[393-1] Twenty years, speaking approximately. This letter was written in 1503, and Columbus entered the service of Spain in 1485.
[393-2] Diego was the heir of his father’s titles. He was appointed governor of the Indies in 1508, but a prolonged lawsuit was necessary to establish his claims to inherit his father’s rights.
[393-3] Their course was down the Mosquito coast. Cariay was near the mouth of the San Juan River of Nicaragua. Las Casas gives the date of the arrival at Cariarí, as he gives the name, as September 17 (III. 114). The Historie gives the date as September 5 and the name as Cariai (p. 297).
[393-4] Peter Martyr, De Rebus Oceanicis (ed. 1574), p. 239, says that Columbus called Ciamba the region which the inhabitants called Quiriquetana, a name which it would seem still survives in Chiriqui Lagoon just east of Almirante Bay. The name “Ciamba” appears on Martin Behaim’s globe, 1492, as a province corresponding to Cochin-China. It is described in Marco Polo under the name “Chamba”; see Yule’s Marco Polo, II. 248-252 (bk. III., ch. V.).
[393-5] Carambaru is the present Almirante Bay, about on the border between Costa Rica and Panama. Las Casas describes the bay as six leagues long and over three broad with many islands and coves. He gives the name as Caravaró (III. 118). Ferdinand Columbus’s account is practically identical.
[394-1] Veragua in this letter includes practically all of the present republic of Panama. The western quarter of it was granted to Luis Colon, the Admiral’s grandson, in 1537, as a dukedom in partial compensation for his renouncing his hereditary rights. Hence the title Dukes of Veragua borne by the Admiral’s descendants. The name still survives in geography in that of the little island Escudo de Veragua, which lies off the northern coast.
[394-2] The eve or vigil of St. Simon and St. Jude is October 27. According to the narrative in the Historie, on October 7, they went ashore at the channel of Cerabora (Carambaru). A few days later they went on to Aburema. October 17 they left Aburema and went twelve leagues to Guaigo, where they landed. Thence they went to Cateva (Catiba, Las Casas) and cast anchor in a large river (the Chagres). Thence easterly to Cobrava; thence to five towns, among which was Beragua (Veragua); the next day to Cubiga. The distance from Cerabora to Cubiga was fifty leagues. Without landing, the Admiral went on to Belporto (Puerto Bello), which he so named. (“Puerto Bello, which was a matter of six leagues from what we now call El Nombre de Dios.” Las Casas, III. 121.) He arrived at Puerto Bello November 2, and remained there seven days on account of the rains and bad weather. (Historie, pp. 302-306.) Apparently Columbus put this period of bad weather a few days too early in his recollection of it.
[394-3] Ciguare. An outlying province of the Mayas lying on the Pacific side of southern Costa Rica. Peter Martyr, De Rebus Oceanicis, p. 240, says, “In this great tract (i.e., where the Admiral was) are two districts, the near one called Taia, and the further one Maia.”
[395-1] See [p. 311, note 5].
[395-2] Probably casas, houses, should be the reading here. In the corresponding passage of the contemporary Italian version the word is “houses.” This information, mixed as it is with Columbus’s misinterpretations of the Indian signs and distorted by his preconceptions, was first made public in the Italian translation of this letter in 1505 and then gave Europe its first intimations of the culture of the Mayas.