THE PORT OF PALOS—THE SUPERSTITION OF ITS MARINERS—THE HAND OF SATAN—A BIRD WHICH LIFTED VESSELS TO THE CLOUDS—THE PINTA AND THE NINA—THE SANTA MARIA—CAPACITY OF A SPANISH CARAVEL—THE THREE PINZONS—THE DEPARTURE—COLUMBUS' JOURNAL—THE HELM OF THE PINTA UNSHIPPED—THE VARIATION OF THE NEEDLE—THE APPEARANCE OF THE TROPICAL ATLANTIC—FLOATING VEGETATION—THE SARGASSO SEA—ALARM, AND THREATENED MUTINY, OF THE SAILORS—PERPLEXITIES OF COLUMBUS—LAND! LAND! A FALSE ALARM—INDICATIONS OF THE VICINITY OF LAND—MURMURS OF THE CREWS—OPEN REVOLT QUELLED BY COLUMBUS—FLOATING REEDS AND TUFTS OF GRASS—LAND AT LAST—THE VESSELS ANCHOR OVER-NIGHT.

Columbus received his letters-patent, granting him all the privileges and titles he had demanded, on the 30th of April, 1492. His son Diego was made page to the prince-royal,—a favor only accorded to children of noble families. The harbor of Palos was chosen as the port of departure; and its inhabitants, whose annual taxes consisted in furnishing two caravels, armed and manned, to the Government, were instructed to place them, within ten days, at the orders of Columbus. Persons awaiting trial or condemnation were to have the privilege of escaping verdict and punishment by embarking upon this terrible and perhaps fatal voyage.

The mariners of Palos received these tidings with dismay. Nothing was certainly in those days more calculated to strike with terror the cautious coaster than a voyage upon the boundless, endless Mare Tenebrosum, which, in the imagination not only of the ignorant, but even of the educated, was the home of chaos, if not the seat of Erebus. Upon the maps of the world designed at this period, the words Mare Tenebrosum were surrounded with figures of imps and devils, compared to which the Cyclops, griffins, and centaurs of mythology were modest and benign creations. The Arabians, who were forbidden by the Koran to depict the forms of animals, gave, as they thought, a fitting character to the sea, by representing the hand of Satan upon their charts, ready to clutch and drag beneath the waves all who should be so rash as to brave the displeasure of Bahr-al-Talmet. Besides Satan, besides the Leviathan and Behemoth, and other similar submarine terrors, the adventurer upon the open sea would find adversaries in the air; and, if he escaped the blast and the thunderbolt, it would be to fall a victim to the roc, that gigantic bird which lifted ships into the air and crunched them in the clouds. This roc, from terrifying the companions of Columbus, has descended to amuse children in the nautical romance of Sinbad the Sailor.

Time passed, and the authorities of Palos had yet furnished nothing towards the voyage. Owners of vessels hid them in distant creeks, and the port became gradually a desert. The court ordered stringent measures, and at last a caravel named the Pinta was seized and laid up for repairs. All the carpenters turned sick, and neither rope, wood, nor tar were to be found. In vain did Marchena, the zealous Franciscan of Palos, who was beloved by all its inhabitants, undertake a crusade among the seafaring population in favor of the project: the whole Andalusian coast considered it chimerical and a temptation of Providence.

Martin Alonzo Pinzon, one of three brothers, all seamen, and who had at this period lately returned from Rome, where the Pope's librarian had shown him a map bearing the representation of land in the Atlantic to the west, was introduced by Marchena to Columbus. The report soon became current that the brothers, whose credit and influence at Palos were very great, intended to risk the adventure on board of the caravel Nina, belonging to the younger of the three. The mariners took courage, and the city of Palos contributed its second caravel, the Gallega, making three in all. This Gallega, though old and heavy and unfit for the service, was stout and solid, and Columbus chose her for his flag-ship, rebaptizing her, however, the Santa Maria. Towards the end of July, the vessels were nearly ready for sea, and Columbus retired for a period to the monastery, where he passed his days in prayer and his nights in contemplation. On one occasion he left the convent and appeared among the workmen: he surprised the sailors, condemned by the city to accompany him to the west, engaged in putting the rudder of the Pinta together in such a manner that the first storm would unship it. Marchena redoubled his exhortations, and at last the expedition was ready.

Popular belief has, in modern times, represented these vessels as much smaller than they probably really were. The term caravel, of doubtful etymology, affords no indication of their tonnage or capacity. Caravels were used, however, to transport troops, provisions, and artillery, and even to fight upon the high seas. They were sent by Portugal to the coast of Africa. John II. had, as we have narrated, sent a vessel to the west in order to anticipate Columbus; and this vessel was a caravel. The smallest of the three—the Nina—subsequently, when at sea, took on board fifty-six men, in addition to her own crew, a number of cannon, and a portion of the rigging of the Santa Maria, without lowering her water-line; and Columbus once threatened a Portuguese officer to take one hundred of his men on board the Nina and carry them to Castile. Neither she, nor the other two caravels, were the "light barks" or "shallops" which historians have delighted to represent them. The importance of the subject requires that we describe the three vessels with all the minuteness which the late researches of which we have spoken will authorize.

The Santa Maria measured about ninety feet at the keel. She had four masts, two of them square-rigged, and two furnished with the lateen-sails of the Mediterranean. She had a deck extending from stem to stern, and a double deck at the poop, twenty-six feet long,—one-third, nearly, of her entire length. The double deck was pierced for cannon, the forward-deck being armed with smaller pieces, used for throwing stones and grape. From the journal of Columbus we know that he employed, in the manoeuvres, quite a complicated system of ropes and pulleys. Eight anchors hung over her sides. She represented in her general characteristics a modern vessel of twenty guns. She was manned by sixty-six men, not one of whom was from Palos,—one of them being an Englishman, and one an Irishman,—and was commanded by Columbus.

The Pinta and the Nina were decked only forward and aft, the space in the middle being entirely uncovered. Their armament was equal to that of sloops of sixteen and ten guns respectively. Alonzo Pinzon commanded the Pinta, whose total crew, including the officers, numbered thirty men. The youngest of the three Pinzons, Vincent Yanez, commanded the Nina, with twenty-three men. The provisions of the fleet consisted of smoked beef, salt pork, rice, dried peas and other vegetables, herrings, wine, oil, vinegar, &c., sufficient for a year.

As the day approached and the danger grew more imminent, the apprehension increased, and the sailors expressed a desire to reconcile themselves with Heaven and obtain absolution for their sins. They went in procession to the monastery of La Rabida, with Columbus at their head, and received the Eucharist from the hands of the Franciscan Marchena. Columbus, while waiting for the land-breeze, retired for a last time to the convent, to meditate upon the duties before him and to peruse his favorite book, the Gospel of St. John. At three o'clock in the morning of the 3d of August he was awakened by the murmuring of the long wished for wind in the tops of the pine-trees which bordered his cell. The coming day was Friday, a day inauspicious to sailors, but to him a day of good omen. He arose, summoned Marchena, from whom he received the communion, and then descended, on foot, the steep declivity which leads to Palos.

The Santa Maria at once sent her boat to receive the admiral, and at the sound of the preparations and the orders of the pilots, the inhabitants awoke and opened wide their windows. Mothers, wives and sisters, fathers and brothers, ran in confusion to the shore, to bid a last farewell to those whom they might perhaps never see again. The royal standard, representing the Crucifixion, was hoisted at the main; and Columbus, standing upon the quarterdeck, gave the order to spread the sails in the name of Jesus Christ. Thus commenced the most memorable venture upon the ocean that man had then made or has made since,—the record of whose shortest day is more stored with incident than was the whole voyage of Jason, from the Whirling Rocks to the Golden Fleece.

Columbus commenced his journal at once, and it is from the passages of this narrative which are still extant, that we shall derive an account of the voyage. He begins by declaring the object of the expedition to be to extend the blessings of the gospel to nations supposed to be without it. He adds, that he shall write at night the events of the day, and each morning the occurrences of the night. He will mark the lands he shall discover upon the chart, and will banish sleep from his eyelids in order to watch the progress of his vessel.

All went well till Monday, when the helm of the Pinta fell to pieces,—this accident having been a second time prepared by her refractory owners. The fleet made the best of their way to the Canaries, where the Pinta was repaired. They sailed again on the 6th of September, narrowly escaping attack from three Portuguese caravels that King John had sent against Columbus, indignant that he should have transferred to another power the proposal he had once made to himself.

Thus far the route had lain over the beaten track between the continent and the Canaries, along the coast of Africa. As they now launched into the open sea, and as the Peak of Teneriffe sank under the horizon behind them, the heart of Columbus beat high with joy, while the courage of his officers and men died away within them. The Admiral kept two logs, one for himself and one for the crew, the latter scoring a distance less than that which they had really made, and thus keeping them in ignorance of their actual distance from home. His course was to the southwest. The sky, the stars, the horizon, the water, changed visibly as they advanced. Familiar constellations disappeared, others took their place. On the 13th of September, Columbus observed a strange and fearful phenomenon. The needle, which till then had been infallible, swerved from the Polar star, and tremblingly diverged to the northwest. The next day, this variation was still more marked. Columbus took every precaution to conceal a discovery so discouraging from the fleet, and one which alarmed even him. The water now became more limpid, the climate more bland, and the sky more transparent. There was a delicate haze in the air, and a fragrance peculiar to the sea in the fresh breeze. Aquatic plants, apparently newly detached from the rocks or the bed of the ocean, floated upon the waves. For the first time in the history of the world, the tranquil beauties and the solemn splendors of the tropical Atlantic were passing before the gaze of human beings. According to the journal of Columbus, "nothing was wanting in the scene except the song of the nightingale to remind him of Andalusia in April."

The proximity of land seemed often to be indicated by the odor with which the winds were laden, by the abundance of marine plants, and the presence of birds. Columbus would not alter his course, as he did not wish to abate the confidence of his men in his own belief that land was to be found by steering west. The floating vegetation now became so abundant that it retarded the passage of the vessels. The sailors became seriously alarmed. They thought themselves arrived at the limit of the world, where an element, too unstable to tread upon, too dense to sail through, admonished the rash stranger to take warning and return. They feared that the caravels would be involved beyond extrication, and that the monsters lying in wait beneath the floating herbage would make an easy meal of their defenceless crews. The trade-winds, then unknown, were another cause of anxiety; for, if they always blew to the westward, as they appeared to do, how could the ships ever return eastward to Europe? In the midst of the apprehensions excited by these causes, which nearly drove the terrified men to mutiny, a contrary wind sprang up, and the revolt was thus providentially quelled. Columbus wrote in his journal, "this opposing wind came very opportunely, for my crew was in great agitation, imagining that no wind ever blew in these regions by which they could return to Spain."

But the terrors of the ignorant men soon broke out afresh. Seaweed and tropical marine plants reappeared in heavy masses, and seemed to shut in the ships among their stagnant growth. The breeze no longer formed billows upon the surface of the waters. The sailors declared that they were in those dismal quarters of the world where the winds lose their impulse and the waters their equilibrium, and that soon fierce aquatic monsters would seize hold of the keels of the ships and keep them prisoners amid the weeds. In the midst of the perplexities to which Columbus was thus exposed, the sea became suddenly agitated, though the wind did not increase. This revival of motion in the element they thought relapsed into sullen inactivity, again cheered the crew into a temporary tranquillity.[2]

At sunset on the 25th, Alonzo Pinzon, rushing excitedly upon the quarterdeck of the Pinta, shouted, "Land! land! My lord, I was the first to see it!" The sailors of the Nina clambered joyfully into the tops, and Columbus fell upon his knees in thanksgiving. But the morn dissipated the illusion, and the ocean stretched forth its illimitable expanse as before. On the 1st of October, one of the lieutenants declared with anguish that they were seventeen hundred miles from the Canaries, intelligence which terribly alarmed the crew, though they had really made a much greater distance, being actually twenty-one hundred miles from Teneriffe, according to Columbus' private reckoning.

The indications of the vicinity of land had been so often deceitful, that the crew no longer put faith in them, and fell from discouragement into taciturnity, and from taciturnity into insubordination. The discontent was general, and no efforts were made to conceal it. In their mutinous conversations, they spoke contemptuously of Columbus as "the Genoese," as a charlatan and a rogue. Was it just, they said, that one hundred and twenty men should perish by the caprice and obstinacy of one single man, and that man a foreigner and an impostor? If he persisted in proceeding "towards his everlasting west, which went on and on, and never came to an end," he ought to be thrown into the sea and left there. On their return they could easily say that he had fallen into the waves while gazing at the stars. A revolt was agreed upon between the crews of the three ships, who were on several occasions brought into communication by the sending of boats from the one to the other. The captains of the Pinta and the Nina were aware of what was transpiring, but for the time being maintained a cautious neutrality. The sea continued calm as the Guadalquivir at Seville, the air was laden with tropical fragrance, and in twenty-four hours the fleet, apparently at rest, glided imperceptibly over one hundred and eighty miles. This motionless rapidity, as it were, thoroughly terrified the crew, and, breaking out into open mutiny, they refused, on the 10th of October, to go any farther westward. The Nina and the Pinta rejoined the Santa Maria; the brothers Pinzon, followed by their men, leaped upon her deck, and commanded Columbus to put his ship about and return to Palos.

At this most vital point of the narrative, our authorities are contradictory, while the journal of Columbus himself is silent. According to Oviedo,—a writer who obtained his information from an enemy of Columbus,—the latter yielded to his men so far as to propose a compromise, and to consent to return unless land was discovered in three days' sail. To say the least, such a submission to the menaces and behests of his infuriated subalterns was not an act compatible with the character of Columbus, with his well known self-reliance, and his openly expressed and constantly reiterated confidence in the Divine protection. The Catholic biography, which we have quoted, attributes the pacification of the revolt directly to the Divine interference, asserting that no human philosophy can explain this sudden and complete suspension of the prevailing exasperation and animosity. It is certain, at any rate, that the demonstration, which began at nightfall, had ceased long before the morning's dawn.

And now pigeons flew in abundance about the ships, and green canes and reeds floated languidly by. A bush, its branches red with berries, was recovered from the water by the Nina. A tuft of grass and a piece of wood, which appeared to have been cut by some iron instrument, were picked up by the Pinta. Such indications were sufficient to sustain the most dejected. Still the sun sank to rest in a horizon whose pure line was unbroken by land and unsullied by terrestrial vapor. The caravels were called together, and, after the usual prayer to the Virgin, Columbus announced to them that their trials were at an end, and that the morrow's light would bring with it the realization of all their hopes. The pilots were instructed to take in sail after midnight, and a velvet pourpoint was promised to him who should first see land. The crews which, two days before, considered Columbus as a trickster and a cheat, now received his word as they would a gospel from on high. The expectation and impatience which pervaded the three ships were indescribable. No eye was closed that night. The Pinta, being the most rapid sailer, was a long way in advance of the others. The Nina and the Santa Maria followed slowly, for sail had now been shortened, in her track. Suddenly a flash and a heavy report from the Pinta announced the joyful tidings. A Spaniard of Palos, named Juan Rodriguez Bermejo, had seen the land and won the velvet pourpoint. Columbus fell upon his knees, and, raising his hands to heaven, sang the Te Deum Laudamus. The sails were then furled and the fleet lay to. Arms and holiday dresses were prepared, for they knew not what the day would bring forth, whether the land would offer hospitality or challenge to combat. The great mystery of the ocean was to be revealed on the morrow: in the meantime, the night and the darkness had in their keeping the mighty secret—whether the land was a savage desert or a spicy and blooming garden.