The Dark And Twisted Psychology Of Christopher Columbus

As dawn broke on October 13th, 1492, three small Spanish ships dropped anchor off the coast of a tiny island in what would later be known as the Caribbean Sea. Watched from the trees by the timid inhabitants, a party of men began to row ashore. They were the first Europeans the natives had ever seen. Christopher Columbus was about to discover a new world and within a few short years turn a paradise into a hell. The closing years of the 15th century were a time of great change and awakening for Europe. In a continent for years riven by internal division and conflict, a new spirit of inquiry was abroad. This period became known to future generations as the Renaissance. And nowhere was it stronger than in the field of exploration. An expanding Europe was desperate to break its bonds and spread its influence into the world beyond. European governments and merchants began to give increasing attention to the possibility of finding a new route to the riches of India and Cathay, which we call China. Land routes to the east had been established many years earlier, but overland trade was a slow and risky business, now made more expensive and uncertain by the presence across the trade routes of new Muslim kingdoms. It was in these circumstances that some western nations began to consider a new possibility. Could they reach the riches of the east by sea? In the 15th century, almost everyone believed that the world was a sphere. In 1492, in Nuremberg, a German cartographer called Martin Beheim made a globe, and that globe represents, as near as possible, the 15th century perception of the world as the Middle Ages knew it. Now, the 15th century knew there were islands in the Atlantic. There are, in fact, a lot of islands in the Atlantic. But what they didn't know is that they'd already discovered them all. The Cape Verdes, the Azores, and the Canaries. There were no other islands in the Atlantic. But Martin Beheim's globe shows an Atlantic ocean with one large island in it, and that is Japan. It shows a world. It's the last representation of the world as the Middle Ages knew it, with one ocean on the left-hand side of the ocean section. You can see Cathay, China, and on the right-hand side, you can see Europe. It's the last representation of a world without America in it. It was into this restless and rapidly changing world that Christopher Columbus was born. Very little is known with certainty about his early years, and even the spelling of his name varies widely. He used the form Colón as his surname, but it is by the Latin version that Columbus is known to history. Christopher was born in Genoa, on the shores of the Mediterranean, in about the year 1451, the eldest son of a wool weaver. From about the age of 14, Columbus had chosen the life of a seaman, voyaging widely in the Mediterranean. Throughout his life, Columbus customarily clothed his thoughts and plans in a cloak of secrecy. So even today, we cannot be sure what he expected to find when he sailed westwards. He may have been drawn by hopes of discovering the fabled islands and lands of legend, just as much as finding a new seaward route to China and the Indies. Certainly, using a wide variety of sources, ancient writings on travel and cosmology, biblical references, and travellers' tales of unknown islands and even of strange plants and bodies which had been washed up on the shores of the Azores, he developed a detailed theory of what he thought lay to the west. History Hit is like Netflix, just for history fans, with exclusive history documentaries covering some of the most famous people and events in history, just for you. Whether you're looking to dive into life and crime in Victorian London, or the forgotten history that deserves to be heard, History Hit has a documentary for you, just a click away. We're committed to bringing history fans award-winning documentaries and podcasts that you can't find anywhere else. Sign up now for a free trial, and Absolute History fans get 50% off their first three months. Just be sure to use the code ABSOLUTEHISTORY at checkout. The thing to remember about Columbus, he wasn't actually an original thinker. He was aware of, and he used the theories of the day, the theories that were current in his time, and he developed and elaborated these through his personal experience, both as a mariner and a trader in the Mediterranean, and more especially in the Atlantic, which was known as the Ocean Sea in those days. Now Columbus didn't just pick up the theories that were lying around, he did his own work. Now he was aware of calculations of the size of the Atlantic. For instance, those of Toscanelli, who had calculated the Atlantic at being something like 5,000 nautical miles. He did his own calculations and arrived at a figure which was rather less than that. As it turned out, Columbus was rather more accurate in his estimate than people like Toscanelli and the other cosmographers who were working on the same sorts of problems. In theory, it was always possible to sail to the east using the western route across the ocean. The big question was, how wide was the ocean? Was this theory something which could be achieved in practice? And it's that question that Columbus spent many years, 10 years or so, trying to answer in his preparations for the 1492 voyage. But it was one thing for Columbus to develop his theory. Finding the means to prove it was quite another matter. He needed ships, men and money. And the only way to obtain these was with the aid of a wealthy patron. In 1484, Columbus took his proposal for a western voyage to King John I of Portugal, but met with a cool reception. The Portuguese king regarded Columbus as a big talker and boastful. And he and his experts, heavily involved in Portugal's explorations of the African coast route to the east, gave the Genoan little credit. In the years following, Columbus was vainly to seek backing from France and England. But his hopes increasingly rested with Spain and its joint monarchs, Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile. He first had audience with the Spanish rulers in 1486. And Isabella, at least, widely regarded as one of the most able rulers of the period, seemed to be interested in Columbus's schemes. A commission was appointed to consider them. But the time was not yet ripe for action. Spanish energies were currently devoted to the war to expel the Moors from their last foothold in Spain. And until this was achieved, there was no time or energy to devote to fantastic schemes for exploration. The next six years were among the most frustrating of Columbus's life. Whilst he dragged his heels, the commission deliberated and finally delivered their verdict. Columbus's plan, the experts said, rested upon weak foundations and seemed uncertain and impossible to any educated person. The only glimmer of hope came from Isabella, who told Columbus to apply to her again once the war against the Moors was over. Negotiations were resumed late in 1491 and almost foundered over Columbus's high demands. He required the title of Admiral of the Ocean and, more seriously, to be made viceroy of any new lands that were discovered and 10% of the proceeds of any trade with them. His proposals were almost rejected again until the keeper of Ferdinand's purse pointed out that the voyage would cost less than one week's expenditure on the upkeep of the royal court. The popular legend that Queen Isabella pawned her jewels to finance the expedition is untrue. The next step was for Columbus to find ships for his voyage and the crews to man them. He established his base at the little port of Palos, not far from Cádiz. Here, experienced sailors were plentiful. Again, contrary to legend, Columbus does not seem to have experienced any great difficulty in recruiting men. Very few of his crew were the convicts of popular myth. There were plenty of good, capable seamen with a taste for adventure and gold and Columbus had the support of several local shipowner families, notably the Pinzon brothers, Martín and Vincente, who were to be two of his captains. In all, Columbus recruited about 90 men. As well as sailors, the expedition included several specialists. Luis de Torres, whose knowledge of Arabic was expected to prove useful. Rodrigo del Escobado, who was to keep the official record of the voyage and a royal official, Rodrigo Sanchez, who was to make sure that the Spanish crown received its fair share of any profits. Columbus was also given official letters of introduction to the great Khan of China and any other foreign potentates whom he might encounter. Interestingly, though armed for self-defense, the contingent did not include any soldiers. The expedition consisted of three ships. Most famous was Columbus's flagship, variously called La Gallega after Galicia, its place of origin, or more usually the Santa Maria, though to her crew she was apparently known as the Dirty Mary. Santa Maria was a three-masted square rigger of around 100 tons. Columbus's other two vessels were smaller. The Nina of some 60 tons and 70 foot in length, captained by Vincente Pinzon, and the Pinta, slightly larger under his brother Martin. Though originally caravels, one was converted into a square rigger soon after the voyage began. The two ships provided by the crown came as a result of the town of Palos having committed a misdemeanor and they were punished by having to provide these two ships and the crews. The third ship, the flagship, the Santa Maria, was provided by private investment. As it turned out, the two ships from Palos were much more suitable for this voyage because they were caravels. They were the newer sort of ship available in Mediterranean waters but a ship, a kind of ship, which was quite well suited for transatlantic crossing. It was fast and it was maneuverable and Columbus subsequently complained bitterly that his flagship, the Santa Maria, was useless in the Caribbean because he couldn't maneuver it as effectively as he could the other two ships. Early on August 3rd, 1492, Columbus's ships weighed anchor and stood out to sea. The great adventure had begun. Columbus headed south for the Canary Islands and took advantage of the prevailing easterly winds in that quarter to guide him across the great ocean. Another factor was that, according to Columbus's calculations, Quincy lay in the same latitude as the Canaries. Simply heading more or less on a straight course was bound to bring him to its shores. Pausing to take fresh water and extra provisions on board, Columbus headed west again from the Canaries on September 6th. He met with mainly favorable winds and the little flotilla made rapid progress into the unknown. Probably because he feared discontent amongst his men and also perhaps because of his passion for secrecy, Columbus kept two records of his daily progress. One, which he kept to himself, recorded what Columbus believed to be the actual distance which he had covered. The other, for the consumption of his crew, suggested a faster rate of progress, which in fact seems to have been the more accurate. During the first 10 days of their voyage, Columbus and his ships made a total of some 1,160 miles. Flying before the steady easterly trade winds, these were, for Columbus, the happiest days of the voyage. What a delight were the savor of the mornings, he wrote. Like April in Andalusia, the only thing wanting was to hear the nightingale. By about September 19th, both the Admiral of the Ocean and his men were beginning to grow anxious, soundings showed no sign of the ocean bottom. According to popular myth, there then came a cry of, Land from a lookout! And the excited Columbus ordered his men to share in a hymn of thanksgiving, an ordered course to be set towards the apparent island. It is possible that all that had been sighted was a bank of cloud, and morale dropped further when a period of slight winds and slow progress set in. Then, on October 7th, drooping spirits were revived. Great flocks of birds, which we now know to have been part of the annual autumn migration from North America to the West Indies, were sighted heading southwest, and Columbus ordered course to be altered to follow them. But it seems clear that there was still discontent among some of the men about where exactly Columbus was leading them. This almost certainly never reached the point of mutiny, which has been suggested by some writers. But Columbus and his commanders evidently agreed to turn back if no land was sighted in the next three or four days. However, as the hours went by, sightings of floating branches, some with leaves on them, made it obvious that land could not be far away. All through the night of October 11th, the little fleet pressed on before a stiff breeze. Lookouts, eager to earn the royal reward of a comfortable sum of money and a silk doublet for the first man to sight land, strained at the masthead. At about 10 p.m. on the night of October 11th, both Columbus and a lookout claimed to see a light like a little wax candle rising and falling. This was almost certainly an illusion caused by the strain of prolonged watching, though this did not prevent Columbus from later appropriating the reward for himself. Then, at about 2 a.m. on the morning of October 12th, Rodrigo de Trayana, lookout on the Pinta, spotted what would have looked like a white cliff in the moonlight. This time there was no mistake. At daylight, Columbus began to close in on the small island, which was now clearly visible. The long voyage was over, and the course of world history was about to change forever. There is still dispute about the island on which Columbus had made his landfall. At least 12 alternative sites have been suggested. At about noon on October 12th, Columbus's men became the first Spaniards to set foot on the soil of the New World. Watched cautiously by a few natives, Columbus and his men set up the standards of Castile and of the expedition, and, all having rendered thanks to our Lord kneeling on the ground, embracing it with tears of joy for the immeasurable mercy of having reached it, the admiral rose and gave the island the name of San Salvador. It is unclear what land Columbus thought he had reached. But he saw no reason to suspect that the almost naked people who timidly came forward to meet him were not Chinese or Indian. We actually know very little about the natives of the Caribbean islands at the time of Columbus, for two reasons. First of all, they had no written language and therefore left no written records of their own. And secondly, because their oral culture, their oral history, was destroyed along with the people by the Spaniards. Our knowledge of the indigenous population of the Caribbean comes solely from European accounts, from the accounts of Europeans who'd encountered them, most particularly the Spaniards. Of course, having to rely on such accounts means that we have a distorted picture of the natives and their culture. The most obvious distortion being, of course, the word Indian. This was given to them by Columbus in the belief that he'd made landfall off the Asian landmass. It was adopted by the Spaniards and then has come down to the rest of us through the Spaniards. So the term Indian is, of course, simply a reflection of the distortion of the accounts of the natives as they were encountered by those early settlers and explorers. Columbus was apparently initially quite touched by the kindness and friendliness of the Tainos inhabitants of the island he called San Salvador, writing, But a darker side to his thinking quickly became apparent when Columbus added, I believe that they would easily be made Christians because it seemed to me that they had no religion. Our Lord pleasing, I will carry on six of them at my departure to your highnesses in order that they may learn to speak. By sign language, the natives indicated that other islands lay to the west and Columbus put to sea once more, kidnapping six inhabitants to act as guides. During the next few days, the expedition came across numerous other islands, discovering on them many exotic and new plants, fine trees, maize, and sweet potatoes. But apart from the tantalizing evidence of the ornaments worn by the natives, there was no sign of what was increasingly becoming the Spaniards' chief desire, gold. Informed by the islanders of a larger island, which they called Colba, Columbus, perhaps believing this might be the mainland of China, resumed his voyage and on October 28, anchored off the coast of Cuba. But again, his hopes were to meet with frustration. A party dispatched inland in search of evidence of Chinese or Japanese civilization returned empty-handed. Apart from news of a strange practice which they had observed, they had met many people who were going to their village with a firebrand in the hand and herbs to drink the smoke thereof. It was Europe's first experience of tobacco. Rumors of gold abounded. Columbus was told of an island called Babique, where the people gathered gold on the beach by candlelight. Possibly fired by these tales, Martin Pinzon and his pinto slipped away alone on a private gold-hunting expedition, leaving Columbus with the two other vessels to sail on. On December 8, Columbus reached yet another island, and the admiral, seeing the grandeur and beauty of this island and its resemblance to the land of Spain, christened it La Isla Española, later to become Hispaniola. In an ominous moment for the island's unsuspecting Tainos inhabitants, who welcomed Columbus in the same fashion as the islanders elsewhere, the admiral noted the rich ornaments worn by a local chief, a cacique, and his entourage, and confided to his journal that the people were very cowardly, fit to be ordered about and made to work, sew, and do anything else that may be needed. It is clear that Columbus's thoughts were turning from his proclaimed objective of seeking a route to the Indies to the possibilities of conquering and colonizing these newfound lands. On December 22, Columbus received a message from Guacanagare, a powerful cacique in what is now northwestern Hispaniola, inviting him to visit, and especially attractive to Columbus, enclosing as a gift a richly ornamented belt with a gold buckle. This was a temptation impossible for Columbus to resist, but en route, disaster struck. Exhausted by all-night entertainment, the crew of the Santa Maria failed to keep watch on the night of Christmas Day. Just before midnight, the ship ran onto a reef and was wrecked. Though with the help of Guacanagare and his people, the crew and most of the contents of the Santa Maria were saved, Columbus was left only with the little Nina, much too small a vessel to carry all of his men back home to Spain. This gave him a pretext to do what may already have been in his mind, to establish a permanent settlement in the newly discovered islands. With increasing evidence that gold must be plentiful and close at hand, there were plenty of volunteers to man the new settlement. Using timber from the Santa Maria, a small fort, itself perhaps evidence of the Spaniards' true intentions toward the friendly people of the islands, was constructed on a sand spit on the northwestern coast of Hispaniola, and 39 men selected to garrison it. There is no doubt that Columbus was already considering the potential of Spain's new subjects as slaves. On January 4, 1493, Columbus and the Nina set sail on the first stage of the long voyage home. Two days later, they encountered the Pinta, and Pinzon's news was such as to cause Columbus to forgive his desertion. Penetrating into the interior of Hispaniola, Martin Pinzon and his men had found gold in abundance. After an ominous development engaging in a brief skirmish with some Tainos at Samana Bay, Columbus set course for Spain. He carried with him about a dozen hapless Tainos captives to display to the Spanish monarchs. The voyage home was a perilous one. The two little ships encountered near-hurricane conditions and came close to foundering. Indeed, Columbus lost sight of Pinzon and the Pinta and gave them up for lost. However, Nina at length came safely to anchor in the Azores on the 18th of February, 1493. But the explorer's troubles were not yet over. Contrary winds drove him into Lisbon instead of a Spanish harbor, and he could not be certain how he would be received by King John of Portugal, when the latter realized that he had missed the chance of gaining for himself the new territories of the Indies. However, John rejected advice that he should imprison Columbus, contenting himself with the rueful comment, why did I let slip such a wonderful chance? Allowed to resume his journey, Columbus dropped anchor at Palos at about noon on March 15th, after a voyage lasting 224 days. He was about to discover that the mortally sick Martin Pinzon had reached Spain shortly before him. But perhaps fortunately for Columbus's reputation, had died before he could give his version of events to Ferdinand and Isabella. When about April 20th, Columbus with his cavalcade of natives, or those who had survived the voyage, in their full exotic attire and bearing strange gifts, including some gold, reached the court of Barcelona, he received a hero's welcome. Confirmed in all the titles and privileges which he had demanded, it was the Genoese sailors finest hour. It vindicated all he'd said about his voyage across the Atlantic, it vindicated the support he'd received in order to mount that voyage, and most of all it vindicated or gave vindication to all the contractual arrangements he'd made with the Spanish monarchs. The direct result of that for him personally was that he was now Admiral of the Ocean Sea, and he was poised to become an extremely rich man if he could turn his discoveries in the New World into money. In terms of his investors, it was an unmitigated disaster. Columbus had not found the great civilisations that he was hoping to make contact with across the ocean. He'd found some very beautiful islands, he'd found some natural resources, he'd found some gentle people, but he'd found nothing that was of any real interest to his investors. There are some significant omissions from his account of the first voyage, particularly the sinking of the Santa Maria, which was very embarrassing to him to lose a ship of that size. It was a considerable embarrassment. But what he did very successfully in the letters that he wrote in 1493 about the first voyage was delay the basis for the funding of the second voyage. Ferdinand and Isabella lost no time in authorising Columbus to make a second voyage to the newly discovered lands, whatever they might actually be. This time there was to be a major expedition and its object was clear, to establish a Spanish colony. A fleet of 17 ships carrying 1,200 men left Cádiz in September 1493. Significantly, they included both priests to convert the natives of the islands and soldiers to crush them. Discovering more islands, including Guadalupe and Puerto Rico en route, the expedition arrived at the post of Navidad to find that it had been burnt to the ground and its inhabitants slaughtered. In a foretaste of later events, Columbus's men had come into conflict with the Tainos over gold and the native women and been massacred. There is no evidence that Columbus expressed particular regret or concern, though he did prevent vengeance being exacted on the loyal Cacique, Guacanagari. Rather than rebuild the ill-fated settlement, Columbus chose to establish a new colony on the north side of Hispaniola. Named Isabella, it was badly sighted and in an unhealthy spot. It would bring Columbus little but grief. Leaving the colonists to establish themselves, Columbus resumed his explorations. From now on, the darker side of his nature becomes steadily more apparent. The voyage was marked by continual clashes with the natives. Some, the Caribs, were accused of cannibalism by the Spaniards, but there is no evidence that this was true and may have in part been used as an excuse to justify the increasing cruelty which the Spaniards displayed towards them. Columbus explored part of the coast of Cuba. Then, in an action difficult to understand, except as a sign of his desperation to prove to Ferdinand and Isabella that he had in fact reached the promised lands of Asia, the admiral forced his crew to swear an oath, on pain of having their tongues torn out if they broke it, that Cuba was in fact the long-sought continent. Returning in June 1494 to Isabella, Columbus found that life in his idyllic colony, left in the charge of his son Diego, was already turning sour. Many of the colonists, disillusioned both with conditions and Columbus's leadership, had sent messages of complaint back to Spain. And poisoned by the Spaniards' lust for gold, the colonists were openly at war with the native people of Hispaniola. Attempts by the Tainos to resist were ruthlessly crushed by Columbus and his men, who made use of savage dogs and war horses never before encountered by the natives. Columbus's formerly relatively moderate attitude towards them was rapidly changing. Disappointed in the amounts of gold which had so far been discovered, he proposed instead to sell the inhabitants as slaves. Some 1,500 were rounded up and about a third of them shipped home to Spain. But the majority failed to survive the voyage. And because they felt that the trade would be too uneconomic to make a profit, and Spanish subjects should not be enslaved, Ferdinand and Isabella declined to authorize further shipments. The fate of the other captives was equally terrible. After allowing his men to take their pick of them, Columbus released the survivors to fend for themselves. It is said that the Tainos women fled in such terror that they abandoned their babies. Unable to meet the vast tribute in gold which the Spaniards demanded, and facing mutilation and execution for failure, the Tainos, or those of them who still survived, became fugitives in the mountains where they were hunted down like wild beasts or starved. It was one of the darkest chapters in Spanish colonial history, known to other Europeans of the time as the Black Legend, which did much to engender hatred and fear of Spain throughout the 16th century. In the conquered islands, the work of devastation and genocide continued until there were no natives left to destroy. In 1492, the population of Hispaniola had been estimated to have been in the millions. By 1550, cruelty, murder, and disease had reduced the Tainos to less than 500 survivors. The impact of the Spanish on the natives of the Caribbean islands was absolutely catastrophic, and for two main reasons. The first was disease. The Spaniards brought with them infectious diseases such as smallpox and measles, for which the natives had no natural immunity. Now this devastated their population, and as a consequence undermined their reproductive base. In other words, there were fewer people of reproductive age and ability to maintain the population. The second was rather more political and rather more insidious. The initial consequence of Spanish settlement on the islands was enslavement for the Indians, and Columbus himself was implicated in this. He was the first person to take Indians back to Spain as slaves. Columbus's return to Spain in March 1496 was a much less triumphant affair than that of three years previously. Despite his ingenious claims, it was apparent to most people that Columbus had not reached Cathay or the Indies. The lands he had discovered were not producing gold in the quantities which he had promised, and the inhabitants, or those who survived, were not proving willing converts to Christianity. It seems that Ferdinand and Isabella were becoming disillusioned with the whole business of new lands in the West, and only the wish to prevent foreign powers from reaping any benefits which there were to be had there, caused the Spanish monarchs to give continued, but increasingly reluctant, backing to Christopher Columbus. In March 1498, he was given permission to undertake a third voyage, partly financed by the sale of some of the Taino slaves he had brought back with him. In some ways, though this was not fully appreciated at the time, Columbus's third voyage of discovery was perhaps his most important. As well as discovering the island of Trinidad, Columbus became the first European to set foot on the continent of South America, when, on August 5th, 1498, he reached the coast of Venezuela. The landing was opposed this time not by natives, but by hordes of hostile monkeys. At first, Columbus did not realize that he had discovered a continent, assuming that he had landed on yet another island. But as he voyaged up the coast, he began to change his mind. What seems to have changed Columbus's mind was the site of the vast estuary of the Orinoco River. Such a huge volume of fresh water, he felt, could only have been produced from a large landmass. But where and what this continent was remained unclear to the explorer. It might, of course, be Asia, but the evidence suggests that Columbus was by now beginning to come to the conclusion that he had indeed reached some completely uncharted land. He wrote to Ferdinand and Isabella, Your Highnesses will gain these vast lands, which are an other world. Unfortunately, Columbus was now increasingly suffering from complications from the dysentery, which he had contracted in his previous voyage. These, it is now thought, were affecting his mental stability. And it was perhaps partly this that caused Columbus to engage in some flights of fancy which were extreme, even for him. The new lands, he suggested, might contain great stores of gold, which is treasure. And with it, whoever has it may do what he wants in the world and may succeed in taking souls to paradise. And this latter task, Columbus suggested, might prove easier because he hinted that his new discovery might even be the Garden of Eden. It is most unlikely that Spain's hard-headed rulers were impressed by their admiral's more fantastic theories. Indeed, they probably served to increase their doubts as to his reliability. These concerns would be strengthened still further by events when Columbus put in once more to the ill-starred colony of Isabella. Columbus found Hispaniola in a state of ferment and rebellion against his own and his son's authority. Unable to restore order, Columbus wrote to Spain asking for the assistance of a lettered official. This was probably the pretext which the Spanish government had been looking for. And they dispatched a nobleman, Francisco de Bobadilla, with judicial powers both to deal with the rebels and to investigate the grievances which they had laid against Columbus and his son. Columbus did nothing to help his own case by the arrogant fashion in which he received Bobadilla and quickly found himself imprisoned and charged with concealing the gold of the island and wishing to make himself and other accomplices lords of the island and give it away to the Genoese. In fact, modern scholars inclined to the view that Columbus was to some degree being used as a convenient scapegoat for the wider failings of Spanish colonial policy. But this did not prevent his being sent back to Spain in chains and in disgrace. The extent of Columbus's downfall has sometimes been exaggerated. Disgrace and imprisonment were an occupational hazard for the great in his day. And Ferdinand and Isabella retained sufficient gratitude for his past exploits to allow him to retain his title of Admiral of the Ocean and at least some of the privileges which had been granted to him. But Columbus was stripped of all of his powers in the colonies. Eventually, in March 1502, he was given permission to undertake another voyage of exploration on condition that he did not set foot on Hispaniola. So far as he made them clear, Columbus's aims in his final voyage were to explore further to the north of the other world which he had discovered. He may have believed that he would find a strait leading at last to the long-sought route to Asia. But it is equally likely that he was just as much motivated by a lust for gold which had now become a mania. A desire, as Columbus himself wrote, for gold without limit. Ironically, at one point during this last voyage, Columbus was to reach the Isthmus of Panama, only about a dozen miles from the site of the great Pacific Ocean whose existence Columbus never suspected. But apart from this, the voyage was a sorry tale of ever-increasing cruelty to those men and beasts that he encountered. Sickness, storms, and frustration. After being shipwrecked for a year in Jamaica, Columbus came back to Spain for the last time in November 1504. Here, whatever dwindling hopes of a return to favor which Columbus still had, received a fatal blow with the news of the death of Queen Isabella. It had been she who had been his chief champion. An increasingly embittered man, Columbus vainly reminded the Spanish court that, Our Redeemer ordained my path thither. There in the Indies I have brought more lands under his dominion than there are in Africa or Europe, and more than 1,700 islands apart from Hispaniola, which comprises more than the whole of Spain. It was an exaggerated plea, born of frustration and increasing instability, and met with no response. Though far from living in the poverty of popular legend, Columbus spent his final years in fruitless pursuit of the awards and privileges which he claimed were rightfully his. History has been very ambivalent about Columbus for two reasons, I think. One is obviously connected with the fact that the discovery of Central and South America caused havoc on the native populations of those lands, the islands of the Caribbean and Central America. Columbus was, as far as we know, the first European to make contact with the American continent in the 15th century. If he hadn't done it, someone else would have done fairly soon. Europe was on the brink of that discovery. Columbus just happened to be a man who was in the right place at the right time. Whether or not Columbus was the very first European to set foot on American soil, he is the first person to have explored the New World systematically, and he kept record, and who was able to repeat his voyages and tell other people about his voyages. So to that extent, whether or not he was the first there, he was certainly the first to bring to the attention of the Old World the existence of the New World, and that was absolutely crucial. On May 20th, 1506, his passing unmarked by the wider world, Christopher Columbus died. It was a lonely fate for the Genoese sailor, who, for good or ill, had brought medieval Europe through the gates of a new age and given her a new world to make her own.