Columbus_ The Four Voyages - Laurence Bergreen [24]
The parrots did not distract Columbus from the singular beauty of the women arrayed before them; where he previously gaped at their near nakedness and lack of modesty, he now recorded reports of “two wenches as white as they can be in Spain,” who inhabited a region whose “lands were cultivated and . . . down the center of the valley a very wide and great river which could irrigate all the lands. All the trees were green and full of fruit, and the plants all flowery and very tall, the paths very broad and good.” From this point forward, Columbus bursts the bounds of conventional logbook discourse, for a time leaving behind all mention of tides and winds and sail for rapturous and visionary description. “The air,” he wrote, “was like April in Castile,” reverberating with intoxicating sounds that struck him as “the greatest delight in the world,” with all of nature in harmony. “At night some little birds sang sweetly, the crickets and frogs made themselves heard, the fishes were as in Spain; they say much mastic and aloes and cotton trees”—but, he had to add, jarred from his reverie, “gold they found not.” The spell broken, he busied himself trying to measure the length of the night and day with hourglasses, but without the expected result, and he was forced to admit, “there could be some mistake because either they didn’t turn them so promptly, or the sand failed to pass through.” His grumbling at the impasse is palpable. It was apparent that his imagination and instincts remained more finely attuned and far-reaching than his clumsy handling of his flawed instruments.
The next day, he departed Puerto de la Concepción—now Moustique Bay, Haiti—and made his way toward a craggy, mountainous island that reminded the crew of the humped back of a turtle, and so it came to be called Turtle or Tortoise Island, best known by its Spanish name, Tortuga. He beheld “a very high land but not mountainous, and it is very beautiful and very populous.” He resolved to try for Tortuga again the following day, December 15, this time anchoring “half a league to leeward off a beach, good, clean holding ground.”
Columbus dropped abundant hints that he was becoming melancholy and disoriented in paradise. He had arrived, and he was still lost. He yearned to find the gold he had promised his Sovereigns, and himself, and beyond that, a larger sense of purpose. Over his journal hovers the sense that, having failed thus far to make contact with the Grand Khan or other powerful and wealthy rulers, his ambitious voyage lacked redeeming purpose. He had witnessed what had befallen Bartolomeu Dias, the Portuguese explorer, on his return to Lisbon from the Cape of Good Hope four years earlier. Dias had spent two years of struggle and deprivation to reach this goal, risking his life and those of his crew, only to receive a lukewarm reception from the vain and volatile king of Portugal. Two years later, in 1490, still trying to win his sovereign’s favor, and his share of glory, Dias embarked on another expedition and perished.
The tragic career of this noble mariner stood as a cautionary tale, one that Columbus did not intend to repeat in the fertile paradise he had discovered. His psyche required a greater destiny.
CHAPTER 2
Son of Genoa
No matter where he went, or who he became, Columbus remained a son of Genoa, the Ligurian seaport where bold maritime exploration was a way of life.
In 1291, the Vivaldi brothers of Genoa, Ugolino and Vadino, assembled a carefully planned and well-capitalized ocean voyage