Columbus Discovers South America

This series has five easy 5 minute installments.

Introduction
Christopher Columbus made four voyages of discovery. His career was checkered by highs and lows. When he did good, he did spectacularly good; when he did bad, that was on a spectacular scale, too. Around the turn of the twenty-first century, it became fashionable to emphasize the bad part of his biography. This is more due to fashion and contemporary excesses of political correctness than objective history. On the other hand, previous decades emphasis on the good was not objective history, either. While emphasis on one side has balanced out, it would have been nice if the treatment of Columbus’ legacy had been balanced all along.

Columbus was controversial even in his own lifetime. The below selected story makes the point. He was greedy and his rivals were, too. At different times he was both perpetrator and victim. He was also deeply religious and sincerely wanted to honor God by making things better. Christopher Columbus lived large in both bad and good.

This selection is by Clements Robert Markham.

Time: 1498
Place: North Coast of South America

On September 25, 1493, Columbus sailed from Palos and began his second voyage of discovery. He had seventeen vessels and about fifteen hundred men. In November he discovered Dominica in the West Indies. Arriving at La Navidad, Española (Haiti), he found that the colony which he had left there on returning from his first visit had been killed by the Indians. At a point farther east he founded Isabella, the first European town in the New World.

In April, 1594, he, sailed westward and along the south shore of Cuba, which he mistook for a peninsula of Asia. He next discovered Jamaica and in September returned to Isabella. The Indians rose in rebellion against the Spaniards, who had ill-used them and Columbus quelled the insurrection, in a battle on the Vega Real, April 25, 1495. He had before planned for the enslavement of hostile Indians, an act from which his reputation has somewhat suffered.

Owing to hardship and discontent, some of the colonists carried complaints to Spain. Bishop Fonseca, who had charge of colonial affairs, upheld the complainants and in 1495 Juan Aguado was sent as royal commissioner to Española. Aguado prepared a report, fearing the effects of which, Columbus returned to Spain at the same time (1496) with him. A brother of Columbus was left in charge of the government at Española. The Spanish sovereigns, Ferdinand and Isabella, dismissed the charges against Columbus and on May 30, 1498, he sailed from San Lucar on his third voyage to the New World.

The great navigator was no longer the powerful, enduring man of six years before. Exposure, months of sleepless watching, anxiety and tropical fevers had at length done their work. The bright intellect, the vivid imagination, the great heart, the generous nature, would be the same until death but the constitution was shattered. The admiral now suffered from ophthalmia, gout and a complication of diseases. The last six years of his life were destined to be a time of much and cruel suffering, aggravated by ingratitude, perfidy and injustice.

In fitting out the third expedition every petty annoyance and obstruction that the malice of Bishop Fonseca could invent was used to thwart and delay the admiral. Each subordinate official knew that insolence to the object of the Bishop’s envy and dislike and neglect of his wishes, were the surest ways to the favor of his chief. One creature of Fonseca, named Jimeno de Briviesca, carried his insolence beyond the bounds of the endurance even of the dignified and long-suffering admiral, who very properly took him by the scruff of the neck on one occasion and kicked him off the poop of the flag-ship. The delays of Fonseca and his agents caused incalculable injury to the public service, as will presently appear.

The sovereigns had ordered that six million maravedis — about ten thousand dollars — should be granted for the equipment of the expedition and that eight vessels should be provided. The contractor for provisions was Jonato Berardi, a Florentine merchant settled at Seville; and, owing to his death, the contracting work fell upon his assistant Amerigo Vespucci, who was very actively employed on this service from April, 1497, to May, 1498. In 1492 Vespucci came to Spain as a partner of an Italian trader at Cadiz named Donato Nicolini and he afterward became the chief clerk or agent of Berardi. It was thus that Columbus first became acquainted with Amerigo Vespucci, when the admiral had reached the ripe age of forty-five. As for his provisions, a good deal of the meat turned bad on the voyage and the contract was not very satisfactorily carried out. It is strange that this beef and biscuit contractor should have given his name to the New World but perhaps not more strange than that a bacon contractor should be the patron saint of England and of Genoa.

The admiral was most anxious to dispatch supplies and re-enforcements to his brother and he succeeded in sending off two caravels in advance, under the command of Hernandez Coronel, who had been appointed chief magistrate of Espafiola. The other vessels consisted of two naos or ships of a hundred tons and four caravels. After months of harassing and unnecessary delay, they dropped down the Guadalquiver from Seville and the admiral sailed. He touched at Porto Santo and Madeira and reached Gomera on May 19th. Columbus had become aware, through information collected from the natives of the islands, that there was extensive land, probably a continent, to the southward. He had also received a letter from a skilled and learned jeweller named Jaime Ferrer, dated August 5, 1495, in which it was laid down that the most valuable things came from very hot countries, where the natives are black or tawny. These and other considerations led him to determine to cross the Atlantic on a lower parallel than he had ever done before; and he invoked the Holy Trinity for protection, intending to name the first land that was sighted in their honor. But he was impressed with the importance of sending help to the colony without delay.

Continued.

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