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by romantic adventurers. Those who had braved the perils of the ocean to seek their fortunes in a new world fancied that they trod on enchanted ground; and where nature appeared in so new a garb, the invariable laws by which she directs her operations were easily lost sight of. Ponce de Leon failed to discover the miraculous fountain; but, after sailing a considerable distance to the north-west, he fell in with land, to which, from the circumstance of its being discovered on Easter-day, he gave the name of Florida.* He remarked the strong easterly currents running near the newly discovered country; and by this voyage the Spanish navigators were taught the advantage of steering by the straits of Bahama on their return to Europe.

The fierce resistance of the savages prevented Ponce de Leon from making any settlement on the coast of Florida; and little notice was taken of his discovery till 1519, when Francisco Garay, the governor of Jamaica, sent four ships to make farther researches in the north. Pineda, who commanded the expedition, commencing his survey at Florida, which had hitherto been supposed to be an island, succeeded in following the coast westward as far as Vera Cruz in New Spain. In describing the Indian nations which he had seen in the course of his voyage, he indulged largely in the privilege of fiction allowed to travellers: some, he says, were giants, others pigmies, and some were of ordinary stature.†

The voyage of Pineda completed the survey of the Mexican Gulf; for discoveries had already been made towards the west, which awakened the curiosity and prompted the exertions of Garay. In the year 1517, Francisco Hernando de Cordoba sailed from Cuba towards the west; examined a considerable portion of the northern coast of Yucatan; and returned to the Havanna with accounts collected from the Indians of a civilised and wealthy nation situated to the west of the coast which he had explored. In the following year, Juan de *Easter day is called by the Spaniards Pasqua florida. + Navarrete, p. 65,

Grijalva proceeded from the same port to continue these discoveries. Having passed the limits of preceding navigators, he came to a country which the natives called Quimpech or Campeachy. Farther on, he landed on a small island near the shore, beautifully ornamented with plantations; and in the centre of it he found several stone temples apparently in decay, with long flights of steps conducting to their summits; and among them one exceeding all the rest in height, and containing an idol to which human victims were offered in sacrifice. The farther Grijalva proceeded towards the west, the more the country seemed to improve in opulence and civilisation. The white houses built of stone, agreeably scattered along the shore, reminded the Spanish seamen of their native land, and they bestowed on this promising region the flattering title of New Spain. No difficulty was found in trafficking with the natives, who were peaceable and obliging. Gold was procured in large quantities; Grijalva even received from the hands of a cacique a complete suit of armour made of that precious metal. Having collected not a little treasure, and pursued his discoveries northwards beyond Panuco, he hastened to make his way back to Cuba, in the hope of returning shortly to this land of riches, and of levying new contributions on the weakness or facility of its simple inhabitants.

Thus, within the space of six-and-twenty years from the first discovery of America, the Spaniards had laboured with unceasing activity to extend their knowledge of the New World; they had established numerous colonies in it at a great distance from one another; and without any national exertions, but carried forward solely by the impulse of individual ambition, they had examined the winding and circuitous coast of that great continent, from the Rio de la Plata to the extremity of Florida. As their knowledge increased, their boldness and curiosity augmented with it; and accidents frequently occurred which widened the limits of their geographical knowledge. Lucas Vasquez de Aillon sailed

from Hispaniola in 1520, to capture slaves in the Bahama islands: failing, however, in the immediate object of his voyage, he directed his course northward, and discovered that part of the coast of North America which is included within the limits of the two Carolinas. He found the natives peaceable, and in great numbers. They were at first terror-struck at the novel appearance of the Spaniards and their ships; but when the timorous feelings of amazement had passed away, they crowded on board to indulge their curiosity in a nearer survey of their strange visitors. The Spaniards watched their opportunity, and suddenly weighing anchor, bore off the unhappy Indians from their native shores to miserable servitude. Proud of his success, Aillon repaired to the court of Spain to solicit a grant of the country which he had discovered. This was readily conceded; and he engaged to establish a colony at his own expense, eight hundred leagues from Hispaniola, and within three years from the time of the grant, or before 1528. He attempted to comply with these conditions; fitted out an expedition of six ships, and five hundred persons; landed at the mouth of a river, in 33° 40′, which is probably the George Town river of modern maps, and proceeded to build a town in an eligible situation. But sickness, want, and the unceasing attacks of the Indians, broke the spirits of his people. Aillon himself was among the number of those who fell victims to the insalubrity of the climate. Of the five hundred who had accompanied that unfortunate commander, in a short time not above a hundred and fifty remained; and this miserable remnant, shocked at the rapid mortality of their companions, fled from the scene of so much distress, and returned to Hispaniola.

Some time previous to these events, an important discovery had been made in the southern hemisphere, which promised brilliant advantages, and added largely to the triumphs of the Spanish nation. Fernando Magalhaens, or, as he is ordinarily called, Magellan, a Portuguese commander, of distinguished ability and expe

rience, dissatisfied with the neglect in which he was allowed to languish after long services in the East Indies, where he assisted at the siege of Malacca, and unable to obtain from his sovereign that meed of favour to which he felt himself entitled, resolved to abandon for ever a kingdom in which meritorious exertions were so ill requited. A man of his stamp was sure to meet with a gracious reception at the court of Spain. Being secretly invited thither, he repaired, in 1517, to Valladolid, where Charles V. at that time resided with his court. Magellan answered all the enquiries of that prince with respect to the situation of the Moluccas, and supported the opinion that Spain had a right to those valuable islands.

The bull by which pope Alexander VI. adjusted the conflicting claims of the Spaniards and Portuguese determined that a line, drawn from pole to pole, a hundred leagues to the west of the Azores, should be the common boundary of their respective domains; that all countries discovered 180 degrees to the west of that line should belong to the Spaniards; and those at an equal distance on the east of it, to the Portuguese. This mode of demarcation, sufficiently positive and exact in the Atlantic, was practically useless at the other side of the globe. Geographers were as yet unable to measure degrees of longitude with accuracy. Those who followed Ptolemy, and held that China was 180 degrees from the Canary islands, were disposed to believe that the Moluccas, or Spice islands, lay beyond that portion of the globe bestowed on Portugal by the sovereign pontiff, and of course that they belonged to Spain if reached from the west. The convention of 1494, in which those rival courts had agreed to remove the line of demarcation to the distance of 370 leagues westward of the Azores, while it opened to Portugal a footing in Brazil, necessarily enlarged the claims of Spain in the eastern hemisphere, and threw fresh confusion on the title to the very spot, the possession of which was so ardently coveted by the contracting parties. In no other

instance have political speculations been so remarkably frustrated by geographical ignorance.

Magellan maintained the right of Spain to the Moluccas, and engaged to conduct a fleet thither by the west; for he was persuaded of the existence of a passage round the American continent: and as he had the art of impressing his own serious conviction on the minds of others, his proposal was readily accepted. The fleet equipped for this great enterprise consisted of five vessels, two of a hundred and twenty, two of ninety, and one of sixty tons: the crews amounted altogether to two hundred and thirty men. Magellan hoisted his flag on board the Trinidad, Juan de Carthagena commanded the San Antonio, Luis de Mendoza the Vittoria, Gaspar de Quesada the Conception, on board of which vessel was Sebastian del Cano in quality of lieutenant, who had the honour of bringing back the Vittoria, after having made the complete circuit of the globe ; lastly, the Santiago, a small vessel, was commanded by Rodriguez Serrano. The preparations being completed, the fleet sailed from San Lucar on the 20th of September 1519, and arrived, without any accident, on the coast of Brazil. Pursuing his voyage slowly to the south, Magellan reached, in April, a safe and commodious harbour, in nearly fifty degrees of southern latitude, to which he gave the name of Port St. Julian. Here he resolved to

pass the winter, which in that part of the world is extremely rigorous from May to September. But the strict economy observed by him in the distribution of provisions, together with the hardships of a raw and tempestuous climate, gave rise to discontentment among the officers of the expedition, who were otherwise little disposed to submit to the authority of a foreigner. They murmured at the privations and at the dangers to which they were exposed, while remaining inactive on a strange and barren coast, during the most inclement season of the year: they demanded to be conducted back to Spain; and on Magellan's absolute refusal to comply with their wishes, they broke out at once into open disobedience.

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