THE GREAT VOYAGES 55
Caribbean of sugar-processing techniques and the
method of using cuttings to plant sugar cane.
THE VOYAGES OF COLUMBUS
The search for a sea road to the Indies inspired more
than one solution. If some believed that the route
around Africa offered the answer to the Eastern
riddle, others favored sailing due west across the
Atlantic. This view had the support of an eminent
authority, the Florentine scientist Paolo Toscanelli,
who in 1474 advised the Portuguese to try the
western route as “shorter than the one which you
are pursuing by way of Guinea.” His letter came to
the attention of an obscure Italian seafarer, Chris-
topher Columbus, who had been refl ecting on the
problem, and it confi rmed his belief that such a pas-
sage from Europe to Cipangu ( Japan) and Cathay
(China) would be easy. This conception rested on
a gross underestimate of the earth’s circumference
and an equal overestimate of the size and eastward
extension of Asia. Since all educated Europeans
believed the world was round, that question never
entered into the dispute between Columbus and his
opponents. The main issue was the extent of the
ocean between Europe and Asia, and on this point
the opposition was right.
For Columbus the idea of reaching the East by
sailing west acquired all the force of an obsession. A
fi gure of transition from the dying Middle Ages to the
world of capitalism and science, a curious combina-
tion of mystic and practical man, Columbus believed
that God Himself had revealed to him “that it was
feasible to sail from here to the Indies, and placed in
me a burning desire to carry out this plan.”
About 1484, Columbus, who then resided in
Lisbon, offered to make a western voyage of dis-
covery for John II, but a committee of experts who
listened to his proposal advised the king to turn it
down. Undismayed by his rebuff, Columbus next
turned to Castile. After eight years of discouraging
delays and negotiation, Isabella—in a last-minute
change of mind—agreed to support the “Enterprise
of the Indies.” The capitulación (contract) made by
the queen with Columbus named him admiral,
viceroy, and governor of the lands he should dis-
cover and promised him a generous share in the
profi ts of the venture.
On August 3, 1492, Columbus sailed from
Palos with three small ships, the Pinta, the Santa
María, and the Niña, manned not by the jailbirds of
legend but by experienced crews under competent
offi cers. The voyage was remarkably prosperous,
with fair winds the whole way out. But the great
distance beyond sight of land began to worry some
of the men, and by the end of September, the crew
of the Santa María, Columbus’s fl agship, became
disgruntled. According to Columbus’s son Ferdi-
nand, some sailors proposed to heave the admiral
overboard and return to Spain with the report that
he had fallen in while watching the stars. Colum-
bus managed to calm his men, and soon fl oating
gulfweed and bosun birds gave signs of land. On
October 12, they made landfall at an island in the
Bahamas that Columbus named San Salvador.
Cruising southward through the Bahamas,
Columbus came to the northeast coast of Cuba,
which he took for part of Cathay. An embassy sent
to fi nd the Great Khan failed in its mission but re-
turned with reports of a hospitable reception by
natives who introduced the Spaniards to the use of
“certain herbs the smoke of which they inhale,” an
early reference to tobacco. Next Columbus sailed
eastward to explore the northern coast of an is-
land (present-day Dominican Republic and Haiti),
which he named “Española” (Hispaniola). Here the
Spaniards were cheered by the discovery of some
alluvial gold and gold ornaments, which the na-
tives bartered for Spanish trinkets.
From Hispaniola, on whose coast Columbus
lost his fl agship, he returned to Spain to report his
supposed discovery of the Indies. The Sovereigns re-
ceived him with signal honors and ordered him to
immediately prepare a second expedition to follow
up his discovery. In response to Portuguese charges
of encroachment on an area in the Atlantic reserved
to Portugal by a previous treaty with Castile, Ferdi-
nand and Isabella appealed for help to Pope Alex-
ander VI, himself a Spaniard. The pontiff complied
by issuing a series of bulls in 1493 that assigned
to Castile all lands discovered or to be discovered
by Columbus and drew a line from north to south
a hundred leagues west of the Azores and Cape
Verdes; the area west of this line was to be a Span-
ish sphere of exploration. To John II this demarca-
tion line seemed to threaten Portuguese interests in