Читать книгу Seven League Boots - Richard Halliburton - Страница 15

Table of Contents

Once, several years before the date of this story, I hired a seaplane in the city of Miami, Florida, and flew out over the Bahamas, hoping to settle in my own mind which one of them was the landfall of Columbus.

Historians know that the island is one of these. Columbus called it San Salvador. But which island on modern charts is the original San Salvador? There have been almost as many claims as there have been historians, or indeed, as there are islands.

Unfortunately, Columbus’ original log-book disappeared soon after his death, but fortunately not before Fray Las Casas, a contemporary, had made faithful copies of parts of it, one part being dated October 12, 1492. The cleric, no man of science, failed to preserve the mathematical reckonings which would have located the island exactly. He did, however, extract word-for-word Columbus’ report of the discovery and his picturesque description of the landfall.

And that is how we know a stiff wind was blowing toward the west on the night of October eleventh-twelfth; and that Rodrigo, a seaman, was the first to see the tongue of land gleaming in the moonlight.

The same Spanish copy of the original record describes “San Salvador”:

“This island is quite large and very level. It has a large lake in the center. The shape of the island is that of a bean, and the vegetation so luxuriant that it is a pleasure to behold it.” On October fourteenth, after two days ashore, Columbus also wrote: “At daybreak I had the boats of the caravels made ready and went along the island in a northeasterly direction in order to see the villages. The inhabitants, coming to the shore, beseeched us to land there, but I was afraid of a reef of rocks which entirely surrounds the island. But within this belt is a harbor of such size, that there would be ample room for all the vessels of Christendom.”

This is not a great deal of information. But it is nearly all that exists, and with it my pilot and I laid our course for the Bahamas.

In this archipelago there are thirty large islands and over six hundred islets. Fortunately I didn’t need to explore them all, for Columbus, coming from the east, must have encountered, first, one of the string of islands—ten in number—which face the open ocean. Each of these has had its strong advocates among geographers, and since I came with an open mind I meant to visit all ten.

From the coast of Florida the two of us flew for five hundred miles down the outer chain, circling over each in turn, looking for one that offered the special features Columbus described. Great Abaco had the size—“a large island”—but no lake. We flew on to Eleuthera. From the air it resembled a snake, but not by any stretch of the imagination “a bean.” Conception, the next island, was only half surrounded by a reef, not “entirely surrounded”; and Yuma Fernandina had no reef at all. Samana looked like a bean, but that was its only claim.

Cat Island (where the Maria Teresa went on the rocks) occupied me for an entire day. This has always been a strong contestant for the honor, since Washington Irving, following the conclusions of a U. S. naval officer, chose in his great biography of Columbus to name Cat Island as the landfall. Consequently most of the maps of the nineteenth century call it San Salvador. But search though I might, I could not find even the weakest argument in its favor. There is no lake, and a ridge four hundred feet high running down the center prevents it from being “very flat.” I had to conclude that Irving had accepted a careless identification.

Next morning I flew on to Crooked Island, Mariguana, Rum Cay and Grand Turk. Not one of these had a harbor fit to shelter a single sailing boat, much less “all the vessels in Christendom.”

Four days I had spent exploring from the sea and the air, and so far not one of the islands had remotely fitted the description given in the log-book. There still remained, however, one island to be explored—Watling’s Island, the seawardmost and the likeliest of all.

Watling’s Island was in the news in 1892, when the directors of the Columbian Exposition accepted it as San Salvador. That year Walter Wellman, the journalist, raised a small monument on the east shore to mark the place where Columbus presumably landed. An excellent and authoritative book by Dr. Rudolf Cronau,^[1] more carefully reasoned and more persuasive than the others I had read, also lent almost conclusive proof that Watling’s was the right island. Dr. Cronau had explored all the islands long before my own visit, and by a process of elimination decided that Watling’s was undoubtedly the landfall.

But when I flew over the Exposition’s monument and down the east coast, I saw, as Dr. Cronau had noted before me, not one coral reef paralleling the coast as Columbus described, but three. The caravels would not have dared come within a league of this shore, day or night, and certainly not while a high wind was blowing, as the log-book recorded.

But the flight disclosed something else—“a large lake in the center of the island”—very large, and precisely in the center. Suddenly alert, we climbed higher in the seaplane, to eight thousand feet. Watling’s Island was visible below in its entirety, and it was shaped like a bean. I looked for the encircling belt of coral reef. It was there, surrounding the island with scarcely a break. But what about the harbor? The coast was without any indentation whatsoever. And then I saw the harbor too. It was made by the reef swinging far out from shore at the northern end and back again, leaving a perfectly calm basin a mile wide inside the barrier, which acted as a natural breakwater. The basin was indeed big enough to hold all the ships of fifteenth-century Christendom.

This, unmistakably, was San Salvador.

But since it was apparent, even from the air, that the landing-monument was wrongly placed, I decided to search further, with Dr. Cronau’s book still as my guide, and find the actual spot where Columbus stepped ashore in the New World.

The east coast, facing Spain, was obviously out of the question, for its unbroken phalanx of reefs makes it unapproachable from the sea. Columbus would not have ventured such a hazard in a rowboat, much less a sailing ship. However, on the west coast—the coast facing Florida—right beside the hamlet of Cockburn, there is a beautiful beach, which boats can reach through a wide break in the coral wall.

Columbus, as he reports in his log-book, having seen the moonlit tongue of land, lay to until daylight, and with the prevailing east wind must have drifted past the northern tip of the reef. Then, during the morning, he sailed south, and finding the breach in the barrier, steered through and dropped anchor before the unobstructed beach. And it was here, on the leeward, the safe side of the island, that he went ashore.

My seaplane, descending to within thirty feet of the sea, easily spotted the low coral cay that Rodrigo had first seen at the northern tip. We followed Columbus’ course down the west coast, into the opening in the reef, landed on the lagoon inside and came to a stop on the very same spot, I suspect, where the Santa Maria dropped her sails.

What schoolboy has not seen the painting of Columbus disembarking on the beach with his sword aloft, his flag unfurled, and the Indians staring at him in wonder? I should have liked as dramatic an arrival. But instead of a Spanish admiral and his captains all dressed in purple velvet, two grimy aviators came ashore dressed in cotton coveralls, and unfurling nothing more royal than a couple of pongee mufflers, with which we were removing the spattered oil from our eyes. The “Indians” however (the inhabitants are entirely Negro, and number no more than seventy-five) were sufficiently astonished, for ours was the first flying ship ever to visit the island, and the first most of them had ever seen.

Next day, in a small boat, still following Columbus, we rowed back up the west coast reef, and found the “very narrow entrance” to the harbor which had so impressed him. “True, there are some rocks in it,” he wrote (the rocks are still conspicuous), “but the water is as calm and motionless as that of a well”; as indeed it was while I was there. He continued: “I also wanted to find out the best location for a fort. And I discovered a piece of land resembling an island although it is not one, with six huts on it. This piece of land could easily be cut through within two days, thereby converting it into an island.” And jutting boldly out into the reef-harbor is just such a piece of land. It has been cut through (no doubt by old pirate Watling himself) and made into an island—and into a fort as well, for I found a very ancient cannon guarding the excavated canal.

Dr. Cronau, I felt sure, was right. In only a single respect did the island fail to meet Columbus’ description: it is as barren of “luxuriant vegetation” as its neighbors, for whatever forests there once were have long since been cut down by the English buccaneers.

Returning to Cockburn, I resolved to cross the island to the misplaced 1892 monument, dismantle it, and re-erect it on the western beach where, by all the proofs of Columbus’ log-book, it belongs. But Bessie, the island’s horse, was lame that week, so my noble plan to move the stones came to naught. Not three weeks later, however, Count von Luckner, aboard his schooner with Lowell Thomas, came to Watling’s Island and, likewise convinced that it was San Salvador, succeeded in doing most skilfully what I had failed to do.

And I am certain that the monument now tells the truth, and that it marks as nearly as we shall ever know the very spot upon which the great Admiral first stepped ashore in the Americas.

This little expedition of mine naturally added fresh fuel to my interest in Columbus. I soon found out that the identification of his landfall was not the only controversial point. Historians were likewise disagreed upon his burial place. Over this question prime ministers have fallen, bishops have been libeled, and nations have all but gone to war. Even today two continents dispute the possession of the bones of the man who was probably the most important world figure since Christ.

Columbus died in 1506, in the Spanish city of Valladolid. His repeated request, when he felt death approaching, was that his body be buried in Hispaniola, the rich and beautiful island he had discovered on his first voyage. On this island had risen a thriving port, Santo Domingo, toward which the eyes of all Spain were turned, for as Columbus’ first permanent colony it had become the goal of a vast migration of fortune-seekers.

To this New World cross-roads, therefore, Columbus’ remains were transferred in 1540. The leaden casket, when it arrived from Spain, was reinterred with proper ceremony in the newly built Cathedral on the gospel side of the altar. At the same time the body of Diego Columbus, the son, was taken to Santo Domingo and placed beside that of his father. Both graves were marked with marble slabs, which remained there to identify them for a hundred and fifteen years.

Then in 1655 the English attacked Santo Domingo, and the church authorities, to protect the grave from desecration, destroyed the marble slabs and obliterated everything which might reveal the location of the bodies. Nor were new slabs ever put in place. For another hundred and forty years no inscription marked where Columbus’ bones lay.

Perhaps that might be the situation even today had not Spain, in 1795, been forced to cede Hispaniola to France. Unwilling to surrender the body of their great national hero, the Spaniards decided to remove the Columbus casket to Cuba. They dug into the Cathedral floor, below the altar, just where tradition said the grave lay. Coming to a lead casket they reverently removed it to the Cathedral in Havana, and sealed it in a vault in the presbytery wall. Across the vault was placed a relief-image of Columbus, and an inscription: “O remains and image of the great Columbus, for a thousand ages rest secure in this urn, and in the remembrance of our nation.”

After that the Santo Domingo Cathedral, bereft of its glory, was allowed to fall into such decay that by 1877 it had to be completely rebuilt. Delving below the stone floor before the altar, the workmen came upon an ancient lead casket just like the one removed to Havana in 1795. On the lid was inscribed the abbreviation, D. de la A. per. Ate., which Dr. Cronau,^[2] continuing his researches on Columbus, has translated as “Descubridor de la America. Primer Almirante”—that is, Discoverer of America, First Admiral. On three sides of the box were engraved, one to each side, the letters C C A—which could stand for Cristoval Colon, Almirante.

Realizing that this find was probably of extraordinary importance, the Bishop of the diocese invited all the Dominican dignitaries of state and church, as well as the foreign consuls, to witness the opening of the casket. When the lid was raised it revealed on its under side a third inscription, Illtre y Esdo Varon Dn. Criztoval Colon, which could only be interpreted as “Illustre y Esclarecido Varon Don Cristobal Colon”—Illustrious and Famous Baron Christopher Columbus.

There could be no doubt whose bones were these, crumbling in the bottom of the box.

The Cathedral at Havana was honoring the wrong Columbus. During the period when the graves were unmarked, it had been forgotten that the son was sepultured beside his father. It was Diego’s casket, not Christopher’s, which had been moved with such pomp to Cuba.

The discovery of the true grave of Columbus caused a sensation at that time throughout the world. Spain indignantly denied its authenticity, insisting the discovery was a hoax, despite the array of unimpeachable witnesses. She recalled her minister from Santo Domingo in disgrace when he reported the find was genuine, and has steadfastly refused to credit any claims except her own in the long controversy which arose.

In 1898 Cuba gained independence; and Spain, still declaring that Christopher Columbus must rest only in Spanish territory, moved the uninscribed casket a third time, back to Seville from which it had departed more than three hundred and fifty years earlier. There it was entombed magnificently, in an onyx sarcophagus marked Cristobal Colon, and enthroned in the transept of the great Seville Cathedral, for all the world to see.

But all the world can now be certain that Cristobal Colon is not there.

Naturally the Dominican citizens are fully aware of the importance of their trust. They too have built, in their Cathedral, a shrine to guard the remains of their Columbus. In the center of the shrine is a heavy bronze chest, the sides of which fold down and reveal the precious casket within. Once a year, on October twelfth, the sides of the chest are removed, exposing the lead box to full view of the patriots who file past.

All this, I say, I had learned some years before from Cronau’s books. The hope of seeing that box for myself was one of the two reasons I had come now to Hispaniola. Having visited Christophe’s Citadel, I said good-by to Cap Haitien, traveled south again to Port-au-Prince, and again took to the air. Our seaplane followed the rugged southern coastline and crossed the frontier from Haiti, a black republic where the speech and culture are entirely French, into Santo Domingo, a white republic where the speech and culture are entirely Spanish. Looking down at Hispaniola, at the intensely blue water along the beach and the smoky mountains climbing inland tier on tier, I could understand why Columbus loved this great island more than any other place on earth, and why he wanted to be buried in the city he had founded on its shore.

It was not October twelfth when I reached the city of Santo Domingo—only the middle of September. Nevertheless a friendly church official granted me an extraordinary favor by opening the bronze chest and permitting me to examine the casket privately and at length.

I had a profound feeling of awe when these actual bones of Columbus were revealed. Every detail of the relic was indelibly fixed on my memory.

The lead box is seventeen inches long by nine inches square, and on the sides the initials C C A—Cristobal Colon Almirante—stand out boldly. The lid was lifted back, so I could read the inscription on the inside also. Of Columbus’ remains, only a few bones are still intact; the rest have crumbled to dust which half fills the receptacle. The skull has disintegrated entirely, or else it was never there. Beside the leaden box is a rusty iron musket-ball, a third of an inch in diameter. This bullet had lodged itself in Columbus, no one knows how or when, but probably long before he became an admiral. It was never extracted, and went with him to his grave.

The lead box itself has corroded sadly, and the sides have warped away from the bottom. Time and inadequate protection have combined to threaten the casket and its sacred contents with complete dissolution.

But this alarming condition is not to continue, we may hope, much longer. The Pan-American Union has been striving for the last twenty years to bring to reality the Columbus Memorial, a monumental sepulcher which will guard the casket and the bones throughout the ages.

As the result of two international competitions, a design of noble beauty has been selected. Formed as a recumbent cross sloping upward, eight hundred feet long and two hundred feet high at the head, it will lift aloft, where its arms intersect, an eternal beacon. All the nations of both Americas, moved by admiration and gratitude, have agreed to subscribe to this heroic project.

At Santo Domingo, the cradle of civilization in the West, it is planned to build this monument to the great Discoverer: a monument from whose summit a flag of fire will shine in the heavens to guide the ships of the sea and the ships of the air in their courses across the hemisphere Columbus gave to the world.

[1]	The Discovery of America and the Landfall of Columbus; privately printed, 1921.

[2]	See The Last Resting Place of Columbus; privately printed, 1921.