The Islands of Unwisdom Read online

  ‘So it was Gallego’s hand that guided Don Francisco’s pen! In my simplicity I had put it all down to the inveterate malice of Captain Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa, who caused me so much trouble and anxiety during the voyage and whom I finally degraded for his cruelties and insubordination. It was Gallego after all! By the Holy Mother of God, what foul ingratitude! My fellow-countryman, whose fortune and reputation I secured by making him my chief pilot when I might have chosen a score of more capable and deserving men!’

  ‘Of Gallego’s capacities I cannot judge. But he alleged that so far from conferring reputation on him, you robbed him of it: that he conceived and planned the expedition himself and made the preparations for it. And that it was only at the personal plea of your uncle, the illustrious Licentiate de Castro, that His Majesty conferred the command upon yourself—yourself who (if I may be permitted to quote his words) “neither before you sailed, nor after, knew stem from stern, tar from turpentine, or the Pole star from the planet Venus.” According to this same memorial you so grossly neglected your duties that—to mention only one instance of the many there adduced—on your precipitate return to California, your task only half accomplished, it was left to him to pay for the refitting of your two ships with fourteen hundred gold pesos out of his own pocket, and for their re-victualling with another four hundred—a sum for which he had not, at that date, received a maravedi of compensation, though his account had been a dozen times presented.’

  The Viceroy paused to watch the effect of this revelation, but Don Alvaro never moved an eyelash. (I heard the tale from my godfather, the Marquis’s secretary, who was present.) ‘I knew well, your Excellency,’ he answered with a sad shake of his head, ‘that Gallego was an unlucky choice for chief pilot: that he was jealous, treacherous tale-bearing and devoid of even a spark of Christian charity. I must admit, alas, that our Galicia breeds the worst of men as well as the best. Gallego was raised among the mists of Cebrero, whose rude inhabitants have a thousand times more respect for a witch than for a priest, and are so avaricious that when a stranger stops to water his mare at one of their streams they will detain him by force and seize his boots or cloak, if he refuses to pay in coin. But I had no notion that even Gallego would tell such shameless lies and, disregarding all obligations of loyalty, embody them in a secret report to Don Francisco. But enough of Gallego: he had his just deserts five years ago, when the Devil claimed him in a shipwreck at the mouth of the River Saña.’

  ‘And how did you happen to fall foul of Don Francisco? He was a stiff-backed man, but neither unreasonable nor quarrelsome. I see that he accuses you of returning from the Isles of Solomon with forty thousand pesos of gold, and failing to declare them in your report to His Majesty. On this point, by the way, neither Gallego nor Sarmiento was his informant.’

  Here Don Alvaro was on safer ground: ‘No, indeed! Sarmiento’s complaint was that I had not remained long enough in the islands to conduct mining operations, but hurried home empty-handed. As for Gallego (who hated Sarmiento as one snake hates another): if I had found even one-tenth of the amount you mention, would he have dared to claim that I was so ungenerous that the refitting of my storm-tossed vessels was left for him to pay? But what care I who told lies to Don Francisco? Your Excellency must have heard of the deep grudge which this thief—for I can call him thief since the King’s justices consigned him to the prison of Seville, there to repent his huge misappropriations of government funds—the deep grudge, I say, which this thief bore my sainted uncle, his predecessor. His spite was directed against me only as my uncle’s nephew. When six years later I returned to this country from Spain, with the letters patent in my pocket, he pretended the most loyal obedience to His Majesty’s wishes, but declared that the country had been so sadly impoverished under my uncle’s misrule that for the time being it was out of the question to equip and man a flotilla of the authorized strength. Yet all these were lies.’

  ‘Don Alvaro,’ said the Viceroy, ‘try to be just to the man, however bitter your feelings may be. There is a saying: “Of the dead, speak nothing but good”; and though much of the gold and silver that passed through my predecessor’s hands stuck to his palms, yet never a day passes but I feel grateful to him for the vigour with which he consolidated the conquests and gains of the heroic Pizarro, of my sainted father, and of your sainted uncle. It was Don Francisco who established the magnificent constitution under which Peru is still governed. And it was he who, with the help of your enemy Sarmiento, took care that the loyalty of its people should be secured for all time to the crown of Castile, by extinguishing the ancient, absurd dynasty of the Incas. If he could not furnish you with ships, why, neither can I, for all the good will I bear you; the silver mines of Potosi and Huancavelica are no longer what they were and the increased demands for treasure made by the King force me to be thrifty in the extreme. The ships and stores you have, I suppose, purchased yourself. All that I have done is to lend you arms from the royal arsenal, detail capable soldiers to serve under your pendant, and permit you to recruit sailors and settlers on your own initiative. And apropos of that: I have at last found you the very man you need for Colonel, and this morning, if one of his famous celebrations has not prevented him, he has already gone aboard your flagship. He is a brave and pious soul who has fought on a hundred fields of battle; you must know him at least by reputation—I refer to Don Pedro Merino de Manrique.’

  ‘Merino!’ echoed the General faintly, gripping the back of a chair. ‘Alas, your Excellency, if only you had told me sooner. I would rather the Devil himself commanded my troops. He was once a close friend of this same Sarmiento, and a week ago in a wine-shop at Callao he fell out with one of my officers, Don Felipe Corzo, who captains our galeot. It was only the quick-wittedness of a pretty girl who was the subject of the dispute, that prevented this fire-eater from running my Captain through. She tossed a cupful of wine in Merino’s face, pushed Don Felipe into the street, bolted the door and herself took refuge in a certain slight out-building at the back, where the Colonel’s delicacy forbade him to pursue her. When the two men meet again, as in the end they must meet, though they sail in different ships, they will recognize each other at once, the quarrel will flare up again and murder be done.’

  ‘Here in Peru,’ said the Viceroy authoritatively, drawing himself up in his chair. ‘Here in Peru, Don Alvaro, you are a private person and have no right to quell even a wine-shop dispute without reference to myself or my officers. But it behoves you to remember that, once your flotilla is under way, you are the trusty and beloved deputy of His Most Christian Majesty and exercise absolute power under him. If any of your subordinates dare to fall out and commit a breach of the peace, it is your duty to investigate the matter at once, fall upon the culprits like a sledge-hammer and flatten them on the anvil of discipline. “Let him who rules, rule!” This lesson I was taught by my sainted father who restored order in this country by knocking head against head, without respect for rank or fear of retaliation; and during my governorship in Chile I proved myself—if I may make the boast—a true son of his begetting… But tell me, my friend, what truth is there in the rumour that you found much gold and many large pearls in the Isles of Solomon?’

  ‘As for gold,’ the General replied with a disarming smile, ‘we found it and we did not find it. The natives who came aboard my flagship from the great islands of Santa Ysabel and Guadalcanal all venerated the golden cross and chain around my neck, and when I showed them some nuggets that I had with me, they nodded and pointed towards the mountains, saying “Yaro bocru!”, bocru signifying “much” in their language. And when I asked their word for gold, they told me areque and made signs that it was found near running water. However, being unable, because of the fewness of our soldiers and the scarcity of ammunition, to carry war into the hills, we did not, in the event, handle any gold at all; the yellow ore we found on Guadalcanal was what our miners called “fool’s gold.” I sent one Andrés Nuñez with thirty soldiers to see what the land p
roduced, and to search for true ore in cracks or broken ground, because a couple of miners who understood the business said that it seemed a land for precious metals. But while they were washing for gold in a river of the interior, so many natives crowded around them with threatening gestures that they had to abandon the project; besides, the stream was running too swiftly for their pans. Yet the sand, they reported, glinted bright. Moreover, the women of Aytoro are said to wear necklaces, which they call aburu…’

  ‘And the pearls?’ asked the Viceroy, drumming impatiently on the table.

  ‘As for the pearls—now there I can speak with perfect certainty. On the island of Veru I both saw and handled many small pearls of a good colour. The natives thought nothing of them, not understanding the use of the drill. Again at Estrella Bay I found very large pearls with which the children were playing at marbles; but these were scorched and discoloured because their parents, who value only the meat of the oyster, had placed the shells on red-hot stones to roast. In the other islands, too, we found abundance of pearl shells of enormous size, and if the pearls were of the same proportion they would be jewels fit for a crown. But, unlike gold, pearls are a luxury—and if there is no gold in the islands that God has granted me to discover, then you may write me down as a dunce. Here, at least, I am at one with Sarmiento: it is my opinion that they teem with precious metals.’

  ‘In that case, Don Alvaro,’ said the Viceroy, ‘you were far from wise to proclaim their riches to the world by naming them the Isles of Solomon, as though you had re-discovered the Land of Ophir from which King Solomon brought prodigious quantities of gold for the beautifying of his Temple.’

  ‘Your Excellency will pardon me. The name was not my invention, but issued from Sarmiento’s rash brain and gained such currency among the crew that I could not persuade them to call the group by any other. Yet I own that I was much surprised by the Jewish cast of features in a great number of the islanders—descendants, as Sarmiento would have it, of Solomon’s mariners—and by the practice of circumcision which is widespread. The name, at all events, proved my undoing. Don Francisco, jealous of my success, placed frivolous obstacles in my path and delayed me here for six years, though I sent memorial after memorial to the Indies Council and others directly to the King—he even threw me into prison when once, by great mischance, one of these letters fell into his hands—’

  ‘I seem to remember that in it you not only reflected sharply upon the Viceroy’s treatment of yourself, but accused him of having sent unauthorized expeditions to the South Seas for his own profit, and of planning to send yet another to your islands—if I may call them so—in search of contraband treasure.’

  ‘I stand by all I wrote, your Excellency. And since I was not the only witness against him, was he not recalled? However, I had no better fortune with his successor, Don Martin Enriquez….’

  The Viceroy leaned back in his great carved ebony chair, and cooled himself with a light fan of lace and tortoise-shell. His eyes roamed idly among the gold traceries of the ceiling. ‘Oh, by all the sores of Lazarus!’ my godfather sighed to himself, ‘is Don Alvaro going to recapitulate the history of his grievances chapter by chapter?’ My godfather had been secretary to each of these Viceroys in turn and had heard it fifty times, if he had heard it once, always with new additions and embroideries. ‘I wonder that the Marquis has not cut him short already.’

  ‘…Don Martin, as I was saying, must have read the adverse report upon me, bequeathed him by Don Francisco. Taking no pity on the poor wretches whom I had brought from Spain to colonize my islands and who were now reduced to the utmost misery—one half of the women had been forced to walk the streets, which caused me infinite shame…. Taking no pity on them, he told me that enough lands had already been discovered, and that what mattered now was to settle and people these rather than squander the King’s resources in search of new countries, especially in regions so distant that even when they were pacified they would still be a great and useless burden to maintain. He even dared to question the authenticity of my letters patent, saying that when next he had occasion to write to his friends of the Indies Council he would ask for more information about me. Don Martin died in the following year, and the old Count of Villardompardo, your Excellency’s immediate predecessor could hardly, I admit, have helped me, even if he had wished, because of the earthquakes, followed by pestilence and famine, which made his term so ill-fated. Also, by that time the news of our discovery had spread far and wide—a Genoese sailor is to be blamed for that—and the report reached England that the Isles of Solomon were the eighth wonder of the world. That lure drew Francis Drake into the South Seas, where he began to prey on our shipping. Drake’s name cast a black shadow over my life, because his piracies were everywhere pleaded as an argument against my project. “It would be folly to colonize these islands and set the natives to work in the mines,” I was told, “when Drake and his captains are bound to reap where you have sown!” Such talk I hold to be both cowardly and unpatriotic. Only last year your Excellency proved that resolute Spanish hearts and well-aimed Spanish guns can subdue Englishmen even more daring than Drake—’

  The Marquis smiled complacently. ‘It is indeed cause for great satisfaction to have the gallant Richard Hawkins safely confined in our City jail. You should see him tramp up and down in his cell, Don Alvaro, even in this pestilential heat, up and down, up and down, like a lion in a cage! Blessed be the Virgin, we heard of his arrival sooner than he expected! When our men-of-war surprised his Dainty in the Bay of San Mateo, and denied her sea-room for manoeuvre, he fought his guns to the last, and would not yield even when he was dismasted and sinking, having lost half his crew. Our targeteers poured aboard from both sides and the scrimmage washed clean over him. My brother, Don Beltran Hurtado, who commanded that day, declares that he fought superbly.’

  ‘That is high praise indeed, your Excellency. But, if I may be permitted to continue my dismal tale: the Indies Council then advised His Majesty that the Isles of Solomon should not be colonized for the time being, in order, they said, to prevent English freebooters who might sail through the Straits of Magellan, in back-door raids on the spice islands of Molucca, from refitting or revictualling at our expense on the way. And this policy was followed for many years until now, at last, when my hopes were nearly extinguished, your Excellency’s generous intervention—in gratitude for which I propose to honour the first new land of importance that I may discover by giving it your Excellency’s own name—’

  ‘Of course, of course, it stands to reason. If this piracy continues, what greater advantage could His Majesty possess than a well-found base in the South Seas, midway between Peru and the long-established colony of the Philippines, from which our ships could actively deny the privateers that assistance in water and victuals which the Indians might otherwise give them? Last year your charming Lady presented this argument to me with such eloquence that I had no word left in contradiction; and that very day, as you know, I wrote to the King on my own responsibility. She also made a certain proposal about gold and pearls, doubtless with your approval…. Your Galician women of every rank and station show remarkable independence and fortitude: while passing through the province on a journey to Corunna I was astonished to see them guiding the plough, sowing, harrowing, felling trees, in short, doing all the work of men, yet keeping their modesty and piety in a way that would shame many women of the South.’

  ‘Ah, piety!’ exclaimed the General, catching gratefully at the word, his eyes aglow with religious fervour. ‘By Heaven, that is a subject which should have been earlier on my lips. Though discovery is glorious, trade necessary, gold desirable and courage the justification of manhood, yet is not piety a jewel worth a thousand times more than all the rest? The first object of our enterprise is not to discover in order to conquer, to conquer in order to find gold, to find gold in order to enrich ourselves, to enrich ourselves in order to lead lives of sloth and luxury! It is a nobler and more glorious object by far:
to perform the solemn duty which Our Saviour has laid upon us; to bring those benighted, cannibalistic heathen the inexpressible joy of the Faith; to baptize them with the holy ritual of our Mother the Church, to teach them that they have immortal souls, to warn them of the horrid nature of sin, to guide them along the narrow path that leads to redemption…’

  But the Marquis was no longer listening. ‘Tell me, Don Alvaro,’ he said, stroking his beard thoughtfully. ‘If you should find gold in plenty, whether in the rivers or the rocks, or large and well-shaped pearls, would it be possible, as your Lady so generously suggested…? Do you think…?’

  He hesitated, searching for the word, but at this delicate moment a door behind the General slowly opened, a plump white hand glittering with rings slid into view, a dainty finger beckoned.

  The Viceroy stopped, sighed deeply, and did not complete his question. ‘In a minute, in a minute, my Lady,’ he pleaded to the owner of the hand. ‘I have not yet done.’ Then he snatched a scroll from the table, opened it, cleared his throat and, in a firm, if hurried voice, began at once to read out a speech which my godfather had composed at his direction:

  ‘Don Garcia Hurtado de Mendoza, Marquis of Cañete, Viceroy of Peru, to the intrepid General Alvaro de Mendaña y Castro of Neira, in the presence of the chief officers of the Church and State here assembled in our Viceregal audience-chamber at Lima, the City of Kings, in the year of our redemption, 1595—greeting:

  ‘My Lord the General, I may well wish you God-speed as you embark upon this enterprise with as vigorous a company of men as can be found anywhere in the world. Prodigious indeed have been the deeds of Spaniards at various times and in different places, especially when led by valorous Generals who know how to face and overcome adversity; who have met danger with prudence; who have kept a cheerful countenance despite the frowns of Fortune, and maintained the spirits of their followers with high promises and encouraging words; who have rewarded them, cherished them, succoured them; and who, ruling by kindness, have taken wise advantage of every opportunity that offered. There are so many glorious leaders of our nation who have acted thus in times past, that I should undoubtedly weary brain and tongue if I attempted to bring them all to mind. Yet I must not omit to praise their valiant followers, who always, on every occasion, showed themselves loyal and obedient, overflowing in courtesy and virtue, in word as well as in deed. If in respect of the present age my praises must be qualified in part, that is no fault of the men. Some years yield better harvests than others. Latterly, our bold husbandmen have garnered scanty sheaves and their overseers have earned little praise—especially those going in search of adventure on the high seas, where dangers and difficulties abound but remedies are few.