Читать книгу Up the Orinoco and down the Magdalena - J. A. Zahm - Страница 9

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A short sail eastwards and we found ourselves crossing the Windward Passage. Not far from our port quarter was Cape Maisi, which Columbus, on his first voyage, named Cape Alpha and Omega, as being the easternmost extremity of Asia; Alpha, therefore, from his own point of view, and Omega from that of his Portuguese rivals. On his second voyage Columbus came down through this passage to satisfy himself that he had actually reached Mangi, the land of the Great Khan, and coasted along the island of Cuba, as he reckoned, for a thousand miles. But as fate would have it, he stopped short in his westward course within a few hours’ sail of the present Cape San Antonio, the westernmost promontory of the island. If he had only journeyed on a few miles further, he would have detected the insularity of what he considered a continent, and thus have anticipated the discoveries of Vespucius and Ocampo. And he would have done more. He would have reached the shores of Yucatan and Campeachy and had an opportunity of exploring the famous ruins of Chichen Itza and Uxmal. How different, too, it would have been, if, after discovering Guanahuani, he had directed the prow of the Santa Maria slightly to the northwest, when a short sail would have brought him to the coast of Florida! It is interesting to speculate not only how much his own life, but also how greatly the entire course of American history would have been affected by these slight changes in his course on these momentous occasions.

But during his four voyages among these mysterious islands the great navigator was as one groping his way in the Cretan labyrinth. On his return eastward from the Cape of Good Hope—the name he gave to the westernmost point of Cuba attained by him—he found, almost before he was aware of it, that he had actually circumnavigated what he had imagined to be Cipango, the great island of Japan. This surprised and puzzled him beyond expression. Evidently, either he was mistaken or the authorities on whom he had been relying were mistaken. If the island—Española—was not Cipango, what was it? He soon learned that gold mines existed in the interior of the country and that there was evidence of excavations that had been long abandoned.24 What more natural, then, than his conclusion that this was the far-famed Ophir whence King Solomon had obtained the gold used in the adornment of the temple of Jerusalem!

Whatever may be said of the Admiral’s theory, one thing is certain, and that is that the discovery of gold in Española25 was directly or indirectly the cause of untold misery to the aborigines, and eventually led up to the present unfortunate condition of this hapless island. It was, as the reader knows, the work in the mines that was the chief factor in the gradual decimation and the final extinction of the Indians in Española. When there were no longer Indians to do the work, negroes were imported from Africa, and thence dates that hideous period of cruel traffic in human beings which, for more than three centuries, was the blackest stain on the vaunted civilization of the Caucasian race. But in this, as in other similar cases, an avenging Nemesis has either already overtaken the offending nations or is giving them grave concern regarding the future. In the black republics of Haiti and Santo Domingo the slave has replaced the master, and there are already indications that the day of reckoning is approaching for the powers that are in control of the other islands of the West Indies. We saw evidences of this during our visit in Cuba, and are convinced that, if it were not for the strong arm of the United States, it would not be long before we should have another black republic at our doors. And what is said of Cuba may be said of all the islands of the Lesser Antilles from Trinidad to Puerto Rico. The race question is one that will have to be met sooner or later. The whites are decreasing in numbers and the blacks are rapidly increasing and becoming more insistent on what they claim to be their rights, especially to that of a greater representation in government affairs, and to a larger share of the emoluments of public office.

It was only a few years after the colonizing of Española when negro slavery was introduced into the island. The motive was, in some measure, a humane one—namely, to spare the Indians the arduous labor in the mines for which they were physically incapacitated. The African was much stronger and had much greater powers of endurance than the native. According to Herrera, “the negroes flourished so well in Española, that it was thought that if a negro was not hanged he would never die, for no one had ever seen one die of disease. Thus the negroes found, like the oranges, a soil in Española better suited to them than their own country, Guinea.”26

Monopolies of licenses were granted by the Spanish monarchs for the importation of negro slaves to the West Indies, first to their own subjects, and later on to certain Genoese and Germans, and finally, by a special asiento, or contract, the Spanish government conveyed to the English the “exclusive right to carry on the most nefarious of all trades between Africa and Spanish America.” The British engaged to transport annually to the Spanish Indies during a term of thirty years, four thousand and eight hundred of what, in trade language, were called “Indian pieces,” that is to say, negro slaves, paying a duty per head of thirty-three escudos and one-third.27 So great was the number of negroes imported into America from 1517, when Charles V first permitted the traffic, until 1807, when the slave trade was abolished by an act of the English Parliament, that it has been computed that their total number was not less than five or six millions. In one single year, 1768, it is said that the number torn from their homes and country and transported to Spain’s new colonies was no less than ninety-seven thousand.28

But the inevitable soon came to pass—much sooner than even the wisest statesman could have foreseen. The great Cardinal Ximenes, it is true, realized from the beginning the risk incurred by sending negroes to the Indies. He contended that it was wrong to send beyond the ocean people so “apt in war” as the blacks, who might at any time stir up a servile war against Spanish rule. He insisted that “the negroes, who were as malicious as they were strong, would no sooner perceive themselves to be more numerous in the New World than the Spaniards, than they would lay their heads together to put on their masters the chains they now carried.”29

The cardinal’s prediction soon came true. In all parts of the Indies—in the islands of the sea and on Tierra Firme—there were massacres and uprisings and “servile wars,” without number, and both the colonies and the mother country had often occasion to regret the introduction within their boundaries of so dangerous and warlike subjects. But it was too late to rectify the mistake. It was impossible to drive them out of the country, or to return them to the land whence they had been brought against their will. So rapidly had they increased in numbers that they now, in many places, constituted a great majority of the population. Española, to-day constituting the two republics of Haiti and Santo Domingo, was the first island of which they got supreme control. Which will be the next? The question is not an idle one. It is one frequently asked in the West Indies. The unrest and agitation of the blacks are much greater than we in the North imagine. Their ambition is greater and their political aspirations higher than those who have not been among them are prepared to admit. The situation is certainly not one that justifies supine indifference on the part of the governments now in control, nor is the difficulty one whose solution can be indefinitely postponed. Every lover of law and order must hope that some modus vivendi can be arrived at whereby, while all the legitimate claims of the negro are conceded, the world will he spared another “decline and fall” like that which has been witnessed in Española.

We called at several of the ports of Haiti and Santo Domingo but we found little to interest us outside of the capital of the latter republic. Santo Domingo is not only the oldest city in the New World—the early abandoned settlement of Isabella never deserved the name of city—but is, in many respects, the most interesting. Founded by Bartholomew Columbus in 1496, and named Santo Domingo after the patron saint of his father, Domenico, it was, for a while, the seat of the vice-royalty. It was to this place that Don Diego Colon, the son of the Admiral, brought his lovely bride, Doña Maria de Toledo, a daughter of one of the oldest and proudest families of Spain. Here he set up a vice-regal court that excited the envy of his enemies, and was by them made the basis of charges preferred against him that he meditated establishing a government independent of the mother country. Of the viceroy’s palace, Oviedo writes to Charles V, it “seemeth unto me so magnificall and princelyke that yowr maiestie maye bee as well lodged therin as in any of the mooste exquisite builded houses of Spayne.”30

From Santo Domingo radiated the lines of discovery and conquest that culminated in the achievements of Cortes, Balboa and Pizarro. Here Columbus was loaded with chains and imprisoned by Bobadilla. Here was established the first university of the New World. Here, within the walls of the Convent of San Domingo, prayed and labored that noble “Protector of the Indians,” Las Casas, and here he planned and began work on his monumental Historia de las Indias. Until the last assault by Drake in 1586, it was the centre of commercial activity in the Indies, for it was the chief port of call to and from Spain and the place where merchants, miners, and planters disposed of their commodities and amassed fortunes.

But Santo Domingo’s halcyon days were of short duration. Before the end of the sixteenth century the city began to decline. The theatre of activity, that had hitherto been confined to Española, was transferred to Cuba and Mexico, Panama and Peru, and to-day the once gay and prosperous capital exhibits but a shadow of its pristine glory.

Homenage Castle, the crumbling palace of Don Diego Columbus, and the few churches and monasteries that still, even in their neglected condition, attest the former importance of the place, present a pathetic picture, and tell, in mute but elegant language, of the reverses and evil days that have been the lot of America’s first city.

Besides the buildings just named we were especially interested in the Cathedral. It is a noble structure and its interior decorations compare favorably with similar edifices in Spain and Mexico. But there was one attraction there that had for us, as it must have for all Americans, a special interest, and which alone would well repay a pilgrimage to Santo Domingo—the last resting place of the one “who to Castile and Leon gave a new world.”

As the reader is aware, there has been a long and spirited controversy as to the location of los restos—the remains—of the illustrious discoverer. We have been shown his sepulchre in the Cathedral of Havana, and in that of Seville, yet it has been demonstrated beyond question that his ashes have never reposed in either of these places. Without entering into details, it may now be stated, as facts which no longer admit of any reasonable doubt, that after his death in 1506, the remains of Columbus were interred in the Franciscan monastery of Valladolid, whence, in 1508, they were transferred to the monastery of Las Cuevas, at Seville. In 1541, at the request of “Doña Maria of Toledo, Vicereine of the Indies, wife that was of the Admiral Don Diego Columbus,” Charles V, by a special cedula, granted permission for the transfer of the remains of Christopher Columbus to Española, to be interred in the capilla mayor of the Cathedral of Santo Domingo. Here they have since reposed, with the exception of the short time during which they were kept in the adjoining church, when the Cathedral was undergoing certain necessary repairs in 1877 and 1878. The supposed remains of the first Admiral, that were taken to Havana in 1795, and finally transferred to Seville in 1899, have been shown to be those of his son, Don Diego, who, together with Don Luis Columbus, the third Admiral, and the first Duke of Veragua, was also buried in the capilla mayor of the Cathedral, where the remains of Don Luis still lie near those of his illustrious grandfather.31

As our steamer moved out of the water of Santo Domingo our eyes remained fixed on the Cathedral, whose Spanish tiled roof reflected the vermilion rays of the setting sun, and afford shelter for one of the world’s greatest heroes and benefactors.

“Hic locus abscondit præclari membra Coloni,”

This place hides the remains of the illustrious Columbus, of him who, in the language of one of the many epitaphs devoted to his memory,

“Dió riquezas immensas á la tierra,

Innumerables almas al cielo.”32

And then, as the last vestiges of this noble old temple vanished from our vision, we thought of the words of Humboldt, than whom no one was better qualified to pronounce a fitting eulogy on one of the world’s immortals.

“The majesty of great memories,” he declares, “seems concentrated in the name of Christopher Columbus. It is the originality of his vast conceptions, the compass and fertility of his genius, and the courage which bore out against the long series of misfortunes, which have exalted the Admiral high above all his contemporaries.”33

And we dreamed—or was it a telepathic intimation of a future reality?—when the precious remains, that have so long been guarded in this distant and rarely visited island, should be transferred for a third and a last time, but this time where they might be visited and venerated by millions instead of the few hundred that now find their way hither, and where they might occupy a noble sarcophagus, like that which beneath the dome of the Invalides, holds all that is mortal of the great Corsican, and in a temple worthy alike of the man and of the greatest nation in the world. There is one edifice in which all the nations of the hemisphere discovered by Columbus have a common interest, the splendid structure now being erected in Washington, for the special use and benefit of the North and South American Republics. Here in the capital of the nation, in the district named after the discoverer, in sight of the tomb of the “Father of his Country,” should the remains of “The Admiral of the Ocean Sea,” find an abiding place of sepulture commensurate with the magnitude of his achievements. Alongside and in connection with this Pan-American building, in the heart of what is to be “the City Beautiful,” and there alone, let there be erected a mausoleum that, as a monument of art, shall rank, as did those of Hadrian and Mausolus, amongst the world’s wonders, and be a fitting culmination of the architectural creations that have been planned for the great and growing capital of the New World, the world of Columbus.