The Life of Columbus by Arthur Helps

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Transcribers Notes:

Several non-English proper names have been rendered in ASCI, omitting the
proper accents.

Page headers have been moved to the beginning of the appropriate paragraph
and several very long paragraphs have been split to correspond to the page
headers. See the DOC or PDF versions for the original pagination and map
images.

The following glossary provides references and definitions of unfamiliar
(to me) terms and names.

Adelantado
Governor or commander. Refers to Don Bartholomew Columbus (brother of
Christopher) in this volume.

Angelic Doctor:
Thomas Aquinas

Arroba
In Spanish-speaking countries, a weight of about 25 pounds.
In Portuguese-speaking countries, about 32 pounds.

Aught
Anything whatever.

Bartholomew Columbus
Brother of Christopher Columbus.

Cacique
Title for an Indian chief in the Spanish West Indies.

Ca da Mosto or Cadamosto
Alvise Ca' da Mosto, (1432-1488) Venetian explorer and trader who wrote
early accounts of western African exploration.

Caonabo
Cacique (chief) who destroyed Columbus's first garrison at La Navidad.

Cave of Adullam
About 13 miles west of Bethlehem where David gathered "every one that
was in distress, and every one that was in debt, and every one that was
discontented" (1 Sam. 22:2).

Cipango
Japan.

Compeer
Person of equal status; a peer.

Contumely
Contempt arising from arrogance; insolence.

Cosmography
Study of the universe, including geography and astronomy.

Diego Columbus
Son of Columbus and Donna Felipa

Don Diego Columbus
Brother of Columbus

Donna Felipa Munnis Perestrelo
Wife of Christopher Columbus. Daughter of the first governor of Porto
Santo. Only issue was Diego.

Dragon's blood
Thick red liquid from a palm (Daemonorops draco) in tropical Asia;
formerly used in varnishes and lacquers.

Encomienda
A grant entitling Spaniards to land plus the Native American inhabitants
of that land. The land and its inhabitants.

Fernando Columbus
Son of Christopher Columbus and Beatrice.

Friesland
Located in Europe on the North Sea between the Scheldt and Weser rivers.
Now a province of the northern Netherlands.

Galliot
Light, swift galley.

Gyve
Shackle for the leg.

Las Casas
Bartlome de las Casas is the chief source of information about the
islands after Columbus arrived. Other historians overlooked the Indian
slave trade, begun by Columbus; Las Casas denounced it as "among the
most unpardonable offenses ever committed against God and mankind."

Machiavelli: Nicolo Machiavelli (1469-1527)
Political philosopher, author of The Prince, that focuses on problems of
a monarch, the foundation of political authority and how to retain
power, rather than pursue ideals.

Maravedis
Spanish currency. One million Maravedis (one cuentos) in 1490 is
equivalent to about 308 English Pounds in 1860, or US$ 48,000 in 2005.

Martyr, Peter
Peter Martyr d'Anghera wrote early accounts of Columbus, Ojeda, Cortes,
and other Spanish explorers.
An Italian humanist from Florence.
Served as tutor in the Spanish court and had direct access to Columbus.
Author of "De Orbe Novo" describing the first European contacts with
native Americans.

Moors
Arabs

Provence
Province of southeast France bordering on the Mediterranean.

Pinzon, Martin Alonzo
Chief shipowner of Palos. Accompanied Columbus as a captain.

Paria, Gulf of
Between Trinidad and Venezuela.

Repartimiento
Spanish, from repartir, to divide.
Distribution of slaves or assessment of taxes.

Tagus
River on the Iberian Peninsula flowing westward
through central Portugal into the Atlantic.

Ultima Thule
Ancient name for northern-most region of the habitable world.

End of Transcribers Note

The Life of Columbus

GEORGE BELL & SONS,
LONDON: YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN
NEW YORK: 66, FIFTH AVENUE, AND
BOMBAY: 53, ESPLANADE ROAD
CAMBRIDGE: DEIGHTON, BELL & CO.

THE LIFE OF COLUMBUS

CHIEFLY BY
SIR ARTHUR HELPS K.C.B.
AUTHOR OF "THE SPANISH CONQUEST IN AMERICA"
"FRIENDS IN COUNCIL" ETC.

LONDON
GEORGE BELL AND SONS
1897

First published 1868.
Reprinted 1869, 1873, 1874, 1877, 1878, 1881,
1883, 1887, 1890, 1892.
Included in Bohn's Standard Library, 1896,
Reprinted 1897.

TO
WILLIAM HENRY STONE,
THIS LIFE OF COLUMBUS
IS DEDICATED
WITH SINCERE ESTEEM AND REGARD
BY HIS AFFECTIONATE.
FRIEND,
ARTHUR HELPS.
London, October, 1868

PREFACE.

This Life of Columbus is one of a series of biographies prepared under my
superintendence, and for the most part taken verbatim from my "History of
the Spanish Conquest in America."

That work was written chiefly with a view to illustrate the history of
slavery, and not to give full accounts of the deeds of the discoverers and
conquerors of the New World, much less to give a condensed memoir of each
of them.

It has, therefore, been necessary to rearrange and add considerably to
these materials, and for this assistance I am indebted to the skill and
research of Mr. Herbert Preston Thomas.

Perhaps there are few of the great personages in history who have been
more talked about and written about than Christopher Columbus, the
discoverer of America. It might seem, therefore, that there is very little
that is new to be said about him. I do not think, however, that this is
altogether the case. Absorbed in, and to a certain extent overcome by the
contemplation of the principal event, we have sometimes, perhaps, been
mistaken as to the causes which led to it. We are apt to look upon
Columbus as a person who knew that there existed a great undiscovered
continent, and who made his way directly to the discovery of that
continent--springing at one bound from the known to the unknown. Whereas,
the dream of Columbus's life was to make his way by an unknown route to
what was known, or to what he considered to be known. He wished to find
out an easy pathway to the territories of Kublai Khan, or Prester-John.

Neither were his motives such as have been generally supposed. They were,
for the most part, purely religious. With the gold gained from potentates
such as Kublai Khan, the Holy Sepulchre was to be rebuilt, and the
Catholic Faith was to be spread over the remotest parts of the earth.

Columbus had all the spirit of a crusader, and, at the same time, the
investigating nature of a modern man of science. The Arabs have a proverb
that a man is more the son of the age in which he lives than of his own
father. This was not so with Columbus; he hardly seems to belong at all to
his age. At a time when there was never more of worldliness and
self-seeking; when Alexander Borgia was Pope; when Louis the Eleventh
reigned in France, Henry the Seventh in England, and Ferdinand the
Catholic in Arragon and Castille--about the three last men in the world to
become crusaders--Columbus was penetrated with the ideas of the twelfth
century, and would have been a worthy companion of Saint Louis in that
pious king's crusade.

Again, at a time when Aristotle and "the Angelic Doctor" ruled the minds
of men with an almost unexampled tyranny: when science was more dogmatic
than theology; when it was thought a sufficient and satisfactory
explanation to say that bodies falling to the earth descended because it
is their nature to descend--Columbus regarded natural phenomena with the
spirit of inductive philosophy that would belong to a follower of Lord
Bacon.

Perhaps it will be found that a very great man seldom does belong to his
period, as other men do to theirs. Machiavelli [1] says that the way to
renovate states is always to go back to first principles, especially to
the first principles upon which those states were founded. The same law,
if law it be, may hold good as regards the renovation of any science, art,
or mode of human action. The man who is too closely united in thought and
feeling with his own age, is seldom the man inclined to go back to these
first principles.

[Footnote 1: Machiavelli was contemporary with Columbus. No two men
could have been more dissimilar; and Machiavelli was thoroughly a
product of his age, and a man who entirely belonged to it.]

It is very noticeable in Columbus that he was it most dutiful, unswerving,
and un-inquiring son of the Church. The same man who would have taken
nothing for granted in scientific research, and would not have held
himself bound by the authority of the greatest names in science, never
ventured for a moment to trust himself as a discoverer on the perilous sea
of theological investigation.

In this respect Las Casas, though a churchman, was very different from
Columbus. Such doctrines as that the Indians should be somewhat civilized
before being converted, and that even baptism might be postponed to
instruction,--doctrines that would have found a ready acceptance from the
good bishop--would have met with small response from the soldierly
theology of Columbus.

The whole life of Columbus shows how rarely men of the greatest insight
and foresight, and also of the greatest perseverance, attain the exact
ends they aim at. In this respect all such men partake the career of the
alchemists, who did not transmute other metals into gold, but made
valuable discoveries in chemistry. So, with Columbus. He did not rebuild
the Holy Sepulchre; he did not lead a new crusade; he did not find his
Kublai Khan, or his Prester John; but he brought into relation the New
World and the Old.

It is impossible to read without the deepest interest the account from day
to day of his voyages. It has always been a favourite speculation with
historians, and, indeed, with all thinking men, to consider what would
have happened from a slight change of circumstances in the course of
things which led to great events. This may be an idle and a useless
speculation, but it is an inevitable one. Never was there such a field for
this kind of speculation as in the voyages, especially the first one, of
Columbus. The first point of land that he saw, and landed at, is as nearly
as possible the central point of what must once have been the United
Continent of North and South America. The least change of circumstance
might have made an immense difference in the result. The going to sleep of
the helmsman, the unshipping of the rudder, (which did occur in the case
of "The Pinzon,") the slightest mistake in taking an observation, might
have made, and probably did make, considerable change in the event. During
that memorable first voyage of Columbus, the gentlest breeze carried with
it the destinies of future empires. Had he made his first discovery of
land at a point much southward of that which he did discover, South
America might have been colonized by the Spaniards with all the vigour
that belonged to their first efforts at colonization; and, being a
continent, might not afterwards have been so easily wrested from their
sway by the maritime nations.

On the other hand, had some breeze, big with the fate of nations, carried
Columbus northwards, it would hardly have been left for the English, more
than a century afterwards, to found those Colonies which have proved to be
the seeds of the greatest nation that the world is likely to behold.

It was, humanly speaking, singularly unfortunate for Spanish dominion in
America, that the earliest discoveries of the Spaniards were those of the
West India Islands. A multiplicity of governors introduced confusion,
feebleness, and want of system, into colonial government. The numbers,
comparatively few, of the original inhabitants in each island, were
rapidly removed from the scene of action; and the Spaniards lacked, at the
beginning, that compressing force which would have been found in the
existence of a body of natives who could not have been removed by the
outrages of Spanish cruelty, the strength of Spanish liquors, or the
virulence of Spanish diseases.[Footnote 2]

[Footnote 2: The smallpox, for instance, was a disease introduced by the
Spaniards, which the comparatively feeble constitution of the Indians
could not withstand.]

The Monarchs of Spain, too, would have been compelled to treat their new
discoveries and conquests more seriously. To have held the country at all,
they must have held it well. It would not have been Ovandos, Bobadillas,
Nicuesas and Ojedas who could have been employed to govern, discover,
conquer, colonize--and ruin by their folly--the Spanish possessions in the
Indies. The work of discovery and conquest, begun by Columbus, must then
have been entrusted to men like Cortes, the Pizarros, Vasco Nunez, or the
President Gasca; and a colony or a kingdom founded by any of these men
might well have remained a great colony, or a great kingdom, to the
present day.
ARTHUR HELPS.
London, October, 1868.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.
Early Discoveries in the Fifteenth Century

CHAPTER II.
Early Years of Columbus

CHAPTER III.
Columbus in Spain

CHAPTER IV.
First Voyage

CHAPTER V.
Homeward bound

CHAPTER VI.
Second Voyage of Discovery

CHAPTER VII.
Illness; Further Discoveries; Plots against Columbus

CHAPTER VIII.
Criminals sent to the Indies; Repartimientos; Insurrection

CHAPTER IX.
Columbus's Third Voyage

CHAPTER X.
Arrival at Hispaniola; Bad Treatment by Bobadlilla

CHAPTER XI.
Columbus pleads his Cause at Court; New Enterprise; Ovando

CHAPTER XII.
Remarkable Despatch; Mutiny;
Eclipse predicted, and its influence; Mutiny quelled

CHAPTER XIII.
Falling Fortunes: Conclusion

CHAPTER I. Early Discoveries in the Fifteenth Century.

LEGENDS OF THE SEA.

Modern familiarity with navigation renders it difficult for us to
appreciate adequately the greatness of the enterprise which was undertaken
by the discoverers of the New World. Seen by the light of science and of
experience, the ocean, if it has some real terrors, has no imaginary ones.
But it was quite otherwise in the fifteenth century. Geographical
knowledge was but just awakening, after ages of slumber; and throughout
those ages the wildest dreams had mingled fiction with fact. Legends
telling of monsters of the deep, jealous of invasion of their territory;
of rocks of lodestone, powerful enough to extract every particle of iron
from a passing ship; of stagnant seas and fiery skies; of wandering saints
and flying islands; all combined to invest the unknown with the terrors of
the supernatural, and to deter the explorer of the great ocean. The
half-decked vessels that crept along the Mediterranean shores were but
ill-fitted to bear the brunt of the furious waves of the Atlantic. The now
indispensable sextant was but clumsily anticipated by the newly invented
astrolabe. The use of the compass had scarcely become familiar to
navigators, who indeed but imperfectly understood its properties. And who
could tell, it was objected, that a ship which might succeed in sailing
down the waste of waters would ever be able to return, for would not the
voyage home be a perpetual journey up a mountain of sea?

INCITEMENTS TO DISCOVERY.

But the same tradition which set forth the difficulties of reaching the
undiscovered countries promised a splendid reward to the successful
voyager. Rivers rolling down golden sand, mountains shining with priceless
gems, forests fragrant with rich spices were among the substantial
advantages to be expected as the result of the enterprise. "Our quest
there," said Peter Martyr, "is not for the vulgar products of Europe." The
proverb "Omne ignotum pro magnifico" [Transcribers's note: Everything
unknown is taken for magnificent.] was abundantly illustrated. And there
was another object, besides gain, which was predominant in the minds of
almost all the early explorers, namely, the spread of the Christian
religion. This desire of theirs, too, seems to have been thoroughly
genuine and deep-seated; and it may be doubted whether the discoveries
would have been made at that period but for the impulse given to them by
the most religious minds longing to promote, by all means in their power,
the spread of what, to them, was the only true and saving faith. "I do
not," says a candid historian [Faria y Sousa] of that age, "imagine that
I shall persuade the world that our intent was only to be preachers; but
on the other hand the world must not fancy that our intent was merely to
be traders," There is much to blame in the conduct of the first
discoverers in Africa and America; it is, however, but just to acknowledge
that the love of gold was by no means the only motive which urged them to
such endeavours as theirs. To appreciate justly the intensity of their
anxiety for the conversion of the heathen, we must keep in our minds the
views then universally entertained of the merits and efficacy of mere
formal communion with the Church, and the fatal consequences of not being
within that communion.

EARLY ADVENTURERS.

This will go a long way towards explaining the wonderful inconsistency, as
it seems to us, of the most cruel and wicked men believing themselves to
be good Christians and eminent promoters of the faith, if only they
baptized, before they slew, their fellow-creatures. And the maintenance of
such church principles will altogether account for the strange oversights
which pure and high minds have made in the means of carrying out those
principles, fascinated as they were by the brilliancy and magnitude of the
main object they had in view.

But while piety, sometimes debased into religious fanaticism, had a large
part in these undertakings, doubtless the love of adventure and the
craving for novelty had their influence also. And what adventure it was!
New trees, new men, new animals, new stars; nothing bounded, nothing
trite, nothing which had the bloom taken off it by much previous
description! The early voyagers moreover, were like children coming out to
take their first gaze into the world, with ready credulity and unlimited
fancy, willing to believe in fairies and demons, Amazons and mystic
islands, "forms of a lower hemisphere," and fountains of perpetual youth.

MEDIAEVAL MAP OF THE WORLD; THE ROMAN DOMINION.

The known world, in the time of Prince Henry of Portugal (at whose
discoveries it will be convenient to take a preliminary glance), was a
very small one indeed. The first thing for us to do is to study our maps
and charts. Without frequent reference to these, a narrative like the
present forms in our mind only a mirage of names and dates and facts, is
wrongly apprehended even while we are regarding it, and soon vanishes
away. The map of the world being before us, let us reduce it to the
proportions it filled in Prince Henry's time; let us look at our infant
world. First take away those two continents, for so we may almost call
them, each much larger than a Europe, to the far west. Then cancel that
square massive looking piece to the extreme south-east; its days of penal
settlements and of golden fortunes are yet to come. Then turn to Africa;
instead of that form of inverted cone which it presents, and which we now
know there are physical reasons for its presenting, make a scimetar shape
of it, by running a slightly curved line from Juba on the eastern side to
Cape Nam on the western. Declare all below that line unknown. Hitherto, we
have only been doing the work of destruction; but now scatter emblems of
hippogriffs and anthropophagi on the outskirts of what is left on the map,
obeying a maxim, not confined to the ancient geographers only: "Where you
know nothing, place terrors." Looking at the map thus completed, we can
hardly help thinking to ourselves, with a smile, what a small space,
comparatively speaking, the known history of the world has been transacted
in, up to the last four hundred years. The idea of the universality of the
Roman dominion shrinks a little; and we begin to think that Ovid might
have escaped his tyrant.[3] The ascertained confines of the world were
now, however, to be more than doubled in the course of one century; and to
Prince Henry of Portugal, as the first promoter of these vast discoveries,
our attention must be directed.

[Footnote 3: But the empire of the Romans filled the world; and when that
empire fell into the hands of a single person, the world became a safe
and dreary prison for his enemies. The slave of imperial despotism,
whether he was condemned to drag the gilded chain in Rome and his
senate, or to wear out a life of exile on the barren rocks of Seriphus,
or the frozen banks of the Danube, expected his fate in silent despair.
To resist was fatal, and it was impossible to fly. On every side he was
encompassed with a vast extent of sea and land, which he could never
hope to traverse without being discovered, seized, and restored to his
irritated master. GIBBON'S Decline and Fall, vol. i. p. 97, Oxford
Edition.]

[Illustration: Contemporary map of the world.]

[Illustration: 1490 map of the world includes only Europe, Asia and the
northern 1/4 of Africa. Excludes the Americas, Greenland, and
Australia.]

PRINCE HENRY OF PORTUGAL; HIS MOTIVES FOR DISCOVERY.

This prince was born in 1394. He was the third son of John the First of
Portugal and Philippa, the daughter of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster.
That good Plantagenet blood on the mother's side was, doubtless, not
without avail to a man whose life was to be spent in continuous and
insatiate efforts to work out a great idea. Prince Henry was with his
father at the memorable capture of Ceuta, the ancient Seplem, in the year
1415. This town, which lies opposite to Gibraltar, was of great
magnificence, and one of the principal marts in that age for the
productions of the eastern world. It was here that the Portuguese
first planted a firm foot in Africa; and the date of this town's capture
may, perhaps, be taken as that from which Prince Henry began to meditate
further and far greater conquests. His aims, however, were directed to a
point long beyond the range of the mere conquering soldier. He was
especially learned, for that age of the world, being skilled in
mathematical and geographical knowledge. He eagerly acquired from Moors of
Fez and Morocco, such scanty information as could be gathered concerning
the remote districts of Africa. The shrewd conjectures of learned men, the
confused records of Arabic geographers, the fables of chivalry, were not
without their influence upon an enthusiastic mind. The especial reason
which impelled the prince to take the burden of discovery on himself was
that neither mariner nor merchant would be likely to adopt an enterprise
in which there was no clear hope of profit. It belonged, therefore, to
great men and princes; and amongst such, he knew of no one but himself who
was inclined to it. This is not an uncommon motive. A man sees something
that ought to be done, knows of no one that will do it but himself, and so
is driven to the enterprise even should it be repugnant to him.

[Illustration: MAP OF WESTERN AFRICAN COAST.]

IMPORTANT EXPEDITION

Prince Henry, then, having once the well-grounded idea in his mind that
Africa did not end, according to the common belief, at Cape Nam
[Portuguese for "not"], but that there was a region beyond that forbidding
negative, seems never to have rested until he had made known that quarter
of the world to his own. He fixed his abode upon the promontory of Sagres,
at the southern part of Portugal, whence, for many a year, he could watch
for the rising specks of white sail bringing back his captains to tell him
of new countries and new men.

One night, in the year 1418, he is thought to have had a dream of promise,
for on the ensuing morning he suddenly ordered two vessels to be got ready
forthwith, and placed them under the command of two gentlemen of his
household, Zarco and Vaz, whom he directed to proceed down the Barbary
coast on a voyage of discovery. A contemporary chronicler, Azurara, tells
the story more simply, and merely states that these captains were young
men, who, after the ending of the Ceuta campaign, were as eager for
employment as the prince for discovery; and that they were ordered on a
voyage having for its object the general molestation of the Moors as well
as the prosecution of discoveries beyond Cape Nam.

DISCOVERY OF PORTO SANTO.

The Portuguese mariners had a proverb about the Cape, "He who would pass
Cape Not either will return or not," [Quem passar o Cabo de Nam, ou
tornara ou nam], intimating that if he did not turn before passing the
Cape he would never return at all. On this occasion it was not destined to
be passed, for the two captains were driven out of their course by storms,
and accidentally discovered a little island, where they took refuge, and
which, from that circumstance, they called Porto Santo. On their return
their master was delighted with the news they brought him, more on account
of its promise than its substance. In the same year he sent them out again
with a third captain, Bartholomew Perestrelo, to convey a supply of seeds
and animals for the newly-found island. Unfortunately, however, among the
animals were some rabbits, which multiplied so rapidly that they
overspread the whole island, and, by devouring every plant and blade of
grass which grew there, soon changed a fruitful land into a bare
wilderness.

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