Page 307 - Art In The Age Of Exploration (Great Section on Chinese Art Ming Dynasty)

more, one would have to assume that if the
Journal was consciously falsified by Columbus
and those who had access to his manuscript, it
was rewritten almost completely. In short, if
credence can be given to the Journal of the first
voyage, it is hard to escape the conclusion that
from the moment he reached the islands of the
Caribbean, if not before, Columbus was fired
with dreams of gold, spices, and Christian con-
verts. He believed he was in the "Indies/' He
seems to have had a fixed idea that the source of
gold, if he could only find it, must be Marco
Polo's Cipangu, and that he was getting closer
by the day. When he left his men at La Navidad,
he and they believed that the nearby region of
Cybao was in fact Cipangu and that their
dreams were on the point of realization. Not far
away, he believed, lay a land mass that could
only be the realm of the Great Khan.
Before he reached Spain on the return voyage
he was driven to shelter in Portugal, where he
told the doubting king that he was returning
from the Indies. The Spanish monarchs
accepted his word that he had been there. He
received a letter from Ferdinand and Isabella
addressed to "Don Cristobal Colon, their
Admiral of the Ocean Sea, Viceroy and Gov-
ernor of the Islands that he hath discovered in
13
the Indies/' Apart from the Portuguese, most
contemporaries believed Columbus' assertions
that he had reached the Indies, though a few
doubted that the globe was so small that he
could have got there in only thirty-three days'
sailing from the Canaries. Even on his second,
third, and fourth voyages neither he nor the fig. i. Martin Behaim, Terrestrial Globe. Dated to 1492. Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg
vast majority of his contemporaries seem to
have seriously questioned the conviction that he
had discovered a western route to Asia. This
conviction blinded him to his discovery of a vast coast he sailed along in his last voyage of 1502- Vespucci, who did recognize America as a "New
new continent. 1503 was not a new mainland, but the Malay World," sailed down the coast of Argentina on
Columbus was the first Renaissance-era Peninsula itself. To the end he was unable to one of his voyages, searching for such a passage.
European to encounter the "New World" of the acknowledge his discovery of a new world Magellan, sailing much farther south, found
Americas, but after three more expeditions to it because he clung to the belief that he had that passage in 1520 and then sailed west-
he still went to his grave believing he had indeed found his way westward to the old world north-west across the Pacific to the Philippines.
simply discovered a route to the islands of the of Cipangu, Cathay, and the Indies. Had Columbus reached the Philippines, he
East. Despite his four unsuccessful attempts to might have learned that Cathay was close at
find and exploit the realms of the Great Khan, hand and that there were many islands to the
Cipangu, and Prester John, Columbus never Japan in the age of Columbus north, including Cipangu.
abandoned his belief that he had connected If Columbus had actually found his way to If, as the Portuguese were to do in the 15405,
Europe and Asia with a month-long voyage. Cipangu on one of his voyages, what kind of he had approached Japan from Southeast Asia
When others suggested that he had discovered a reception might he have received and what kind and the China coast, he would already have
new continent, he rejected the notion, only of land and society would he have described in heard stories of Japan and perhaps have encoun-
acknowledging that the Asian islands were more his journal and letters? The question is not far- tered some of the freebooters (wako) who in the
extensive than he had imagined. Throughout fetched. Columbus himself hoped to circum- 14905 sailed Asian waters and alternately traded
1493, having found Cuba and Hispaniola, he navigate the world. Had he recognized that with and ravaged the coastal settlements of
insisted that each in turn was Cipangu. In 1498 South America was not an Asian island but a Korea and China. Although known as "Japanese
he believed that he was sailing south of Cipangu continent that blocked his way to Asia, he pirates," the marauders comprised Koreans and
and Cathay, that the mainland of South might have sailed southward looking for a pas- Chinese as well. Columbus might even have
America was part of a peninsula protruding sage eastward to the gold and spices he was made a landfall at one of the small Japanese
from Malaysia, and finally he believed that the seeking. His Florentine contemporary Amerigo trading communities which, in the late fif-

306 CIRCA 1492