Columbus_ The Four Voyages - Laurence Bergreen [91]
Raw, incomplete, and unsanitary, La Isabela was formally founded on January 6, 1494, among the most important days in the Christian calendar, the Feast of the Epiphany, that is, the revelation of God in human form, in the person of Jesus Christ. A dozen priests dedicated the settlement in a makeshift church on land. This was the first Mass held in the New World, but under the pressure of events, there was no time to reflect on this milestone.
Two aides, Alonso de Ojeda and Ginés de Gorbalán, immediately set out from La Isabela for the mining region of the Cibao with about two dozen Spanish scouts and a handful of Indian guides. Columbus lingered at La Isabela, tending to his health.
Storms, mudslides, and floods assailed Ojeda’s party; the men sought refuge in an Indian village, where Ojeda heard reports of quantities of gold in the hills obscured in the fog and mist. To prove their claims, the Indians displayed three ample nuggets. Ojeda became so excited by the find that he decided to report to Columbus at the first opportunity, and by January 20 he was back at La Isabela, with gold, gifts, and additional Indian servants in tow. His subordinate, Gorbalán, spent an extra day ferreting out additional stores of gold, and arrived at the fort twenty-four hours later. Columbus, his health restored, rejoiced in the find, and readied a mining expedition to the Cibao to bring back a much larger haul, much to the frustration of his men, who yearned for the comfort and safety of Spain.
Without warning, sickness felled the men. Dr. Chanca, so diligent that he insisted on sampling each new kind of fish lest the men poison themselves, found himself treating three or four hundred fallen explorers, and he teetered on the verge of exhaustion himself. At first, Columbus faulted the climate for the outbreak, but on further consideration, he wrote, “I place greater blame on heavy womanizing, which here is very widespread, so if they are immodest and unrestrained it is not strange that they should suffer the consequences,” that is, syphilis. The disease presents in many ways, and is often self-healing, simply disappearing after a flare-up. Columbus observed of the afflicted, “Thanks be to God, they get well: four or five days and the illness runs its course.” That was not always the case; syphilis sometimes lurks in the nervous system for years until it explodes like a biological time bomb.
Syphilis was the scourge of both continents, and scientific consensus about the pattern of transmission has fluctuated. Reflecting the conventional view of his time, Fernández de Oviedo, the self-taught naturalist, wrote, “Syphilis first appeared in Spain after Admiral Christopher Columbus discovered the Indies and returned home. Some Christians who accompanied Columbus on the voyage of discovery,” as he called the first voyage, “and some who were on the second voyage brought this plague to Spain, and from them other people were contaminated.” Spanish soldiers brought it with them to Italy during a military campaign, and “from there it spread all over Christendom and was carried by men and women who had the disease.” It was so easy to transmit syphilis, Fernández de Oviedo believed, that merely sharing plates or cups or bedsheets would accomplish the deed. “Very few Christians who associate and lie with the Indian women have escaped the malady,” he warned. “This horrible disease came from the Indies,” where it was “quite common among the natives,” but, “not so dangerous there as it is here in Europe.” The reason for the disparity, according to Fernández de Oviedo, was that Indians cured themselves of syphilis, so he believed, by gulping drafts of water in which splinters of bark or wood that had been thoroughly boiled—not from just any tree, but the fruit-bearing guayacán of Hispaniola, or more precisely, the nearby island of Beata. “Undoubtedly many are cured of syphilis by this treatment.”
To meet the myriad difficulties