Landfall - 2

Landfall - 2

 The first interest of the voyagers was in the inhabitants of this delightful land. They found

them well built, athletic-looking men, most of them young, with handsome bodies and

intelligent faces. Columbus, eager to begin his missionary work, gave them some red

caps and some glass beads, with which he found them so delighted that he had good

hopes of making converts, and from which he argued that "they were a people who would

better be freed and converted to our Holy Faith by love than by force," which sentence of

his contains within itself the whole missionary spirit of the time. These natives, who were

the freest people in the world, were to be "freed"; freed or saved from the darkness of

their happy innocence and brought to the light of a religion that had just evolved the

Inquisition; freed by love if possible, and by red caps and glass beads; if not possible,

then freed by force and with guns; but freed they were to be at all costs. It is a tragic

thought that, at the very first impact of the Old World upon this Eden of the West, this

dismal error was set on foot and the first links in the chain of slavery forged. But for the

moment nothing of it was perceptible; nothing but red caps and glass beads, and trinkets

and toys, and freeing by love. The sword that Columbus held out to them, in order to find

out if they knew the use of weapons, they innocently grasped by the blade and so cut their

fingers; and that sword, extended with knowledge and grasped with fearless ignorance, is

surely an emblem of the spread of civilisation and of its doubtful blessings in the early

stages. Let us hear Columbus himself, as he recorded his first impression of Guanahani:

"Further, it appeared to me that they were a very poor people, in everything. They all go

naked as their mothers gave them birth, and the women also, although I only saw one of

the latter who was very young, and all those whom I saw were young men, none more

than thirty years of age. They were very well built with very handsome bodies, and very

good faces. Their hair was almost as coarse as horses' tails, and short, and they wear it

over the eyebrows, except a small quantity behind, which they wear long and never cut.

Some paint themselves blackish, and they are of the colour of the inhabitants of the

Canaries, neither black nor white, and some paint themselves white, some red, some

whatever colour they find: and some paint their faces, some all the body, some only the

eyes, and some only the nose. They do not carry arms nor know what they are, because I

showed them swords and they took them by the edge and ignorantly cut themselves. They

have no iron: their spears are sticks without iron, and some of them have a fish's tooth at

the end and others have other things. They are all generally of good height, of pleasing

appearance and well built: I saw some who had indications of wounds on their bodies,

and I asked them by signs if it was that, and they showed me that other people came there

from other islands near by and wished to capture them and they defended themselves: and

I believed and believe, that they come here from the continental land to take them

captive. They must be good servants and intelligent, as I see that they very quickly say all

that is said to them, and I believe that they would easily become Christians, as it appeared

to me that they had no sect. If it please our Lord, at the time of my departure, I will take

six of them from here to your Highnesses that they may learn to speak. I saw no beast of

any kind except parrots on this island."

They very quickly say all that is said to them, and they will very easily become good

slaves; good Christians also it appears, since the Admiral's research does not reveal the

trace of any religious sect. And finally "I will take six of them"; ostensibly that they may

learn to speak the language, but really that they may form the vanguard of cargo after

cargo of slaves ravished from their happy islands of dreams and sunshine and plenty to

learn the blessings of Christianity under the whip and the sword. It is all, alas, inevitable;

was inevitable from the moment that the keel of Columbus's boat grated upon the shingle

of Guanahani. The greater must prey upon the less, the stronger must absorb and

dominate the weaker; and the happy gardens of the Golden Cyclades must be spoiled and

wasted for the pleasure and enrichment of a corrupting civilisation. But while we

recognise the inevitable, and enter into the joy and pride of Columbus and his followers

on this first happy morning of their landing, we may give a moment's remembrance to the

other side of the picture, and admit that for this generation of innocents the discovery that

was to be all gain for the Old World was to be all loss to them. In the meantime, decrees

the Admiral, they are to be freed and converted; and "I will take six of them that they

may learn to speak."

There are no paths or footprints left in the sea, and the water furrowed on that morning

more than four hundred years ago by the keels of Columbus's little fleet is as smooth and

trackless as it was before they clove it. Yet if you approach Guanahani from the east

during the hours of darkness you also will see a light that waxes and wanes on the

horizon. What the light was that Columbus saw is not certain; it was probably the light

from a torch held by some native woman from the door of her hut; but the light that you

will see is from the lighthouse on Dixon Hill, where a tower of coral holds a lamp one

hundred and sixty feet above the sea at the north-east point of the island. It was erected in

no sentimental spirit, but for very practical purposes, and at a date when Watling's Island

had not been identified with the Guanahani of Columbus's landfall; and yet of all the

monuments that have been raised to him I can think of nothing more appropriate than this

lonely tower that stands by day amid the bright sunshine in the track of the trade wind,

and by night throws its powerful double flash every half-minute across the dark lonely

sea. For it was by a light, although not of man's kindling, that Columbus was guided upon

his lonely voyage and through his many difficulties; amid all his trials and

disappointments, dimly as it must have burned sometimes, it never quite went out.

Darkness was the name of the sea across which he took his way; darkness, from his

religious point of view, was the state of the lands to which he journeyed; and, whatever

its subsequent worth may have been, it was a burning fragment from the living torch of

the Christian religion that he carried across the world with him, and by which he sought

to kindle the fire of faith in the lands of his discovery. So that there is a profound

symbolism in those raying beams that now, night after night, month by month, and year

after year, shine out across the sea from Watling's Island in the direction of the Old

World.