Shooting Stars: Ten Historical Miniatures Read online

  Vasco Núñez de Balboa feels his heart contract. At last he is on the track of the legendary land of gold, the land that they have dreamt of for years and years; his predecessors have hoped for a sight of it in the south and the north, and now, if this native is telling the truth, it lies only a few days’ journey away. And at the same time he had proof of the existence of that other ocean to which Columbus, Cabot, Corte-Real, all those great and famous seafarers, have sought the way in vain, and the way around the globe is discovered too. The name of the man who is first to see that new sea and take possession of it for his motherland will never perish on this earth. Now Balboa knows what he must do to absolve himself of all blame and win everlasting honour: he must be first to cross the isthmus to the Mar del Sur, the southern sea that is the way to India, and conquer this new Ophir for the Spanish Crown. That hour in the chief Comagre’s house has determined his fate. From now on, the life of this chance-come adventurer has a higher meaning, one that will outlast time.

  FLIGHT INTO IMMORTALITY

  There can be no greater happiness in the life of a man than to have discovered his life’s purpose in the middle of its span, in his years of creativity. Núñez de Balboa knows what is at stake for him—either a pitiful death on the scaffold or immortality. First he must buy peace with the Crown, in retrospect legitimizing and legalizing his crime when he usurped power! So the rebel of yesterday, now the most zealous of subjects, sends Pasamonte, the royal treasurer on Española, not only the one-fifth of Comagre’s gift of gold that belongs to the Crown by law, but as he is better versed in the practices of the world than that dry lawyer Enciso he adds to the official consignment a private financial donation to the treasurer, asking to be confirmed in his office as Captain-General of the colony. In fact Pasamonte the treasurer has no authority to do so, but in return for the gold he sends Núñez de Balboa a provisional, if in truth worthless, document. At the same time Balboa, wishing to secure himself on all sides, has also sent two of his most reliable men to Spain to tell the court about all he has done for the Crown, conveying the important information that he has induced the Indio chieftain to support him. He needs, Vasco Núñez de Balboa tells the authorities in Seville, only a troop of 1,000 men, and with those men he will undertake to do more for Castile than any other Spaniard before him. He engages to discover the new sea and gain possession of the Land of Gold, now located at long last, the land promised by Columbus that never materialized but that he, Balboa, will conquer.

  Everything now seems to have turned out well for the man who was once a rebel and a desperado. But the next ship from Spain brings bad news. One of his accomplices, a man whom he sent over to defuse the complaints at court of the robbed Enciso, tells him that such a mission is dangerous for him, even mortally dangerous. The cheated bachiller has gone to the Spanish law courts with his accusation of the man who robbed him of his power, and Balboa must pay him compensation. Meanwhile, the news of the nearby southern sea, which might have saved him, has not arrived yet; in any case, the next ship to cross the ocean will bring a lawyer to call Balboa to account for the trouble he has caused, and either judge him on the spot or take him back to Spain in chains.

  Vasco Núñez de Balboa realizes that he is lost. He has been condemned before his message about the nearby southern sea and the Golden Coast arrives. Naturally news of it will be exploited even as his head rolls into the sand—someone else will bring his deed to completion, the great deed that he dreamt of. He himself can hope for nothing more from Spain. They know there that he hounded the king’s rightful governor to his death, that he personally drove the Alcalde out of office—he will have to consider the verdict merciful if it is merely imprisonment, and he does not have to pay for his deeds on the block. He cannot count on powerful friends, for he has no power of his own left, and his best advocate, the gold, has too soft a voice to ensure mercy for him. Only one thing can save him now from the punishment for his audacity, and that is even greater audacity. If he discovers the other sea and the new Ophir before the lawyers arrive, and their henchmen take him and put him in fetters, he can save himself. Only one kind of flight is open to him here at the end of the inhabited world: flight into a great achievement, into immortality.

  So Núñez de Balboa decides not to wait for the 1,000 men he asked Spain to send for the conquest of the unknown ocean, still less for the arrival of the lawyers. Better to venture on a monstrous deed with a few like-minded men! Better to die honourably for one of the boldest ventures of all times than be dragged shamefully to the scaffold with his hands bound. Núñez de Balboa calls the colony together, explains, without concealing the difficulties, his intention of crossing the isthmus, and asks who will follow him. His courage puts fresh heart into the others. A hundred and ninety soldiers, almost the entire defensive force of the colony capable of bearing arms, volunteer. There is not much equipment to be found, for these men are already living in a state of constant warfare. And on 1st September 1513 Núñez de Balboa, hero and bandit, adventurer and rebel, intent on escaping the gallows or a dungeon, sets out on his march into immortality.

  AN IMMORTAL MOMENT

  They begin to cross the isthmus in the province of Coyba, the little realm of the chief Careta whose daughter is Balboa’s companion; it will later turn out that Núñez de Balboa has not chosen the narrowest place, in his ignorance thus extending the dangerous crossing by several days. But for such a bold venture into the unknown, his main concern is to have the security of a friendly Indian tribe, for support or in the case of a withdrawal. His men cross from Darién to Coyba in ten large canoes, 190 soldiers armed with spears, swords, arquebuses and crossbows, accompanied by a pack of the much-feared bloodhounds. His ally the Indian chief provides Indios to act as guides and bearers, and on 6th September the famous march across the isthmus begins, a venture making enormous demands on the will-power of those tried and tested adventurers. The Spanish first have to cross the low-lying areas in stifling equatorial heat that saps their strength; the marshy ground, full of feverish infections, was to kill many thousands of men working on the building of the Panama Canal centuries later. From the first they have to hack their way through the untrodden, poisonous jungle of creepers with axes and swords. The first of the troop, as if working inside a huge green mine, cut a narrow tunnel through the undergrowth for the others, and the army of conquistadors then strides along in single file, an endlessly long line of men, always with weapons in their hands, on the alert both day and night to repel any sudden attack by the native Indios. The heat is stifling in the sultry, misty darkness of the moist vault of giant trees as a pitiless sun blazes down above them. Drenched in sweat and with parched lips, the heavily armed men drag themselves on, mile after mile. Sometimes sudden downpours of rain fall like a hurricane, little streams instantly become torrential rivers, and the men have to either wade through them or cross them over swaying bridges improvised from palm fibres by the Indios. The Spanish have nothing to eat but a handful of maize; weary with lack of sleep, hungry, thirsty, surrounded by myriads of stinging, blood-sucking insects, they work their way forward in garments torn by thorns, footsore, their eyes feverish, their cheeks swollen by the stings of the whirring midges, restless by day, sleepless by night, and soon they are entirely exhausted. Even after the first week of marching, a large part of the troop can no longer stand up to the stress, and Núñez de Balboa, who knows that the real danger still lies in wait for them, gives orders for all those sick with fever and worn out to stay behind. He means to brave the crucial venture only with the best of his troop.

  At last the ground begins to rise. The jungle becomes less dense now that its full tropical luxuriance can unfold only in the marshy hollows. But when there is no shade to protect them, the equatorial sun high overhead, glaring and hot, beats down on their heavy armour. Slowly and by short stages, the weary men manage to climb the hilly country to the mountain chain that separates the narrow stretch of land between the two oceans like a stone backbone. Graduall
y the view is freer, and the air is refreshing by night. After eighteen days of heroic effort, they seem to have overcome the worst difficulty; already the crest of the mountain range rises before them, and from the peaks, so the Indian guides say, they will be able to see both oceans, the Atlantic and the still-unknown and unnamed Pacific. But now of all times, just when they seem to have overcome the tough, vicious resistance of nature, they face a new enemy: the native chieftain of that province, who bars the strangers’ way with hundreds of his warriors. Núñez de Balboa has plenty of experience of fighting off the Indios. All he has to do is get the men to fire a salvo from their arquebuses, and that artificial thunder and lightning exerts its proven magical power once again over the local population. Screaming, the terrified warriors run, the Spanish and their bloodhounds in pursuit. Instead of enjoying this easy victory, however, Balboa, like all the Spanish conquistadors, dishonours it by terrible cruelty, having a number of defenceless, bound prisoners torn apart alive by the hungry dogs, their flesh reduced to scraps, a spectacle staged as a substitute for bullfights and gladiatorial games. Dreadful slaughter shames the last night before Núñez de Balboa’s immortal day.

  There is a unique, inexplicable mixture in the character and manner of these Spanish conquistadors. Pious believers as ever any Christians were, they call upon God from the ardent depths of their souls, at the same time committing the most shocking inhumanities of history in his name. Capable of the most magnificent and heroic feats of courage, sacrifice and suffering, they still deceive and fight one another shamelessly; yet in the midst of their contemptible behaviour they have a strong feeling of honour, and a wonderful, indeed truly admirable sense of the historic importance of their mission. That same Núñez de Balboa who threw innocent, bound and defenceless prisoners to the bloodthirsty dogs the evening before, perhaps caressing the jaws of the animals in satisfaction while they were still dripping with human blood, understands the precise significance of his deed in the story of mankind, and at the crucial moment finds one of those great gestures that remain unforgettable over the ages. He knows that this day, the 25th of September, will be remembered in the history of the world, and with true Spanish feeling the hard, thoughtless adventurer lets it be known how fully he has grasped the lasting gravity of his mission.

  Balboa’s gesture is this: that evening, directly after the bloodbath, one of the natives has pointed out a nearby peak, telling him that from its height you can see the other ocean, the unknown Mar del Sur. Immediately Balboa makes his arrangements. Leaving the injured and exhausted men in the plundered village, he orders those still capable of marching—sixty-seven of them in all, out of the original 190 with whom he began the expedition in Darién—to climb the mountain. They approach the peak at ten in the morning. There is only a small, bare hilltop yet to be scaled, and then the view must stretch out before their eyes.

  At this moment Balboa commands his men to stop. None of them is to follow him, for he does not want to share this first sight of the new ocean with anyone else. After crossing one gigantic ocean in our world, the Atlantic, he alone will be, now and for ever, the first Spaniard, the first European, the first Christian to set eyes on the still-unknown other ocean, the Pacific. Slowly, with his heart thudding, deeply aware of the significance of the moment, he climbs on, a flag in his left hand, his sword in his right hand, a solitary silhouette in the vast orb. Slowly he scales the hilltop, without haste, for the real work has already been done. Only a few more steps, fewer now, still fewer, and once he has reached the peak a great view opens up before him. Beyond the mountains, wooded and green as the hills descend below him, lies an endless expanse of water with reflections as of metal in it: the sea, the new and unknown sea, hitherto only dreamt of and never seen, the legendary sea sought in vain by Columbus and all who came after him, the ocean whose waves lap against the shores of America, India and China. And Vasco Núñez de Balboa looks and looks and looks, blissfully proud as he drinks in the knowledge that his are the first European eyes in which the endless blue of that ocean is mirrored.

  Vasco Núñez de Balboa gazes long and ecstatically into the distance. Only then does he call up his comrades to share his joy and pride. Restless and excited, gasping for breath and crying out aloud, they scramble, climb and run up the last hill, they stare in amazement and gaze with astonishment in their eyes. All of a sudden Father Anselm de Vara, who is with the party, strikes up the Te Deum laudamus, and at once all the noise and shouting dies down, all the harsh, rough voices of those soldiers, adventurers and bandits uniting in the devout hymn. The Indios watch in astonishment as, at a word from the priest, they cut down a tree to erect a cross, carving the initials of the King of Spain’s name in the wood. And when the cross rises, it is as if its two wooden arms were reaching out to both seas, the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans, and all the hidden distance beyond them.

  In the midst of the awed silence, Núñez de Balboa steps forward and addresses his soldiers. They did right, he says, to thank God who of his grace has granted them such honour, and pray to him to continue helping them to conquer that sea and all these lands. If they will continue following him faithfully, he adds, they will go home from these new Indies the richest Spaniards ever known. He solemnly raises his flag to all four winds, to take possession on behalf of Spain of all the distant lands where those winds blow. Then he calls the clerk, Andrés de Valderrabáno, telling him to write out a certificate recording this solemn act for all time to come. Andrés de Valderrabáno unrolls a parchment that he has carried in a closed wooden container with an inkwell and a quill all the way through the jungle, and commands all the noblemen and knights and men-at-arms—los caballeros e hidalgos y hombres de bien—“who were present at the discovery of the southern sea, the Mar del Sur, by the noble and highly honoured Captain Vasco Núñez de Balboa, His Majesty’s Governor”, to confirm that “this Master Vasco Núñez de Balboa was the man who first set eyes on that sea and showed it to his followers”.

  Then the sixty-seven men climbed down the hill, and since that day, the 25th of September 1513, mankind has known of the last and hitherto undiscovered ocean on earth.

  GOLD AND PEARLS

  At last they are certain of it. They have seen the sea. And now to go down to its coast, feel the flowing water, touch it, taste it, pick up flotsam and jetsam from the beach! It takes them two days to climb down, and so that in future he will know the quickest way from the mountain range to the sea, Núñez de Balboa divides his men into separate groups. The third of these groups, under Alonzo Martín, is the first to arrive on the beach, and even the simple soldiers of this group of adventurers are so full of the vanity of fame, so thirsty for immortality, that Alonzo Martín himself, a plain, straightforward man, instantly gets the clerk to write down in black and white that he was the first to plunge his foot and his hand in those still-unnamed waters. Only after he has exchanged his small ego for a mote of immortality does he let Balboa know that he has reached the sea and felt its water with his own hand. Balboa immediately prepares for another grand gesture. Next day, Michaelmas Day by the calendar, he appears with only twenty-two companions on the beach, armed and girded like St Michael himself, to take possession of the new sea in a solemn ceremony. He does not stride into the water at once, but waits haughtily like its lord and master, resting under a tree until the rising tide sends a wave washing up to him, licking around his feet like an obedient dog. Only then does he stand up, slinging his shield on his back so that it gleams like a mirror in the sun, take his sword in one hand and in the other the flag of Castile bearing the portrait of the Virgin Mary, and stride into the water. Not until he is deep in those vast, strange waters, the waves breaking round his waist, does Núñez de Balboa, once a rebel and desperado, now the faithful servant and triumphant general of his king, wave the flag on all sides, crying in a loud voice: “Long live those high and mighty monarchs Ferdinand and Joanna of Castile, León and Aragón, in whose names and in favour of the royal Crown of Castile I tak
e true, physical and lasting possession of all these seas and lands, coasts and harbours and islands, and I swear that should any prince or any other captain, Christian or heathen or of any other faith or rank whatsoever, lay claim to these lands and seas I will defend them in the name of the kings of Castile, whose property they are, now and for all time, as long as the world shall last and until the Day of Judgement.”

  All the Spaniards repeat this oath, and for a moment their words drown out the roaring of the waves. Each man moistens his lips with seawater, and once again the clerk Andrés de Valderrabáno takes note of this act of possession, closing his document with the words: “These twenty-two men, as well as the clerk Andrés de Valderrabáno, were the first Christians to set foot in the Mar del Sur, and they all tried the water with their hands, and moistened their mouths with it, to see whether it was salt water like the water of the other sea. And when they saw that it was so they gave thanks to God.”

  The great deed is done. Now they have yet to derive earthly benefit from their heroic undertaking. The Spanish plunder or barter a little gold with some of the natives. But a new surprise awaits them in the midst of their triumph, for the Indios bring them whole handfuls of the precious pearls that are to be found on the neighbouring islands in rich profusion, including one, known as La Pellegrina, celebrated by Cervantes and Lope de Vega because, as one of the loveliest of all pearls, it adorned the royal crown of Spain and England. The Spaniards stuff all their pockets and sacks full of these precious things, which are not worth much more here than shells and sand, and when they greedily ask about what, to them, is the most important thing in the world—gold—one of the natives points south, to where the line of the mountains blurs softly into the horizon. There, he explains, lies a land of untold treasure, its rulers dine off golden vessels, and large four-legged animals—he means llamas—drag the most wonderful of loads into the king’s treasury. And he tells them the name of the country that lies south in the sea and beyond the mountains. It is something like Birù, a strange and melodious sound.