QUEEN ISABELLA'S DECISION.

109 the fallacies and absurdities involved in such statements, and to wonder at the ignorance that could believe in them; others there were ready with facts of navigation and geography, few as they were in that age, to show that, whether Columbus were right or wrong, such objections to his theories were more baseless than his wildest dreams. And there were some, perhaps, who thought, if they did not say so, that the laws of the universe

could not be limited to texts of Scripture, or assertions sanctified by nothing but priestly authority. It was a gain, nevertheless, to get the subject before so august a body as this Council of Salamanca, and the eloquence which Columbus brought to its discussion, the special scientific facts of which he showed himself the master, the skill with which he parried attack, and the sagacity with which he avoided the pitfalls and ambushes with which the wily monks beset his path, made him new friends and strengthened his old ones.

Application

and France.

Doubtful of success in Spain, he at one time sent his brother Bartholomew to England to open negotiations, if possible, with Henry VII.; at another time he entered into correspondence with Louis XI. of France. From Ferdinand and his counsellors he could get only evasive answers, and wearied out at length with pro- to England crastination, and negotiations that came to nothing, he bade farewell to his friends and started for France and England. But among those who sincerely believed in him and his project was Luis de Santangel, receiver of the ecclesiastical revenues of Aragon, who, on hearing that Columbus had actually started to leave the country, hastened to the queen and begged her to recall him. His entreaties and representations, seconded by those of Alonzo de Quintanilla, the Minister of Finance, who happened to be present, prevailed with Isabella. They convinced her that the loss and the shame to Spain would be great and irreparable if such an opportunity to add to her dominion and wealth, by the discovery of a short passage to India, should fall into the hands of any other power. A messenger was immediately dispatched to bring Columbus back, the queen Queen Isadeclaring that the enterprise should now be her own, and bella decides that she would pawn the royal jewels to defray its expenses. enterprise. This generous sacrifice on her part, however, was rendered unneces

on the

sum.

sary by Santangel, who took it upon himself to advance the requisite On the arrival of Columbus, negotiation was resumed, and an agreement was at length drawn up between Ferdinand and Isabella and himself by which he was made admiral and viceroy of all the seas and lands he should discover; a tenth part of all the revenues to be derived from them was to be his; and he was to provide an eighth part of the expenses. Armed with such authority, he repaired to Palos to make arrangements for the voyage.

The departure from Palos.

The agreement was signed in April or May, 1492, and on the third of the following August he sailed from Palos in command of an expedition consisting of three vessels and one hundred and twenty men. The largest ship, the Santa Maria, on which flew the admiral's pennant, was probably not more than one

hundred tons' burden; the other two, the Pinta and the Niña, commanded respectively by his friends Martin Alonzo Pinzon and Vincente Yanez Pinzon, of Palos, were still smaller vessels, called caravels, with no decks amidships, but built high out of the water at the stem and stern.

But not only were his vessels small; they were hardly seaworthy, and one of them, the Pinta, unshipped her rudder before they reached the Canaries. It is conjectured, indeed, that this was not accidental, but was con

trived by the owners of the vessel before she left port, they not liking the adventure on which they were compelled to send her. The admiral, however, had great difficulty in getting any vessels at all, so intense was the feeling in Palos against the enterprise. The royal mandate; the promise of immunity from civil or criminal process against any person who would enlist in it; the example of the Pinzons, the most respectable and experienced mariners of the port; and the priestly influence of Juan Perez, the prior of Rabida, were means and influences all needed and all used to procure crews. When the expedition sailed, it was followed by prayers and tears and lamentations for men most of whom were constrained by authority or ne

THE FIRST EXPEDITION.

111

cessity to enter upon an adventure which seemed desperate to the last degree.

Expense of

tion.

The sum advanced from the treasury of Aragon by Santangel was one million one hundred and forty thousand maravedis, "being the sum he lent," says the account-book, "for pay- the expediing the caravels which their highnesses ordered to go as the armada to the Indies, and for paying Christopher Columbus, who goes in the said armada." 1 If to this be added the one eighth share of the expenses which it was stipulated Columbus himself should provide, the whole cost of the expedition was one million two hundred and eighty-two thousand and five hundred maravedis, a sum hardly equal in its purchasing power to fifty thousand dollars of the money of our time. It is evident, therefore, that the expense of the expedition must always have been a secondary consideration with the sovereigns from whom Columbus had sought assistance. The real difficulty was not money, but the serious doubts as to the soundness of his theory of the possibility of a western voyage to India. It was those doubts, intensified into absolute terror, that filled Palos with wailing and consternation when he succeeded, at last, in making good his departure.

Seven months later he entered the same port with the halo of the most brilliant success about him, and prepared to proceed to court surrounded with the barbaric pomp of painted savages decked out with ornaments of gold, and crowned with coronets of brilliant feathers, attendants carrying in their hands birds of the gayest plumage, the stuffed skins of strange beasts, and specimens of trees and plants supposed to bear the most precious spices. No wonder that then the revulsion of feeling was tremendous, and he was hailed as the greatest and most fortunate of men. It was a short-lived triumph, however, never to be repeated on his return from either of his three subsequent voyages, for his was a success that had not succeeded.

The mistake

navigator.

The glory of the discovery he actually made has to a remarkable degree obscured the fact that in the long discussion before kings and councils of the discovery he proposed to make, it of the great was Columbus who was in the wrong, and his opponents who were in the right, on the main question a short western route to India. The ignorance, the obstinacy, the stupidity, with which he so long contended, were indeed obstacles in the way of an event so important to all civilized races as the possession of half the globe; but that event was no more proposed or foreseen by Columbus than it was opposed by those who withstood him the most persistently, or ridiculed him the most unmercifully. The very splendor of his

1 Helps' Life of Columbus, p. 80.