The Enchanted Islands -2
This hurried gabbling about gold and the aid of our Lord, interlarded with fragments of
natural and geographical observation, sounds strangely across the gulf of time and
impresses one with a disagreeable sense of bewildered greed—like that of a dog gulping
at the delicacies in his platter and unwilling to do justice to one for fear the others should
escape him; and yet it is a natural bewilderment, and one with which we must do our best
to sympathise.
Fernandina was the name which Columbus had already given to Long Island when he
sighted it from Santa Maria; and he reached it in the evening of Tuesday, October 16th.
The man in the canoe had arrived before him; and the astute Admiral had the satisfaction
of finding that once more his cleverness had been rewarded, and that the man in the
canoe had given such glowing accounts of his generosity that there was no difficulty
about his getting water and supplies. While the barrels of water were being filled he
landed and strolled about in the pleasant groves, observing the islanders and their
customs, and finding them on the whole a little more sophisticated than those of San
Salvador. The women wore mantillas on their heads and "little pieces of cotton" round
their loins—a sufficiently odd costume; and they appeared to Columbus to be a little
more astute than the other islanders, for though they brought cotton in quantities to the
ships they exacted payment of beads for it. In the charm and wonder of his walk in this
enchanted land he was able for a moment to forget his hunger for gold and to admire the
great branching palm-trees, and the fish that
"are here so different from ours that it is wonderful. There are some formed like cocks of
the finest colours in the world, blue, yellow, red and of all colours, and others tinted in a
thousand manners: and the colours are so fine, that there is not a man who does not
wonder at them, and who does not take great pleasure in seeing them. Also, there are
whales. I saw no beasts on land of any kind except parrots and lizards. A boy told me that
he saw a large snake. I did not see sheep nor goats, nor any other beast; although I have
been here a very short time, as it is midday, still if there had been any, I could not have
missed seeing some."
Columbus was not a very good descriptive writer, and he has but two methods of
comparison; either a thing is like Spain, or it is not like Spain. The verdure was "in such
condition as it is in the month of May in Andalusia; and the trees were all as different
from ours as day from night, and also the fruits and grasses and the stones and all the
things." The essay written by a cockney child after a day at the seaside or in the country,
is not greatly different from some of the verbatim passages of this journal; and there is a
charm in that fact too, for it gives us a picture of Columbus, in spite of his hunt for gold
and precious stones, wandering, still a child at heart, in the wonders of the enchanted
world to which he had come.
There was trouble on this day, because some of the crew had found an Indian with a piece
of gold in his nose, and they got a scolding from Columbus for not detaining him and
bartering with him for it. There was bad weather also, with heavy rain and a threatening
of tempest; there was a difference of opinion with Martin Alonso Pinzon about which
way they should go round the island: but the next day the weather cleared, and the wind
settled the direction of their course for them. Columbus, whose eye never missed
anything of interest to the sailor and navigator, notes thus early a fact which appears in
every book of sailing directions for the Bahama Islands—that the water is so clear and
limpid that the bottom can be seen at a great depth; and that navigation is thus possible
and even safe among the rockstrewn coasts of the islands, when thus performed by sight
and with the sun behind the ship. He was also keenly alive to natural charm and beauty in
the new lands that he was visiting, and there are unmistakable fragments of himself in the
journal that speak eloquently of his first impressions. "The singing of the little birds is
such that it appears a man would wish never to leave here, and the flocks of parrots
obscure the sun."
But life, even to the discoverer of a New World, does not consist of wandering in the
groves, and listening to the singing birds, and smelling the flowers, and remembering the
May nights of Andalusia. There was gold to be found and the mainland of Cathay to be
discovered, and a letter, written by the sovereigns at his earnest request, to be delivered to
the Great Khan. The natives had told him of an island called Samoete to the southward,
which was said to contain a quantity of gold. He sailed thither on the 19th, and called it
Isabella; its modern name is Crooked Island. He anchored here and found it to be but
another step in the ascending scale of his delight; it was greener and more beautiful than
any of the islands he had yet seen. He spent some time looking for the gold, but could not
find any; although he heard of the island of Cuba, which he took to be the veritable
Cipango. He weighed anchor on October 24th and sailed south-west, encountering some
bad weather on the way; but on Sunday the 28th he came up with the north coast of Cuba
and entered the mouth of a river which is the modern Nuevitas. To the island of Cuba he
gave the name of Juana in honour of the young prince to whom his son Diego had been
appointed a page.
This hurried gabbling about gold and the aid of our Lord, interlarded with fragments of
natural and geographical observation, sounds strangely across the gulf of time and
impresses one with a disagreeable sense of bewildered greed—like that of a dog gulping
at the delicacies in his platter and unwilling to do justice to one for fear the others should
escape him; and yet it is a natural bewilderment, and one with which we must do our best
to sympathise.
Fernandina was the name which Columbus had already given to Long Island when he
sighted it from Santa Maria; and he reached it in the evening of Tuesday, October 16th.
The man in the canoe had arrived before him; and the astute Admiral had the satisfaction
of finding that once more his cleverness had been rewarded, and that the man in the
canoe had given such glowing accounts of his generosity that there was no difficulty
about his getting water and supplies. While the barrels of water were being filled he
landed and strolled about in the pleasant groves, observing the islanders and their
customs, and finding them on the whole a little more sophisticated than those of San
Salvador. The women wore mantillas on their heads and "little pieces of cotton" round
their loins—a sufficiently odd costume; and they appeared to Columbus to be a little
more astute than the other islanders, for though they brought cotton in quantities to the
ships they exacted payment of beads for it. In the charm and wonder of his walk in this
enchanted land he was able for a moment to forget his hunger for gold and to admire the
great branching palm-trees, and the fish that
"are here so different from ours that it is wonderful. There are some formed like cocks of
the finest colours in the world, blue, yellow, red and of all colours, and others tinted in a
thousand manners: and the colours are so fine, that there is not a man who does not
wonder at them, and who does not take great pleasure in seeing them. Also, there are
whales. I saw no beasts on land of any kind except parrots and lizards. A boy told me that
he saw a large snake. I did not see sheep nor goats, nor any other beast; although I have
been here a very short time, as it is midday, still if there had been any, I could not have
missed seeing some."
Columbus was not a very good descriptive writer, and he has but two methods of
comparison; either a thing is like Spain, or it is not like Spain. The verdure was "in such
condition as it is in the month of May in Andalusia; and the trees were all as different
from ours as day from night, and also the fruits and grasses and the stones and all the
things." The essay written by a cockney child after a day at the seaside or in the country,
is not greatly different from some of the verbatim passages of this journal; and there is a
charm in that fact too, for it gives us a picture of Columbus, in spite of his hunt for gold
and precious stones, wandering, still a child at heart, in the wonders of the enchanted
world to which he had come.
There was trouble on this day, because some of the crew had found an Indian with a piece
of gold in his nose, and they got a scolding from Columbus for not detaining him and
bartering with him for it. There was bad weather also, with heavy rain and a threatening
of tempest; there was a difference of opinion with Martin Alonso Pinzon about which
way they should go round the island: but the next day the weather cleared, and the wind
settled the direction of their course for them. Columbus, whose eye never missed
anything of interest to the sailor and navigator, notes thus early a fact which appears in
every book of sailing directions for the Bahama Islands—that the water is so clear and
limpid that the bottom can be seen at a great depth; and that navigation is thus possible
and even safe among the rockstrewn coasts of the islands, when thus performed by sight
and with the sun behind the ship. He was also keenly alive to natural charm and beauty in
the new lands that he was visiting, and there are unmistakable fragments of himself in the
journal that speak eloquently of his first impressions. "The singing of the little birds is
such that it appears a man would wish never to leave here, and the flocks of parrots
obscure the sun."
But life, even to the discoverer of a New World, does not consist of wandering in the
groves, and listening to the singing birds, and smelling the flowers, and remembering the
May nights of Andalusia. There was gold to be found and the mainland of Cathay to be
discovered, and a letter, written by the sovereigns at his earnest request, to be delivered to
the Great Khan. The natives had told him of an island called Samoete to the southward,
which was said to contain a quantity of gold. He sailed thither on the 19th, and called it
Isabella; its modern name is Crooked Island. He anchored here and found it to be but
another step in the ascending scale of his delight; it was greener and more beautiful than
any of the islands he had yet seen. He spent some time looking for the gold, but could not
find any; although he heard of the island of Cuba, which he took to be the veritable
Cipango. He weighed anchor on October 24th and sailed south-west, encountering some
bad weather on the way; but on Sunday the 28th he came up with the north coast of Cuba
and entered the mouth of a river which is the modern Nuevitas. To the island of Cuba he
gave the name of Juana in honour of the young prince to whom his son Diego had been
appointed a page.
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