Off the Map

by Fergus Fleming

  Carvalho, now the expedition leader, sailed through the Philippines to Borneo, then south in search of the Moluccas. For six months he was, in effect, a pirate, pillaging without qualm and looting every ship he met. At one port he was asked to leave a hostage for goodwill: he gave them his son and sailed on. Eventually, the crew tired of his behaviour. They mutinied, tried him for his misdeeds, and replaced him with a Spanish officer, Juan del Cano. At the next demand for hostages it was Carvalho they handed over.

  Del Cano swiftly brought order to the voyage, and under his leadership they reached the Moluccas on 6 November 1521. Almost 27 months after leaving Seville, the Spanish fleet had finally arrived at its destination. They were pleased to find that the local rulers were not well disposed towards the Portuguese. They disliked their antagonism towards Islam, resented the manner in which they had monopolized trade for the last ten years, and were offended by the behaviour of their sailors. Knowing nothing about Spain save that it was Portugal’s rival, and impressed by del Cano’s insistence that his men behave with scrupulous decorum, they saw a chance to improve their bargaining position. The king of one island, Tidore, announced that his people were ‘the most loyal friends and vassals to the King of Spain ... [and] wished us to give him a seal of the King of Spain and a royal banner, because he had decided that henceforth his own island and that which is named Ternate ... would both come under the dependency of the King of Castille. For the honour of his Suzerain, he was ready to fight to the death, and should he no longer be able to resist or defend himself, he would sail off to Spain, aboard a junk, with all his retinue.’ To prove their good intentions, they offered the Spaniards as much spice as they wanted, at favourable rates, and promised to reserve all future crops against their next visit. Furthermore, they allowed del Cano to place a small garrison on one of the islands.

  Del Cano and Espinosa stuffed their holds with spices. Their men, meanwhile, traded privately, selling everything they had to procure their own personal supplies. Spare clothes, food, weapons and equipment were bartered until nothing remained save the bare essentials for the passage home. On the point of departure, however, the Trinidad sprang a leak. The king of Tidore sent divers to investigate – Pigafetta reported how they swam around the ship for an hour, using their long hair to detect any signs of suction from the hull – and when they resurfaced it became apparent that the ship needed extensive repairs. Leaving Espinosa to oversee the work, del Cano sailed aboard the Victoria for the Cape of Good Hope on 21 December. In case he should be intercepted by the Portuguese, he ordered Espinosa to take the Trinidad in the opposite direction, to Spain’s newly conquered territories in Central America. That way, at least one of them would return home.

  For two months del Cano dodged in and out of the Indies, braving starvation, shipwreck and mutiny – several men deserted on the island of Timor – before heading into open seas. He did not follow the habitual route along the coasts of India, Arabia and Africa, but struck south-west across the Indian Ocean, trusting in his seamanship to bring them to the Cape. His navigation was perfect: by mid-May they had rounded the Cape and were in the Atlantic. But it had not been an easy trip. Having crammed their hold so full of spices, they had left little space for food, and what meat they had was unsalted and soon became putrid. By the time they approached Africa they were on a diet of rice and water, and some of the men begged to be landed at Mozambique even though it meant becoming prisoners of the Portuguese. On consideration, however, they changed their minds (according to Pigafetta, because they were ‘more anxious for their honour than their lives’). It was no better in the Atlantic. Del Cano dared not land lest the ship be captured, but continued north up the coast of Africa, his crew dying from starvation and disease. It was almost as bad as crossing the Pacific. Fifteen people had already died crossing the Indian Ocean. During the course of the next eight weeks another 22 corpses were thrown overboard. ‘When we cast [them] into the ocean,’ Pigafetta recorded sanctimoniously, ‘the Christians sank to the bottom with their face turned upward, while the Indians always sank with their face turned downward. If God had not granted us favourable weather, we would all have died of hunger.’

  By 9 July 1522 things were so dire that del Cano was forced, against his wishes, to dock at Santiago in the Cape Verde Islands. Explaining to the Portuguese governor that he had lost his way while returning from America, he was allowed to purchase rice and water. But when the last boatload of food had left, one of the crew foolishly offered to pay with spices instead of money. Realizing that del Cano had come not from America but from the Indies, the Portuguese arrested all 13 members of the shore party and ordered the Victoria ashore. With food aboard, home so near, and his cargo so valuable, del Cano abandoned his men, raised sail and headed for Spain. On Monday 8 September the Victoria docked at Seville, firing all its guns in celebration.

  Its reception was less rapturous than expected. The San Antonio had, as Magellan suspected, returned home, and its captain Estevão Gomes had already lodged complaints against the way the expedition had been run. For a short while del Cano was imprisoned until, when the facts became clear, Gomes took his place in gaol. Thereupon, he and his crew were allowed to enjoy their success. Although the smallest of Magellan’s ships, displacing only 85 tons, the Victoria carried a cargo of spices so valuable that it sold for ten thousand times the purchase price and raised enough money to cover the entire cost of the expedition. Even after the king had taken his cut, there was enough for del Cano and his men to live in comfort for the rest of their lives. They could claim, too, the privilege of having been the first people to circumnavigate the globe, en route charting a westward passage to the Indies, crossing the Pacific Ocean and revealing the true size of the world’s oceans. They had also discovered an apparent hole in time. While supplies were being loaded at Cape Verde, Pigafetta had noticed a remarkable thing. According to his journal and the pilot’s logbook, the date was 9 July. But at Santiago it was 10 July. ‘We could not understand how we had made a mistake,’ he wrote, ‘as I, who had never been ill, had never ceased to keep a journal every day, without interruption.’ Two centuries earlier Arab astronomers had theorized that if one travelled around the world against the passage of the sun one would gain a day on the calendar. Here, now, was the proof.

  The expedition had a sad ending. The Trinidad was captured by the Portuguese and its men imprisoned. The garrison del Cano left in the Moluccas held out for a few years before they, too, were taken prisoner. The climate, and Portuguese gaols, killed all but four, who eventually straggled back to Spain. Of the 277 people who had left Seville in 1519 only 69 survived, and 35 of those were the San Antonio mutineers. The strait that Magellan had discovered through South America was forgotten, and by 1560 had been expunged from the map: in that year a report stated (arbitrarily and with no proof) that ‘the Strait of Magellan no longer exists; either a landslide has blocked it or else an island has risen out of the sea to dam up its channel’. Moreover, after much studying of the atlas, it was decided that the Spice Islands lay on the Portuguese side of the Tordesillas line and that Magellan had wasted his time.

  ADVENTURES IN THE AMAZON

  Francisco de Orellana (1541–6)

  On the face of it, the east was a far more profitable avenue of discovery than the west. Since Columbus’s annexation of the West Indies, however, a stream of explorers had left Europe to probe the rumours of gold that Columbus had reported. They included the Spaniard Vicente Pinzón, one of Columbus’s shipmates, who found the mouth of the Amazon (he called it Saint Mary of the Sweet Water) in 1500; Pedro Alvares Cabral, who discovered Brazil in the same year; John the Navigator, who went as far south as the River Plate; and an Italian, Amerigo Vespucci, who travelled on a number of expeditions to South America between 1497 and 1505, working variously for Spain and Portugal. Of all these voyages of discovery, Vespucci’s had the greatest significance. A Florentine chandler, whose hobby was the study of navigation and geography, he never personally
commanded an expedition and was an interpreter of discovery rather than an instigator. But he was the first to realize that Europe was divided from the Indies by a separate continent, and for this he was rewarded in 1507 by a cartographer who suggested the New World be christened in his honour – America.

  By the time Vespucci returned, the West Indies had already attracted a number of settlers who had imported slaves, horses and cattle and set themselves up as ranchers. But they were an unreliable crowd, adventurers and ex-soldiers for the most part, who had left Spain in search of excitement rather than a settled agricultural life. After a short while they usually abandoned their holdings, either because they were bored or because they found the work too hard, or because they had heard rumours of a gold strike elsewhere. This population of restless desperadoes proved a perfect recruiting ground for Spain’s designs on the New World. In a series of private ventures, licensed but not funded by the Crown, they probed west towards America, planting colonies on the Panamanian, Colombian and Ecuadorean coasts, where they flourished despite sickness, hunger and attacks by local Indians. By 1513 Vasco Núñez de Balboa had crossed the isthmus to the Pacific Ocean, founded the town of Darién, and explored both the Caribbean and Pacific coasts in boats built locally for the purpose. In 1519 Hernán Cortés left Cuba with a force of 600 volunteers to conquer the Maya civilization of Yucatan and the Aztec of Mexico.* New Spain (Mexico) was just the beginning. The conquistadores, as they called themselves, moved simultaneously north and south, their armour, firearms and horses – never before seen in Central or South America – allowing them to conquer most of the lands around the Gulf of Mexico and a large portion of the Andes. For the latter, Spain could thank Francisco Pizarro.

  A not very successful settler at Darién, Pizarro had been tempted, like others, by reports of a wealthy civilization to the south. After several abortive attempts, he reached Peru in 1530 where, with his four brothers and a few hundred soldiers, he conquered the vast, sophisticated empire of the Incas. The rumours of wealth were true – so true, in fact, as to surpass fable. When Pizarro captured the Inca himself, Atahuallpa, he demanded as ransom that the cell in which was kept be filled with gold as high as he could reach his hand. The request was honoured. Encouraged, Pizarro asked a further price for Atahuallpa’s release: the right for his men to strip the gold from Inca temples. This too was done. Then, having melted down the gold, Pizarro ordered Atahuallpa to be executed on spurious charges of treason. Balking at the prospect of being burned at the stake, Atahuallpa accepted Christianity in return for an easier death. He was publicly garrotted on 26 July 1533.

  Atahuallpa’s murder did not complete the conquest, but when Pizarro finished the job in 1534 his men were still eager for gold. From Inca prisoners (who by now were willing to tell the victors anything they wanted to hear so long as they did not have to be burned or garrotted) Pizarro learned of a land whose ruler was so wealthy that he was dusted with a mixture of resin and gold dust in the morning, before washing it off in a nearby lake at night, to re-anoint himself the following day. ‘He feels it would be less beautiful to wear any other ornament,’ wrote one chronicler. ‘It would be crude and common to put on armour plates or wear hammered or stamped gold, for other rich lords wear these when they wish ... I would rather have the sweepings of the chamber of this prince, than the great meltings of gold which have taken place in Peru.’ He was called El Dorado, ‘The Golden One’. In 1541 Pizarro’s brother Gonzalo left the Andean city of Quito to find him.

  A burly, coarsely spoken and highly effective soldier, Gonzalo Pizarro was attracted by tales not only of gold but of spices: La Canela, the Land of Cinnamon, was supposed to exist to the east of the Andes. To this was added the prospect of colonizing new territory. As Pizarro explained to the King of Spain, ‘I became fascinated, and I decided to go and conquer and explore it ... In my zeal and eagerness to do this, I spent more than fifty thousand castellanos, which I paid out in advance to the men whom I took with me, both on foot and horse.’

  The expedition that left Quito in March 1541 comprised 280 men, 260 horses, 4,000 Indian porters, a herd of 2,000 pigs (in addition to the usual stores of grain, biscuits and wine), plus a pack of several hundred dogs to harry any opposition they might meet. It was described as ‘a very magnificent body of men and one well prepared for any adventure which might lie ahead’. Magnificent it may have been, but it was not prepared for the Andes. The mountains were steep, thickly forested and riven by streams and rivers. The passes were cold, cloudy and more than 14,000 feet high. For two months it rained incessantly – ‘it never stopped long enough to dry the shirts on our backs’. They hacked their way through the jungle with machetes, built countless bridges, and when they emerged in the foothills, 90 miles later, were at the end of their strength. ‘We were exhausted simply getting over the other side,’ Pizarro wrote. ‘The expeditionary force ... were quite worn out in consequence of the great hardships which they had gone through in climbing up and down the great mountains.’ After recuperating in the fertile valley of Sumaco – where they were joined by a rearguard of 23 men led by the one-eyed conquistador Francisco de Orellana – Pizarro took 70 men in search of the Land of Cinnamon. His precise route is unknown, but it probably led south-east to the Napo River. He did find cinnamon, but the trees were too scattered, too few and too far distant to be harvested profitably. ‘It is a land and a commodity by which Your Majesty cannot be rendered any service,’ he wrote disconsolately. He tortured his Indian guides repeatedly (sometimes they were burned at the stake, sometimes thrown to the dogs, in both cases while still alive), but after several weeks’ travel he had still not found what he wanted. According to one contemporary, he was ‘much distressed at finding he could not reach any fertile and abundant province ... and deplored many times that he had undertaken the expedition. Although he did not let his followers understand this, on the contrary giving them every encouragement.’ When he reached the Napo’s tributary, the Coca, however, he met a local chief, Delicola, who not only showed him the best place to build a bridge – above the frighteningly steep San Rafael Falls – but, having obviously heard of the Spaniards’ methods, assured him that El Dorado lay to the east. Seizing him to act as a guide, Pizarro sent word for de Orellana to follow with the rest of the men.

  Reunited, the Spanish force continued down the Coca, Delicola leading the way in chains. The ground was marshy, the forest nigh impenetrable, the climate stiflingly humid and fever rampant. By October most of the porters were dead from disease, mistreatment and exhaustion. Delicola had slipped his chains and fled into the jungle. In addition, the column was being attacked sporadically by local tribesmen. With insufficient porters to carry either his supplies or the 25 men who were now too ill to move, Pizarro ordered the construction of a boat. His men responded with ingenuity, felling trees, sawing planks, making charcoal, constructing furnaces, forging nails from horseshoes and shredding old clothes which, combined with tree sap, they used to seal the gaps between the planks. After several weeks they had produced a 26-foot-long watertight vessel that they named San Pedro. Pizarro loaded it with his food and his invalids, then on 9 November continued down the Coca. Delicola had spoken vaguely of El Dorado being at a point where two rivers met. They did not reach the junction – presumably that between the Coca and the Napo – and by Christmas Pizarro was in despair. Already in October they had finished the last of their pigs and had been reduced to scavenging for roots. Now they started on the dogs and horses. The Indians they captured told them that the road ahead was hard and barren, with no food for miles. With his men on the brink of mutiny, Pizarro considered a retreat to the Andes. But then Francisco de Orellana stepped forward.

  A distant relation of Pizarro, and five years his junior, the 30-year-old Orellana proposed that he go ahead in the boat to find food, which he believed was only one day’s journey away. According to Father Carvajal, a priest who accompanied him, he was sacrificing himself for the good of the expedition: ‘If he, Piza
rro, should find that Orellana was delayed, he should not be concerned about him, and in the meantime he should turn back to where food was to be had, and wait for Orellana there for three or four days, or for as long as he should see fit. And in case Orellana did not come back, he should not be concerned about him. Thereupon [Pizarro] told him to do whatever he thought best.’ Pizarro told it slightly differently: ‘I was pleased at the idea and [said] that he should see to it that he got back within twelve days, and in no case to go beyond the junction of the rivers, but bring the food and give attention to nothing else.’ Orellana departed on 26 December 1541 with 57 men and most of the expedition’s weapons.

  Twelve days passed, then another 12, during which Pizarro’s party ate more of their horses and all of their dogs. ‘They wasted nothing, neither the viscera nor the hides nor any other parts,’ wrote one contemporary. Starving, Pizarro sent an advance party down the Coca to its junction with the Napo. It found neither El Dorado nor Orellana but, travelling up the Napo, it did find an abandoned cassava plantation. When they returned 27 days later with their booty, Pizarro’s conquistadores were starving. They had eaten ‘nothing but saddles and stirrup leather, sliced, boiled and toasted over embers, with palm shoots and fruit stems fallen from the trees, together with toads and snakes. For we had by now eaten in this wild country over one thousand dogs and more than one hundred horses, and many of us were sick, and others weak, while some had actually died there of hunger.’ Devouring the cassava, they set out for the plantation. It took a week just to cross the river, and then another ten days before they hacked their way to the grove. When they got there they were so ravenous that they barely bothered to cook the cassava roots before gorging themselves. Unfortunately, raw cassava is poisonous. Two men died as a result of their excesses, and most of the others were incapacitated. More disheartening still, a lone conquistador stumbled out of the jungle to announce himself as the last survivor of Orellana’s group. His story was that Orellana had reached the junction between the Coca and the Napo but, the current being too strong for him to sail upriver, had gone east into uncharted territory. He, Hernán Sanchez de Varga, had objected, whereupon he had been left to fend for himself.