Part 3 (1/2)
V.
MIDNIGHT Ma.s.s ON THE MISSISSIPPI OVER THE BODY OF FERDINAND DE SOTO, 1542.[H]
As simple, gloomy and severe as were the circ.u.mstances surrounding the departure of the expeditions of Lief Erickson and Columbus, and subsequently of Henry Hudson and the Pilgrim Fathers, so brilliant, hopeful and coveted was the journey of Fernando De Soto, when he set sail from Spain in April, 1538, to conquer Florida and in search of a new Eldorado. Having previously returned from the conquest of Peru, as the chief lieutenant of Francisco Pizarro, possessed of great wealth, and through his marriage with the beautiful Isabella Bobadilla affiliated with the highest n.o.bility, and having been appointed Governor of Cuba by Charles V.--the flower of the Spanish and Portuguese aristocracy flocked to his standard. The seven large and three small s.h.i.+ps, including his flag-s.h.i.+p, the ”San Christoval,” in which the expedition set sail, were fitted out with great splendor. De Soto was then forty-two years of age, having been born at Xeres, Spain, in 1496, while his followers were mostly young men, and a more gorgeous or joyous company cannot be imagined. With them went the wife of De Soto and many other beautiful women, and the voyage was one round of pleasure and festivities. After landing and wintering in Cuba he started from there in May, 1539, with a following of one thousand men in nine s.h.i.+ps, leaving the administration of Cuba in the hands of his wife and the Lieutenant-Governor. The original splendor was preserved, the leaders being clad in gorgeous armor and, followed by a host of servants and priests, they took with them all manner of live stock, cattle, horses, mules, etc., and were provided with all sorts of weapons and trappings, but also, significantly, with blood-hounds, handcuffs and iron neck-collars. Thus they landed in Florida, in the neighborhood of Tampa Bay, and began their march northward in the month of June, 1539, the cavaliers to the number of one hundred and thirteen on horseback, and the rest on foot. They pa.s.sed the winter near the present Georgia border, and in the spring of 1540 reached the location of the present city of Savannah. Instead of pacifying, they alienated the natives through many acts of hostility, in the exuberance of their youth and prowess, in consequence of which many members of the expedition were killed in battle and others died through sickness and deprivation.
Nevertheless, they pushed on still further westward towards the Rocky Mountains, and in May, 1541, discovered and crossed the Mississippi River near Lower Chickasaw Bluff, a little north of the thirty-fourth parallel of lat.i.tude, in Tunica County, in what is now the State of Mississippi. On again reaching the Mississippi on the return march, De Soto, in consequence of the exposure and hards.h.i.+ps to which he had been subjected, sank down with a fever from which he died on May 21, 1542.
Owing to the awe which he had inspired in the minds of the natives it was deemed wise by the remnant of his followers to conceal the fact of his death. Accordingly at the dead of night he was wrapped in a flag, in which sand had been sown, and taken in a boat to the middle of the river, and amid the glare of torches, the chanting by the priests of the midnight ma.s.s, and his sorrowing and silent companions, solemnly consigned to the depths of the great river.
It is this solemn moment which the artist has caught in the painting bearing the above t.i.tle. As in all the other pictures he has, also in this, depicted all the important details of the occasion without descending to such minute particularity that the painting would lose its poetic character. The sad scene recalls vividly to the mind--in contrast with the high hope and magnificent display of the expedition at its start--the futility of human ambition.
The tone of the picture is heightened through the mingling of the pale moonlight with the lurid reflection from the torches, and the coloring altogether is such that it is in perfect harmony with the occasion.
It is unnecessary to dwell upon the subsequent fate of the remnant of the expedition, except, perhaps, to say that the picture itself gains in interest by contemplating that, after wandering through the pathless forests, wading swamps, swimming rivers and fighting Indians all the time, and deprived of their leader, and after four years of hards.h.i.+ps from the time that the expedition set out, those who were left made their way to Mexico. In the meantime the beautiful wife of De Soto had died brokenhearted, and never was there, all in all, a more tragic ending to an expedition commenced amid so much pomp and glory and with such sanguine expectations. His longed-for Eldorado was not found, and yet De Soto, not unlike Columbus, gained immortality more surely than if his expectations had been realized; for the Father of Waters, the greatest river in the world, will always be a.s.sociated with his name, and the acquisition of the vast province of Louisiana by Spain led the way for its subsequent transfer to the United States. It was on April 30, 1803, that through the negotiations conducted by James Monroe and Robert Livingston the Province of Louisiana was purchased for the sum of about $15,000,000 from France, which nation had prior thereto acquired it from Spain.
In view of the chapters of history which a contemplation of this picture recalls, it is of particular interest during this year (1904), when through the magnificent Louisiana Purchase Exposition we are celebrating the centennial anniversary of the acquisition by the United States of the vast territory, which before De Soto and his followers the foot of white man had never trod.
HENRY HUDSON ENTERING NEW YORK BAY
(_September 11, 1609_)
[Ill.u.s.tration: Copyright, 1898, by Edward Moran.]
VI.
HENRY HUDSON ENTERING NEW YORK BAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 1609.[I]
Previous to his discovery of the Hudson River, Henry Hudson, an Englishman, sometimes erroneously called Hendrick Hudson because the s.h.i.+p in which he sailed was fitted out under the auspices of the Dutch East India Company and the Amsterdam Chamber of Commerce, had made three voyages to find a northwest pa.s.sage to China and India. To reach those sh.o.r.es _via_ the Atlantic seems to have been the goal of all the early discoverers, including Columbus and also De Soto, who, before his Florida expedition, had explored the coast of Central America, on the Pacific Ocean, in search of a pa.s.sage through the American continent; and even Hudson sailed up the Hudson River in the expectation that it would lead on to the Pacific Ocean and thus to Asia. Hudson was not the only Englishman who had received encouragement and a.s.sistance from Holland when his own land had failed him, the same as did the Pilgrims soon thereafter, when they sought refuge in that enlightened and enterprising country.
He sailed from Amsterdam on April 6, 1609, in a clumsy, two-masted craft with square sails called the ”Half Moon,” a Dutch galiot of only ninety tons, with a crew of twenty men, in an extreme northwesterly direction, but being driven back by the ice, skirted along the Atlantic coast, pa.s.sing through Cas...o...b..y, Maine, as far south as Chesapeake Bay, and thence again northward, and entered Raritan Bay, south of Staten Island, on September 11, 1609, into the present harbor of New York, and, on September 14th, sailed up the Hudson River almost as far as Albany.
The return voyage down the Hudson to its mouth, owing to adverse winds, occupied eleven days, and on November 7, 1609, he landed at Dartmouth, England, where, owing to the jealousy of the English Government, the crew was detained and his s.h.i.+p seized, although she had borne the Dutch flag and Hudson had claimed the sovereignty of the soil for that country over that portion of the American continent which he had discovered. It was to all intents and purposes a discovery, as the first definite historic account of the existence of this part of the new world dated from this voyage, of which he kept a careful journal, however probable it may be that, before him, other Europeans had looked upon Manhattan Island and the Hudson River, in view of the many expeditions to America during the long period from the tenth to the seventeenth centuries.
The discovery of Hudson led almost immediately to numerous trading voyages, and thereafter to temporary, and then to regular and permanent colonization, and finally to the foundation of the great City of New York. Also with Hudson, the same as with Columbus and De Soto, is thus linked a discovery far greater in its consequences than if he had succeeded in reaching the goal which he originally set out to find. Like theirs, also his ending was sad and tragic, for on a subsequent northwestern voyage, his mutinous crew cast him, together with his son and seven of his faithful men, adrift amid the ice of Hudson Bay, which bears his name, thus like De Soto peris.h.i.+ng in the very waters which he had discovered.
His life is wrapt in mystery; nothing is known of it except during the four years occupied with his voyages (1607 to 1611), and that he was probably the son of Christopher Hudson, one of the factors of the Muscovy Company. There is not even an authentic portrait of him in existence.
The interest of this painting centers in the scene, which it vividly depicts, of the effect upon the natives of this first sight of a s.h.i.+p.
Nothing could be more intense than the expression of mingled fear and defiant surprise portrayed in the face and att.i.tude of the young Indian warrior, that so strange an object should dare to approach his. .h.i.therto undisputed domain of the sh.o.r.e. This interest is heightened through the grouping of the squaw and Indian dog, with the Indian hut or tepee in the background on the edge of the forest, and the rocky sh.o.r.e in the foreground. The s.h.i.+p itself is subordinated to the representation of this idea, being only dimly seen in the distance.
Through this conception, the artist was enabled to present a picture which adds to the variety of the series, and at the same time demonstrates his surpa.s.sing mastery of figure and landscape painting as well.
EMBARKATION OF THE PILGRIMS From Southampton