Genius and Discovery

FLIGHT INTO
IMMORTALITY
THE DISCOVERY OF
THE PACIFIC OCEAN
25 September 1513

A Ship Is Fitted Out
When he first returned from the newly discovered
continent of America, Columbus had displayed
countless treasures and curiosities on his triumphal
procession through the crowded streets of Seville
and Barcelona: human beings of a race hitherto
unknown, with reddish skins; animals never seen
before; colourful, screeching parrots; slow-moving
tapirs; then strange plants and fruits that would
soon find a new home in Europe—Indian corn,
tobacco, the coconut. The rejoicing throng marvels
at all these things, but the royal couple and their
counsellors are excited above all by a few boxes
and baskets containing gold. Columbus does not
bring much gold back from the new Indies: a few
pretty things that he has bartered with the natives,
or stolen from them, a few small bars and several
handfuls of loose grains, gold dust rather than solid
gold—the whole of it at most enough to mint a
few hundred ducats. But the inspired Columbus,
who always fanatically believes whatever he wants
to believe at any given time, and who has been
so gloriously proved right about his sea route to
India, boasts effusively and in all honesty that this
is only a tiny foretaste. Reliable news, he adds, has
reached him of gold mines of immeasurable extent
on these new islands; only just below the surface,
the precious metal, he says, lies under a thin layer
of soil in many fields, and you can easily dig it out
with an ordinary spade. Farther south, however,
there are realms where the kings drink from golden
goblets, and gold is worth less than lead at home in
Spain. The ever-avaricious king listens, intoxicated to
hear of this new Ophir that now belongs to him. No
one yet knows Columbus and his sublime folly well
enough to doubt his promises. A great fleet is fitted
out at once for the second voyage, and now there
is no need for recruiting officers and drummers to
find men to join it. Word of the newly discovered
Ophir, where you can pick up gold from the ground
with your bare hands, sends all Spain mad; people
come in their hundreds, their thousands to travel
to El Dorado, the land of gold.
But what a dismal tidal wave of humanity is now
cast up by greed from every city, every village, every
hamlet. Not only do honourable noblemen arrive,
wishing to gild their coats of arms, not only are
there bold adventurers and brave soldiers; all the
filthy scum of Spain is also washed up in Palos and
Cádiz. There are branded thieves, highwaymen and
footpads hoping to find a more profitable trade in
the land of gold; there are debtors who want to
escape their creditors and husbands hoping to get
away from scolding wives; all the desperadoes and
failures, branded criminals and men sought by the
Alguacil justices volunteer for the fleet, a motley
band of failures who are determined that they
will make their fortunes at long last, in an instant
too, and to that end are ready to commit any act
of violence and any crime. They have told one
another the fantasies of Columbus, repeating that
in those lands you have only to thrust a spade into
the ground to see nuggets of gold glinting up at
you, and the prosperous among the emigrants hire
servants and mules to carry large quantities of the
precious metal away. Those who do not succeed in
being taken on by the expedition find another way:
never troubling to get the royal permission, coarsegrained
adventurers fit out ships for themselves,
in order to cross the ocean as fast as they can and
get their hands on gold, gold, gold. And at a single
stroke, Spain is rid of troublemakers and the most
dangerous kind of rabble.
The Governor of Española (later San Domingo
and Haiti) is horrified to see these uninvited guests
overrunning the island entrusted to his care. Year
after year the ships bring new freight and increasingly
rough, unruly fellows. The newcomers, in turn, are
bitterly disappointed. There is no sign of gold lying
loose on the road, and not another grain of corn
can be got out of the unfortunate native inhabitants
on whom these brutes descend. So hordes of them
wander around, intent on robbery, terrifying the
unhappy Indios and the governor alike. The latter
tries in vain to make them colonists by showing
them where land may be had, giving them cattle,
and indeed ample supplies of human cattle in the
form of sixty to seventy native inhabitants as slaves
to work for every one of them. But neither the
high-born hidalgos nor the former footpads have a
mind to set up as farmers. They didn’t come here
to grow wheat and herd cattle; instead of putting
their minds to sowing seed and harvesting crops,
they torment the unfortunate Indios—they will have
eradicated the entire indigenous population within
a few years—or sit around in taverns. Within a short
time most of them are so deep in debt that after
their goods they have to sell their hats and coats,
their last shirts, and they fall into the clutches of
traders and usurers.
So in 1510 all these failures on Española are glad
to hear that a well-regarded man from the island,
the bachiller or lawyer Martín Fernandez de Enciso,
is fitting out a ship with a new crew to come to
the aid of his colony on terra firma. In 1509 two
famous adventurers, Alonzo de Ojeda and Diego de
Nicuesa, received the privilege from King Ferdinand
of founding a colony near the straits of Panama and
the coast of Venezuela, naming it rather too hastily
Castilla del Oro, Golden Castile. Intoxicated by
the resonant name and beguiled by tall stories, the
lawyer, who knew little about the ways of the world,
had put most of his fortune into this adventure.
But now no gold comes from the newly founded
colony in San Sebastián on the Gulf of Urabá, only
shrill cries for help. Half the crew have been killed
in fighting the native people, and the other half
have starved to death. To save the investment he
has already made, Enciso ventures the rest of his
fortune, and equips another expedition to go to the
aid of the original one. As soon as they hear that
Enciso needs soldiers, all the desperadoes and loafers
on Española exploit this opportunity and take ship
with him. Their aim is simply to get away, away
from their creditors and the watchful eyes of the
stern governor. But the creditors are also on their
guard. They realize that the worst of their debtors
intend to disappear, never to be seen again, and so
they besiege the governor with requests to let no one
travel without his special permission. The governor
grants their wish. A strict guard obliges Enciso’s ship
to stay outside the harbour, while government boats
patrol the coastal waters to prevent anyone without
such permission from being smuggled aboard. And
all the embittered desperadoes, who fear death less
than honest work or their towering debts, watch as
Enciso’s ship leaves on its venture with all sail set.