Las Casas had first told—guardedly, to be sure—the story of the Pinzons’ contributing the money which enabled Columbus to assume an eighth part of the expense of the first voyage; but it is now claimed that the assistance of that family was confined to exerting its influence to get Columbus a crew. It is judged that the evidence is conclusive that the Pinzons did not take pecuniary risk in the voyage of 1492, because only their advances of this sort for the voyage of 1499 are mentioned in the royal grant respecting their arms. But such evidence is certainly inconclusive; and without the evidence of Las Casas it must remain uncertain whence Columbus got the five hundred thousand maravedis which he contributed to the cost of that momentous voyage.
The world has long glorified the story in the Historie of 1571 about the part which the crown jewels, and the like, played in the efforts of Isabella to assist in the furnishing of Columbus’ vessels. Peter Martyr, Bernaldez, and others who took frequent occasion to sound the praises of her majesty, say nothing of it; and, as is now contended, for the good reason that there was no truth in the story, the jewels having long before been pledged in the prosecution of the war with the Moors.
It is inferred (p. 417) from Las Casas that his abridgment of Columbus’ Journal was made from a copy, and not from the original (Navarrete, i. 134); and Harrisse says that from two copies of this abridgment, preserved in the collection of the Duque d’Osuna at Madrid, Varnhagen printed his text of it which is contained in his Verdadera Guanahani. This last text varies in some places from that in Navarrete, and Harrisse says he has collated it with the Osuna copies without discovering any error. He thinks, however, that the Historie of 1571, as well as Las Casas’ account, is based upon the complete text; and his discrediting of the Historie does not prevent him in this case saying that from it, as well as from Las Casas, a few touches of genuineness, not of importance to be sure, can be added to the narrative of the abridgment. He also points out that we should discriminate as to the reflections which Las Casas intersperses; but he seems to have no apprehension of such insertions in the Historie in this particular case.
The Ambrosian text of the first letter is once more reprinted (p. 419), accompanied by a French translation. In some appended notes the critic collates it with the Cosco version in different shapes, and with that of Simancas. He also suggests that this text was printed at Barcelona toward the end of March, 1493, and infers that it may have been in this form that the Genoese ambassadors took the news to Italy when they left Spain about the middle of the following month.
The closing chapter of this first volume is on the question of the landfall. The biographer discredits attempts to settle the question by nautical reasoning based on the log of Columbus, averring that the inevitable inaccuracies of such records in Columbus’ time is proved by the widely different conclusions of such experienced men as Navarrete, Becher, and Fox. He relies rather on Columbus’ description and on that in Las Casas. The name which the latter says was borne in his day by the island of the landfall was “Triango;” but the critic fails to find this name on any earlier map than that first made known in the Cartas de Indias in 1877. To this map he finds it impossible to assign an earlier date than 1541, since it discloses some reminders of the expedition of Coronado. He instances other maps in which the name in some form appears attached to an island of the Bahamas,—as in the Cabot mappemonde of 1544 (Triangula), the so-called Vallard map (Triango), that of Gutierrez in 1550 (Trriango), that of Alonso de Santa Cruz in his Islario of 1560 (Triangulo). Unfortunately on some of the maps Guanahani appears as well as the name which Las Casas gives. Harrisse’s solution of this conjunction of names is suggested by the fact that in the Weimar map of 1527 (see sketch, ante, p. 43) an islet “Triango” lies just east of Guanahani, and corresponds in size and position to the “Triangula” of Cabot and the “Triangulo” of Santa Cruz. Guanahani he finds to correspond to Acklin Island, the larger of the Crooked Island group (see map, ante, p. 55); while the Plana Cays, shown east of it, would stand for “Triango.” Columbus, with that confusion which characterizes his writings, speaks in one place of his first land being an “isleta,” and in another place he calls it an “isla grande.” This gives the critic ground for supposing that Columbus saw first the islet, the “Triango” of Las Casas, or the modern “Plana Cays,” and that then he disembarked on the “isla grande,” which was Acklin Island. So it may be that Columbus’ own confused statement has misled subsequent writers. If this theory is not accepted, Fox, in selecting Samana, has, in the critic’s opinion, come nearer the truth than any other.
[THE EARLIEST MAPS]
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