Part 19 (2/2)

[132-5] Las Casas, I. 321, has ”many heads well carved from wood.”

Possibly these were totems.

[133-1] Las Casas, I. 321, comments, ”These must have been skulls of the manati, a very large fish, like large calves, which has a skin with no scales like a whale and its head is like that of a cow.”

[133-2] ”I believe that this port was Baracoa, which name Diego Velasquez, the first of the Spaniards to settle Cuba, gave to the harbor of Asumpcion.” Las Casas, I. 322.

[133-3] Near Granada in Spain.

[133-4] Nuevitas del Principe. (Navarrete.)

[133-5] ”Alto de Juan Danue.” (Navarrete.)

[134-1] Rio Maximo. (Navarrete.)

[134-2] See above, p. 91.

[134-3] Rather, ”The text here is corrupt.” Las Casas, I. 324, gives the same figures and adds, ”yet I think the text is erroneous.” Navarrete says the quadrants of that period measured the alt.i.tude double and so we should take half of forty-two as the real alt.i.tude. If so, one wonders why there was no explanation to this effect in the original journal which Las Casas saw or why Las Casas was not familiar with this fact and did not make this explanation. Ruge, _Columbus_, pp. 144, 145, says there were no such quadrants, and regards these estimates as proofs of Columbus's ignorance as a scientific navigator.

[134-4] In Toscanelli's letter Cathay is a province in one place and a city in another.

[134-5] Boca de Carabelas grandes. (Navarrete.)

[135-1] Punta del Maternillo. (Navarrete.)

[135-2] Las Casas says, I. 326. ”I think the Christians did not understand, for the language of all these islands is the same, and in this island of Espanola gold is called _caona_.”

[136-1] The last words should be, ”distant from the one and from the other.” Las Casas, I. 327, says: ”Zayton and Quisay are certain cities or provincias of the mainland which were depicted on the map of Paul the physician as mentioned above.” These Chinese cities were known from Marco Polo's description of them. This pa.s.sage in the Journal is very perplexing if it a.s.sumes that Columbus was guided by the Toscanelli letter. Again a few days earlier Columbus was sure that Cuba was c.i.p.ango, and now he is equally certain that it is the mainland of Asia a.s.serted by Toscanelli to be 26 s.p.a.ces or 6500 Italian miles west of Lisbon, but the next day his estimate of his distance from Lisbon is 4568 miles. It would seem as if Columbus attached no importance to the estimate of distances on the Toscanelli map which was the only original information in it.

[137-1] _Cf._ p. 134, note 3.

[137-2] The true distance was 1105 leagues. (Navarrete.)

[138-1] _Contramaestre_ is boatswain.

[138-2] ”_Bohio_ means in their language 'house,' and therefore it is to be supposed that they did not understand the Indians, but that it was Hayti, which is this island of Espanola where they made signs there was gold.” Las Casas, I. 329.

[138-3] Columbus understood the natives to say these things because of his strong preconceptions as to what he would find in the islands off the coast of Asia based on his reading of the Book of Sir John Maundeville.

Cf. ch. XVIII. of that work, _e.g._, ”a great and fair isle called Nac.u.mera.... And all the men and women have dogs' heads,” and ch. XIX., _e.g._, ”In one of these isles are people of great stature, like giants, hideous to look upon; and they have but one eye in the middle of the forehead.”

[139-1] Las Casas, I. 329, identifies the _mames_ as _ajes_ and _batatas_. The batatas, whence our word ”potato,” is the sweet potato.

_Mames_ is more commonly written _names_ or _ignames_. This is the Guinea Negro name of the _Dioscorea sativa_, in English ”Yam.” _Ajes_ is the native West Indies name. See Peschel, _Zeitalter der Entdeckungen_, p.

139, and Columbus's journal, Dec. 13 and Dec. 16. _Faxones_ are the common haricot kidney beans or string beans, _Phaseolus vulgaris_. This form of the name seems a confusion of the Spanish _fasoles_ and the Portuguese _feijes_. That Columbus, an Italian by birth who had lived and married in Portugal and removed to Spain in middle life, should occasionally make slips in word-forms is not strange. More varieties of this bean are indigenous in America than were known in Europe at the time of the discoveries. Cf. De Candolle, _Origin of Cultivated Plants_, pp.

338 ff.

[139-2] The word is _contramaestre_, boatswain.

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