ESCAPE INTO IMMORTALITY
The Discovery of the Pacific Ocean,
25 September 1513
A ship is equipped
On his first return from the discovered America, Columbus had shown a myriad of treasures and curiosities on his triumphal procession through the crowded streets of Seville and Barcelona; red-colored people of a hitherto unknown race, never-before-seen animals, the colorful, screaming parrots, the lumbering tapirs, the then strange plants and fruits that would soon find their home in Europe; the Indian grain, the tobacco and the coconut. All this is curiously marveled at by the cheering crowd, but what excites the royal couple and their advisors most are the few boxes and baskets of gold. It is not much gold that Columbus brings from the new India, a few ornamental things that he has bartered or robbed from the natives, a few small ingots and a few handfuls of loose grains, gold dust more than gold—the whole booty at most sufficient for the minting of a few hundred ducats. But the brilliant fantasist Columbus, who fanatically always believes what he wants to believe, and who was just as gloriously right about his sea route to India, fibs in honest exuberance that this is only a tiny first sample. He has been given reliable news of immense gold mines on these new islands; the precious metal lies very shallow in some fields, under a thin layer of earth. It could easily be dug up with an ordinary spade. Further south, however, there were kingdoms where kings drank from golden vessels and gold was less valuable than lead in Spain. Intoxicated, the eternally money-hungry king hears of this new Ophir that is his own, nor does one know Columbus enough in his sanguine foolishness to doubt his promises. Immediately, a large fleet is equipped for the second voyage, and now there is no need for recruiters and drummers to hire a crew. The news of the newly discovered Ophir, where gold can be picked up with the bare hand, makes the whole of Spain mad: people flock by the hundreds, by the thousands, to travel to El Dorado, the land of gold.
But what a murky flood it is that greed is now throwing in from all the towns and villages and hamlets. Not only honest noblemen who want to thoroughly gild their coat of arms, not only daring adventurers and brave soldiers, but all the dirt and scum of Spain is flooding into Palos and Cadiz. Branded thieves, highwaymen and tramps seeking more lucrative trades in the gold country, debtors seeking to escape their creditors, husbands seeking to escape their quarrelsome wives, all the desperados and failed existences, the burnt-out and wanted by the Alguacils join the fleet—a madly mixed band of failed existences, determined to finally get rich in one fell swoop, and to do so, determined to commit every act of violence and crime. So madly did they suggest to each other the fantasy of Columbus that in those countries one only had to push the spade into the earth and the golden nuggets would shine out at one, that the wealthy among the emigrants would take servants and mules with them to be able to haul away the precious metal in great masses. Those who do not succeed in being accepted into the expedition force their way in in a different way; without asking much for royal permission, wild adventurers equip ships on their own initiative to get across quickly and to grab gold, gold, gold; in one fell swoop, Spain is freed from all its troubled existences and its most dangerous rabble.
The governor of Española (later San Domingo or Haiti) is horrified to see these uninvited guests flooding the island entrusted to him. From year to year, the ships bring new cargo and ever more unr
