by David Boyle
They were very ugly of demeanor and countenance, and all had their cheeks stuffed out inside with a green grass which they continually chewed like cattle, so that they could scarcely speak; and each had around his neck two dried gourds, one of which was filled with that grass which they had in their mouths, and the other with a white flour which seemed like powdered chalk, and from time to time would dip into the flour gourd a splinter which they would keep moistening in the mouth; then they would insert it into their mouths, powdering the grass therein. Astonished at such a thing, we could not guess this secret, nor for what purpose they did so.
These natives had not yet been exposed to Ojeda and those like him, and were generally welcoming to Vespucci and his small landing parties. The cannibalism he described was gruesome, but most of his descriptions of life in Latin America tended toward the idyllic, especially his meeting with a man who had great-great-grandchildren and claimed to be 132 years old. All these passages fed the emerging myth of a utopian continent, and yet there was also something monstrous even in Vespucci’s descriptions. Their diabolical frenzies in battle, their habit of eating the mothers and children of their enemies. He lived among them at one stage for twenty-seven consecutive days, sleeping at night in a hammock and marveling at their innocence, and then found himself—if we believe him—occasionally buying their prisoners to save them from the cauldron.
The fleet reunited near Porto Seguro on November 3, 1501, and continued southward, exploring the mouths of rivers as they went, hoping that they might turn out to be the strait to Asia, thrilled by the beauty of everything they saw and the aromatic smell that wafted up from the shore. “I fancied myself near a terrestrial paradise,” said Vespucci, rather as Columbus had done on his third voyage. But unlike Columbus, he remained skeptical that this was what it was. “I am like one of those followers of St. Thomas,” he wrote later, “who are slow to believe.”
At the start of 1502, Vespucci passed another great river and harbor, naming it after the month: Rio de Janeiro. Peering at the night sky and doing his calculations, he drew the point on the map marked by the line drawn by the Treaty of Tordesillas, which delineated the boundary of the Castilian ocean. Coelho formally handed over command to Vespucci, as the nearest they had to a Castilian representative, and they named the nearest river Cananor and erected a traditional Portuguese marble column, like the ones that marked the limit of their original voyages down the coast of Africa. Vespucci had been told by Gaspar da Gama that Cananor was the farthest place in India that the Portuguese expedition under Cabral had reached. It was intended to mark the farthest place that Portugal could claim in Latin America under the treaty. It was February 15, 1502, and Vespucci’s calculations of the longitude were correct to within two miles. He had been getting better at the technique.
From then on, he kept the charts and the names on them confidential from his Portuguese colleagues, attempting to be fair to Castile, and the fleet sped up. Even so, the names he chose were not always Spanish. A month later, on March 24, it was Guido Antonio Vespucci’s birthday, and Amerigo honored his great mentor by naming the San Antonio River.*
The expedition managed a brief exploration of what is now the Plate River before heading farther south, naming it the Rio Giordan. But on April 7, 1502, five days after Prince Arthur’s death in Ludlow, the three ships were hit by a massive storm. They hauled down the sails and tried to ride it out far off the coast. It had been dark for fifteen hours when they caught sight of an unfamiliar rocky coast, and sheered away to avoid being caught on the rocks. Coelho and Vespucci agreed that they seemed to be entering a part of the ocean that was particularly dangerous, and it made sense to turn around.
The ships could only just see each other through the gloom, but they managed to signal and set course back north. In fact, they had hit the Roaring Forties—the violent prevailing winds between the latitudes of forty and fifty degrees south—though Vespucci later exaggerated how far they had gone, and claimed to have reached fifty-three degrees. Either way, no European had been this far south before.
Even before Columbus’s irritating reappearance in chains, Isabella and Ferdinand had decided to appoint a professional governor of the Indies. Bobadilla had not been intended to establish any kind of permanent rule. The choice of permanent official took longer, but they eventually appointed the aristocratic and trustworthy Nicholas de Ovando, then fifty-two. The arrangement with Columbus, as far as his promised vice-regal appointment, was at an end. Ovando’s salary was to be twice Bobadilla’s.
The same day that Ovando was appointed, September 3, 1501, the sovereigns issued a series of pronouncements about the future of Hispaniola. From now on, licenses would always be needed to sail for the Indies. All ships would have a notary on board to assess what tax was due to the crown. The Indians would no longer be enslaved, except in certain exceptional cases, but would be converted to Christianity “with much love, and without using force.” Of course, the certain exceptional cases expanded considerably on the other side of the Atlantic, but the sovereigns seem now to have been seriously concerned about their new subjects and determined to make sure they were better treated.
Ovando sailed from Sanlúcar de Barrameda at the head of a large fleet of twenty-seven ships, the largest so far sent to the Indies, on February 13, 1502, two days before Vespucci’s calculations at Cananor. On board were as many as 2,500 settlers, a number swelled by the deepening economic problems and rising poverty in Castile and Aragon. Among them were Francisco Pizarro, the future conqueror of Peru; and Bartholomé de las Casas, the future campaigner for humanity toward the Indians. The future conqueror of Mexico, Hernán Cortés, would have gone too, but he had hurt his leg jumping out of the bedroom window of a married lady a few days before sailing and had been left behind.
This would be a serious attempt at settlement. No longer would the sovereigns rely on amateurs. Nor would they rely on Columbus to push forward the boundaries of exploration. For the first time, they would attempt to settle the mainland, and armed with his patent that urged him to stop the expansion of the English, the adventurer Alonso de Ojeda was licensed to lead an expedition of three ships to the coast of what is Colombia today. Thanks to the intervention with Ferdinand of his friend Juan de la Cosa, Ojeda was also armed with the title Governor of New Andalusia.
Columbus had forgiven neither of these former friends and associates—Ojeda for his theft of the Pearl Coast map and de la Cosa for portraying Cuba as an island, when he had been one of those on Columbus’s second voyage who had made an oath that it was mainland China. Nor had he forgiven the officials who were licensing these voyages of discovery across the ocean he regarded as his own. Peralonso Niño and Vicente Yáñez Pinzón were mapping the Caribbean bit by bit and bringing back a fortune in pearls. But between his vituperations against these former friends, and his book of prophecies, Columbus was making some progress persuading the sovereigns to agree to a fourth voyage. Through the winter of 1501 into 1502 he bombarded the court with letters and proposals, begging for the chance to sail again, and with different plans for the voyage. When he pressed them for a response, they had lost the proposals, and he had to start again. But finally, in March 1502, the voyage was agreed to and the struggle began again to raise the money.
Columbus’s original estimate of the cost had been beaten down to a mere fraction by his usual enemies in the treasury, which is why he was now raising the necessary money from his reliable old contacts in Genoa, the cosmopolitan business families who had first offered him work. At the same time, the resources to man and supply his four ships were being siphoned off to the almost limitless needs of Hispaniola’s new governor, on whose behalf the docks of Seville and Cadiz had exhausted themselves preparing a fleet.
The result was that Columbus had serious doubts about the adequacy of his four ships and supplies. But he was still sick and could not get up enough energy even to command his flagship, La Capitana. Aware that he needed support on board, he took with him hi
s thirteen-year-old son Ferdinand and persuaded his brother Bartholomew to come too, on the Santiago de Palos, much against Bartholomew’s better judgment. Along with them sailed the creaking Gallega and the tiny Vizcaína, which struggled out of Cadiz harbor on May 9, 1502, after delays waiting for wind.
It is hardly surprising, therefore, that Columbus turned his mind to writing his will before leaving. He wrote to his son Diego asking him to look after his poor abandoned mistress Beatriz, and he wrote to the Bank of St. George in Genoa, explaining that wherever his body might be, his heart would always be in the city of his birth. Then he went on board for a voyage he intended as the crowning achievement of his life and as the final answer to his critics. Columbus referred to his fourth voyage as the “High Voyage.” It was intended to finally get through to the Indies and to bring back enough gold to restore his lost titles and privileges. He had employed a trumpeter on board La Capitana in order to impress the Chinese. This journey was to be his most dangerous and disastrous yet.
By June 1502, Columbus’s rickety squadron was anchored outside Santo Domingo harbor in defiance of his strict instructions not to go there. He had begun by sailing south—directly toward Vespucci’s returning ships—to help a Portuguese fortress on the Moroccan coast, which was under attack. This was in line with the new friendly relations between Castile and Portugal, which Vespucci was now struggling to preserve. After that, Columbus made his fastest crossing yet across the Atlantic, just twenty-one days. Even so, he already had reason to be increasingly concerned about the ships—especially the Santiago de Palos—and the extreme youth of his crews.
Ovando had arrived in Hispaniola as governor, after a difficult crossing three months before, and was installed in Columbus’s old home. Columbus’s nemesis Bobadilla as well as Roldán and various high-ranking Taino captives were on or near the dockside, watching the gathering winds nervously and preparing to leave for Castile. There was consternation in the town when it was discovered who was in the ships they could see waiting offshore, afraid that the hated Columbus brothers were about to stage a return to power.
There were reasons why Columbus had broken his promise not to land. The first was that he was determined to swap the Santiago de Palos for one of the other ships in Ovando’s fleet, which he knew would still be in Santo Domingo harbor. But there was a more urgent reason. He had seen the unusual swell from the southwest, watched the racing clouds, and sensed the oppressive feeling in the air, which for Columbus meant only one thing: they were in for a dreadful storm. He could see the preparations on the dockside, and realized that the fleet was about to sail, and it was vital that they were delayed. He was also determined to shelter his own ships in the harbor. He sent the captain of the Gallega ashore with a letter, warning Ovando that he must keep the fleet in port until after the storm.
Ovando was by the docks himself when this letter arrived, supervising the dispatch of Hispaniola’s latest consignment of produce, by far the most valuable cargo which had yet crossed the Atlantic. There were thirty ships now heaving in the lively swell, their flags and pennants flapping wildly in the wind, and in their holds was nearly three years worth of full-time gold mining. Surrounded by some leading colonists, Ovando dealt with their fears by reading out the letter in a sarcastic voice, and he sent the captain back with a stark refusal. Astonished and horrified, Columbus took his own ships farther around the coast to take shelter in the bay of Azúa de Compostela. “Was there a man born who would not die of despair—excepting Job himself,” he wrote, “at being denied refuge at the hazard of his life and soul…in the very land which, by God’s will, and sweating blood, I won for Spain?”
As he predicted, the hurricane struck some hours later, and it did so with unprecedented force. The new city of Santo Domingo was nearly flattened. Roofs were torn off and wooden walls were demolished. The storm surge swept through the devastated streets, drowning those near the shore and their animals, smashing the boats and remaining ships in the harbor, transforming the new city into piles of debris. The church which had been so laboriously built there since Bartholomew Columbus had laid the foundation stones five years before was left in ruins. Three of Columbus’s small squadron broke free of their moorings and managed to survive only by extraordinary seamanship. Only La Capitana held firm.
The returning fleet, under Columbus’s friend Antonio de Torres, was not so lucky. The ships had just reached the particularly dangerous straits between Hispaniola and Puerto Rico when the wind rose to hurricane force, tearing off masts and sails before the crews had the chance to take them down. The ships were scattered and succumbed one by one to the rage of the sea. As many as five hundred lives were lost, together with nearly all the gold, including the so-called Great Nugget, a lump of gold said to have weighed over three hundred pounds. All the papers about Bobadilla’s governorship went down with the ships, along with Bobadilla himself and all his staff. Also drowned were Roldán and his former ally Guarionex, as well as the fleet commander de Torres himself and the navigator Peralonso Niño. Three surviving ships staggered back to Santo Domingo in the following days, dismasted and battered. Only one ship, the unseaworthy caravel Aguja, in which the authorities had entrusted Columbus’s own gold, made it all the way back to Castile.
Vespucci’s expedition had arrived off Sierra Leone on the African coast on May 10, 1502, a month before these events, and the day after Columbus had sailed from Cadiz. One of his ships had become unseaworthy and it was beached and set on fire. He then sailed north again to the Azores at the end of July and stayed there for two weeks to rest. There seems to have been a reluctance to actually get home and begin the diplomatic wrangling that Vespucci was going to have to do in both royal courts if he was going to survive with his reputation unscathed.
It had been an achievement. Not one crewman had been killed—or possibly only one, based on a later story that one had been eaten by native women. No native villagers had been seized and sold into slavery. Two rival maritime nations, he hoped, would see clearly where their rights lay and be able to avoid stumbling into war by mistake. Before his voyage the assumption among navigators was still that this landmass, so inconveniently in the middle of the Atlantic, was just a final hurdle before the Indies. After Vespucci’s voyage, it was clearer that this was a whole continent, running from the Arctic to the Antarctic. There was at least a possibility that it was no more part of Asia than Europe was.
This was an insight that derived not solely from Vespucci, but also from the series of explorations now so feverishly continuing in Central America, and on those of Cabot, Corte Real, and Fernandez in the north. But this New World—a term coined back in 1493 by Peter Martyr and used increasingly by Vespucci—was not yet of great interest to many of the explorers in its own right. For the next decade, the challenge was to find a passage, south, north, or central, that would take them through to Asia and the spices. Vespucci had studied the continent for its own sake, using his astrolabe and quadrant, and was trying to shift the debate to a more technocratic level. He may have had no formal training at sea, but he knew his science, or so he argued, and had a great deal to teach the seagoing community.
His problem was that he and Coelho had taken Marchionni at his word. They had brought back no gold or slaves, but holds full of rather ordinary dyestuffs like brazilwood. They had discovered no new hope of profit, and as a result, they were disturbed to find that their investors were no longer very interested. For the Portuguese, the problem was that all those passages, if they existed, probably lay on the Spanish side of the treaty line. For the Spanish, the danger was that the Portuguese had already found their own route to India. Diplomats began debating whether the Tordesillas line extended around the other side of the world as well.
Nervous about his reception, Vespucci finally landed in Lisbon on September 7, 1502, bringing parrots, monkeys, and logwood, and immediately began writing his regular report to Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco, explaining that “I reached the region of the Antipodes, which
according to my navigation, is the fourth part of the world.” In fact, he was bitterly disappointed by his reception in Lisbon, where he had hoped to be hailed as a great discoverer. A month later, he was sailing up the Guadalquivir back home to Seville.
Columbus was still in the Caribbean. He had escaped the hurricane in June only to be lashed by the most extraordinary weather. His four caravels crossed the Windward Passage along the southern coast of Jamaica and made the journey to Honduras in only three days. There Bartholomew took a party ashore and discovered a sophisticated galley, eight-feet wide, rowed by a crew of twenty-five local Indians. He seized the elderly skipper of this canoe as an interpreter for the expedition.
The objective was the straits that would take them through to India, but it was unclear which way to search. Columbus believed they had arrived somewhere near the Malay Peninsula, and therefore ought to sail southeast. But the winds and the current were against them and, for the next twenty-eight days, they sailed through thunder, lightning, and almost continuous torrential rain. The crew was permanently soaked. He wrote how guilty he was to have brought Bartholomew, against his will.
