Old Fort Santo Domingo
No description can convey to your mind an adequate impression of the beauty of this wonderful old cathedral, for one needs colour, colour, colour, everywhere for its proper setting. It is built of the yellowest of soft porous stone, to which time has bequeathed a luminosity, the brilliancy of which no language can rightly picture. It is purely Spanish in its style, depending for its beauty entirely on its symmetry of form and not on extraneous ornamentation; it is built rather low to withstand frequent earthquakes, and from its solidity and simplicity and directness of construction has a charm which few of the later Spanish cathedrals possess. Time has laid her kindly hands upon this temple of God gently—ever so gently, and through many a lifetime has fulfilled the priestly office of consecration.
I sat down in the shade, for, as we left the carriage, a big cloud tumbled over by mistake and the sun laughingly plunged headlong through the mist before the quarrelsome elements had time to gainsay. With Little Blue Ribbons close by, and Sister and our Spanish Student disappearing within the arches of the Cathedral, I sat there on the base of one of the great pillars at the doorway, and filled my eyes with the beauty of the strong, graceful arches overhead, in whose time-worn curves hung the ancient bells, beautiful bronze bells, now green with age, still pealing forth the praise of God as in the days of Columbus’s followers.
Down the weather-worn and sun-ripened sides of the Cathedral were long streaks of black, like the silent tears of centuries, shed for glories now no more. Was it not enough to rest there, where one could look at the bells and wait for the quiver of the long tongues, ringing out the hour of mass, and catch the thrill of the mottled gray and blue sky sifting its mellow light through the ancient towers? There are some things so absolutely satisfying that it seems an arrant sacrilege to be discontent and want for more. But Little Blue Ribbons, with the impatience of childhood, began to tug at my hand, and the dear old bells must have gone asleep, for with all our longing they hung there covered by their deep, green silence, and Little Blue Ribbons said we would have our waiting all for nothing. For nothing is it, dear one, to forget the stress of living for awhile, and let one’s spirit drop into the peace of a sleeping bell?
III.
We found that the interior of the Cathedral had a very new, clean face, having been recently “restored” and whitewashed; thus being out of harmony with the venerable exterior; however, some one remarked, it was “gratifying to see that the Dominicans appreciate their ancient monument.” That complacent remark struck the ear awry, like the whine of a deacon’s report at a Sunday-school convention. Appreciate? Why, the people of Santo Domingo worship this spot! It is the one place of interest to them; it is the one thing they ask the stranger if he has seen; it is the centre of their life and love—that ancient pile of yellow glory—for are not the ashes of their great Cristobal Colon guarded there? Would that we Americans had any relic we held as sacredly!
So I suppose we ought not to quarrel with the Dominicans over the new coat of whitewash, for they meant it well, but we can at least wish they hadn’t cleaned house so thoroughly. Within those walls rest the bones of Columbus after their many disinterments and post-mortem wanderings—so it is claimed; but whether these are the bones of Columbus, or of some one else, who can say? What does it matter? Somewhere about one hundred years ago—in 1795—’tis said, when this island was ceded to the French, the Spaniards took Columbus’s bones back to Spain. Later these mortal fragments were returned to Santo Domingo, in accordance with his expressed wish that they finally be buried in this his beloved birthplace and funeral-pyre of his cherished hopes in the New World; which wish had been once before honoured in the first removal of the remains to the then Spanish colony. Sealed in a leaden casket they were imbedded in masonry under the stone floor of the cathedral chancel, and there was no attempt to disturb them until about 1878, when they were presumably removed to Havana to be re-interred there, and, as the Spaniards stoutly maintain, again disinterred from their resting-place in the cathedral at Havana and hurried away to Spain just before the American occupation of Cuba, there to receive the sad honour of a costly mausoleum in Seville. But a few years ago a second box was discovered, buried fast in ancient masonry and cement, about three feet from the place in which the first one was found; and this leaden box, the Dominicans claim, holds the real bones of the real Columbus, for they stoutly maintain that the other box contained the bones Diego Colon, nephew to Columbus, or, as some say, his son—not Cristobal Colon, our Columbus—and the inscription on a silver plate found inside seems to bear out the authenticity of the later discovery, as does also the location of this second casket and the pains taken to render it secure. Whosesoever bones they were, I was in the proper frame of mind to venerate them, and it was with a feeling of deep awe and pathos that I stood before the much-disputed leaden box, now enshrined in gold and silver, and covered by a very gorgeous white marble tomb, newly made in Barcelona. The box is about a foot and a half long, one foot high, and one foot wide—rather a small space for so great a man as Columbus, but then—
“Imperial Cæsar, dead, and turn’d to clay,
Might stop a hole to keep the wind away.”
And so the Dominicans had a very beautiful and lofty and modern monument built in Spain and brought across the water to San Domingo, as a fitting shrine for their great treasure. With many minarets and dainty arches cut from snowy marble, and ornate with carvings and gilt, it stands more as a monument to the faithful loyalty of the Dominicans than to the memory of that valiant discoverer. He was a world soul. He belongs to all time, as do all the great. The march of Western civilisation is his monument. The Dominicans plan to erect a building which they deem worthier this work of gold and marble than is the sad old cathedral Columbus founded—worthier the sacred leaden box; but could there be a more fitting sanctuary for the great Genoese, than within these ancient walls whose beginnings he directed and which rose after death in direct fulfilment of his ambition?
We found built into the wall a huge cross, rudely hewn of wood, which the stories say was set in a clearing in a little plain by Columbus, before the year 1500, to mark the place where his great church should stand. This primitive cross was afterward built into the wall itself. How constantly memories of the great discoverer hover about these walls; for it was in Santo Domingo that Columbus was imprisoned by his jealous rivals, and thence at last he was taken in chains to Spain, where he died, and hither again came his weary bones.
How pathetic, yet how characteristic, is this grim example of the Spaniard’s reverence for the past, even if that past may have been so cruelly dishonoured! Columbus, the poor Genoese dreamer; Columbus, still the crazy explorer, but upheld by royal hands; Columbus, the fêted and flattered discoverer of new worlds, giving to Spain greater riches than she dreamed; Columbus, the victim of jealous gossip and intrigue, bound in chains and finally dying—broken and disgraced. Columbus, in ashes these four hundred years, guarded in pomp, and convoyed by great ships in this final retreat, step by step, from the empire he founded! For with each successive loss of her rich holdings in the New World, Spain has tried to carry with her in her retreat, these precious relics, until the name Columbus, framed in dishonour, disaster, and defeat, has become to her almost a pain. How tragic that Spain should strain to her heart with fierce