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Updated: May 25, 2025
Behind him, the Ferrarian promontory was growing more and more shadowy, becoming a mere blur on the horizon. By nightfall the Mare Nostrum was in front of Cape Palos and he had to sail in the outer waters in order to double it, leaving Cartagena in the distance.
This, however, did not prove to be quite such a straightforward business as might have been expected. The truth is that, whatever a few monks and physicians may have thought of it, the proposed expedition terrified the ordinary seafaring population of Palos. It was thought to be the wildest and maddest scheme that any one had ever heard of.
Ten Indians were captured and taken with them to show to his friends in Europe. Besides, Columbus hoped that they would learn the language of Spain, and carry Christianity back to their people. THE SEARCH FOR CHINA RENEWED. There was rejoicing in Palos when the voyagers returned. Great honors were bestowed upon Columbus. It was now easy to get men and money for another voyage.
Unfortunately these adventurers were of a class compared with whom even the cut-throats and gaol-birds of the humble little expedition that had sailed the year before from Palos were useful and efficient.
Ambition was the keynote of his life; not an unworthy keynote, by any means, if only the ambition be sound; but one serious defect of Columbus's ambition was that it was retrospective rather than perspective. He may have had, before he sailed from Palos, an ambition to be the discoverer of a New World; but I do not think he had.
Tinto means deep-colored, like wine; and as this river flows through the richest copper region in the whole world, it is not surprising that its waters are reddish, nor that the copper trade enriched the neighboring towns. How the now unimportant Palos at the mouth of the Rio Tinto came to be chosen as the seaport from which Columbus should embark is an amusing story.
Some time before, its inhabitants had, through disobedience or some other offense, incurred the displeasure of their sovereigns. By way of punishment, the Crown ordered that Palos should fit out two caravels at its own expense and lend them to the government for a year whenever the government should call for them.
He could walk with Diego through the sandy roads beneath the pine trees, or through the fields and vineyards below; and above all he could talk to the company that good Perez invited to meet him among them merchants and sailors from Palos, of whom the chief was Martin Alonso Pinzon, a wealthy landowner and navigator, whose family lived then at Palos, owning the vineyards round about, and whose descendants live there to this day.
Of the better sort who accompanied this second expedition there were a few, but only a few, solid, reliable individuals whose society must have been a comfort to the Admiral; among them, the faithful Juan de la Cosa, the Palos pilot; James Columbus, or as the Spaniards called him, Diego Colon, faithful to his celebrated brother, but unfortunately somewhat stupid; Antonio de las Casas, father of the young priest who later became the champion of the Indians and who wrote Columbus's biography; Juan Ponce de Leon, an intrepid aristocrat who was destined to discover Florida; and Doctor Chanca, a physician and botanist who was to write an account of the vegetables and fruits of the western lands.
Some adventurers from Portugal, allured by this report, went out for the purpose of prosecuting this discovery, one of whom was James de Tiene, and the pilot was James Velasquez of Palos.
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