Part 1

Transcriber’s Note: In keeping with the author’s note that “Such misspellings as a Spanish scholar will readily recognize as the blunders of the Spanish printer I have not thought it necessary to notice”, errors in the Spanish parts of the text have been left as printed. Some evident blunders of the English printer have, however, been corrected.

WORKS ISSUED BY The Hakluyt Society.

SELECT LETTERS OF CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS, ETC.

M.DCCC.LXX.

INSTRUCTIONS TO BINDER.

Portrait of S. Christopher to face Title.

Herrera’s map and Bahama Islands, modern, opposite each other, between pp. lx and lxi; the first at top, the second at bottom, both reading the same way.

Juan de la Cosa’s map to face page lxiii.

SELECT LETTERS OF CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS, WITH OTHER ORIGINAL DOCUMENTS, RELATING TO HIS FOUR VOYAGES TO THE NEW WORLD.

TRANSLATED AND EDITED BY R. H. MAJOR, F.S.A., ETC., KEEPER OF THE DEPARTMENT OF MAPS AND CHARTS IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM, AND HON. SEC. OF THE ROYAL GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY.

Second Edition.

“Tu spiegherai, Colombo, a un novo polo Lontane sì le fortunate antenne, Ch’ a pena seguirà con gli occhi il volo La Fama ch’ ha mille occhi e mille penne. Canti ella Alcide e Bacco, e di te solo Basti a’ posteri tuoi ch’alquanto accenne; Chè quel poco darà lunga memoria Di poema dignissima e d’ istoria.”

_Tasso.—Gerusalemme Liberata._ Canto xv, 32.

LONDON: PRINTED FOR THE HAKLUYT SOCIETY. M.DCCC.LXX.

T. RICHARDS, 37, GREAT QUEEN STREET.

COUNCIL OF THE HAKLUYT SOCIETY.

SIR RODERICK IMPEY MURCHISON, BART., K.C.B., G.C.St.S., F.R.S., F.R.G.S., D.C.L., Mem. Imp. Acad. Sc. St. Petersburgh, Corr. Mem. Inst. Fr. etc., etc., PRESIDENT.

REAR-ADMIRAL C. R. DRINKWATER BETHUNE, C.B., } VICE-PRESIDENTS. THE RIGHT HON. SIR DAVID DUNDAS, } REV. G. P. BADGER, F.R.G.S. J. BARROW, ESQ., F.R.S. E. H. BUNBURY, ESQ. LORD ALFRED CHURCHILL. REAR-ADMIRAL R. COLLINSON, C.B. SIR WALTER ELLIOTT, K.S.I. GENERAL C. FOX. W. E. FRERE, ESQ. CAPTAIN J. G. GOODENOUGH, R.N. CHARLES GREY, ESQ. EGERTON VERNON HARCOURT, ESQ. JOHN WINTER JONES, ESQ., F.S.A. R. H. MAJOR, ESQ., F.S.A. SIR CHARLES NICHOLSON, BART. SIR WILLIAM STIRLING MAXWELL, BART. MAJOR-GENERAL SIR HENRY C. RAWLINSON, K.C.B. THE LORD STANLEY OF ALDERLEY.

CLEMENTS R. MARKHAM, ESQ., HONORARY SECRETARY.

TO THE HONOURED AND BELOVED MEMORY OF HIS EXCELLENCY THE COUNT DE LAVRADIO, LATE ENVOY EXTRAORDINARY AND MINISTER PLENIPOTENTIARY OF HIS MOST FAITHFUL MAJESTY AT THE COURT OF ST. JAMES’S, ETC., ETC., ETC., A WARM APPRECIATOR OF THE EXALTED MERITS OF COLUMBUS, THE FOLLOWING PAGES ARE REVERENTLY INSCRIBED BY THE EDITOR.

PREFACE.

It has been thought desirable by some of the leading members of our Council that I should avail myself of the opportunity offered by this second Edition of the _Select Letters of Columbus_, to lay before the Society a correspondence in which I have endeavoured to vindicate the character of the Society’s early productions, and especially the first edition of this work, from a most unjustifiable attack made upon them by Mr. Froude in the _Westminster Review_ in 1852, and _repeated_ in the second volume of that gentleman’s _Short Studies on Great Subjects_, printed in 1867, and _reprinted_ in a popular edition in the same year. The letters themselves will convey to the reader the whole of the facts, minus only the bitterness and ferocity of Mr. Froude’s attack.

_The Athenæum, July 13th, 1867._

“British Museum, July 3rd, 1867.

“Will you allow me to appeal against a wrong done to the Hakluyt Society in general, and to myself in particular, in a work now very extensively read?

“In the second volume of Mr. Froude’s _Short Studies on Great Subjects_, at page 102, is an article on ‘England’s Forgotten Worthies,’ in which the author makes an attack on the Hakluyt Society, the bitter expressions of which need not be repeated here. It is headed by the titles of three of the Society’s early publications, and the first he states to be _The Observations of Sir Richard Hawkins, Knt., in his Voyage in the South Sea in 1593_. Reprinted from the edition of 1622, and _edited by R. H. Major, Esq., of the British Museum_; whereas I had nothing to do with the editing of that work. This done, at page 108, Mr. Froude says: ‘_The Editor of the Letters of Columbus_ (which I did edit in 1847) _apologizes for the rudeness of the old seaman’s phraseology. Columbus, he tells us, was not so great a master of the pen as of the art of navigation. We are to make excuses for him. We are put on our guard, and, warned not to be offended, before we are introduced to the sublime record of sufferings under which a man of the highest order was staggering towards the end of his earthly calamities; although the inarticulate fragments in which his thought breaks out from him, are strokes of natural art, by the side of which literary pathos is poor and meaningless._’ I warmly deny that I apologized for Columbus’s language. So far from it, I repeatedly expressed my sympathy with and admiration of his manly and touching record of his sufferings. What I did apologize for was any mischievous result which might possibly have accrued, though I do not think it did accrue, to my own diction from that occasional want of connectedness in the original which I had to contend with in translating. The two things are manifestly different, and it is not pleasant to find the reader’s highest sympathies appealed to in order to bring down greater condemnation on me for a fault that I had never committed. But I should not trouble you with such a personal matter, were it not that, having fabricated this handle for censure on me, Mr. Froude makes it a hook for the following criticism on the Hakluyt Society: ‘_And even in the subjects which they select, they are pursued by the same curious fatality_,’ the selection blamed being that of _Drake’s Last Voyage in 1595_, edited from the original MSS. Then, after magisterially condemning this elsewhere unblamed selection as a ‘_fatal_’ sin, Mr. Froude proceeds to say, at the foot of page 109, ‘_But every bad has a worse below it, and more offensive than all these is the Editor of “Hawkins’s Voyage to the South Sea,”_’—and if the reader refers to the head of the article for the name of _this most offensive editor_, he will, as I have already said, find my name, who never had anything to do with it. It is true that on page 110 the name of the real editor, Admiral Bethune, occurs; but as Mr. Froude’s article is a reprint from the _Westminster Review_ of 1852 (not 1853, as Mr. Froude again blunders in saying), there has been time enough for that gentleman to correct the injurious errors into which he had fallen. Although naturally annoyed at this treatment of my name, I left the offence unnoticed at the time; but now that, after a lapse of fifteen years, it is reprinted, with all faults in a widely-circulated publication, I call on Mr. Froude to correct his mis-statements.

“I am, happily, able to state, from the experience of twenty years, that the estimate of the Hakluyt Society’s publications by the literary world is far from supporting Mr. Froude in his supercilious treatment of that Society. Whatever opinion, however, those publications may deserve, it is the duty of a critic to be correct, and the greater the severity, the greater the need of correctness; but when a critic lashes not only one’s self, but one’s friends, by means of misrepresentations and blunders of his own making, what does that critic deserve?

R. H. MAJOR.”

_The Athenæum, July 20th, 1867._

“5, Onslow Gardens, July 15, 1867.

“I am sorry to have given Mr. Major cause to complain of me. Should my _Essays_ be reprinted, the mistake which he points out shall be corrected; and I can only regret the injustice which meanwhile is done to his name. At the same time the only error which I can acknowledge is confined to the title of a work which stands at the head of the article. In the article itself the volumes criticised are assigned to their proper editors.

J. A. FROUDE.”

_The Athenæum, July 27th, 1867._

“British Museum, July 23, 1867.

“I beg to thank Mr. Froude for his courteous expression of regret for what, I am quite sure, was done inadvertently, and I would thankfully accept his promise of reparation if it were extended to all the mischief that is being done to me. Unfortunately for me, _two editions_ of Mr. Froude’s _Essays_ have been issued this year, _the second this very month_, in a _cheap and popular form_; thus diffusing and prolonging, in the most effectual manner, an injustice to my name which has existed for fifteen years, and postponing indefinitely the chance of reparation in a future edition.

“Under such circumstances, I read with regret that, while acknowledging one error, Mr. Froude does not also acknowledge what everyone else sees clearly and condemns, the injustice of his censure on me with respect to Columbus, and which he makes a ground for censure on the Hakluyt Society. That Society stands too high to need any defence from its former Honorary Secretary, but I may be excused for specially asking that this censure may be expunged; for I have a letter from Mr. Bancroft, who was Ambassador here at the time, in which he eulogizes, in terms so warm that I may not repeat them, the spirit in which I had written both of the sufferings of Columbus, and of the touching language in which he had recorded them. This is exactly the contrary of what Mr. Froude’s two editions are telling everybody that I have done.

R. H. MAJOR.”

Now that, in revising my translation for this second edition, I have again gone through the texts of Columbus’s letters, I uncompromisingly repeat the expression which in 1847 I used _solely_ in exculpation of any mischievous result to my own diction from the disconnectedness of the original, viz., that “Columbus was not so great a master of the pen as of the art of navigation.” Whether my judgment on this point be of more or less weight than Mr. Froude’s is of no moment whatever; but it is of moment that the mischievous effect of a savage criticism, built up on the critic’s own blunders, should be neutralized as far as possible. The reader has the realities of the whole case before him, and may judge for himself.

R. H. M.

INTRODUCTION.

Nearly three thousand years have passed since the wisest of men declared that there was nothing new under the sun. The saying has held good to the present day, for men are perpetually finding out that their recent discoveries had been already made, but under circumstances which did not reveal the full value of that which had been discovered. No greater examples of this truth can be adduced than in the history of the Atlantic, of America, and of Australia. Until the days of Prince Henry the Navigator, the Atlantic was so unknown that it justly bore the name of the “Sea of Darkness;” and yet, during the previous two thousand years occasional glimpses of light had in fact been thrown upon the face of that mysterious ocean. “Nil novi sub sole” was still an indisputable proverb. In the researches into the Atlantic originated by Prince Henry, Columbus took part, and hence, as we shall presently more fully see, derived the idea of the great importance of explorations to the West. Within one hundred years of the triumphant rounding by Prince Henry’s navigators (in 1434) of Cape Bojador, which till then had been the limit of Atlantic exploration, the Portuguese had discovered both the eastern and western shores of the continental island of Australia. And yet till recently men knew not that they owed the knowledge either of America or of Australia[1] to the initiatory efforts of a Prince with whose name, in fact, they were almost entirely unacquainted.

Such facts show the great injustice done to the originators of great explorations who, working with the smallest means, really deserve the highest meed of honour.

Yet in the estimate of merit it must be conceded that priority, immense as are its claims, is not all-absorbent. Columbus, as we shall presently see, was anticipated in the discovery of America, and yet such were the special virtues brought to bear upon the execution of his great achievement, that, as Humboldt has eloquently said, “the majesty of grand recollections seems concentred” on his illustrious name. The peculiar value of the following letters, descriptive of the four important voyages of Columbus, is that the events described are from the pens of those to whom the events occurred. In them we have laid before us, as it were from Columbus’s own mouth, a clear statement of his opinions and conjectures on what were to him great cosmical riddles—riddles which have since been solved mainly through the light which his illustrious deeds have shed upon the field of our observation. In these letters also we trace the magnanimity with which Columbus could support an accumulated burthen of undeserved affliction. It is impossible to read without the deepest sympathy the occasional murmurings and half suppressed complaints which are uttered in the course of his letter to Ferdinand and Isabella, describing his fourth voyage. These murmurings and complaints were wrung from his manly spirit by sickness and sorrow, and though reduced almost to the brink of despair by the injustice of the king, yet do we find nothing harsh or disrespectful in his language to the sovereign. A curious contrast is presented to us. The gift of a world could not move the monarch to gratitude; the infliction of chains, as a recompense for that gift, could not provoke the subject to disloyalty. The same great heart which through more than twenty wearisome years of disappointment and chagrin gave him strength to beg and to buffet his way to glory, still taught him to bear with majestic meekness the conversion of that glory into unmerited shame.

The translated documents are seven in number. Five of them are letters from the hand of Columbus himself, describing respectively his first, third, and fourth voyages. Another, describing the second voyage, is by Dr. Chanca, the physician to the fleet during that expedition, and the seventh document is an extract from the will of Diego Mendez, one of Columbus’s officers during the fourth voyage, who gives a detailed account of many most interesting adventures undertaken by himself, but left undescribed by Columbus.

I shall not pause here to enter into the important bibliography of these documents, which has no charm for many readers, and is therefore placed at the end of this introduction. A series of original documents of such importance might appear to need but few words of introduction or recommendation, since the entire history of civilisation presents us with no event, with the exception perhaps of the art of printing, so momentous as the discovery of the western world; and, independently of the lustre which the grandeur of that event confers upon the discoverer, there is no individual who has rendered himself, on the score of personal character and conduct, more illustrious than Christopher Columbus. There have, nevertheless, not been wanting those, who, from various motives, and on grounds of various trustworthiness, have endeavoured to lessen his glory, by impeaching his claim to the priority of discovery, or by arguing that the discovery itself has proved a misfortune rather than advantage to the world at large. By way, therefore, of vindicating the value of the original documents here translated, a brief account of such pretensions to prior discovery as have been at different times put forth, may not be thought superfluous.

The oldest story which seems possibly to bear reference to what we call the “new world” is related by Theopompus.

Theopompus lived in the fourth century before the Christian era; in a fragment of his works preserved by Ælian is a conversation between Silenus and Midas, King of Phrygia, in which the former says that Europe, Asia, and Africa were surrounded by the sea, but that beyond this known world was an island of immense extent, containing huge animals and men of twice our stature, and long-lived in proportion. There were in it many great cities whose inhabitants had laws and customs entirely different from ours. Fabulous as the story is as a whole, we cannot escape from the thought that it suggests, though vaguely, a notion of the real existence of a great western country. This idea is strengthened by the remarkable story related to Solon by a priest of Sais from the sacred inscriptions in the temples, and presented to us by Plato in his Timæus and Critias, wherein he speaks of an island called Atlantis, opposite the Pillars of Hercules, larger than Africa and Asia united, but which in one day and night was swallowed up by an earthquake and disappeared beneath the waters. The result was that no one had since been able to navigate or explore that sea on account of the slime which the submerged island had produced. Many as have been the doubts and conjectures to which this narrative has been subjected by the learned in ancient and modern times, it is a remarkable fact that Crantor, in a commentary on Plato quoted by Proclus, declares that he found this same account retained by the priests of Sais three hundred years after the period of Solon, and that he was shown the inscriptions in which it was embodied. It is also deserving of notice that precisely in that part of the ocean described in the legend we find the island groups of the Azores, Madeira, the Canaries, and a host of other rocks and sand-banks, while the great bank of varec, or floating seaweed, occupying the middle portion of the basin of the North Atlantic, and covering, according to Humboldt, an area about six times as large as Germany, has been reasonably regarded as explanatory of the obstacle to navigation to which the tradition refers.

Various have been the speculations respecting the original colonisation of the western hemisphere. Athanasius Kircher, in his _Prodromus Coptus and Œdipus Ægyptiacus_, gives the Egyptians the credit of colonising America, as well as India, China, and Japan, grounding his argument upon the religious worship of the sun, moon, stars, and animals. Edward Brerewood, at pages 96 and 97 of his _Enquiries touching the Diversity of Languages_, contends, and he is far from being alone in his opinion, that the Americans are the progeny of the Tartars. Marc Lescarbot, in his _Histoire de la Nouvelle France_, maintains that the Canaanites, when routed by Joshua, were driven into America by storms, and that Noah was born in America, and after the flood showed his descendants the way into their paternal country, and assigned to some of them their places of abode there; while Hornius, in his treatise _De originibus Americanis_, after touching upon the various conjectures here quoted, animadverts on the presumption and folly of Paracelsus, when he states that a second Adam and Eve were created for the peopling of the western world.

The first specific statement, however, of a supposed migration from the shores of the old world to those of the new, is that which the elder De Guignes presumes to be demonstrable from the relation given by a Chinese historian, Li-Yen, who lived at the commencement of the seventh century. (See _Mémoires de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres_, vol. 28, p. 504.) The said historian speaks of a country, named Fou-sang, more than forty thousand _li_[2] to the East of China. He says that they who went thither started from the province of Leaton, situated to the north of Peking; that after having made twelve thousand li, they came to Japan; that travelling seven thousand li northward from that place, they arrived at the country of Venchin, and at five thousand li eastward of the latter, they found the country of Tahan, whence they journeyed to Fou-sang, which was twenty thousand li distant from Tahan. From this account De Guignes endeavours, by a long chain of argument, to prove that the Chinese had pushed their investigations into Jeso, Kamtschatka, and into that part of America which is situated opposite the most eastern coast of Asia.

This surmise of De Guignes has been answered by Klaproth, in a paper which appeared in the _Nouvelles Annales des Voyages_ (tom. 51, 2ᵉ serie, p. 53). His arguments go to show that the country named Fou-sang is Japan; and that the country of Tahan, situated to the west of Asiatic Vinland, can only be the island of Saghalian. Humboldt observes upon this subject, that the number of horses, the practice of writing, and the manufacture of paper from the Fou-sang tree, mentioned in the account given by the Chinese historian, ought to have shown De Guignes that the country of which he spoke was not America.