E.G.R. Taylor - Select Documents illustrating the Four Voyages of Columbus

Edited by
CECIL JANE and E.G.R. TAYLOR

SELECT DOCUMENTS
ILLUSTRATING THE
FOUR VOYAGES OF COLUMBUS

INCLUDING THOSE CONTAINED IN R.H. MAJORS
SELECT LETTERS OF CHRISTOPHER
COLUMBUS

TRANSLATED AND EDITED
WITH ADDITIONAL MATERIAL, AN
INTRODUCTION AND NOTES
BY
CECIL JANE

VOL. II
THE THIRD AND
FOURTH VOYAGES.
WITH A SUPPLEMENTARY INTRODUCTION
BY
E. G. R. TAYLOR

LONDON
PRINTED FOR THE HAKLUYT SOCIETY
M CM XXXIII

PRINTED IN
GREAT BRITAIN
AT THE
UNIVERSITY PRESS
OXFORD
BY
JOHN JOHNSON
PRINTER
TO THE
UNIVERSITY

M R. CECIL JANE died on February 15, 1932, after a very brief illness, leaving the Introduction to the present volume, upon which he was working to within two days of his death, unfinished. His early death was a heavy loss both to learning and to the many friends who had followed his career with keen interest. He was already known as a lecturer on history in the Universities of Oxford and Aberystwith when, in 1929, the Hakluyt Society published the first volume of the present work, edited by him. The critical knowledge and judgement which he displayed in his introduction and notes to that volume quickly gained for him a high reputation as an authority on Columbus and on the early history of Spanish America. In appreciation of his work, the municipal authorities of Genoa presented him with facsimiles of all the Columbian documents belonging to that city, while he was frequently consulted by historians in France and Spain as well as in England.

Although Mr. Jane had only written about one-third of his projected Introduction to the present volume, the President and Council of this Society felt that no other person could complete it in a manner which would do justice to its author, and therefore decided to publish the fragment just as he left it. The text which he used was that established by De Lollis (Scritti di Cristoforo Colombo), except in the case of the Relacin of Diego Mndez, where he followed Fernndez de Navarrete. Professor E. G. R. Taylor was good enough to write a supplementary introduction, Columbus and the World-Map, to supply notes on the documents and to fill in the routes on the two maps. Mrs. Peter Cornish has kindly read the proofs and compiled the Index, while the present writer has arranged the material, supplied some notes, and seen the work through the press. But most of the labour and all the inspiration were Cecil Janes.

EDWARD LYNAM.

September, 1932.

Map to illustrate the third voyage

Map to illustrate the fourth voyage

AMONG the factors which determined the conduct of Columbus during his four voyages and throughout his whole later career, a foremost place must be assigned to the character of the reception with which he met at the Castilian court when he sought to obtain material assistance to enable him to execute the design which he had formed. Such assistance was absolutely necessary for him; whatever may have been the nature of the objective which he set before himself, unaided he could not hope even to attempt its attainment. Had he designed no more than to sail across the Atlantic, he would still have required help; a poor foreigner, he would have been unable to procure a ship, nor, had a ship been at his disposal, would he have been able to find a crew to man her. His need was the greater, since he assuredly aspired to win for himself something more substantial than that barren reputation which might be the portion of a successful navigator. If he desired fame, he still more desired wealth, position, and power, deliverance from that obscurity and poverty in which he had been born, from that subjection against which his very soul revolted. He was thus compelled to seek assistance, but when he did so, modest as were the means for which he asked, he encountered very considerable difficulties. The King of Portugal, to whom he first applied, was deeply committed to African adventure and wedded to the attempt to open the easterly route to India; he listened, indeed, to the proposals which were laid before him, but he listened only in the end to reject them. Disappointed at Lisbon, Columbus turned to Castile, to meet there with a reception which was little more encouraging. He was obliged to consume some seven or eight years in urging his case upon the sovereigns and their council, or in awaiting some definite answer from them, and it was, perhaps, only at the eleventh hour, when his patience was almost exhausted and his hope almost dead, that he obtained that for which he pleaded.