Columbus_ The Four Voyages - Laurence Bergreen [9]
The next day “[t]here came so fair and sweet a smell of flowers and trees from the land, that it was the sweetest thing in the world.” And ahead, a smaller island, and another, so many that he despaired of exploring them all “because I couldn’t do it in fifty years, for I wish to see and discover the most that I can before returning to Your Highnesses (Our Lord willing) in April.” Fifty years: he was just beginning to appreciate the enormity and incomprehensibility of the lands he had found. Everything was strange and different—the vegetation, the people, the musky odor of flowers wafting from a nearby island. It was only October, the New World only a week old in his awareness. More than six months remained until he was due back in Spain, and anything could happen in this unexplored world.
As the entries in his diary increased, he related his experiences at sea with confidence and eloquence. On its surface, the diary is meant to convey the startling drama and novelty of his voyage, in which everything was a discovery, every experience and sensation was being registered for the first time by the European sensibility, and with European sensitivity—more specifically, the regal Castilian sensibility that Columbus longed to emulate. He tried to blend imperiousness and intelligence, as if holding the world at arm’s length to study it. For Columbus, an expatriate from Genoa, a merchant sailor and self-taught navigator, the aristocratic tone was a carefully crafted impersonation notable for what he omitted or downplayed or misunderstood as much as the startling discoveries he recorded.
As his voyage proceeded, the diary subtly transformed itself into a manifesto of discovery, and beyond that, a mirror into which he could not stop looking as it came to reflect his vision, his ambition, his will to greatness, himself. In his own mind, his experiences and observations were so persuasive that they interfered with his ability to respond to the ever-changing reality of exploration. Instead, he was confined by his rigid expectations.
To complicate matters, students of his remarkable diary must rely on a transcription of the original journal of the first voyage, which has been lost. It comes down through two main sources. The first is Columbus’s natural, or illegitimate, son Ferdinand, a sailor turned historian; the second is Bartolomé de Las Casas, the friar and chronicler. Ferdinand naturally sought to burnish his father’s tarnished reputation, while Las Casas sought a deep enough circle in hell in which to cast the explorer. But Las Casas’s attitude toward Columbus is more nuanced than that of a single-minded critic. He was aware of the complexity of the undertaking, to which he was an eyewitness and participant, yet also capable of seeing events in a larger historical context, living both in the moment and out of it. He lacked a holograph—the handwritten version—of the journal; instead, he worked from a flawed version about which he registered occasional scholarly complaints. In addition to routine copying errors, the unknown scribe on whom Las Casas relied had a troubling tendency to confuse “miles” with “leagues,” and even “east” with “west.” Such mistakes made it difficult to retrace Columbus’s route precisely.
As a champion of the dignity and human rights of the Indians, Las Casas included numerous passages in which Columbus admired his hosts. Las Casas switches frequently between direct quotation of the copy before him, in which Columbus speaks in the first person, and detailed summaries in which the Admiral is referred to in the third person, giving the impression that Columbus, like Caesar, referred to himself in that manner. (The scrupulous Las Casas distinguishes between the two by using quotation marks for direct quotations.)
Columbus’s vague, occasionally deceptive reports