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tiny outpost with increasingly more food and
gold. The colonists, who miscalculated the
limits to which the peaceful Taino would
endure such behavior, would pay for this arro-
gance with their lives.
In Barcelona on the day of Columbus’s
arrival at the Spanish court, however, the
atmosphere hummed with rejoicing and
anticipation of great things to come. The
monarchs finished listening to their guest’s
tales of the Indies and the singers of the royal
chapel were signaled to chant the Christian
hymn Te Deum. Las Casas reported that there
were tears in the eyes of the monarchs,
Columbus, and others present.
After the ceremony, Columbus—a Genoese
merchant’s son, now honored by the rulers of
Spain’s growing empire—was shown to his
lodgings. The admiral was thinking ahead. He
was ready to set sail again, intent on following
the islands he had discovered to the court of
the Grand Khan of China or to the imperial
palaces of Japan. Flushed with glory and wary
of competitors, Columbus was already plan-
ning to outfit a fresh expedition and again set
sail toward the western horizon.
A NEW WORLD
By the time Columbus set sail a second time,
his first voyage was common knowledge
throughout Spain. Gossip and rumor helped
spread the news. Educated Italians and Ger-
mans living in Portugal and Spain wrote to
their friends and families at home, spreading
details of the voyage across southern Europe
with surprising speed. Columbus’s initial writ-
ten report to Ferdinand and Isabella, later
known as his “Letter on the First Voyage,”
reached Barcelona so quickly that it was
printed and distributed publicly even before
Columbus’s arrival at court. Gradually, copies
of his report were seen throughout Europe.
European intellectuals who were fasci-
nated by Columbus’s first voyage believed, as
he did, that the islands he had reached lay
somewhere off the eastern shores of Asia,
then sometimes called the “antipodes” (from
the Greek words meaning “opposing feet,”
reflecting the notion that the feet of the peo-
ple inhabiting the opposite parts of the Earth
would come up against each other). Such
scholars included Queen Isabella’s chaplain,
an Italian priest and perceptive geographer
named Pietro Martire d’Anghiera. Better
known as Peter Martyr, he witnessed Colum-
bus’s return to Spain in 1492 and was both
fascinated by and skeptical of the admiral’s
grand claims. Reflecting the current misper-
ceptions about the size of the Earth, political
tensions between Spain and Portugal, and a
sense of what the discovery might mean,
Martyr wrote:Acertain Colonus [Columbus] has sailed to
the western antipodes, even to the Indian
coast, as he believes. He has discovered
many islands which are thought to be those
of which mention is made bycosmogra-
phers, beyond the eastern ocean and adja-
cent to India. I do not wholly deny this,
although the size of the globe seems to sug-
gest otherwise, for there are not wanting
those who think the Indian coast to be a
short distance from the end of Spain....
Enough for us that the hidden half of the
globe is brought to light, and the Por-
tuguese daily go farther and farther beyond
the equator. Thus shoreshitherto unknown
will soon become accessible.Peter Martyr had no way of knowing what
future landings on and departures from those
“shores hitherto unknown” would mean to the
course of human history. His skepticism about
Columbus’s claims faded as he studied the(^8) B Discovery of the Americas, 1492–1800
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