Spanish cosmographers, however, were not impressed. In fourteen hundred ninety, they “judged his promises and offers were impossible and vain and worthy of rejection. . they ridiculed his reasoning saying that they had tried so many times and had sent ships in search of the mainland and that it was all air and there was no reason in it. .”
Lizzie Melville, Herman’s wife, in a letter to her mother: “I suppose by this time you are deep in the ‘fogs’ of ‘Mardi’—if the mist ever does clear away, I should like to know what it reveals. .”
They further advised the Sovereigns “that it was not a proper object for their royal authority to favor an affair that rested on such weak foundations, and which appeared uncertain and impossible to any educated person, however little learning he might have.”
But Columbus “had conceived in his heart the most certain confidence to find what he claimed he would, as if he had this world locked up in his trunk.”
Later, in the Indies:
“We reached the latter island near a large mountain which seemed almost to reach heaven, and in the centre of that mountain there was a peak which was much higher than all the rest of the mountain, and from which many streams flowed in different directions, especially toward the direction in which we lay. At a distance of three leagues a waterfall appeared as large through as an ox, which precipitated itself from such a high point that it seemed to fall from heaven. It was at such a distance that there were many wagers on the ships, as some said that it was white rocks and others that it was water. As soon as they arrived nearer, the truth was learned, and it was the most wonderful thing in the world to see from what a high place it was precipitated and from what a small place such a large waterfall sprang.”
And the Pequod, approaching the Straits of Sunda:
“Broad on both bows, at the distance of some two or three miles, and forming a great semi-circle, embracing one half of the level horizon, a continuous chain of whale-jets were up-playing and sparkling in the noonday air.”
Swinging my foot to the floor, I sit tense, crouched forward, straight in the chair. Huge-headed, I am one of millions, and there is a gateway, an opening, for which all of us have been alerted.
“As marching armies approaching an unfriendly defile in the mountains, accelerate their march, all eagerness to place that perilous passage in their rear, and once more expand in comparative security upon the plain; even so did this vast fleet of whales now seem hurrying forward through the straits; gradually contracting the wings of their semicircle, and swimming on, in one solid, but still crescentic centre.”
From Nantucket, east,
to Good Hope, the Indian Ocean, the Straits of Sunda, and
“. . we glided between two whales into the innermost heart of the shoal, as if from some mountain torrent we had slid into a serene valley lake. Here the storms in the roaring glens between the outermost whales, were heard but not felt. In this central expanse the sea presented the smooth satin-like surface, called a sleek, produced by the subtle moisture thrown off by the whale in his more quiet moods. Yes, we were now in that enchanted calm which they say lurks at the heart of every commotion.”
“Keeping at the centre of the lake, we were occasionally visited by small tame cows and calves; the women and children of this routed host.”
“Some of the subtlest secrets of the seas seemed divulged to us in this enchanted pond. We saw young Leviathan amours in the deep.”
And Columbus, on the third voyage, sailing in the Gulf of Paria, observing the mangroves lining the shore, with tiny oysters clinging to their roots. . the oyster shells open, to catch from the mangrove leaves the dewdrops that engender pearls. .
Fourteen hundred and ninety, Isabella, rejecting the advice of her cosmographers, was hesitant. Perhaps, with insanity touching her mother and her daughter, rendering her thus bracketed
(as Melville, his father dying maniacal and his son a suicide, was similarly bracketed),
she was just strange enough to listen. .
Certainly, the natural direction for Spain’s colonial expansion was Africa, in pursuit of the Moors. America was altogether irrelevant, distant, difficult, tempting, and ultimately untenable and ruinous. Thus, as Melville to Western Man, so Columbus to Spanish history, did more violence, perhaps, than all the wars that followed.
But as Albertus Magnus said of the Antipodes:
“Perhaps also some magnetic power in that region draws human stones even as the magnet draws iron.”
FOUR
And there was Michele de Cuneo, with his Carib slave: “Having taken her into my cabin, she being naked according to their custom, I conceived a desire to take pleasure. I wanted to put my desire into execution but she did not want it and treated me with her fingernails in such manner that I wished I had never begun. But seeing that (to tell you the end of it all), I took a rope and thrashed her well, for which she raised such unheard of screams that you would not have believed your ears. Finally we came to an agreement in such a manner that I can tell you that she seemed to have been brought up in a school of harlots.”
And the letter to the Marquis of Mantua, announcing that vessels of the King of Spain “discovered certain islands, among others a very large island toward the Orient which had very great rivers and terrible mountains and a most fertile country inhabited by handsome men and women, but they all go naked, except that some wear a leaf of cotton over their genitals. .”
Melville, in TYPEE:
“. . we found ourselves close in with the island the next morning, but as the bay we sought lay on its farther side, we were obliged to sail some distance along the shore, catching, as we proceeded, short glimpses of blooming valleys, deep glens, waterfalls, and waving groves, hidden here and there by projecting and rocky headlands, every moment opening to the view some new and startling scene of beauty.”
“As they drew nearer, and I watched the rising and sinking of their forms, and beheld the uplifted right arm bearing above the water the girdle of tapa, and their long dark hair trailing beside them as they swam, I almost fancied they could be nothing else than so many mermaids. .”
(Columbus, First Voyage: “On the previous day, when the Admiral went to the Rio del Oro, he saw three mermaids, which rose well out of the sea. .”)
TYPEE: “We were still some distance from the beach, and under slow headway, when we sailed right into the midst of these swimming nymphs, and they boarded us at every quarter; many seizing hold of the chainplates and springing into the chains; others. . wreathing their slender forms about the ropes. . All of them at length succeeded in getting up the ship’s side, where they clung dripping with the brine and glowing from the bath, their jet-black tresses streaming over their shoulders, and half-enveloping their otherwise naked forms. There they hung, sparkling with savage vivacity. .”
“Our ship was now given up to every species of riot. .”
But Columbus in Spain, fourteen eighty-five to ninety-two:
“All this delay did not go without great anguish and grief for Cristóbal Colón, for. . he saw his life was flowing past wasted. . and above all because he saw how distrusted his truth and person were, which for generous persons it is known to be as painful and detestable as death.”