Chapter V: The Search for the Indies (5)

[Footnote 529: "The lands, therefore, which Columbus had
visited were called the West Indies; and as he seemed to have
entered upon a vast region of unexplored countries, existing in
a state of nature, the whole received the comprehensive
appellation of the New World." Irving's _Columbus_, vol. i. p.
333. These are very grave errors, again involving the
projection of our modern knowledge into the past. The lands
which Columbus had visited were called simply the Indies; it
was not until long after his death, and after the crossing of
the Pacific ocean, that they were distinguished from the East
Indies. The _New World_ was not at first a "comprehensive
appellation" for the countries discovered by Columbus; it was
at first applied to one particular region never visited by him,
viz. to that portion of the southeastern coast of South America
first explored by Vespucius. See vol. ii. pp. 129, 130.]

[Footnote 530: Peter Martyr, however, seems to have entertained
some vague doubts, inasmuch as this assumed nearness of the
China coast on the west implied a greater eastward extension of
the Asiatic continent than seemed to him probable:--"Insulas
reperit plures; has esse, de quibus fit apud cosmographos
mentio extra oceanum orientalem, adjacentes Indiæ arbitrantur.
Nec inficior ego penitus, _quamvis sphæræ magnitudo aliter
sentire videatur_; neque enim desunt qui parvo tractu a finibus
Hispaniæ distare littus Indicum putent." _Opus Epist._, No.
135. The italicizing is mine.]

[Footnote 531: This abominable piece of wickedness, driving
200,000 of Spain's best citizens from their homes and their
native land, was accomplished in pursuance of an edict signed
March 30, 1492. There is a brief account of it in Prescott's
_Ferdinand and Isabella_, pt. i. chap. vi.]

[Sidenote: This voyage was an event without any parallel in history.]

Thus nobody had the faintest suspicion of what had been done. In the famous letter to Santangel there is of course not a word about a New World. The grandeur of the achievement was quite beyond the ken of the generation that witnessed it. For we have since come to learn that in 1492 the contact between the eastern and the western halves of our planet was first really begun, and the two streams of human life which had flowed on for countless ages apart were thenceforth to mingle together. The first voyage of Columbus is thus a unique event in the history of mankind. Nothing like it was ever done before, and nothing like it can ever be done again. No worlds are left for a future Columbus to conquer. The era of which this great Italian mariner was the most illustrious representative has closed forever.