The Discovery of America Part 25

CHAPTER V.

THE SEARCH FOR THE INDIES.

_WESTWARD OR SPANISH ROUTE._

[Sidenote: Sources of information concerning the life of Columbus: Las Casas and Ferdinand Columbus.]

[Sidenote: The Biblioteca Colombina at Seville.]

Our information concerning the life of Columbus before 1492 is far from being as satisfactory as one could wish. Unquestionably he is to be deemed fortunate in having had for his biographers two such men as his friend Las Casas, one of the n.o.blest characters and most faithful historians of that or any age, and his own son Ferdinand Columbus, a most accomplished scholar and bibliographer. The later years of Ferdinand's life were devoted, with loving care, to the preparation of a biography of his father; and his book--which unfortunately survives only in the Italian translation of Alfonso Ulloa,[392] published in Venice in 1571--is of priceless value. As Was.h.i.+ngton Irving long ago wrote, it is "an invaluable doc.u.ment, ent.i.tled to great faith, and is the cornerstone of the history of the American continent."[393] After Ferdinand's death, in 1539, his papers seem to have pa.s.sed into the hands of Las Casas, who, from 1552 to 1561, in the seclusion of the college of San Gregorio at Valladolid, was engaged in writing his great "History of the Indies."[394] Ferdinand's superb library, one of the finest in Europe, was bequeathed to the cathedral at Seville.[395] It contained some twenty thousand volumes in print and ma.n.u.script, four fifths of which, through shameful neglect or vandalism, have perished or been scattered.

Four thousand volumes, however, are still preserved, and this library (known as the "Biblioteca Colombina") is full of interest for the historian. Book-buying was to Ferdinand Columbus one of the most important occupations in life. His books were not only carefully numbered, but on the last leaf of each one he wrote a memorandum of the time and place of its purchase and the sum of money paid for it.[396]

This habit of Ferdinand's has furnished us with clues to the solution of some interesting questions. Besides this, he was much given to making marginal notes and comments, which are sometimes of immense value, and, more than all, there are still to be seen in this library a few books that belonged to Christopher Columbus himself, with very important notes in his own handwriting and in that of his brother Bartholomew. Las Casas was familiar with this grand collection in the days of its completeness, he was well acquainted with all the members of the Columbus family, and he had evidently read the ma.n.u.script sources of Ferdinand's book; for a comparison with Ulloa's version shows that considerable portions of the original Spanish text--or of the doc.u.ments upon which it rested--are preserved in the work of Las Casas.[397] The citation and adoption of Ferdinand's statements by the latter writer, who was able independently to verify them, is therefore in most cases equivalent to corroboration, and the two writers together form an authority of the weightiest kind, and not lightly to be questioned or set aside.

[Footnote 392: _Historie del S. D. Fernando Colombo; Nelle quali s' ha particolare, & vera relatione della vita, & de'

fatti dell' Ammiraglio D. Christoforo Colombo, suo padre: Et dello scoprimento, ch' egli fece dell' Indie Occidentali, dette Monde-Nuovo, hora possedute dal Sereniss. Re Catolico: Nuouamente di lingua Spagnuola tradotte nell' Italiana dal S.

Alfonso Vlloa. Con. privilegio._ IN VENETIA, M D LXXI.

_Appresso Francesco de' Franceschi Sanese._ The princ.i.p.al reprints are those of Milan, 1614; Venice, 1676 and 1678; London, 1867. I always cite it as _Vita dell' Ammiraglio_.]

[Footnote 393: Irving's _Life of Columbus_, New York, 1868, vol. iii. p. 375. My references, unless otherwise specified, are to this, the "Geoffrey Crayon," edition.]

[Footnote 394: Las Casas, _Historia de las Indias, ahora por primera vez dada a luz por el Marques de la Fuensanta del Valle y D. Jose Sancho Rayon_, Madrid, 1875, 5 vols. 8vo.]

[Footnote 395: "Fu questo D. Ernando di non minor valore del padre, ma di molte piu lettere et scienze dotato che quelle non fu; et il quale lasci alla Chiesa maggiore di Siviglia, dove hoggi si vede honorevolmente sepolto, una, non sola numerosissima, ma richissima libraria, et piena di molti libri in ogni facolta et scienza rarissimi: laquale da coloro che l'

han veduta, vien stimata delle piu rare cose di tutta Europa."

Moleto's prefatory letter to _Vita dell' Ammiraglio_, April 25, 1571.]

[Footnote 396: For example, "_Manuel de la Sancta Fe catolica_, Sevilla, 1495, in-4. Costo en Toledo 34 maravedis, ano 1511, 9 de Octubre, No. 3004." "_Tragicomedia de Calisto y Melibea_, Sevilla, 1502, in-4. Muchas figuras. Costo en Roma 25 cuatrines, por Junio de 1515. No. 2417," etc. See Harrisse, _Fernand Colomb_, Paris, 1872, p. 13.]

[Footnote 397: "L' autorita di Las Casas e d' una suprema e vitale importanza tanto nella storia di Cristoforo Colombo, come nell' esame delle _Historie_ di Fernando suo figlio.... E dal confronto tra questi due scrittori emergera una omogeneita si perfetta, che si potrebbe coi termini del frate domenicano ritrovare o rifare per due terzi il testo originale spagnuolo delle _Historie_ di Fernando Colombo." Peragallo, _L'

autenticita delle Historie di Fernando Colombo_, Genoa, 1884, p. 23.]

[Sidenote: Bernaldez and Peter Martyr.]

[Sidenote: Letters of Columbus.]

Besides these books of most fundamental importance, we have valuable accounts of some parts of the life of Columbus by his friend Andres Bernaldez, the curate of Los Palacios near Seville.[398] Peter Martyr, of Anghiera, by Lago Maggiore, was an intimate friend of Columbus, and gives a good account of his voyages, besides mentioning him in sundry epistles.[399] Columbus himself, moreover, was such a voluminous writer that his contemporaries laughed about it. "G.o.d grant," says Zuniga in a letter to the Marquis de Pescara, "G.o.d grant that Gutierrez may never come short for paper, for he writes more than Ptolemy, more than Columbus, the man who discovered the Indies."[400] These writings are in great part lost, though doubtless a good many things will yet be brought to light in Spain by persistent rummaging. We have, however, from sixty to seventy letters and reports by Columbus, of which twenty-three at least are in his own handwriting; and all these have been published.[401]

[Footnote 398: _Historia de los Reyes Catolicos D. Fernando y D^a Isabel. Cronica inedita del siglo XV, escrita por el Bachiller Andres Bernaldez, cura que fue de Los Palacios_, Granada, 1856, 2 vols. small 4to. It is a book of very high authority.]

[Footnote 399: _De orbe novo Decades_, Alcala, 1516; _Opus epistolarum_, Compluti (Alcala), 1530; Harrisse, _Bibliotheca Americana Vetustissima_, Nos. 88, 160.]

[Footnote 400: "A Gutierrez vuestro solicitador, ruego a Dios que nunca le falte papel, porque escribe mas que Tolomeo y que Colon, el que hallo las Indias." Rivadeneyra, _Curiosidades bibliograficas_, p. 59, apud Harrisse, _Christophe Colomb_, tom. i. p. 1.]

[Footnote 401: Harrisse, _loc. cit._, in 1884, gives the number at sixty-four.]

[Sidenote: Defects in Ferdinand's information.]

Nevertheless, while these contemporary materials give us abundant information concerning the great discoverer, from the year 1492 until his death, it is quite otherwise with his earlier years, especially before his arrival in Spain in 1484. His own allusions to these earlier years are sometimes hard to interpret;[402] and as for his son Ferdinand, that writer confesses, with characteristic and winning frankness, that his information is imperfect, inasmuch as filial respect had deterred him from closely interrogating his father on such points, or, to tell the plain truth, being still very young when his father died, he had not then come to recognize their importance.[403] This does not seem strange when we reflect that Ferdinand must have seen very little of his father until in 1502, at the age of fourteen, he accompanied him on that last difficult and disastrous voyage, in which the sick and hara.s.sed old man could have had but little time or strength for aught but the work in hand. It is not strange that when, a quarter of a century later, the son set about his literary task, he should now and then have got a date wrong, or have narrated some incidents in a confused manner, or have admitted some gossiping stories, the falsehood of which can now plainly be detected. Such blemishes, which occur chiefly in the earlier part of Ferdinand's book, do not essentially detract from its high authority.[404] The limits which bounded the son's accurate knowledge seem also to have bounded that of such friends as Bernaldez, who did not become acquainted with Columbus until after his arrival in Spain.

[Footnote 402: Sometimes from a slip of memory or carelessness of phrasing, on Columbus's part, sometimes from our lacking the clue, sometimes from an error in numerals, common enough at all times.]

[Footnote 403: "Ora, l' Ammiraglio avendo cognizione delle dette scienze, cominci ad attendere al mare, e a fare alcuni viaggi in levante e in ponente; de' quali, e di molte altre cose di quei primi d io non ho piena notizia; perciocche egli venne a morte a tempo che io non aveva tanto ardire, o pratica, per la riverenza filiale, che io ardissi di richiederlo di cotali cose; o, per parlare piu veramente, allora mi ritrovava io, come giovane, molto lontano da cotal pensiero." _Vita dell'

Ammiraglio_, cap. iv.]

[Footnote 404: Twenty years ago M. Harrisse published in Spanish and French a critical essay maintaining that the _Vita dell' Ammiraglio_ was not written by Ferdinand Columbus, but probably by the famous scholar Perez de Oliva, professor in the university of Salamanca, who died in 1530 (_D. Fernando Colon, historiador de su padre_, Seville, 1871; _Fernand Colomb: sa vie, ses oeuvres_, Paris, 1872). The Spanish ma.n.u.script of the book had quite a career. As already observed, it is clear that Las Casas used it, probably between 1552 and 1561. From Ferdinand's nephew, Luis Columbus, it seems to have pa.s.sed in 1568 into the hands of Baliano di Fornari, a prominent citizen of Genoa, who sent it to Venice with the intention of having it edited and published with Latin and Italian versions. All that ever appeared, however, was the Italian version made by Ulloa and published in 1571. Harrisse supposes that the Spanish ma.n.u.script, written by Oliva, was taken to Genoa by some adventurer and palmed off upon Baliano di Fornari as the work of Ferdinand Columbus. But inasmuch as Harrisse also supposes that Oliva probably wrote the book (about 1525) at Seville, under Ferdinand's eyes and with doc.u.ments furnished by him, it becomes a question, in such case, how far was Oliva anything more than an amanuensis to Ferdinand? and there seems really to be precious little wool after so much loud crying. If the ma.n.u.script was actually written "sous les yeux de Fernand et avec doc.u.ments fournis par lui," most of the arguments alleged to prove that it could not have emanated from the son of Columbus fall to the ground. It becomes simply a question whether Ulloa may have here and there tampered with the text, or made additions of his own. To some extent he seems to have done so, but wherever the Italian version is corroborated by the Spanish extracts in Las Casas, we are on solid ground, for Las Casas died five years before the Italian version was published. M. Harrisse does not seem as yet to have convinced many scholars. His arguments have been justly, if somewhat severely, characterized by my old friend, the lamented Henry Stevens (_Historical Collections_, London, 1881, vol. i. No.

1379), and have been elaborately refuted by M. d'Avezac, _Le livre de Ferdinand Colomb: revue critique des allegations proposees contre son authenticite_, Paris, 1873; and by Prospero Peragallo, _L' autenticita delle Historie di Fernando Colombo_, Genoa, 1884. See also Fabie, _Vida de Fray Bartolome de Las Casas_, Madrid, 1869, tom. i. pp. 360-372.]

[Sidenote: Researches of Henry Harrisse.]

In recent years elaborate researches have been made, by Henry Harrisse and others, in the archives of Genoa, Savona, Seville, and other places with which Columbus was connected, in the hope of supplementing this imperfect information concerning his earlier years.[405] A number of data have thus been obtained, which, while clearing up the subject most remarkably in some directions, have been made to mystify and embroil it in others. There is scarcely a date or a fact relating to Columbus before 1492 but has been made the subject of hot dispute; and some pretty wholesale reconstructions of his biography have been attempted.[406] The general impression, however, which the discussions of the past twenty years have left upon my mind, is that the more violent hypotheses are not likely to be sustained, and that the newly-ascertained facts do not call for any very radical interference with the traditional lines upon which the life of Columbus has heretofore been written.[407] At any rate there seems to be no likelihood of such interference as to modify our views of the causal sequence of events that led to the westward search for the Indies; and it is this relation of cause and effect that chiefly concerns us in a history of the Discovery of America.

[Footnote 405: See Harrisse, _Christophe Colomb_, Paris, 1884, 2 vols., a work of immense research, absolutely indispensable to every student of the subject, though here and there somewhat over-ingenious and hypercritical, and in general unduly biased by the author's private crotchet about the work of Ferdinand.]

[Footnote 406: One of the most radical of these reconstructions may be found in the essay by M. d'Avezac, "Canevas chronologique de la vie de Christophe Colomb," in _Bulletin de la Societe de Geographie_, Paris, 1872, 6e serie, tom. iv. pp.

5-59.]

[Footnote 407: Was.h.i.+ngton Irving's _Life of Columbus_, says Harrisse, "is a history written with judgment and impartiality, which leaves far behind it all descriptions of the discovery of the New World published before or since." _Christophe Colomb_, tom. i. p. 136. Irving was the first to make use of the superb work of Navarrete, _Coleccion de los viages y descubrimientos que hicieron por mar los Espanoles desde fines del siglo XV._, Madrid, 1825-37, 5 vols. 4to. Next followed Alexander von Humboldt, with his _Examen critique de l'histoire de la geographie de Nouveau Continent_, Paris, 1836-39, 5 vols. 8vo.

This monument of gigantic erudition (which, unfortunately, was never completed) will always remain indispensable to the historian.]

[Sidenote: Date of the birth of Columbus: archives of Savona.]

[Sidenote: Statement of Bernaldez.]

[Sidenote: Columbus's letter of September, 1501.]

[Sidenote: The balance of probability is in favour of 1436.]

The date of the birth of Columbus is easy to determine approximately, but hard to determine with precision. In the voluminous discussion upon this subject the extreme limits a.s.signed have been 1430 and 1456, but neither of these extremes is admissible, and our choice really lies somewhere between 1436 and 1446. Among the town archives of Savona is a deed of sale executed August 7, 1473, by the father of Christopher Columbus, and ratified by Christopher and his next brother Giovanni.[408] Both brothers must then have attained their majority, which in the republic of Genoa was fixed at the age of twenty-five.

Christopher, therefore, can hardly have been less than seven and twenty, so that the latest probable date for his birth is 1446, and this is the date accepted by Munoz, Major, Harrisse, and Avezac. There is no doc.u.mentary proof, however, to prevent our taking an earlier date; and the curate of Los Palacios--strong authority on such a point--says expressly that at the time of his death, in 1506, Columbus was "in a good old age, seventy years a little more or less."[409] Upon this statement Navarrete and Humboldt have accepted 1436 as the probable date of birth.[410] The most plausible objection to this is a statement made by Columbus himself in a letter to Ferdinand and Isabella, written in 1501. In this letter, as first given in the biography by his son, Columbus says that he was of "very tender age" when he began to sail the seas, an occupation which he has kept up until the present moment; and in the next sentence but one he adds that "now for forty years I have been in this business and have gone to every place where there is any navigation up to the present time."[411] The expression "very tender age" agrees with Ferdinand's statement that his father was fourteen years old when he first took to the sea.[412] Since 1446 + 14-40 = 1500, it is argued that Columbus was probably born about 1446; some sticklers for extreme precision say 1447. But now there were eight years spent by Columbus in Spain, from 1484 to 1492, without any voyages at all; they were years, as he forcibly says, "dragged out in disputations."[413] Did he mean to include those eight years in his forty spent upon the sea?

Navarrete thinks he did not. When he wrote under excitement, as in this letter, his language was apt to be loose, and it is fair to construe it according to the general probabilities of the case. This addition of eight years brings his statement substantially into harmony with that of Bernaldez, which it really will not do to set aside lightly. Moreover, in the original text of the letter, since published by Navarrete, Columbus appears to say, "now for _more than_ forty years," so that the agreement with Bernaldez becomes practically complete.[414] The good curate spoke from direct personal acquaintance, and his phrases "seventy years" and "a good old age" are borne out by the royal decree of February 23, 1505, permitting Columbus to ride on a mule, instead of a horse, by reason of his old age (_ancianidad_) and infirmities.[415]

Such a phrase applies much better to a man of sixty-nine than to a man of fifty-nine. On the whole, I think that Was.h.i.+ngton Irving showed good sense in accepting the statement of the curate of Los Palacios as decisive, dating as it does the birth of Columbus at 1436, "a little more or less."

[Footnote 408: Harrisse, _op. cit._ tom. i. p. 196.]

[Footnote 409: "In _senectute bona_, de edad de setenta anos poco mas o menos." Bernaldez, _Reyes Catolicos_, tom. i. p.

334.]

[Footnote 410: M. d'Avezac (_Canevas chronologique_, etc.) objects to this date that we have positive doc.u.mentary evidence of the birth of Christopher's youngest brother Giacomo (afterwards spanished into Diego) in 1468, which makes an interval of 32 years; so that if the mother were (say) 18 in 1436 she must have borne a child at the age of 50. That would be unusual, but not unprecedented. But M. Harrisse (tom. ii. p.

214), from a more thorough sifting of this doc.u.mentary evidence, seems to have proved that while Giacomo cannot have been born later than 1468 he may have been born as early as 1460; so that whatever is left of M. d'Avezac's objection falls to the ground.]

[Footnote 411: "Serenissimi principi, di eta molto tenera io entrai in mare navigando, et vi ho continovato fin' hoggi: ...

et hoggimai pa.s.sano quaranta anni che io uso per tutte quelle parti che fin hoggi si navigano." _Vita dell' Ammiraglio_, cap.

iv.]

[Footnote 412: _Op. cit._ cap. iv. _ad fin_.]