Christopher Columbus and How He Received and Imparted the Spirit of Discovery

by Justin Winsor

January 6.

Having commissioned Diego de Arana as commander and Pedro Gutierrez and Roderigo de Escoveda to act as his lieutenants of the fort and its thirty-nine men, Columbus now embarked, but not before he had addressed all sorts of good advice to those he was to leave behind,—advice that did no good, if the subsequent events are clearly divined. It was not, however, till Friday, January 4, 1493, that the wind permitted him to stand out of the harbor of the Villa de Navidad, as he had named the fort and settlement from the fact of his shipwreck there on the day of the nativity. Two days later they met the "Pinta," and Pinzon, her commander, soon boarded the Admiral to explain his absence, "saying he had left against his will." The Admiral doubted such professions; but did not think it prudent to show active resentment, as Las Casas tells us. The fact apparently was that Pinzon had not found the gold he went in search of and so he had returned to meet his commander. He had been coasting the island for over twenty days, and had been seen by the natives, who made the report to the Admiral already mentioned. Some Indians whom he had taken captive were subsequently released by the Admiral, for the usual ulterior purpose. It is curious to observe how an act of kidnapping which emulated the Admiral's, if done by Pinzon, is called by the canonizers, "joining violence to rapine."

Jamaica.

At this time Columbus records his first intelligence respecting an island, Yamaye, south of Cuba, which seems to have been Jamaica, where, as he learned, gold was to be found in grains of the size of beans, while in Española the grains were nearly the size of kernels of wheat. He was also informed of an island to the east, inhabited by women only. He also understood that the people of the continent to the south were clothed, and did not go naked like those of the islands.

Both vessels now having made a harbor, and the "Nina" beginning to leak, a day was spent in calking her seams. Columbus was not without apprehension that the two brothers, Martin Alonso Pinzon of the "Pinta," and Vicente Jañez Pinzon who had commanded the "Nina," might now with their adherents combine for mischief. He was accordingly all the more anxious to hasten his departure, without further following the coast of Española. Going up a river to replenish his water, he found on taking the casks on board that the crevices of the hoops had gathered fine bits of gold from the stream. This led him to count the neighboring streams, which he supposed might also contain gold.

Columbus sees mermaids.

It was not only gold which he saw. Three mermaids stood high out of the water, with not very comely faces to be sure, but similar to those of human beings; and he recalled having seen the like on the pepper coast in Guinea. The commentators suppose they may have been sea-calves indistinctly seen.

1493. January 10. The ships sail for Spain.

January 12. Caribs.

The two ships started once more on the 10th, sometimes lying to at night for fear of shoals, making and naming cape after cape. On the 12th, entering a harbor, Columbus discovered an Indian, whom he took for a Carib, as he had learned to call the cannibals which he so often heard of. His own Indians did not wholly understand this strange savage. When they sent him ashore the Spaniards found fifty-five Indians armed with bows and wooden swords. They were prevailed upon at first to hold communication; but soon showed a less friendly spirit, and Columbus for the first time records a fight, in which several of the natives were wounded. An island to the eastward was now supposed to be the Carib region, and he desired to capture some of its natives. Navarrete supposes that Porto Rico is here referred to. He also observed, as his vessels went easterly, that he was encountering some of the same sort of seaweed which he had sailed through when steering west, and it occurred to him that perhaps these islands stretched easterly, so as really to be not far distant from the Canaries. It may be observed that this propinquity of the new islands to those of the Atlantic, longer known, was not wholly eradicated from the maps till well into the earlier years of the sixteenth century.