THIS "True Story
of Christopher Columbus" is offered and inscribed to the boys and girls of
America as the opening volume in a series especially designed for their
reading, and to be called "Children's Lives of Great Men." In this
series the place of honor, or rather of position, is given to Columbus the
Admiral, because had it not been for him and for his pluck and faith and
perseverance there might have been no young Americans, such as we know to-day,
to read or care about the world's great men.
Columbus led the
American advance; he discovered the New World; he left a record of persistence
in spite of discouragement and of triumph over all obstacles, that has been the
inspiration and guide for Americans ever since his day, and that has led them
to work on in faith and hope until the end they strove for was won.
"The True Story of
Christopher Columbus" will be followed by the "true story" of
others who have left names for us to honor and revere, who have made the world
better because they lived, and who have helped to make and to develop American
freedom, strength and progress.
It will be the endeavor
to have all these presented in the simple, straightforward, earnest way that
appeals to children, and shows how the hero can be the man, and the man the
hero.
CHAPTER I.
A BOY WITH AN IDEA . . . 11
CHAPTER II.
WHAT PEOPLE THOUGHT OF THE IDEA . . . 23
CHAPTER III.
HOW COLUMBUS GAINED A QUEEN FOR HIS FRIEND . . . 34
CHAPTER IV.
HOW THE ADMIRAL SAILED AWAY . . . 48
CHAPTER V.
HOW THEY FARED ON THE SEA OF DARKNESS . . . 59
CHAPTER VI.
WHAT COLUMBUS DISCOVERED . . . 66
CHAPTER VII.
HOW A BOY BROUGHT THE ADMIRAL TO GRIEF . . . 82
CHAPTER VIII.
TRYING IT AGAIN . . . 92
CHAPTER IX.
NOW THE TROUBLES OF THE ADMIRAL BEGAN . . . 103
CHAPTER X.
FROM PARADISE TO PRISON . . . 112
CHAPTER XI.
HOW THE ADMIRAL CAME AND WENT AGAIN . . . 124
CHAPTER XII.
HOW THE ADMIRAL PLAYED ROBINSON CRUSOE . . . 141
CHAPTER XIII.
THE END OF THE STORY . . . 157
CHAPTER XIV.
HOW THE STORY TURNS OUT . . . 173
"The Boys pointing
after him would Call him 'the crazy Explorer.'" Frontis.
Sailing to distant
Lands 12
The Birthplace of
Columbus 13
Bound around Africa 18
Genoa, the Birthplace
of Columbus 16
"Golden
Cathay" 17
First inspirations of
Columbus 19
Columbus at Thirty 21
What Folks Thought
Lived in the "Jumping-off Place" 22
The Round Earth 24
A Dream of Cathay 25
A Wise Old Scholar 28
The Room in the Convent
of Rabida in which they Talked it Over 31
The Treasures of Cathay
34
The Convent of Rabida
where Columbus Found Friends 35
Looking toward Cathay
37
The City Gate of Santa
Fé 40
The Alhambra at Granada
40
Columbus at Granada
Explaining his Ideas to Queen Isabella 41
The World as Columbus
Knew, it when he Went to School 43
The Bridge of Pinos
where the Queen's Messenger found Columbus 46
The Church of St.
George at Palos 40
The Santa Maria, the
Flag-ship of Columbus 51
What Pedro the Cabin
Boy Expected to become in Cathay 54
The Departure from
Palos 55
Good-by, Columbus! 57
The Two Owners 59
The Three Caravels 61
A City in the Sea 63
Watching for Land 64
The Night before the
Discovery 65
Columbus Sees a Light
67
The Landing of Columbus
(From a German picture) 71
The Place where
Columbus Landed 74
The Landing of Columbus
(From the painting in the Capitol) 75
"They have Come
from Heaven," they Said 77
The Tropic Islands 78
The New Land 79
Captain Alonso Pinzon
82
Fort La Navidad 84
Columbus Received by
Ferdinand and Isabella at Barcelona 87
Columbus has Come 89
Looking at the
Procession 90
Columbus Telling his
Adventures to Juan Perez at Rabida 91
The Harbor of Cadiz 93
"He saw the
Hill-tops of Dominica" 94
The Lurking Indian 95
Caonabo and his Braves
97
The Tower of the Fort
99
The Ruins of Isabella
99
The Grumblers 101
Statue of Leif Ericsson
in Boston 101
Along the Shore of Cuba
104
Columbus in the Garb of
a Priest 108
The Queen's Messengers
109
Ferdinand and Isabella
110
In Sight of the
mountain Peaks of Trinidad 111
The Three Ships of
Columbus Leaving "Paradise" 113
In the Dragon's Mouth
115
Bartholomew Columbus,
Brother of the Admiral 117
On the Dock at Cadiz
119
Paddles and Pots from
the Indies 120
"He Listened to
the Complaints of all the Black Sheep 121
Feathers and Fruit from
the Indies 123
Columbus in Chains 125
The Man who Wanted to
"Set Matters Straight" 127
The Alhambra 130
The Court of the Lions
in the Alhambra 131
I am still the Admiral
134
The old Castle and
water Batteries at Santo Domingo 135
Getting ready the Gold
Fleet 137
Corner of the City Wall
and Sentry Box, Santo Domingo 138
The Wreck of
Bobadilla's Ship 139
"Broken and
Shattered" 140
Fragment of the
Alhambra 141
Off the Coast of
Honduras 142
"The Galley of the
Cacique" 143
The People of Honduras
see the Ships of the Admiral 146
A Gold Hunt in Veragua
148
On the Mosquito Coast
149
Sir Christopher's Cove
on the Island of Jamaica 150
On the Island of
Jamaica 151
Diego Mendez going for
Help 154
Storm-tossed in the
Indies 155
Seville the Beautiful
156
The Arms of Columbus
158
The Death of Columbus
159
The House in Valladolid
in which Columbus Died 162
A Cloister in the old
Cathedral in Santo Domingo 163
Americus Vespucius 164
Map showing the four
Voyages of Columbus 165
Ruins of the Palace of
Diego in Santo Domingo 168
Spanish Adventurers
Exploring the New Land 169
A Medal of Columbus 172
Two Historic Bridges
174
Independence Hall,
Philadelphia 175
The White City by the
Lake 177
The Discoverer of our
Country 179
The Founder of our
Country 179
The Savior of our
Country 179
The Harbor of New York
City and the Statue of Liberty 180
Looking down the Lagoon
on the World's Fair Grounds 182
The Old and the New 183
A Railway Station in
Philadelphia 185
A Business Street in
Chicago 186
The Dome of the Capitol
186
MEN who do great things
are men we all like to read about. This is the story of Christopher Columbus,
the man who discovered America. He lived four hundred years ago. When he was a
little boy he lived in Genoa. It was a beautiful city in the northwestern part
of the country called Italy. The mountains were behind it; the sea was in front
of it, and it was so beautiful a place that the people who lived there called
it "Genoa the Superb." Christopher Columbus was born in this
beautiful city of Genoa in the year 1446, at number 27 Ponticello Street. He
was a bright little fellow with a fresh-looking face, a clear eye and golden
hair. His father's name was Domenico Columbus; his mother's name was Susanna.
His father was a wool-comber. He cleaned and straightened out the snarled-up
wool that was cut from the sheep so as to make it ready to be woven into cloth.
Christopher helped his
father do this when he grew strong enough, but he went to school, too, and
learned to read and write and to draw maps and charts. These charts were maps
of the sea, to show the sailors where they could steer without running on the
rocks and sand, and how to sail safely from one country to another.
This world was not as
big then as it is now--or, should say, people did not know it was as big. Most
of the lands that Columbus had studied about in school, and most of the people
he had heard about, were in Europe and parts of Asia and Africa. The city of
Genoa where Columbus lived was a very busy and a very rich city. It was on the
Mediterranean Sea, and many of the people who lived there were sailors who went
in their ships on voyages to distant lands. They sailed to other places on the
Mediterranean Sea, which is a very large body of water, you know, and to
England, to France, to Norway, and even as far away as the cold northern island
of Iceland. This was thought to be a great journey.
The time in which Columbus
lived was not as nice a time as is this in which you live. People were always
quarreling and fighting about one thing or another, and the sailors who
belonged to one country would try to catch and steal the ships or the things
that belonged to the sailors or the storekeepers of another country. This is
what we call piracy, and a pirate, you know, is thought to be a very wicked
man.
But when Columbus
lived, men did not think it was so very wicked to be a sort of half-way pirate,
although they did know that they would be killed if they were caught. So almost
every sailor was about half pirate. Every boy who lived near the seashore and
saw the ships and the sailors, felt as though he would like to sail away to
far-off lands and see all the strange sights and do all the brave things that
the sailors told about. Many of them even said they would like to be pirates
and fight with other sailors, and show how strong and brave and plucky they
could be.
Columbus was one of
these. He was what is called an adventurous boy. He did not like to stay
quietly at home with his father and comb out the tangled wool. He thought it
would be much nicer to sail away to sea and be a brave captain or a rich
merchant.
When he was about
fourteen years old he really did go to sea. There was a captain of a sailing
vessel that sometimes came to Genoa who had the same last name--Columbus. He
was no relation, but the little Christopher somehow got acquainted with him
among the wharves of Genoa. Perhaps he had run on errands for him, or helped
him with some of the sea-charts he knew so well how to draw. At any rate he
sailed away with this Captain Columbus as his cabin boy, and went to the wars
with him and had quite an exciting life for a boy.
Sailors are very fond
of telling big stories about their own adventures or about far-off lands and
countries. Columbus, listened to many of these sea-stories, and heard many
wonderful things about a very rich land away to the East that folks called
Cathay.
If you look in your
geographies you will not find any such place on the map as Cathay, but you will
find China, and that was what men in the time of Columbus called Cathay. They
told very big stories about this far-off Eastern land. They said its kings
lived in golden houses, that they were covered with pearls and diamonds, and
that everybody there was so rich that money was as plentiful as the stones in
the street.
This, of course, made
the sailors and storekeepers, who were part pirate, very anxious to go to
Cathay and get some of the gold and jewels and spices and splendor for
themselves. But Cathay was miles and miles away from Italy and Spain and France
and England. It was away across the deserts and mountains and seas and rivers,
and they had to give it up because they could not sail there.
At last a man whose
name was Marco Polo, and who was a very brave and famous traveler, really did
go there, in spite of all the trouble it took. And when he got back his stories
were so very surprising that men were all the more anxious to find a way to
sail in their ships to Cathay and see it for themselves.
But of course they
could not sail over the deserts and mountains, and they were very much troubled
because they had to give up the idea, until the son of the king of Portugal,
named Prince Henry, said he believed that ships could sail around Africa and so
get to India or "the Indies" as they called that land, and finally to
Cathay.
Just look at your map
again and see what a long, long voyage it would be to sail from Spain and
around Africa to India, China and Japan. It is such a long sail that, as you
know, the Suez Canal was dug some twenty years ago so that ships could sail
through the Mediterranean Sea and out into the Indian Ocean, and not have to go
away around Africa.
But when Columbus was a
boy it was even worse than now, for no one really knew how long Africa was, or
whether ships really could sail around it. But Prince Henry said he knew they
could, and he sent out ships to try. He died before his Portuguese sailors,
Bartholomew Diaz, in 1493, and Vasco de Gama, in 1497, at last did sail around
it and got as far as "the Indies."
So while Prince Henry
was trying to see whether ships could sail around Africa and reach Cathay in
that way, the boy Columbus was listening to the stories the sailors told and
was wondering whether some other and easier way to Cathay might not be found.
When he was at school
he had studied about a certain man named Pythagoras, who had lived in Greece
thousands of years before he was born, and who had said that the earth was
round "like a ball or an orange. " As Columbus grew older and made
maps and studied the sea, and read books and listened to what other people
said, he began to believe that this man named Pythagoras might be right, and
that the earth was round, though everybody declared it was flat. If it is
round, he said to himself, "what is the use of trying to sail around
Africa to get to Cathay? Why not just sail west from Italy or Spain and keep
going right around the world until you strike Cathay? I believe it could be
done," said Columbus.
By this time Columbus
was a man. He was thirty years old and was a great sailor. He had been captain
of a number of vessels; he had sailed north and south and east; he knew all
about a ship and all about the sea. But, though he was so good a sailor, when
he said that he believed the earth was round, everybody laughed at him and said
that he was crazy. "Why, how can the earth be round?" they cried.
"The water would all spill out if it were, and the men who live on the
other side would all be standing on their heads with their feet waving in the
air." And then they laughed all the harder.
But Columbus did not
think it was anything to laugh at. He believed it so strongly, and felt so sure
that he was right, that he set to work to find some king or prince or great
lord to let him have ships and sailors and money enough to try to find a way to
Cathay by sailing out into the West and across the Atlantic Ocean.
Now this Atlantic
Ocean, the western waves of which break upon our rocks and beaches, was thought
in Columbus's day to be a dreadful place. People called it the Sea of Darkness,
because they did not know what was on the other side of it, or what dangers lay
beyond that distant blue rim where the sky and water seem to meet, and which we
call the horizon. They thought the ocean stretched to the end of a flat world,
straight away to a sort of "jumping-off place," and that in this
horrible jumping-off place were giants and goblins and dragons and monsters and
all sorts of terrible things that would catch the ships and destroy them and
the sailors.
So when Columbus said
that he wanted to sail away toward this dreadful jumping-off place, the people
said that he was worse than crazy. They said he was a wicked man and ought to
be punished.
But they could not
frighten Columbus. He kept on trying. He went from place to place trying to get
the ships and sailors he wanted and was bound to have. As you will see in the
next chapter, he tried to get help wherever he thought it could be had. He
asked the people of his own home, the city of Genoa, where he had lived and
played when a boy; he asked the people of the beautiful city that is built in
the sea--Venice; he tried the king of Portugal, the king of England, the king
of France the king and queen of Spain. But for a long time nobody cared to
listen to such a wild and foolish and dangerous plan--to go to Cathay by the
way of the Sea of Darkness and the Jumping-off place. You would never get there
alive, they said.
And so Columbus waited.
And his hair grew white while he waited, though he was not yet an old man. He
had thought and worked and hoped so much that he began to look like an old man
when he was forty years old. But still he would never say that perhaps he was
wrong, after all. He said he knew he was right, and that some day he should
find the Indies and sail to Cathay.
I DO not wish you to
think that Columbus was the first man to say that the earth was round, or the
first to sail to the West over the Atlantic Ocean. He was not. Other men had
said that they believed the earth was round; other men had sailed out into the
Atlantic Ocean. But no sailor who believed the earth was round had ever yet
tried to prove that it was by crossing the Atlantic. So, you see, Columbus was
really the first man to say, I believe the earth is round and I will show you
that it is by sailing to the lands that are on the other side of the earth.
He even figured out how
far it was around the world. Your geography, you know, tells you now that what
is called the circumference of the earth--that is, a straight line drawn right
around it--is nearly twenty-five thousand miles. Columbus had figured it up
pretty carefully and he thought it was about twenty thousand miles. If I could
start from Genoa, he said, and walk straight ahead until I got back to Genoa
again, I should walk about twenty thousand miles. Cathay, he thought, would
take up so much land on the other side of the world that, if he went west
instead of east, he would only need to sail about twenty-five hundred or three
thousand miles.
If you have studied
your geography carefully you will see what a mistake he made.
It is really about
twelve thousand miles from Spain to China (or Cathay as he called it). But
America is just about three thousand miles from Spain, and if you read all this
story you will see how Columbus's mistake really helped him to discover
America.
I have told you that
Columbus had a longing to do something great from the time when, as a little
boy, he had hung around the wharves in Genoa and looked at the ships sailing
east and west and talked with the sailors and wished that he could go to sea.
Perhaps what he had learned at school--how some men said that the earth was
round--and what he had heard on the wharves about the wonders of Cathay set him
to thinking and to dreaming that it might be possible for a ship to sail around
the world without falling off. At any rate, he kept on thinking and dreaming
and longing until, at last, he began doing.
Some of the sailors
sent out by Prince Henry of Portugal, of whom I have told you, in their trying
to sail around Africa discovered two groups of islands out in the Atlantic that
they called the Azores, or Isles of Hawks, and the Canaries, or Isles of Dogs.
When Columbus was in Portugal in 1470 he became acquainted with a young woman
whose name was Philippa Perestrelo. In 1473 he married her.
Now Philippa's father,
before his death, had been governor of Porto Santo, one of the Azores, and
Columbus and his wife went off there to live. In the governor's house Columbus
found a lot of charts and maps that told him about parts of the ocean that he
had never before seen, and made him feel certain that he was right in saying
that if he sailed away to the West he should find Cathay.
At that time there was
an old man who lived in Florence, a city of Italy. His name was Toscanelli. He
was a great scholar and studied the stars and made maps, and was a very wise
man. Columbus knew what a wise old scholar Toscanelli was, for Florence is not
very far from Genoa. So while he was living in the Azores he wrote to this old
scholar asking him what he thought about his idea that a man could sail around
the world until he reached the land called the Indies and at last found Cathay.
Toscanelli wrote to
Columbus saying that he believed his idea was the right one, and he said it
would be a grand thing to do, if Columbus dared to try it. Perhaps, he said,
you can find all those splendid things that I know are in Cathay--the great
cities with marble bridges, the houses of marble covered with gold, the jewels
and the spices and the precious stones, and all the other wonderful and
magnificent things. I do not wonder you wish to try, he said, for if you find
Cathay it will be a wonderful thing for you and for Portugal.
That settled it with
Columbus. If this wise old scholar said he was right, he must be right. So he
left his home in the Azores and went to Portugal. This was in 1475, and from
that time on, for seventeen long years he was trying to get some king or prince
to help him sail to the West to find Cathay.
But not one of the
people who could have helped him, if they had really wished to, believed in
Columbus. As I told you, they said that he was crazy. The king of Portugal,
whose name was John, did a very unkind thing--I am sure you would call it a
mean trick. Columbus had gone to him with his story and asked for ships and
sailors. The king and his chief men refused to help him; but King John said to
himself, perhaps there is something in this worth looking after and, if so,
perhaps I can have my own people find Cathay and save the money that Columbus
will want to keep for himself as his share of what he finds. So one day he
copied off the sailing directions that Columbus had left with him, and gave
them to one of his own captains without letting Columbus know anything about
it. The Portuguese captain sailed away to the West in the direction Columbus
had marked down, but a great storm came up and so frightened the sailors that
they turned around in a hurry. Then they hunted up Columbus and began to abuse
him for getting them into such a scrape. You might as well expect to find land
in the sky, they said, as in those terrible waters.
And when, in this way,
Columbus found out that King John had tried to use his ideas without letting
him know anything about it, he was very angry. His wife had died in the midst
of this mean trick of the Portuguese king, and so, taking with him his little
five-year-old son, Diego, he left Portugal secretly and went over into Spain.
Near the little town of
Palos, in western Spain, is a green hill looking out toward the Atlantic. Upon
this hill stands an old building that, four hundred years ago, was used as a a
convent or home for priests. It was called the Convent of Rabida, and the priest
at the head of it was named the Friar Juan Perez. One autumn day, in the year
1484, Friar Juan Perez saw a dusty traveler with a little boy talking with the
gate-keeper of the convent. The stranger was so tall and fine-looking, and
seemed such an interesting man, that Friar Juan went out and began to talk with
him. This man was Columbus.
As they talked, the
priest grew more and more interested in what Columbus said. He invited him into
the convent to stay for a few days, and he asked some other people--the doctor
of Palos and some of the sea captains and sailors of the town--to come and talk
with this stranger who had such a singular idea about sailing across the
Atlantic.
It ended in Columbus's
staying some months in Palos, waiting for a chance to go and see the king and
queen. At last, in 1485, he set out for the Spanish court with a letter to a
priest who was a friend of Friar Juan's, and who could help him to see the king
and queen.
At that time the king
and queen of Spain were fighting to drive out of Spain the people called the
Moors. These people came from Africa, but they had lived in Spain for many
years and had once been a very rich and powerful nation. They were not
Spaniards; they were not Christians. So all Spaniards and all Christians hated
them and tried to drive them out of Europe.
The king and queen of
Spain who were fighting the Moors were named Ferdinand and Isabella. They were
pretty good people as kings and queens went in those days, but they did a great
many very cruel and very mean things, just as the kings and queens of those
days were apt to do. I am afraid we should not think they were very nice people
nowadays. We certainly should not wish our American boys and girls to look up
to them as good and true and noble.
When Columbus first
came to them, they were with the army in the camp near the city of Cordova. The
king and queen had no time to listen to what they thought were crazy plans, and
poor Columbus could get no one to talk with him who could be of any help. So he
was obliged to go back to drawing maps and selling books to make enough money
to support himself and his little Diego.
But at last, through
the friend of good Friar Juan Perez of Rabida, who was a priest at the court,
and named Talavera, and to whom he had a letter of introduction, Columbus found
a chance to talk over his plans with a number of priests and scholars in the
city of Salamanca where there was a famous college and many learned men.
Columbus told his
story. He said what he wished to do, and asked these learned men to say a good
word for him to Ferdinand and Isabella so that he could have the ships and
sailors to sail to Cathay. But it was of no use.
What! sail away around
the world? those wise men cried in horror. Why, you are crazy. The world is not
round; it is flat. Your ships would tumble off the edge of the world and all
the king's money and all the king's men would be lost. No, no; go away; you
must not trouble the queen or even mention such a ridiculous thing again.
So the most of them said.
But one or two thought it might be worth trying. Cathay was a very rich
country, and if this foolish fellow were willing to run the risk and did
succeed, it would be a good thing for Spain, as the king and queen would need a
great deal of money after the war with the Moors was over. At any rate, it was
a chance worth thinking about.
And so, although
Columbus was dreadfully disappointed, he thought that if he had only a few
friends at Court who were ready to say a good word for him he must not give up,
but must try, try again. And so he staid in Spain.
WHEN you wish very much
to do a certain thing it is dreadfully hard to be patient; it is harder still
to have to wait. Columbus had to do both. The wars against the Moors were of
much greater interest to the king and queen of Spain than was the finding of a
new and very uncertain way to get to Cathay. If it had not been for the
patience and what we call the persistence of Columbus, America would never have
been discovered--at least not in his time.
He staid in Spain. He
grew poorer and, poorer. He was almost friendless. It seemed as if his great
enterprise must be given up. But he never lost hope. He never stopped trying.
Even when he failed he kept on hoping and kept on trying. He felt certain that
sometime he should succeed.
As we have seen, he
tried to interest the rulers of different countries, but with no success. He
tried to get help from his old home-town of Genoa and failed; he tried Portugal
and failed; he tried the Republic of Venice and failed; he tried the king and
queen of Spain and failed; he tried some of the richest and most powerful of
the nobles of Spain and failed; he tried the king of England (whom he got his
brother, Bartholomew Columbus, to go and see) and failed. There was still left
the king of France. He would make one last attempt to win the king and queen of
Spain to his side and if he failed with them he would try the last of the
rulers of Western Europe, the king of France.
He followed the king
and queen of Spain as they went from place to place fighting the Moors. He
hoped that some day, when they wished to think of something besides fighting,
they might think of him and the gold and jewels and spices of Cathay.
The days grew into
months, the months to years, and still the war against the Moors kept on; and
still Columbus waited for the chance that did not come. People grew to know him
as "the crazy explorer" as they met him in the streets or on the church
steps of Seville or Cordova, and even ragged little boys of the town,
sharp-eyed and shrill-voiced as all such ragged little urchins are, would run
after this big man with the streaming white hair and the tattered cloak,
calling him names or tapping their brown little foreheads with their dirty
fingers to show that even they knew that he was "as crazy as a loon."
At last he decided to
make one more attempt before giving it up in Spain. His money was gone; his
friends were few; but he remembered his acquaintances at Palos and so he
journeyed back to see once more his good friend Friar Juan Perez at the Convent
of Rabida on the hill that looked out upon the Atlantic he was so anxious to
cross.
It was in the month of
November, 1491, that he went back to the Convent of Rabida. If he could not get
any encouragement there, he was determined to stay in Spain no longer but to go
away and try the king of France.
Once more he talked
over the finding of Cathay with the priests and the sailors of Palos. They saw
how patient he was; how persistent he was; how he would never give up his ideas
until he had tried them. They were moved by his determination. They began to
believe in him more and more. They resolved to help him. One of the principal
sea captains of Palos was named Martin Alonso Pinzon. He became so interested
that he offered to lend Columbus money enough to make one last appeal to the
king and queen of Spain, and if Columbus should succeed with them, this Captain
Pinzon said that he would go into partnership with Columbus and help him out
when it came to getting ready to sail to Cathay.
This was a move in the
right direction. At once a messenger was sent to the splendid Spanish camp
before the city of Granada, the last unconquered city of the Moors of Spain.
The king and queen of Spain had been so long trying to capture Granada that
this camp was really a city, with gates and walls and houses. It was called
Santa Fé. Queen Isabella, who was in Santa Fé, after some delay, agreed to hear
more about the crazy scheme of this persistent Genoese sailor, and the Friar
Juan Perez was sent for. He talked so well in behalf of his friend Columbus
that the queen became still more interested. She ordered Columbus to come and
see her, and sent him sixty-five dollars to pay for a mule, a new suit of
clothes and the journey to court.
About Christmas time,
in the year 1491, Columbus, mounted upon his mule, rode into the Spanish camp
before the city of Granada. But even now, when he had been told to come, he had
to wait. Granada was almost captured; the Moors were almost conquered. At last
the end came. On the second of January, 1492, the Moorish king gave up the keys
of his beloved city, and the great Spanish banner was hoisted on the highest
tower of the Alhambra--the handsomest building in Granada and one of the most
beautiful in the world. The Moors were driven out of Spain and Columbus's
chance had come.
So he appeared before
Queen Isabella and her chief men and told them again of all his plans and
desires. The queen and her advisers sat in a great room in that splendid
Alhambra I have told you of. King Ferdinand was not there. He did not believe
in Columbus and did not wish to let him have either money, ships or sailors to
lose in such a foolish way. But as Columbus stood before her and talked so
earnestly about how he expected to find the Indies and Cathay and what he hoped
to bring away from there, Queen Isabella listened and thought the plan worth
trying.
Then a singular thing
happened. You would think if you wished for something very much that you would
be willing to give up a good deal for the sake of getting it. Columbus had
worked and waited for seventeen years. He had never got what he wanted. He was
always being disappointed. And yet, as he talked to the queen and told her what
he wished to do, he said he must have so much as a reward for doing it that the
queen and her chief men were simply amazed at his--well, what the boys to-day
call "cheek"--that they would have nothing to do with him. This man
really is crazy, they said. This poor Genoese sailor comes here without a thing
except his very odd ideas. and almost "wants the earth" as a reward.
This is not exactly what they said, but it is what they meant.
His few friends begged
him to be more modest. Do not ask so much, they said, or you will get nothing.
But Columbus was determined. I have worked and waited all these years, he
replied. I know just what I can do and just how much I can do for the king and
queen of Spain. They must pay me what I ask and promise what I say, or I will
go somewhere else. Go, then! said the queen and her advisers. And Columbus
turned his back on what seemed almost his last hope, mounted his mule and rode
away.
Then something else
happened. As Columbus rode off to find the French king, sick and tired of all
his long and useless labor at the Spanish court, his few firm friends there saw
that, unless they did something right away, all the glory and all the gain of
this enterprise Columbus had taught them to believe in would be lost to Spain.
So two of them, whose names were Santangel and Quintanilla, rushed into the
queen's room and begged her, if she wished to become the greatest queen in
Christendom, to call back this wandering sailor, agree to his terms and profit
by his labors.
What if he does ask a
great deal? they said. He has spent his life thinking his plan out; no wonder
he feels that he ought to have a good share of what he finds. What he asks is
really small compared with what Spain will gain. The war with the Moors has
cost you ever so much; your money-chests are empty; Columbus will fill them up.
The people of Cathay are heathen; Columbus will help you make them Christian
men. The Indies and Cathay are full of gold and jewels; Columbus will bring you
home shiploads of treasures. Spain has conquered the Moors; Columbus will help
you conquer Cathay.
In fact, they talked to
Queen Isabella so strongly and so earnestly, that she, too, became excited over
this chance for glory and riches that she had almost lost, Quick! send for
Columbus. Call him back! she said. I agree to his terms. If King Ferdinand
cannot or will not take the risk, I, the queen, will do it all. Quick! do not
let the man get into France. After him. Bring him back!
And without delay a
royal messenger, mounted on a swift horse, was sent at full gallop to bring
Columbus back.
All this time poor
Columbus felt bad enough. Everything had gone wrong. Now he must go away into a
new land and do it all over again. Kings and queens, he felt, were not to be
depended upon, and he remembered a place in the Bible where it said: "Put
not your trust in princes." Sad, solitary and heavy-hearted, he jogged
slowly along toward the mountains, wondering what the king of France would say
to him, and whether it was really worth trying.
Just as he was riding
across the little bridge called the Bridge of Pinos, some six miles from
Granada, he heard the quick hoof-beats of a horse behind him. It was a great
spot for robbers, and Columbus felt of the little money he had in his traveling
pouch, and wondered whether he must lose it all. The hoof-beats came nearer.
Then a voice hailed him. Turn back, turn back! the messenger cried out. The
queen bids you return to Granada. She grants you all you ask.
Columbus hesitated.
Ought he to trust this promise, he wondered. Put not your trust in princes, the
verse in the Bible had said. If I go back I may only be put off and worried as
I have been before. And yet, perhaps she means what she says. At any rate, I
will go back and try once more.
So, on the little
Bridge of Pinos, he turned his mule around and rode back to Granada. And, sure
enough, when he saw Queen Isabella she agreed to all that he asked. If he found
Cathay, Columbus was to be made admiral for life of all the new seas and oceans
into which he might sail; he was to be chief ruler of all the lands he might
find; he was to keep one tenth part of all the gold and jewels and treasures he
should bring away, and was to have his "say" in all questions about
the new lands. For his part (and this was because of the offer of his friend at
Palos, Captain Pinzon) he agreed to pay one eighth of all the expenses of this
expedition and of all new enterprises, and was to have one eighth of all the
profits from them.
So Columbus had his
wish at last. The queen's men figured up how much money they could let him
have; they called him "Don Christopher Columbus," "Your
Excellency" and "Admiral," and at once he set about getting
ready for his voyage.
THE agreement made
between Columbus and the king and queen of Spain was signed on the seventeenth
of April, 1492. But it was four months before he was quite ready to sail away.
He selected the town of
Palos as the place to sail from, because there, as you know, Captain Pinzon
lived; there, too, he had other acquaintances, so that he supposed it would be
easy to get the sailors he needed for his ships. But in this he was greatly
mistaken.
As soon as the papers
had been signed that held the queen to her promise, Columbus set off for Palos.
He stopped at the Convent of Rabida to tell the Friar Juan Perez how thankful
he was to him for the help the good priest had given him, and how everything
now looked promising and successful.
The town of Palos, as
you can see from your map of Spain, is situated at the mouth of the river Tinto
on a little bay in the southwestern part of Spain, not far from the borders of
Portugal. To-day the sea has gone away from it so much that it is nearly high
and dry; but four hundred years ago it was quite a seaport, when Spain did not
have a great many sea towns on the Atlantic coast.
At the time of
Columbus's voyage the king and queen of Spain were angry with the port of Palos
for something its people had done that was wrong--just what this was we do not
know. But to punish the town, and because Columbus wished to sail from there,
the king and queen ordered that Palos should pay them a fine for their
wrong-doing. And this fine was to lend the king and queen of Spain, for one
year, without pay, two sailing vessels of the kind called caravel's, armed and
equipped "for the service of the crown"--that is, for the use of the
king and queen of Spain, in the western voyage that Columbus was to make.
When Columbus called
together the leading people of Palos to meet him in the church of St. George
and hear the royal commands, they came; but at first they did not understand
just what they must do. But when they knew that they must send two of their
ships and some of their sailing men on this dreadful voyage far out upon the
terrible Sea of Darkness, they were terribly distressed. Nobody was willing to
go. They would obey the commands of the king and queen and furnish the two
ships, but as for sailing off with this crazy sea captain--that they would not
do.
Then the king's
officers went to work. They seized some sailors (impressed is the word for
this), and made them go; they took some from the jails, and gave them their
freedom as a reward for going; they begged and threatened and paid in advance,
and still it was hard to get enough men for the two ships. Then Captain Pinzon,
who had promised Columbus that he would join him, tried his hand. He added a
third ship to the Admiral's "fleet." He made big promises to the
sailors, and worked for weeks, until at last he was able to do what even the
royal commands could not do, and a crew of ninety men was got together to man
the three vessels. The names of these three vessels were the Capitana (changed
before it sailed to the Santa Maria), the Pinta and the Nina or Baby. Captain
de la Cosa commanded the Santa Maria, Captain Martin Alonso Pinzon the Pinta
and his brother, Captain Vincent Pinzon, the Nina. The Santa Maria was the
largest of the three vessels; it was therefore selected as the leader of the
fleet--the flag-ship, as it is called--and upon it sailed the commander of the
expedition, the Admiral Don Christopher Columbus.
When we think of a
voyage across the Atlantic nowadays, we think of vessels as large as the big
three-masted ships or the great ocean steamers--vessels over six hundred feet
long and fifty feet wide. But these "ships" of Columbus were not
really ships. They were hardly larger than the "fishing smacks" that
sail up and down our coast to-day. Some of them were not so large. The Santa
Maria was, as I have told you, the largest of the three, and she was only
sixty-three feet long, twenty feet wide and ten and a half feet deep. Just
measure this out on the ground and see how small, after all, the Admiral's
"flag-ship" really was. The Pinta was even smaller than this, while
the little Nina was hardly anything more than a good-sized sail boat. Do you
wonder that the poor people of Palos and the towns round about were frightened
when they thought of their fathers and brothers and sons putting out to sea, on
the great ocean they had learned to dread so much, in such shaky little boats
as these?
But finally the vessels
were ready. The crews were selected. The time had come to go. Most of the
sailors were Spanish men from the towns near to the sea, but somehow a few who
were not Spaniards joined the crew.
One of the first men to
land in America from one of the ships of Columbus was an Irishman named
William, from the County Galway. And another was an Englishman named either
Arthur Laws or Arthur Larkins. The Spanish names for both these men look very
queer, and only a wise scholar who digs among names and words could have found
out what they really were. But such a one did find it out, and it increases our
interest in the discovery of America to know that some of our own northern
blood--the Irishman and the Englishman--were in the crews of Columbus.
The Admiral Columbus
was so sure he was going to find a rich and civilized country, such as India
and Cathay were said to be, that he took along on his ships the men he would
need in such places as he expected to visit and among such splendid people as
he was sure he should meet. He took along a lawyer to make out all the forms
and proclamations and papers that would have to be sent by the Admiral to the
kings and princes he expected to visit; he had a secretary and historian to
write out the story of what he should find and what he should do. There was a
learned Jew, named Louis, who could speak almost a dozen languages, and who
could, of course, tell him what the people of Cathay and Cipango and the Indies
were talking about. There was a jeweler and silversmith who knew all about the
gold and silver and precious stones that Columbus was going to load the ships
with; there was a doctor and a surgeon; there were cooks and pilots, and even a
little fellow, who sailed in the Santa Maria as the Admiral's cabin boy, and
whose name was Pedro de Acevedo.
Some scholars have said
that it cost about two hundred and thirty thousand dollars to fit out this
expedition. I do not think it cost nearly so much. We do know that Queen
Isabella gave sixty-seven thousand dollars to help pay for it. Some people,
however, reckoning the old Spanish money in a different way, say that what
Queen Isabella gave toward the expedition was not over three or four thousand
dollars of our money. Perhaps as much more was borrowed from King Ferdinand,
although he was to have no share in the enterprise in which Queen Isabella and
Columbus were partners.
It was just an hour
before sunrise on Friday, the third of August, 1492, that the three little
ships hoisted their anchors and sailed away from the port of Palos. I suppose
it was a very sorry and a very exciting morning in Palos. The people probably
crowded down on the docks, some of them sad and sorrowful, some of them
restless and curious. Their fathers and brothers and sons and acquaintances
were going--no one knew where, dragged off to sea by a crazy old Italian sailor
who thought there was land to be found somewhere beyond the Jumping-off place.
They all knew he was wrong. They were certain that nothing but dreadful goblins
and horrible monsters lived off there to the West, just waiting to devour or
destroy the poor sailors when these three little ships should tumble over the
edge.
But how different
Columbus must have felt as he stepped, into the rowboat that took him off to
his "flag-ship," the Santa Maria. His dreams had come true. He had
ships and sailors under his command, and was about to sail away to discover
great and wonderful things. He who had been so poor that he could hardly buy
his own dinner, was now called Don and Admiral. He had a queen for his friend
and helper. He was given a power that only the richest and noblest could hope
for. But more than all, he was to have the chance he had wished and worked for
so long. He was to find the Indies; he was to see Cathay; he was to have his
share in all the wealth he should discover and bring away. The son of the poor
wool-weaver of Genoa was to be the friend of kings and princes; the cabin boy
of a pirate was now Admiral of the Seas and Governor of the Colonies of Spain!
Do you wonder that he felt proud?
So, as I have told you,
just before sunrise on a Friday morning in August, be boarded the Santa Maria
and gave orders to his captains "to get under way." The sailors with
a "yo heave ho!" (or whatever the Spanish for that is) tugged at the
anchors, the sails filled with the morning breeze, and while the people of
Palos watched them from the shore, while the good friar, Juan Perez, raised his
hands to Heaven calling down a blessing on the enterprise, while the children
waved a last good-by from the water-stairs, the three vessels steered out from
Palos Harbor, and before that day's sun had set, Columbus and his fleet were
full fifty miles on their way across the Sea of Darkness. The westward voyage
to those wonderful lands, the Indies and Cathay, had at last begun.
DID you ever set out,
in the dark, to walk with your little brother or sister along a road you did
not know much about or had never gone over before? It was not an easy thing to
do, was it? And how did your little brother or sister feel when it was known that
you were not just certain whether you were right or not? Do you remember what
the Bible says about the blind leading the blind?
It was much the same
with Columbus when he set out from Palos to sail over an unknown sea to find
the uncertain land of Cathay. He had his own idea of the way there, but no one
in all his company had ever sailed it, and he himself was not sure about it. He
was very much in the dark. And the sailors in the three ships were worse than
little children. They did not even have the confidence in their leader that
your little brother or sister would probably have in you as you traveled that
new road on a dark night. It was almost another case of the blind leading the
blind, was it not?
Columbus first steered
his ships to the south so as to reach the Canary Islands and commence his real
westward voyage from there. The Canary Islands, as you will see by looking in
your geography, are made up of seven islands and lie off the northern corner of
Africa, some sixty miles or so west of Morocco. They were named Canaria by the
Romans from the Latin canis, a dog, "because of the multitude of dogs of
great size" that were found there. The canary birds that sing so sweetly
in your home come from these islands. They had been known to the Spaniards and
other European sailors of Columbus's day about a hundred years.
At the Canaries the
troubles of Columbus commenced. And he did have a lot of trouble before his
voyage was over. While near the island called the Grand Canary the rudder of
the Pinta, in which Captain Alonso Pinzon sailed, somehow got loose, then broke
and finally came off. It was said that two of the Pinta's crew, who were really
the owners of the vessel, broke the rudder on purpose, because they had become
frightened at the thoughts of the perilous voyage, and hoped by damaging their
vessel to be left behind.
But Columbus had no
thought of doing any such thing. He sailed to the island of Gomera, where he
knew some people, and had the Pinta mended. And while lying here with his fleet
the great mountain on the island of Teneriffe, twelve thousand feet high,
suddenly began to spit out flame and smoke. It was, as of course you know, a
volcano; but the poor frightened sailors did not know what set this mountain on
fire, and they were scared almost out of their wits and begged the Admiral to
go back home. But Columbus would not. And as they sailed away from Gomera some
sailors told them that the king of Portugal was angry with Columbus because he
had got his ships from the king and queen of Spain, and that he had sent out
some of his war-ships to worry or capture Columbus.
But these, too,
Columbus escaped, although not before his crews had grown terribly nervous for
fear of capture. At last they got away from the Canaries, and on Sunday, the
ninth of September, 1492, with a fresh breeze filling their sails, the three
caravels sailed away into the West. And as the shores of Ferro, the very last
of the Canary Islands, faded out of sight, the sailors burst into sighs and
murmurings and tears, saying that now indeed they were sailing
off--off--off--upon the awful Sea of Darkness and would never see land any
more.
When Columbus thought
that he was sailing too slowly--he had now been away from Palos a month and was
only about a hundred miles out at sea--and when he saw what babies his sailors
were, he did something that was not just right (for it is never right to do
anything that is not true) but which he felt he really must do. He made two
records (or reckonings as they are called) of his sailing. One of these records
was a true one; this he kept for himself. The other was a false one; this he
kept to show his sailors. So while they thought they were sailing slowly and
that the ocean was not so very wide, Columbus knew from his own true record that
they were getting miles and miles away from home.
Soon another thing
happened to worry the sailors. The pilots were steering by the compass. You
know what that is--a sort of big magnet-needle perfectly balanced and pointing
always to the north. At the time of Columbus the compass was a new thing and
was only understood by a few. On the thirteenth of September they had really
got into the middle of the ocean, and the line of the north changed. Of course
this made the needle in the compass change its position also. Now the sailors
had been taught to believe so fully in the compass that they thought it could
never change its position. And here it was playing a cruel trick upon them. We
are trapped! they cried. The goblins in this dreadful sea are making our
compass point wrong so as to drag us to destruction. Go back; take us back!
they demanded.
But Columbus, though he
knew that his explanation was wrong, said the compass was all right. The North
Star, toward which the needle always pointed, had, so he said, changed its
position. This quieted the sailors for a while.
When they had been
about forty days out from Palos, the ship ran into what is marked upon your
maps as the Sargasso Sea. This is a vast meadow of floating seaweed and
seagrass in the middle of the Atlantic; it is kept drifting about in the same
place by the two great sea currents that flow past it but not through it.
The sailors did not
know this, of course, and when the ships began to sail slower and slower
because the seaweed was so thick and heavy and because there was no current to
carry them along, they were sure that they were somewhere near to the
jumping-off place, and that the horrible monsters they had heard of were making
ready to stop their ships, and when they had got them all snarled up in this
weed to drag them all down to the bottom of the sea.
For nearly a week the
ships sailed over these vast sea-meadows, and when they were out of them they
struck what we call the trade-winds--a never-failing breeze that blew them ever
westward. Then the sailors cried out that they were in an enchanted land where
there was but one wind and never a breeze to blow the poor sailors home again.
Were they not fearfully "scarey?" But no doubt we should have been
so, too, if we had been with them and knew no more than they did.
And when they had been
over fifty days from home on the twenty-fifth of September, some one suddenly
cried Land! Land! And all hands crowded to the side. Sure enough, they all saw
it, straight ahead of them--fair green islands and lofty hills and a city with
castles and temples and palaces that glittered beautifully in the sun.
Then they all cried for
joy and sang hymns of praise and shouted to each other that their troubles were
over. Cathay, it is Cathay! they cried; and they steered straight for the
shining city. But, worst of all their troubles, even as they sailed toward the
land they thought to be Cathay, behold! it all disappeared--island and castle
and palace and temple and city, and nothing but the tossing sea lay all about
them. For this that they had seen was what is called a mirage--a trick of the
clouds and the sun and the sea that makes people imagine they see what they
would like to, but really do not. But after this Columbus had a harder time
than ever with his men, for they were sure he was leading them all astray.
And so with frights and
imaginings and mysteries like these, with strange birds flying about the ships
and floating things in the water that told of land somewhere about them, with
hopes again and again disappointed, and with the sailors growing more and more
restless and discontented, and muttering threats against this Italian
adventurer who, was leading the ships and sailors of the Spanish king to sure
destruction, Columbus still sailed on, as full of patience and of faith, as
certain of success as he had ever been.
On the seventh of
October, 1492, the true record that Columbus was keeping showed that he had
sailed twenty-seven hundred miles from the Canaries; the false record that the
sailors saw said they had sailed twenty-two hundred miles. Had Columbus kept
straight on, he would have landed very soon upon the coast of Florida or South
Carolina, and would really have discovered the mainland of America. But Captain
Alonso Pinzon saw what looked like a flock of parrots flying south. This made
him think the land lay that way; so he begged the Admiral to change his course
to the southward as he was sure there was no land to the west. Against his
will, Columbus at last consented, and turning to the southwest headed for Cuba.
But he thought he was
steering for Cathay. The islands of Japan, were, he thought, only a few leagues
away to the west. They were really, as you know, away across the United States
and then across the Pacific Ocean, thousands of miles farther west than
Columbus could sail. But according to his reckoning he hoped within a day or
two to see the cities and palaces of this wonderful land.
When they sailed from
the Canaries a reward had been offered to whomsoever should first see land.
This reward was to be a silken jacket and nearly five hundred dollars in money;
so all the sailors were on the watch.
At about ten o'clock on
the evening of the eleventh of October, Columbus, standing on the high raised
stern of the Santa Maria, saw a moving light, as if some one on the shore were
running with a flaming torch. At two o'clock the next morning--Friday, the
twelfth of October, 1492 the sharp eyes of a watchful sailor on the Pinta (his
name was Rodrigo de Triana) caught sight of a long low coastline not far away.
He raised the joyful shout Land, ho! The ships ran in as near to the shore as
they dared, and just ten weeks after the anchors had been hauled up in Palos
Harbor they were dropped overboard, and the hips of Columbus were anchored in
the waters of a new world.
Where was it? What was
it? Was it Cathay? Columbus was sure that it was. He was certain that the
morning sun would shine for him upon the marble towers and golden roofs of the
wonderful city of the kings of Cathay.
A LITTLE over three
hundred years ago there was a Pope of Rome whose name was Gregory XIII. He was
greatly interested in learning and science, and when the scholars and wise men
of his day showed him that a mistake in reckoning time had long before been
made he set about to make it right. At that time the Pope of Rome had great
influence with the kings and queens of Europe, and whatever he wished them to
do they generally did.
So they all agreed to
his plan of renumbering the days of the year, and a new reckoning of time was
made upon the rule that most of you know by heart in the old rhyme:
Thirty days hath September,
April, June and November;
All the rest have thirty-one,
Excepting February which alone
Hath twenty-eight--and this, in fine,
One year in four hath twenty-nine.
And the order of the days of
the months and the year is what is called, after Pope Gregory, the Gregorian
Calendar.
This change in
reckoning time made, of course, all past dates wrong. The old dates, which were
called Old Style, had to be made to correspond with the new dates which were
called New Style.
Now, according to the
Old Style, Columbus discovered the islands he thought to be the Indies (and
which have ever since been called the West Indies) on the twelfth of October,
1492. But, according to the New Style, adopted nearly one hundred years after
his discovery, the right date would be the twenty-first of October. And this is
why, in the Columbian memorial year of 1892, the world celebrated the four
hundredth anniversary of the discovery of America on the twenty-first of
October; which, as you see, is the same as the twelfth under the Old Style of
reckoning time.
But did Columbus
discover America? What was this land that greeted his eyes as the daylight came
on that Friday morning, and he saw the low green shores that lay ahead of his
caravels?
As far as Columbus was
concerned he was sure that he had found some one of the outermost islands of
Cipango or Japan. So he dropped his anchors, ordered out his rowboat, and
prepared to take possession of the land in the name of the queen of Spain, who
had helped him in his enterprise.
Just why or by what
right a man from one country could sail up to the land belonging to another
country and, planting in the ground the flag of his king, could say, "This
land belongs to my king!" is a hard question to answer. But there is an
old saying that tells us, Might makes right; and the servants of the kings and
queens--the adventurers and explorers of old--used to go sailing about the
world with this idea in their heads, and as soon as they came to a land they,
had never seen before, up would go their flag, and they would say, This land is
mine and my king's! They would not of course do this in any of the well-known
or "Christian lands" of Europe; but they believed that all
"pagan lands" belonged by right to the first European king whose
sailors should discover and claim them.
So Columbus lowered a
boat from the Santa Maria, and with two of his chief men and some sailors for
rowers he pulled off toward the island.
But before he did so,
he had to listen to the cheers and congratulations of the very sailors who,
only a few days before, were ready to kill him. But, you see, this man whom
they thought crazy had really brought them to the beautiful land, just as he
had promised. It does make such a difference, you know, in what people say
whether a thing turns out right or not.
Columbus, as I say, got
into his rowboat with his chief inspector and his lawyer. He wore a crimson
cloak over his armor, and in his hand he held the royal banner of Spain.
Following him came Captain Alonso Pinzon in a rowboat from the Pinta, and in a
rowboat from the Nina Captain Vincent Pinzon. Each of these captains carried
the "banner of the green cross" on which were to be seen the initials
of the king and queen of Spain.
As they rowed toward
the land they saw some people on the shore. They were not dressed in the
splendid clothes the Spaniards expected to find the people of Cathay wearing.
In fact, they did not have on much of anything but grease and paint. And the
land showed no signs of the marble temples and gold-roofed palaces the sailors
expected to find. It was a little, low, flat green island, partly covered with
trees and with what looked like a lake in the center.
This land was, in fact,
one of the three thousand keys or coral islands that stretch from the capes of
Florida to the island of Hayti, and are known as the Bahama Islands. The one
upon which Columbus landed was called by the natives Guanahani, and was either
the little island now marked on the map as Cat Island or else the one called
Watling's Island. Just which of these it was has been discussed over and over
again, but careful scholars have now but little doubt that it was the one known
to-day as Watling's Island. To see no sign of glittering palaces and gayly
dressed people was quite a disappointment to Columbus. But then, he said, this,
is probably the island farthest out to sea, and the people who live here are
not the real Cathay folks. We shall see them very soon.
So with the royal
banner and the green-cross standards floating above him, with his captains and
chief officers and some of the sailors gathered about him, while all the others
watched him from the decks of his fleet, Columbus stepped upon the shore. Then
he took off his hat, and holding the royal banner in one hand and his sword in
the other he said aloud: I take possession of this island, which I name San
Salvador,[*] and of all the islands and lands about it in the name of my patron
and sovereign lady, Isabella, and her kingdom of Castile. This, or something
like it, he said, for the exact words are not known to us.
And when he had done
this the captains and sailors fell at his feet in wonder and admiration,
begging him to forgive them for all the hard things they had said about him.
For you have found Cathay, they cried. You are our leader. You will make us
rich and powerful. Hurrah for the great Admiral!
And when the naked and
astonished people of the island saw all this--the canoes with wings, as they
called the ships, the richly-dressed men with white and bearded faces, the
flags and swords, and the people kneeling about this grand-looking old man in
the crimson cloak--they said to one another: These men are gods; they have come
from Heaven to see us. And then, they, too, fell on the ground and worshiped
these men from Heaven, as they supposed Columbus and his sailors to be.
And when they found
that the men from Heaven did not offer to hurt them, they came nearer; and the
man in the crimson cloak gave them beads and pieces of bright cloth and other
beautiful things they had never seen before. And this made them feel all the
more certain that these men who had come to see them in the canoes with wings
must really be from Heaven. So they brought them fruits and flowers and
feathers and birds as presents; and both parties, the men with clothes and the
men without clothes, got on very well together.
But Columbus, as we
know, had come across the water for one especial reason. He was to find Cathay,
and he was to find it so that he could carry back to Spain the gold and jewels
and spices of Cathay. The first thing, therefore, that he tried to find out
from the people of the island--whom he called "Indians," because he
thought he had come to a part of the coast of India--was where Cathay might be.
Of course they did not
understand him. Even Louis, the interpreter, who knew a dozen languages and who
tried them all, could not make out what these "Indians" said. But
from their signs and actions and from the sound of the words they spoke,
Columbus understood that Cathay was off somewhere to the southwest, and that
the gold he was bound to find came from there. The "Indians" had
little bits of gold hanging in their ears and noses. So Columbus supposed that
among the finer people he hoped soon to meet in the southwest, he should find
great quantities of the yellow metal. He was delighted. Success, he felt, was
not far off. Japan was near, China was near, India was near. Of this he was
certain; and even until he died Columbus did not have any idea that he had
found a new world--such as America really was. He was sure that he had simply
landed upon the eastern coasts of Asia and that he had found what he set out to
discover--the nearest route to the Indies.
The next day Columbus
pulled up his anchors, and having seized and carried off to his ships some of
the poor natives who had welcomed him so gladly, he commenced a cruise among
the islands of the group he had discovered.
Day after day he sailed
among these beautiful tropic islands, and of them and of the people who lived
upon them he wrote to the king and queen of Spain: "This country excels
all others as far as the day surpasses the night in splendor. The natives love
their neighbors as themselves; their conversation is the sweetest imaginable;
their faces smiling; and so gentle and so affectionate are they, that I swear
to Your Highness there is not a better people in the world."
Does it not seem a pity
that so great a man should have acted so meanly toward these innocent people
who loved and trusted him so? For it was Columbus who first stole them away
from their island homes and who first thought of making them slaves to the
white men.
COLUMBUS kept sailing
on from one island to another. Each new island he found would, he hoped, bring
him nearer to Cathay and to the marble temples and golden palaces and splendid
cities he was looking for.
But the temples and
palaces and cities did not appear. When the Admiral came to the coast of Cuba
he said: This, I know, is the mainland of Asia. So he sent off Louis, the
interpreter, with a letter to the "great Emperor of Cathay." Louis
was gone several days; but he found no emperor, no palace, no city, no gold, no
jewels, no spices, no Cathay--only frail houses of bark and reeds, fields of
corn and grain, with simple people who could tell him nothing about Cathay or
Cipango or the Indies.
So day after day
Columbus kept on his search, sailing from island to island, getting a little
gold here and there, or some pearls and silver and a lot of beautiful bird
skins, feathers and trinkets.
Then Captain Alonso
Pinzon, who was sailing in the Pinta, believed he could do better than follow
the Admiral's lead. I know, he said, if I could go off on my own hook I could
find plenty of gold and pearls, and perhaps I could find Cathay. So one day he
sailed away and Columbus did not know what had become of him.
At last Columbus,
sailing on and troubled at the way Captain Alonso Pinzon had acted, came one
day to the island of Hayti. If Cuba was Cathay (or China), Hayti, he felt sure,
must be Cipango (or Japan). So he decided to sail into one of its harbors to
spend Christmas Day. But just before Christmas morning dawned, the helmsman of
the Santa Maria, thinking that everything was safe, gave the tiller into the
hands of a boy--perhaps it was little Pedro the cabin boy--and went to sleep.
The rest of the crew also were asleep. And the boy who, I suppose, felt quite
big to think that he was really steering the Admiral's flagship, was a little
too smart; for, before he knew it, he had driven the Santa Maria plump upon a
hidden reef. And there she was wrecked. They worked hard to get her off but it
was no use. She keeled over on her side, her seams opened, the water leaked in,
the waves broke over her, the masts fell out and the Santa Maria had made her
last voyage.
Then Columbus was in
distress. The Pinta had deserted him, the Santa Maria was a wreck, the Nina was
not nearly large enough to carry all his men back to Spain. And to Spain he
must return at once. What should he do?
Columbus was quick at
getting out of a fix. So in this case he speedily decided what to do. He set
his men at work tearing the wreck of the Santa Maria to pieces. Out of her
timbers and woodwork, helped out with trees from the woods and a few stones
from the shore, he made quite a fort. It had a ditch and a watch-tower and a
drawbridge. It proudly floated the flag of Spain. It was the first European
fort in the new world. On its ramparts Columbus mounted the cannons he had
saved from the wreck and named the fort La Navidad--that is, Fort Nativity,
because it was made out of the ship that was wrecked on Christmas Day--the day
of Christ's nativity, his birthday.
He selected forty of
his men to stay in the fort until he should return from Spain. The most of them
were quite willing to do this as they thought the place was a beautiful one and
they would be kept very busy filling the fort with gold. Columbus told them
they must have at least a ton of gold before he came back. He left them
provisions and powder for a year, he told them to be careful and watchful, to
be kind to the Indians and to make the year such a good one that the king and
queen of Spain would be glad to reward them. And then he said good-by and
sailed away for Spain.
It was on the fourth of
January, 1493, that Columbus turned the little Nina homeward. He had not sailed
very far when what should he come across but the lost Pinta. Captain Alonso
Pinzon seemed very much ashamed when he saw the Admiral, and tried to explain
his absence. Columbus knew well enough that Captain Pinzon had gone off gold
hunting and had not found any gold. But he did not scold him, and both the
vessels sailed toward Spain.
The homeward voyage was
a stormy and seasick one. Once it was so rough that Columbus thought surely the
Nina would be wrecked. So he copied off the story of what he had seen and done,
addressed it to the king and queen of Spain, put it into a barrel and threw the
barrel overboard.
But the Nina was not
shipwrecked, and on the eighteenth of February Columbus reached the Azores. The
Portuguese governor was so surprised when he heard this crazy Italian really
had returned, and was so angry to think it was Spain and not Portugal that was
to profit by his voyage that he tried to make Columbus a prisoner. But the
Admiral gave this inhospitable welcomer the slip and was soon off the coast of
Portugal.
Here he was obliged to
land and meet the king of Portugal--that same King John who had once acted so
meanly toward him. King John would have done so again had he dared. But things
were quite different now. Columbus was a great man. He had made a successful
voyage, and the king and queen of Spain would have made it go hard with the
king of Portugal if he dared trouble their admiral. So King John had to give a
royal reception to Columbus, and permit him to send a messenger to the king and
queen of Spain with the news of his return from Cathay.
Then Columbus went on board
the Nina again and sailed for Palos. But his old friend Captain Alonso Pinzon
had again acted badly. For he had left the Admiral in one of the storms at sea
and had hurried homeward. Then he sailed into one of the northern ports of
Spain, and hoping to get all the credit for his voyage, sent a messenger
post-haste to the king and queen with the word that he had returned from Cathay
and had much to tell them. And then he, too, sailed for Palos.
On the fifteenth of
March, 1493, just seven months after he had sailed away to the West, Columbus
in the Nina sailed into Palos Harbor. The people knew the little vessel at
once. And then what a time they made! Columbus has come back, they cried. He
has found Cathay. Hurrah! hurrah! And the bells rang and the cannons boomed and
the streets were full of people. The sailors were welcomed with shouts of joy,
and the big stories they told were listened to with open mouths and many
exclamations of surprise. So Columbus came back to Palos. And everybody pointed
him out and cheered him and he was no longer spoken of as "that crazy
Italian who dragged away the men of Palos to the Jumping-off place."
And in the midst of all
this rejoicing what should sail into the harbor of Palos but the Pinta, just a
few hours late! And when Captain Alonso Pinzon heard the sounds of rejoicing,
and knew that his plans to take away from Columbus all the glory of what had
been done had all gone wrong, he did not even go to see his old friend and ask
his pardon. He went away to his own house without seeing any one. And there he
found a stern letter from the king and queen of Spain scolding him for trying
to get the best of Columbus, and refusing to hear or see him. The way things
had turned out made Captain Alonso Pinzon feel so badly that he fell sick; and
in a few days he died.
But Columbus, after he
had seen his good friend Juan Perez, the friar at Rabida, and told him all his
adventures, went on to Barcelona where King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella were
waiting for him. They had already sent him letters telling him how pleased they
were that he had found Cathay, and ordering him to get ready for a second
expedition at once. Columbus gave his directions for this, and then, in a grand
procession that called everybody to the street or window or housetop, he set
off for Barcelona. He reached the court on a fine April day and was at once
received with much pleasure by the king and queen of Spain.
Columbus told them
where he had been and what he had seen; he showed them the gold and the pearls and
the birds and curiosities he had brought to Spain as specimens, of what was to
be found in Cathay; he showed them the ten painted and "fixed-up"
Indians he had stolen and brought back with him.
And the king and queen
of Spain said he had done well. They had him sit beside them while he told his
story, and treated this poor Italian wool-weaver as they would one of their
great princes or mighty lords. They told him he could put the royal arms
alongside his own on his shield or crest, and they bade him get together at
once ships and sailors for a second expedition to Cathay--ships and sailors
enough, they said, to get away up to the great cities of Cathay, where the
marble temples and the golden palaces must be. It was their wish, they said, to
gain the friendship of the great Emperor of Cathay, to trade with him and get a
good share of his gold and jewels and spices. For, you see, no one as yet
imagined that Columbus had discovered America. They did not even know that
there was such a continent. They thought he had sailed to Asia and found the
rich countries that Marco Polo had told such big stories about.
Columbus, you may be
sure, was "all the rage" now. Wherever he went the people followed
him, cheering and shouting, and begging him to take them with him on his next
voyage to Cathay.
He was as anxious as
any one to get back to those beautiful islands and hunt for gold and jewels. He
set to work at once, and on the twenty-fifth of September, 1493, with a fleet
of seventeen ships and a company of fifteen hundred men, Columbus the Admiral
set sail from Cadiz on his second voyage to Cathay and Cipango and the Indies.
And this time he was certain he should find all these wonderful places, and
bring back from the splendid cities unbounded wealth for the king and queen of
Spain.
DO you not think
Columbus must have felt very fine as he sailed out of Cadiz Harbor on his
second voyage to the West? It was just about a year before, you know, that his
feeble fleet of three little ships sailed from Palos port. His hundred sailors
hated to go; his friends were few; everybody else said he was crazy; his
success was very doubtful. Now, as he stood on the high quarter-deck of his big
flag-ship, the Maria Galante, he was a great man. By appointment of his king
and queen he was "Admiral of the Ocean Seas" and "Viceroy of the
Indies." He had servants, to do as he directed; he had supreme command
over the seventeen ships of his fleet, large and small; fifteen hundred men
joyfully crowded his decks, while thousands left at home wished that they might
go with him, too. He had soldiers and sailors, horsemen and footmen; his ships
were filled with all the things necessary for trading with the Indians and the
great merchants of Cathay, and for building the homes of those who wished to
live in the lands beyond the sea.
Everything looked so
well and everybody was so full of hope and expectation that the Admiral felt
that now his fondest dreams were coming to pass and that he was a great man
indeed.
This was to be a hunt
for gold. And so sure of success was Columbus that he promised the king and
queen of Spain, out of the money he should make on this voyage, to, himself pay
for the fitting out of a great army of fifty thousand foot soldiers and four
thousand horsemen to drive away the pagan Turks who had captured and held
possession of the city of Jerusalem and the sepulcher of Christ. For this had
been the chief desire, for years and years, of the Christian people of Europe.
To accomplish it many brave knights and warriors had fought and failed. But now
Columbus was certain he could do it.
So, out into the
western ocean sailed the great expedition of the Admiral. He sailed first to
the Canary Isles, where he took aboard wood and water and many cattle, sheep
and swine. Then, on the seventeenth of October, he steered straight out into
the broad Atlantic, and on Sunday, the third of November, he saw the hill-tops
of one of the West India Islands that he named Dominica. You can find it on
your map of the West Indies.
For days he sailed on,
passing island after island, landing on some and giving them names. Some of
them were inhabited, some of them were not; some were very large, some were
very small. But none of them helped him in any way to find Cathay, so at last
he steered toward Hayti (or Hispaniola, as he called it) and the little
ship-built fortress of La Navidad, where his forty comrades had been left.
On the twenty-seventh
of November, the fleet of the Admiral cast anchor off the solitary fort. It was
night. No light was to be seen on the shore; through the darkness nothing could
be made out that looked like the walls of the fort. Columbus fired a cannon;
then he fired another. The echoes were the only answer. They must be sound
sleepers in our fortress there, said the Admiral. At last, over the water he
heard the sound of oars--or was it the dip of a paddle? A voice called for the
Admiral; but it was not a Spanish voice. The interpreter--who was the only one
left of those ten stolen Indians carried by Columbus to Spain--came to the
Admiral's side; by the light of the ship's lantern they could make out the
figure of an Indian in his canoe. He brought presents from his chief. But where
are my men at the fort? asked the Admiral. And then the whole sad story was
told.
The fort of La Navidad
was destroyed; the Spaniards were all dead; the first attempt of Spain to start
a colony in the new world was a terrible failure. And for it the Spaniards
themselves were to blame.
After Columbus had left
them, the forty men in the fort did not do as he told them or as they had
solemnly promised. They were lazy; they were rough; they treated the Indians
badly; they quarreled among themselves; some of them ran off to live in the
woods. Then sickness came; there were two "sides," each one jealous
of the other; the Indians became enemies. A fiery war-chief from the hills,
whose name was Caonabo, led the Indians against the white men. The fort and
village were surprised, surrounded and destroyed. And the little band of
"conquerors"--as the Spaniards loved to call themselves--was itself
conquered and killed.
It was a terrible
disappointment to Columbus. The men in whom he had trusted had proved false.
The gold he had told them to get together they had not even found. His plans
had all gone wrong.
But Columbus was not
the man to stay defeated. His fort was destroyed, his men were killed, his
settlement was a failure. It can't be helped now, he said. I will try again.
This time he would not
only build a fort, he would build a city. He had men and material enough to do
this and to do it well. So he set to work.
But the place where he
had built from the wreck of the unlucky Santa Maria his unlucky fort of La
Navidad did not suit him. It was low, damp and unhealthy. He must find a better
place. After looking about for some time he finally selected a place on the
northern side of the island. You can find it if you look at the map of Hayti in
the West Indies; it is near to Cape Isabella.
He found here a good
harbor for ships, a good place on the rocks for a fort, and good land for
gardens. Here Columbus laid out his new town, and called it after his friend
the queen of Spain, the city of Isabella.
He marked out a central
spot for his park or square; around this ran a street, and along this street he
built large stone buildings for a storehouse, a church and a house for himself,
as governor of the colony. On the side streets were built the houses for the
people who were to live in the new town, while on a rocky point with its queer
little round tower looking out to sea stood the stone fort to protect the
little city. It was the first settlement made by white men in all the great new
world of America.
You must know that
there are some very wise and very bright people who do not agree to this. They
say that nearly five hundred years before Columbus landed, a Norwegian prince
or viking, whose name was Leif Ericsson, had built on the banks of the
beautiful Charles River, some twelve miles from Boston, a city which he called
Norumbega.
But this has not really
been proved. It is almost all the fancy of a wise man who has studied it out
for himself, and says he believes there was such a city. But he does not really
know it as we know of the city of Isabella, and so we must still say that Christopher
Columbus really discovered America and built the first fort and the first city
on its shores--although he thought he was doing all this in Asia, on the shores
of China or Japan.
When Columbus had his
people nearly settled in their new city of Isabella, he remembered that the
main thing he was sent to do was to get together as much gold as possible. His
men were already grumbling. They had come over the sea, they said, not to dig
cellars and build huts, but to find gold--gold that should make them rich and
great and happy.
So Columbus set to work
gold-hunting. At first things seemed to promise success. The Indians told big
stories of gold to be found in the mountains of Hayti; the men sent to the
mountains discovered signs of gold, and at once Columbus sent home joyful
tidings to the king and queen of Spain.
Then he and his men
hunted everywhere for the glittering yellow metal. They fished for it in the
streams; they dug for it in the earth; they drove the Indians to hunt for it
also until the poor redmen learned to hate the very sound of the word gold, and
believed that this was all the white men lived for, cared for or worked for;
holding up a piece of this hated gold the Indians would say, one to another:
"Behold the Christian's god!" And so it came about that the poor
worried natives, who were not used to such hard work, took the easiest way out
of it all, and told the Spaniards the biggest kind of lies as to where gold
might be found--always away off somewhere else--if only the white men would go
there to look for it.
On the thirteenth of
January, 1494, Columbus sent back to Spain twelve of his seventeen ships. He
did not send back in them to the king, and queen, the gold he had promised. He
sent back the letters that promised gold; he sent back as prisoners for
punishment some of the most discontented and quarrelsome of his colonists; and,
worst of all, he sent to the king and queen a note asking, them to permit him
to send to Spain all the Indians he could catch, to be sold as slaves. He said
that by doing this they could make "good Christians" of the Indians,
while the money that came from selling the natives would buy cattle for the
colony and leave some money for the royal money-chests.
It is not pleasant to
think this of so great a man as Columbus. But it is true, and he is really the
man who, started the slave-trade in America. Of course things were very
different in his time from what they are to-day, and people did not think so
badly of this horrible business. But some good men did, and spoke out boldly
against it. What they said was not of much use, however, and slavery was
started in the new world. And from that act of Columbus came much sorrow and
trouble for the land he found. Even the great war between the northern and
southern sections of our own United States, upon one side or the other of which
your fathers, or your grandfathers perhaps, fought with gun and sword, was
brought about by this act of the great Admiral Columbus hundreds of years
before.
So the twelve ships
sailed back to Spain, and Columbus, with his five remaining ships, his soldiers
and his colonists, remained in the new city of Isabella to keep up the hunt for
gold or to become farmers in the new world.
BOTH the farmers and
the gold hunters had a hard time of it in the land they had come to so
hopefully. The farmers did not like to farm when they thought they could do so
much better at gold hunting; the gold hunters found that it was the hardest
kind of work to get from the water or pick from the rocks the yellow metal they
were so anxious to obtain.
Columbus himself was
not satisfied with the small amount of gold he got from the streams and mines
of Hayti; he was tired of the wrangling and grumbling of his men. So, one day,
he hoisted sail on his five ships and started away on a hunt for richer gold
mines, or, perhaps, for those wonderful cities of Cathay he was still
determined to find.
He sailed to the south
and discovered the island of Jamaica. Then he coasted along the shores of Cuba.
The great island stretched away so many miles that Columbus was certain it was
the mainland of Asia. There was some excuse for this mistake. The great number
of small islands he had sailed by all seemed to lie just as the books about
Cathay that he had read said they did; the trees and fruits that he found in
these islands seemed to be just the same that travelers said grew in Cathay.
To be sure the marble
temples, the golden-roofed palaces, the gorgeous cities had not yet appeared;
but Columbus was so certain that he had found Asia that he made all his men
sign a paper in which they declared that the land they had found (which was, as
you know, the island of Cuba) was really and truly the coast of Asia.
This did not make it
so, of course; but it made the people of Spain, and the king and queen, think
it was so. And this was most important. So, to keep the sailors from going back
on their word and the statement they had signed, Columbus ordered that if any
officer should afterward say he had been mistaken, he should be fined one
hundred dollars; and if any sailor should say so, he should receive one hundred
lashes with a whip and have his tongue pulled out. That was a curious way to
discover Cathay, was it not?
Then Columbus, fearing
another shipwreck or another mutiny, sailed back again to the city of Isabella.
His men were discontented, his ships were battered and leaky, his hunt for gold
and palaces had again proved a failure. He sailed around Jamaica; he got as far
as the eastern end of Hayti, and then, just as he was about to run into the
harbor of Isabella, all his strength gave out. The strain and the
disappointment were too much for him; he fell very, very sick, and on the
twenty-ninth of September, 1494, after just about five months of sailing and
wandering and hunting, the Nina ran into Isabella Harbor with Columbus so sick
from fever that he could not raise his hand or his head to give an order to his
men.
For five long months
Columbus lay in his stone house on the plaza or square of Isabella a very sick
man. His brother Bartholomew had come across from Spain with three supply
ships, bringing provisions for the colony. So Bartholomew took charge of
affairs for a while.
And while Columbus lay
so sick, some of the leading men in the colony seized the ships in which
Bartholomew Columbus had come to his brother's aid, and sailing back to Spain
they told the king and queen all sorts of bad stories about Columbus. They were
Spaniards. Columbus was an Italian. They were jealous of him because he was
higher placed and had more to say than they had. They were angry to think that
when he had promised to bring them to the gorgeous cities and the glittering
gold mines of Cathay he had only landed them on islands which were the homes of
naked savages, and made them work dreadfully hard for what little gold they
could find. He had promised them power; they went home poorer than when they
came away. So they were "mad" at Columbus--just as boys and girls are
sometimes "mad" at one another; and they told the worst stories they
could think of about him, and called him all sorts of hard names, and said the
king and queen of Spain ought to look out for "their great Admiral,"
or he would get the best of them and keep for himself the most of whatever he
could find in the new lands.
At last Columbus began
to grow better. And when he knew what his enemies had done he was very much
troubled for fear they should get the king and queen to refuse him any further
aid. So, just as soon as he was able, on the tenth of March, 1496, he sailed
home to Spain.
How different was this
from his splendid setting out from Cadiz two years before. Then everything
looked bright and promising; now everything seemed dark and disappointing. The
second voyage to the Indies had been a failure.
So, tired of his hard
work in trying to keep his dissatisfied men in order, in trying to check the
Indians who were no longer his friends, in trying to find the gold and pearls
that were to be got at only by hard work, in trying to make out just where he
was and just where Cathay might be, Columbus started for home. Sick, troubled,
disappointed, threatened by enemies in the Indies and by more bitter enemies at
home, sad, sorry and full of fear, but yet as determined and as brave as ever,
on the tenth of March, 1496, he went on board his caravels with two hundred and
fifty homesick and feversick men, and on the eleventh of June his two vessels
sailed into the harbor of Cadiz.
The voyage had been a
tedious one. Short of food, storm-tossed and full of aches and pains the
starving company "crawled ashore," glad to be in their home land once
more, and most of them full of complaints and grumblings at their commander,
the Admiral.
And Columbus felt as
downcast as any. He came ashore dressed, not in the gleaming armor and crimson
robes of a conqueror, as on his first return, but in the garb of what was known
as a penitent--the long, coarse gown, the knotted girdle and peaked hood of a
priest. For, you see, he did not know just what terrible stories had been told
by his enemies; he did not know how the king and queen would receive him. He
had promised them so much; he had brought them so little. He had sailed away so
hopefully; he had come back humbled and hated. The greatest man in the world,
he had been in 1492; and in 1496 he was unsuccessful, almost friendless and
very unpopular. So you see, boys and girls, that success is a most uncertain
thing, and the man who is a hero to-day may be a beggar to-morrow.
But, as is often the
case, Columbus was too full of fear. He was not really in such disgrace as he
thought he was. Though his enemies had said all sorts of hard things against
him, the king--and especially the queen--could not forget that he was, after
all, the man who, had found the new land for Spain; they knew that even though
he had not brought home the great riches that were to have been gathered in the
Indies, he had still found for Spain a land that would surely, in time, give to
it riches, possessions and power.
So they sent knightly
messengers to Columbus telling him to come and see them at once, and greeting
him with many pleasant and friendly words. Columbus was, as you must have seen,
quick to feel glad again the moment things seemed to turn in his favor; so he
laid aside his penitent's gown, and hurried off to court. And almost the first
thing he did was to ask the king and queen to fit out another fleet for him.
Six ships, he said he should want this time; and with these he was certain he
could sail into the yet undiscovered waters that lay beyond Hayti and upon
which he knew he should find Cathay.
I am afraid the king
and queen of Spain were beginning to feel a little doubtful as to this still
undiscovered Cathay. At any rate, they had other matters to think of and they
did not seem so very anxious to spend more money on ships and sailors. But they
talked very nicely to Columbus; they gave him a new title (this time it was
duke or marquis); they made him a present of a great tract of land in Hayti,
but it was months and months before they would help him with the ships and
money he kept asking for.
At last, however, the
queen, Isabella, who had always had more interest in Columbus and his plans
than had the king, her husband, said a good word for him. The six ships were
given him, men and supplies were put on board and on the twentieth of May,
1498, the Admiral set out on his third voyage to what every one now called the
Indies.
There was not nearly so
much excitement among the people about this voyage. Cathay and its riches had
almost become an old story; at any rate it was a story that was not altogether
believed in. Great crowds did not now follow the Admiral from place to place
begging him to take them with him to the Indies. The hundreds of sick, disappointed
and angry men who had come home poor when they expected to be rich, and sick
when they expected to be strong, had gone through the land, and folks began to
think that Cathay was after all only a dream, and that the stories of great
gold and of untold riches which they had heard were but "sailors'
yarns" which no one could believe.
So it was hard to get
together a crew large enough to man the six vessels that made up the fleet. At
last, however, all was ready, and with a company of two hundred men, besides
his sailors, Columbus hoisted anchor in the little port of San Lucar just north
of Cadiz, near the mouth of the Guadalquivir river, and sailed away into the
West.
This time he was
determined to find the continent of Asia. Even though, as you remember, he made
his men sign a paper saying that the coast of Cuba was Asia, he really seems to
have doubted this himself. He felt that he had only found islands. If so, he said,
Cathay must be the other side of those islands; and Cathay is what I must find.
So, with this plan in
mind, he sent three of his ships to the little settlement of Isabella, and with
the other three he sailed more to the southwest. On the first of August the
ships came in sight of the three mountain peaks of the large island he called
Trindad, or Trinity.
Look on your map of
South America and you will see that Trinidad lies almost in the mouth of the
Orinoco, a mighty river in the northern part of South America.
Columbus coasted about
this island, and as he did so, looking across to the west, he saw what he
supposed to be still another island. It was not. It was the coast of South
America. For the first time, but without knowing it, Columbus saw the great
continent he had so long been hunting for, though he had been seeking it under
another name.
So you see, the story
of Columbus shows how his life was full of mistakes. In his first voyage he
found an island and thought it was the mainland of the Eastern Hemisphere; in
his third voyage he discovered the mainland of the New World and thought it
only an island off the coast of the Old World. His life was full of mistakes,
but those mistakes have turned out to be, for us, glorious successes.
IF you know a boy or a
girl whose mind is set on any one thing, you will find that they are always
talking about that thing. Is not this so? They have what people call a
"hobby" (which is a kind of a horse, you know), and they are apt, as
we say, to "ride their hobby to death."
If this is true of
certain boys and girls, it is even more true of men and women. They get to be
what we call people of one idea, and whatever they see or whatever they do
always turns on that one idea.
It was so with
Columbus. All his life his one idea had been the finding of Asia--the Indies,
or Cathay, as he called it--by sailing to the west. He did sail to the west. He
did find land. And, because of this, as we have seen, all his voyaging and all his
exploring were done in the firm belief that he was discovering new parts of the
eastern coast of Asia. The idea that he had found a new world never entered his
head.
So, when he looked
toward the west, as he sailed around the island of Trinidad and saw the distant
shore, he said it was a new part of Asia. He was as certain of this as he had
before been certain that Cuba was a part of the Asiatic mainland.
But when he sailed into
the mouth of the great Orinoco River he was puzzled. For the water was no
longer salt; it grew fresher and fresher as he sailed on. And it rushed out so
furiously through the two straits at the northern and southern ends of Trinidad
(which because of the terrible rush of their currents he called the Lion's
Mouth and the Dragon's Mouth) that he was at first unable to explain it all.
Then he had a curious
idea. Columbus was a great reader of the Bible; some of the Bible scholars of
his day said that the Garden of Eden was in a far Eastern land where a mighty
river came down through it from the hills of Paradise; as Columbus saw the
beautiful land he had reached, and saw the great river sending down its waters
to the sea, he fitted all that he saw to the Bible stories he knew so well, and
felt sure that he had really discovered the entrance to the Garden of Eden.
He would gladly have
sailed across the broad bay and up the great river to explore this heavenly
land; but he was ill with gout, he was nearly blind from his sore eyes, his
ships were shaky and leaky, and he felt that he ought to hurry away to the city
of Isabella where his brothers, Bartholomew and Diego, were in charge of
affairs and were, he knew, anxiously waiting for him to come back.
So at last he turned
away from the lovely land that he thought must be Paradise and steered toward
Hayti. On the nineteenth of August he arrived off the coast of Hayti. He sent a
messenger with news of his arrival, and soon greeted his brother Bartholomew,
who, when he heard of the Admiral's arrival, sailed at once to meet him.
Bartholomew Columbus
had a sad story to tell his brother Christopher. Things had been going badly in
Hayti, and the poor Admiral grew sicker and sicker as he listened to what
Bartholomew had to tell.
You have heard it said
that there are black sheep in every flock. There were black sheep in this
colony of Columbus. There were lazy men and discontented men and jealous men,
and they made great trouble, both in the city of Isabella and in the new town
which Bartholomew had built in another part of the island and called Santo
Domingo.
Such men are sure to
make mischief, and these men in Hayti had made a lot of it. Columbus had staid
so long in Spain that these men began to say that they knew he was certainly in
trouble or disgrace there, that the king and queen were angry with him, and
that his offices of viceroy and admiral were to be taken away from him. If this
were so, they were going to look out for themselves, they said. They would no
longer obey the commands of the Admiral's brothers, Bartholomew and Diego, whom
he had left in charge.
So they rose in
rebellion, and made things so uncomfortable for the two brothers that the
colony was soon full of strife and quarreling.
The leader of this
revolt was one of the chief men in the colony. His name was Roldan. When
Columbus and Bartholomew sailed into the harbor of Santo Domingo, on the
thirtieth of August, they found that Roldan and his followers had set up a camp
for themselves in another part of the island, and given out that they were
determined never to have anything more to do with the three Columbus brothers.
This rebellion weakened
the colony dreadfully. Things looked desperate; so desperate indeed that
Columbus, after thinking it all over, thought that the only way to do was to
seem to give in to Roldan and patch up some sort of an agreement by which they
could all live together in peace. But all the same, he said, I will complain to
the king and have this rebel Roldan punished.
So the Admiral wrote
Roldan a letter in which he offered to forgive and forget all that he had done
if he would come back and help make the colony strong and united again. Roldan
agreed to do this, if he could have the same position he held before, and if
Columbus would see that his followers had all the land they wanted. Columbus
agreed to this and also gave the rebels permission to use the poor natives as
slaves on their lands. So the trouble seemed to be over for a while, and
Columbus sent two of his ships to Spain with letters to the king and queen. But
in these letters he accused Roldan of rebellion and tried to explain why it was
that things were going so badly in Hayti.
But when these ships
arrived in Spain the tidings they brought and the other letters sent by them
only made matters worse. People in Spain had heard so many queer things from
across the sea that they were beginning to lose faith in Columbus. The men who
had lost health and money in the unlucky second voyage of the Admiral were now
lazy loafers about the docks, or they hung about the court and told how Columbus
had made beggars of them, while they hooted after and insulted the two sons of
Columbus who were pages in the queen's train. They called the boys the sons of
"the Admiral of Mosquitoland."
Then came the ships
with news of Roldan's rebellion, but with little or no gold. And people said
this was a fine viceroy who couldn't keep order among his own men because, no
doubt, he was too busy hiding away for his own use the gold and pearls they
knew he must have found in the river of Paradise he said he had discovered.
Then came five
shiploads of Indian slaves, sent to Spain by Columbus, and along with them came
the story that Columbus had forgiven Roldan for his rebellion and given him
lands and office in Hayti.
King Ferdinand had
never really liked Columbus and had always been sorry that he had given him so
much power and so large a share in the profits. The queen, too, began to think
that while Columbus was a good sailor, he was a very poor governor. But when
she heard of the shiploads of slaves he had sent, and found out that among the
poor creatures were the daughters of some of the chiefs, or caciques, of the
Indians, she was very angry, and asked how "her viceroy" dared to use
"her vassals" so without letting her know about it. "Things were
indeed beginning to look bad for Columbus. The king and queen had promised that
only members of the Admiral's family should be sent to govern the island; they
had promised that no one but himself should have the right to trade in the new
lands. But now they began to go back on their promises. If Columbus cannot find
us gold and spices, they said, other men can. So they gave permission to other
captains to explore and trade in the western lands. And as the complaints
against the Admiral kept coming they began to talk of sending over some one
else to govern the islands.
More letters came from
Columbus asking the king and queen to let him keep up his slave-trade, and to
send out some one to act as a judge of his quarrel with Roldan. Then the king
and queen decided that something must be done at once. The queen ordered the
return of the slaves Columbus had sent over, and the king told one of his
officers named Bobadilla to go over to Hayti and set things straight. And he
sent a letter by him commanding Columbus to talk with him, to give up all the
forts and arms in the colony and to obey Bobadilla in all things.
Bobadilla sailed at
once. But before he got across the sea matters, as we know, had been
straightened out by the Admiral; and when Bobadilla reached Hayti he found
everything quiet there. Columbus had made friends with Roldan (or made believe
that he had), and had got things into good running order again.
This was not what
Bobadilla had reckoned upon. He had expected to find things in such a bad way
that he would have to take matters into his own hand at once, and become a
greater man than the Admiral. If everything was all right he would have his
journey for nothing and everybody would laugh at him. So he determined to go
ahead, even though there was no necessity for his taking charge of affairs. He
had been sent to do certain things, and he did them at once. Without asking
Columbus for his advice or his assistance, he took possession of the forts and
told every one that he was governor now. He said that he had come to set things
straight, and he listened to the complaints of all the black sheep of the
colony--and how they did crowd around him and say the worst things they could
think of against the Admiral they had once been so anxious to follow.
Bobadilla listened to
all their stories. He proceeded to use the power the king and queen had given
him to punish and disgrace Columbus--which was not what they meant him to do.
He moved into the palace of the Admiral; he ordered the Admiral and his
brothers to come to him, and when they came expecting to talk things over,
Bobadilla ordered that they be seized as prisoners and traitors, that they be
chained hand and foot and put in prison.
Columbus's saddest day
had come. The man who had found a new world for his king and queen, who had
worked so hard in their service and who had meant to do right, although he had
made many mistakes, was thrust into prison as if he were a thief or a murderer.
The Admiral of the Ocean Seas, the Viceroy of the Indies, the grand man whom
all Spain had honored and all the world had envied, was held as a prisoner in
the land he had found, and all his powers were taken by a stranger. He was
sick, he was disappointed, he was defeated in all his plans. And now he was in
chains. His third voyage had ended the worst of all. He had sailed away to find
Cathay; he had, so he believed, found the Garden of Eden and the river of
Paradise. And here, as an end to it all, he was arrested by order of the king
and queen he had tried to serve, his power and position were taken from him by
an insolent and unpitying messenger from Spain; he was thrown into prison and
after a few days he was hurried with his brothers on board a ship and sent to
Spain for trial and punishment. How would it all turn out? Was it not a sad and
sorry ending to his bright dreams of success?
I SUPPOSE you think
Bobadilla was a very cruel man. He was. But in his time people were apt to be
cruel to one another whenever they had the power in their own hands. The days
in which Columbus lived were not like these in which we are living. You can
never be too thankful for that, boys and girls. Bobadilla had been told to go
over the water and set the Columbus matters straight. He had been brought up to
believe that to set matters straight you must be harsh and cruel; and so he did
as he was used to seeing other people in power do. Even Queen Isabella did not
hesitate to do some dreadful things to certain people she did not like when she
got them in her power. Cruelty was common in those days. It was what we call
the "spirit of the age." So you must not blame Bobadilla too much, although
we will all agree that it was very hard on Columbus.
So Columbus, as I have
told you, sailed back to Spain. But when the officer who had charge of him and
whose name was Villijo, had got out to sea and out of Bobadilla's sight, he
wanted to take the chains off. For he loved Columbus and it made him feel very
sad to see the old Admiral treated like a convict or a murderer. Let me have
these cruel chains struck off, Your Excellency, he said. No, no, Villijo,
Columbus replied. Let these fetters remain upon me. My king and queen ordered
me to submit and Bobadilla has put me in chains. I will wear these irons until
my king and queen shall order them removed, and I shall keep them always as
relics and memorials of my services.
It always makes us sad
to see any one in great trouble. To hear of a great man who has fallen low or
of a rich man who has become poor, always makes us say: Is not that too bad?
Columbus had many enemies in Spain. The nobles of the court, the men who had
lost money in voyages to the Indies, the people whose fathers and sons and
brothers had sailed away never to return, could not say anything bad enough
about "this upstart Italian," as they called Columbus.
But to the most of the
people Columbus was still the great Admiral. He was the man who had stuck to
his one idea until he had made a friend of the queen; who had sailed away into
the West and proved the Sea of Darkness and the Jumping-off place to be only
fairy tales after all; who had found Cathay and the Indies for Spain. He was
still a great man to the multitude.
So when on a certain
October day, in the year 1500, it was spread abroad that a ship had just come
into the harbor of Cadiz, bringing home the great Admiral, Christopher
Columbus, a prisoner and in chains, folks began to talk at once. Why, who has
done this? they cried. Is this the way to treat the man who found Cathay for
Spain, the man whom the king and the queen delighted to honor, the man who made
a procession for us with all sorts of birds and animals and pagan Indians? It cannot
be. Why, we all remember how he sailed into Palos Harbor eight years ago and
was received like a prince with banners and proclamations and salutes. And now
to bring him home in chains! It is a shame; it is cruel; it is wicked. And when
people began to talk in this way, the very ones who had said the worst things
against him began to change their tone.
As soon as the ship got
into Cadiz, Columbus sent off a letter to a friend of his at the court in the
beautiful city of Granada. This letter was, of course, shown to the queen. And
it told all about what Columbus had suffered, and was, so full of sorrow and
humbleness and yet of pride in what he had been able to do, even though he had
been disgraced, that Queen Isabella (who was really a friend to Columbus in
spite of her dissatisfaction with the things he sometimes did) became very
angry at the way he had been treated.
She took the letter to
King Ferdinand, and at once both the king and the queen hastened to send a
messenger to Columbus telling him how angry and sorry they were that Bobadilla
should have dared to treat their good friend the Admiral so. They ordered his
immediate release from imprisonment; they sent him a present of five thousand
dollars and asked him to come to court at once.
On the seventeenth of
December, 1500, Columbus came to the court at Granada in the beautiful palace
of the Alhambra. He rode on a mule. At that time, in Spain, people were not
allowed to ride on mules, because if they did the Spanish horses would not be
bought and sold, as mules were so much cheaper and were easier to ride. But
Columbus was sick and it hurt him to ride horseback, while he could be fairly
comfortable on an easy-going mule. So the king and queen gave him special
permission to come on mule-back.
When Columbus appeared
before the queen, looking so sick and troubled, Isabella was greatly affected.
She thought of all he had done and all he had gone through and all he had
suffered, and as he came to the steps of the throne the queen burst into tears.
That made Columbus cry too, for he thought a great deal of the queen, and he
fell at her feet and told her how much he honored her, and how much he was
ready to do for her, if he could but have the chance.
Then the king and queen
told him how sorry they were that any one should have so misunderstood their
desires and have treated their brave and loyal Admiral so shamefully. They
promised to make everything all right for him again, and to show him that they
were his good friends now as they always had been since the day he first sailed
away to find the Indies for them and for Spain.
Of course this made
Columbus feel much better. He had left Hayti in fear and trembling. He had come
home expecting something dreadful was going to happen; he would not have been
surprised at a long imprisonment; he would not even have been surprised if he
had been put to death--for the kings and queens and high lords of his day were
very apt to order people put to death if they did not like what had been done.
The harsh way in which Bobadilla had treated him made him think the king and
queen had really ordered it. Perhaps they had; and perhaps the way in which the
people cried out in indignation when they saw the great Admiral brought ashore
in chains had its influence on Queen Isabella. King Ferdinand really cared
nothing about it. He would gladly have seen Columbus put in prison for life;
but the queen had very much to say about things in her kingdom, and so King
Ferdinand made believe he was sorry and talked quite as pleasantly to Columbus
as did the queen.
Now Columbus, as you
must have found out by this time, was as quick to feel glad as he was to feel
sad. And when he found that the king and queen were his friends once more, he
became full of hope again and began to say where he would go and what he would
do when he went back again as Viceroy of the Indies and Admiral of the Ocean
Seas. He begged the queen to let him go back again at once, with ships and
sailors and the power to do as he pleased in the islands he had found and in
the lands he hoped to find.
They promised him
everything, for promising is easy. But Columbus had once more to learn the
truth of the old Bible warning that he had called to mind years before on the
Bridge of Pinos: Put not your trust in princes.
The king and queen
talked very nicely and promised much, but to one thing King Ferdinand had made
up his mind--Columbus should never go back again to the Indies as viceroy or
governor. And King Ferdinand was as stubborn as Columbus was persistent.
Not very much gold had
yet been brought back from the Indies, but the king and queen knew from the
reports of those who had been over the seas and kept their eyes open that, in
time, a great deal of gold and treasure would come from there. So they felt
that if they kept their promises to Columbus he would take away too large a
slice of their profits, and if they let him have everything to say there it
would not be possible to let other people, who were ready to share the profits
with them, go off discovering on their own hook.
So they talked and
delayed and sent out other expeditions and kept Columbus in Spain, unsatisfied.
Another governor was sent over to take the place of Bobadilla, for they soon
learned that that ungentlemanly knight was not even so good or so strict a
governor as Columbus had been.
Almost two years passed
in this way and still Columbus staid in Spain. At last the king and queen said
he might go if he would not go near Hayti and would be sure to find other and
better gold lands.
Columbus did not relish
being told where to go and where not to go like this; but he promised. And on
the ninth of May, 1502, with four small caravels and one hundred and fifty men,
Christopher Columbus sailed from Cadiz on his fourth and last voyage to the
western world.
He was now fifty-six
years old. That is not an age at which we would call any one an old man. But
Columbus had grown old long before his time. Care, excitement, exposure, peril,
trouble and worry had made him white-haired and wrinkled. He was sick, he was
nearly blind, he was weak, he was feeble--but his determination was just as
firm, his hope just as high, his desire just as strong as ever. He was bound,
this time, to find Cathay.
And he had one other
wish. He had enemies in Hayti; they had laughed and hooted at him when he had
been dragged off to prison and sent in chains on board the ship. He did wish to
get even with them. He could not forgive them. He wanted to sail into the
harbor of Isabella and Santo Domingo with his four ships and to say: See, all
of you! Here I am again, as proud and powerful as ever. The king and queen have
sent me over here once more with ships and sailors at my command. I am still
the Admiral of the Ocean Seas and all you tried to do against me has amounted
to nothing,
This is not the right
sort of a spirit to have, either for men or boys; it is not wise or well to
have it gratified. Forgiveness is better than vengeance; kindliness is better
than pride.
At any rate, it was not
to be gratified with Columbus. When his ships arrived off the coast of Hayti,
although his orders from the king and queen were not to stop at the island
going over, the temptation to show himself was too strong. He could not resist
it. So he sent word to the new governor, whose name was Ovando, that he had
arrived with his fleet for the discovery of new lands in the Indies, and that
he wished to come into Santo Domingo Harbor as one of his ships needed repairs;
he would take the opportunity, he said, of mending his vessel and visiting the
governor at the same time.
Now it so happened that
Governor Ovando was just about sending to Spain a large fleet. And in these
ships were to go some of the men who had treated Columbus so badly. Bobadilla,
the ex-governor, was one of them; so was the rebel Roldan who had done so much
mischief; and there were others among the passengers and prisoners whom
Columbus disliked or who hated Columbus. There was also to go in the fleet a
wonderful cargo of gold--the largest amount yet sent across to Spain. There were
twenty-six ships in all, in the great gold fleet, and the little city of Santo
Domingo was filled with excitement and confusion.
We cannot altogether
make out whether Governor Ovando was a friend to Columbus or not. At any rate,
he felt that it would be unwise and unsafe for Columbus to come into the harbor
or show himself in the town when so many of his bitter enemies were there. So
he sent back word to Columbus that he was sorry, but that really he could not
let him come in.
How bad that must have
made the old Admiral feel! To be refused admission to the place he had found
and built up for Spain! It was unkind, he said; he must and would go in.
Just then Columbus, who
was a skillful sailor and knew all the signs of the sky, and all about the
weather, happened to notice the singular appearance of the sky, and saw that
there was every sign that a big storm was coming on. So he sent word to
Governor Ovando again, telling him of this, and asking permission to run into
the harbor of Santo Domingo with his ships to escape the coming storm. But the
governor could not see that any storm was coming on. He said: Oh! that is only
another way for the Admiral to try to get around me and get me to let him in. I
can't do it. So, he sent back word a second time that he really could not, let
Columbus come in. I know you are a very clever sailor, he said, but, really, I
think you must be mistaken about this storm. At any rate, you will have time to
go somewhere else before it comes on, and I shall be much obliged if you will.
Now, among the
twenty-six vessels of the gold fleet was one in which was stored some of the
gold that belonged to Columbus as his share, according to his arrangement with
the king and queen. If a storm came on, this vessel would be in danger, to say
nothing of all the rest of the fleet. So Columbus sent in to Governor Ovando a
third time. He told him he was certain a great storm was coming. And he begged
the governor, even if he was not allowed to come up to Santo Domingo, by all
means to keep the fleet in the harbor until the storm was over. If you don't,
there will surely be trouble, he said. And then he sailed with his ships along
shore looking for a safe harbor.
But the people in Santo
Domingo put no faith in the Admiral's "probabilities." There will be
no storm, the captains and the officers said. If there should be our ships are
strong enough to stand it. The Admiral Columbus is getting to be timid as he
grows older. And in spite of the old sailor's warning, the big gold fleet
sailed out of the harbor of Santo Domingo and headed for Spain.
But almost before they
had reached the eastern end of the island of Hayti, the storm that Columbus had
prophesied burst upon them.
It was a terrible
tempest. Twenty of the ships went to the bottom. The great gold fleet was
destroyed. The enemies of Columbus--Bobadilla, Roldan and the rest were
drowned. Only a few of the ships managed to get back into Santo Domingo Harbor,
broken and shattered. And the only ship of all the great fleet that got safely
through the storm and reached Spain all right was the one that carried on board
the gold that belonged to Columbus. Was not that singular?
Then all the friends of
Columbus cried: How wonderful! Truly the Lord is on the side of the great
Admiral!
But his enemies said:
This Genoese is a wizard. He was mad because the governor would not let him
come into the harbor, and he raised this storm in revenge. It is a dangerous
thing to interfere with the Admiral's wishes.
For you see in those
days people believed in witches and spells and all kinds of fairy-book things
like those, when they could not explain why things happened. And when they could
not give a good reason for some great disaster or for some stroke of bad luck,
they just said: It is witchcraft; and left it so.
WHILE the terrible
storm that wrecked the great gold fleet of the governor was raging so
furiously, Columbus with his four ships was lying as near shore as he dared in
a little bay farther down the coast of Hayti. Here he escaped the full fury of
the gale, but still his ships suffered greatly, and came very near being shipwrecked.
They became separated in the storm, but the caravels met at last after the
storm was over and steered away for the island of Jamaica.
For several days they
sailed about among the West India Islands; then they took a westerly course,
and on the thirtieth of July, Columbus saw before him the misty outlines of
certain high mountains which he supposed to be somewhere in Asia, but which we
now know were the Coast Range Mountains of Honduras. And Honduras, you
remember, is a part of Central America.
Just turn to the map of
Central America in your geography and find Honduras. The mountains, you see,
are marked there; and on the northern coast, at the head of a fine bay, you
will notice the seaport town of Truxillo. And that is about the spot where, for
the first time, Columbus saw the mainland of North America.
As he sailed toward the
coast a great canoe came close to the ship. It was almost as large as one of
his own caravels, for it was over forty feet long and fully eight feet wide. It
was paddled by twenty-five Indians, while in the middle, under an awning of
palm-thatch sat the chief Indian, or cacique, as he was called. A curious kind
of sail had been rigged to catch the breeze, and the canoe was loaded with
fruits and Indian merchandise.
This canoe surprised
Columbus very much. He had seen nothing just like it among the other Indians he
had visited. The cacique and his people, too, were dressed in clothes and had
sharp swords and spears. He thought of the great galleys of Venice and Genoa; he
remembered the stories that had come to him of the people of Cathay; he
believed that, at last, he had come to the right place. The shores ahead of him
were, he was sure, the coasts of the Cathay he was hunting for, and these
people in "the galley of the cacique" were much nearer the kind of
people he was expecting to meet than were the poor naked Indians of Hayti and
Cuba.
In a certain way he was
right. These people in the big canoe were, probably, some of the trading
Indians of Yucatan, and beyond them, in what we know to-day as Mexico, was a
race of Indians, known as Aztecs, who were what is called half-civilized; for
they had cities and temples and stone houses and almost as much gold and
treasure as Columbus hoped to find in his fairyland of Cathay. But Columbus was
not to find Mexico. Another daring and cruel Spanish captain, named Cortez,
discovered the land, conquered it for Spain, stripped it of its gold and
treasure, and killed or enslaved its brave and intelligent people.
After meeting this canoe,
Columbus steered for the distant shore. He coasted up and down looking for a
good harbor, and on the seventeenth of August, 1502, he landed as has been told
you, near what is now the town of Truxillo, in Honduras. There, setting up the
banner of Castile, he took possession of the country in the name of the king
and queen of Spain.
For the first time in
his life Columbus stood on the real soil of the New World. All the islands he
had before discovered and colonized were but outlying pieces of America. Now he
was really upon the American Continent.
But he did not know it.
To him it was but a part of Asia. And as the main purpose of this fourth voyage
was to find a way to sail straight to India--which he supposed lay somewhere to
the south--he set off on his search. The Indians told him of "a narrow
place" that he could find by sailing farther south, and of a "great
water." beyond it. This "narrow place" was the Isthmus of
Panama, and the "great water" beyond it was, of course, the Pacific
Ocean. But Columbus thought that by a "narrow place" they meant a
strait instead of an isthmus. If he could but find that strait, he could sail
through it into the great Bay of Bengal which, as you know and as he had heard,
washes the eastern shore of India.
So he sailed along the
coasts of Honduras and Nicaragua trying to find the strait he was hunting for.
Just look at your map and see how near he was to the way across to the Pacific
that men are now digging out, and which, as the Nicaragua Canal, will connect
the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans. And think how near he was to finding that
Pacific Ocean over which, if he could but have got across the Isthmus of
Panama, he could have sailed to the Cathay and the Indies he spent his life in
trying to find. But if he had been fortunate enough to get into the waters of
the Pacific, I do not believe it would have been so lucky for him, after all.
His little ships, poorly built and poorly provisioned, could never have sailed
that great ocean in safety, and the end might have proved even more disastrous
than did the Atlantic voyages of the Admiral.
He soon understood that
he had found a richer land than the islands he had thus far discovered. Gold
and pearls were much more plentiful along the Honduras coast than they were in Cuba
and Hayti, and Columbus decided that, after he had found India, he would come
back by this route and collect a cargo of the glittering treasures.
The land was called by
the Indians something that sounded very much like Veragua. This was the name
Columbus gave to it; and it was this name, Veragua, that was afterward given to
the family of Columbus as its title; so that, to-day, the living descendant of
Christopher Columbus in Spain is called the Duke of Veragua.
But as Columbus sailed
south, along what is called "the Mosquito Coast," the weather grew
stormy and the gales were severe. His ships were crazy and worm-eaten; the food
was running low; the sailors began to grumble and complain and to say that if
they kept on in this way they would surely starve before they could reach
India.
Columbus, too, began to
grow uneasy. His youngest son, Ferdinand, a brave, bright little fellow of
thirteen, had come with him on this voyage, and Columbus really began to be
afraid that something might happen to the boy, especially if the crazy ships
should be wrecked, or if want of food should make them all go hungry. So at
last he decided to give up hunting for the strait that should lead him into the
Bay of Bengal; he felt obliged, also, to give up his plan of going back to the
Honduras coast for gold and pearls. He turned his ships about and headed for
Hayti where he hoped he could get Governor Ovando to give him better ships so
that he could try it all over again.
Here, you see, was
still another disappointing defeat for Columbus. For after he had been on the
American coast for almost a year; after he had come so near to what he felt to
be the long-looked-for path to the Indies; after most wonderful adventures on
sea and land, he turned his back on it all, without really having accomplished
what he set out to do and, as I have told you, steered for Hayti.
But it was not at all
easy to get to Hayti in those leaky ships of his. In fact it was not possible
to get there with them at all; for on the twenty-third of June, 1503, when he
had reached the island of Jamaica he felt that his ships would not hold out any
longer. They were full of worm-holes; they were leaking badly; they were
strained and battered from the storms. He determined, therefore, to find a good
harbor somewhere on the island of Jamaica and go in there for repairs. But he
could not find a good one; his ships grew worse and worse; every day's delay
was dangerous; and for fear the ships would sink and carry the crews to the
bottom of the sea, Columbus decided to run them ashore anyhow. This he did; and
on the twelfth of August, 1503, he deliberately headed for the shore and ran
his ships aground in a little bay on the island of Jamaica still known as Sir
Christopher's Cove. And there the fleet was wrecked.
The castaways lashed
the four wrecks together; they built deck-houses and protections so as to make
themselves as comfortable as possible, and for a whole year Columbus and his
men lived there at Sir Christopher's Cove on the beautiful island of Jamaica.
It proved anything but
beautiful for them, however. It makes a good deal of difference, you know, in
enjoying things whether you are well and happy. If you are hungry and can't get
anything to eat, the sky does not look so blue or the trees so green as if you
were sitting beneath them with a jolly picnic party and with plenty of lunch in
the baskets.
It was no picnic for
Columbus and his companions. That year on the island of Jamaica was one of
horror, of peril, of sickness, of starvation. Twice, a brave comrade named
Diego Mendez started in an open boat for Hayti to bring relief. The first time
he was nearly shipwrecked, but the second time he got away all right. And then
for months nothing was heard of him, and it was supposed that he had been
drowned. But the truth was that Governor Ovando, had an idea that the king and
queen of Spain were tired of Columbus and would not feel very bad if they never
saw him again. He promised to send help, but did not do so for fear he should
get into trouble. And the relief that the poor shipwrecked people on Jamaica
longed for did not come.
Then some of the men
who were with Columbus mutinied and ran away. In fact, more things happened
during this remarkable fourth voyage of Columbus than I can begin to tell you
about. The story is more wonderful than is that of Robinson Crusoe, and when
you are older you must certainly read it all and see just what marvelous
adventures Columbus and his men met with and how bravely the little Ferdinand
Columbus went through them all. For when Ferdinand grew up he wrote a life of
his father, the Admiral, and told the story of how they all played Robinson
Crusoe at Sir Christopher's Cove.
At last the
long-delayed help was sent by Governor Ovando, and one day the brave Diego
Mendez came sailing into Sir Christopher's Cove. And Columbus forgave the
rebels who had run away; and on the twenty-eighth of June, 1504, they all
sailed away from the place, that, for a year past, had been almost worse than a
prison to them all.
On the fifteenth of
August, the rescued crews sailed into the harbor of Santo Domingo. The
governor, Ovando, who had reluctantly agreed to send for Columbus, was now in a
hurry to get him away. Whether the governor was afraid of him, or ashamed
because of the way he had treated him, or whether he felt that Columbus was no
longer held so high in Spain, and that, therefore, it was not wise to make much
of him, I cannot say. At any rate he hurried him off to Spain, and on the
twelfth of September, 1504, Columbus turned his back forever on the new world
he had discovered, and with two ships sailed for Spain.
He had not been at sea
but a day or two before he found that the ship in which he and the boy
Ferdinand were sailing was not good for much. A sudden storm carried away its
mast and the vessel was sent back to Santo Domingo. Columbus and Ferdinand,
with a few of the men, went on board the other ship which was commanded by
Bartholomew Columbus, the brother of the Admiral, who had been with him all
through the dreadful expedition. At last they saw the home shores again, and on
the seventh of November, 1504, Columbus sailed into the harbor of San Lucar,
not far from Cadiz.
He had been away from
Spain for fully two years and a half. He had not accomplished a single thing he
set out to do. He had met with disappointment and disaster over and over again,
and had left the four ships that had been given him a total wreck upon the
shores of Jamaica. He came back poor, unsuccessful, unnoticed, and so ill that
he could scarcely get ashore.
And so the fourth
voyage of the great Admiral ended. It was his last. His long sickness had
almost made him crazy. He said and did many odd things, such as make us think,
nowadays, that people have, as we call it, "lost their minds." But he
was certain of one thing--the king and queen of Spain had not kept the promises
they had made him, and he was determined, if he lived, to have justice done
him, and to make them do as they said they would.
They had told him that
only himself or one of his family should be Admiral of the Ocean Seas and
Viceroy of the New Lands; they had sent across the water others, who were not
of his family, to govern what he had been promised for his own. They had told
him that he should have a certain share of the profits that came from trading
and gold hunting in the Indies; they had not kept this promise either, and he
was poor when he was certain he ought to be rich.
So, when he was on land
once more, he tried hard to get to court and see the king and queen. But he was
too sick. He had got as far as beautiful Seville, the fair Spanish city by the
Guadalquivir, and there he had to give up and go to bed. And then came a new
disappointment. He was to lose his best friend at the court. For when he had
been scarcely two weeks in Spain, Queen Isabella died.
She was not what would
be considered in these days either a particularly good woman, or an especially
good queen. She did many cruel things; and while she talked much about doing
good, she was generally looking out for herself most of all. But that was not
so much her fault as the fault of the times in which she lived. Her life was
not a happy one; but she had always felt kindly toward Columbus, and when he
was where he could see her and talk to her, he had always been able to get her
to side with him and grant his wishes.
Columbus was now a very
sick man. He had to keep his bed most of the time, and this news of the queen's
death made him still worse, for he felt that now no one who had the
"say" would speak a good word for the man who had done so much for
Spain, and given to the king and queen the chance to make their nation great
and rich and powerful.
ANY one who is sick, as
some of you may know, is apt to be anxious and fretful and full of fears as to
how he is going to get along, or who will look out for his family. Very often
there is no need for this feeling; very often it is a part of the complaint
from which the sick person is suffering.
In the case of
Columbus, however, there was good cause for this depressed and anxious feeling.
King Ferdinand, after Queen Isabella's death, did nothing to help Columbus. He
would not agree to give the Admiral what he called his rights, and though
Columbus kept writing letters from his sick room asking for justice, the king
would do nothing for him. And when the king's smile is turned to a frown, the
fashion of the court is to frown, too.
So Columbus had no
friends at the king's court. Diego, his eldest son, was still one of the royal
pages, but he could do nothing. Without friends, without influence, without opportunity,
Columbus began to feel that he should never get his rights unless he could see
the king himself. And sick though he was he determined to try it.
It must have been sad
enough to see this sick old man drag himself feebly to the court to ask for justice
from the king whom he had enriched. You would think that when King Ferdinand
really saw Columbus at the foot of the throne, and when he remembered all that
this man had done for him and for Spain, and how brave and persistent and full
of determination to do great things the Admiral once had been, he would at
least have given the old man what was justly due him.
But he would not. He
smiled on the old sailor, and said many pleasant things and talked as if he
were a friend, but he would not agree to anything Columbus asked him; and the
poor Admiral crawled back to his sick bed again, and gave up the struggle. I
have done all that I can do, he said to the few friends who remained faithful
to him; I must leave it all to God. He has always helped me when things were at
the worst.
And God helped him by
taking him away from all the fret, and worry, and pain, and struggle that made
up so much of the Admiral's troubled life. On the twentieth of May, 1506, the
end came. In the house now known as Number 7 Columbus Avenue, in the city of
Valladolid; in Northern Spain, with a few faithful friends at his side, he
signed his will, lay back in bed and saying trustfully these words: Into thy
hands, O Lord, I commit my spirit! the Admiral of the Ocean Seas, the Viceroy
of the Indies, the Discoverer of a New World, ended his fight for life.
Christopher Columbus was dead.
He was but sixty years
old. With Tennyson, and Whittier, and Gladstone, and De Lesseps living to be
over eighty, and with your own good grandfather and grandmother, though even
older than Columbus, by no means ready to be called old people, sixty years
seems an early age to be so completely broken and bent and gray as was he. But
trouble, and care, and exposure, and all the worries and perils of his life of
adventure, had, as you must know, so worn upon Columbus that when he died he
seemed to be an old, old man. He was white-haired, you remember, even before he
discovered America, and each year he seemed to grow older and grayer and more
feeble.
And after he had died
in that lonely house in Valladolid, the world seems for a time to have almost
forgotten him. A few friends followed him to the grave; the king, for whom he
had done so much, did not trouble himself to take any notice of the death of
his Admiral, whom once he had been forced to honor, receive and reward. The
city of Valladolid, in which Columbus died, was one of those fussy little towns
in which everybody knew what was happening next door, and talked and argued
about whatever happened upon its streets and in its homes; and yet even
Valladolid hardly seemed to know of the presence within its gates of the sick
"Viceroy of the Indies." Not until four weeks after his death did the
Valladolid people seem to realize what had happened; and then all they did was
to write down this brief record: "The said Admiral is dead."
To-day, the bones of
Columbus inclosed in a leaden casket lie in the Cathedral of Santo Domingo.
People have disputed about the place where the Discoverer of America was born;
they are disputing about the place where he is buried. But as it seems now
certain that he was born in Genoa, so it seems also certain that his bones are
really in the tomb in the old Cathedral at Santo Domingo, that old Haytian city
which he founded, and where he had so hard a time.
At least a dozen places
in the Old World and the New have built monuments and statues in his honor; in
the United States, alone, over sixty towns and villages bear his name, or the
kindred one of Columbia. The whole world honors him as the Discoverer of
America; and yet the very name that the Western Hemisphere bears comes not from
the man who discovered it, but from his friend and comrade Americus Vespucius.
Like Columbus, this
Americus Vespucius was an Italian; like him, he was a daring sailor and a
fearless adventurer, sailing into strange seas to see what he could find. He
saw more of the American coast than did Columbus, and not being so full of the
gold-hunting and slave-getting fever as was the Admiral, he brought back from
his four voyages so much information about the new-found lands across the sea,
that scholars, who cared more for news than gold, became interested in what he
reported. And some of the map-makers in France, when they had to name the new
lands in the West that they drew on their maps--the lands that were not the
Indies, nor China, nor Japan--called them after the man who had told them so
much about them--Americus Vespucius. And so it is that to-day you live in
America and not in Columbia, as so many people have thought this western world
of ours should he named.
And even the titles,
and riches, and honors that the king and queen of Spain promised to Columbus
came very near being lost by his family, as they had been by himself. It was
only by the hardest work, and by keeping right at it all the time, that the
Admiral's eldest son, Diego Columbus, almost squeezed out of King Ferdinand of
Spain the things that had been promised to his father.
But Diego was as
plucky, and as brave, and as persistent as his father had been; then, too, he
had lived at court so long--he was one of the queen's pages, you remember that
he knew just what to do and how to act so as to get what he wanted. And at last
he got it.
He was made Viceroy
over the Indies; he went across the seas to Hayti, and in his palace in the
city of Santo Domingo he ruled the lands his father had found, and which for
centuries were known as the Spanish Main; he was called Don Diego; he married a
high-born lady of Spain, the niece of King Ferdinand; he received the large
share of "the riches of the Indies" that his father had worked for,
but never received. And the family of Christopher Columbus, the Genoese
adventurer--under the title of the Dukes of Veragua--have, ever since Don
Diego's day, been of what is called "the best blood of Spain."
If you have read this
story of Christopher Columbus aright, you must have come to the conclusion that
the life of this Italian sea captain who discovered a new world was not a happy
one. From first to last it was full of disappointment. Only once, in all his
life, did he know what happiness and success meant, and that was on his return
from his first voyage, when he landed amid cheers of welcome at Palos, and marched
into Barcelona in procession like a conqueror to be received as an equal by his
king and queen.
Except for that little
taste of glory, how full of trouble was his life! He set out to find Cathay and
bring back its riches and its treasures. He did not get within five thousand
miles of Cathay. He returned from his second voyage a penitent, bringing only
tidings of disaster. He returned from his third voyage in disgrace, a prisoner
and in chains, smarting under false charges of theft, cruelty and treason. He
returned from his fourth voyage sick unto death, unnoticed, unhonored,
unwelcomed.
From first to last he
was misunderstood. His ideas were made fun of, his efforts were treated with
contempt, and even what he did was not believed, or was spoken of as of not
much account. A career that began in scorn ended in neglect. He died
unregarded, and for years no one gave him credit for what he had done, nor
honor for what he had brought about.
Such a life would, I am
sure, seem to all boys and girls, but a dreary prospect if they felt it was to
be theirs or that of any one they loved. And yet what man to-day is more highly
honored than Christopher Columbus? People forget all the trials and hardships
and sorrows of his life, and think of him only as one of the great successes of
the world--the man who discovered America.
And out of his life of
disaster and disappointment two things stand forth that all of us can honor and
all of us should wish to copy. These are his sublime persistence and his
unfaltering faith. Even as a boy, Columbus had an idea of what he wished to try
and what he was bound to do. He kept right at that idea, no matter what might
happen to annoy him or set him back.
It was the faith and
the persistence of Columbus that discovered America and opened the way for the
millions who now call it their home. It is because of these qualities that we
honor him to-day; it is because this faith and persistence ended as they did in
the discovery of a new world, that to-day his fame is immortal.
Other men were as
brave, as skillful and as wise as he. Following in his track they came sailing
to the new lands; they explored its coasts, conquered its red inhabitants, and
peopled its shores with the life that has made America today the home of
millions of white men and millions of free men. But Columbus showed the way.
WHENEVER you start to
read a story that you hope will be interesting, you always wonder, do you not,
how it is going to turn out? Your favorite fairy tale or wonder story that
began with "once upon a time," ends, does it not, "so the prince
married the beautiful princess, and they lived happy ever after?"
Now, how does this
story that we have been reading together turn out? You don't think it ended happily,
do you? It was, in some respects, more marvelous than any fairy tale or wonder
story; but, dear me! you say, why couldn't Columbus have lived happily, after
he had gone through so much, and done so much, and discovered America, and
given us who came after him so splendid a land to live in?
Now, just here comes
the real point of the story. Wise men tell us that millions upon millions of
busy little insects die to make the beautiful coral islands of the Southern
seas. Millions and millions of men and women have lived and labored, died and
been forgotten by the world they helped to make the bright, and beautiful, and
prosperous place to live in that it is to-day.
Columbus was one of
these millions; but he was a leader among them and has not been forgotten. As
the world has got farther away from the time in which he lived, the man
Columbus, who did so much and yet died almost unnoticed, has grown more and
more famous; his name is immortal, and to-day he is the hero Columbus--one of
the world's greatest men.
We, in America, are
fond of celebrating anniversaries. I suppose the years that you boys and girls
have thus far lived have been the most remarkable in the history of the world
for celebrating anniversaries. For fully twenty years the United States has
been keeping its birthday. The celebration commenced long before you were born,
with the one hundredth anniversary of the Battle of Lexington (in 1875). It has
not ended yet. But in 1892, We celebrated the greatest of all our
birthdays--the discovery of the continent that made it possible for us to be
here at all.
Now this has not always
been so with us. I suppose that in 1592 and in 1692 no notice whatever was
taken of the twelfth day of October, on which--one hundred and two hundred
years before--Columbus had landed on that flat little "key" known as
Watling's Island down among the West Indies, and had begun a new chapter in the
world's wonderful story. In 1592, there was hardly anybody here to celebrate
the anniversary--in fact, there was hardly anybody here at all, except a few
Spanish settlers in the West Indies, in Mexico, and in Florida. In 1692, there
were a few scattered settlements of Frenchmen in Canada, of Englishmen in New
England, Dutchmen in New York, Swedes in Delaware, and Englishmen in Maryland,
Virginia and the Carolinas. But none of these people loved the Spaniards. They
hated them, indeed; for there had been fierce fighting going on for nearly a
hundred years between Spain and England, and you couldn't find an Englishman, a
Dutchman or a Swede who was willing to say a good word for Spain, or thank God
for the man who sailed away in Spanish ships to discover America two hundred
years before.
In 1792, people did
think a little more about this, and there were a few who did remember that,
three hundred years before, Columbus had found the great continent upon which,
in that year 1792, a new republic, called the United States of America, had
only just been started after a long and bloody war of rebellion and revolution.
We do not find,
however, that in that year of 1792 there were many, if any, public celebrations
of the Discovery of America, in America itself. A certain American clergyman,
however, whose name was the Rev. Elhanan Winchester, celebrated the three
hundredth anniversary of the Discovery of America by Columbus. And he
celebrated it not in America, but in England, where he was then living. On the
twelfth of October, 1792, Winchester delivered an address on "Columbus and
his Discoveries," before a great assembly of interested listeners. In that
address he said some very enthusiastic and some very remarkable things about
the America that was to be:
"I see the United
States rise in all their ripened glory before me," he said. "I look
through and beyond every yet peopled region of the New World, and behold period
still brightening upon period. Where one contiguous depth of gloomy wilderness
now shuts out even the beams of day, I see new States and empires, new seats of
wisdom and knowledge, new religious domes spreading around. In places now
untrod by any but savage beasts, or men as savage as they, I hear the voices of
happy labor, and see beautiful cities rising to view. I behold the whole
continent highly cultivated and fertilized, full of cities, towns and villages,
beautiful and lovely beyond expression. I hear the praises of my great Creator
sung upon the banks of those rivers now unknown to song. Behold the delightful
prospect! See the silver and gold of America employed in the service of the
Lord of the whole earth! See slavery, with all its train of attendant evils,
forever abolished! See a communication opened through the whole continent, from
North to South and from East to West, through a most fruitful country. Behold
the glory of God extending, and the gospel spreading through the whole
land!"
Of course, it was easy
for a man to see and to hope and to say all this; but it is a little curious,
is it not, that he should have seen things just as they have turned out?
In Mr. Winchester's
day, the United States of America had not quite four millions of inhabitants.
In his day Virginia was the largest State--in the matter of
population--Pennsylvania was the second and New York the third. Philadelphia
was the greatest city, then followed New York, Boston, Baltimore and Charleston.
Chicago was not even thought of.
To-day, four hundred
years after Columbus first saw American shores, one hundred and sixteen years
after the United States were started in life by the Declaration of American
Independence, these same struggling States of one hundred years ago are joined
together to make the greatest and most prosperous nation in the world. With a
population of more than sixty-two millions of people; with the thirteen
original States grown into forty-four, with the population of its three largest
cities--New York; Philadelphia and Chicago--more than equal to the population
of the whole country one hundred years ago; with schools and colleges and happy
homes brightening the whole broad land that now stretches from ocean to ocean, the
United States leads all other countries in the vast continent Columbus
discovered. Still westward, as Columbus led, the nation advances; and, in a
great city that Columbus could never have imagined, and that the prophet of one
hundred years ago scarcely dreamed of, the mighty Republic in 1892 invited all
the rest of the world to join with it in celebrating the four hundredth
anniversary of the Discovery of America by Columbus the Admiral. And to do this
celebrating fittingly and grandly, it built up the splendid White City by the
great Fresh Water Sea.
Columbus was a dreamer;
he saw such wonderful visions of what was to be, that people, as we know,
tapped their foreheads and called him "the crazy Genoese." But not
even the wildest fancies nor the most wonderful dreams of Columbus came
anywhere near to what he would really have seen if--he could have visited the
Exposition at Chicago, in the great White City by the lake--a "show
city" specially built for the World's Fair of 1893, given in his honor and
as a monument to his memory.
Why, he would say, the
Cathay that I spent my life trying to find was but a hovel alongside this! What
would he have seen? A city stretching a mile and a half in length, and more
than half a mile in breadth; a space covering over five hundred acres of
ground, and containing seventeen magnificent buildings, into any one of which
could have been put the palaces of all the kings and queens of Europe known to
Columbus's day. And in these buildings he would have seen gathered together,
all the marvelous and all the useful things, all the beautiful and all the
delightful things that the world can make to-day, arranged and displayed for
all the world to see. He would have stood amazed in that wonderful city of
glass and iron, that surpassingly beautiful city, all of purest white, that had
been built some eight miles from the center of big and busy Chicago, looking
out upon the blue waters of mighty Lake Michigan. It was a city that I wish all
the boys and girls of America--especially all who read this story of the man in
whose honor it was built, might have visited. For as they saw all its wonderful
sights, studied its marvelous exhibits, and enjoyed its beautiful belongings,
they would have been ready to say how proud, and glad, and happy they were to
think that they were American girls and boys, living in this wonderful
nineteenth century that has been more crowded with marvels, and mysteries, and
triumphs than any one of the Arabian Nights ever contained.
But, whether you saw
the Columbian Exhibition or not, you can say that. And then stop and think what
a parrot did. That is one of the most singular things in all this wonder story
you are reading. Do you not remember how, when Columbus was slowly feeling his
way westward, Captain Alonso Pinzon saw some parrots flying southward, and
believing from this that the land they sought was off in that direction, he
induced Columbus to change his course from the west to the south? If Columbus
had not changed his course and followed the parrots, the Santa Maria, with the
Pinta and the Nina, would have sailed on until they had entered the harbor of
Savannah or Charleston, or perhaps the broad waters of Chesapeake Bay. Then the
United States of to-day would have been discovered and settled by Spaniards,
and the whole history of the land would have been quite different from what it
has been. Spanish blood has peopled, but not uplifted, the countries of South
America and the Spanish Main. English blood, which, following after--because
Columbus had first shown the way--peopled, saved and upbuilt the whole
magnificent northern land that Spain missed and lost. They have found in it
more gold than ever Columbus dreamed of in his never-found Cathay; they have
filled it with a nobler, braver, mightier, and more numerous people than ever
Columbus imagined the whole mysterious land of the Indies contained; they have
made it the home of freedom, of peace, of education, of intelligence and of
progress, and have protected and bettered it until the whole world respects it
for its strength, honors it for its patriotism, admires it for its energy, and
marvels at it for its prosperity.
And this is what a
flying parrot did: It turned the tide of lawless adventure, of gold-hunting, of
slave-driving, and of selfish strife for gain to the south; it left the north
yet unvisited until it was ready for the strong, and sturdy, and determined men
and women who, hunting for liberty, came across the seas and founded the
colonies that became in time the free and independent republic of the United
States of America.
And thus has the story
of Columbus really turned out. Happier than any fairy tale, more marvelous than
any wonder book, the story of the United States of America is one that begins,
"Once upon a time," and has come to the point where it depends upon
the boys and girls who read it, to say whether or not they shall "live
happily ever after."
The four hundred years
of the New World's life closed its chapter of happiness in the electric lights
and brilliant sunshine of the marvelous White City by Lake Michigan. It is a
continued story of daring, devotion and progress, that the boys and girls of
America should never tire of reading. And this story was made possible and
turned out so well, because of the briefer, but no less interesting story of
the daring, the devotion and the faith of the determined Genoese sailor of four
hundred years ago, whom men knew as Don Christopher Columbus, the Admiral of
the Ocean Seas.