These records of visits to the West Indies by Dutch, English, French and other travellers following in the wake of the great discoverers and explorers, rise almost to the importance of documentary evidence, when they attempt to deal with such questions as the attitude of the Spaniards towards the natives of the New World. But mainly they are narratives, setting down simply and unpretentiously the impressions made upon European visitors by the bigness of dimensions and proportions and the abundance of natural products of all sorts. There is a spirit of wonderment at the riches so profusely bestowed upon this Western world; but there is not yet a trace of the jealousy so apparent in later writings, when commercial rivalry had divided the nations of Europe into hostile camps and finally arrayed all of them against Spain. Though not always written by men who had set out in pursuit of adventure, they convey to the reader a breath of the oldtime romance of travel in countries the plants and animals and native residents of which are so many objects of curious interest. But viewed as a whole, these books are full of information, at times strangely quickened by an individual human touch, and read at leisure in a certain order, reconstruct the panorama of West Indian life in a period which had no parallel in the history of the world.
CHAPTER XXVIII
It was the inscrutable irony of fate that Cuba should remain so negligible a quantity during one of the most momentous and progressive periods of human history. No other era since man began his career had been on the whole so marked with greatness. Discovery and exploration had doubled the known area of the globe, and the intellectual achievements of the race had even more than kept pace with the material. The era of which we have been writing in this volume saw the completion of Columbus's work in his fourth voyage, the exploits of Magellan, Balboa and Cabot, the enterprises of Cortez and Pizarro, of Cartier and Raleigh. It saw the rise of religious liberty, and of modern philosophy and science. It saw the art of printing, invented in the preceding century, developed into world-wide significance.
This was the era of genius. Its annals were adorned with the names of Shakespeare and Cervantes, of Rafael and Titian and Michael Angelo, of Holbein and Durer, of Luther and Erasmus, of Ariosto and Rabelais, of Tyndale and Knox, of Calvin, Loyola and Xavier, of Copernicus and Vesalius, of Montaigne and Camoens, of Tycho Brahe and Kepler, of Tasso and Spenser, of Bacon and Jonson, of Sidney and Lope de Vega. It was a wondrous company that passed along the world's highway while Cuba was struggling in obscurity to lay the foundations of a future state.
Nor did Spain herself lag behind her neighbor nations. The sixteenth century saw her swift rise to the greatest estate she has ever known, and her development of many of the greatest names in her history. She began the century a newly-formed kingdom uncertain of herself and timorously essaying an ambitious career; and she reached its close one of the most extensive and most powerful empires in the world. We commonly think of her chiefly as a conquering power. But in fact that century of her marvellous conquests of empire was also her golden age in intellect. We may imagine that the swiftness of her rise to primacy among the nations, and the dazzling splendor of her conquests, stimulated and inspired the minds of her people to comparable achievements in the intellectual world. The sixteenth century was indeed to Spain what the Augustan Age was to Rome, and what the Elizabethan and Victorian ages were to England, and for some of the same reasons.
It was then that three great universities were founded: Salamanca, Alcala for science, Valladolid for law; and a noteworthy school of navigation at Seville. There flourished the philosopher Luis Vives, the tutor of Mary Stuart. In jurisprudence there were Victoria and Vazquez, from whom Grotius received his inspiration; and Solorzano, with his monumental work of the Government of the Indies. The drama was adorned by Lope de Rueda, Lope de Vega, Gabriel Tellez, and Juan del Enzina. The greatest name of all in literature was that of Miguel Cervantes y Saavedra. There were the poets Garcilaso de Vega, and Luis de Argote y Gongora. There were the painters Ribera, and Domenico Theotocopuli, who inspired Velazquez.
Above all, there was one of the most remarkable groups of historians of any land or age. Paez de Castro was more than any other man the founder of history as a philosophical study as distinguished from mere polite letters; the forerunner of Voltaire and Hume. There were Florian de Ocampo, Jeronimo Zurita, Ambrosio de Morales, and the famous Jesuit Mariana. Then there was a remarkable company of historians inspired by the American conquests of Spain, who gave their attention to writing of the lands thus added to her empire: Oviedo, Gomara, Bernal Diaz, Lopez de Velasco, Las Casas, and many more. Cortez, Pizarro, Velasquez and others might conquer lands for Spain. These others would see to it that their deeds were fittingly chronicled.
There was something more, still more significant. There arose distinguished writers, producing notable works, in the countries of Spanish America; some born there, some travelling thither from the peninsula. It was in 1558 that the University of Santo Domingo was founded, which for a time served all the Spanish Indies and was a great centre of learning. How many poets and dramatists, not to mention historians and other writers, there were in America in that century, we are reminded in Cervantes's "Viaje de Parnaso" and Lope de Vega's "Laurel de Apolo." These writers were chiefly in Mexico and Peru, for obvious reasons. Those were Spain's chief colonies, and they were those which had themselves the most noteworthy past, a past marked with a high degree of civilization. The first book ever printed in the Western Hemisphere was the "Breve y Compendiosa Doctrina Cristiana," published by Juan de Zumarraga, the first Bishop of Mexico, in Mexico in 1539.
It was about the middle of the century that there appeared the first American book of real literary merit. This was "La Araucana," a Chilean epic poem, by Alonso de Ercilla y Zuñiga. Another epic, with Hernando Cortez for its hero, was "Cortez Valeroso," by Gabriel Lasso de la Vega, in 1588. The next year saw Juan de Castellanos's prodigious historical and biographical poem of 150,000 lines, "Elegias de Varones Ilustres de Indias." Another epic of Cortez was Antonio de Saavedra Guzman's "Peregrino Indiano," in 1599.
In all these things Cuba had no part. In later centuries that island could boast of poets and other writers worthy to rank with their best contemporaries of other lands. But in that marvellous sixteenth century she seems to have produced not a single name worthy of remembrance. In the rich productivity of Spanish intellect Cuba remained unrepresented. In Oriente, in Camaguey and in Havana there may be found legends and ballads of unknown but ancient origin, which are assumed to have been composed perhaps in the days of Velasquez, and to have been passed down orally from generation to generation. Quien sabe? It is quite probable that such was their origin; but it is quite certain that their authors are unknown.
For this lack of intellectual productivity in the first century of Cuba's history, and indeed the lack of any noteworthy achievements, the reason is not difficult to perceive. As we observed at the beginning of this volume, Cuba, at the advent of Europeans, was a country without a civilization and without a past. Mexico, Yucatan and Peru had enjoyed civilizations not unworthy of comparison with those of Europe and Asia, the remains of which attracted thither the intellects of Spain, and inspired them. But Cuba had nothing of the sort. Again, the vast wealth of Mexico and Peru attracted to those countries many more explorers, conquerors and colonists than Cuba could draw to herself. And there was also the partiality which was shown to them by royal favor and in royal interest. We shall have reviewed the annals of the first Cuban century to little purpose if we do not perceive that during the greater part of that time the "Queen of the Antilles," the "Pearl of the West Indies," as she was even then occasionally and afterward habitually called, was the Cinderella of the Spanish Empire; a Cinderella destined, however, one day to meet her Fairy Prince and thus to be wakened into splendor not surpassed by the finest of her sisters.
The close of the sixteenth century marked, then, approximately a great turning point in Cuban history. Thitherto she had been exclusively identified with Spain. She had developed no individuality and had exercised