Part 10

Francis had asked Verrazzano to come to Moulins because, from what he had heard, it seemed to him that here was a man who could take care of himself and hold his tongue, and he liked such men. The experience reminded the Florentine of the great days of the Medici. Charles de Bourbon's palace at Moulins was fit for a king. Unlike most French châteaux, which were built on low lands among the hunting forests, it stood on a hill in a great park, and was surrounded with terraces, fountains, and gardens in the Italian style. Moreover its furniture was permanent, not brought in for royal guests and then taken away. The richness and beauty of its tapestries, state beds, decorations, and other belongings was beyond anything in any royal palace of that time. The duke's household included five hundred gentlemen in rich suits of Genoese velvet, each wearing a massive gold chain passing three times round the neck and hanging low in front; they attended the guests in divisions, one hundred at a time.

The feasting was luxurious, and many of its choice dishes were supplied by the estate. There were rare fruits and herbs in the gardens, and a great variety of game-birds and animals in the park and the forest. But there were also imported delicacies--Windsor beans, Genoa artichokes, Barbary cucumbers and Milan parsley. The first course consisted of Médoc oysters, followed by a light soup. The fish course included the royal sturgeon, the dorado or sword-fish, the turbot. Then came heron, cooked in the fashion of the day, with sugar, spice and orange-juice; olives, capers and sour fruits; pheasants, red-legged partridges, and the favorite roast, sucking-pig parboiled and then roasted with a stuffing of chopped meats, herbs, raisins and damson plums. There were salads of fruit,--such as the King's favorite of oranges, lemons and sugar with sweet herbs,--or of herbs, such as parsley and mint with pepper, cinnamon and vinegar. For dessert there were Italian ices and confectionery, and the Queen's favorite plum, Reine Claude, imported from Italy; the white wine called Clairette-au-miel, hypocras, gooseberry and plum wines, lemonade, champagne. There was never a King who could appreciate such artistic luxury more deeply than Francis I. This may be one reason for his warm welcome of Verrazzano, who seemed to be able to increase the wealth of his country and his King.

"I have had a very indignant visit from the Spanish ambassador," said Francis when they were seated together in a private room. "He says that there has been piracy on the high seas, my Verrazzano."

The Italian met the laughing glance of the King with a somber gleam in his own dark eyes. "Does one steal from a robber?" he asked. "Not a quill of gold-dust nor an ingot of silver nor a seed-pearl comes honestly to Spain. It is all cruelty, bribery, slavery. Savonarola threatened Lorenzo de' Medici with eternal fires, prince as he was, for sins that were peccadilloes beside those of Spanish governors."

"There is something in what you say," assented Francis lightly. "If we get the treasure of the Indies without owning the Indies we are certainly rid of much trouble. I never heard of Father Adam making any will dividing the earth between our brother of Spain and our brother of Portugal. Unless they can find such a document--" the laughing face hardened suddenly into keen attention, "we may as well take what we can get where we can find it. And now about this road to India; what have you to suggest?"

Verrazzano outlined his plans in brief speech and clear. The proposed voyage might have two objects; one, the finding of a route to Asia if it existed; the other, the discovery of other countries from which wealth might be gained, in territory not yet explored. Verrazzano pointed out the fact that, as the earth was round, the shortest way to India ought to be near the pole rather than near the equator, yet far enough to the south to escape the danger of icebergs.

"Very well then,"--the King pondered with finger on cheek. "Say as little as possible of your preparations, use your own discretion, and if any Spaniards try to interfere with you--" the monarch grinned,--"tell them that it is my good pleasure that my subjects go where they like."

The Spanish agents in France presently informed their employer that the Florentine Verrazzano was again making ready to sail for regions unknown. Perhaps he did not himself know where he should go; at any rate the spies had not been able to find out.

Two months later news came that before Verrazzano had gone far enough to be caught by the squadron lying in wait for him, he had pounced on the great carrack which had been sent home by Cortes loaded with Aztec gold. In convoying this prize to France he had caught another galleon coming from Hispaniola with a cargo of gold and pearls, and the two rich trophies were now in the harbor of La Rochelle, where the audacious captain was doubtless making ready for another piratical voyage.

Verrazzano made a second start a little later, but was driven back by a Biscay storm. Finally, toward the end of the year 1523, he set out once more with only one ship, the _Dauphine_, out of his original fleet of four, and neither friend nor foe caught a glimpse of him during the voyage. In March, 1524, having sailed midway between the usual course of the West Indian galleons and the path of the fishers going to and from the Banks of Newfoundland, he saw land which he felt sure had not been discovered either by ancient or modern explorers.

It was a low shore on which the fine sand, some fifteen feet deep, lay drifted into hillocks or dunes. Small creeks and inlets ran inland, but there seemed to be no good harbor. Beyond the sand-dunes were forests of cypress, palm, bay and other trees, and the wind bore the scent of blossoming trees and vines far out to sea. For fifty leagues the _Dauphine_ followed the coast southward, looking for a harbor, for Verrazzano knew that pearl fisheries and spices were far more likely to be found in southern than in northern waters. No harbor appeared. The daring navigator knew that if he went too far south he ran some risk of encountering a Spanish fleet, and that after his getting two of the most valuable cargoes ever sent over seas, they would be patroling all the tropical waters in the hope of catching him. He turned north again.

On the shore from time to time little groups of savages appeared moving about great bonfires, and watching the ship. They wore hardly any clothing except the skin of some small animal like a marten, attached to a belt of woven grass; their skins were russet-brown and their thick straight black hair was tied in a knot rather like a tail.

"One thing is certain," said young François Parmentier cheerfully, "these folk have never seen Spaniards--or Portuguese. Even on the Labrador the people ran from us, after Cortereale went slave-stealing there."

Verrazzano smiled. Young Parmentier was always full of hope and faith. A little later the youth volunteered to be one of a boat's crew sent ashore for water, and provided himself with a bagful of the usual trinkets for gifts. The surf ran so high that the boat could not land, and François leaped overboard and swam ashore. Here he scattered his wares among the watching Indians, and then, leaping into the waves again, struck out for the boat. But the surf dashed him back upon the sand into the very midst of the natives, who seized him by the arms and legs and carried him toward the fire, while he yelled with astonishment and terror.

Verrazzano was if anything more horrified than François himself; this was the son of his oldest friend. The Indians were removing his clothing as if they were about to roast him alive. But it appeared presently that they only wished to dry his clothes and comfort him, for they soon allowed him to return to the boat, seeing this was his earnest desire, and watched him with the greatest friendliness as he swam back.

No strait appeared, but at one point Verrazzano, landing and marching into the interior with an exploring party, found a vast expanse of water on the other side of what seemed a neck of land between the two seas, about six miles in width. If this were the South Sea, the same which Balboa had seen from the Isthmus of Darien, so narrow a strip of land was at least as good or better than anything possessed by Spain. Verrazzano continued northward, and found a coast rich in grapes, the vines often covering large trees around which the natives kept the ground clear of shrubs that might interfere with this natural vineyard. Wild roses, violets, lilies, iris and many other plants and flowers, some quite unknown to Europe, greeted the admiring gaze of the commander. His quick mind pictured a royal garden adorned with these foreign shrubs and herbs, the wainscoting and furniture to be made by French and Italian joiners from these endless leagues of timber, the stately churches and castles which might be built by skilful masons from the abundant stone along these shores. Here was a province which, if it had not gold, had the material for many luxuries which must otherwise be bought with gold, and his clear Italian brain perceived that ingots of gold and silver are not the only treasure of kings.

At last the _Dauphine_ came into a harbor or lake three leagues in circumference, where more than thirty canoes were assembled, filled with people. Suddenly François Parmentier leaped to his feet and waved his cap with a shout.

"Now what madness has taken you?" queried Verrazzano.

"I know where we are, that's all. This is Wampum Town,--L'Anormé Berge--the Grand Scarp. This is one of their great trading places, Captain. Father heard about it at Cape Breton from some south-country savages."

"And what may wampum be?" asked Verrazzano coolly.

"'T is the stuff they use for money--bits of shell made into beads and strung into a belt. There is an island in this bay where they make it out of their shell-fish middens--two kinds--purple and white. On my word, this big chief has on a wampum belt now!"

This was interesting information indeed, and the natives seemed prepared to traffic in all peace and friendliness. Verrazzano found upon investigation that on the north of this bay a very large river, deep at the mouth, came down between steep hills. Afterward, following the shore to the east, he discovered a fine harbor beyond a three-cornered island. Here he met two chiefs of that country, a man of about forty, and a young fellow of twenty-four, dressed in quaintly decorated deerskin mantles, with chains set with colored stones about their necks. He stayed two weeks, refitting the ship with provisions and other necessaries, and observing the place. The crew got by trading and as gifts the beans and corn cultivated by the people, wild fruits and nuts, and furs. Further north they found the tribes less friendly, and at last came so near the end of their provision that Verrazzano decided to return to France. He reached home July 8, 1524, after having sailed along seven hundred leagues of the Atlantic coast.

[Illustration: "The natives seemed prepared to traffic in all peace and friendliness"--_Page_ 132]

Francis I. was in the thick of a disastrous war with Spain, and had not time just then to consider further explorations. The war was not fairly over when a Cadiz warship, in 1527, caught Verrazzano and hanged him as a pirate.

NOTE

The not unnatural conclusion of Verrazzano that what he saw was an ocean or a great inland sea led to extraordinary misconceptions in the maps and charts of the time. It was not until the early part of the seventeenth century that the region was actually explored, by Newport and Smith, and found to be only Chesapeake Bay.

THE DRUM

I wake the gods with my sullen boom-- I am the Drum! They wait for the blood-red flowers that bloom In the heart of the sacrifice, there in the gloom With terror dumb-- I sound the call to his dreadful doom-- I am the Drum!

I was the Serpent, the Sacred Snake-- Wolf, bear and fox By the silent shores of river and lake Tread softly, listening lest they wake My voice that mocks The rattle that falling bones will make On barren rocks.

My banded skin is the voice of the Priest-- I am the Drum! I sound the call to the War-God's feast Till Tezcatlipoca's power hath ceased And the White Gods come Out of the fire of the burning East-- Hear me, the Drum!

X

THE GODS OF TAXMAR

If the Fathers of the Church had ever been on the other side of the world, they would have made new rules for it.

So thought Jerónimo Aguilar, on board a caravel plying between Darien and Hispaniola. It was a thought he would hardly have dared think in Spain.

He was a dark thin young friar from the mountains near Seville. In 1488 his mother, waiting, as women must, for news from the wars, vowed that if God and the Most Catholic Sovereigns drove out the Moors and sent her husband home to her, she would give her infant son to the Church. That was twenty-four years ago, and never had the power of the Church been so great as it now was. When the young Fray Jerónimo had been moved by fiery missionary preaching to give himself to the work among the Indians, his mother wept with astonishment and pride.

But the Indies he found were not the Indies he had heard of. Men who sailed from Cadiz valiant if rough and hard-bitted soldiers of the Cross, turned into cruel adventurers greedy for gold, hard masters abusing their power. The innocent wild people of Colón's island Eden were charged by the planters with treachery, theft, murderous conspiracy, and utter laziness. With a little bitter smile Aguilar remembered how the hidalgo, who would not dig to save his life, railed at the Indian who died of the work he had never learned to do. It was not for a priest to oppose the policy of the Church and the Crown, and very few priests attempted it, whatever cruelty they might see. Aguilar half imagined that the demon gods of the heathen were battling against the invading apostles of the Cross, poisoning their hearts and defeating their aims. It was all like an evil enchantment.

These meditations were ended by a mighty buffet of wind that smote the caravel and sent it flying northwest. Ourakan was abroad, the Carib god of the hurricane, and no one could think of anything thereafter but the heaving, tumbling wilderness of black waves and howling tempest and hissing spray. Valdivia, regidor of Darien, had been sent to Hispaniola by Balboa, the governor, with important letters and a rich tribute of gold, to get supplies and reinforcements for the colony. Shipwreck would be disastrous to Balboa and his people as well as to the voyagers.

Headlong the staggering ship was driven upon Los Viboros, (The Vipers) that infamous group of hidden rocks off Jamaica. She was pounded to pieces almost before Valdivia could get his one boat into the water, with its crew of twenty men. Without food or drink, sails or proper oars, the survivors tossed for thirteen dreadful days on the uncharted cross-currents of unknown seas. Seven died of hunger, thirst and exposure before the tide that drifted northwest along the coast of the mainland caught them and swept them ashore.

None of them had ever seen this coast. Valdivia cherished a faint hope that it might be a part of the kingdom of walled cities and golden temples, of which they had all heard. There were traces of human presence, and they could see a cone-shaped low hill with a stone temple or building of some kind on the top. Natives presently appeared, but they broke the boat in pieces and dragged the castaways inland through the forest to the house of their cacique.

That chief, a villainous looking savage in a thatched hut, looked at them as if they had been cattle--or slaves--or condemned heretics. What they thought, felt or hoped was nothing to him. He ordered them taken to a kind of pen, where they were fed. So great is the power of the body over the mind that for a few days they hardly thought of anything but the unspeakable joy of having enough to eat and drink, and nothing to do but sleep. The cacique visited the enclosure now and then, and looked them over with a calculating eye. Aguilar was haunted by the idea that this inspection meant something unpleasant.

All too soon the meaning was made known to them. Valdivia and four other men who were now less gaunt and famine-stricken than when captured, were seized and taken away, to be sacrificed to the gods.

It was the custom of the Mayas of Yucatan to sacrifice human beings, captives or slaves for choice, to the gods in whose honor the stone pyramids were raised. When the victim had been led up the winding stairway to the top, the central figure in a procession of priests and attendants, he was laid upon a stone altar and his heart was cut out and offered to the idol, after which the body was eaten at a ceremonial feast. The eight captives who remained now understood that the food they had had was meant merely to fatten them for future sacrifice. Half mad with horror, they crouched in the hot moist darkness, and listened to the uproar of the savages.

A strong young sailor by the name of Gonzalo Guerrero, who had done good service during the hurricane, pulled Jerónimo by the sleeve, "What in the name of all the saints can we do, Padre?" he muttered. "José and the rest will be raving maniacs."

Aguilar straightened himself and rose to his feet where the rays of the moon, white and calm, shone into the enclosure. Lifting his hands to heaven he began to pray.

All he had learned from books and from the disputations and sermons of the Fathers fell away from him and left only the bare scaffolding, the faith of his childhood. At the familiar syllables of the Ave Maria the shuddering sailors hushed their cries and oaths and listened, on their knees.

This was a handful of castaways in the clutch of a race of man-eaters who worshiped demons. But above them bent the tender and pitiful Mother of Christ who had seen her Son crucified, and Christ Himself stood surrounded by innumerable witnesses. Among the saints were some who had died at the hands of the heathen, many who had died by torture. The poor and ignorant men who listened were caught up for the moment into the vision of Fray Jerónimo and regained their self-control. When the prayer was ended Gonzalo Guerrero sprang up, and rallied them to furious labor. Under his direction and Aguilar's they dug and wrenched at their cage like desperate rats, until they broke away enough of it just to let a man's body through. Aguilar was the last to go. He closed the hole and heaped rubbish outside it, as rubbish and branches had been piled where they were used to sleep, to delay as long as possible the discovery of their escape. They got clear away into the depths of the forest.

But for men without provisions or weapons the wilderness of that unknown land was only less dreadful than death. Trees and vines barren of fruit, streams where a huge horny lizard ate all the fish--El Lagarto he was called by the discoverers,--no grain or cattle which might be taken by stealth--this was the realm into which they had been exiled. When they ventured out of the forest, driven by famine, they were captured by Acan Xooc, the cacique of another province, Jamacana. Here they were made slaves, to cut wood, carry water and bear burdens. Water was scarce in that region. There had been reservoirs, built in an earlier day, but these were ruined, and water had to be carried in earthern jars. The cacique died, and another named Taxmar succeeded him. Year after year passed. The soul of one worn-out white man slipped away, followed by another, and another, until only Aguilar and Guerrero were left alive.

Taxmar sent the sailor as a present to a friend, cacique of Chatemal, but kept Aguilar for himself, watching his ways.

The cacique was a sagacious heathen of considerable experience, but he had never seen a man like this one. Jerónimo was now almost as dark as an Indian and had not a scrap of civilized clothing, yet he was unlike the other white men, unlike any other slave. He had a string of dried berries with a cross made of reeds hung from it, which he sometimes appeared to be counting, talking to himself in his own language. Taxmar had once seen a slave from the north who had been a priest in his own country and knew how to remember things by string-talk, knotting a string in a peculiar fashion; but he was not like this man. When the white slave saw the crosses carved on their old walls he had eagerly asked how they came there, and Taxmar gathered that the cross had some meaning in the captive's own religion. He never lied, never stole, never got angry, never tattled of the other slaves, never disobeyed orders, never lost his temper. Taxmar could not remember when he himself had ever been restrained by anything but policy from taking whatever he wanted. Here was a man who could deny himself even food at times, when he was not compelled to. Taxmar could not understand.

What he did not know was, that when he had escaped from the cannibals Aguilar had made a fresh vow to keep with all strictness every vow of his priesthood, and to bear his lot with patience and meekness until it should be the will of God to free him from the savages. He had begun to think that this freedom would never be his in his lifetime, but a vow was a vow. He no more suspected that Taxmar was taking note of his behavior, than a man standing in front of the lion's cage at the menagerie can translate the thoughts behind the great cat's intent eyes.

Taxmar began to try experiments. He invented temptations to put in the way of his slave, but Aguilar generally did not seem to see them. One day the Indians were shooting at a mark. One came up to Aguilar and seized him by the arm.

"How would you like to be shot at?" he said. "These bowmen hit whatever they aim at--if they aim at a nose they hit a nose. They can shoot so near you that they miss only by the breadth of a grain of corn--or do not miss at all."

Aguilar never flinched, although from what he knew of the savages he thought nothing more likely than his being set up for a San Sebastian. He answered quietly,

"I am your slave, and you can do with me what you please. I think you are too wise to destroy one who is both useful and obedient."

The suggestion had been made by the order of Taxmar, and the answer was duly reported to him.