Columbus supposes himself at Mangi.
When the natives pointed to the interior and said, "Cubanacan," meaning, it is supposed, an inland region, Columbus imagined it was a reference to Kublai Khan; and the Cuban name of Mangon he was very ready to associate with the Mangi of Mandeville.
As he still coasted westerly he found river and village, and made more use of his prisoners than had before been possible. They seem by this time to have settled into an acquiescent spirit. He wondered in one place at statues which looked like women. He was not quite sure whether the natives kept them for the love of the beautiful, or for worship.
Columbus supposes himself on the coast of Cathay.
He found domesticated fowl; and saw a skull, which he supposed was a cow's, which was probably that of the sea-calf, a denizen of these waters. He thought the temperature cooler than in the other islands, and ascribed the change to the mountains. He observed on one of these eminences a protuberance that looked like a mosque. Such interpretation as the Spaniards could make of their prisoners' signs convinced them that if they sailed farther west they would find some potentate, and so they pushed on. Bad weather, however, delayed them, and they again opened communication with the natives. They could hear nothing of gold, but saw a silver trinket; and learned, as they thought, that news of their coming had been carried to the distant king. Columbus felt convinced that the people of these regions were banded enemies of the Great Khan, and that he had at last struck the continent of Cathay, and was skirting the shores of the Zartun and Quinsay of Marco Polo. Taking an observation, Columbus found himself to be in 21° north latitude, and as near as he could reckon, he was 1142 leagues west of Ferro. He really was 1105.
1492. November 2-5.
Cuba explored.
Tobacco.
Potatoes.
From Friday, November 2, to Monday, November 5, two Spaniards, whom Columbus had sent into the interior, accompanied by some Indians, had made their way unmolested in their search for a king. They had been entertained here and there with ceremony, and apparently worshiped as celestial comers. The evidences of the early Spanish voyagers give pretty constant testimony that the whites were supposed to have come from the skies. Columbus had given to his envoys samples of cinnamon, pepper, and other spices, which were shown to the people. In reply, his messengers learned that such things grew to the southeast of them. Columbus later, in his first letter, speaks of cinnamon as one of the spices which they found, but it turned out to be the bark of a sort of laurel. Las Casas, in mentioning this expedition, says that the Spaniards found the natives smoking small tubes of dried leaves, filled with other leaves, which they called tobacos. Sir Arthur Helps aptly remarks on this trivial discovery by the Spaniards of a great financial resource of modern statesmen, since tobacco has in the end proved more productive to the Spanish crown than the gold which Columbus sought. The Spaniards found no large villages; but they perceived great stores of fine cotton of a long staple. They found the people eating what we must recognize as potatoes. The absence of gold gave Columbus an opportunity to wish more fervently than before for the conversion of some of these people.