The Second Voyage - 2

The Second Voyage - 2

 The villagers were not altogether unfriendly, although they were shy at first; but red caps

and hawks' bells had their usual effect. There were signs of warfare, in the shape of bonetipped

arrows; there were tame parrots much larger than those of the northern islands;

they found pottery and rough wood carving, and the unmistakable stern timber of a

European vessel. But they discovered stranger things than that. They found human skulls

used as household utensils, and gruesome fragments of human bodies, unmistakable

remains of a feast; and they realised that at last they were in the presence of a man-eating

tribe. Later they came to know, something of the habits of the islanders; how they made

raiding expeditions to the neighbouring islands, and carried off large numbers of

prisoners, retaining the women as concubines and eating the men. The boys were

mutilated and fattened like capons, being employed as labourers until they had arrived at

years of discretion, at which point they were killed and eaten, as these cannibal epicures

did not care for the flesh of women and boys. There were a great number of women on

the island, and many of them were taken off to the ships—with their own consent,

according to Doctor Chanca. The men, however, eluded the Spaniards and would not

come on board, having doubtless very clear views about the ultimate destination of men

who were taken prisoners. Some women from a neighbouring island, who had been

captured by the cannibals, came to Columbus and begged to be taken on board his ship

for protection; but instead of receiving them he decked them with ornaments and sent

them ashore again. The cannibals artfully stripped off their ornaments and sent them back

to get some more.

The peculiar habits of the islanders added an unusual excitement to shore leave, and there

was as a rule no trouble in collecting the crews and bringing them off to the ships at

nightfall. But on one evening it was discovered that one of the captains and eight men

had not returned. An exploring party was sent of to search for them, but they came back

without having found anything, except a village in the middle of the forest from which

the inhabitants had fled at their approach, leaving behind them in the cooking pots a halfcooked

meal of human remains—an incident which gave the explorers a distaste for

further search. Young Alonso de Ojeda, however, had no fear of the cannibals; this was

just the kind of occasion in which he revelled; and he offered to take a party of forty men

into the interior to search for the missing men. He went right across the island, but was

able to discover nothing except birds and fruits and unknown trees; and Columbus, in

great distress of mind, had to give up his men for lost. He took in wood and water, and

was on the point of weighing anchor when the missing men appeared on the shore and

signalled for a boat. It appeared that they had got lost in a tangled forest in the interior,

that they had tried to climb the trees in order to get their bearings by the stars, but without

success; and that they had finally struck the sea-shore and followed it until they had

arrived opposite the anchorage.

They brought some women and boys with them, and the fleet must now have had a large

number of these willing or unwilling captives. This was the first organised transaction of

slavery on the part of Columbus, whose design was to send slaves regularly back to Spain

in exchange for the cattle and supplies necessary for the colonies. There was not very

much said now about religious conversion, but only about exchanging the natives for

cattle. The fine point of Christopher's philosophy on this subject had been rubbed off; he

had taken the first step a year ago on the beach at Guanahani, and after that the road

opened out broad before him. Slaves for cattle, and cattle for the islands; and wealth from

cattle and islands for Spain, and payment from Spain for Columbus, and money from

Columbus for the redemption of the Holy Sepulchre—these were the links in the chain of

hope that bound him to his pious idea. He had seen the same thing done by the

Portuguese on the Guinea coast, and it never occurred to him that there was anything the

matter with it. On the contrary, at this time his idea was only to take slaves from among

the Caribs and man-eating islanders as a punishment for their misdeeds; but this, like his

other fine ideas, soon had to give way before the tide of greed and conquest.

The Admiral was now anxious to get back to La Navidad, and discover the condition of

the colony which he had left behind him there. He therefore sailed from Guadaloupe on

November 20th and steered to the north-west. His captive islanders told him that the

mainland lay to the south; and if he had listened to them and sailed south he would have

probably landed on the coast of South America in a fortnight. He shaped his course

instead to the north-west, passing many islands, but not pausing until the 14th, when he

reached the island named by him Santa Cruz. He found more Caribs here, and his men

had a brush with them, one of the crew being wounded by a poisoned arrow of which he

died in a few days. The Carib Chiefs were captured and put in irons. They sailed again

and passed a group of islets which Columbus named after Saint Ursula and the Eleven

Thousand Virgins; discovered Porto Rico also, in one of the beautiful harbours of which

they anchored and stayed for two days. Sailing now to the west they made land again on

the 22nd of November; and coasting along it they soon sighted the mountain of Monte

Christi, and Columbus recognised that he was on the north coast of Espanola.