A crossbowman brought one out of the forest that he had knocked down from a tree with a shaft, and because it was still so fierce that he dared not get near it, he cut off one of its legs with a knife. The sight of it scared a valiant dog we had on board but frightened even more one of those boars the Indians had brought, and it backed off in great fear; this surprised us because hitherto it had run at everybody on deck, including the dog. The Admiral then had boar and cat thrown together, whereupon the cat coiled his tail around the pig’s snout, seized him by the neck with his remaining foreclaw, and bit him so that he grunted with fear. From this we concluded that these cats hunt other animals, like the wolves and greyhounds of Spain.
The balance of October 1502 passed in an overheated hallucination of voyaging.
October 5 . . . Zorobaró Bay “has three or four channels that are very convenient for getting in and out with every kind of wind. The ships sailed as if in streets between one island and another, the branches of trees brushing the rigging of the ships.” Twenty canoes approach, with Indians “as naked as they came from their mothers’ wombs,” ready to trade gold for hawk’s bells. . . .
October 7 . . . Columbus seizes two Indians who refuse to sell their gold mirrors to the Europeans. “The Indians are painted all over their face and body in different colors, white, black, and red.” Pedro Ledesma, the pilot, experiences a more elaborate reception, according to Las Casas: eighty canoes, “each with a great deal of gold aboard,” approach the Spanish fleet, but “the Admiral refused to take any of it.”
Knowing the Admiral’s obsession with gold, Las Casas scratched his head. Either the encounter with eighty gold-laden canoes never occurred, or the Admiral concluded their cargo and their message lacked legitimacy.
Within days, the Spaniards are on the move again.
October 17 . . . The Admiral sends boats ashore at the Chiriqui Lagoon, whereupon a hundred Indians rush into water up to their waists “brandishing spears, blowing horns, beating a drum, splashing water toward the Christians, and squirting toward them the juice of some herb that they were chewing.” Once the Indians quiet down, Columbus’s men trade for sixteen mirrors of pure gold worth 150 ducats. Elation overcomes them.
In the last days of October, Columbus and his men detected “signs of a building,” by which Ferdinand meant an edifice made of stone rather than wood, cane, or thatch. For the Europeans, the presence of stone indicated an advanced civilization, in this case, the remnants of the Maya. The Maya’s architectural accomplishments were all the more remarkable because, unlike Europeans, they did not use animal or water power to assist in construction; everything was done by hand.
Ferdinand compared the sturdy result to a “great mass of stucco” that “appeared to have been made of stone and lime.” And the Admiral was so impressed that he “ordered a piece to be taken as a souvenir of that antiquity.” Having found in the Maya a civilization worthy of the name, Columbus appeared on the brink of further study and encounters, but he preferred to search for the Chinese described by Marco Polo, and so he moved on.
On November 2, the fleet arrived at a harbor that Columbus called Puerto Bello, in Panama, “because it is very large, beautiful, thickly populated, and surrounded by cultivated country.” Ferdinand extolled the setting, in which vessels could lie close to shore, yet slip away quickly. “The country about the harbor is well tilled and full of houses only a stone’s throw or crossbow shot apart, all as pretty as a picture, the fairest thing one ever saw.” Seduced by nature, the fleet tarried as rain and foul weather descended.
A week later, the sodden fleet resumed its course eastward, sighting fields of maize from the decks of their ships, and coming to rest in a cove, where the intruders terrified the locals, who frantically swam to safety. When the Europeans tried to catch up with a fleeing Indian and haul him aboard for sport, Ferdinand recalled that “he would dive like a waterfowl and come up a bowshot or two distant. It was really funny to see the boat giving chase and the rowers wearing themselves out in vain, for they finally had to return empty-handed.”
In the torpor of heat and rain—temperatures averaged in the high eighties by day, with only a little cooling at night—they were losing track of time. Suddenly it was November 23, and they were “repairing ships and mending casks”—this was when the coopers played their part—just before they called on Guiga, not far from the Isthmus of Panama, although the men had no idea that they found themselves on a strip of land separating two great oceans.
The sight of hundreds of Indians gathering on the shore, wearing gold pendants in their ears and noses, proved unnerving rather than welcoming. By Saturday, November 26, the fleet was under sail again, squeezing into a cramped harbor that the men called Retrete, that is, “closet,” or possibly “toilet,” “because it was so small that it would not hold more than five or six ships” negotiating an entrance barely more than seventy feet wide, “with rocks as sharp as the points of a diamond sticking up on either side.” The vessels negotiating their way through had so little room that a man could easily jump from the deck to the shore.
“In this harbor we stayed nine days, with miserable weather,” Ferdinand mournfully recalled. As before, Indians came to trade, but this time they observed sailors “sneaking ashore from the ships.” The moment they saw the intruders, the Indians returned to their dwellings, as this “greedy and dissolute set of men committed innumerable outrages.” The Indians lost patience, “and some fights occurred between the two sides” as the Indians circled the fleet trapped in the harbor’s confines. Too late, “the Admiral tried to placate them by patience and civility,” without success. To teach them a lesson, or, as Ferdinand put it, “to temper their pride and teach them not to scorn Christians,” Columbus ordered his artillery to fire at a crowd of Indians on an exposed hilltop. The cannonball fell to earth among them, letting them know “that this thunder concealed a thunderbolt.” This time, the show of force worked, and “after that, they hardly dared peep out at us from behind the hills.”
In this incident, Las Casas saw the tragedy and folly of the Enterprise of the Indies, for which he blamed one man: Columbus. “Had these people been treated right from the moment they were discovered in a fashion both loving and just, as natural reason dictates they should have been,” he explained, “and especially if this had been done in a Christian manner, we should have been able to obtain from these people all the gold and riches that they enjoyed in such profusion in exchange for our worthless baubles, and it is clear that there could have reigned between us such peace and love that their conversion to Christ would, as a consequence, have been both easy and certain.” But once again, the Admiral had only made things worse.
Meanwhile, the harbor teemed with “large lizards or crocodiles that came out to sleep ashore and gave out an odor as strong as if all the musk”—popularly known as an aphrodisiac—“ in the world were collected together.” The sight was understandably unsettling, even terrifying. “They are so ravenous and cruel that if they find a man asleep they will drag him into the water to eat him, but they are cowardly and flee when attacked.” The following night, the monsters and their stench returned, as they did each night.
Menaced by man and beast alike, Columbus fled northward on December 5, retracing his route.
“Never was seen more unsettled weather,” Ferdinand insisted. “Now the wind was fair for Veragua; now it whipped about and drove us back to Puerto Bello. And just as we were most hopeful of making port, the wind would change again, sometimes with such terrible thunder and lightning that the men dared not open their eyes and it seemed the ships were sinking and the heavens coming down.” At times, the booming thunder persisted to the point where “we were sure some ship of the fleet was firing signals for help.” Torrential rains soaked the sails and swept the decks. Vicious storms occur regularly in this region, off the coast of Nicaragua, and survival itself was at stake. “All suffered greatly and were in despair, for they could not get even a half hour’s r
est, being wet through for days on end, sometimes running one way and sometimes another, struggling with all the elements and dreading them all.” There was much to fear: “The fire in the lightning flashes, the air for its fury, the water for the waves, and the land for the reefs and rocks of that unknown coast, which sometimes rears up at a man near the port where he hopes to find shelter.” But the sailors pressed on, his son trembling before nature’s wrath, as Columbus attempted to give orders while struggling to preserve his sanity.
As if these terrors were not sufficient to defeat the fleet, a “waterspout”—Ferdinand’s term for a small tornado—appeared on December 13, churning a deadly path between two ships. Catching sight of the funnel from the heaving deck of his ship, Ferdinand noted how “it raises the water up in a column thicker than a water butt, twisting it about like a whirlwind.” The only defense was prayer: “Had the sailors not dissolved it by reciting the Gospel according to St. John, it would surely have swamped anything it struck.”
As the tempest blew without respite, Vizcaína disappeared in the mist, forever, it was feared, until she reappeared “after three very dark and dangerous days, during which time she had lost her boat and once anchored near land, but had to cut her cable.” She was safe, for now.
The hurricane had relented, but from within the bowels of her hull, the snakelike shipworms were slowly destroying her.
Even a spell of calm weather, when it finally came “after the fleet had been half destroyed by the battering storm,” brought a new menace. A swirl of shadows beneath the rippling surface of the sea coalesced into a school of sharks—probably specimens of the Caribbean reef shark (Carcharhinus perezi). Los tiburones surrounded the ships and terrorized the superstitious sailors, who considered them the vultures of the sea and portents of death.
“These beasts seize a person’s leg or arm with their teeth and cut it off as clean as with a knife because they have two rows of saw-like teeth,” Ferdinand noted in revulsion. The sailors killed as many of the streamlined predators as possible, yet “they still followed us by making turns in the water.” He was referring to what is now known as a shark threat display, exhibited by sharks sensing danger. When making the display, they exaggerate their usual movements. The gray reef shark, for instance, plunges its rigid fins downward, arches its back, and lashes its tail to the side, swimming in a pattern resembling a figure eight. Sharks behaving in this manner are preparing either to strike or flee.
So ravenous were these sharks, Ferdinand recalled, that they ate carrion, and “one can catch them by simply attaching a piece of red cloth to the hook.” Their voracious greed exceeded his nightmares. “Out of one shark’s belly I saw a turtle taken that afterward lived on the ship.” Another slain shark yielded an entire shark’s head previously discarded by the men “because the head, unlike the rest of the body, is not good to eat.” Yet the shark had devoured it. Even though the slithering monsters repelled the men, “all did the shark the honor of eating it, for by that time we had been over eight months at sea and had consumed all the meat and fish that we had brought from Spain.” The blood, the slime, the foam, the stench, the ships rolling and pitching on the heaving seas: it made a man ravenous and nauseous at the same time. What little food they had caused them to retch in disgust. “What with the heat and the dampness even the biscuit was so full of worms that, God help me, I saw many wait until nightfall to eat the porridge made of it so as not to see the worms; others were so used to eating them that they did not bother to pick them out, for they might have lost their supper by being so fastidious.”
Deliverance came on December 17, when the fleet reached Puerto Gordo, Panama. “In this harbor, resembling a great channel, we rested for three days.”
The men staggered ashore, weak from the ordeal, to gaze at a new marvel. “The people here lived in the tops of trees, like birds; their cabins or huts were built over frames of poles placed across branches.” The men could not explain the phenomenon, and decided it was a response to “their fear of griffins”—mythical beasts with an eagle’s head and wings attached to a lion’s body. Or maybe living on raised frames had a simpler explanation, as a precaution against a rival group.
By December 20, the fleet was under sail once again, but “hardly had we put out to sea when the winds and storms returned to vex us, so that we were forced to enter another harbor.” Three days later, Columbus judged conditions safe enough for the fleet to try again, “but the weather, like an enemy that lies in wait for a man, suddenly attacked us.” The blasts drove the helpless vessels back to the harbor where they had sought refuge on December 12. As Christmas approached, the men occupied themselves with repairs to La Gallega and loading maize, wood, and water, when their stomachs craved meat and wine. On January 3, 1503, the fleet put to sea once more, only to encounter “foul weather and contrary winds that actually grew worse each time the Admiral altered his course.”
The Admiral took his storms personally; they were contests with cosmic forces, in which he was bound to go mano a mano with the elements. He would not have been surprised to behold a spiteful angel emerge from a massive cumulonimbus, detonating with thunder and lightning, prepared to wrestle him to the bottom of the sea.
“For nine days I was lost with no hope of life,” he recalled.
Eyes never saw the sea so rough, so ugly, or so seething with foam. The wind did not allow us to go ahead or give us a chance of running, nor did it allow us to shelter under any headland. There I was held in those seas turned to blood, boiling like a cauldron on a mighty fire. The skies had never looked more threatening. For a day and a night they blazed like a furnace, and the lightning burst in such flashes that every moment I looked to see whether my masts and sails had not been struck. They came with such terrifying fury that we believed the ships would be utterly destroyed. All this time water fell unceasingly from the sky. One cannot say it rained, for it seemed like a repetition of the Deluge. The crews were now so broken that they longed for death to release them from their martyrdom. The ships had already twice lost their boats, anchors, and rigging and were stripped bare of their sails.
On January 6, the battered fleet came to rest in today’s Panama off the mouth of a river that Columbus chose to name Río Belén, an abbreviation for Bethlehem. After three days of ambiguous encounters with Indians and fruitless expeditions in search of gold, La Capitana (Columbus’s flagship) and Vizcaína rode the flood tide over the bar and proceeded up the Río Belén. The sight of the strange ships summoned droves of Indians peddling their fish with all the vigor of the dockside merchants of Genoa or Seville. Ferdinand was astonished to learn that the fish swam upstream to meet their fate. Cadging a little gold wherever he could find it, Columbus gave over hawk’s bells and strings of beads for samples of the precious metal. The next day, the other two ships in the fleet crossed the bar, and, with his forces massed, the Admiral prepared to claim what he believed was gold hidden in the mines of Veragua.
“On the third day after our arrival the Adelantado took the boats down the coast and ascended the river to the village of the Quibián,” wrote Ferdinand, “which is the name those Indians give to their king.” Learning of visitors from afar, the Quibián immediately came downstream with his canoes to greet them. The result was perhaps the most decorous initial contact of the entire voyage: “They treated each other with much friendship and civility, each giving the other the things he most prized; and after they had conversed for a long while, the Adelantado and the Quibián each went their own way very peacefully.” The next day, the sociable cacique returned to greet the Admiral himself aboard the flagship, where they chatted for an hour without rivalry or rancor.
Then, on Tuesday, January 24, a storm broke. Moments before, the Spaniards had been feeling calm and secure, but now, in the deluge, the Río Belén overwhelmed its banks. “Before we could prepare for or run a hawser ashore,” Ferdinand wrote breathlessly, “the fury of the water struck the flagship with such force that she broke one of the two ca
bles and drove with such force against Gallega, which lay astern, that the blow carried away her bonaventure mizzen”—the short, lateen-rigged fourth mast. “Then, fouling one another, they drifted so as to be in great peril of going down with all hands.” If they sank, all would be lost, and both Columbus and his son would go down with them.
Eventually the ships managed to untangle themselves, and they floated down the river to the sea. “So violent a storm raged there that the fleet would have been shattered to pieces at the mouth of the river.” There was nothing to do but wait, and pray. The outcome vindicated Columbus’s risky decision not to seek refuge at sea, where disaster lurked.
When the skies cleared several days later, he assigned his brother Bartholomew “to settle and conquer the land.” Columbus would give up his search for a strait leading to India in mid-voyage to return to Spain and his Sovereigns. The abruptness of the decision suggested that he was far sicker than anyone—even his son—realized, and he desired above all to return to Spain to recover, or die in the attempt.
CHAPTER 12
Castaways in Paradise
By February 6, Bartholomew was leading a complement of sixty-eight men in rowboats along the coast to the mouth of the Río Veragua, west of the Río Belén, up the river to the Quibián’s village, where they spent a day resting from their labors and inquiring about the way through the jungle to the gold mines. The Quibián obligingly sent guides to show them the route, and within hours of their arrival, the men were collecting gold, many of them for the first time in their lives. That night they returned to their ships, feeling tired, content, and rich.
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