The immediate result of Vasco da Gama’s and Cabot’s voyages, however, was a renewed Spanish interest in the islands across the sea; Columbus’ Hispaniola, in fact, suddenly became a matter of great urgency to the Spanish Sovereigns. In January 1498, two ships were once again sent out to the Indies, laden with food and supplies, while Columbus made preparations for a fleet of his own. Six more ships had been hired for the expedition, but this time the going proved tough. Though the Sovereigns had promised nearly two million maradevis for expenses, by February Columbus had received less than one-quarter of that amount, and most of his preparations had to be made on credit. Worse yet, he found far fewer volunteers prepared to ship out to those islands of hunger and illness; Hispaniola, in fact, had become so infamous that the Sovereigns finally offered freedom to any convict willing to serve the Admiral for a year or two – except those convicted of “heresy, high treason, fugery, sodomy, or theft of copper, gold and silver.”
Not until May 30 did the third voyage to America finally get underway, with Columbus well aware that this time he better find the Asian mainland and lots more of the gold he had promised. In Madeira they took on additional supplies, and after a brief stop at the Canaries set out into the Atlantic “in the name of the Holy Trinity.” Three of the caravels under the command of Alonso de Carvajal were sent out directly to Hispaniola to deliver supplies to a new settlement began by Bartholomeo, which he had named Santo Domingo. The three remaining ships, the flagship Santa Maria de Guia, La Vaquenos, and El Correo, sailed to what was hoped to be the southern part of Cathay.
Columbus had decided to sail a more southerly course in the hope of finding both the continent and to get closer to all those precious metals that would surely be found to the south. But as they reached the parallel of Sierra Leone, the winds grew softer and softer and finally died completely. For eight days they drifted with the equatorial currents in a heat so intense that the casks of wine and water “burst and snapped their hoops. The wheat burned like fire; the salt pork and other meats went bad.” Finally a fresh trade wind sprang up again and the temperatures dropped. The sailors, who had already expected to die in mid-ocean, began to revive again, and talk about gold and riches became common. Columbus no longer dared to go farther southward; he set a course due west, and for the next nine days the ships sailed in fair weather toward their destination. By the end of July, however, the supply of drinking water was running dangerously low; with no sign of land ahead, Columbus set a more northerly course again in order to reach one of the Caribbean islands. At that point they were less than thirty nautical miles east of the coast of Venezuela.
At noon of that same day land was sighted, and soon it appeared in the shape of three hills. Since Columbus had already placed this voyage under the protection of the Holy Trinity, he regarded the three peaks as a miraculous sign from God, and the island before him was named Trinidad. They dropped anchor and the men went ashore to wash their clothes and to bathe the caked salt and sweat from their bodies. To the south they could make out more land, lying very low along the horizon, and they estimated it at least 200 leagues long. Columbus called it Isla Sancta, but no one realized that they were actually looking at the very object of this voyage – the immense and rich continent of South America.
The next day the ships continued around Trinidad into the Gulf of Paria. There a large dugout canoe filled with Indians came out to meet them; Columbus, however, noted with disgust that once again they were only naked savages instead of the civilized Chinese he had hoped to encounter. After some unsuccessful attempts to lure these Indians aboard, the Admiral hoped to entice them by putting on a little show for their benefit. He ordered the pipe players to sound off, the tambourines to be jangled, and the ship’s boys to dance. The Trinidad Indians, however, appear to have looked on this activity as a war dance; before these strange white men had much of a chance to warm up, they let fly a shower of arrows. The dance was broken off, and the Spanish answered with a volley from their crossbows, and that was the last seen of any of the natives of Trinidad.
While the ships were still exploring in the Gulf of Paria, the Spaniards received the scare of their lives. An enormous tidal wave suddenly roared through the strait below the gulf, snapping anchor cables, raising the ships to an immense height and then dropping them so low that they were certain they had seen bottom. Columbus decided that this was no place to linger, and he named the strait Boca del Sierpe – the Serpent’s Mouth.
The following morning, the Spaniards sailed toward the land Columbus had already named Isla de Gracia. As they reached its eastern cape, they noticed that this island stretched far to the west, farther than they could see. They found a large thatched house and a fire still burning, but the inhabitants had already fled. Only a swarm of monkeys chattered at the Spanish who remained totally unaware that they had just set foot on the American mainland for the very first time. For so long they had been searching for a continent and had found nothing but islands; now they considered the mainland to be nothing but another island. The date was August 5, 1498.
Only the next day, a horde of friendly Indians appeared on the coast, “many of them wore pieces of gold on their breast,” wrote Columbus, “and some had pearls round their arms. I rejoiced greatly when I saw these things . . . and they told me they got them in a land further north . . .” That last statement caused great excitement among the Spanish; since the Admiral was suffering severely from sore eyes, Pedro de Torres now took formal possession of the region which the natives called Paria. It is still known as the Paria Peninsula, and today is a part of Venezuela.
The little fleet continued along the coast of the gulf, and the caravel El Correo was sent ahead to reconnoiter. The ship soon returned, and her captain reported that they had entered four great bays where the water was fresh and clear – they had found the mouth of the Rio Grande and one outlet of the Orinoco River. At first Columbus refused to believe that here was the mouth of any great river, for “he could not see land which was large enough to contain the source” of such a stream. But the evidence could no longer be denied. It must suddenly have dawned on Columbus that he had actually reached a mainland – not, perhaps, the land he had hoped to reach, but a mainland nevertheless. In his journal he now recorded: “I believe that this is a very great continent, until today unknown.” A river this large could only have sprung from a continent, but it was also clear by now that this was not Asia at all. This land, Columbus said, was an “otro mundo” – another world, previously unknown to Europeans.
But Columbus was by that time seriously ill, and his thoughts no longer clear. The writings in his journal now frequently became rambling and mystical accounts, trying to describe and explain this new discovery. A few days later he confided to his journal that he was convinced this new land was actually the Terrestrial Paradise – that he, Christopher Columbus, had found the Garden of Eden! “I have come to another conclusion respecting the Earth, namely that it is not round as they describe it, but of the form of a pear, which is very round except where the stalk grows, at which part it is very prominent; or like a round ball, upon one part of which is a prominence like a woman’s nipple, this protrusion being the highest and nearest to the sky . . . I believe it is impossible to ascent thither, because I am convinced that this is the spot of the terrestrial paradise, whither one can go but by God’s permission . . . and it is situated in the ocean below the Equator, at the end of the East . . . where the countries and islands of the East come to an end.” He had already noticed on all his voyages across the Atlantic that the air became cooler once they passed the Azores – the higher one came on this bulge in the Earth. And did not the violent waves and currents in the Boca del Sierpe prove that the water was running down a big slope?
For several more days the ships had continued sailing in the Gulf of Paria and between the islands of Ascuncion, Los Testogas and Margarita. But Columbus’ health had grown continuously worse, his eyes had begun to bleed and he was almost blind for long periods. Finally, on August 15, he gave orders to set course for Hispaniola.
Columbus was one of the outstanding navigators of his time, and he was about to prove it. Ill as he was, after a long journey over uncharted waters and the exploration of a strange new coast, he now plotted an accurate course from the shores of Venezuela to the new settlement of Santo Domingo on Hispaniola, a journey of more than 700 miles. So accurate was this course that only four days later they anchored off Beata Island, at the southern tip of Hispaniola, only 120 miles southwest of Santo Domingo. As they started out again in northeasterly direction, they were suddenly met by a caravel coming downwind. Bartholomeo Colon had sighted three ships, the supply fleet under Carvajal, sailing past Santo Domingo and had come out to find them and direct them to the settlement. Hoping that Carvajal would find the way back by himself, Bartholomeo now led his ill brother to Santo Domingo. On the last day of August 1498, another voyage came to an end for Christopher Columbus. Though he was never to know it, this time he had found the gateway to the greatest territory for Spanish expansion and eventually to the greatest riches the world had ever seen.