The Life of Columbus | Page 3

his Kublai Khan, or his Prester John; but he brought into relation
the New World and the Old.
It is impossible to read without the deepest interest the account from
day to day of his voyages. It has always been a favourite speculation
with historians, and, indeed, with all thinking men, to consider what
would have happened from a slight change of circumstances in the
course of things which led to great events. This may be an idle and a

useless speculation, but it is an inevitable one. Never was there such a
field for this kind of speculation as in the voyages, especially the first
one, of Columbus. The first point of land that he saw, and landed at, is
as nearly as possible the central point of what must once have been the
United Continent of North and South America. The least change of
circumstance might have made an immense difference in the result. The
going to sleep of the helmsman, the unshipping of the rudder, (which
did occur in the case of "The Pinzon,") the slightest mistake in taking
an observation, might have made, and probably did make, considerable
change in the event. During that memorable first voyage of Columbus,
the gentlest breeze carried with it the destinies of future empires. Had
he made his first discovery of land at a point much southward of that
which he did discover, South America might have been colonized by
the Spaniards with all the vigour that belonged to their first efforts at
colonization; and, being a continent, might not afterwards have been so
easily wrested from their sway by the maritime nations.
On the other hand, had some breeze, big with the fate of nations,
carried Columbus northwards, it would hardly have been left for the
English, more than a century afterwards, to found those Colonies which
have proved to be the seeds of the greatest nation that the world is
likely to behold.
It was, humanly speaking, singularly unfortunate for Spanish dominion
in America, that the earliest discoveries of the Spaniards were those of
the West India Islands. A multiplicity of governors introduced
confusion, feebleness, and want of system, into colonial government.
The numbers, comparatively few, of the original inhabitants in each
island, were rapidly removed from the scene of action; and the
Spaniards lacked, at the beginning, that compressing force which
would have been found in the existence of a body of natives who could
not have been removed by the outrages of Spanish cruelty, the strength
of Spanish liquors, or the virulence of Spanish diseases.[Footnote 2]
[Footnote 2: The smallpox, for instance, was a disease introduced by
the Spaniards, which the comparatively feeble constitution of the
Indians could not withstand.]

The Monarchs of Spain, too, would have been compelled to treat their
new discoveries and conquests more seriously. To have held the
country at all, they must have held it well. It would not have been
Ovandos, Bobadillas, Nicuesas and Ojedas who could have been
employed to govern, discover, conquer, colonize--and ruin by their
folly--the Spanish possessions in the Indies. The work of discovery and
conquest, begun by Columbus, must then have been entrusted to men
like Cortes, the Pizarros, Vasco Nunez, or the President Gasca; and a
colony or a kingdom founded by any of these men might well have
remained a great colony, or a great kingdom, to the present day.
ARTHUR HELPS. London, October, 1868.

CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
Early Discoveries in the Fifteenth Century
CHAPTER II.
Early Years of Columbus
CHAPTER III.
Columbus in Spain
CHAPTER IV.
First Voyage
CHAPTER V.
Homeward bound
CHAPTER VI.

Second Voyage of Discovery
CHAPTER VII.
Illness; Further Discoveries; Plots against Columbus
CHAPTER VIII.
Criminals sent to the Indies; Repartimientos; Insurrection
CHAPTER IX.
Columbus's Third Voyage
CHAPTER X.
Arrival at Hispaniola; Bad Treatment by Bobadlilla
CHAPTER XI.
Columbus pleads his Cause at Court; New Enterprise; Ovando
CHAPTER XII.
Remarkable Despatch; Mutiny; Eclipse predicted, and its influence;
Mutiny quelled
CHAPTER XIII.
Falling Fortunes: Conclusion
CHAPTER I.
Early Discoveries in the Fifteenth Century.
LEGENDS OF THE SEA.

Modern familiarity with navigation renders it difficult for us to
appreciate adequately the greatness of the enterprise which was
undertaken by the discoverers of the New World. Seen by the light of
science and of experience, the ocean, if it has some real terrors, has no
imaginary ones. But it was quite otherwise in the fifteenth century.
Geographical knowledge was but just awakening, after ages of slumber;
and throughout those ages the wildest dreams had mingled fiction with
fact. Legends telling of monsters of the deep, jealous of invasion of
their territory; of rocks of lodestone, powerful enough to extract every
particle of iron from a passing ship; of stagnant seas and fiery skies; of
wandering saints and flying islands; all combined to invest the
unknown