Columbus_ The Four Voyages - Laurence Bergreen [90]
He named the town La Isabela, after the queen who conferred legitimacy on his efforts. Guillermo Coma predicted that “in surpassing all others by virtue of its strategic position and benign climate [it] will within a few years be very populated, and filled and frequented by colonists.” And with even less justification, he added, “It will compete with any of the cities of Spain when its buildings are finished and its walls are magnificently raised. They have done the houses, and are constructing the protective walls, which adorn the city and give secure refuge to its inhabitants.” He described how a “wide street” would divide the city, crisscrossed by many other streets, with a fortress rising above the beach.
He spun out his extravagant ambitions for the tiny settlement. “The Admiral’s residence is called the royal palace, for at some future time, if God, the creator and giver of countless blessings, wills it, the Sovereigns may set out from Cadiz to visit this well-favored land and behold the islands won from them so far from home.” They would sail up the Ozama to stake their claim to the new lands Columbus had discovered. Once there, they would find, among other things, “a noble church . . . bursting with the furnishings sent from Spain by Queen Isabella for the worship of God.” Although the vision of the Catholic Sovereigns worshipping in these new lands seemed far-fetched, Columbus reported that Christianity was taking hold. The Indians, he said, regarded it with devotion and respect as they knelt in contemplation. It was a beautiful fantasy, eminently suitable for export.
In this spirit, Coma believed that La Isabela was not just another makeshift trading post or embattled fortress, but the early manifestation of a new civilization transplanted from Spain. He advanced the intoxicating but unrealistic conviction that La Isabela, and other new cities like it, would soon rival the capitals of Spain. If Coma expressed a shared sense among Columbus’s men, his words indicated a crucial shift in the voyage’s rationale: Columbus was no longer looking for ancient India. He had found the raw materials, the workers, and the setting for an entirely new and unexpected realm, something implicitly bigger and better than Spain in the sense that it was purer, and little more than three weeks’ journey (weather permitting) from the Canary Islands. Even Las Casas, so quick to condemn Columbus, acknowledged the importance of the new settlement. “When I was appointed prior of the Dominican house in La Plata harbor, I took a large stone from it [La Isabela]. And I laid it as the cornerstone of the monastery I began to build there. For the record,” he noted, “this stone stands in the east corner of the ground floor and was the first stone to be laid, right next to the main entrance and the church.” In this way, he preserved Columbus’s legacy in Hispaniola.
The ambitious task of building a new fort consumed Columbus, who was determined to learn the lessons of La Navidad and construct a safer refuge for his men.
Ferdinand remarked that his father became so overwhelmed that he had no time to keep a journal from December 11, 1493, until March 12 of the following year, when he fell seriously ill. “Suddenly during my sleep I was tormented on my whole right side, from the sole of my foot to my head, as if stricken by paralysis, which caused me not a little suffering,” he later reported. “Now I am better, and I have not ceased at that which I ought to concentrate on the best as I can and with contentment. Since then, both night and day, I wear no less clothing than I would in Seville.” All the while, he endured cool, dreary weather, which he likened to a “typical winter