CHAPTER I
HOW IT ALL STARTED
THE lure of gold and the lust of empire; these were the impelling motives that sent three small ships across the Atlantic to seek out India’s wealth, and to add 1 her rich domain to the Spanish crown. Christopher Columbus wanted gold and glory. Spain wanted expansion of empire and added world power. The fulfillment of these desires was committed to the hazard of a daring voyage over an unknown sea.
In this age of worldwide geographic knowledge, with innumerable modern ships sailing the seven seas along well-charted paths, it is difficult mentally to picture the extraordinary conditions under which that memorable voyage was made in 1492.
A small, flat world, and a central sea; that was the popular geographic belief that accompanied the rise and fall of nations down through the centuries to the end of the mighty civilizations of Greece and Rome.
The Mediterranean and its neighboring lands; that was the world at the dawn of the fifteenth century. Outside these narrow limits, all was surmise, conjecture and speculation.
By 1492, however, the belief had become fairly general, at least among the learned men, that the world was round; but it was still universally believed that the world stood still, and that the heavens revolved about the earth. Copernicus had not yet advanced his heliocentric theory.
Word had also reached this little Mediterranean world of a distant land called India, where great riches awaited those who might adventure thither. The wonderful stories of this eastern country related by Marco Polo, the great explorer of his time, gained rapid currency, and finally got into book form through the then newly invented printing press.
Polo had penetrated the lands lying eastward of Europe, and had been royally entertained by the great Kublai Khan; had traversed Asia, and encountered what appeared to be a vast ocean—in reality the Pacific Ocean—that looked toward the east; had sailed on this ocean southward along the eastern coast of Asia, and into the Indian Ocean; and had finally reached Persia, whence he returned by land to his native city of Venice. His explorations occupied some twenty-four years, and covered lands hitherto unknown to Europe, which came to be designated by the general name of India.
Polo pictured in glowing terms the fabulous wealth of the Far East. One of his stories, typical of the rest, was of an island containing six hundred thousand families, so rich that the palaces of its nobles were covered with plates of gold. In such fashion ran the marvelous stories of Marco Polo, and these tales, in an age of credulity, created a profound impression; so strong, indeed, that it came to be believed that Polo had rediscovered the Tharshish of the Scriptures, that land of gold and spices that had enriched the Tyrian merchants, and of which it was said in Kings, chapter ten, “And all King Solomon’s drinking vessels were of gold, and all the vessels of the House of the Forest of Lebanon were of pure gold; none were of silver; it was nothing accounted of in the days of Solomon. For the King had at sea a navy of Tharshish with the navy of Hiram; once in three years came the navy of Tharshish, bringing gold and silver, ivory, and apes and peacocks. So King Solomon exceeded all the kings of the earth for riches and wisdom.”
A desire to reach this land, and to share in its mighty stores of easily acquired wealth became general. But getting there presented a problem that baffled the industrial enterprise of that day. A ship could not sail eastward from the Mediterranean, for there was then no Suez Canal to connect with the Red Sea. Caravans were commercially impracticable by reason of the long and perilous journey through intervening deserts, across mountain ranges, and among hostile peoples. To sail south was, in the then popular belief, to court certain death under torrid suns among death-dealing vapors. Besides, a Cape of Good Hope had no place in the geographic imaginings of that time.
The “Wealth of Ind” seemed far off, and beyond the reach of those whose cupidity had been so thoroughly aroused by the remarkable stories of Marco Polo.
Then Christopher Columbus, a college bred Genoese, who had been 1492, deeply stirred by the stories of Marco Polo, and who was filled with the spirit of adventure, evolved a great idea. He believed but the world to be round, thought it was much smaller than it is. He also thought the world stood motionless; but that didn’t matter so much. A round world was all that was necessary to his plan. He had studied with painstaking care the account given by Marco Polo of his journey to and from the Far East. It is known that Columbus possessed a printed copy of the Latin version of Polo’s book made by Pipino, and that on more than seventy pages of this book, there were notes in the handwriting of Columbus.
Columbus was a great cosmographer and an experienced navigator. He believed the world was round, and that the ocean Polo saw, looking eastward from India, was the Atlantic. It never occurred to him that there might be an entire continent, as yet undiscovered, lying between the westward coast of Europe and the eastern edge of Asia, to make a barrier between them. By sailing westward across the Atlantic, he would arrive at India; that was his great idea; and its only defect was that he underestimated the size of this ball of the earth, and could not know all that its surface held of lands and seas. He had a marvelous conception, far in advance of his time, and if it did not, as he expected, establish a direct sea route, and insure successful commerce with the rich wonderland of the Far East, it did far greater things to further civilization.
But at the time, Columbus was probably inspired more by desire for wealth and position than by any urge to advance civilization. He became thoroughly convinced that his that his idea was reasonable and feasible, and he set at work to find the financial backing needed for his adventurous plans, a difficult job, for the monied men of that day were no swifter in loosening pursestrings for visionary schemes than they are now. He had many a rebuff, many a derisive laugh at his wild plan of high finance. At last he succeeded in persuading the King and Queen of Spain to supply the needed funds in return for Spanish dominion over any lands he might discover. Nor did Columbus overlook his own ambitions. It was agreed that he should have a tenth of all the riches he should collect or seize, and that he should be made viceroy and admiral over the unexplored realm; these high offices to be transmitted by inheritance to his descendants.
With this royal contract signed, sealed and delivered, Columbus sailed from Palos, on the southern coast of Spain, on Friday, August 3, 1492. Note the day—Friday. He had three ships, really little more than sailboats, the Santa Maria of a hundred tons being the largest. This Columbus commanded, with fifty-two men under him. Then came the Pinta, a fifty-ton boat, with eighteen men under Martin Pinzon, and yet smaller, only forty tons, the Nina, commanded by Vincente Yanez, with a crew of eighteen.
Westward these small craft sailed to circle the globe, cross the Atlantic, and find India; a daring and adventurous voyage based on these wonderful stories of Marco Polo, and the cosmographic theories of Columbus. And strangely enough, Columbus found land just as he expected he would, almost to a day of the time he reckoned, on October 12, 1492; and there wasn’t the slightest doubt in his mind but that it was the very land he was looking for. It wasn’t—not by one vast continent and one mighty ocean. San Salvador he named this island—and he knew very shortly that it was an island. In full pomp, with banners flying, he took possession in the name of their majesties of Castile and Leon.
And that day, October 12, 1492, was
also a Friday. That his discovery was an island made no difference to Columbus.
It was, he felt sure, part of India, and the
mainland would be found further on. He never knew that
he had made the greater discovery of a new and separate continent, richer and more wonderful than all the thenknown world, and he died in the full belief that he had
established his claims, and found a direct sea route westward to India. Again came a Friday—January 4, 1493—and Columbus set sail for Palos to take the news of his success to his royal masters of Spain, and he landed at Palos on Friday, March 15, 1493. The outward voyage had taken seventy-one days; the return voyage exactly the same length of time. On Friday it began; on a Friday he reached the new world; he began his return voyage ona Friday; and landed in Spain on a Friday. An unlucky day? Not for Christopher Columbus. This island of San Salvador, with the group of which it was a part, came to be called the West Indies; the idea
being that they bordered and screened the eastern coast of India, but had been found by sailing “West.” Spain promptly took possession of these islands, and her navigators pushed on westward to find the mainland. They soon encountered land, but the land they encountered,
as it developed, was not India. It did prove to be of considerable extent, and was inhabitated by people who had developed a primitive civilization, had an organized
form of government with established courts and administrative
offices, and had
a ruler they called “Montezuma.” In brief, these Span-
ish navigators, on their way to India, had stumbled upon
Mexico and her ancient Aztec civilization. This appeared to be quite a find, and the Spanish author-
ities concluded to appropriate it en route. To this end, Diego Velazquez, Spanish governor of Cuba, sent Hernando Cortes, a_ brilliant and dashing young Spaniard, with some six or seven hundred trained soldiers, to take possession of this newly and accidentally discovered country. Velazquez, for some reason, sought to recall Cortes, but the order found Cortes already at sea, and with adventure beckoning, and with loyal soldiers
at his command, he concluded to ignore the order of recall. With his little army, he landed on the Mexican coast on March 4, 1519, and presented a strange sight to the eyes of the astonished natives—boats, the like of which they had never seen; a new and wonderful animal, bear-
ing strangely equipped soldiers; huge weapons that belched forth fire and smoke, and pale-faced men whom the natives looked upon as visiting gods; all conspired to fill these primitive people with consternation and alarm. The invaders had several cannon and a number of horses.
The natives, of course, had never seen a cannon,
and it is a noteworthy historical fact that the horses Cortes had with him were the first on the North American continent. Cortes soon discovered that Montezuma ruled over a vast empire, that his riches were immense, and that his power was absolute. This discovery only added to the zeal of the invaders. Cortes was an extraordinary man. Courageous and resourceful, he combined military skill with
artful intrigue, and—when
deemed
helpful—un-
ae Be:
s
Facsimile Signature of Cortes hesitating cruelty. All these he employed, and with such success that, on July 7, 1520, a final military victory made him master of Mexico. Cortes spent some time looking over this remarkable land which he had conquered, but he never forgot that the main purpose of Spain was to find a western waterway to India. The discovery of Mexico, together with other coastwise explorations, had dispelled the idea that the island group discovered by Columbus was a mere screening archipelago, beyond and near which lay India; but there re- “Sy, mained a universal belief that soubie nee ta | through these western lands there A we was an open waterway that would ater provide a direct all-water route to the land of riches so glowingly described by Marco Polo. This supposed waterway came to be known as the Strait of Anian,
and in the
language of Professor Chapman of the Department of History of the University of California, “The story of the search for the Strait of Anian is one of the most fascinating tales in the annals of the New World.” At about this time—in 1520, to be exact—Magellan, in search of this strait, made his famous voyage down the east coast of South America, sailed through the strait that bears his name, and found a great ocean between the land Columbus discovered and the land he thought ne had discovered. Magellan sailed on across the Pacific, and reached the Philippine Islands, which he claimed for his sovereign, and which after a brief contention with Portugal, became a part of the Spanish Empire. In his explorations in Mexico, Cortes crossed over to the west coast, and there inaugurated
several expedi-
tions to search for the Strait of Anian. He found no strait, but he found Lower California, which he thought was an island, and which he named California. This was in 1535.
The name, California, he took from a romance written in about 1498 by a Spanish writer named Or-
donez de Montalvo, wherein the story is told of an island
of great riches called California, “lying to the right hand as you sail toward the Indies,” and ruled by black Amazons whose queen was called Califia. In the then current belief as to the location of India, the mythical island of the Spanish romance seemed geographically to coincide with the supposed island discovered by Cortes. Hence the seeming aptness of the name California. Cortes returned to Spain in 1540, Though he had added an empire to the Spanish dominions, he had failed to find the elusive waterway to India. But that search went on. In 1542, Antonio Mendoza, the first Viceroy of Mexico,
sent Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo on an expedition up the west coast of the supposed island of California in search of the strait which everybody believed to exist, but which nobody seemed able to find. Cabrillo, with two small boats, poorly built and badly outfitted, the anchors and iron work of which had been carried by men from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific, sailed northward along the coast. They stopped at sevyeral points, and on November 6, 1542, sighted Point Pinos at Monterey Bay, but did not land. They went on as far north as what is now called Fort Ross, in Sonoma County, and on their return trip, again passed Point Pinos on November 18, 1542. Cabrillo found no strait, but he found California; and this was only fifty years after Columbus first sighted the New World.
In the light of present day knowledge, how strange, and yet how interesting appears the plain historic fact that the discovery of Mexico, with its untold and even now but partially developed wealth, and the discovery of California, the land of riches, beauty and romance, were merely incidental to adventures undertaken for the discovery of a direct water route westward from Europe to India.