Footnote 517: Applying the Gregorian Calendar, or "new style," it becomes the 21st. The four hundredth anniversary will properly fall on October 21, 1892.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 518: This is a common notion among barbarians. "The Polynesians imagine that the sky descends at the horizon and encloses the earth. Hence they call foreigners papalangi, or 'heaven-bursters,' as having broken in from another world outside." Max Müller, Chips from a German Workshop, vol. ii. p. 268.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 519: "An Attempt to solve the Problem of the First Landing Place of Columbus in the New World," in United States Coast and Geodetic Survey—Report for 1880—Appendix 18, Washington, 1882.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 520: The first recorded mention of tobacco is in Columbus's diary for November 20, 1492:—"Hallaron los dos cristianos por el camino mucha gente que atravesaba á sus pueblos, mugeres y hombres con un tizon en la mano, yerbas para tomar sus sahumerios que acostumbraban," i. e. "the two Christians met on the road a great many people going to their villages, men and women with brands in their hands, made of herbs for taking their customary smoke." Navarrete, tom. i. p. 51.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 521: Not "Little Spain," as the form of the word, so much like a diminutive, might seem to indicate. It is simply the feminine of Español, "Spanish," sc. tierra or isla. Columbus believed that the island was larger than Spain. See his letter to Gabriel Sanchez, in Harrisse, tom. i. p. 428.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 522: Columbus to Santangel, February 15, 1493 (Navarrete, tom. i. p. 168).[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 523: Las Casas, tom. i. pp. 443, 449.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 524: This story rests upon the explicit statement of a contemporary Portuguese historian of high authority, Garcia de Resende, Chronica del Rey Dom João II., Lisbon, 1622, cap. clxiv. (written about 1516); see also Vasconcellos, Vida del Rey Don Juan II., Madrid, 1639, lib. vi.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 525: "When they learnt that she returned in triumph from the discovery of a world, the whole community broke forth into transports of joy." Irving's Columbus, vol. i. p. 318. This is projecting our present knowledge into the past. We now know that Columbus had discovered a new world. He did not so much as suspect that he had done anything of the sort; neither did the people of Palos.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 526: Charlevoix, Histoire de l'isle Espagnole, ou de St. Domingue, Paris, 1730, liv. ii.; Muñoz, Historia de las Indias ó Nuevo Mundo, Madrid, 1793, lib. iv. § 14.[Back to Main Text]