At Cariay, “verdant as a field of basil,” and its adjacent island of Quiribiri, the fleet first began to encounter the guanín pendants that Columbus had previously seen around Paria: golden disks polished to such a sheen the sailors took to referring to them as “mirrors.” In an attempt to win the favor of this people, Columbus ordered presents be distributed among them, only to find them resistant to such obligation; the fleet found all of the gifts on the beach the next morning, tied into a bundle. The following day the natives of Cariay presented them with two young girls of eight and fourteen, naked but covered in guanín pendants. While Columbus’s memory of the meeting with these girls was vile in the extreme—despite their youth, he would later write, the most practiced whores could not have been more experienced at enticement—this is likely to have been more a projection of the lustful desires of the adult sailors; Hernando, with the bashful nobility of adolescent sexuality, recalled only their braveness among strangers. Columbus clothed them and sent them back to their tribe. Bartholomew captured two natives to act as guides as they progressed down the coast, in response to which the natives sent two wild pigs (peccaries) as ransom, but Columbus insisted on paying for the pigs with gifts. To add to the considerable confusion, one of the peccaries got loose on deck and careened around, only to be attacked by a local catlike creature that one of the sailors had wounded and brought aboard. Hernando concluded from the encounter between the wild pig and the cat that the cats must be used as hunting animals much like greyhounds in Spain, though it becomes clear from his description the “cat” was actually a spider monkey.15
During the painfully slow passage along this coast Hernando was drawn even closer to his father by the fever that struck them both down. Columbus later wrote that the suffering of his son, only thirteen at the time, racked his soul, which sank to see Hernando so fatigued. This despair was transformed to boundless feelings of parental pride, however, as the Admiral watched the boy from his sickbed on deck: despite his illness the young Hernando worked so hard that it gave spirit to the other men, and tended to the comfort of his father all the while. It was as if, Columbus said of his son, he had been a sailor for eighty years. This was the kind of intuitive nautical genius Columbus only ever attributed to himself, a testimony of shared character that was cherished as the centerpiece of Hernando’s self-image for all his life.16
From Cariay onward the avalanche of local customs and curiosities is simplified into records of the steadily increasing numbers of gold guanín mirrors the fleet was able to acquire for little in return, a sure sign for Columbus that they were nearing the gold-rich region for which he had been searching since 1492 and which might also be the beginnings of the realm of Cathay. At Cerabora among the narrow channels a gold mirror weighing ten ducats (paid—three hawksbells); at Alburema, a mirror weighing fourteen ducats and an eagle pendant of twenty-two, whose owners were taken captive after they refused to trade; at Guayga, the herb-spitting, horn-blowing inhabitants were eventually persuaded to trade for sixteen mirrors weighing in at a total of 150 ducats; and at Cateba they took twenty mirrors for a few hawksbells apiece. Also at Cateba they found the first evidence of masonry, in the form of a massive wall made of stone and lime mortar, and farther on they encountered the estuary of Veragua, where five villages of the prettiest houses imaginable were surrounded by cultivated fields.
Then, just when it seemed they must be nearing their Promised Land, the trail went cold. Beyond Veragua the weather turned against them, forcing them eventually to put into a little inlet they named Retrete, where the opening pleasantries with local residents soon turned to hostility. Columbus was able to keep them away from the ships with cannon blasts, bringing to pass the scene foretold in The Book of Prophecies in which
the inhabitants of the islands are stupefied before you, and all their kings are shocked by the thunder (Ezekiel 28).
Despite the natives having an appearance attractive to Hernando, the shore was littered with giant lizardlike crocodiles that smelled “as though all the musk in the world had been gathered” and which would eat any man they found sleeping. With the signs clearly becoming less favorable Columbus reluctantly decided they should return to the region of Veragua, where the trail was last warm, but this volte-face came too late. The climate had turned against them, and they were stranded aboard their ships amid thunder and lightning so intense the sailors closed their eyes, feeling the ships sinking beneath them and the sky collapsing upon them. In the sleeplessness caused by constant rain, Hernando noted that they began to hear phantom distress signals from the other ships, and the endless parade of fears rose once again into their minds: fire from lightning, wind and waves that might capsize the ship, reefs and rocks along unfamiliar coastline. On 13 December the horror increased when a waterspout arose and passed between two of the ships, in a column as thick as a drum and churning like a whirlwind. During the storm they were separated from the Vizcaína, and though they managed to find her a few days later, they had in the meantime been surrounded by sharks, an encounter that allowed Hernando to describe the appearance of a bite from one of these creatures and to record that they found, in the sharks’ bellies, a whole turtle and the head of another shark. This might seem impossible, Hernando observed, were it not for the fact that the shark’s mouth reaches from the tip of its olive-shaped head almost down to its stomach. They caught and ate a number of the sharks, which provided a welcome relief from their usual worm-riddled porridge made of ship’s biscuit. The humidity had made it so thick with insects, Hernando writes, that he saw many of the crew wait until after nightfall to eat so they didn’t have to face the sight of their food; they had long since given up trying to pick the worms out, as this simply meant throwing away one’s dinner.17
On the Feast of the Epiphany, 6 January, the fleet finally regained the position they had held two months earlier, among the estuary mouths in Veragua. The name of Belén (Bethlehem) was chosen for the river called Yebra in the local tongue, in honor of the day on which the Magi found Jesus. While the river mouth provided some protection from the storms that continued to trouble the open ocean, it was not without its own dangers. The ships were barely able to enter the shallow inlet, which was no more than four fathoms deep, and although safe from the waves once inside, they soon realized they faced a threat from another direction. Shortly after they arrived in Belén, a flash flood swept down from the mountains a little way inland, snapped loose one of the Capitana’s anchors, and sent the ship crashing into the Gallega, breaking its bonaventure mizzen (the rearmost mast) and repeatedly smashing them against each other as they swirled in the river.
Driven by the strange mixture of conviction and desperation that characterized many of his actions, Columbus decided a settlement should be founded in Belén and held by a small contingent while the remaining crew should return to Spain for supplies. The inhabitants of an adjacent river mouth had quickly produced gold to trade, claiming they had collected it in the nearby mountains, suffering hunger and missing their wives as they gathered it. Cordial relations had been established with the local chieftain, Quibian, who had also spoken of gold in the mountains, and this had been further confirmed by an expedition inland led by Bartholomew. On their scouting mission they had discovered gold among the roots of the trees, just as the The Book of Prophecies predicted would be found in the land of Ophir, where the lions dug it up with their claws and left it to be collected. This, it seemed, must be the golden region for which Columbus had been searching. But as the houses for eighty men slowly rose in Belén, beyond a gulley “about a lombard’s shot” from the river mouth, a strangeness infects the tone of Hernando’s notes. The local fisher tribes, he writes, have an uncanny habit of standing with their backs to one another while speaking and are constantly chewing a leaf—cocaína—which makes their teeth putrid and rotten. Their main catch comes from the swarms of ocean fish that make their way up the river at various times of the year, but they also catch leaping sardines, sometimes by fixing a p
alm-leaf partition in the middle of a canoe to block the fish as they are forced to jump over the boat.
The plans for the settlement of Belén included, in addition to the houses, a store and arsenal and the ship Gallega, which was to be left for Bartholomew’s use as commander of the fort. But the Gallega was no longer seaworthy and would not provide an escape route for those left behind in case of need. Besides the loss of its mast in the river flood, it was so riddled with shipworms it was like a delicate lattice or honeycomb. Indeed, it soon became clear that none of the ships could leave the inlet. The mouth had silted up further, leaving only two fathoms’ clearance, and while in calm weather they might have considered dragging the unloaded ships over the sandbar, pulling the fragile hulls out in the rough seas was sure to shatter them. Their only hope, then, was to pray for rain to swell the river mouth to allow them passage.
The mood darkened even more when they discovered the apparently friendly Quibian had been maneuvering against them. He had lied, for a start, about the presence of gold in his own region and had instead sent Bartholomew to the gold fields in the lands of a neighboring enemy king, hoping this would draw the travelers to settle there. When they chose to found Belén in Quibian’s territory anyway, the incensed king decided to attack and eradicate the Christians’ foothold in his land. On learning this, Bartholomew led a band of armed men to Quibian’s hut, taking him prisoner and entrusting him to one Juan Sanchez to take back to the ships. But when Quibian complained about the chafing of his bonds Sanchez loosened them out of pity, allowing Quibian to leap from the boat when Sanchez was momentarily lost in thought. The fugitive swam ashore while the other captives made a cacophony that provided him with some cover. There was no chance of recapturing him in the dense undergrowth. Returning to the ship with the remaining hostages, Sanchez cut off his own beard in fulfillment of the oath he swore to secure his captive.18
When the rains did come, Columbus decided to leave immediately for Spain to resupply, unloading the three seaworthy ships and crossing the sandbar using the ship’s boats. Before setting sail the skipper of the Capitana, Diego Tristan, returned ashore in the sole remaining ship’s boat for final supplies and water. The boat did not return, and the crew faced the unpalatable choice of waiting indefinitely for news or turning their backs on Belén. During the days that followed, as Columbus and Hernando anchored in high winds off a dangerous coast with a skeleton crew and no ship’s boat, they had little way of knowing what was happening onshore. When Spanish corpses began washing out to sea covered in wounds and perched on by carrion crows, it seemed their darkest fears had been realized. To make matters worse, half the Spaniards’ remaining hostages escaped in a daring bid during the night, and those who didn’t make it hung themselves belowdecks. Beyond the macabre nature of the scene, this also meant Columbus no longer held anything that might make Quibian deal for a truce.
At this moment Columbus was struck with one of his periodic bouts of blindness, and a high fever. He later remembered himself as being alone aboard the Capitana, and he may well have felt alone, though it seems certain Hernando, who is silent about his own role in most things but bears witness to it all, was there with him. At the height of his fever Columbus climbed into the crow’s nest, wailing in fear and anguish and calling for help from Spain, though no one from the four winds (Columbus lamented) whispered a response. Having exhausted himself, he collapsed. During this fevered sleep he experienced a vision and later recorded the piteous words spoken to him:
O foolish man, so slow to trust in your own and the only God! Have I done more for anyone, even my servants Moses and David? I watched you from birth, and when the time was right, I made your name resound marvelously across the earth. I gave you the Indies, a rich portion of the earth, for your own; you parted them as you saw fit, as I gave you power to do. To the sides of the Ocean Sea, fixed with strong chains, I gave you the key. I exalted your name in many lands and brought you honor among Christian people. What greater honor did I do to Israel, when I led them out of Egypt? Or David, whom from a shepherd I raised to be King of the Jews? Return to Him and confess your error; that His pity is boundless. Nor have I held back great things from you in your old age: great inheritance is in your power. Abraham had lived a hundred years when he became a father to Isaac, and nor was Sarah young in age. Yet you cry out for aid into the unknown. Tell me: Who has inflicted woes on you time and time again—God, or the world? The wealth and power God bestows cannot be taken by any, nor shall anyone say he has not been rewarded for his service: even if it appears another way, know that I am letting you fall to bring greater glory in victory. The time is full of ripeness: all that I have promised you will be yours, with more; I have given what was made for you, as I do to all.
The voice in Columbus’s vision, which echoes in great perfection the God who speaks to Job out of the whirlwind, now blends the castigation unleashed upon Job with the promises given to Abraham as the maker of a great nation. In his delirium and in front of his young son, Columbus had formed a God for himself out of quotations from The Book of Prophecies. Almost more astonishing than the words of Columbus’s vision was the fact that he wrote them down after the storm and sent them in a letter to Ferdinand and Isabella. With a breathtaking lack of caution, Columbus speaks of the New World here as God’s gift to him personally, to do with what he pleases, and makes Spain the recipient of Columbus’s favor directly and God’s only indirectly. The storm had closed the gap for Columbus between his inner vision and the world he saw outside, and the predictions of The Book of Prophecies were now being confirmed by direct revelation, by a voice speaking to him from out of the maelstrom.19
* * *
After nine days reports from the land began finally to arrive. Diego Tristan in the Bermuda’s boat had reached shore to find Quibian already attacking Belén, having waited only for the moment of Columbus’s departure to strike. The forest was thick just thirty yards from the edges of the settlement, allowing Quibian’s spearmen to lunge forward unseen. Arriving at the river mouth, Tristan had turned away from the settlers who tried to clamber aboard, choosing instead to save the ship’s boat and report back to Columbus if he could. As it turned out, he would not be able to do even this: he died shortly after from a spear driven through his eye socket. In Belén the fighting intensified, with the attackers pressing in close and making it impossible for the Christians to use muskets. When a report did finally reach the Admiral—after one Pedro de Ledesma swam ashore on a scouting mission—it was clear their only option was a full-scale retreat, abandoning Belén and the worm-eaten Gallega. The surviving settlers (including Bartholomew Columbus) were ferried aboard under artillery cover provided by the Capitana, and they weighed anchor, having profited nothing from Belén but blood, misery, and failure. The Vizcaína sank soon after, and now they were reduced from three honeycomb caravels to two, the Bermuda and the Capitana. To keep these afloat they worked three pumps, night and day, flushing out the water in the hull only just as fast as it came in.
The nearest help, in Hispaniola, was almost a thousand miles away.
V
A Knowledge of Night
As the Capitana and the Bermuda sailed away from Belén, Hernando saw his father’s fortunes at their lowest ebb. Although Columbus would later insist the lands he had visited here were among those eastern kingdoms described in his treasured books, by Marco Polo and by Eneas Silvius Piccolomini in his Historia rerum, he admitted they had not found the horses described by Piccolomini, with breastplates and mouthpieces of gold. The report Columbus was to write on this expedition was raw with the knowledge that he had asked for trust too many times: he protested that he would not boast of the riches of Veragua because of his former humiliation, though he could not resist adding as an aside that they saw more signs of gold in two days there than in four years on Hispaniola. This must surely, he reasoned, be the region of Aurea Chersonesus (Pliny’s name for a “Golden Land” in southeast Asia) that had brought so much wealth to So
lomon, and the only reason Columbus had not found the fountainhead of wealth was because he had been confined to the coasts, which were populated only by modest fishermen. There is a sharp historical irony in the fact that as Columbus floundered about to find a positive spin for this disastrous expedition, he was, in some ways, actually right. As Hernando later pointed out, the region of Veragua was indeed the best crossing point for the Pacific and the regions of the East: in Columbus’s determination that the “crossing” mentioned by many inhabitants of the region should be a strait through which ships could sail, he had failed to understand that this crossing could instead be a narrow isthmus. The area around Retrete where the trail had gone cold would, four hundred years later, provide the eastern entrance for the Panama Canal.1
The damage to Columbus’s reputation as a nautical-historical visionary soon began to threaten not just his legacy but also the physical safety of his crews. The sailors on board the swiftly disintegrating ships had a limited number of moves left to them, and the pilots agreed unanimously that they should strike out north for Hispaniola. Columbus, however, was convinced they needed to go farther east before turning north, as once they struck out from land the currents would make it impossible to correct course. They turned north on 1 May 1503, against Columbus’s better judgment, and though they sailed as close to the easterly wind as they could, his fears proved true: after passing a series of low islands covered with turtles that they called Las Tortugas (the Cayman Islands), they found their bearings among the labyrinthine islets south of Cuba that Columbus had named the Jardines de la Reina. Hernando would have read from his father the sure knowledge that the game was up: the easterly winds and westerly currents would prevent them from ever making Hispaniola, even if they had not been reliant on ships now more hole than hull. When a night storm drove the Bermuda into the Capitana, breaking her stern and the other ship’s stem, their decision was all but made, and their stomachs sank when at daybreak they discovered a single cable was all that was holding the Capitana to its sheet anchor and away from the Bermuda and the rocks. Columbus began looking for a place to ground the boats, heading south across the narrow strait to northern Jamaica, where after rejecting the waterless and uninhabited Puerto Bueno, they settled as unchoosing beggars on the harbor of Santa Gloria.
The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books Page 10