia if not a part of it.
If he had lived long enough to hear of Quito and its immense elevation, I
should suppose that might very well have suited his idea of the position of
Eden.  The coast of this continent, upon which he had now arrived, was either
continuous with the coast of Cochin China (Cuba) and Malacca, or would be
found to be divided from it by a strait through which one might pass directly
into the Indian ocean.

     It took some little time for this theory to come to maturity in the mind
of Columbus.  Not expecting to find any mainland in that quarter, he began by
calling different points of the coast different islands.  Coming out through
the passage which he named Dragon's Mouth, he caught distant glimpses of
Tobago and Grenada to starboard, and turning westward followed the Pearl Coast
as far as the islands of Margarita and Cubagua.  The fine pearls which he
found there in abundance confirmed him in the good opinion he had formed of
that country.  By this time, the 15th of August, he had so far put facts
together as to become convinced of the continental character of that coast,
and would have been glad to pursue it westward.  But now his strength gave
out.  During most of the voyage he had suffered acute torments with gout, his
temperature had been very feverish, and his eyes were at length so exhausted
with perpetual watching that he could no longer make observations.  So he left
the coast a little beyond Cubagua, and steered straight for Hispaniola, aiming
at San Domingo, but hitting the island of Beata because he did not make
allowance for the westerly flow of the currents.  He arrived at San Domingo on
the 30th of August, and found his brother Bartholomew, whom he intended to
send at once on a further cruise along the Pearl Coast, while he himself
should be resting and recovering strength.

     But alas!  there was to be no cruising now for the younger brother nor
rest for the elder.  It was a sad story that Bartholomew had to tell.  War
with the Indians had broken out afresh, and while the Adelantado was engaged
in this business a scoundrel named Roldan had taken advantage of his absence
to stir up civil strife.  Roldan's rebellion was a result of the ill-advised
mission of Aguado.  The malcontents in the colony interpreted the Admiral's
long stay in Spain as an indication that he had lost favour with the
sovereigns and was not coming back to the island.  Gathering together a strong
body of rebels, Roldan retired to Xaragua and formed an alliance with the
brother of the late chieftain Caonabo.  By the time the Admiral arrived the
combination of mutiny with barbaric warfare had brought about a frightful
state of things.  A party of soldiers, sent by him to suppress Roldan,
straightway deserted and joined that rebel.  It thus became necessary to come
to terms with Roldan, and this revelation of the weakness of the government
only made matters worse.  Two wretched years were passed in attempts to
restore order in Hispaniola, while the work of discovery and exploration was
postponed.  Meanwhile the items of information that found their way to Spain
were skilfully employed by Fonseca in poisoning the minds of the sovereigns,
until at last they decided to send out a judge to the island, armed with
plenary authority to make investigations and settle disputes.  The glory which
Columbus had won by the first news of the discovery of the Indies had now to
some extent faded away.  The enterprise yielded as yet no revenue and entailed
great expense; and whenever some reprobate found his way back to Spain, the
malicious Fonseca prompted him to go to the treasury with a claim for pay
alleged to have been wrongfully withheld by the Admiral.  Ferdinand Columbus
tells how some fifty such scamps were gathered one day in the courtyard of the
Alhambra, cursing his father and catching hold of the king's robe, crying,
"Pay us!  pay us!" and as he and his brother Diego, who were pages in the
queen's service, happened to pass by, they were greeted with hoots: - "There
go the sons of the Admiral of Mosquito-land, the man who has discovered a land
of vanity and deceit, the grave of Spanish gentlemen!" ^1

[Footnote 1: "Ecco i figliuoli dell' Ammiraglio de' Mosciolini, di colui che
ha trovate terre di vanita e d'inganno, per sepoltura e miseria de'
gentiluomini castigliani." Vita dell' Ammiraglio, cap. lxxxiv.]

     An added sting was given to such taunts by a great event that happened
about this time.  In the summer of 1497, Vasco da Gama started from Lisbon for
the Cape of Good Hope, and in the summer of 1499 he returned, after having
doubled the cape and crossed the Indian ocean to Calicut on the Malabar coast
of Hindustan.  His voyage was the next Portuguese step sequent upon that of
Bartholomew Dias.  There was nothing questionable or dubious about Gama's
triumph.  He had seen splendid cities, talked with a powerful Rajah, and met
with Arab vessels, their crews madly jealous at the unprecedented sight of
Christian ships in those waters; and he brought back with him to Lisbon
nutmegs and cloves, pepper and ginger, rubies and emeralds, damask robes with
satin linings, bronze chairs with cushions, trumpets of carved ivory, a
sunshade of crimson satin, a sword in a silver scabbard, and no end of such
gear. ^2 An old civilization had been found and a route of commerce
discovered, and a factory was to be set up at once on that Indian coast.  What
a contrast to the miserable performance of Columbus, who had started with the
flower of Spain's chivalry for rich Cipango, and had only led them to a land
where they must either starve or do work fit for peasants, while he spent his
time in cruising among wild islands!  The king of Portugal could now snap his
fingers at Ferdinand and Isabella, and if a doubt should have sometimes
crossed the minds of those chagrined sovereigns, as to whether this plausible
Genoese mariner might not, after all, be a humbug or a crazy enthusiast, we
can hardly wonder at it.

[Footnote 2: Major, Prince Henry the Navigator, pp. 398-401.]