The Conquistadors Read Online Free Page B

cherished the idea that unknown lands lay beyond the Western Ocean.
    It is hardly credible that Columbus could have dreamed this up on the basis of hearsay and some vague reference in a dead sea captain’s papers. By then the Portuguese had almost a century’s experience of maritime exploration. The lure throughout had been, not gold, but spices. In those days spices, particularly pepper, were in great demand for the preserving of carcases slaughtered in theautumn because of the shortage of winter feed. The spice islands of the Moluccas are situated in the East Indies and the pepper was brought to Europe via Malaya, India, Egypt, and then overland to the Mediterranean. This route, littered with pirates and potentates, was so costly in lives and tribute that a bale of pepper purchased for one ducat in the Moluccas sold for 105 ducats in Europe. This was the financial lure that had motivated the Portuguese dream of a direct ocean route south round Africa to the Indies. We know why their interest in the African shore waned shortly after the death of Henry the Navigator. What remains a mystery is why, in the treaty that ended the War of Succession in 1476, they abandoned all claim to lands beyond the Western Ocean, and why they suddenly became so secretive about their voyages of discovery.
    Two years before Bartholomew Diaz succeeded in rounding the Cape of Good Hope, King John II, whose maritime enthusiasm had equalled Henry’s, turned down Columbus’s pleas for financial backing with the statement that he had ‘information regarding the western lands more positive than the visions of the Genoese’. Had the Portuguese already explored the American coast? This seems incredible. Nevertheless, there is still much we have to learn about the early voyages. It is only in recent years that we have come to accept the idea that the Vikings were in America four centuries before Columbus. Irish monks, sailing their skin-hulled curraghs, may have been there as early as the sixth century. And what about the Phoenicians, who kept the details of their trading voyages to themselves – or the Greeks?
    Who was Quetzalcoatl, the Aztec god of learning, who was tall and white-skinned, with long hair and flowing beard, and who came out of the east, out of the sunrise, and who disappeared into the sea as mysteriously as he had come? This was the god of Aztec mythology that the Mexicans were to confuse with Cortes. And the Incas, too – who was their Tici-Viracocha? The appearance recently of a new map acts as a timely reminder that, in the five centuries that have elapsed since the days of Portuguese discovery, much vital information has been lost. Indeed, the acceptance of Columbus as the discoverer of America has obscured at least one Portuguese voyage, that of Joâo Vaz Corte-Real in 1472, who is recognised by half a dozen countries, including Portugal and Denmark, as the real discoverer of America. The sea route that the Viking longships took, and possibly also the Irish monks, was by way of Iceland and Greenland. Here the open sea passages are nowhere greater than four hundred miles and the Danes were regularly sailing the first three of these. Why not the last?
    Such speculation was even more rife in the days of Columbus, and what is so frustrating is that we do not know on what information he based his belief in the possibility of reaching land beyond the Western Ocean. All we know is that he was so dedicated to the idea that, failing support for it in Lisbon, he went to Spain. The war with Granada was then at its height, nobody had any time or money to spare for such visionary exploits. He tried the nobles of the Mediterraneancoast, and failed again. But interest had been aroused, and when Granada fell Ferdinand and Isabella were prepared to listen to his arguments. On April 17, 1492, at Santa Fe, they signed a capitulation appointing him admiral, viceroy and governor-general of all islands and mainlands he