Читать книгу Up the Orinoco and down the Magdalena - J. A. Zahm - Страница 12

Table of Contents

A most delightful voyage was ours from Puerto Cabello to the Port-of-Spain, the capital of Trinidad. The sea was as placid as an inland lake on a windless day, and the air as balmy as in a morning of June. The coast of the mainland was nearly always in sight, and at times the peaks of the Coast Range rose far above the fleecy clouds that encircled their lofty flanks. The days were beautiful but the nights were glorious. All our youthful dreams about the delights of sailing on southern seas, amid emerald isles, and under bright starlit skies, where soft spice-scented zephyrs blow, were here realized. The serenity and transparency of the azure vault of heaven, with its countless shooting stars, had their counterpart in the smooth, unruffled Caribbean, to whose water millions of Noctilucæ imparted a phosphorescent glow which rivaled that of molten gold. We were at last in the favored home of the chambered nautilus, happily, dreamily gliding along on an even keel

“In gulfs enchanted, where the siren sings,

And coral reefs lie bare,

Where the cold sea-maids rise from crystal springs

To sun their streaming hair.”

Yes, we were skirting along the Pearl Coast,38 celebrated in legend and story—darkened by deeds of barbarous cruelty and resplendent in records of heroic achievement. I shall not tell of our second visit to La Guayra and of the day we spent at Macuto or describe the present conditions of the historic old towns of Barcelona, Cumana and Carupano, which lay on our course. Much might be said of all these places, distinguished, since their foundation, both in peace and war.

I cannot, however, pass this part of the Pearl Coast without recalling the fact that it was near Cumana that the earliest settlements in Venezuela were effected and that here it was that one of the first—if not the first—permanent colonies on the mainland of the New World was established. Columbus, during his fourth voyage, attempted to make a settlement in Veragua, that might serve as a base of future operations, but the attempt resulted in complete failure. Similar efforts had been made by Alonso de Ojeda and others, but without lasting results. Panama was not founded until 1516 or 1517. Nombre de Dios, it is true, was founded somewhat earlier, but in the beginning was little more than a blockhouse. But here, as early in 1514, on the Rio Manzanares, then the River Cumana, only “a cross-bow-shot” from the shore, the zealous Sons of St. Francis had erected a monastery, and a short time subsequently the Dominicans established another monastery, not far distant, at Santa Fe de Chiribichi. Here they gathered the simple children of the forest around them, and soon had the beginnings of flourishing missions.39 The trusting and unspoiled Indians welcomed these apostles of the gospel of peace and love, and soon learned to regard them as friends and fathers. So peaceful did all this land become under the influence of the benign teaching of the gentle friars, that, according to Oviedo and Las Casas, a Christian trader could go alone anywhere without ever being molested.40

It was to the Pearl Coast that Las Casas came, after he found, by sad experience, that his efforts in behalf of the Indians in Cuba, Española and Puerto Rico were frustrated by influences he was unable to control. It was here, aided by Franciscans and Dominicans, who had preceded him by only a few years, that he purposed laying the corner stone of that vast Indian commonwealth, for which he had secured letters patent from Charles V.

For this great experiment in colonization, the greatest the world has ever known, he had received a grant of land extending from Paria to Santa Marta, and from the Caribbean Sea to Peru. In his colossal undertaking he planned to have the coöperation of an order of knights—the Knights of the Golden Spur—specially created to aid him in the work of civilizing and christianizing the Indians. It was his dream to bring within the fold of the Church all the Indians of Central and South America, and to establish for their behoof and benefit an ideal Christian state such as a century and a half later was realized in the fertile basins of the Parana and Paraguay.41

If the noble philanthropist had been properly supported by the rich and the powerful, the entire course of subsequent events in South America would have been altered, and the historian would have been spared the task of penning those dark annals of injustice and iniquity which, for long centuries, were such a foul blot on humanity. But from the time he set foot on the Pearl Coast, in pursuance of his noble plan, he found himself beset by untold difficulties, and his designs thwarted at every turn, and that, too, by his own countrymen. Blinded by lust of gold and pleasure, they left nothing undone to insure the failure of his project, and in the end succeeded in their nefarious purpose.

Abandoned by those on whose coöperation he fully relied, he was, in its very inception, forced to relinquish his heroic enterprise, and return to Española. Discomfited and heartsick, but not crushed, he sought an asylum in the monastery of Santo Domingo. There for eight years he devoted himself to prayer and study, and, true Christian athlete that he was, he was always preparing himself for a final struggle in a new arena. When his enemies least expected it, he came forth from his retirement, and, clad in the habit of a Dominican, proclaimed himself again the champion of the downtrodden Indian. And from that moment until the day of his death, at the advanced age of ninety-two, whether as a simple monk or as the bishop of Chiapa,42 his voice was always raised in behalf of the children of the forest, and against their enslavement by cruel, soulless seekers after fortune.43

He was, if not the first, the world’s greatest abolitionist, and if there are still many millions of red men in the New World to-day who have escaped the bond of servitude, it is mainly due to their illustrious protector, Bartolomé de Las Casas.44