The fancy that this coast was Asia and that Cuba was Asia might, indeed, have led to the transfer to it at one time of the names which Columbus had placed along the north coast of his supposed peninsular Cuba; but that proves a misplacement of the names, and not a creation of the coast. For a while this continental land was backed up on the maps against a meridian scale, which hid the secret of its western limits, and left it a possible segment of Asia. Then it stood out alone with a north and southwestern line, but with Asia beyond, just as if it were no part of it, and this delineation was common even while there was a division of geographical belief as to North America and Asia being one.
Cuba an island.
The fact that Cuba, in the drafting of the La Cosa and Cantino maps, is represented as an island has at times been held to signify that the views of Columbus respecting its peninsular rather than its insular character were not wholly shared by his contemporaries. That foolish act by which, under penalty, the Admiral forced his crew to swear that it was a part of the main might well imply that he expected his assertions would be far from acceptable to other cosmographers. If Varnhagen's opinion as to the track of Vespucius in his voyage of 1497, following the contour of the Gulf of Mexico, be accepted as knowledge of the time, the insularity of Cuba was necessarily proved even at that early day; but it is the opinion of Henry Stevens, as has been already shown, that the green outline of the western parts of Cuba in La Cosa's chart was only the conventional way of expressing an uncertain coast. Consequently it did not imply insularity. If it is to be supposed that the Portuguese had a similar method of expressing uncertainties of coast, they did not employ it in the Cantino map, and Cuba in 1502 is unmistakably an island. It is, moreover, sufficiently like the Cuba of La Cosa to show it was drawn from one and the same prototype. If the maker of the Cantino map followed La Cosa, or a copy of La Cosa, or the material from which La Cosa worked, there is no proof that he ever suspected the peninsularity of Cuba.
Columbus looking on at other explorations.
Columbus, in his hours of neglect, and amid his unheeded pleas for recognition, during these two grewsome years in Spain, may never have comprehended in their full significance these active efforts of the Portuguese to anticipate his own hopes of a western passage beyond the Golden Chersonesus; but the doings of Mendoza, Cristobal Guerra, and other fellow-subjects of Spain were not wholly unknown to him.
1500. October. Bastidas's expedition.
In October, 1500, and before Columbus knew just what his reception in Spain was going to be, Rodrigo de Bastidas, accompanied by La Cosa and Vasco Nuñez Balboa, sailed from Cadiz on an expedition that had for its object to secure to the Crown one quarter of the profits, and to make an examination of the coast line beyond the bay of Venezuela, in order that it might be made sure that no channel to an open sea lay beyond. The two caravels followed the shore to Nombre de Dios, and at the narrowest part of the isthmus, without suspecting their nearness to the longed-for sea, the navigators turned back. Finding their vessels unseaworthy, for the worms had riddled their bottoms, they sought a harbor in Española, near which their vessels foundered after they had saved a part of their lading. A little later, this gave Bobadilla a chance to arrest the commander for illicit trade with the natives. This transaction was nothing more, apparently, than the barter of trinkets for provisions, as he was leading his men across the island to the settlements.
Portuguese and English in these regions.
It was while with Bastidas, in 1501-2, that La Cosa reports seeing the Portuguese prowling about the Caribbean and Mexican waters, seeking for a passage to Calicut. It was while on a mission of remonstrance to Lisbon that La Cosa was later arrested and imprisoned, and remained till August, 1504, a prisoner in Portugal.