CHAPTER II DISCOVERY AND COLONIZATION BY SPAIN, In this chapter we view the coming of the actors upon the great New World stage. As is true in dramas of lesser renown, there were heroes here—true heroes—but also many a knave and villain, with here and there a jester. Dreamers there were, too, and many a brave woman and saintly priest. On the surface the results of Spanish, French, and English colonization seem similar. It is of prime importance to note, as the story develops, the utter unlikeness that existed both in methods employed and the results secured; especially to compare the compact solidarity of the English colonies with the loosely hinged empires opened up by her rivals-magnificent in extent, but impossible of successful organization or government. All of the states of our present American Union were embraced within the claims of these rival nations; but, at the end of the long years, when these states came to form constitutions of their own, their basic law came in most instances from English origin from charters, precedents and statutes created by that nation which, originally, occupied the least territory and whose colonists spread least widely in the colonial period. The events recorded in this chapter form, therefore, an interesting illustration of the fact that the seed of national growth lies in the virility of the common people—not in the boasts of royalty or the pompous decrees and mandates which it can utter. Section 3. Fountains of Youth and Cities of Ivory THE romance of Spain's finding and exploring the New World is not exceeded by any similar story of enthusiasm and de termination in the history of the world. Like many a romance, however, it is a story of avarice and greed for baubles, for gold and gems, for fountains of youth and cities of ivory, and is fraught with the old, old lesson that what a man soweth that A story of greed shall he also reap. Christopher The Turks were thundering at the gates of Constantinople when Christopher Columbus, the son of a wool weaver, was born, at Genoa, about 1451. Catching the fever of adventure common in the days when these northern Italian cities had mastered the Mediterranean and its trade, Columbus took to the sea. He married the daughter of one of Prince Henry of Portugal's navigators and became, eventually, the most famous of the Italians who so splendidly advanced the triumphs of the Portuguese school of The early training of Columbus navigation. In early days his voyaging extended from Guinea in Africa to Great Britain, or beyond, in the north. His mind was of the independent type. In proof of this we find that when he read books he was wont to scrawl his objections to, or comments on, the subject matter on the margins of the book's pages. One of these comments, for instance, was to refute the idea that men could not sail under the equator without being prostrated by heat; the experiences of the Portuguese (like Dias), he said, proved this to be untrue. He believed, as many had before him, that the earth was round. The mystery of the Atlantic seems to have become a perpetual challenge to him. Every mention of its known or fabled islands excited him. Just when he conIceived the idea that one could sail from West to East is not known. He learned that a Florentine astronomer, Toscanelli, had asserted this fact and wrote to him; the reply reasserted the opinion, but gave the inquiring lad no information he could not have secured at home. One of his greatest sources of inspiration was the reading of the adventures of Marco Polo, a Venetian, who visited China in the thirteenth century and wrote of his travels (map p. 5). When Columbus read of the great ocean that washed The influence of Marco Polo the shores of that distant land we can imagine that every question he had asked himself about the Atlantic came back to taunt him anew. Might not the two oceans be one after all? The BEHAIM'S GLOBE. (Above, as Columbus used it in 1492. Below, the American continents drawn on a globe of the same scale.) important thing is that Columbus was greater than his facts; by that is meant that he developed a great faith and an iron determination which his facts did not wholly warrant. Failing to interest King John of Portugal in his plan to reach India by crossing the Atlantic, he finally succeeded in winning the support of Spain's rulers, Ferdinand and Isabella. The contract for the voyage, signed in April, 1492, stated that he was to go on a voyage as an ambassador to bring Christianity to the land of the Great Khan of "Cipango" (Japan) of which Marco Polo had written so entertainingly; on the way he expected to discover many "islands" and "mainlands"; over such he was to rule as Terms of Columbus's contract governor and receive 10 per cent. of the royalty of any trade that might spring up. Sailing with a crew of about one hundred men in three ships from the Canary Islands September 6th and, luckily, aided by the Atlantic Current, which here runs something Discovery of America like a river from Spain to the West Indies, he discovered Watling Island-one of the Bahama Group which he named "San Salvador"-October 12, 1492. It was the most brilliant individual achievement in history. While startling, it was also constructive. For his day Columbus was a scientific explorer, in marked contrast to the Cabots, for instance, who, within a few years, gave England a claim to the northern American coast. By "scientific" we mean that Columbus kept careful records of each day's events and thus gathered data which would prove of advantage to all who came after him.1 Columbus made three subsequent voyages. In 1493 he reached Santo Domingo and Jamaica. In 1498 he really found the new continent, coming upon South America three later voyages from off Venezuela. In 1502 he reached the Cen- Columbus's tral American coast. He believed from the first that he had found a strange part of Asia or India. The relationship of Japan to the Korean peninsula and the Gulf of Pechili in Asia resembles that of Cuba to the Floridan peninsula and the Gulf of Mexico. (Compare these regions, map p. 19.) As early as 1500, however, La Cosa, Columbus's pilot, was confident that the new coastline was not that of Asia and drew a vague map of the region on which no Asiatic place names were inscribed. Queer likenesses, and the vague and contradictory nature of all reports which navigators made, tended to delay for many decades an understanding of our continental coastline. Nature herself seemed to encourage other misunderstandings of geography. When fresh water was dipped up at sea, out of sight of land, off the mouth of the Orinoco River, men reasoned, logically, that that river drained an enormous area of land-a continent. The Mississippi and St. Lawrence rivers, on the other hand, could not throw their waters far into the sea because of the islands off their mouths. Men thought, therefore, that there was no continent in that part of the world, and that an archipelago (collection of islands) 1An important factor in Spain's oceanic mastery now was the building of new types of ships. The Italians and the Portuguese invented the "caravel." Columbus's flagship, the Santa Maria, was this type of craft; it carried three masts, one (mizzen) with a lateen sail. These boats were the fast-sailing 'clipper ships" of their day. They were longer and narrower than was usual and therefore better sailers. Fast-sailing ships were a vital factor in exploration beyond a wide ocean; enough drinking water could not be kept fresh in slow-sailing boats. The Portuguese designed the "carrack" in the sixteenth century also; one of these, of 1,600 tons burden, was the Olympic of its day. It measured 165 feet by 47; but while the Santa Maria was only 230 tons, its length was 128 feet by 26 in width, thus having better "sailing lines." |