Crisis In The Admiral's Life - 2

Crisis In The Admiral's Life - 2

In the meantime it became necessary to appoint some one to supersede Bobadilla; for the

news that arrived periodically from Espanola during the year showed that he had entirely

failed in his task of reducing the island to order. For the wholesome if unequal rigours of

Columbus Bobadilla had substituted laxness and indulgence, with the result that the

whole colony was rapidly reduced to a state of the wildest disorder. Vice and cruelty

were rampant; in fact the barbarities practised upon the natives were so scandalous that

even Spanish opinion, which was never very sympathetic to heathen suffering, was

thoroughly shocked and alarmed. The Sovereigns therefore appointed Nicholas de

Ovando to go out and take over the command, with instructions to use very drastic means

for bringing the colony to order. How he did it we shall presently see; in the meantime all

that was known of him (the man not having been tried yet) was that he was a poor knight

of Calatrava, a man respected in royal circles for the performance of minor official duties,

but no very popular favourite; honest according to his lights—lights turned rather low

and dim, as was often the case in those days. A narrow-minded man also, without

sympathy or imagination, capable of cruelty; a tough, stiff-necked stock of a man, fit to

deal with Bobadilla perhaps, but hardly fit to deal with the colony. Spain in those days

was not a nursery of administration. Of all the people who were sent out successively to

govern Espanola and supersede one another, the only one who really seems to have had

the necessary natural ability, had he but been given the power, was Bartholomew

Columbus; but unfortunately things were in such a state that the very name of Columbus

was enough to bar a man from acceptance as a governor of Espanola.

It was not for any lack of powers and equipment that this procession of governors failed

in their duties. We have seen with what authority Bobadilia had been entrusted; and

Ovando had even greater advantages. The instructions he received showed that the needs

of the new colonies were understood by Ferdinand and Isabella, if by no one else.

Ovando was not merely appointed Governor of Espanola but of the whole of the new

territory discovered in the west, his seat of government being San Domingo. He was

given the necessary free hand in the matters of punishment, confiscation, and allotment of

lands. He was to revoke the orders which had been made by Bobadilla reducing the

proportion of gold payable to the Crown, and was empowered to take over one-third of

the. gold that was stored on the island, and one-half of what might be found in the future.

The Crown was to have a monopoly of all trade, and ordinary supplies were only to be

procured through the Crown agent. On the other hand, the natives were to be released

from slavery, and although forced to work in the mines, were to be paid for their labour—

a distinction which in the working out did not produce much difference. A body of

Franciscan monks accompanied Ovando for the purpose of tackling the religious question

with the necessary energy; and every regulation that the kind heart of Isabella could think

of was made for the happiness and contentment of the Indians.

Unhappily the real mischief had already been done. The natives, who had never been

accustomed to hard and regular work under the conditions of commerce and greed, but

had only toiled for the satisfaction of their own simple wants, were suffering cruelly

under the hard labour in the mines, and the severe driving of their Spanish masters. Under

these unnatural conditions the native population was rapidly dying off, and there was

some likelihood that there would soon be a scarcity of native labour. These were the

circumstances in which the idea of importing black African labour to the New World was

first conceived—a plan which was destined to have results so tremendous that we have

probably not yet seen their full and ghastly development. There were a great number of

African negro slaves at that time in Spain; a whole generation of them had been born in

slavery in Spain itself; and this generation was bodily imported to Espanola to relieve and

assist the native labour.

These preparations were not made all at once; and it was more than a year after the return

of Columbus before Ovando was ready to sail. In the meantime Columbus was living in

Granada, and looking on with no very satisfied eye at the plans which were being made

to supersede him, and about which he was probably not very much consulted; feeling

very sore indeed, and dividing his attention between the nursing of his grievances and

other even less wholesome occupations. There was any amount of smiling kindness for

him at Court, but very little of the satisfaction that his vanity and ambition craved; and in

the absence of practical employment he fell back on visionary speculations. He made

great friends at this time with a monk named Gaspar Gorricio, with whose assistance he

began to make some kind of a study of such utterances of the Prophets and the Fathers as

he conceived to have a bearing on his own career.

Columbus was in fact in a very queer way at this time; and what with his readings and his

meditatings and his grievances, and his visits to his monkish friend in the convent of Las

Cuevas, he fell into a kind of intellectual stupor, of which the work called 'Libro de las

Profecias,' or Book of the Prophecies, in which he wrote down such considerations as

occurred to him in his stupor, was the result. The manuscript of this work is in existence,

although no human being has ever ventured to reprint the whole of it; and we would

willingly abstain from mentioning it here if it were not an undeniable act of Columbus's

life. The Admiral, fallen into theological stupor, puts down certain figures upon paper;

discovers that St. Augustine said that the world would only last for 7000 years; finds that

some other genius had calculated that before the birth of Christ it had existed for 5343

years and 318 days; adds 1501 years from the birth of Christ to his own time; adds up,

and finds that the total is 6844 years; subtracts, and discovers that this earthly globe can

only last 155 years longer. He remembers also that, still according to the Prophets, certain

things must happen before the end of the world; Holy Sepulchre restored to Christianity,

heathen converted, second coming of Christ; and decides that he himself is the man

appointed by God and promised by the Prophets to perform these works. Good Heavens!

in what an entirely dark and sordid stupor is our Christopher now sunk—a veritable

slough and quag of stupor out of which, if he does not manage to flounder himself, no

human hand can pull him.