Would seek a passage westerly through the Caribbean Sea.
Columbus misunderstands the currents.
These visions of Columbus were harmless, and served to beguile him with pious whimsies. But the mood did not last. He next turned to his old geographical problems. The Portuguese were searching north and south for the passage that would lead to some indefinite land of spices, and afford a new way to reach the trade with Calicut and the Moluccas, which at this time, by the African route, was pouring wealth into the Portuguese treasury in splendid contrast to the scant return from the Spanish Indies. He harbored a belief that a better passage might yet be found beyond the Caribbean Sea. La Cosa, in placing that vignette of St. Christopher and the infant Christ athwart the supposed juncture of Asia and South America, had eluded the question, not solved it. Columbus would now go and attack the problem on the spot. His expectation to find a desired opening in that direction was based on physical phenomena, but in fact on only partial knowledge of them. He had been aware of the strong currents which set westward through the Caribbean Sea, and he had found them still flowing west when he had reached the limit of his exploration of the southern coast of Cuba. Bastidas, who had just pushed farther west on the main coast, had turned back while the currents were still flowing on, along what seemed an endless coast beyond. Bastidas did not arrive in Spain till some months after Columbus had sailed, for he was detained a prisoner in Española at this time. Some tidings of his experiences may have reached Spain, however, or the Admiral may not have got his confirmation of these views till he found that voyager at Santo Domingo, later. Columbus had believed Cuba to be another main, confining this onward waste of waters to the south of it.
Gulf Stream.
It was clear to him that such currents must find an outlet to the west, and if found, such a passage would carry him on to the sea that washed the Golden Chersonesus. He indeed died without knowing the truth. This same current, deflected about Honduras and Yucatan, sweeps by a northerly circuit round the great Gulf of Mexico, and, passing out by the Cape of Florida, flows northward in what we now call the Gulf Stream.
There is nothing in all the efforts of the canonizers more absurdly puerile than De Lorgues's version of the way in which Columbus came to believe in this strait. He had a vision, and saw it! The only difficulty in the matter was that the poor Admiral was so ecstatic in his hallucination that he mistook the narrowness of an isthmus for the narrowness of a strait!
A convenient relief to Ferdinand to send Columbus on such a search.
1501. Columbus prepares to equip his ships.
1502. February. Columbus writes to the Pope.