Chapter 24

[218-1] The mermaids [Spanish, "sirens"] of Columbus are the _manatis_, or sea-cows, of the Caribbean Sea and great South American rivers. They are now scarcely ever seen out at sea. Their resemblance to human beings, when rising in the water, must have been very striking. They have small rounded heads, and cervical vertebrae which form a neck, enabling the animal to turn its head about. The fore limbs also, instead of being pectoral fins, have the character of the arm and hand of the higher mammalia. These peculiarities, and their very human way of suckling their young, holding it by the forearm, which is movable at the elbow-joint, suggested the idea of mermaids. The congener of the _manati_, which had been seen by Columbus on the coast of Guinea, is the _dugong_. (Markham.)

[218-2] Las Casas has "on the coast of Guinea where manequeta is gathered" (I. 430). _Amomum Melequeta_, an herbaceous, reedlike plant, three to five feet high, is found along the coast of Africa, from Sierra Leone to the Congo. Its seeds were called "Grains of Paradise," or _maniguetta_, and the coast alluded to by Columbus, between Liberia and Cape Palmas, was hence called the Grain Coast. The grains were used as a condiment, like pepper, and in making the spiced wine called _hippocras_. (Markham.)

[219-1] Rio Chuzona chica. (Navarrete.)

[219-2] Reading _broma_ ("ship worm") for _bruma_ ("mist") in the sentence: _sino que tiene mucha bruma_. De la Roquette in the French translation gives _bruma_ the meaning of "shipworm," supposing it to be a variant form of _broma_. The Italian translator of the letter on the fourth voyage took _broma_ to be _bruma_, translated it _pruina e bruma_, and consequently had Columbus's ship injured by frost near Panama in April! _Cf._ Thacher, _Christopher Columbus_, II. 625, 790.

[220-1] So called because the summit is always covered with white or silver clouds. Las Casas, I. 432. A monastery of Dominicans was afterwards built on Monte de Plata, in which Las Casas began to write his history of the Indies in the year 1527. Las Casas, IV. 254. (Markham.)

[220-2] Puerto de Plata, where a flourishing seaport town was afterwards established; founded by Ovando in 1502. It had fallen to decay in 1606. (Markham.)

[220-3] Punta Macuris. The distance is 3, not 4 leagues. (Navarrete.)

[220-4] Punta Sesua. The distance is only one league. (_Id._)

[220-5] Cabo de la Roca. It should be 5, not 6 leagues. (_Id._)

[220-6] Bahia Escocesa. (_Id._)

[220-7] Las Casas says that none of these names remained even in his time. I. 432.

[221-1] This was the Peninsula of Samana. (Navarrete.)

[221-2] Isla Yazual. (_Id._)

[221-3] Cabo Cabron, or Lover's Cape; the extreme N.E. point of the island, rising nearly 2000 feet above the sea. (Markham.)

[221-4] Puerto Yaqueron. (Navarrete.)

[221-5] Cabo Samana; called Cabo de San Theramo afterwards by Columbus (Markham.)[TN-3]

[221-6] The Bay of Samana. (Navarrete.)

[221-7] Cayo de Levantados. (_Id._)

[222-1] This should be, "who says that he was very ugly of countenance, more so than the others that he had seen."

[222-2] Las Casas says, I. 433, "Not charcoal but a certain dye they make from a certain fruit."

[222-3] Las Casas, I. 434, says there never were any cannibals in Espanola.

[223-1] Las Casas, I. 434, says that a section in the northeastern part of Espanola "was inhabited by a tribe which called themselves _Mazariges_ and others _Ciguayos_ and that they spoke different languages from the rest of the island. I do not remember if they differed from each other in speech since so many years have passed, and to-day there is no one to inquire of, although I have talked many times with both generations; but more than fifty years have gone by." The Ciguayos, he adds, were called so because they wore their hair long as women do in Castile. This passage shows that Las Casas was writing this part of his history a half-century after he went first to Espanola, which was in 1502, with Ovando.

[223-2] See p. 226, note 4, under Jan. 15.

[223-3] Porto Rico. (Navarrete.)

[223-4] Las Casas, I. 434, says that Guanin was not the name of an island, but the word for a kind of base gold.

[223-5] A gap in the original manuscript.

[224-1] Las Casas, I. 435, has, "and as word of a palm-tree board which is very hard and very heavy, not sharp but blunt, about two fingers thick everywhere, with which as it is hard and heavy like iron, although a man has a helmet on his head they will crush his skull to the brain with one blow."

[224-2] "This was the first fight that there was in all the Indies and when the blood of the Indians was shed." Las Casas, I. 436.

[225-1] Porto Rico. Navarrete says it is certain that the Indians called Porto Rico Isla de Carib.

[225-2] Probably Martinique or Guadeloupe. (Navarrete.)

[226-1] By this calculation the Admiral entered the service of the Catholic Sovereigns on January 20, 1486. (Navarrete.)

[226-2] "What would he have said if he had seen the millions and millions (_cuentos y millones_) that the sovereigns have received from his labors since his death?" Las Casas, I. 437.

[226-3] Porto Rico.

[226-4] Columbus had read in Marco Polo of the islands of MASCULIA and FEMININA in the Indian Seas and noted the passage in his copy. See ch. XXXIII. of pt. III. of Marco Polo. On the other hand there is evidence for an indigenous Amazon myth in the New World. The earliest sketch of American folk-lore ever made, that of the Friar Ramon Pane in 1497, preserved in Ferdinand Columbus's _Historie_ and in a condensed form in Peter Martyr's _De Rebus Oceanicis_ (Dec. I., lib. IX.), tells the story of the culture-hero Guagugiona, who set forth from the cave, up to that time the home of mankind, "with all the women in search of other lands and he came to Matinino, where at once he left the women and went away to another country," etc., _Historie_ (London ed., 1867), p. 188. Ramon's name is erroneously given as Roman in the _Historie_. On the Amazons in Venezuela, see Oviedo, lib. XXV., cap. XIV. It may be accepted that the Amazon myth as given by Oviedo, from which the great river derived its name, River of the Amazons, is a composite of an Arawak folk-tale like that preserved by Ramon Pane overlaid with the details of the Marco Polo myth, which in turn derives from the classical myth.

[227-1] _Y los mas le ponen alli yerba_, "and the most of them put on poison." The description of these arrows corresponds exactly with that given by Sir E. im Thurn of the poisoned arrows of the Indians of Guiana, which still have "adjustable wooden tips smeared with poison, which are inserted in the socket at the end of a reed shaft." _Among the Indians of Guiana_, p. 242.

[227-2] Capsicum. (Markham.)

[228-1] Gulf of the Arrows. This was the Bay of Samana, into which the river Yuna flows. (Navarrete.)

[228-2] Porto Rico. It would have been distant about 30 leagues. (Navarrete.)

[229-1] "The sons remain with their mothers till the age of fourteen when they go to join their fathers in their separate abode." Marco Polo, pt. III., ch. XXXIII. _Cf._ p. 226, note 4.

[229-2] Now called Cabod el Engano,[TN-4] the extreme eastern point of Espanola. It had the same name when Las Casas wrote. (Markham.)

[229-3] Alcatraz.

[230-1] The _almadrabas_, or tunny fisheries of Rota, near Cadiz, were inherited by the Duke, as well as those of Conil, a little fishing town 6 leagues east of Cadiz. (Markham.)

[230-2] _Un pescado_ (a fish), called the _rabiforcado_. For _un pescado_, we should probably read _una ave pescadora_, and translate: a fishing bird, called _rabiforcado_. See entry for September 29 and note.

[230-3] _Alcatraces_, _rabos de juncos_, and _rabiforcados_: boobies, boatswain-birds, and frigate-birds. The translator has not been consistent in selecting English equivalents for these names. In the entry of January 18 _rabiforcado_ is frigate-bird; in that of January 19 _rabo de junco_ is frigate-bird; in that of January 21 _rabo de junco_ is _boatswain-bird_. September 14 _garjao_ is the tern, while on January 19 the _rabiforcado_ is the tern. On these birds, see notes 11, 12, 13, and 20. See also Oviedo, _Historia General y natural de las Indias_, lib. XIV., cap. I., for descriptions of these birds.

[231-1] _Rabiforcados y pardelas._ Las Casas, I. 440, has _aves pardelas_. Talhausen, _Neues Spanisch-deutsches Woerterbuch_, defines _pardelas_ as _Peters-vogel_, _i.e._, petrel.

[231-2] _Rabos de juncos y pardelas._ The translator vacillates between sandpipers and terns in rendering _pardelas_. _Cf._ January 28 and 31, but as has just been noted "petrels" is the proper word.

[231-3] An error of the transcriber for miles. Each glass being half-an-hour, going six miles an hour, they would have made 33 miles or 8-1/4 leagues in five hours and a half. (Navarrete.)

[233-1] Petrels.

[233-2] The English equivalent is dory, or gilthead.

[234-1] Petrels.

[235-1] Vicente Yanez Pinzon.

[235-2] Later a rich citizen of the city of Santo Domingo, Espanola, where he was known as Roldan the pilot. Las Casas, I. 443.

[236-1] The name is also written Peralonso Nino. He made one of the first voyages to the mainland of South America after the third voyage of Columbus. See Irving, _Companions of Columbus_. Bourne, _Spain in America_, p. 69.

[237-1] A gap in the original manuscript.

[238-1] Martin Alonso Pinzon succeeded in bringing the caravel _Pinta_ into port at Bayona in Galicia. He went thence to Palos, arriving in the evening of the same day as the _Nina_ with the Admiral. Pinzon died very soon afterwards. Oviedo [I. 27] says: "He went to Palos to his own house and died after a few days since he went there very ill." (Markham.)

[239-1] Virgin of Guadalupe was the patroness of Estremadura. As many of the early colonists went from Estremadura there came to be a good number of her shrines in Mexico. _Cf._ R. Ford, _Handbook for Spain_, index under "Guadalupe."

[239-2] A full account of the shrine at Loreto may be found in Addis and Arnold, _Catholic Dictionary_, under "Loreto."

[239-3] "This is the house where the sailors of the country particularly have their devotions." Las Casas, I. 446. Moguer was a village near Palos.

[240-1] See page 108, note 1. and entry for October 10.

[241-1] As Beatriz Enriquez, the mother of Ferdinand, was still living, this passage has occasioned much perplexity. A glance at the corresponding passage, quoted in direct discourse from this entry in the Journal, in the _Historie_ of Ferdinand, shows that the words "orphans without father or mother" were not in the original Journal, if we can trust this transcript. On the other hand, Las Casas, in his _Historia_, I. 447, where he used the original Journal and not the abridgment that has come down to us, has the words "_huerfanos de padre y madre en tierra estrana_." It may be that Ferdinand noted the error of the original Journal and quietly corrected it.

[241-2] In Ferdinand's text nothing is said explicitly about the Indies.

[241-3] There is nothing corresponding to this in Ferdinand's extract from the Journal. Was this omission also a case of pious revision?

The Admiral thought that there could be no great storms in the countries he had discovered, because trees (mangroves) actually grew with their roots in the sea. The herbage on the beach nearly reached the waves, which does not happen when the sea is rough. (Markham.)

[241-4] Ferdinand Columbus has preserved in his life of his father the exact words of the Journal for the last two pages of the entry for February 14. The extract is given here to illustrate the character of the work of the epitomizer who prepared the text of the Journal as it has come down to us. "I should have borne this fortune with less distress if my life alone had been in peril, since I am aware that I am in debt to the Most High Creator for my life and because at other times I have found myself so near to death that almost nothing remained but to suffer it. But what caused me boundless grief and trouble was the reflection that, now that Our Lord had been pleased to enlighten me with the faith and with the certainty of this undertaking in which he had already given me the victory, that just now, when our gainsayers were to be convinced and your Highnesses were to receive from me glory and enlargement of your high estate, the Divine Majesty should will to block it with my death. This last would have been more endurable if it did not involve that of the people I brought with me with the promise of a very prosperous issue. They seeing themselves in such a plight not only cursed their coming but even the fear or the restraint which after my persuasions prevented them from turning back from the way as many times they were resolved to do. And above all this my grief was redoubled at the vision before my eyes and at the recollection of two little sons that I had left at their studies in Cordova without succor in a strange land and without my having rendered (or at least without its being made manifest) the service for which one might trust that your Highnesses would remember them.

"And although on the one hand I was comforted by the faith that I had that Our Lord would never suffer a work which would highly exalt his Church, which at length after so much opposition and such labors I had brought to the last stage, to remain unaccomplished and that I should be broken; on the other hand, I thought that, either on account of my demerits or to prevent my enjoying so much glory in this world, it was his pleasure to take it away from me, and so while thus in perplexity I bethought myself of the venture of your Highnesses who even if I should die and the ship be lost, might find means of not losing a victory already achieved and that it might be possible in some way for the news of the success of my voyage to come to your ears; wherefore I wrote on a parchment with the brevity that the time demanded how I had discovered the lands that I had promised to, and in how many days; and the route I had followed; and the goodness of the countries, and the quality of their inhabitants and how they were the vassals of your Highnesses who had possession of all that had been found by me. This writing folded and sealed I directed to your Highnesses with the superscription or promise of a thousand ducats to him who should deliver it unopened, in order that, if some foreigners should find it, the truth of superscription might prevent them from disposing of the information which was inside. And I straightway had a large cask brought and having wrapped the writing in a waxed cloth and put it into a kind of tart or cake of wax I placed it in the barrel which, stoutly hooped, I then threw into the sea. All believed that it was some act of devotion. Then because I thought it might not arrive safely and the ships were all the while approaching Castile I made another package like that and placed it on the upper part of the poop in order that if the ship should sink the barrel might float at the will of fate."

[243-1] The bonnet was a small sail usually cut to a third the size of the mizzen, or a fourth of the mainsail. It was secured through eyelet-holes to the leech of the mainsail, in the manner of a studding sail. (Navarrete.)

[243-2] On this day the Admiral dated the letter to Santangel, the _escribano de racion_, which is given below on pp. 263-272.

[244-1] This was on Sunday, 17th of February. (Navarrete.)

[244-2] The port of San Lorenzo. (_Id._).

[246-1] The incredulity of the Portuguese governor as to these assertions was natural. The title Admiral of the Ocean Sea was novel and this was the first time it was announced that Spain or any other European power had possessions in the Indies.

[247-1] Half the crew were still detained on shore.

[248-1] That the site of the Garden of Eden was to be found in the Orient was a common belief in the Middle Ages and later. _Cf._ the _Book of Sir John Mandeville_, ch. XXX.

[249-1] The last of the canonical hours of prayer, about nine in the evening.

[252-1] On this day the Admiral probably wrote the postscript to his letter Santangel written at sea on February 15.

[253-1] Modern scholars have too hastily identified this Bartolome Diaz with the discoverer of the Cape of Good Hope. There is no evidence for this except the identity of the name. Against the supposition are the facts that neither Columbus, Las Casas, nor Ferdinand remark upon this meeting with the most eminent Portuguese navigator of the time, and that this Diaz is a subordinate officer on this ship who is sent to summon Columbus to report to the captain. That the great admiral of 1486-1487 would in 1493 be a simple _Patron_ on a single ship is incredible.

[253-2] Joao II.

[254-1] The treaty of Alcacovas signed by Portugal September 8, 1479, and by Spain March 6, 1480. In it Ferdinand and Isabella relinquished all rights to make discoveries along the coast of Africa and retained of the African islands only the Canaries. The Spanish text is printed in _Alguns Documentos da Torre do Tombo_ (Lisbon, 1892), pp. 45-46. See also Vignaud, _Toscanelli and Columbus_, pp. 61-64.

[254-2] "The Mine," more commonly El Mina, a station established on the Gold Coast by Diogo de Azambuja in 1482. The full name in Portuguese was S. Jorge da Mina, St. George of the Mine.

[255-1] The Portuguese historian Ruide Pina, in his _Cronica D'El Rey Joao_, gives an account of Columbus's meeting with the king which is contemporary. From his official position as chief chronicler and head of the national archives and from the details which he mentions it is safe to conclude that he was an eye-witness.

"In the following year, 1493, while the king was in the place of the Val do Paraiso which is above the Monastery of Sancta Maria das Vertudes, on account of the great pestilences which prevailed in the principal places in this district, on the sixth of March there arrived at Restello in Lisbon Christovam Colombo, an Italian who came from the discovery of the islands of Cipango and Antilia which he had accomplished by the command of the sovereigns of Castile from which land he brought with him the first specimens of the people, gold and some other things that they have; and he was entitled Admiral of them. And the king being informed of this, commanded him to come before him and he showed that he felt disgusted and grieved because he believed that this discovery was made within the seas and bounds of his lordship of Guinea which was prohibited and likewise because the said Admiral was somewhat raised from his condition and in the account of his affairs always went beyond the bounds of the truth and made this thing in gold, silver, and riches much greater than it was. The king was accused of negligence in withdrawing from him for not giving him credit and authority in regard to this discovery for which he had first come to make request of him. And although the king was urged to consent to have him slain there, since with his death the prosecution of this enterprise so far as the sovereigns of Castile were concerned would cease on account of the decease of the discoverer; and that this could be done without suspicion if he consented and ordered it, since as he was discourteous and greatly elated they could get involved with him in such a way that each one of these his faults would seem to be the true cause of his death; yet the king like a most God-fearing prince not only forbade this but on the contrary did him honor and showed him kindness and therewith sent him away." _Colleccao de Livros Ineditos de Historia Portugueza_, II. 178-179. It will be noted that according to this account Columbus said he had discovered Cipango and Antilia, a mythical island which is represented on the maps of the fifteenth century, and that Columbus is called Colombo his Italian name, and not Colom or Colon.

[256-1] This may have been her brother, the Duke of Bejar, afterwards King Manoel.

[256-2] _Espadim_: a Portuguese gold piece coined by Joao II. Las Casas, I. 466, says: "20 _Espadinos_, a matter of 20 ducats." The Espadim contained 58 to 65 grains of gold. W.C. Hazlitt, _Coinage of European Nations, sub voce_. King Joao II. gave Columbus's pilot almost exactly the sum which Henry VII. gave to John Cabot, which was L10. In the French translation and the translation in J.B. Thacher's _Christopher Columbus_ the word _espadines_ is erroneously taken to be Spanish and rendered "_Epees_," and "small short swords."

[257-1] Having been absent 225 days.

LETTER FROM COLUMBUS TO LUIS DE SANTANGEL

INTRODUCTION

This letter, the earliest published narrative of Columbus's first voyage, was issued in Barcelona in April, 1493, not far from the time when the discoverer was received in state by the King and Queen. The _Escribano de Racion_, to whom it was addressed, was Luis de Santangel, who had deeply interested himself in the project of Columbus and had advanced money to enable Queen Isabella to meet the expenses of the voyage. He, no doubt, placed a copy in the hands of the printer. Only two printed copies of this Spanish letter, as it is called, have come down to us. One is a folio of the first imprint, discovered and reproduced in 1889. Of this the unique copy is in the Lenox Library in New York; its first page is reproduced in facsimile in this volume, by courteous permission of the authorities of the library. The other is a quarto of the second and slightly corrected imprint, first made known in 1852 and first reproduced in 1866. Facsimiles of both are given in Thacher's _Christopher Columbus_, II. 17-20 and 33-40.

Columbus sent a duplicate of this letter with some slight changes to Gabriel Sanxis (Spanish form, Sanchez), the treasurer of Aragon, from whose hands a copy came into the possession of Leander de Cosco, who translated it into Latin, April 29, 1493.

This Latin version was published in Rome, probably in May, 1493, and this issue was rapidly followed by reprints in Rome, Basel, Paris, and Antwerp. It is to this Latin version that the European world outside of Spain was indebted for its first knowledge of the new discoveries.

A poetical paraphrase in Italian by Giuliano Dati was published in Rome in June, 1493. This is reprinted in Major's _Select Letters of Columbus_. The first German edition of the letter was published in Strassburg in 1497.

In the years 1493-1497 the Santangel letter was printed twice in Spanish, and the duplicate of it, the Sanchez letter, was printed nine times in Latin, five times in Dati's Italian paraphrase, and once in German. Until the publication in 1571 of the _Historie_, the Italian translation of Ferdinand Columbus's biography of his father, which contains an abridgment of Columbus's _Journal_, these letters and the account in Peter Martyr's _Decades de Rebus Oceanicis_, were the only sources of information in regard to the first voyage accessible to the world at large. The translation here given is that contained in Quaritch's _The Spanish Letter of Columbus_ (London, 1893), with a few minor changes in the wording. An English translation of the Latin or Sanchez letter may be found in the first edition of Major's _Select Letters of Columbus_ (London, 1847). This version is reprinted in P.L. Ford's _Writings of Christopher Columbus_, New York, 1892. By an error in the title of the first edition, Rome, 1493, Sanchez's Christian name is given as Raphael.

The text of the Santangel letter published by Navarrete in 1825 was derived from a manuscript preserved in the Spanish Archives at Simancas. In 1858 the Brazilian scholar Varnhagen published an edition of the Sanchez letter from a manuscript discovered by him in Valencia. Neither of these manuscripts, however, has the authority of the first printed editions.

E.G.B.