[DIALOGUE BETWEEN CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS AND PIETRO GUTIERREZ.]
Columbus. A fine night, friend.
Gutierrez. Fine indeed; but a sight of land would be much finer.
Col. Decidedly. So even you are tired of a life at sea.
Gut. Not so. But I am rather weary of this voyage, which turns out to be so much longer than I expected. Do not, however, think that I blame you, like the others. Rather, consider that I will, as hitherto, do all I can to help you in anything relating to the voyage. But just for the sake of some talk I wish you would tell me candidly and explicitly, whether you are as confident as at first about finding land in this part of the world; or if, after spending so much time to no purpose, you begin at all to doubt.
Col. Speaking frankly as to a friend who will not betray me, I confess I am a little dubious; especially because certain evidences during the voyage, which filled me with hope, have turned out deceitful; for instance, the birds which flew over us from the west, soon after we left Gomera, and which I considered a sure sign of land not far distant. Similarly, more than one conjecture and anticipation, made before setting out, regarding different things that were to have taken place during the voyage, have failed of realisation. So that at length I cannot but say to myself, "Since these predictions in which I put the utmost faith have not been verified, why may not also my chief conjecture, that of finding land beyond the ocean, be also unfounded?" It is true this belief of mine is so logical, that if it be false, on the one hand it would seem as if no human judgment could be reliable, except such as concern things actually seen, and touched; and on the other hand, I remember how seldom reality agrees with expectation. I ask myself, "What ground have you for believing that both hemispheres resemble each other, so that the western, like the eastern, is part land and part water? Why may it not be one immense sea? Or instead of land and water, may it not contain some other element? And, supposing it to have land and water like the other, why may it not be uninhabited? or even uninhabitable? If it be peopled as numerously as our hemisphere, what proof have you that rational beings are to be found there, as in ours? And if so, why not some other intelligent animals instead of men? Supposing they be men, why not of a kind very different from those you are acquainted with; for instance, with much larger bodies, stronger, more skilful, naturally gifted with much more genius and intelligence, more civilised, and richer in sciences and arts?"
These thoughts occur to me. And in truth, we see nature endowed with such power, so diverse and manifold in her effects, that we not only are unable to form a certain opinion about her works in distant and unknown parts of the world, but we may even doubt whether we do not deceive ourselves in drawing conclusions from the known world, and applying them to the unknown. Nor would it be contrary to probability to imagine that the things of the unknown world, in whole or part, were strange and extraordinary to us. For do we not see with our own eyes that the needle in these seas falls away from the Pole Star not a little towards the west? Such a thing is perfectly novel, and hitherto unheard of by all navigators; and even after much thought I can arrive at no satisfactory explanation of it. I do not infer that the fables of the ancients regarding the wonders of the undiscovered world and this ocean are at all credible. Annonus, for instance, said of these parts, that the nights were illumined by flames, and the glow of fiery torrents, which emptied themselves into the sea. We observe also, how foolish hitherto have been all the fears of miraculous and terrible novelties felt by our fellow-sailors during the voyage; as when, on coming to that stretch of seaweed, which made as it were a meadow in the sea, and impeded us so greatly, they imagined we had reached the verge of navigable waters.
I say this simply because I wish you to see that although this idea of mine about undiscovered land may be founded on very reasonable suppositions, in which many excellent geographers, astronomers, and navigators, with whom I conversed on the subject in Spain, Italy, and Portugal, agree with me, it might yet be fallacious. In short, we often see many admirably drawn conclusions prove erroneous, especially in matters about which we have very little knowledge.