Slike strani
PDF
ePub

THE RETURN OF COLUMBUS.

EPES SARGENT.

Characters PEDRO, his secretary.

DON GOMEZ, a Grandee.

ON GOMEZ. What? What is all this you tell me? Colum

DON bus returned? A new world discovered? Impossible!

PEDRO. It is even so, sir. Only an hour since a courier arrived at the palace with the intelligence. Columbus was driven by stress All Portugal is in a ferment

of weather to anchor in the Tagus.

of enthusiasm, and all Spain will be equally excited soon. sensation is prodigious.

DON G. Oh, it is a trick! It must be a trick!

The

PEDRO. But he has brought home the proofs of his visit-gold and precious stones, strange plants and animals; and, above all, specimens of a new race of men, copper-colored, with straight hair.

DON G. Still I say, a trick! He has been coasting along the African shore, and there collected a few curiosities which he is ing off for proofs of his pretended discovery.

PEDRO. It is a little singular that all his men should be leagued in keeping up so unprofitable a falsehood.

DON G. But 'tis against reason, against common-sense, against Scripture, that such a discovery should be made. It must not be! It shall not be!

PEDRO. How will your Excellency prevent it? King John of Portugal has received him with royal magnificence, has listened to his accounts, and is persuaded that they are true.

DON G. We shall see, we shall see. Look you, sir, a plain, matter-of-fact man, such as I, is not to be taken in by any such preposterous story. This vaunted discovery will turn out no discovery at all. my words.

Mark

PEDRO. The King and Queen have given orders for preparations on the most magnificent scale for the reception of Columbus.

DON G. What delusion! Her Majesty is so credulous! A practical, common-sense man like myself can find no points of sympathy in such a nature.

PEDRO. The Indians on board of the returned vessels are said to be unlike any known race of men.

DON G. Very unreliable, all that. I take the common-sense view of the affair. I am a matter-of-fact man; and, remember what I say it will all turn out a trick. The crews may have been deceived. Columbus may have steered a southerly course instead of a westerly. Anything is probable, rather than that a coast to the westward of us has been discovered.

PEDRO. I saw the courier; he told me he had conversed with all the sailors, and they laughed at the suspicion that there could be any mistake about the discovery, or that any other but a westerly course could have been steered.

DON G. Still I say, a trick! An unknown coast reached by steering west? Impossible! The earth a globe and men standing with their heads down in space? Folly! An ignorant sailor from Genoa in the right, and all our learned doctors and philosophers in the wrong? Infatuation! I am a matter-of-fact man, sir. I will believe what I can see and handle and understand. But as for believing in the antipodes, or that the earth is round, or that Columbus has discovered land to the west-oh, dear! if it should prove true, how the Queen will jeer me! Ring the bell, sir. Order the carriage. I will go at once to the palace and undeceive the King and Queen.

IN

THE RETURN OF COLUMBUS.

WILLIAM H. PRESCOTT.

N the spring of 1493, while the court was still at Barcelona, letters were received from Christopher Columbus, announcing his return to Spain and the successful achievement of his great enterprise, by the discovery of land beyond the western ocean.

The delight and astonishment, raised by this intelligence, were proportioned to the skepticism with which his project had been originally viewed. The sovereigns were now filled with a natural impatience to ascertain the extent and particulars of the important discovery; and they transmitted instant instructions to the Admiral to repair to Barcelona as soon as he should have made the preliminary arrangements for the further prosecution of his enterprise.

Great was the agitation in the little community of Palos, as they beheld the well-known vessel of the Admiral reëntering their harbor. Their desponding imaginations had long since consigned him to a watery grave; for, in addition to the preternatural horrors which hung over the voyage, they had experienced the most stormy and disastrous winter within the recollection of the oldest mariners. Most of them had relatives or friends on board. They thronged immediately to the shore, to assure themselves with their own eyes of the truth of their return. When they beheld their faces once more, and saw them accompanied by the numerous evidences which they brought back of the success of the expedition, they burst forth in acclamation of joy and gratulation. They awaited the landing of Columbus, when the whole population of the place accompanied him and his crew to the principal church, where solemn thanksgivings were offered up for their return, while every bell in the village sent forth a joyous peal in honor of the glorious event.

The Admiral was too desirous of presenting himself before the sovereigns to protract his stay long in Palos. He took with him on his journey specimens of the multifarious products of the newly discovered regions. He was accompanied by several of the native islanders, arrayed in their simple barbaric costume, and decorated, as he passed through the principal cities, with collars, bracelets, and other ornaments of gold, rudely fashioned. He exhibited also considerable quantities of the same metal in dust, or in crude masses, numerous vegetable exotics possessed of aromatic or medicinal virtues, several kinds of quadrupeds unknown in Europe, and birds whose varieties of gaudy plumage gave a brilliant effect to the pageant. The Admiral's progress through the country was every

[ocr errors]

where impeded by the multitudes thronging forth to gaze at the extraordinary spectacle, and the more extraordinary man, who, in the emphatic language of that time, which has now lost its force from its familiarity, first revealed the existence of a new world." As he passed through the busy, populous city of Seville, every window-balcony, and house-top, which could afford a glimpse of him, is described to have been crowded with spectators.

It was the middle of April before Columbus reached Barcelona. The nobility and cavaliers in attendance on the court, together with the authorities of the city, came to the gates to receive him, and escorted him to the royal presence. Ferdinand and Isabella were seated, with their son, Prince John, under a superb canopy of state, awaiting his arrival. On his approach they rose from their seats, and, extending their hands to him to salute, caused him to be seated before them. These were unprecedented marks of condescension to a person of Columbus's rank, in the haughty and ceremonious court of Castile.

It was, indeed, the proudest moment in the life of Columbus. He had fully established the truth of his long-contested theory, in the face of argument, sophistry, sneers, skepticism, and contempt. He had achieved this not by chance, but by calculation, supported through the most adverse circumstances by consummate conduct. The honors paid him, which had hitherto been reserved only for rank, or fortune, or military success, purchased by the blood and tears of thousands, were, in his case, a homage to intellectual power, successfully exerted in behalf of the noblest interests of humanity.

The discoveries of Columbus excited a sensation, particularly among men of science, in the most distant parts of Europe, strongly contrasting with the apathy which had preceded them. They congratulated one another on being reserved for an age which had witnessed the consummation of so grand an event. Most of the scholars of the day, however, adopted the erroneous hypothesis of Columbus, who considered the lands he had discovered as bordering on the eastern shores of Asia, and lying ad

jacent to the vast and opulent regions depicted in such golden colors by Mandeville and Polo. This conjecture, which was conformable to the Admiral's opinions before undertaking the voyage, was corroborated by the apparent similarity between various productions of these islands and of the east. From this misapprehension the new dominions soon came to be distinguished as the West Indies, an appellation by which they are still recognized in the titles of the Spanish crown.

THE DISCOVERY OF THE HUDSON RIVER.

WASHINGTON IRVING.

[In 1609 Henry Hudson, an Englishman in the service of the Dutch, on a voyage in quest of a northwest passage to India, discovered the river which bears his name. Two Dutch forts were erected in 1614, one at Albany and one on Manhattan Island, where the city of New York now stands. The country was called New Netherlands, and the settlement on Manhattan Island was named New Amsterdam. These names were retained until the conquest of the country by the English. Charles II. of England granted the country to his brother, the Duke of York, in whose honor the country and city were named.]

N the ever-memorable year of our Lord 1609, on a Saturday morning, the five-and-twentieth day of March, old style, did that "worthy and irrecoverable discoverer (as he has justly been called), Master Henry Hudson," set sail from Holland in a stout vessel called the Half-Moon, being employed by the Dutch East India Company, to seek a northwest passage to China.

Henry (or, as the Dutch historians call him, Hendrick) Hudson was a seafaring man of renown, who had learned to smoke tobacco under Sir Walter Raleigh, and is said to have been the first to introduce it into Holland, which gained him much popularity in that country, and caused him to find great favor in the eyes of their High Mightinesses, the Lords States-General, and also of the honorable East India Company. He was a short, square, brawny old gentleman, with a double chin, a mastiff mouth, and a broad copper nose, which was supposed in those days to have acquired its

« PrejšnjaNaprej »