LITMIR.BIZ

      Toscanelli’s Map (simplified)

      6. Motives and Difficulties of Columbus.—Columbus was urged on by patriotism, desire of gain, missionary hopes of Christianizing distant lands, and a natural enthusiasm for heroic enterprise. He corresponded with Toscanelli, a learned Italian, who sent him letters and a map, but underestimated greatly the distance to be traversed. This mistake was fortunate, as Columbus would probably never have secured a hearing had he proposed to take a voyage of ten thousand miles—the actual distance between Spain and the East Indies. As it was, for a long time he applied in vain to princes and potentates—who alone could sustain the expenses of such an expedition—for permission and means to make a voyage which he believed to be about three thousand miles in length. The record of his hopes and fears, his successes and reverses, reads like a heroic poem. Fortunately for him, the Portuguese had been making voyages down the African coast, with their eyes fixed on the Eastern trade, and the Spaniards, strong through the recent union of Castile and Aragon and the conquest of the Moorish kingdom of Granada, had been aroused to eager rivalry in maritime enterprise. At the court of Ferdinand and Isabella, the Spanish monarchs, Columbus eloquently pleaded his cause. Success at last crowned his efforts. Under the patronage of Isabella he sailed from the port of Palos, with a fleet of three vessels, on the 3d of August, 1492.

      Ships of the Time of Columbus.

7. Voyages of Columbus.—Within a month the adventurers had left the Canaries and were traversing the unknown ocean. As the days went by the crews became restless, but the dauntless resolution of Columbus prevented mutiny. Finally, after a fortunate change of course to the southwest, the great navigator saw a light ahead, on the evening of October 11, and the following morning he found that an island had been reached. It was probably Watling’s Island, one of the Bahama group, though the identity of the landing place has been a matter of much dispute.^[7] On this first voyage Columbus coasted along the northern side of Cuba, and also discovered the island now known as Hayti. Then, after losing his largest ship and suffering many other trials, he returned to Spain, confident that he had reached islands off the coast of India. The Spanish sovereigns received him with great respect and pomp, and soon sent him back to take possession of his discoveries in the name of Spain. Unfortunately, there was little or no wealth to be obtained from the new possessions except by capable colonists, and Columbus was not fitted to govern dependencies. So great did the opposition to him become that he was arrested some years later, on account of charges of extortion and cruelty brought by his followers, and was sent to Spain in irons. He was soon released, however, and undertook his fourth and last voyage. The results of his last three expeditions were not important. He succeeded in exploring more of Cuba, and in discovering Jamaica. He reached also the mouth of the Orinoco, and was much puzzled to account for its size, which was too great for an island river. On his last voyage he coasted the shores of Central America, in a vain search for a waterway to India. He found no strait, but did find an isthmus; and when he heard reports of a vast body of water lying on the other side of the land, he thought that it must be the Indian Ocean. Thus he was confirmed in his error with regard to the nearness of India, and doubtless cherished his delusion to his death. After his fourth voyage he returned to Spain, and died there in 1506, in poverty and obscurity.

      Sebastian Cabot.

8. The Cabots and the English Title.—Almost immediately after Columbus’s first voyage, Pope Alexander VI. issued a bull dividing the non-Christian portion of the world into two parts: Spain to have all that she might discover west of a line to be drawn one hundred leagues west of the Azores; and Portugal all that she might discover east of it. In the following year the rival nations fixed the line at three hundred and seventy leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands. Aroused by these events, Henry VII. of England, who was laying the foundations of Tudor greatness, granted a license of exploration to John Cabot, an Italian then living in Bristol. This seaman landed somewhere near the mouth of the St. Lawrence River, in 1497. Accounts of the voyage are unsatisfactory; and those of the voyage of 1498, supposed to have been made under the command of Cabot’s son Sebastian,^[8] are still more vague. That the Cabots did make northerly discoveries on which the English based their right to colonize North America is, however, quite certain.

9. Other Successors of Columbus.—The discovery of the West Indies, as the new islands were named in consequence of Columbus’s mistake, naturally gave a great impetus to exploration. In 1497–98 the Portuguese under Vasco da Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope and reached the real India, the goal of their desires. In the last year of the same century another Portuguese, Gaspar Cortereal, explored a good deal of the North American coast, and in a few years Newfoundland was much frequented by fishermen, especially from France and England.^[9] Little was known, however, about the geography of the new world. Many strange errors were current respecting it, and some years passed before it was given a name. One of the errors was that North America was a projection of Asia, which was not disproved until 1728, when the Russian navigator Vitus Bering sailed from the Pacific into the Arctic Ocean. This error had much to do with the delay in furnishing the two continents with names. By a curious chain of circumstances, too, the name finally settled upon did not do honor to Columbus.