Columbus
and
Other Heroes
of
American Discovery
Transcriber’s Notes
The cover image was provided by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.
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This book was written in a period when many words had not become standardized in their spelling. Words may have multiple spelling variations or inconsistent hyphenation in the text. These have been left unchanged unless indicated with a Transcriber’s Note.
The alphabetical order of the Index has been corrected, but references have not been checked for accuracy.
Transcriber’s Notes are used when making corrections to the text or to provide additional information for the modern reader. These notes are identified by ♦♠♥♣ symbols in the text and are shown immediately below the paragraph in which they appear.
CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS.
COLUMBUS
AND OTHER HEROES OF
AMERICAN DISCOVERY
BY
N. D’ANVERS
COPIOUSLY ILLUSTRATED
GEORGE ROUTLEDGE AND SONS, Limited
NEW YORK: 9 LAFAYETTE PLACE
London and Manchester
Copyright, 1885 and 1893,
By Joseph L. Blamire.
The Caxton Press
171, 173 Macdougal Street, New York
AUTHOR’S NOTE.
The present volume is intended to give a general idea of the progress of exploration in the districts now forming Canada and the United States, with the general advance of the white man westwards. The chief authorities consulted in the preparation of the “Heroes of the Exodus to the West” were the reports to their superiors of the early Jesuit missionaries; George Bancroft’s “History of the United States;” Bryant’s “Popular History of the United States;” and Bancroft’s “Native Races of the Pacific.” But reference has also been made to the original works of all the great travelers in the districts under notice; while much valuable geographical information has been culled from the Journals of the learned Societies both of England and America, and from Réclus’s “Geógraphie Universelle.”
N. D’ANVERS.
Hampstead, 1884.
CONTENTS.
America known to the Ancients—The Island of Atlantis—Scandinavian Emigration—Eric the Red and Gunnbiorn—Bjarni Herjulfson and Leif the Lucky—Discovery of Vinland—Thorvald and the Skrællings—A terrible Struggle—An heroic Amazon—Retreat of the Danes—Return of Freydis to Vinland—Massacre of Colonists by her Orders—Total Disappearance of Scandinavian Settlement—Madoc of Wales—The Brothers Zeni—Marco Polo—Early Life of Columbus—The Astrolabe applied to Navigation—A Hearing at last—Duplicity of John II.—Columbus in Poverty and Exile—A generous Prior—Hope and Despair—Isabella is won over—Full Powers granted to Columbus—The Start from Saltos—Discontent of Sailors—Variation of Compass—Mutiny—Land Ahead!—Discovery of the West Indian Islands—Return to Spain—Second and Third Voyages—Death in Poverty and Disgrace—Amerigo Vespucci—The Cabots—First Landing in North America—The Cortereals—Breton Fishermen.
The Spanish in the Gulf of Mexico—Vasco Nuñez de Balboa concealed in a Cask—His Pardon—Shipwreck and Rescue of Explorers by Balboa—His Discovery of the Pacific—His Murder by [♠]Anias—Expedition of Ponce de Leon—The Discovery of Florida and Search for the Fountain of Youth—Leon’s Death from poisoned Arrows—Discovery of the Mouths of the Pacific by Francis Garay—Lucas Vasquez de Ayllon in Florida—His Cruelty to the Natives—Their Retaliation—Verrazano on the Atlantic coast of North America—The Invasion of Florida by Pamphilo de Narvaez—His Disappointment, Retreat, and Death—The Captivity and Escape of four of his Followers—The Expedition of Hernando de Soto—Meeting with Juan Ortiz—His romantic Story—An Indian burned alive—A native Princess—At the foot of the Apalachian Mountains—Southward to Mavilla—Struggle with Indians—Westward ho! and Discovery of the Mississippi—De Soto in a new Character—His Death and Burial in the Mississippi—Escape of his Men under his Successor, Luis [♦]Moscoso de Alvarado—Murder of Louis Cancello, the Missionary—Expedition of De Luna.
[♠] ‘Anias’ used throughout, refers to Peter Arias
[♦] ‘Muscoso’ replaced with ‘Moscoso’
Verrazano sent out by Francis I.—Discovery of the Hudson—Jacques Cartier in Canada, and his Discovery of the St. Lawrence—Touching Scene at Hochelaga—Foundation of Fort Charles on the Site of Quebec—Kidnapping of Donnacona and other Natives, and return to Europe—Death of Indian Captives, and cold Reception at Hochelaga on the Return of Cartier without them—Break-up of the Colony and Flight of Cartier—Arrival of [♦]Roberval—Sad Fate of his People—Ribault and the French Refugees on the River of May—Return home of Ribault—Assassination of Pierria—Escape of Colonists in a crazy Pinnace—Their Murder of a Comrade for Food—Their Rescue by an English Vessel—Laudonnière’s Colony on the May—Mutiny, and Troubles with the Indians—Famine, and Arrival of Ribault—Disgrace of Laudonnière—Arrival of Menendez—Massacre of French Huguenots by Spaniards—Escape of a little Remnant to Anastasia—Second and third Massacres—Gallant Bearing of Ribault—Foundation of St. Augustine—Vengeance of De Gourgues on the Spanish—Murder of Missionaries in Florida—St. Augustine burned by Drake.
[♦] ‘Robeval’ replaced with ‘Roberval’
Sir Humphrey Gilbert’s unsuccessful Voyages, and Death by Drowning—Sir Walter Raleigh’s Renewal of his Brother’s Patent—Grenville and others sent out to Virginia by Raleigh—First Settlement at Roanoake—Its Abandonment by White—Birth of Virginia Dare—Search for the lost Colony—Death of Bartholomew Gilbert—Gosnold’s Expedition—Formation of the Southern and Northern Companies—Failure of the Latter to gain a Footing in Maine—Arrival in Chesapeake Bay of Colonists sent out by the Southern Company—Foundation of Jamestown—Smith’s Visit to the Potomac—His Captivity among the Indians and Rescue from Death by Pocahontas—Smith chosen President—The Coronation of Powhatan—A new Charter obtained—Emigrants shipwreck—Smith wounded, and compelled to leave Virginia—Subsequent Troubles—Arrival of Sir Thomas Gates—The Colony reduced to sixty starving Men and Women—Jamestown abandoned—Arrival of Lord De La Warre—Return to Jamestown—Marriage and Death of Pocahontas—Gradual Growth of Virginia—Terrible Massacre of 1622, and the Results of that Massacre—Arrival of Lord Baltimore in Jamestown—First Settlement of Maryland—Father White.
The French in Maine, and their Settlement at Port Royal—Jesuit Missionaries at Grand Manan—Destruction of French Colonies by Argall—John Smith and Thomas Hunt on the Coasts of Maine—Vines on the Saco River, and Dermer on Long Island—Early History of the Pilgrim Fathers—Arrival of the Mayflower off Cape Cod—Preliminary Exploration by Miles Standish—Discovery of Plymouth Harbor, and first Landing on Plymouth Rock—An Indian Visitor—Arrival of fresh Emigrants—Complications with them and with the Indians—An Indian Chief saved by Englishmen—Indian Plot revealed—Ringleaders slain by Standish—Puritan Refugees at Cape Ann—Standish sent out against them—Peace made by Conant—Conant’s Settlement at Salem—The Dorchester Company—Endicott sent out by it to Massachusetts—Arrival of Winthrop with 800 Emigrants—Foundation of Boston and other Towns—Roger Williams expelled from Salem—His Settlement in Rhode Island, and Foundation of Providence—Visit of Indian Chief from Connecticut to Boston—Emigration to Connecticut—John Winthrop appointed Governor—Tearing down of Dutch Arms, and Foundation of Saybrook Fort—Hooker’s Emigration to Connecticut, and Foundation of Bradford—Troubles ahead—Discovery of the Hudson—Fight with Indians—Discovery of Hudson’s Bay and Death of Hudson—Foundation of New Netherland Company—Dutch Explorations in Delaware, etc.—West India Company founded—Settlement of Walloons at Albany—Foundation of New York—The Swedes on the Delaware—Disputes between them and the Dutch, and between the Dutch and the English.
Champlain in Maine—Foundation of Quebec—Discovery of Lakes Peter and Champlain—Foundation of Montreal—First Navigation of the Ottawa—Discovery of Lakes Huron and Nipissing—An Iroquois Execution—Canada taken by the English, and restored to the French—Death of Champlain—Fathers Brébœuf and Daniel on Lake Huron—Raymbault and Pigart on Lake Nipissing—Jogues among the Iroquois—His Murder—Capture, Conversion, and Execution of one of his Murderers—Terrible Iroquois War—Father Dreuillette among the Sioux—His Death in the Forest—Allouez on Lake Superior—Rumors of a great River on the West—Marquette discovers the Mississippi—Descent of the River in native Canoes—Arrival in Arkansas—Saved by the Pipe of Peace—Up the Mississippi to the Illinois—Across North-eastern Illinois—Death of Marquette on the shores of Lake Michigan—Expedition of La Salle—Loss of the Griffin—Building of a new Vessel—Discovery of Lake Peoria—Down the Mississippi to the Sea—Second Expedition of La Salle—Fruitless Search for the Mouth of the Mississippi—Wanderings in Texas and New Mexico—Despair—Attempt to walk back to Canada—Murder in the Jungle—Murder of the Murderers—The Coureurs de bois in the North-west—Baron La Hontan’s Trip down the Mississippi—Rumors of the Sea on the West—Journey of Father Charlevoix.
Expedition of Diego de Hurtado—Ulloa’s Trip up the Gulf of California—Da Nizza in Arizona—The Cities of the Plain—Murder of Dorantes and his Companions—Da Nizza visits Cibola in Disguise—Expedition of Alarchon and Coronado—Discovery of the Mouth of the Colorado—Cibola taken by Coronado—Discovery of the Town of Quivira—Discovery of Cape Mendocino by Cabrillo—Viscaino’s Trip up the North-west Coast—Numerous Deaths from Scurvy—Discovery of the Mouth of the Columbia—Death of Viscaino—Expedition of Juan de Fuca—Supposed Discovery of Queen Charlotte’s Sound—De Fonte and Barnardo in the North-western Archipelago—Father Kino among the Picture-Writers and Sun Worshipers—Discovery of the Mimbres—Establishment of a Mission on the Gila—Descent of the Apaches on the Settlements of the Whites—Expulsion of the Jesuits, and Murder of Natives—Pearl-fishers on the Californian Coast—The Jesuits expelled from Lower California—Exodus of Jesuits from Lower to Northern California—First Colony founded at San Diego—Discovery of the Bay of San Francisco—Decline of the Power of the Jesuits, and their gradual Withdrawal from California.
Murder of Captains Stone and Oldham—Massacre on Block Island—Intervention of Roger Williams—The Last Stand of the Pequods—Emigration of Eaton and Davenport to Connecticut—Foundation of New Haven—First Settlement of Refugees in Carolina—Their Lands given to eight Noblemen—Arrival of Cavaliers and Planters—Misery of the Colonists—Relief at last—Oglethorpe’s first Settlement in Georgia—His Meeting with the Indian Chiefs—Pennsylvania granted to Penn—His Reception in Delaware—His Voyage up the River—Treaty with the Indians—Foundation of Philadelphia—Rapid Growth of Pennsylvania—Foundation of Harrisburg—The French and Indian War—Foundation of Pittsburg—The War of Independence—Freedom won for the Thirteen Original States of the Union—Declaration of Independence on the 4th July, 1776.
D’Iberville’s Arrival at the Mouth of the Mississippi—Foundation of the first French Fort on the Bay of Biloxi—English Expedition to the Mississippi—The Mississippi Scheme—Foundation of New Orleans—Bursting of the Bubble—Louisiana ceded to England—Boone’s first Trip to Kentucky—Taken Prisoner by the Indians—Escape—Meeting with his Brother—Murder of Squire Boone’s Servant—A White Man’s Skeleton found in the Woods—Hunters on the Ohio and in Tennessee—First Settlers start for Kentucky—An Indian Ambush—Retreat—Boone in Despair—Fresh Hope—Boone’s Third Trip at the Head of a Surveying Party—Purchase of Lands from the Cherokees—Foundation of Boonesborough—Influx of Emigrants across the Alleghanies—First Settlement of Tennessee, Ohio, Illinois, and the South of Michigan—The English supplant the French in Louisiana—Restriction of the Name of Louisiana to a small Tract—First English Settlements in Mississippi and Alabama—Acquisition of Florida—First Spanish and English Settlements in Texas—Acquisition of California, Arizona, and New Mexico—Gradual Retreat of the Red Men before the White Settlers.
The new-born Republic—Pike’s Embarkation on the Mississippi at Fort Louis—Sledge Journey along the Banks of the Mississippi—A Chippeway Encampment—A Native Pictorial Record—A Member of the North-west Company—On Snow-shoes to Leech and Red Cedar Lakes—A Council of Chippeway Warriors—Back to St. Louis—New Expedition organized—The Osage Captives—Along the Arkansas—Arrival at the Head-waters of the Mississippi—Search for the Red River of the South—The Rio del Norte mistaken for it—The Explorers taken Prisoners by the Spaniards—Journey across Texas to Natchitoches—Lewis and Clarke embark on the Missouri at St. Louis—The Mouth of the Platte, or Nebraska—Among the Sioux—Difficulty with Indians at the Great Bend—The Mouth of the Yellowstone River—Encounters with White and Brown Bears—The two Forks of the Missouri—Long Hesitation as to which to follow—Lewis solves the Problem by the Discovery of the Great Falls—Terrible Storm, and Narrow Escape of Clarke—The Gates of the Rocky Mountains—Across the Mountains and Discovery of the Source of the Missouri—Search for Shoshones—Three Indian Women surprised—In the Shoshone Camp—Vain Attempt to reach the Source of the Columbia—On the Summit of the Rocky Mountain Range—Down the Pacific Slope to the lower Course of the Columbia—Construction of Canoes—Down the Columbia to the Great Falls—Successful Navigation of them—In the Great Narrows—The Sea at last—Winter among the Flatheads—Home again.
Discovery of Behring Straits—Cook and Meares—Rescue from Starvation—Encounter with Natives—Vancouver on the Western Coast—Gray’s supposed Discovery of the Columbia—Coxe’s Survey of Hudson’s Bay—James in Distress in Hudson’s Bay—Foundation of the Hudson’s Bay Company—Discovery of Rupert’s River—Disputes with the French—Knight’s Voyage and his terrible Fate—Discovery of Relics of Knight and his Comrades—Moore and Smith in Hudson’s Bay—Cession of Canada to England, and its Results—Heroes of the Transition Time—Hearne’s Discovery of Athabasca Lake and the Coppermine River—Massacre of Esquimaux—Discovery of the Arctic Ocean—Result to Geographical Science of that Discovery—Hearne’s Return to Hudson’s Bay—The Indian Exile wrestled for—Enthusiasm of the Company—The Rise of the North-west Company—Mackenzie’s Journey to the Slave Lake, and Discovery of the Slave, Athabasca, or Mackenzie River—His Voyage to Great Bear Lake—Return to Fort [♦]Chipewyan—Journey across Country to the North Pacific—The Work of all Explorers united by his last Trip.
[♦] ‘Chippewyan’ replaced with ‘Chipewyan’
The Pacific Fur Company—Voyage of the Tonquin—Foundation of Astoria—Massacre on the Tonquin—Terrible Revenge—The great Small-pox Chief—Start of the Land Expedition—An Ambush—Unexpected Rescue—Treachery of an Interpreter—Among the Crow Indians—The Black Mountains—The invisible Lords of the Mountain—Arrival on the Banks of the Mad River—Across Country to the Henry River—Construction of Canoes—Embarkation on the Henry—A Canadian drowned—The Lion Caldron—Across Country again—Among the Akai-chies—News of the Astorians—Threatened Attack of the Natives—Arrival on the Banks of the Columbia—Along the River to Indian Encampment—News of Tragedy on the Tonquin—Down the Columbia to Astoria.
Cass’s Voyage up the Mississippi—Long and James on the Platte, or Nebraska—Discovery of the two Sources of the Platte—Among the Mountain Passes—Eating of poisonous Berries—Meeting with a Bear—Ascent of Pike’s Peak—Search for Head-waters of the Arkansas—The Canadian taken for the Arkansas, and followed to its Junction with the latter River—Start of new Expedition from the Ohio—Cannibalism among the Natives—The Apostle of the Indians—Across the Prairies to Lake Michigan—Through Illinois to the Mississippi—Up the Mississippi to the Minnesota—The Head-waters of the Minnesota—The primal Home of the Red River of the North, the St. Lawrence, etc.—Up the Red River to Lake Winnipeg—From Lake Winnipeg to the Lake of the Woods, and thence across Country to Lake Superior—Schoolcraft’s Ascent of the Mississippi, and Discovery of its actual Source.
Wilkes’ Survey of the Western Coast—Fremont’s Ascent of the Kansas—Encounter with Arapaho Warriors—Arrival at Fort Laramie—A threatening Letter—Fremont’s Reply—On the Sweet Water River—Discovery of Mountain Lake and Fremont’s Peak—A winged Messenger—Back to Fort Laramie—To the Rocky Mountains again—On the Banks of the Bear River—Discovery of the Great Salt Lake—Embarkation on the Lake—Sudden Change in the Character of its Waters—From the Salt Lake through the Great Basin to Fort Hall and thence to the Columbia River—Attempt to return Home by a New Route—Lost in the Wilderness—Discovery of Lake Tlamath—Search for an Opening in the Mountains—Discovery of Pyramid Lake—Meeting with Snake Indians—Hunger—Salmon discovered in a River flowing into the Lake—News of White Men on the South—All Hope of reaching United States abandoned—Fremont resolves to cross the Sierra Nevada—First Peak scaled—Meeting with Indians—A Gap in the Mountains discovered at last—Ascent of the Californian Mountain—Opening a Path through the Snow—A terrible Prophecy—Flight of Guide—First Sight of Seaboard Range of Mountains—Intense Excitement—Down the Eastern Slopes of the Californian Mountain to the Banks of the Sacramento—Arrival at Sutter’s Fort—Back to St. Louis by way of the South Pass—Fremont’s third and last Journey.
Early History of the Mormons—Murder of Smith—Expulsion from Illinois—Across the frozen Mississippi—Through the Wilderness—Summons to the War—Young Men sent to the Aid of the Republic—Arrival on the Shores of the Great Salt Lake—Building of Salt Lake City—Expedition of Stansbury—California ceded to the States—Discovery of Gold near Sutter’s Fort—World-wide Excitement—Rush of 30,000 Emigrants Westward—Terror of Indians at Approach of the White Men—Sufferings in the Mountains—Jealousy of Settlers—Prairies set on Fire—Survivors of the 30,000 rescued by White Men from California.
Cozens’ Start from Merilla—First Encounter with Apaches, and Murder of Laws—A Bear Hunt—To the Ruins of Le Gran [♦]Quivera—Two Mules stolen—Back again to Merilla—Cozens and Cochise, an Apache Chief—Cochise offers to act as Guide to the Encampment of his Warriors—The great Mirage known as Greenhorn’s Lake—A Chaos of Rocks and Precipices—Following an Indian Trail—Down the Ravine to the Apache Valley—First Sight of Apache Village with Huts built on truncated Mounds—Excitement among the Apaches—Cochise explains Cozens’ Presence—Eager Welcome—Arrival of Magnus Colorado, the great Scalper—Trying Interview between Magnus and Cozens—Eternal Friendship sworn—A blood-stained Baby’s Frock—Scalp Dance and its attendant Horrors—Back again to Mexico—Second and third Trips to the North—With Jim Davis the Emigrant’s Friend, to the Navajoe Country—Ascent of the Sierra Madre—Encounter with a Panther—In the Zuni Valley among the blue-eyed Indians—Ruins of Zuni—Encounter with Navajoes—Jim Davis’s Story—Re-capture of stolen Cattle—A fall of Three Hundred Feet—Marvelous Preservation of Cozens—Nursed by the Zunis—Murder of Stewart’s Family by Apaches—Escape of Stewart to Zuni—His Death of a broken Heart—Return of Cozens to Mexico.
[♦] ‘Quivara’ replaced with ‘Quivera’
Crisis in British America—Consolidation of its various Parts into one great Colony—Decay of the Hudson’s Bay Company—Establishment of an International Boundary Line—Journey of Palliser—Admission of British Columbia to the Dominion, and Conditions of that Admission—Surveys for Railway—Fleming’s Expeditions—Dispute between the British Government and the United States—Joint-Commission sent out to determine the Boundary Line—Results obtained by it.
HEROES OF AMERICAN DISCOVERY.
CHAPTER I.
COLUMBUS, HIS PREDECESSORS AND HIS IMMEDIATE SUCCESSORS.
ALTHOUGH the discovery of America used to be dated from the voyage of Columbus to the West Indies in 1492, there can be little doubt that this great hero was by no means the first explorer of our era to visit the New World. The existence of land to the west of the Pillars of Hercules was even known to the ancients. Frequent mention is made by Greek and Roman authors of islands on the West, especially of the fair Atlantis, concerning which Plato gives many details, declaring it to have been of vast extent and great beauty, but to have been swallowed up by the sea in pre-historic times. Some modern authors are of opinion that the Canaries are the only existing remains of this Atlantis; others that the so-called island was in reality the mainland of America. Leaving this question to those now studying it with the aid of the recent discoveries in the New World, we pass on to find trustworthy accounts in the old sagas—of which the principal, recently discovered in an Icelandic monastery, are preserved in the Royal Library at Copenhagen—of the presence of Danish settlers in Greenland as early as 982 A.D. These were led thither by the great Eric the Red, who is supposed, however, merely to have acted on information left behind by an early settler of Iceland, named Gunnbiorn, a century before. Gunnbiorn was the true discoverer of Greenland, which he had sighted—though not visited—naming it Hvidsaerk, or the “White Shirt,” because of the perpetual covering of snow worn by its highlands.
THE GLACIERS OF GREENLAND.
In a voyage from Iceland to Greenland, four years after the visit of Eric the Red to the latter country, a Danish navigator named Bjarni Herjulfson was driven far out of his course to the South, and saw land stretching away on the West; but he returned home without making any exploration of the new territories, for which, says tradition, “he was greatly blamed.” His reports, however, of what he had seen, led to the fitting out and heading of a far more important expedition by Leif the Lucky, who, making direct for the most southerly point gained by his predecessors, reached the modern Newfoundland, which he called Helluland, and, landing, found it to be “a country without grass, and covered with snow and ice.”
From Helluland, Leif sailed to the present Nova Scotia, which he named “Markland,” or woodland, because of its extensive forests; and thence he is said to have been driven by a contrary wind on to the coast of New England, but on what part of that coast there is no evidence to show, although it is generally agreed to have been in about N. lat. 41° 24′, a little to the north of Rhode Island. Excursions inland revealed the newly-discovered district to be rich in vines and timber; and loading his vessel with grapes and wood, Leif made haste to return home with his trophies, giving such glowing accounts of his adventures on his arrival, that a short time later his brother Thorvald started with a crew of thirty men for the land of promise.
Thorvald is supposed on this trip to have coasted along the shores of Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Long Island, and in the ensuing year, 1004, to have sailed as far north as Cape Cod (N. lat. 42° 5′, W. long. 70° 10′), where he was wrecked in a violent storm. His vessel was not, however, materially damaged, and having repaired it, he coasted along the present Massachusetts till he came to what is now the harbor of Boston. There he landed, and wandering to and fro in the beautiful scenery with his men, he for the first time came upon some natives, probably Esquimaux, who were resting peaceably beneath their quaint skin-boats.
With the cruelty characteristic of the wild sea-kings of the North, Thorvald at once gave the signal for attack. The poor Skrællings, as he dubbed the natives, were quickly overpowered. One only escaped, and the others were foully murdered. No wonder that this was the beginning of the end of Thorvald’s enterprise. That very night, as he and his followers were sleeping peacefully, untroubled by any remorse for their evil deeds, they were roused by the war-whoop of the Skrællings, come at the bidding of the one survivor to avenge his comrades.
The white men took refuge in their ship, and all escaped unhurt except Thorvald himself, who received a wound in the side, from which he shortly afterward died. He was buried within sight of the Atlantic, on what is now Massachusetts Bay, and his sorrowing followers returned home with the terrible tidings in the ensuing spring.
Undaunted by the fate of his brother, another son of Eric, Thorstein by name, set out for Vinland in 1005, but he failed to find it, and returned home, stricken with mortal sickness, in the same year. On his deathbed, however, he prophesied that his widow, Gudrid, would marry again, and hinted that a great career of discovery and conquest was before her future children. He was right in the first part at least of his speech, for two years later we find Gudrid, as the wife of a sturdy Icelander named Karlsefne, forming part of the largest expedition yet sent out from Greenland to Vinland—an expedition consisting of no less than three ships, and one hundred and forty men and women.
That an important colony was founded by the new adventurers there appears no reason to doubt, although it is impossible to fix its exact locality. Booths were erected, stores were laid in for the winter, and amicable relations were opened with the Skrællings, who came in great numbers, first to stare at the intruders, and then to trade with them, exchanging valuable furs for red cloth, etc.
A slight and almost ludicrous incident was the first thing to break up what had appeared to be the beginning of a long course of successful colonization. A bull belonging to one of the leaders of the expedition rushed suddenly among the buyers and sellers, so terrifying the natives, who had never before seen an animal of that description, that they fled to their kayaks, or skin-boats, in the greatest confusion, returning some weeks later in greatly increased numbers, and armed with bows and arrows, to revenge themselves for what they took to be an intentional insult.
Fierce indeed was the struggle in which they were now involved, and, overwhelmed by superior numbers, the colonists seemed likely to be exterminated, when the tide was turned by the courage of Freydis, a daughter of Eric the Red, who, imbued with the brave spirit of her father, suddenly faced the savages, and brandishing a sword which she had taken from a dead warrior of her own race, she invited the enemy to come and slay her if they would, even tearing open her dress to make clear her meaning.
The Skrællings, perhaps taking these strange gestures for the signs of superhuman agency, gazed for a moment in awe-struck silence at the lonely figure standing thus unprotected among the slain, and then, with cries as wild and weird in the ears of the Northmen as those of their champions to the natives, they one and all turned and fled.
The terrible slaughter among their men had, however, so disgusted the leaders of the colony, that they soon afterwards returned to Greenland; and, but for the ambition of Freydis, the history of the Scandinavian colonies in North America would have ended then and there. Unable to forget her triumph, and eager for yet further distinction, this remarkable woman did not rest until she had organized a new expedition, which, under the leadership of two brothers named Helgi and Finnbogi, set sail in 1011, and, landing in Vinland without molestation from the natives, took possession of the booths erected by their predecessors. All seemed likely to go well, when the overbearing conduct of Freydis, who was not one to shine in the peaceful work of colonization, led to dissensions among the explorers. By a crafty artifice she managed to pick a quarrel with the two brothers, and, with the co-operation of her husband, Thorvard—who, though naturally a mild and inoffensive man, appears to have been entirely under the control of his stronger-minded wife—she succeeded in effecting their massacre, and that of all who were inimical to her supremacy. The survivors, terror-struck by the fate of their companions, yielded without a struggle to the rule of Freydis, who, first binding them all by an oath never to tell of her conduct at home, set them at work to cut timber and collect the curiosities and valuables of the country. Then, when she had acquired enough to insure her wealth for the remainder of her life, she embarked for Greenland with the little remnant of the original party. The Icelandic sagas, already referred to, tell how the iniquity of Freydis gradually leaked out, and how, though she herself escaped unpunished, her sins were visited upon her children.
With her return home the attempts at American colonization by the Northmen appear to have ceased, but tradition tells of many a trip by contemporary adventurers of other nationalities; for, between the fitful excursions from Greenland—which, as we have seen, left no real or permanent impress on the people or districts visited—and the well-organized expedition of modern times, we hear of Arab sailors of the 12th century having sighted land in the unknown Western Ocean, graphically called, from its real and imaginary horrors, the Sea of Darkness; and of a voyage made in 1170 by Madoc, son of the Prince of North Wales, who, after sailing for many weeks away from his native land, came to a country, supposed to have been the modern Virginia, differing in every respect from any European land.
Certain travelers of the 17th century tell of white men speaking the Welsh tongue having been met with among the Indians far away in the West, lending some slight semblance of veracity to the tradition that a colony was indeed founded by the Welsh; but in the absence of all confirmatory documents, we are compelled to reserve judgment on the subject, passing on to the better authenticated story of the voyage of the brothers Zeni of Venice, who, between 1388 and 1404, are said to have visited Greenland and Nova Scotia, and to have long resided as the guest of its king in an island called Frisland, the position—indeed the very existence—of which has never been fully proved, although some authorities are of opinion that it was really only one of the Faroe Islands. However that maybe, many legends were long current in Venice of the intercourse with the unknown Frisland and islands further west, one of which, called Estotiland, is supposed to have been Newfoundland. Hints, too, are scattered up and down old chronicles, of wandering fishermen sailing southward from Estotiland having come to a country answering in the descriptions given of it to Mexico; the Chinese, Malays, and Polynesians are said to have reached the American coasts; and, to conclude our summary of lore relating to the oldest of the continents, Picigano’s map, which is dated 1367, gives indications of a western continent named Antilles, and a yet older map shows an island where Newfoundland ought to be.
Whether America was or was not visited from Europe or from Asia before the time of Columbus, however, the barbarism in which European society was sunk in medieval times prevented any recognition of the true significance of the details of adventures given by returned mariners; and their voyages thus fail to form any real link between the America of the middle ages and that of the present day. If, therefore, we would point out the true precursor of the first hero of discovery in the West, we shall find him, not in the wild Northmen bent on pillage and bloodshed, nor in the brothers Zeni of legend and romance, but in that grand central figure of the scientific annals of the 13th century, Marco Polo, whose book, revealing the existence of vast empires in the East, did much to stimulate the enthusiasm, not only of Columbus, but also of Bartholomew Diaz, Vasco da Gama, and other early heroes of travel, thus indirectly leading to the discovery alike of the Cape of Good Hope and of America.
Although Columbus never set foot on the Northern half of the American continent, with which alone we have, strictly speaking, now to do, no record of travel in any part of the New World would appear to us complete without some account of his first voyage, and of what led to that voyage. For there can be no doubt that, but for the noble steadfastness of purpose which resulted in the achievement of one discovery while its author was bent on another, the revelation of the existence of a quarter of the globe larger than Europe and Asia put together, and which was destined to be the scene of much of the most stirring history of modern times, would have been indefinitely postponed.
CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS.
Of the early life of Christopher Columbus little is known with any certainty. He is supposed, however, to have been born about 1435, and, as the son of a poor wool-comber of Genoa, to have enjoyed few educational advantages, although, fortunately for him, what little teaching he received seems to have tended to foster his peculiar genius. According to his own account, preserved in the Historia del Amirante, he began his maritime career at fourteen, after a brief sojourn at the University of Pavia, enduring great hardships as a sailor employed in the half-commercial, half-nautical cruises of the roving ships which, in the latter part of the 15th century, haunted the Mediterranean and the coasts beyond the Straits of Gibraltar.
In 1459 we hear of a certain “handy sea-captain” named Colombo taking part as a private adventurer in an expedition sent out by John of Genoa against Naples; and in 1470 we find the same sea-captain—now in the prime of life—settling in Lisbon, and by his marriage with the daughter of Palestrello, the discoverer of Porto Santo, coming into possession of many valuable charts and journals, the study of which is said to have first suggested to him the existence of land to the westward, which land, however, he from first to last erroneously supposed to be, not a new continent, but a continuation of the eastern shores of Asia.
Whether our hero drew his inspiration from one author or another, or, as appears more likely, was led up to the conception of his great design by the spirit of the age in which he lived, affects but little the historical fact that it was about 1474, when the enlightened efforts of Prince Henry of Portugal had ushered in a new era of geographical research, that Columbus first enunciated his belief that there was land in the western part of the ocean; that it could be reached; that it was fertile; and, lastly, that it was inhabited—a belief which was shortly afterward converted into a design for seeking a western route to India, although eighteen long years elapsed before the first step was taken in the realization of a scheme so totally opposed to all the preconceived notions of cosmographers.
In voyage after voyage made by Columbus in the succeeding years to the Azores, the Canaries, and the coasts of Guinea, then the limits of navigation to the westward, the future discoverer became more and more fully convinced that, with the necessary time and means at his disposal, he might convert his dream into a waking reality; but, alas! all his attempts to obtain a hearing for his scheme from those who were in a position to forward it were met by scorn and ridicule.
The first ray of hope to break upon the despair of Columbus at this ill-success was the invention—or, to be more strictly accurate, the application to navigation—of the astrolabe, the precursor of the modern quadrant, by Martin Behaim, and by Roderigo and Joseph, physicians in the employ of John II. of Portugal. Armed with it and the mariner’s compass, as defensive weapons, the nautical explorer needed no longer to fear trusting himself on the trackless paths of the ocean; and, Columbus, full of new hope, asked for and obtained an interview with John II. in 1482 or 1483. We can imagine with what eagerness our hero pleaded his cause, and with what patience he explained every detail of his scheme, winning at last a consent, though but a reluctant one, that his proposition should be referred to a “learned junto, charged with all matters relating to maritime discovery,” to which title we may add the saving clause, “of which they were cognizant;” for the minds of king and council alike were set, not on the pushing of discovery westwards, but on further efforts to find a new route to India on the East, and to ascertain the locality of the empire of the fabulous monarch, Prester John.
The council to whose judgment the scheme of Columbus was submitted consisted of the Roderigo and Joseph already mentioned, and of the king’s confessor, Diego Ortiz de Cazadilla, Bishop of Ceuta, who condemned it without hesitation. The king, however, feeling perhaps not altogether convinced by the arguments adduced against it, privately sent out a vessel to test the route mapped out by Columbus, obtaining no result except that of driving the greatest man of the age away from his court, disgusted with the duplicity which, while openly discrediting their author, could thus seek to use his plans.
COLUMBUS BEFORE THE COUNCIL.
The ignorant pilots commissioned to work out the route conceived by the master-mind of the great mariner, returned to Lisbon without venturing beyond the beaten track; and in the ensuing year Columbus secretly left Lisbon, taking with him his young son Diego. We all know the story of his scornful reception at the court of Genoa, and of his arrival, after long wanderings to and fro, footsore, hungry and disheartened, at the gate of La Rabida, a Franciscan convent in Andalusia, to beg a little bread and water for his starving child.
This simple and pathetic request formed the turning-point of Columbus’s career. The prior of the convent, Don Juan Perez de Marchina, whose name deserves to be immortalized in every record of the discovery of the New World, was passing at the moment; and, struck by the manly and dignified bearing of the “beggar,” he approached, and asked whence he came and whither he was going.
COLUMBUS AT A CONVENT DOOR.
Columbus, now used to rebuffs, was touched by the kindly interest shown in his forlorn condition, and soon told the whole story of his woes, his dreams of geographical discovery, his conviction that they would some day be realized, if not by himself, and so forth.
The prior, surprised at a reply of so unusual a character from a wayfarer in circumstances so reduced, invited Columbus to be his guest; and, anxious to obtain confirmation for his belief in the genius of his visitor, he sent for his friend, Garcia Fernandez, to whom we are indebted for our knowledge of the circumstances of this portion of our story.
Fernandez, having listened to all that Columbus had to say, was as completely won over as Marchina had been; and, after many conferences at the convent, our hero, no longer in rags, started for the Spanish court, armed with strong letters of recommendation to the then reigning Ferdinand and Isabella. This was in 1486, when the war with the Moors was absorbing alike the energies and the resources of the kingdom; and it is not much wonder that Columbus could at first obtain no encouragement for the prosecution of a scheme of maritime discovery. He was kindly received, however, and in the repeated absences of the sovereigns, who headed their armies in person, he won the ear first of one and then of another influential dignitary of the court, and in 1491, five long years after his first arrival, he obtained a promise from Ferdinand, that, as soon as the war was over, he and his queen “would have time and inclination to treat with him about what he had offered.”
A chilling message truly to one who had wasted the best years of his life “about what he had offered;” and Columbus, more truly disheartened by it than by the absolute silence of the sender, went back to his old friend at the convent of La Rabida, resolved to sever finally his connection with Spain. It is of this sad period of his history that the Laureate represents him as saying, long afterwards—
“No guess-work! I was certain of my goal;
Some thought it heresy, but that would not hold.
King David called the heavens a hide, a tent
Spread over earth, and so this earth was flat;
Some cited old Lactantius; could it be
That trees grew downward, rain fell upward, men
Walked like the fly on ceilings? and, besides,
The great Augustine wrote that none could breathe
Within the zone of heat; so might there be
Two Adams, two mankinds, and that was clean
Against God’s word: thus was I beaten back,
And chiefly to my sorrow by the Church,
And thought to turn my face from Spain, appeal
Once more to France or England.”
But once more Perez and Fernandez cheered his drooping spirits. They would not hear of his deserting their country; yet another effort should be made to secure to it the glory of sending out the great hero of the age on what they were convinced would be a brilliant and successful enterprise.
With a skill which came of a full heart and a mind not easily to be turned from its purpose, the aged monk pressed his plea, urging the soured Columbus to give Spain another chance; and, observing that his eyes were turning toward France, whose king had sent him a most cordial letter, the Father Guardian did not fail to remind him how that fickle country had forsaken, in the hour of direst need, one of the most daring and noble of her children, Joan of Arc.
PEREZ ON HIS WAY TO SANTA FÉ.
Such arguments slowly made way—the more surely, that the Father quoted several proofs that men of influence were beginning to interest themselves in the undertaking of Columbus. The explorer, therefore, at last consented to wait the issue of a letter which was now sent by Don Perez to the Spanish court, addressed, not to the King, but to the Queen. The answer, which speedily arrived, was cheering beyond all expectation; and, as it contained an invitation to the writer of the epistle to visit her, the old Prior of the convent of La Rabida at once saddled his mule, and, strong in the faith of his mission, passed fearlessly through the country inhabited by the Moors, whence he soon reached Santa Fé, where Ferdinand and Isabella were.
Perez lost no time in presenting himself to the Queen, and the result of the interview was fitly expressed in the message, full of holy thankfulness, which he sent to Columbus the same day—“I came, I saw, God conquered.” The Queen graciously expressed her wish to see the hero himself, and she gave orders that he should be provided with funds sufficient to pay the expenses attendant upon his journey, and upon his appearing before her. In 1492, the would-be discoverer arrived at Grenada, and presented himself at court, being just in time to find himself a witness of the final overthrow of the Moorish power, and the humiliation of Boabdil, the last of the Moorish kings.
Silent and reserved among the rejoicing and shouting multitudes, sympathizing perhaps more keenly with the broken-hearted Boabdil than with his conquerors, Columbus still bided his time; and so soon as the excitement of victory had a little subsided, he was admitted to an audience with the sovereigns. It was now decided that Columbus should put his scheme to a practical test; but fresh difficulties arose in consequence of the “princely conditions” to which alone the humble and poorly-clad adventurer would agree. Not content with the tardy recognition given to the grandeur of his enterprise, he demanded that he should be “invested with the titles and privileges of Admiral and Viceroy over the countries he should discover, with one-tenth of all gains, either by trade or conquest.”
Once more the fate of the New World, which had been, so to speak, unconsciously waiting all this time for the arrival of its discoverer, hung in the balance. Courtiers clamored at the insolence of the sorry fellow who wished to be set above their illustrious heads; and the King looked coldly on, unwilling to break his word, yet anxious to get the matter settled or dropped, that he might give the attention so sorely needed to his kingdom, drained as were its resources by the long wars.
ISABELLA.
But now Isabella, true to the renown she had won by a long course of noble and disinterested conduct, seemed to have been suddenly inspired with a belief in the great mission of Columbus. That hero had again determined to leave Spain, and, as the story goes, was already on the way to Cordova, whence he intended embarking for France, when, at a meeting of the junto discussing the scheme, the Queen exclaimed—“I undertake the enterprise for my own crown of Castile, and will pledge my jewels to raise the necessary funds.”
EMBARKATION OF COLUMBUS.
Columbus was at once recalled; and though the pledging of the Queen’s jewels was not found necessary, she aided him now with all the energy and enthusiasm of her character. On the 17th April, 1492, the stipulations granting full powers to Columbus, and conferring on him and his heirs the honors he had demanded, were signed at the city of Santa Fé, in the plain of Grenada: and on the 3rd August of the same year, eighteen years after he first conceived the idea of the voyage, our hero—all preliminary difficulties over—at last set sail from the bar of Saltos, near Palos (N. lat. 37° 11′, W. long. 6° 47′), in command of three vessels—the Santa Maria, the Pinta, and the Niña, only one of which, the first, and that on which the Admiral himself embarked, was decked. He was leader of one hundred and twenty men; but the motley character of his crews, enlisted on compulsion, and thoroughly imbued with all the superstitions of the age with regard to the perils of the deep, caused Columbus much embarrassment from the very first, and he was detained for three weeks at the Canaries by an “accident”—supposed to have been purposely brought about—to the rudder of the Pinta. It was not until the 6th September that the actual voyage of discovery can be said to have commenced. Setting sail that day from the island of Gomera he passed Ferro, the last of the Canaries, on the 9th.
As the last traces of land faded from the sight of the untutored mariners, their hearts failed them, and with tears and groans they entreated their leader to turn back while there was yet time. The passing of a portion of a wreck on the 11th still further aroused their fears, and it was all that Columbus could do to induce them to obey his orders.
On the 13th September a slight but deeply significant incident occurred. Columbus, watching with eager interest the little compass—which, surrounded as he was by timid, vacillating spirits, must have seemed to him his one steadfast, unchangeable friend—noticed a variation in the needle. To quote the words of Washington Irving, “he perceived about nightfall that the needle, instead of pointing to the north star, varied about half a point, or between five and six degrees, to the north-west, and still more on the following morning.”
Knowing how greatly this phenomenon would alarm his people, Columbus at first kept it to himself; but it was soon remarked by the pilots, and their report sent a fresh thrill of horror through the crews. They were entering a new world, where the very laws of nature were changing, and in which even inanimate objects were subject to weird, unearthly influences.
Calm amid the ever-increasing excitement, Columbus, with greater ingenuity than penetration, explained away the strange deviation—the cause of which has not yet been determined, though many great authorities attribute it to solar influence—by saying that it was due, not to any fault in the compass itself, but to the alteration of the position of the north star.
Thus, whether he himself did or did not believe this to be the true solution of the mystery, did our hero once more calm the terrors of his men, who were, a little later, further cheered by the sight of a heron and a water-wagtail, which, as birds supposed never to venture far out to sea, were looked upon as sure harbingers of land. Next were seen floating patches of herbs and weeds, which could only, it was thought, have been washed from river banks, or from rocks by the sea-shore; and, convinced that their perils were now over, the eager mariners crowded on deck, each anxious to be the first to catch a glimpse of the longed-for country; but as day after day passed on, and no further indications of the end of the voyage were perceived, all the old fears returned, the men broke out into open mutiny, and Columbus’s position became critical in the extreme. Even Martin Alonzo Pinzon, one of the most important members of the squadron, now questioned the wisdom of the Admiral’s determined adherence to a western course; and our hero, though still full of the most intense belief in final success if that course were maintained, was beginning to doubt whether he should himself achieve more than martyrdom in the cause he had so much at heart. Matters were at this stage, when, on the night of the 11th October, 1492, as the weary leader was peering into the darkness of the horizon from the deck of his vessel, hoping against hope to make out some indication of land, no matter how vague, he fancied he saw a light.
Scarcely daring to trust his eyes, he called first one and then another of the companions of his venture, each of whom confirmed his opinion. A light of some kind was undoubtedly moving on the distant waters, but whether it proceeded from some fisherman’s bark, or from the long-sought land, it was impossible to determine.
Never was daylight more eagerly longed for than then; but, hours before it came, the suspense of the three watchers on the Santa Maria was relieved by the booming of a gun from the Pinta, the signal that others also had seen the significant token of the approach to the promised haven. A little later, the dark outlines of the shores of an island, relieved against white breakers, were distinctly made out; and when the dawn of the 12th October, 1492, broke at last, “a level and beautiful island, several leagues in extent, of great freshness and verdure, and covered with trees like a continual orchard,” lay before the eyes of the astonished mariners. Naked natives were hurrying to and fro, expressing by their gestures their astonishment at the appearance of the ships; and at once ordering the boats to be manned. Columbus, scarcely able to restrain his emotion, started to take possession, in the name of the monarchs of Castile, of the newly-discovered territory.
No sooner did the hero set foot on shore, than he fell upon his knees, kissed the ground, and with tears of joy gave thanks to God for thus enabling him to complete his work. Then rising, his heart doubtless swelling with exultation, he drew his sword, unfurled the royal banner, named the island “San Salvador,” and solemnly declared it to be the property of Ferdinand and Isabella, “calling on all present to take the oath of obedience to him as Admiral and Viceroy representing the persons of the sovereigns.”
Although there is some little difference of opinion as to which of the West Indian islands was thus discovered by Columbus, it is generally supposed to have been that now called by the English Cat Island, one of the great Bahama group, and situated in N. lat. 24°, W. long. 74° 30′, of which the native name was Guanahamé. Imagining it to be situated at the extremity of India, the explorer called its people Indians, an appellation which has clung to the aborigines of the New World ever since.
Remaining at Guanahamé only long enough to ascertain the “Indians” to be a gentle, friendly, simple people, with well-formed figures, and pleasant, intelligent faces, Columbus again set sail on the 14th October, and, cruising hither and thither, he discovered several other islands, including the important Cuba and San Domingo, of all of which he took possession in the name of his patrons, planting a small colony on the last named, and meeting everywhere with a cordial welcome from the “savages,” though his own people gave him a good deal of trouble by their perpetual rivalries and jealousies.
Among these latter troubles, none perhaps affected the Admiral so painfully as the desertion of Don Alonzo Pinzon. Pinzon had, in the days of the discoverer’s despondency, stood toward him as a patron, and, Spanish patrician as he was, his countenance had been of no mean value. The very fact also that he consented to serve under Columbus must have seemed a token of his faithfulness; but they had not long been out at sea before he showed that subordination was galling to him, and at last, while Columbus was exploring Cuba, he made his escape with La Pinta, the second in size of the boats which formed the little fleet. The fact was, that news had come to them of rich lands to the North-west, and Pinzon, disappointed that his superior would not steer in that direction, resolved to steal away, and go in search of a golden empire for himself. But the North-west did as little for him as it did for many who came after him, and Columbus encountered him again on the return journey, without the gold of which he had dreamed, and with his vessel so disabled that it could only reach the shores of Spain with difficulty. Indeed, had it not been for the merciful treatment of Columbus, the craven Pinzon would probably have perished on the waters.
Satisfied with the results of his first trip, and anxious to obtain the necessary supplies for the further prosecution of his discoveries, Columbus set sail for Europe on the 4th January, 1493, arriving at the bar of Saltos on the 15th March of the same year. Among those who were on the shore to welcome the returning hero was Don Perez de Marchina, of whose eager waiting for his home-coming the Marquis de Belloy has drawn a touching picture in his charming Life of Columbus. We see him for long months spending his spare moments in his observatory, anxiously watching for the least shadow of a sail upon the horizon. At last he descries a little vessel making its way toward Saltos, and he rushes to the harbor, his sudden appearance giving to the people of the little town the signal that Columbus is at hand. Soon the discoverer is at the shore, and the arms of his “guide, philosopher and friend” are the first to embrace him. From Saltos Columbus made his way to Barcelona, then the residence of the court, where he was received with all the enthusiasm due to one who had added to the kingdom a new empire of undetermined extent and apparently boundless wealth.
More impatient of the delay caused by the rejoicings in his success than he had been of the impediments thrown in his way when he had been unable to obtain a hearing for his embryo scheme, Columbus lost no time in urging on the sovereigns the fitting out of a new expedition, and, six short months after his return home, we find him leaving Cadiz with seventeen ships and 1,500 men. This second voyage resulted in the discovery of the Caribbee Islands and Jamaica.
But in the midst of his work among the West Indian Islands, the Admiral was recalled home to answer terrible charges—of untruthfulness in his descriptions of the countries discovered, and of cruelty to the natives and colonists under his charge—brought against him by his enemies. Although he succeeded in clearing himself for a time, to the satisfaction of Ferdinand and Isabella, from the odious suspicions which had been cast upon him, the rest of his life was one long struggle with persecution and adversity. From his third voyage, in which he discovered Trinidad, and landed at Paria, on the coast of South America, he was sent home in chains. We only linger a moment by the manacled hero to quote once more from Tennyson’s “Columbus.”
“... You know
The flies at home that ever swarm about,
And cloud the highest heads, and murmur down
Truth in the distance—these outbuzzed me so,
That even our prudent king, our righteous queen—
I prayed them, being so calumniated,
They would commission one of weight and worth
To judge between my slandered self and me—
Fonseca, my main enemy at their court,
They send me out his tool, Bovadilla, one
As ignorant and impolitic as a beast—
Blockish irreverence, brainless greed—who sack’d
My dwelling, seized upon my papers, loos’d
My captives, fee’d the rebels of the crown,
Sold the crown-farms for all but nothing, gave
All but free leave for all to work the mines,
Drove me and my good brothers home in chains;
And gathering ruthless gold—a single piece
Weighed nigh four thousand castillanos—so
They tell me—weigh’d him down into the abysm.
The hurricane of the latitude on him fell,
The seas of our discovering over-roll
Him and his gold; the frailer caravel,
With what was mine, came happily to the shore.
There was a glimmering of God’s hand.”
COLUMBUS IN CHAINS.
Soon after the conclusion of his fourth and last voyage, Columbus died at Valladolid in poverty and disgrace, leaving others—many of whom he had himself trained to be able navigators—to reap the fruits of his labors.
One of the first explorers to follow in the track of Columbus was Amerigo Vespucci, whose name, for some reason not very clearly made out, was bestowed on the land discovered by his great predecessor. The work of Amerigo was, however, almost entirely confined to the southern half of the vast continent called after him, although he is supposed to have sailed without landing as far north as Chesapeake Bay; and we therefore pass on to the Cabots, one of whom appears to have been the first European of modern times to set foot in North America.
AMERIGO VESPUCCI.
CABOT BEFORE THE COSMOGRAPHERS.
In 1496, Henry VII. of England, intent on finding that short cut to India which it was so eagerly hoped would open to Europe the commerce of the East, appointed John Cabot to the command of five vessels, with orders thoroughly to explore the western portion of the Atlantic Ocean, and “find whatsoever isles, countries, regions, or provinces of the heathen and infidels, whatsoever they be, and in what part of the world soever they be, which before this time have been unknown to Christians”—a wide commission truly, which was carried out, so far as we can tell from the masses of conflicting evidence before us, by the sailing from Bristol, in 1497, of a single ship, the Matthew, with John Cabot as commander, and his three sons, Ludovico, Sebastiano, and Sanzio, among the subordinate members of the expedition.
Sailing due west, as the most direct mode of carrying out his instructions, John Cabot came in sight, on the 24th June, 1497, of the mainland of America; but whether the portion first seen was Cape Breton, Newfoundland, or Labrador, is undetermined. Without making any attempt to land, the navigators contented themselves with sailing along some three hundred leagues of the coast, and returned home to be received with as much enthusiasm as if they had fulfilled the whole of their mission, and to be rewarded for finding the “New Isle” with the munificent sum of £10.
A second and a third voyage appear to have been undertaken by John Cabot, with no better results than the first; but after his death—about 1499—his son Sebastian, who had long been endeavoring to secure the co-operation of Ferdinand of Spain for an extensive scheme of exploration in the North, came to England, and was appointed by the reigning monarch to the command of an expedition to Labrador.
SEBASTIAN CABOT.
On this trip Sebastian landed several times on different parts of the north-eastern coast of America, and penetrated as far north as 67½°, in his vain quest for that ignis fatuus of his day—the North-west Passage to India; but at last, his provisions failing him, he was compelled to return to Bristol, bringing with him, as his only trophies, some of the natives of districts visited.
This undoubted discovery of the mainland of America, the date of which is variously given by different authorities, important as it in reality was, led to no very definite results. In 1500, a trip was made from Portugal to the North-east by a certain Gaspar Cortereal, who, though nominally in quest of the north-west passage, seems to have made the acquisition of slaves his main object. He penetrated as far north as 50°, and landed on the shores of what is now New Brunswick, naming it Terra de Labrador, or the “land of laborers,” a title subsequently transferred to a strip of the seaboard further north. Enticing some fifty-seven of the natives—who are described as “like gipsies in color, well-made, intelligent, and modest”—on board his vessels, he returned with them to Portugal, and, having sold them, started on a new trip shortly afterward, from which he never returned; but history is silent as to whether he fell a victim to the perils of the sea or to the vengeance of those he wronged.
In 1502, Miguel Cortereal, a younger brother of the inhuman Gaspar, started in search of the missing vessel, but he too disappeared, leaving no trace behind him; and when an expedition, sent out by the King of Portugal to ascertain the fate of the voyagers, returned with no tidings of either ship, it was resolved that the fatal latitudes should henceforth be avoided. For the next few years the north-east coasts of the western continent were visited by none but certain venturesome fishermen of Brittany, whose memory still lives in the name of Cape Breton, but who, thinking only of securing to themselves the harvest of the new-found seas, added next to nothing to our geographical knowledge; though John Denys of Honfleur is said to have explored the whole of the present Gulf of St. Lawrence.
INDIAN BOATS.
CHAPTER II.
THE DISCOVERY OF THE PACIFIC, AND THE EARLY EXPLORATION OF FLORIDA.
BALBOA DISCOVERING THE PACIFIC OCEAN.
TO atone for the sudden check in the progress of discovery in the North, mentioned in our previous chapter, we find the Spanish vigorously prosecuting their explorations in the Gulf of Mexico, bent, like other nations, on finding a new passage to India, though convinced that it lay, not among the snow and ice of the Arctic regions, but in more southerly latitudes.
Ignorant of the important fact, that the land barring their progress westward formed part of one vast continent, one hardy Spanish mariner after another wasted his strength in seeking for some channel between the so-called islands hemming in his bark on this side and on that, until at last the mystery was solved by a freebooter named Vasco Nunez de Balboa, whose romantic story must be given here, forming as it does an era in the history of the whole of the New World.
Nothing could well have been more inauspicious than the commencement of the voyage of the first European who set eyes on the Pacific Ocean. One of the earliest settlers in San Domingo, Vasco Nunez de Balboa was so unsuccessful in his tilling of the soil that he soon found himself in absolute destitution, and, hoping to elude his creditors, he managed to hide himself in a vessel bound for the Caribbean Sea, at that time a favorite resort of pirates and adventurers of every description.
When out of sight of land, Balboa ventured forth from his cask, and, falling on his knees before the captain, Enciso by name, entreated him to protect him and let him share in the expedition. Enraged at so flagrant a defiance of his authority as the concealment of a man on board his ship, Enciso at first threatened to put our hero ashore on some desert island and abandon him to starve, but finally, softened by his eloquent pleadings, he consented that he should work out his passage. To this leniency Enciso soon afterward owed the safety of himself and all his people. His vessel was wrecked on the coast of the Isthmus of Darien, and Nunez, who had visited the district in his early wanderings, led the Spaniards to a friendly Indian village on the Darien.
Life was, however, all Balboa chose to accord to the man to whom he owed his own rescue from a miserable death. Arrived at the village, he accomplished the deposition of Enciso, and his own appointment to the supreme command. Then, having learned in various preliminary excursions that, six days’ journey to the west, there lay another sea, he led his men in the direction indicated, and, after literally fighting his way, step by step, through tribes of hostile Indians, he came, on the 15th of September, 1513, to the foot of a high mountain, from which his guides assured him the sea could be seen.
Imbued, in spite of his rough freebooting nature, with something of the true spirit of an explorer, Balboa now ordered his followers to wait, while he made the ascent alone. Arrived on the brow of the hill, he looked down, and beheld beneath him the wide-stretching ocean, lighted up by the brilliant rays of a tropical sun. Forgetting his lust of gain, and the crimes which had led him to his present position, he now thought only of the solution by his means of the problem which had so long baffled men of science of every nationality, and, falling on his knees, he gave thanks to God that it had pleased Him “to reserve unto that day the victory and praise of so great a thing unto him.”
This act of worship over, Nunez summoned his followers to gaze upon the wonderful sight and ordered them to pile up stones, as a token that he took possession of the land in the name of his sovereign, Ferdinand of Castile. His next step was to send twelve of his men—one of whom was the great Pizarro, future conqueror of Peru—to find the best route to the Pacific coast, himself following more leisurely with the body of his forces.
FRANCIS PIZARRO.
The twelve pioneers quickly came to the beach, and, finding a couple of native canoes floating inshore, two of them, named Alonzo Martin and Blazede Abienza, sprung into them, calling to their comrades to bear witness that they were the first Europeans to embark upon the southern sea. Thus, on September 29, 1513, was completed the first discovery of the great Pacific Ocean, of which Columbus had heard from the natives in his various voyages, though he had never been able to reach it, and which, first crossed by Magellan in 1521, has ever since been an inexhaustible field for the efforts of explorers, and is associated with the names of Cook, Anson, D’Entrecasteaux, Vancouver, Kotzebue, and many other great navigators of modern times.
The discoverer of the Pacific, like so many of the heroes of his day, did not live to reap the fruits of his work. He won the appointment of Adelantado, or governor of the ocean he had been the first to see—an office giving him, though neither he nor his sovereign was aware of it, authority over some 80,000,000 square miles of land and sea! But five short years after the eventful 13th September, he was beheaded by order of the Spanish Governor of Darien, Peter [♦]Anias, who appears to have been jealous of his superior popularity, and to have feared his growing power.
[♦] ‘Anias’ used throughout, refers to Peter Arias
DEATH OF MAGELLAN.
As was natural, the work of Balboa led to the fitting out of numerous expeditions, not only to the southern seas, but to the districts north of the Isthmus of Darien, which, according to native rumor, were rich in gold and precious stones. Leaving the story of the progress of discovery southwards for the present, we go on to the first successor of Nunez entitled to rank among the heroes of the North, the Spaniard, Juan Ponce de Leon, who, when Governor of Puerto Rico, was induced, by the traditions afloat among the natives of the West Indies of the existence of a Fountain of Youth in the North, to lead an expedition in that direction, which resulted in the discovery of Florida.
Whether, at the time of his adventure, De Leon was old, and anxious to regain his youth, or young, and eager to retain it, history does not say. We only know that he made it the object of his life to discover the marvelous region containing the magic fountain, and set sail for that purpose with three caravels on the 3d March, 1512, accompanied by a numerous band of gentlemen, eager to share with their leader the glories of immortality.
After a month’s sail in a north-westerly direction, De Leon came in sight of a country, “covered with flowers and verdure,” and, as it happened to be Easter Sunday, he named the new land Pasena de Flores, or Pasqua Florida, that being the Spanish name for the festival so inseparably connected with floral decorations. On the 2d April the explorers landed at the point now called Fernandina, considerably further north than the modern boundary between Florida and Georgia—the term Florida having been at first loosely applied to all the districts on the north-east of the Gulf of Mexico. Owing to the hostility of the natives, De Leon and his men were, however, soon compelled to return to their ships, but they spent some time in cruising up and down both sides of the peninsula, making flying visits in-shore, in hope of extricating information from the Indians as to the position of the coveted Fountain of Youth. In this quest their failure was complete; but when at last compelled to return to Puerto Rico, they were rewarded for their long wanderings by the discovery of the Bahamas on their voyage back.
A BAYOU IN FLORIDA.
As usual in such cases, De Leon received the appointment of Adelantado of the country he had visited, weighted, however, with the condition that he should colonize it. With this end in view, and perhaps also with a hope of yet renewing his strength at the magic well, he returned to Florida in 1521, only to fall a victim in a struggle with some Indians who opposed his landing, and greeted their would-be governor with a shower of poisoned arrows.
Between the first and last visit of De Leon to Florida, several heroes of Central American discovery touched on the coast of the newly-found district, on their way to and from Mexico; and in 1518, Francis Garay, for some time Governor of Jamaica, cruised along the whole of the shores of North America bordering on the Gulf of Mexico, passing the mouths of the Mississippi, called by the Indians the Miche Sepe, or Father of Waters, and by the Spaniards the Rio del Espirito Santo, or the River of the Holy Ghost. Refraining from landing on account of the “little hospitable” appearance of the country, Garay contented himself with drawing a map of the coast-line, which he very accurately describes as “bending like a bow,” adding that a line drawn from the most southerly point of Florida to the northernmost headland of Yucatan “would make the string of the bow.”
The next European to visit Florida was Lucas Vasquez de Ayllon, who set out with two ships from Cuba, in 1520, bound on a quest for a land called Chicora, said to exist to the north of Florida, and to contain within its limits a sacred stream, whose waters possessed powers similar to those of the Fountain of Youth. Landing between 32° and 33° N. latitude, De Ayllon was hospitably received by the simple natives, who crowded on to his vessels, and gazed with wondering, child-like eyes at all the new wonders before them. Leaving the poor creatures unmolested until he had gained their confidence, the crafty Spaniard amused himself for a time with excursions on the banks of a river to which he gave the name of the Jordan, and when he had induced 130 Indians to go on board, he suddenly returned to the ships, and gave orders for the anchors to be weighed, and set sail for Cuba.
The agony of the captives, when they saw the shores of their native land receding from before them, and realized that return was impossible, passed description. Only dimly did they understand that their fate was to work for the white men; and when a fierce storm arose, and one vessel was swallowed up, with all its inmates, by the waves, the survivors may perhaps have thought that the home from which their strange captors came was beneath the ocean. However that may be, but few of the Indians on the second ship lived to reach New Spain, and when there, their services were of little use to their master, who, disappointed in his first venture, lost no time in organizing a new and more formidable expedition, consisting of several vessels, having on board a force of some five hundred men.
HAVANA HARBOR (CUBA).
After much beating about on the coast north of Florida, during which one pilot is said to have gone mad with vexation at being unable to find the Jordan, De Ayllon landed at a spot near his first encampment, and, to his surprise, was received with enthusiasm by the Indians, who, proving themselves apt pupils of their first European teachers, feasted him and his men until they were completely deceived.
On the fifth day after the landing, when the white men were sleeping off the effects of their orgies, the Indians rose en masse and murdered them all. Then, turning their attention to the vessels lying at anchor, they attacked the sailors with their poisoned arrows, killing many of them, but failing to prevent the escape of a little remnant, who carried home the story of the ill-fated expedition. Whether De Ayllon himself perished on land or at sea is unknown; but it is certain that he never returned, and, to quote a quaint old chronicler whose narrative is among those preserved by the Hakluyt Society, “he was lost ... leaving nothing done worthy of memorie.”
After this tragic conclusion of an unworthy career, Florida and its people were left undisturbed for several years, though some further details of the configuration of its eastern coast were given in 1524 by Verrazano of Florence, who sailed from the point of the peninsula as far north as Cape Breton, and whose experiences on the Atlantic seaboard are given below. The brief respite enjoyed by the unfortunate natives was, however, but a lull before a more terrible storm of invasion than any with which they had yet had to cope, for in 1528, seven years after the death of De Ayllon, Pamphilo de Narvaez, inflamed by the exaggerated accounts given by the survivors of previous expeditions as to the wealth of Florida, obtained permission from Charles V. of Germany to take possession of it in his name.
Leaving Spain in the autumn of 1527, with five ships and a force of some 600 men, Narvaez arrived, after many delays, in the Bay of Tampa, on the west coast of Florida, in February, 1528. Landing with half of his forces, the leader at once commenced his march to the interior, in spite of the remonstrances of some of the chief officers, who feared that if he once lost sight of his vessels he would never see them again. Remembering the experience of Cortes, Narvaez hoped to find a second wealthy nation to plunder; but his disappointment and dismay may be imagined when, instead of any indications of advanced civilization, he met only with vast swamps and forests teeming with naked savages, who, though they melted away at his approach, and eluded his vengeance as if by magic, hung about in the rear of his army, harassing his every movement, and picking up the stragglers for private murder and tortures worse than death.
Buoyed up through all his miseries, however, by the rumors which met him at every turn of the existence in the north of a district called Apalachen, where gold was to be had for the asking, Narvaez still pressed on, to be rewarded at last, after months of weary marching by arriving at a miserable Indian village of some forty houses—supposed to have been somewhere near the mouth of the Apalacha river, flowing from the Apalachian mountains of Georgia—from which all the able-bodied inhabitants had fled. “This,” said the Indian guides—who, taken prisoners by the way, had been forced to give their unwilling services to the intruders—“this is Apalachen; it is here that the gold you long for is to be found.”
Unwilling even yet to own himself beaten, Narvaez took possession of the village, and gave his men permission to remove their armor and rest, intending the next morning to test the truth of the guides’ assurance that game and gold were plentiful in the neighboring woods. But the craft of the Indian had once more supplied his want of strength to cope with the white man. So soon as the Spaniards were asleep in the miserable wigwams they had seized, the savages gathered round them with stealthy tread, and set fire to their temporary resting-places. Many who escaped the flames fell victims to the poisoned arrows let fly with unerring aim from ambushes on every side, and when the morning broke, the few survivors, including Narvaez himself, determined to return to the sea by the shortest route they could find.
A fortnight’s hard fighting with enemies and obstacles innumerable brought a still further diminished remnant to the beach, far from the place they had left their five vessels; and with the savages behind them, and the sea before them, the luckless explorers resolved to build some boats, and trust themselves to the mercy of the waves rather than to that of man. Five crazy barks were constructed with infinite difficulty, and in them the few men still alive embarked.
Not daring to venture into the open sea, the explorers, who knew nothing of navigation, paddled slowly along the shores of the modern state of Alabama, and in about six weeks reached the mouths of the Mississippi in safety; but there a violent storm overtook them and four of the boats, including that containing Narvaez himself, were lost. The fifth, with Cabeca de Vaca (who was originally treasurer to the expedition) on board, had a narrow escape; but the greater number of men in her reached the land, where they were, strange to say, kindly received by the natives. A little later, stragglers from the other boats, who had saved their lives by swimming, arrived, and, joining forces, the adventurers started for the western coast on foot, hoping to reach the Mexican province of Sonora, which had already been colonized by the Spaniards.
Four only of the original party survived to reach the western coast, and these four, of whom Cabeca de Vaca—who seems to have borne a charmed life—was one, were held in captivity by the Indians long years before they were able to effect their escape. Great indeed was the surprise of the colonists on the shores of the Gulf of California, when the little party of bronzed and half-naked wanderers, speaking their own tongue, appeared at the outposts of the little mining settlement; and when their identity with the long-lost explorers was proved, enthusiasm knew no bounds.
Eager to return to their own land, however, the heroes lost no time in taking ship for Europe, and on the 13th August, 1537, nine years after the starting of the original expedition, they arrived in Lisbon, to meet there with a yet more eager reception than in Sonora.
The excitement caused by the wonderful tales of their captivity, told by Cabeca and his comrades, was, as may be imagined, intense. Far from damping the ardor of others for exploration and colonization, the pictures called up by their narrative of hairbreadth escapes, of the magic influence exercised on whole tribes of dusky warriors by a single white man, of the weird growths of the tropical forests, and of the wild beauty of the Indian maidens, created a passion for adventure among the youth of Spain. When, therefore, the renowned Hernando de Soto, who had been in close attendance on Pizarro throughout his romantic career in Peru, asked for and obtained permission from Ferdinand of Spain to take possession of Florida in his name, hundreds of volunteers of every rank flocked to his standard. Narvaez had failed for want of knowledge as to how to deal with the natives; doubtless the land of gold could yet be found by those who knew how to wrest the secret of its position from the sons of the soil; and so once more a gallant company set forth from Spain to measure their strength against the craft of the poor Indians of Florida.
DE SOTO.
De Soto, who was in the first place appointed Governor of Cuba, that he might turn to account the resources of that wealthy island, sailed from Havana, with a fleet of nine vessels and a force of some six or seven hundred men, on the 18th May, 1539, and cast anchor in Tampa Bay on the 30th of the same month. Landing his forces at once, the leader gave orders that they should start for the interior immediately, by the same route as that taken by his unfortunate predecessor; and the men were eagerly plowing their way through the sandy, marshy districts immediately beyond the beach, driving the natives who opposed their progress before them, when one of those romantic instances occurred, in which the early history of the New World is so remarkably rich.
A white man on horseback rode forward from among the dusky savages, who hailed the approach of the troops with wild gestures of delight, and turned out to be a Spaniard named Juan Ortiz, who had belonged to the Narvaez expedition, and had been unable to effect his escape with his comrades. In his captivity among the Indians he had acquired a thorough knowledge of their language, and his services alike as a mediator and a guide were soon found to be invaluable.
The story of his adventures, as told by Ortiz, rivaled even that of Cabeca in thrilling interest. He had been captured soon after the landing of his party by a chief named Ucita, who decided that he should be burned alive by a slow fire, as a sacrifice to the Evil Spirit. A rough stage was therefore set up on four posts; Ortiz, bound hand and foot, was laid upon it; the fire was kindled beneath him, and he resigned himself to the lingering agonies of a shameful death. Around him on every side gathered his enemies, eager to watch his dying contortions. Their shouts of triumph rung upon his ears, and broke in upon his muttered prayers to the God who alone could help him in his extremity.... Was he dreaming that the bitter cries were hushed in answer to his appeal?—that those whose duty it was to feed the flames were pausing in their task? No, it was no dream; the daughter of the chieftain was kneeling at her father’s feet, pleading, in tones as soft as ever fell from the lips of Spanish maiden, for the life of the stranger. It was but a little gift she asked, and, in granting it, would not her father win honor among the tribes? Would not a living prisoner of a strange race be a brighter gem in a chieftain’s crown than the corpse of a dead enemy? Touched by his child’s entreaties, or more convinced by her arguments, Ucita relented. Ortiz was removed from the stage, and informed by signs that he must henceforth consider himself as a slave. In captivity therefore he remained, to be the hero, three years later, of a second romantic adventure, when he was again condemned to be burned, and again rescued by the chieftain’s daughter, who warned him of his danger in time, and led him to the camp of another chieftain, under whose protection he remained until the arrival of his fellow-countrymen. How the devotion of the Indian girl was rewarded we have been unable to ascertain, for, with the characteristic egotism of the Spanish adventurers, Ortiz dwells in his narrative only on his own escapes, and with his acceptance of the second chieftain’s protection, or rather his entry into his service as a slave, the poor maiden disappears from the story.
Led by Ortiz, De Soto and his army made their way, slowly and with difficulty, in a north-easterly direction, till they came to the east of the Bay of Apalachen, a little beyond the mouth of the Flint, where the peninsula of Florida joins the mainland of the United States. Here the camp was pitched for the winter; messages were sent to Cuba for fresh supplies of men and provisions, and exploring parties were dispatched to reconnoiter the land on either side. The discovery of the harbor of Pensacola on the west was the only result of any importance achieved, and early in the spring of the following year, 1540, the march was resumed, this time under the guidance of a native, who said he would take the white men to a far country, governed by a woman, and abounding in a yellow metal, which was used for making all manner of ornaments, etc. This metal could be none other than gold; and, with fresh hope in their hearts, the explorers pressed on.
Following a north-easterly direction, the wanderers soon entered the district now known as Georgia, and, crossing the Altamaha river on its way to the Atlantic, they left the low alluvial lands and swamps of the coast on their right, and struggled on over the rough hilly country gradually sloping up to the Blue Ridge mountains belonging to the Alleghany or Apalachian range, the El Dorado for which they were seeking ever receding as they advanced, while their course was everywhere marked by blood and pillage.
His own conduct to the unfortunate natives giving him no right to expect any thing but treachery from them, De Soto soon began to entertain suspicions of the fidelity of his guide. Perhaps, after all, he was only leading him into an ambush of dusky warriors. He would try and extract further information from some of the captives in his hands. Four poor creatures were therefore brought before the leader for examination, and the first questioned replied that he knew of no such country as that so eagerly sought.
Enraged at this answer, so unlike what he hoped for, De Soto ordered the wretched man to be burned alive, and the sight of his terrible death so inspired his companions that, when their turn came to be examined, they vied with each other in the descriptions they gave of the fertility and wealth of the land on the north. Again deceived, and that with a readiness only to be accounted for by the consuming lust for gold which blinded his understanding, the leader ordered the march to be resumed, and in the spring of 1540 he was met by an Indian queen, who, hearing of his approach, had hastened to welcome him, hoping perhaps to conciliate him, and save herself and her subjects from the usual fate of the natives at the hands of the white men.
Very touching is the account given by the old chroniclers of the meeting between the poor cacica and De Soto. Alighting from the litter in which she had traveled, carried by four of her subjects, the dusky princess came forward with gestures expressive of pleasure at the arrival of her guest, and taking from her own neck a heavy double string of pearls, she hung it on that of the Spaniard. Bowing with courtly grace, De Soto accepted the gift, and for a short time he kept up the semblance of friendship; but having obtained from the queen all the information he wanted, he made her his prisoner, and robbed her and her people of all the valuables they possessed, including large numbers of pearls found chiefly in the graves of natives of distinction. We are glad to be able to add that the poor queen effected her escape from the guards, taking with her a box of pearls which she had managed to regain, and on which De Soto had set especial store.
The home of the cacica appears to have been situated close to the Atlantic seaboard, and to have been among the villages visited by De Ayllon twenty years previously, the natives having in their possession a dagger and a string of beads, probably a rosary, which they said had belonged to the white men. Unwilling to go over old ground, the Spaniards now determined to alter their course, and taking a north-westerly direction, they reached, in the course of a few months, the first spurs of the lofty Apalachian range, the formidable aspect of which so damped their courage, that they turned back and wandered into the lowlands of what is now Alabama, ignorant that in the very mountains they so much dreaded were hidden large quantities of that yellow metal they had sought so long and so vainly.
The autumn of 1540 found the party, their numbers greatly diminished, at a large village called Mavilla, close to the site of the modern Mobile, (N. lat. 30° 40′, W. long. 80°), where the natives were gathered in considerable force; and it soon became evident that an attempt would be made to exact vengeance for the long course of oppression of which the white intruders had been guilty in their two years’ wanderings.
Intending to take possession of Mavilla in his usual high-handed manner, De Soto and a few of his men entered the palisades forming its defenses, accompanied by the cacique, who, meek enough until he was within reach of his warriors, then turned upon his guests with some insulting speech, and disappeared in a neighboring house. A dispute then ensued between a minor chief and one of the Spaniards. The latter enforced his view of the matter at issue by a blow with his cutlass, and in an instant the town was in a commotion. From every house poured showers of arrows, and in a few minutes nearly all the Christians were slain. De Soto and a few others escaped, and, calling his forces together, the Spanish governor quickly invested the town.
A terrible conflict, lasting nine hours, ensued, in which, as was almost inevitable, the white men were finally victorious, though not until they had lost many valuable lives and nearly all their property. Mavilla was burned to ashes; and when the battle was over, the Spaniards found themselves in an awful situation—at a distance from their ships, without food or medicines, and surrounded on all sides by enemies rendered desperate by defeat. The common soldiers, too, had by this time had enough of exploration, and were eager to return to the coast, there to await the return of the vessels which had been sent to Cuba for supplies. Evading the poor fellows’ questions as to his plans, however, De Soto, who had received secret intelligence that his fleet was even now awaiting him in the Bay of Pensacola, but six days’ journey from Mavilla, determined to make one more effort to redeem his honor by a discovery of importance. With this end in view, he led his disheartened forces northward, and in December reached a small village belonging to Chickasaw Indians, in the state of Mississippi, supposed to have been situated about N. lat. 32° 53′, W. long. 90° 23′.
In spite of constant petty hostilities with the Indians, the winter, which was severe enough for snow to fall, passed over peaceably; but with the beginning of spring, the usual arbitrary proceedings were resorted to by De Soto for procuring porters to carry his baggage in his next trip, and this led to a second terrible fight, in which the Spaniards were worsted, and narrowly escaped extermination. Had the Indians followed up their victory, not a white man would have escaped to tell the tale; but they seem to have been frightened at their own success, and to have drawn back just as they had their persecutors at their feet.
Rallying the remnant of his forces, and supplying the place of the uniforms which had been carried off by the enemy with skins and mats of ivy leaves, De Soto now led his strangely transformed followers in a north-westerly direction, and, completely crossing the modern state of Mississippi, arrived in May on the banks of the mighty river from which it takes its name, in about N. lat. 35°.
Thus took place the discovery of the great Father of Waters, rolling by in unconscious majesty on its way from its distant birthplace in Minnesota to its final home in the Gulf of Mexico. To De Soto, however, it was no geographical phenomenon, inviting him to trace its course and solve the secret of its origin, but a sheet of water, “half a league over,” impeding his progress, and his first care was to obtain boats to get to the other side.
DE SOTO DISCOVERING THE MISSISSIPPI.
The Chickasaw Indians, relieved, doubtless, at the prospect of getting rid of the intruders, gladly led them to one of the ordinary crossing-places, but the native canoes found there were not fit for the transportation of horses, and a month was consumed in building barges, during which visits were paid to the strangers by Aquixo, the cacique of the Dakota tribe dwelling on the other side of the Miche Sepe, who would gladly have made friends with his white brother, had not De Soto met his advances by killing the first of his followers who landed near his camp.
By this short-sighted policy the Spanish leader once more defeated his own purpose, and when the transit of the Mississippi was at last effected, his march along the western banks was harassed by the constant hostility of the natives. In the course of the summer, however, after a dreary struggle through the morasses above the landing-stage, he came to the dryer and loftier regions of Missouri, where the natives took him and his men for Children of the Sun, and brought out their blind to be restored to sight.
SCENE ON THE MISSISSIPPI AT THE PRESENT DAY.
For once, De Soto refrained to inflict any injury on the simple believers in his divine mission. Perhaps some dim vision of what he might have been to the untutored savages, had he been true to his own creed, flitted across his mind. In any case, we find the stern, unrelenting, bloodthirsty man assuming for a moment the character of a preacher of the Gospel, pointing to a cross he had set up on an Indian mound, and telling the Indians to pray only to God in Heaven for what they needed. Nay more, he condescended to try to explain to them the mystery of the Atonement, and was so far successful, that chief and subjects kneeled with him and his men at the foot of the sign of our redemption, and listened without interruption to the prayers put up to the God of the white men.
The service over, De Soto asked for instructions as to the best route to follow in his untiring quest for gold; and, acting in accordance with the answers he received, he seems to have turned away from the Mississippi, and, in August, 1541, to have reached the highlands of the south-west of Missouri, near the White River, crossing which, he journeyed southward through Arkansas, and set up his camp for the winter about the site of the present Little Rock (N. lat. 34° 45′, W. long. 92° 13′). Bent on resuming his researches in the ensuing spring, though worn out by continual wanderings and warfare, and deprived by death of his chief helper, Juan Ortiz, the indomitable explorer now endeavored to win over the Indians by claiming supernatural powers, and declaring himself immortal; but it was too late to inaugurate a new policy. The spot chosen for encampment turned out to be unhealthy; the white men began to succumb to disease; scouts sent out to explore the neighborhood for a more favorable situation brought back rumors of howling wildernesses, impenetrable woods, and, worst of all, of stealthy bands of Indians creeping up from every side to hem in and destroy the little knot of white men.
Thus driven to bay, De Soto, who was now himself either attacked by disease or broken down by all he had undergone, determined at least to die like a man; and, calling the survivors of his once gallant company about him, he asked pardon for the evils he had brought upon those who had trusted in him, and named Luis Moscoso de Alvarado as his successor.
On the following day, May 21, 1542, the unfortunate hero breathed his last, and was almost immediately buried secretly without the gates of the camp, Alvarado fearing an immediate onslaught from the natives should the death of the hero who had claimed immortality be discovered. The newly-made grave, however, excited suspicion, and, finding it impossible to prevent it from being rifled by the inquisitive savages, Alvarado had the corpse of his predecessor removed from it in the night, wrapped in cloths made heavy with sand, and dropped from a boat into the Mississippi.
The midnight funeral over, all further queries from the natives, as to what had become of the Child of the Sun, were answered by an assurance that he had gone to heaven for a time, but would soon return. Then, while the expected return was still waited for, the camp was broken up as quietly as possible, and Alvarado led his people westward, hoping, as Cabeca had done before him, to reach the Pacific coast.
But long months of wandering in pathless prairies bringing him apparently no nearer to the sea, and dreading to be overtaken in the wilderness by the winter, he turned back and retraced his steps to the Mississippi, where he once more pitched his camp, and spent six months in building boats, in which he hoped to go down the river to its outlet in the Gulf of Mexico. In this bold scheme he was successful. The embarkation into seven roughly-constructed brigantines took place on the 2d July, 1543, and a voyage of seventeen days, between banks lined with hostile Indians, who plied them unceasingly with their poisoned arrows, brought a few haggard, half-naked survivors to the longed-for gulf. Fifty days later, after a weary cruise along the rugged coast of what is now Louisiana and Texas, a party, still further reduced, landed at the Spanish settlement of Panuco, in Mexico, where they were received as men risen from the dead.
In spite of the disastrous conclusion of so many expeditions to the ill-fated “Land of Flowers,” there were not wanting many adventurers still eager to try their fortunes in the newly-discovered districts. The first hero of note to succeed De Soto was a Dominican priest named Louis Cancello, who, with a number of his brethren, determined to endeavor to convert the natives to Christianity, and, as an earnest of their peaceful intentions, took with them to Florida a number of natives who had been carried off as slaves by their predecessors. Martyrdom was, however, their only reward. The Indians, who had been taught in a long series of severe lessons to look upon white men as their natural enemies, fell upon the missionaries, who were the first to land, and put them to death. With the fate of their leaders before them, the minor members of the party lost no time in effecting their escape, and the freed slaves alone reaped any profit from the trip. Not more successful was an imposing expedition headed by Don Tristan de Luna in 1559. Although provided with an army of 1,500 men, and accompanied by a large body of missionaries eager to convert the natives; the weapons, alike temporal and spiritual, of the new adventurers were powerless against the prejudices of the Indians and the ravages of fever. Those of the explorers who escaped the evil effects of the climate fell victims to the vengeance of the sons of the soil, and but few survived to tell the tale of the failure of the most carefully organized of all Spanish attempts at colonization north of the Gulf of Mexico.
We shall meet yet again, however, with the Spanish in Florida; but it was now the turn of the French to gain a footing in the New World, and before we complete the tale of Spanish discovery in the North, we must give a brief account of the adventures of the Gauls in the great exodus of the Western nations, in which they bore so important—though so fitful—a part.
CHAPTER III.
EARLY FRENCH SETTLERS IN NORTH AMERICA, AND THEIR STRUGGLE WITH THE SPANISH IN FLORIDA.
THE work begun by Vasco Nuñez de Balboa in the great journey already related, which terminated so disastrously for himself, was completed in 1522 by the sailing round the globe of one of the ships of the Magellan expedition, thus proving the existence of a southern oceanic passage to the East, and stimulating the eagerness with which the European nations sought to find a shorter north-western route. The French, hitherto indifferent to what was going on in the New World, seem now to have been suddenly aroused to a sense of the fact that the English, Portuguese, and Spanish were contending, not, as was at first supposed, for the possession of scattered and unimportant islands, but for that of a vast continent of as yet undetermined extent; and Francis I., then smarting under the loss of the Imperial Crown he had so eagerly coveted, resolved to make up for the priority of his rivals in the field by new discoveries in the North. “Why,” he is reported to have said, “should the Kings of Spain and Portugal divide all America between them without suffering me to take a share as their brother? I would fain see the article in Adam’s will that bequeaths that vast inheritance to them.”
The first result of this new interest in the affairs of the West was the fitting out of an expedition, consisting of four ships, under the command of Giovanni Verrazano, a native of Florence, already mentioned. Of these four vessels, three were disabled almost before they set sail, leaving to the sole survivor, the Dauphine, the whole burden of the trip. In that vessel Verrazano left the Madeiras in January, 1524, with the intention of reaching the American coast somewhere above Florida, and thence sailing due north till he came to the North-West Passage.
The first part of this programme was duly carried out, the Dauphine having made land about 34° N. lat., whence she cruised down the coast in search of a harbor some two hundred leagues, thus passing the most northerly point visited by the Spaniards. The natives of the coasts, belonging probably to the same race as those who had so hospitably received De Ayllon before his real character appeared, crowded to the beach to stare at what must have seemed to them a strange monster of the deep; and when they found the “monster” was, after all, the servant of men such as themselves, they beckoned their visitors to land.
MOUTH OF THE HUDSON RIVER.
One sailor alone had the courage to respond to the invitation, and he was nearly drowned in attempting to swim to the shore. Picked up in an exhausted condition by the Indians, he was, however, restored by their tender treatment. Fires were lighted, by which his clothes were dried; and when he was completely restored, he was allowed to return to his comrades, who had all the while been watching the proceedings on shore in horror-struck silence, expecting the lighting of the fires to be the preliminary of a human sacrifice. In the hands of a true leader of men this little episode might have been made the foundation of lasting and, eventually, beneficial relations between the Indians and their guests. Verrazano, however, was no exception to the explorers of his day; he rewarded those who had saved the life of his sailor by carrying off a young boy as a slave, and then, weighing anchor, he set sail with his solitary prize for the North, arriving, after a long cruise, in what is supposed to have been the harbor of New York. Then, as now, though its aspect is so materially changed, the mouth of the Hudson presented a beautiful appearance, with what are now known as Staten and Long Islands on one side, and the magnificent sheet of water flowing into the sea on the other. Instead of the stately vessels and trim little gun-boats which now guard the approach to the capital of the Metropolis, Indian canoes were shooting here and there on the sunlighted waters, their rowers pausing again and again to look at the strange intruder from the South.
Verrazano remained at anchor off the mouth of the Hudson for about fifteen days, receiving visits on board from the natives—a kindly, cheerful race, with regular features, clear complexions, long, straight hair, and good figures. Then steering up the shores of New England for some forty or fifty leagues, he came to the harbor of Nova Scotia, where he would gladly have rested awhile, but finding his provisions failing him, and the Indians meeting his advances with coldness and suspicion, he turned the Dauphine’s head eastward-ho, arriving at Dieppe after an absence of only six months.
JACQUES CARTIER.
More important was the work done by Verrazano’s successor, Jacques Cartier, of St. Malo, who, at the instigation of Admiral [♦]Cabot, was sent out in April, 1534, with two ships of about 130 men, by Francis I., with orders to found a colony somewhere in the North-west. Acting on these somewhat vague instructions, Cartier first made the land at Bona Vista Bay (N. lat. 48° 50′, W. long. 53° 20′), on the eastern coast of Newfoundland. With a knowledge of geography scarcely to have been expected at that early date, Cartier lost no time in steering, first north and then north-west, for the straits of Belle Isle, dividing Newfoundland from the Mainland; and, though his course was considerably impeded by the ice, he passed without accident into the Gulf of St. Lawrence, crossing which, in a south-westerly direction, he entered a bay on the coast of Canada, which he named Chaleur (N. lat. 49° 55′, W. long. 65° 25′), on account of the heat.
[♦] ‘Chabot’ replaced with ‘Cabot’
Landing on the shores of what he describes as an inviting country—though the natives were half-naked savages, living on raw fish and flesh, and with no houses but the canoe tents already noticed in speaking of the discoveries of the Northmen—Cartier took possession of the land in the name of the King of France, setting up a huge cross upon the beach, with the Fleur de Lys carved upon it, in spite of the deprecatory gestures of the natives, who well knew what the proceeding portended.
By dint of the exercise of a good deal more tact than was usually shown by early explorers, Cartier disarmed the suspicions of the natives, and even persuaded their chief to allow him to take his two sons, Taignoagny and Domagaia, to France, for which country he sailed shortly afterward, to report progress and receive further instructions.
CARTIER’S SHIP.
Pleased with the description given of the new country, Francis I. sent Cartier back in the following spring with three well-manned vessels under his command, and full powers to plant French colonies wherever he chose, also to prosecute the search for a short cut to the East, and to convert the natives to the true faith.
With the two Indian lads—whose full confidence he seems to have won—beside him on the deck of the foremost vessel, the future founder of Quebec arrived at the mouth of a large river, the St. Lawrence of the present day, on the 10th August, 1534; and being informed by the natives that its name was Hochelaga, and that it came from a far country which no man had ever seen, he determined to ascend it, thinking that it might perhaps be that strait leading to the Indian Ocean which had so long been sought in vain.
Naming the new river the St. Lawrence, in honor of the saint on whose festival day he first entered it, Cartier made his way slowly over its broad waters till he came to the point at which it receives the Saguenay, beyond which he anchored off a little island, which he called the Isle aux Coudres, on account of the hazel-trees abounding on it. Eight leagues further on, the island now known as the Isle d’Orleans was reached, and here the natives, reassured by the sight of their two fellow-countrymen, flocked on deck, eager to hear of their adventures in the strange land beyond the sea. Delighted with their accounts of the kindness shown them in France, Donnacona, the chief or lord of Saguenay, embraced Cartier, and swore eternal friendship with him and his people, little dreaming that the advent of the French meant the death of his own race as a nation.
ISLANDS AT THE MOUTH OF THE ST. LAWRENCE RIVER.
From the Isle d’Orleans the French vessel sailed on, past the mouth of the St. Croix, now the St. Charles, to the village of Stadacona, on the site of the modern Quebec; thence, undeterred by various stratagems of the natives, intended to intimidate the explorers, to the more important town of Hochelaga, where Montreal now stands; and then past Huron, a settlement of some fifty huts, inclosed within a triple barrier of palisades.
Landing at Hochelaga, among crowds of gesticulating natives, Cartier and his chief followers were led into the public square, where they were at once beset by women and girls, who brought children in their arms to be touched by the white men from beyond the sea. In the center of the square lay the king of the land, Agouhanna, a martyr to the terrible disease of paralysis. Looking up into the face of his visitor, the monarch, with pathetic confidence in his omnipotence, begged that he might be freed from his sufferings; and Cartier, touched by the appeal, kneeled down and rubbed the poor shrunken limbs of the sufferer, receiving in return for the momentary relief thus afforded a present of the royal sufferer’s own crown of porcupine quills.
The ready help given to their leader was the signal for the bringing into the market-place by the natives of all the lame, halt, blind, and aged; and Cartier, finding himself the center of an eager group, could think of nothing better to do than to pray for them all, so he read them a chapter from the Bible, and then kneeled down and addressed a petition to Heaven on their behalf in his own language, the Indians imitating every gesture, under the idea that some magic spell was being performed. We can imagine their disappointment when no immediate result ensued from the ceremony; and we are glad that the explorer showed so much consideration for their ignorance as to distribute presents of knives, beads, rings, etc., among them, which, we are told, they received with joy.
This town of Hochelaga, which is so prominent in Cartier’s narrative, disappeared from history soon after his day; whether it was annihilated under the attack of some rival tribe, or destroyed through some tremendous physical convulsion, history does not tell us. But its name has been revived, and invested with a new interest, in our day; for the geologist—as truly an explorer as the geographer—has been busy upon the site of the ancient town, and has discovered many valuable remains of its strange, forgotten life, which confirm and complete the account given by Cartier. Principal Dawson, of Montreal, in his book on Fossil Men, tells us that he has in his possession from 150 to 200 fragments of earthen vessels found upon the spot where Hochelaga stood; and there is abundant evidence to prove that its inhabitants were people of no mean mechanical skill. For instance, traces have been found of pots, in the necks of which are appliances for suspending them, so that the suspending cord might not be burned. Various relics testify also to their artistic feeling, most notable among which are tobacco-pipes, upon which much fine work must have been spent; their peculiar attention to the pipe being perhaps traceable rather to their reverence for the worship in which it had an important place, than to the lighter fancy which dotes upon meerschaums now-a-days. Their food was that which their surroundings provided; and Dr. Dawson says that, among the remains excavated, bones of nearly all the wild mammals have been found, as well as of numerous birds and fishes. Suspicions of cannibalism are roused by the discovery of part of a woman’s jaw among kitchen refuse; and these are, perhaps, increased by the fact that the Hochelagan skulls which have been discovered bespeak a temperament undoubtedly fierce and cruel; but on this point there is nothing to lead to certain conclusions. It might be interesting to follow out this wonderful story of Hochelagan life further, but to do so here would be aside from the purpose of this chapter, and we therefore content ourselves with adding, that there are not wanting traces of a religious sense, simple and rude it may be, but real and even beautiful, among the Canadians of Cartier’s day; while the tokens which accompany the dead are such as to show that the hope of immortality had shed its soft light upon their hearts.
MONTREAL.
Naming a hill overlooking Hochelaga Mont Royal—hence the modern name of Montreal—in memory of his visit, Cartier soon returned to the mouth of the St. Charles, where he established his winter quarters and remained until the spring, when, having invited Donnacona and nine other natives on board his vessel, he set sail for France, carrying them with him. All but one little girl died soon after the arrival of the fleet at St. Malo, in July, 1536; but their captain considered he had more than repaid them for their sufferings by their admission into the Roman Catholic Church before the end, and was undeterred by any fear of vengeance for his cruelty to them from undertaking, in 1540, yet another trip to Canada, as the new country was now beginning to be called.
The new expedition consisted of five vessels, and was originally placed under the command of Jean François de la Roque, Seigneur de Roberval of Picardy; but at the last moment, for reasons variously given, he requested Cartier to take his place. Arrived for a third time at his old anchorage off Stadacona, Cartier was at first well received by the natives, who expected now to welcome back their chief and his warriors; but when they heard that they were dead, grief and horror filled their hearts. No longer were they willing to look upon the white men as their brethren, or to aid their settlement among them; and though no open hostilities were resorted to, Cartier found his position throughout the winter so very far from pleasant, that he set sail for France as soon as the weather permitted, meeting De Roberval with reinforcements for the colony—which ought to have been founded—in the harbor of St. John’s, Newfoundland.
The Sieur de Roberval, indignant at the failure of his deputy, ordered him to return to the St. Lawrence at once, but Cartier continued his course to his native land in the night, leaving the original commander of the expedition to complete his work as best he could. The new-comers sailed up the St. Lawrence as far as the St. Charles, but De Roberval was almost immediately recalled to France to aid his sovereign in his struggle with Charles V.; and though he left thirty of his men behind him, they failed to gain any real foothold in the country, and returned home in the ensuing spring, some say under the escort of Cartier himself, who was sent to their relief.