Watling’s.—This is thirteen miles long by about six broad, containing sixty square miles, with a height of one hundred and forty feet, and having about one third its area of interior water. It was first suggested by Muñoz in 1793. Captain Becher, of the Royal Navy, elaborated the arguments in favor of this island in the Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, xxvi. 189, and Proceedings, i. 94, and in his Landfall of Columbus on his First Voyage to America, London, 1856. Peschel took the same ground in his Geschichte des Zeitalters der Entdeckungen (1858). R. H. Major’s later opinion is in support of the same views, as shown by him in the Journal of the Royal Geographical Society (1871), xvi. 193, and Proceedings, xv. 210. Cf. New Quarterly Review, October, 1856.
Lieut. J. B. Murdock, U. S. N., in a paper on “The Cruise of Columbus in the Bahamas, 1492,” published in the Proceedings (April, 1884, p. 449) of the United States Naval Institute vol. x, furnishes a new translation of the passages in Columbus’ Journal bearing on the subject, and made by Professor Montaldo of the Naval Academy, and repeats the map of the modern survey of the Bahamas as given by Fox. Lieutenant Murdock follows and criticises the various theories afresh, and traces Columbus’ track backward from Cuba, till he makes the landfall to have been at Watling’s Island. He points out also various indications of the Journal which cannot be made to agree with any supposable landfall.
THE BAHAMA GROUP.
This map is sketched from the chart, made from the most recent surveys, in the United States Coast-Survey and given in Fox’s monograph, with the several routes marked down on it. Other cartographical illustrations of the subject will be found in Moreno’s maps, made for Navarrete’s Coleccion in 1825 (also in the French version); in Becher’s paper in the Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, xxvi. 189, and in his Landfall of Columbus; in Varnhagen’s Das wahre Guanahani; in Major’s paper in the Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, 1871, and in his second edition of the Select Letters, where he gives a modern map, with Herrera’s map (1601) and a section of La Cosa’s; in G. B. Torre’s Scritti di Colombo, p. 214; and in the section, “Wo liegt Guanahani?” of Ruge’s Geschichte des Zeitalters der Entdeckungen, p. 248, giving all routes, except that offered by Fox. See further on the subject R. Pietschmann’s “Beiträge zur Guanahani-Frage,” in the Zeitschrift für wissenschaftliche Geographie (1880), i. 7, 65, with map; and A. Breusing’s “Geschichte der Kartographie,” in Ibid., ii. 193.
Grand Turk.—Its size is five and one half by one and a quarter miles, with an area of seven square miles; its highest part seventy feet; and one third of its surface is interior water. Navarrete first advanced arguments in its favor in 1825, and Kettell adopted his views in the Boston edition of the Personal Narrative of Columbus. George Gibbs argued for it in the New York Historical Society’s Proceedings (1846), p. 137, and in the Historical Magazine (June, 1858), ii. 161. Major adopted such views in the first edition (1847) of his Select Letters of Columbus.
Mariguana.—It measures twenty-three and one half miles long by an average of four wide; contains ninety-six square miles; rises one hundred and one feet, and has no interior water. F. A. de Varnhagen published at St. Jago de Chile, in 1864, a treatise advocating this island as La verdadera Guanahani, which was reissued at Vienna, in 1869, as Das wahre Guanahani des Columbus.[187]
Samana, or Attwood’s Cay.—This is nine miles long by one and a half wide, covering eight and a half square miles, with the highest ridge of one hundred feet. It is now uninhabited; but arrow-heads and other signs of aboriginal occupation are found there. The Samana of the early maps was the group now known as Crooked Island. The present Samana has been recently selected for the landfall by Gustavus V. Fox, in the United States Coast Survey Report, 1880, app. xviii.,—“An attempt to solve the problem of the first landing-place of Columbus in the New World.” He epitomized this paper in the Magazine of American History (April, 1883), p. 240.
