Grade 5.1.1.5
Sailing west, Columbus finds a new world. Even after four voyages he believes it is Asia, and the land is named for another navigator.
In the port of Palos before sunrise on August 3, 1492, three ships, carrying ninety men under Columbus's command, hoisted sail. As the wind caught the canvas, the Santa Maria, the Nina, and the Pinta moved toward the open sea. Many were the rewards the king and queen had promised the first man who sighted land, including the sum of 10,000 maravedis, an old Spanish coin of considerable value. Putting in at the Canary Islands, off the coast of West Africa, the ships were refitted. When they took to the sea again, the date was September 6, 1492.
Now, if the calculations of Columbus were correct, Japan was 2,400 nautical miles away. The world beyond the horizon was unknown. Who could say that the sea monsters of which sailors sometimes spoke-monsters that could swallow a ship in a gulp—did not exist here? For two weeks the three vessels plunged forward. The men on board, seeing nothing but sky and water, began to grumble among themselves. Pelicans flew over the ships, but a day passed, then another and another, and although other pelicans appeared, there was no sight of land. Masses of seaweed in the water aroused another fear. Suppose the weed should become so thick that the ships stuck in it? And then there was the wind that was blowing them away from Spain. How could they be sure that another wind would blow them home?
The grumbling grew worse. The crews met secretly, declaring that Columbus was risking their lives to carry out his own mad ambitions. Even though land had not been sighted, why should they not turn back? Would they not be honored for the fact that they had sailed farther west from Spain than any men who ever had gone to sea? Some even plotted to heave Columbus overboard and claim he had fallen into the sea. Late in September a cry rang out aboard the ships, "Land, land, sirl" The men murmured prayers of thanksgiving, but Columbus knew that by morning they would realize they had only seen some storm clouds that resembled an island. Despite the threats of his crew, Columbus kept his vessels plunging westward. So many false cries of land were raised that in early October Columbus issued a harsh order. Anyone who claimed to see land that was not reached within three days would forfeit the reward even if later he was the first to sight a shore.
On the afternoon of Thursday, October 11, there came a change. A green branch was sighted in the water, and then a green fish of the kind found near reefs. A stick, skillfully carved, was fished from the sea, and a sailor saw a thorn branch with red berries that seemed to be freshly cut. Even Columbus now believed that land was near, and to the other rewards for the first to sight it he added a velvet doublet.
About two hours before midnight, standing on the deck of the sterncastle, Columbus thought that he saw a light. He called on deck Pedro Gutierrez, butler to the king, and Pedro, too, said that there had been a light. Then the Pinta, speediest of the three vessels, fired a signal. Land had been sighted by a sailor named Rodrigo de Triana.
Throughout that night the ships waited for daylight. The first rays of the rising sun on Friday, October 12, 1492, revealed the tree lined coast of Wading Island in the Bahamas. Naked people could be seen along the water's edge, and Columbus boarded the little boat that would take him ashore. Proudly he carried the royal banner with its beautiful green cross that bore the letter F for Ferdinand on one arm and the letter Y for Ysabella (Isabella) on the other.
The sailors knelt in thanks to God. Some could not hold back their tears of joy and others kissed the ground. Columbus gave the island the name of San Salvador and claimed it for the king and queen. The Indians watched the ceremony with gentle good manners. Columbus gave them little red caps and glass beads which they hung around their necks.
Columbus wrote in his journal that the Indians had "very handsome bodies and very good faces." Their hair, he said, was as coarse as a horse's tail, and they wore a braid in back that they never cut. Some painted their faces, some their whole bodies, some only their noses, using shades of black and white, red and blue. All seemed to have very broad foreheads, the result of their custom of flattening the skulls of infants by pressing them between boards. They were highly intelligent and could repeat words that they had heard only once.
Columbus marveled at the boats in which the Indians came to visit the ships. Built all in one piece from the trunks of trees, they sometimes carried as many as forty paddlers. They were "wonderfully made" and skimmed through the water with speed and grace.
A brisk trade developed between the sailors and the Indians, who came loaded down with skeins of spun cotton, parrots, and darts. Everything the Indians offered, Columbus said, was given with "as much love as if their hearts went with it." He could not watch these simple, generous people being cheated by his crew and issued stern orders against offering them in trade "bits of broken crockery" and other worthless items.
Still certain that Japan was near, Columbus sailed to the island Hispaniola (now Haiti and the Dominican Republic). Here he built a fort and left forty-four men while he hastened home with the news of his remarkable discoveries. He was received in triumph at the Spanish court. People stared at the rich and strange prizes from the newfound lands—the cotton, the samples of gold, the strange plants, birds, and animals, the Indians he had brought to be baptized. Plans were made for a second voyage.
Bad news awaited Columbus on his return to Hispaniola. His fort was burned and his colonists had disappeared. Building a second fort and founding the city of Isabella, Columbus made a fresh start as a colonizer. But his love for the Indians was not shared by all. Wealth was what the followers of Columbus were seeking—in gold, in slaves. And Columbus was more a navigator and explorer than a governor. Always he wanted to continue sailing westward until he reached the treasures of the Far East.
In all, Columbus completed four voyages. He discovered the vast continent of South America and many important islands, among them Cuba and Jamaica. When he died on May 20, 1506, Columbus still did not know that he had stumbled upon a new world.
But another Italian navigator of the day, Amerigo Vespucci, realized that these lands were not part of Asia. Between 1497 and 1504, he may have made as many as four voyages to the New World and claimed to be the first explorer to set foot upon the continent of South America. A map, published in 1507, gave the name of America to South America. Later geographers gave the name to both continents.
By: Earl Schenck Miers
Paintings: Alton Tobey
