CUT IN THE GERMAN TRANSLATION OF THE FIRST LETTER OF COLUMBUS (TITLE).

It will be remembered that land was first seen two hours after midnight; and computations made for Fox show that the moon was near the third quarter, partly behind the observer, and would clearly illuminate the white sand of the shore, two leagues distant. From Columbus’s course there were in his way, as constituting the Bahama group,—taking the enumeration of to-day, and remembering that the sea may have made some changes,—36 islands, 687 cays, and 2,414 rocks. By the log, as included in the Journal, and reducing his distance sailed by dead reckoning—which then depended on observation by the eye alone, and there were also currents to misguide Columbus, running from nine to thirty miles a day, according to the force of the wind—to a course west, 2° 49′ south, Fox has shown that the discoverer had come 3,458 nautical miles. Applying this to the several islands claimed as the landfall, and knowing modern computed distances, we get the following table:—

Islands.Course.Miles.An
Excess
of
To Grand Turk
Mariguana
Watling
Cat
Samana		W. 8°– 1′ S.
W. 6° 37′ S.
W. 4° 38′ S.
W. 4° 20′ S.
W. 5° 37′ S.
2834
3032
3105
3141
3072
624
426
353
317
387

Columbus speaks of the island as being “small,” and again as “pretty large” (bien grande). He calls it very level, with abundance of water, and a very large lagune in the middle; and it was in the last month of the rainy season, when the low parts of the islands are usually flooded.

Some of the features of the several islands already named will now be mentioned, together with a statement of the authorities in favor of each as the landfall.

San Salvador, or Cat.—This island is forty-three miles long by about three broad, with an area of about one hundred and sixty square miles, rising to a height of four hundred feet, the loftiest land in the group, and with no interior water. It is usual in the maps of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to identify this island with the Guanahani of Columbus. It is so considered by Catesby in his Natural History of Carolina (1731); by Knox in his Collection of Voyages (1767); by De la Roquette in the French version of Navarrete, vol. ii. (1828); and by Baron de Montlezun in the Nouvelles annales des voyages, vols. x. and xii. (1828-1829). Alexander Slidell Mackenzie, of the United States Navy, worked out the problem for Irving; and this island is fixed upon in the latter’s Life of Columbus, app. xvi., editions of 1828 and 1848. Becher claims that the modern charts used by Irving were imperfect; and he calls “not worthy to be called a chart” the La Cosa map, which so much influenced Humboldt in following Irving, in his Examen critique (1837), iii. 181, 186-222.

GERMAN TRANSLATION OF THE FIRST LETTER OF COLUMBUS (TEXT).