The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II)

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In these last and awful moments, when the soul has but a brief space in
which to make up its accounts between heaven and earth, all dissimulation
is at an end, and we read unequivocal evidences of character. The last
codicil of Columbus, made at the very verge of the grave, is stamped with
his ruling passion and his benignant virtues. He repeats and enforces
several clauses of his original testament, constituting his sou Diego his
universal heir. The entailed inheritance, or mayorazgo, in case he died
without male issue, was to go to his brother Don Fernando, and from him,
in like case, to pass to his uncle Don Bartholomew, descending always to
the nearest male heir; in failure of which it was to pass to the female
nearest in lineage to the admiral. He enjoined upon whoever should inherit
his estate never to alienate or diminish it, but to endeavor by all means
to augment its prosperity and importance. He likewise enjoined upon his
heirs to be prompt and devoted at all times, with person and estate, to
serve their sovereign and promote the Christian faith. He ordered that Don
Diego should devote one tenth of the revenues which might arise from his
estate, when it came to be productive, to the relief of indigent relatives
and of other persons in necessity; that, out of the remainder, he should
yield certain yearly proportions to his brother Don Fernando, and his
uncles Don Bartholomew and Don Diego; and that the part allotted to Don
Fernando should be settled upon him and his male heirs in an entailed and
unalienable inheritance. Having thus provided for the maintenance and
perpetuity of his family and dignities, he ordered that Don Diego, when
his estates should be sufficiently productive, should erect a chapel in
the island of Hispaniola, which God had given to him so marvelously, at
the town of Conception, in the Vega, where masses should be daily
performed for the repose of the souls of himself, his father, his mother,
his wife, and of all who died in the faith. Another clause recommends to
the care of Don Diego, Beatrix Enriquez, the mother of his natural son
Fernando. His connection with her had never been sanctioned by matrimony,
and either this circumstance, or some neglect of her, seems to have
awakened deep compunction in his dying moments. He orders Don Diego to
provide for her respectable maintenance; "and let this be done," he adds,
"for the discharge of my conscience, for it weighs heavy on my soul."
[234] Finally, he noted with his own hand several minute sums, to be paid
to persons at different and distant places, without their being told
whence they received them. These appear to have been trivial debts of
conscience, or rewards for petty services received in times long past.
Among them is one of half a mark of silver to a poor Jew, who lived at
the gate of the Jewry, in the city of Lisbon. These minute provisions
evince the scrupulous attention to justice in all his dealings, and that
love of punctuality in the fulfillment of duties, for which he was
remarked. In the same spirit, he gave much advice to his son Diego, as
to the conduct of his affairs, enjoining upon him to take every month an
account with his own hand of the expenses of his household, and to sign
it with his name; for a want of regularity in this, he observed, lost
both property and servants, and turned the last into enemies. His dying
bequests were made in presence of a few faithful followers and servants,
and among them we find the name of Bartholomeo Fiesco, who had
accompanied Diego Mendez in the perilous voyage in a canoe from Jamaica
to Hispaniola.

Having thus scrupulously attended to all the claims of affection, loyalty,
and justice upon earth, Columbus turned his thoughts to heaven; and having
received the holy sacrament, and performed all the pious offices of a
devout Christian, he expired with great resignation, on the day of
ascension, the 20th of May, 1506, being about seventy years of age.
[235] His last words were, "_In manus tuas Domine, commendo spiritum
meum:_" Into thy hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit. [236]

His body was deposited in the convent of St. Francisco, and his obsequies
were celebrated with funereal pomp at Valladolid, in the parochial church
of Santa Maria de la Antigua. His remains were transported afterwards, in
1513, to the Carthusian monastery of Las Cuevas of Seville, to the chapel
of St. Ann or of Santo Christo, in which chapel were likewise deposited
those of his son Don Diego, who died in the village of Montalban, on the
23d of February, 1526. In the year 1536 the bodies of Columbus and his son
Diego were removed to Hispaniola, and interred in the principal chapel of
the cathedral of the city of San Domingo; but even here they did not rest
in quiet, having since been again disinterred and conveyed to the Havanna,
in the island of Cuba.

We are told that Ferdinand, after the death of Columbus, showed a sense of
his merits by ordering a monument to be erected to his memory, on which
was inscribed the motto already cited, which had formerly been granted to
him by the sovereigns: A Castilla y a Leon nuevo mundo dio Colon (_To
Castile and Leon Columbus gave a new world_). However great an honor a
monument may be for a subject to receive, it is certainly but a cheap
reward for a sovereign to bestow. As to the motto inscribed upon it, it
remains engraved in the memory of mankind, more indelibly than in brass or
marble; a record of the great debt of gratitude due to the discoverer,
which the monarch had so faithlessly neglected to discharge.

Attempts have been made in recent days, by loyal Spanish writers, to
vindicate the conduct of Ferdinand towards Columbus. They were doubtless
well intended, but they have been futile, nor is their failure to be
regretted. To screen such injustice in so eminent a character from the
reprobation of mankind, is to deprive history of one of its most important
uses. Let the ingratitude of Ferdinand stand recorded in its full extent,
and endure throughout all time. The dark shadow which it casts upon his
brilliant renown, will be a lesson to all rulers, teaching thein what is
important to their own fame in their treatment of illustrious men.

Chapter V.

Observations on the Character of Columbus.

In narrating the story of Columbus, it has been the endeavor of the author
to place him in a clear and familiar point of view; for this purpose he
has rejected no circumstance, however trivial, which appeared to evolve
some point of character; and he has sought all kinds of collateral facts
which might throw light upon his views and motives. With this view also he
has detailed many facts hitherto passed over in silence, or vaguely
noticed by historians, probably because they might be deemed instances of
error or misconduct on the part of Columbus; but he who paints a great man
merely in great and heroic traits, though he may produce a fine picture,
will never present a faithful portrait. Great men are compounds of great
and little qualities. Indeed, much of their greatness arises from their
mastery over the imperfections of their nature, and, their noblest actions
are sometimes struck forth by the collision of their merits and their
defects.

In Columbus was singularly combined the practical and the poetical. His
mind had grasped all kinds of knowledge, whether procured by study or
observation, which bore upon his theories; impatient of the scanty aliment
of the day, "his impetuous ardor," as has well been observed, "threw him
into the study of the fathers of the church; the Arabian Jews, and the
ancient geographers;" while his daring but irregular genius, bursting from
the limits of imperfect science, bore him to conclusions far beyond the
intellectual vision of his contemporaries. If some of his conclusions were
erroneous, they were at least ingenious and splendid; and their error
resulted from the clouds which still hung over his peculiar path of
enterprise. His own discoveries enlightened the ignorance of the age;
guided conjecture to certainty, and dispelled that very darkness with
which he had been obliged to struggle.

In the progress of his discoveries he has been remarked for the extreme
sagacity and the admirable justness with which he seized upon the
phenomena of the exterior world. The variations, for instance, of
terrestrial magnetism, the direction of currents, the groupings of marine
plants, fixing one of the grand climacteric divisions of the ocean, the
temperatures changing not solely with the distance to the equator, but
also with the difference of meridians: these and similar phenomena, as
they broke upon him, were discerned with wonderful quickness of
perception, and made to contribute important principles to the stock of
general knowledge. This lucidity of spirit, this quick convertibility of
facts to principles, distinguish him from the dawn to the close of his
sublime enterprise, insomuch that, with all the sallying ardor of his
imagination, his ultimate success has been admirably characterized as a
"conquest of reflection." [237]

It has been said that mercenary views mingled with the ambition of
Columbus, and that his stipulations with the Spanish court were selfish
and avaricious. The charge is inconsiderate and unjust. He aimed at
dignity and wealth in the same lofty spirit in which he sought renown;
they were to be part and parcel of his achievement, and palpable evidence
of its success; they were to arise from the territories he should
discover, and be commensurate in importance. No condition could be more
just. He asked nothing of the sovereigns but a command of the countries he
hoped to give them, and a share of the profits to support the dignity of
his command. If there should be no country discovered, his stipulated
viceroyalty would be of no avail; and if no revenues should be produced,
his labor and peril would produce no gain. If his command and revenues
ultimately proved magnificent, it was from the magnificence of the regions
he had attached to the Castilian crown. What monarch would not rejoice to
gain empire on such conditions? But he did not risk merely a loss of
labor, and a disappointment of ambition, in the enterprise;--on his
motives being questioned, he voluntarily undertook, and, with the
assistance of his coadjutors, actually defrayed, one-eighth of the whole
charge of the first expedition.

It was, in fact, this rare union already noticed, of the practical man of
business with the poetical projector, which enabled him to carry his grand
enterprises into effect through so many difficulties; but the pecuniary
calculations and cares, which gave feasibility to his schemes, were never
suffered to chill the glowing aspirations of his soul. The gains that
promised to arise from his discoveries, he intended to appropriate in the
same princely and pious spirit in which they were demanded. He
contemplated works and achievements of benevolence and religion; vast
contributions for the relief of the poor of his native city; the
foundation of churches, where masses should be said for the souls of the
departed; and armies for the recovery of the holy sepulchre in Palestine.
Thus his ambition was truly noble and lofty; instinct with high thought
and prone to generous deed.

In the discharge of his office he maintained the state and ceremonial of a
viceroy, and was tenacious of his rank and privileges; not from a mere
vulgar love of titles, but because he prized them as testimonials and
trophies of his achievements: these he jealously cherished as his great
rewards. In his repeated applications to the king, he insisted merely on
the restitution of his dignities. As to his pecuniary dues and all
questions relative to mere revenue, he offered to leave them to
arbitration or even to the absolute disposition of the monarch; but not so
his official dignities; "these things," said he nobly, "affect my honor."
In his testament, he enjoined on his son Diego, and whoever after him
should inherit his estates, whatever dignities and titles might afterwards
be granted by the king, always to sign himself simply "the admiral," by
way of perpetuating in the family its real source of greatness.

His conduct was characterized by the grandeur of his views, and the
magnanimity of his spirit. Instead of scouring the newly-found countries,
like a grasping adventurer eager only for immediate gain, as was too
generally the case with contemporary discoverers, he sought to ascertain
their soil and productions, their rivers and harbors: he was desirous of
colonizing and cultivating them; of conciliating and civilizing the
natives; of building cities; introducing the useful arts; subjecting every
thing to the control of law, order, and religion; and thus of founding
regular and prosperous empires. In this glorious plan he was constantly
defeated by the dissolute rabble which it was his misfortune to command;
with whom all law was tyranny, and all order restraint. They interrupted
all useful works by their seditions; provoked the peaceful Indians to
hostility; and after they had thus drawn down misery and warfare upon
their own heads, and overwhelmed Columbus with the ruins of the edifice he
was building, they charged him with being the cause of the confusion.

Well would it have been for Spain had those who followed in the track of
Columbus possessed his sound policy and liberal views. The New World, in
such cases, would have been settled by pacific colonists, and civilized by
enlightened legislators; instead of being overrun by desperate
adventurers, and desolated by avaricious conquerors.

Columbus was a man of quick sensibility, liable to great excitement, to
sudden and strong impressions, and powerful impulses. He was naturally
irritable and impetuous, and keenly sensible to injury and injustice; yet
the quickness of his temper was counteracted by the benevolence and
generosity of his heart. The magnanimity of his nature shone forth through
all the troubles of his stormy career. Though continually outraged in his
dignity, and braved in the exercise of his command; though foiled in his
plans, and endangered in his person by the seditions of turbulent and
worthless men, and that too at times when suffering under anxiety of mind
and anguish of body sufficient to exasperate the most patient, yet he
restrained his valiant and indignant spirit, by the strong powers of his
mind, and brought himself to forbear, and reason, and even to supplicate:
nor should we fail to notice how free he was from all feeling of revenge,
how ready to forgive and forget, on the least signs of repentance and
atonement. He has been extolled for his skill in controlling others; but
far greater praise is due to him for his firmness in governing himself.

His natural benignity made him accessible to all kinds of pleasurable
sensations from external objects. In his letters and journals, instead of
detailing circumstances with the technical precision of a mere navigator,
he notices the beauties of nature with the enthusiasm of a poet or a
painter. As he coasts the shores of the New World, the reader participates
in the enjoyment with which he describes, in his imperfect but picturesque
Spanish, the varied objects around him; the blandness of the temperature,
the purity of the atmosphere, the fragrance of the air, "full of dew and
sweetness," the verdure of the forests, the magnificence of the trees, the
grandeur of the mountains, and the limpidity and freshness of the running
streams. New delight springs up for him in every scene. He extols each new
discovery as more beautiful than the last, and each as the most beautiful
in the world; until, with his simple earnestness, he tells the sovereigns,
that, having spoken so highly of the preceding islands, he fears that they
will not credit him, when he declares that the one he is actually
describing surpasses them all in excellence.

In the same ardent and unstudied way he expresses his emotions on various
occasions, readily affected by impulses of joy or grief, of pleasure or
indignation. When surrounded and overwhelmed by the ingratitude and
violence of worthless men, he often, in the retirement of his cabin, gave
way to bursts of sorrow, and relieved his overladen heart by sighs and
groans. When he returned in chains to Spain, and came into the presence
of Isabella, instead of continuing the lofty pride with which he had
hitherto sustained his injuries, he was touched with grief and tenderness
at her sympathy, and burst forth into sobs and tears.

He was devoutly pious; religion mingled with the whole course of his
thoughts and actions, and shone forth in his most private and unstudied
writings. Whenever he made any great discovery, he celebrated it by solemn
thanks to God. The voice of prayer and melody of praise rose from his
ships when they first beheld the New World, and his first action on
landing was to prostrate himself upon the earth and return thanksgivings.
Every evening, the _Salve Regina_, and other vesper hymns, were
chanted by his crew and masses were performed in the beautiful groves
bordering the wild shores of this heathen land. All his great enterprises
were undertaken in the name of the Holy Trinity, and he partook of the
communion previous to embarkation. He was a firm believer in the efficacy
of vows and penances and pilgrimages, and resorted to them in times of
difficulty and danger. The religion thus deeply seated in his soul
diffused a sober dignity and benign composure over his whole demeanor. His
language was pure and guarded, and free from all imprecations, oaths, and
other irreverent expressions.

It cannot be denied, however, that his piety was mingled with
superstition, and darkened by the bigotry of the age. He evidently
concurred in the opinion, that all nations which did not acknowledge the
Christian faith were destitute of natural rights; that the sternest
measures might be used for their conversion, and the severest punishments
inflicted upon their obstinacy in unbelief. In this spirit of bigotry he
considered himself justified in making captives of the Indians, and
transporting them to Spain to have them taught the doctrines of
Christianity, and in selling them for slaves if they pretended to resist
his invasions. In so doing he sinned against the natural goodness of his
character, and against the feelings which he had originally entertained
and expressed towards this gentle hospitable people; but he was goaded on
by the mercenary impatience of the crown, and by the sneers of his enemies
at the unprofitable result of his enterprises. It is but justice to his
character to observe, that the enslavement of the Indians thus taken in
battle was at first openly countenanced by the crown, and that, when the
question of right came to be discussed at the entreaty of the queen,
several of the most distinguished jurists and theologians advocated the
practice; so that the question was finally settled in favor of the Indians
solely by the humanity of Isabella. As the venerable bishop Las Casas
observes, where the most learned men have doubted, it is not surprising
that an unlearned mariner should err.

These remarks, in palliation of the conduct of Columbus, are required by
candor. It is proper to show him in connection with the age in which he
lived, lest the errors of the times should be considered as his individual
faults. It is not the intention of the author, however, to justify
Columbus on a point where it is inexcusable to err. Let it remain a blot
on his illustrious name, and let others derive a lesson from it.

We have already hinted at a peculiar trait in his rich and varied
character; that ardent and enthusiastic imagination which threw a
magnificence over his whole course of thought. Herrera intimates that he
had a talent for poetry, and some slight traces of it are on record in the
book of prophecies which he presented to the Catholic sovereigns. But his
poetical temperament is discernible throughout all his writings and in all
his actions. It spread a golden and glorious world around him, and tinged
every thing with its own gorgeous colors. It betrayed him into visionary
speculations, which subjected him to the sneers and cavilings of men of
cooler and safer but more groveling minds. Such were the conjectures
formed on the coast of Paria about the form of the earth, and the
situation of the terrestrial paradise; about the mines of Ophir in
Hispaniola, and the Aurea Chersonesus in Veragua; and such was the heroic
scheme of a crusade for the recovery of the holy sepulchre. It mingled
with his religion, and filled his mind with solemn and visionary
meditations on mystic passages of the Scriptures, and the shadowy portents
of the prophecies. It exalted his office in his eyes, and made him
conceive himself an agent sent forth upon a sublime and awful mission,
subject to impulses and supernatural intimations from the Deity; such as
the voice which he imagined spoke to him in comfort amidst the troubles of
Hispaniola, and in the silence of the night on the disastrous coast of
Veragua.

He was decidedly a visionary, but a visionary of an uncommon and
successful kind. The manner in which his ardent, imaginative, and
mercurial nature was controlled by a powerful judgment, and directed by an
acute sagacity, is the most extraordinary feature in his character. Thus
governed, his imagination, instead of exhausting itself in idle flights,
lent aid to his judgment, and enabled him to form conclusions at which
common minds could never have arrived, nay, which they could not perceive
when pointed out.

To his intellectual vision it was given to read the signs of the times,
and to trace, in the conjectures and reveries of past ages, the
indications of an unknown world; as soothsayers were said to read
predictions in the stars, and to foretell events from the visions of the
night. "His soul," observes a Spanish writer, "was superior to the age in
which he lived. For him was reserved the great enterprise of traversing
that sea which had given rise to so many fables, and of deciphering the
mystery of his time." [238]

With all the visionary fervor of his imagination, its fondest dreams fell
short of the reality. He died in ignorance of the real grandeur of his
discovery. Until his last breath he entertained the idea that he had
merely opened a new way to the old resorts of opulent commerce, and had
discovered some of the wild regions of the East. He supposed Hispaniola to
be the ancient Ophir which had been visited by the ships of Solomon, and
that Cuba and Terra Firma were but remote parts of Asia. What visions of
glory would have broken upon his mind could he have known that he had
indeed discovered a new continent, equal to the whole of the old world in
magnitude, and separated by two vast oceans from all the earth hitherto
known by civilized man! And how would his magnanimous spirit have been
consoled, amidst the afflictions of age and the cares of penury, the
neglect of a fickle public, and the injustice of an ungrateful king, could
he have anticipated the splendid empires which were to spread over the
beautiful world he had discovered; and the nations, and tongues, and
languages which were to fill its lands with his renown, and revere and
bless his name to the latest posterity!

Appendix:

Containing Illustrations and Documents.

No. I.

Transportation of the Remains of Columbus from St. Domingo to the Havana.

At the termination of a war between France and Spain, in 1795, all the
Spanish possessions in the island of Hispaniola were ceded to France, by
the 9th article of the treaty of peace. To assist in the accomplishment of
this cession, a Spanish squadron was dispatched to the island at the
appointed time, commanded by Don Gabriel de Aristizabal, lieutenant-general
of the royal armada. On the 11th December, 1795, that commander wrote to
the field-marshal and governor, Don Joaquin Garcia, resident at St.
Domingo, that, being informed that the remains of the celebrated admiral
Don Christopher Columbus lay in the cathedral of that city, he felt it
incumbent on him as a Spaniard, and as commander-in-chief of his majesty's
squadron of operations, to solicit the translation of the ashes of that
hero to the island of Cuba, which had likewise been discovered by him, and
where he had first planted the standard of the cross. He expressed a desire
that this should be done officially, and with great care and formality,
that it might not remain in the power of any one, by a careless
transportation of these honored remains, to lose a relic, connected with
an event which formed the most glorious epoch of Spanish history, and that
it might be manifested to all nations, that Spaniards, notwithstanding the
lapse of ages, never ceased to pay all honors to the remains of that
"worthy and adventurous general of the seas;" nor abandoned them, when the
various public bodies, representing the Spanish dominion, emigrated from
the island. As he had not time, without great inconvenience, to consult
the sovereign on this subject, he had recourse to the governor, as royal
vice-patron of the island, hoping that his solicitation might be granted,
and the remains of the admiral exhumed and conveyed to the island of Cuba,
in the ship San Lorenzo.