A Family of Islands

by Alec Waugh

  This shipment of slaves was the chief tangible return for the shareholders in the expedition, but the lack of material return was not the major cause of the Queen’s concern. There was now a regular caravel service with an exchange of letters between the court and Hispaniola, and Isabella was in receipt of private reports from her new subjects. She read of quarrels between Columbus and his men, and complaints of his tyrannous behaviour. Nor was she pleased to learn that when he had handed over the administration of the city to his elder brother, during his sickness, he had conferred on him the title of adelantado, a title which admitted the bearer to many privileges. He appeared to be usurping the royal authority.

  In her concern, she decided to send out an envoy who would report back to her on the precise conditions that existed there. His credentials were ambiguous. ‘Gentlemen and Squires and others who are in the Indies at our behest, we send you thither Juan Aguado, our butler, who will speak to you on our behalf. We order you to have faith in him and believe what he says.’

  Columbus was puzzled and alarmed. He did not fail to notice that the document contained no reference to himself. Was his position no longer secure at court? He decided to return, to state his case and to have his authority confirmed. He took back the sick and any others who might be glad to get away. Two hundred and twenty colonists were delighted to leave the land of promise.

  From the point of view of the colony’s welfare, he could not have left at a more inconvenient time, and the man whom he appointed as mayor of Isabella in his absence was singularly ill-fitted for a post of such high responsibility.

  The reception that was accorded to Columbus in Cádiz, in June 1496, was very different from that which had welcomed him at Palos thirty-nine months earlier. No balconies were decked with flags. No courtiers thronged to honour him. On the contrary, those who had invested in his enterprise were aggrieved. They felt they had been cheated, while those who had been jealous of his sudden elevation to the aristocracy and resentful of the signal honours that had been showered on him, were quick to sneer. What else could you expect from an Italian upstart!

  Columbus, self-centred and imperious though he was, had the common sense to recognize that he had enemies at court. Self-confident and convinced though he might be of the ultimate value of his discoveries, he realized that the story he had to tell would not be popular. He returned ready to meet opposition, and with a keen sense of the dramatic he exchanged the velvet bonnet and gorgeous cloak in which, at Seville, he had crossed the stone Moorish bridge over the Guadalquivir, for the shabby grey robe of a Franciscan.

  It was thus that he presented himself at court. His movements were slow with gout, his face was lined with sickness, but the Admiral of the Seas carried his head high, his eyes were bright; he spoke with the old eloquence. ‘Your Highnesses,’ he promised, ‘will win these lands which are in another world, where Christianity will have so much enjoyment and our faith in time so great an increase. All this I say with very honest intent and because I desire that Your Highnesses may be the greatest Lords in the world. Lords of it all, I say, and that all be with much service and satisfaction of the Holy Trinity.’ Once again Ferdinand and Isabella listened; and once again fate smiled on the great fanatic. He was given an unexpected chance to prove his skill as a navigator.

  The court was awaiting at Burgos the arrival from England of Margaret of Austria to celebrate her betrothal to Prince Juan. The weather had been bad and the King and Queen had been worried by the fleet’s delay. They had finally decided that it was no use waiting any longer. On a Saturday the court moved to Soria, the King and Queen staying on until Monday. On that night Columbus wrote to tell them that since the wind had changed, the fleet would sail in a day or two, and, if it did not stop at the Isle of Wight, would be in northern Spain on Monday. And indeed on Monday a ship that had not stopped at the Isle of Wight did arrive, at the very port that he had prophesied. Once again his stock stood high; and indeed Isabella’s faith in him had never wavered. He had accomplished what he had promised. He had crossed the ocean, he had added vast territories to her dominions. He had not found the gold that he expected, but she was less interested in gold than he. She had an aristocratic, a regal attitude to money. She had, she said, spent more money on enterprises of less importance. She confirmed him in his authority and promised to fit him out on a third voyage, agreeing to the complicated conditions he demanded.

  Two years were to pass, however, before he was ready to sail again, and during them much happened. In August 1496, Margaret of Austria landed in northern Spain, and within a week it was apparent that she and Prince Juan were ecstatically in love. She was eighteen, he was nineteen. It was like a fairy story. The wedding was celebrated in the following March with the utmost splendour. It seemed to Isabella that in this union of her new empire and the old empire of Charlemagne the destiny of Spain had been confirmed. But Prince Juan was not only young and elegant, he was also delicate, and his doctors were soon warning the Queen that his constitution could not stand the strain placed on it by a marriage that was a love affair; they urged a temporary separation. Isabella could not agree that man should separate whom God had joined. Her theologians agreed with her. Within a year her son was dead.

  She never recovered from this blow. As a Christian Queen she endured stoically the few sad years that lay ahead, but by the time Columbus was ready to sail on his third voyage she was no longer the young woman of dreams who had listened to a visionary.

  There were further blows to fall. A year later, her daughter Isabel, Queen of Portugal, died in childbirth, and the son who should have inherited the throne did not long survive her. At a time when Isabella’s patience and strength were strained to the limits of endurance, Columbus added an intolerable burden.

  On the day of departure, on the docks, he lost his temper with the Bishop’s adjutant, struck him, knocked him down and kicked him. It is probable that this act, more than any other, counted against Columbus with Isabella. What confidence could she have in a man who could lose his temper so completely, in public and against a person whom he should have held as sacrosanct? If he was to behave like this in Spain, what might he not be expected to do in far Hispaniola? She was ready to give credence now to the reports that reached her from those distant shores.

  She had good cause to be exasperated. Once again he was to break her express command and send back Indian slaves. Convinced though she was of Columbus’ skill as a navigator, she had come to feel grave doubts about his effectiveness as an administrator. She was herself an administrator of the highest order and could recognize the lack of essential qualities in others. Finally, her nerves stretched taut, her patience exhausted by the continual complaints about his brutality and highhandedness, she sent out Francisco de Bobadilla with instructions to adjudicate between the various disputants. She appointed him governor and chief magistrate of Hispaniola, and empowered him to send back to Spain anyone whose actions were endangering the national interest; Christopher was told to hand over to him all the property of Their Highnesses and fcto believe him and do what he says’.

  On his arrival, Bobadilla found two Christians recently hanged, swinging from the gallows. The enquiries he made convinced him that he had interrupted a condition of chaos which was very close to anarchy. He decided that the Admiral’s presence was the chief deterrent to peace and ordered his arrest. Columbus returned from his third voyage neither in a velvet cap nor in a Franciscan gown, but in chains.

  The colonial pattern that was to be repeated so often in the years ahead, among so many nations, was first established here, the man on the spot being misunderstood and condemned by the authorities at home. But though Bobadilla went beyond Isabella’s intentions, if not beyond her instructions, which were vague and comprehensive, and though it is possible that Isabella’s choice of Bobadilla was injudicious, there have been few criticisms of his honesty and rectitude.

  In this, his darkest hour, Columbus behaved with great astuteness. His sense of the
theatre did not fail him. The master of the ship that carried him back offered to remove his chains, but he refused. The chains, he asserted, had been placed there under the orders of Her Majesty, Isabella of Castile, and by her orders only could they be struck off. He also was at pains to see that Ferdinand and Isabella received news of his disgrace through the friendly offices of the master of the ship before Bobadilla’s official report reached them. Isabella, horrified that a man whom she had honoured should suffer such indignities, instantly ordered his release and summoned him to court, sending money so that he could appear in clothes worthy of his station.

  The magnetism of his personality bleached the formal bureaucratic testimony against him. He had a great capacity for self-pity, a great sense of his own importance. He was a superb figure of the Renaissance. In a letter to the infanta’s governess he wrote, ‘They judge me as a governor who had gone to Sicily, or to a city or town under a regular governor, where the laws can be observed in toto without fear of losing all, and I am suffering grave injury. I should be judged as a captain who went from Spain to the Indies to conquer a people numerous and warlike, whose manners and religion are very different from ours, who live in sierras and mountains, without fixed settlements, and where, by divine will, I have placed under the sovereignty of the King another world whereby Spain, which was reckoned poor, is become the richest of countries.’

  Columbus, in ill health, tortured with gout but with his eyes ablaze, may well have been even more impressive at his fortune’s lowest ebb than he had been in the pride and glory of his first return; and it was certainly of considerable feats that he had to tell. On this third voyage he had taken a southern route, reaching Trinidad and the Gulf of Paria. He was disappointed at not being received there by Chinese clothed in silk, but he was comforted to find that the natives of Venezuela had upon their arms pearls which might be a satisfactory substitute for gold. The Gulf of Paria contained fresh water, which surely proved the proximity of some great river. The Scriptures had laid down that in the earthly paradise grew the tree of life, from which flowed the four great rivers of the world, the Ganges, the Nile, the Tigris, and the Euphrates. The discovery of this fifth river suggested that he was near the earthly paradise. He was convinced that he was on a continent.

  Their Majesties listened and were impressed. The man whom they had raised to such high honour still seemed worthy of it; they were prepared to confirm him in his rank; but they did not consider that Bobadilla had been at fault. Their envoy might have been overzealous, but he had not been mistaken. Columbus was the greatest navigator that the world had known, but he did not possess the qualities of a colonial governor. They would indeed have been happy to find for his old age a sheltered and honoured sinecure at home, but the imagination of Columbus was still alight. Like that other great visionary of Spain’s Golden Age, he inhabited simultaneously the world of truth and fantasy. He was still convinced that India was close at hand, and he had added now to his programme, as a corollary, a scheme to liberate Jerusalem. He had calculated from a study of the Bible that the earth’s course had only 155 years to run. Many prophecies were still unfulfilled. There was no time to waste.

  Once again Their Majesties let themselves be persuaded. They agreed to finance a fourth voyage, but they stipulated that it was to be simply that of an explorer. Its primary object was the discovery of a sea passage through the Caribbean mainland to the farther seas. The expedition was to consist of four caravels, manned by 135 men and boys. On one point Their Majesties were adamant. He was not to visit Hispaniola, to which had been dispatched independently a colonizing expedition of thirty-two ships manned by two thousand five hundred men.

  Columbus’ last voyage was the most turbulent of the four – to him personally it was disastrous; to its sponsors it was unproductive, since he brought back no gold and did not discover the passage to the southern seas. Yet it served a purpose – coasting along Central America he touched on the sources of the New World’s wealth and, in terms of the dramatic unities, it presented a fitting climax to his career.

  From the start he was unlucky. His first objective was Jamaica, but a heavy storm battered him all the way from Dominica, and he was forced to take shelter under the lee of Hispaniola. He was short of supplies and one of his ships was no longer seaworthy. In spite of the injunctions of Isabella, he begged leave to put into harbour, but was refused. In harbour were the ships of the governor who had supplanted him, Ovando. They were about to return to Spain; their flagship was carrying not only Bobadilla but two of his own bitterest foes. There was also on board a vast store of gold, the largest that was ever returned from Hispaniola. A storm was threatening, and Christopher begged once again to be allowed to shelter in Santo Domingo. Again permission was denied him. So he moved down the coast under its protection, while the fleet that had ignored his warning sailed into the open seas, into the full rage of the storm. Twenty ships, including the flagship, were destroyed. Only one ship returned to Spain. An Aeschylean revenge had been accorded to Columbus.

  For him the next eight months were a mounting torture. Sick, abandoned, threatened by hostile natives, with one ship helpless, he wrote despairingly to Isabella, 61 came to serve Your Highnesses at the age of twenty-eight, and now I have no hair on me that is not whitq, and my body is infirm and exhausted. . . . Isolated in this pain, infirm, daily expecting death, surrounded by a million savages full of cruelty and our enemies . . . and thus separated from the holy sacraments of Holy Church, how neglected will be this soul if here it part from this body.’

  The letter is an astonishing mixture of self-glorification and self-pity. On his way westward he had reached the Central American coast. He glowed as he described it. Inland, he asserted, were deep veins of copper. He had seen cotton sheets, and farther on, in the Cathay which he always believed to be close at hand, were, he had been assured, sheets woven with gold. He was handicapped, he realized, by lack of an interpreter, but the much that he had seen, the little that he had been able to infer, convinced him that at last he was within reach of the long-fabled riches. ‘When I discovered the Indies, I said that they were the biggest and richest dominion in the world. I spoke of the gold, pearls, precious stones, spices, commerce and fairs, and as everything did not turn up at once, I was put to shame. This lesson makes me now say no more than what I hear from natives. Of one thing I dare speak, because there are so many witnesses, that is, that in this land of Voragua (Nicaragua), I have seen more signs of gold in the first two days than in Hispaniola in four years. The lands of the country could not be more beautiful nor better tilled, nor the men more cowardly; there are good harbours and beautiful rivers; it can be easily defended against the world. All this in safety for the Christians, with certainty of overlordship, with great hope of honour and growth for the Christian religion. . . . Your Highnesses are as much Lord and Lady of this as of Jerez and Toledo.’ It was on this voyage that he developed the theory that the earth was shaped like a pear.

  His troubles multiplied. He had to face disaffection in his crew, treachery from the natives, he was sick and weak with fever. Only his will sustained him; the resolve to justify himself in the eyes of the world and of his sovereigns.

  Isabella read his letters in the gardens of the Alhambra while her husband, who had lost interest in these costly sailings, developed his European schemes. She was ill and old and tired; she had lost the zest for living. She had just learned of the estrangement between her daughter, Dona Juana, and her husband, Philip of Burgundy, an estrangement that was to lead to the young Spaniard’s mental breakdown. Did she see a parallel between these despairing letters from Jamaica and her own deep-seated grief? Eleven years ago when she and Ferdinand had risen from their thrones in Barcelona, the discovery of the New World had symbolized the radiant future that awaited a Spain delivered from the infidel and purged of heresy; a Spain that would lead the world in the arts and sciences. How quickly those dreams had crumbled, as the marriages on which that future had been based h
ad been dissolved by death. What would happen to Spain now?

  Isabella was never to see her admiral again. Columbus landed at the mouth of the Guadalquivir early in November; he set out immediately for court, but before he could reach her, she had died.

  During the eighteen months of life that still remained to him, Columbus was persistent in his efforts to inspire Ferdinand’s interest in his plans, but without success. Ferdinand had a great deal on his mind. His daughter, Juana, now Queen of Castile, was already mentally deranged, and he was quarrelling with his son-in-law. He had no male heir and the need for one was hurrying him into marriage with a young Princess. He was committed to the drama of European politics. He was free at last to follow his dream of an African empire, with the western Mediterranean a Spanish lake, and the Moslems driven back to their Eastern strongholds. He was busy with the training and the administration of the army that was to make the Spanish infantry, with their short swords, the most formidable and dreaded force in Europe. His life was reorientated and those dreams of the Great Khan’s ransom had become as shadowy as many of the other dreams that he had shared with Isabella when they both were young. A new life was nourished by new ambitions.

  And indeed, nothing of very immediate importance seemed to be happening across the ocean. Nicolas de Ovando, whom Isabella had sent out there before Columbus’ last voyage, was proving an efficient administrator. He nourished no dreams about Cathay. He had a commission on hand, to organize a colony, and he set to work on it.

  His expedition had been planned in the light of the mistakes that had been made on Columbus’ second voyage. It contained less of the Hidalgo type of emigrant and a greater proportion of solid artisans and agriculturists who were anxious to develop the island and use Santo Domingo as a base for exploration. Ovando took with him vines, olives, oranges, lemons, figs and a certain amount of livestock, pigs, horses, cattle. He collected further recruits in the Canaries and took on there rice and bananas. He also exported a few Negro slaves. For many years Spain had been importing slaves in small quantities to work in the south, particularly in Andalusia. Slaves had also been imported into the Canaries, where it was forbidden to enslave the original inhabitants, though this was a technicality, since the Spaniards were allowed to enrol Indians to work on their estates. The distinction between a serf and a slave is not apparent to the toiler in the fields.