[400-4] Epiphany, January 6. It will be remembered that Columbus had passed Veragua the previous October when working eastward. See [p. 394, note 2]. He now found he could enter the river of Veragua, but found another near by called by the Indians Yebra, but which Columbus named Belem in memory of the coming of the three kings (the wise men of the East) to Bethlehem. (Las Casas, III. 128; Porras in Thacher, II. 645.) The name is still preserved attached to the river.
[401-1] Proeses. In nautical Spanish prois or proiza is a breastfast or headfast, that is a large cable for fastening a ship to a wharf or another ship. In Portuguese proiz is a stone or tree on shore to which the hawsers are fastened. Major interpreted it in this sense, translating the words las amarras y proeses, “the cables and the supports to which they were fastened.” The interpretation given first seems to me the correct one, especially as Ferdinand says that the flood came so suddenly that they could not get the cables on land. Historie, p. 315.
[402-1] Quibian is a title, as indicated a few lines further on, and not a proper name as Major, Irving, Markham, and others following Las Casas have taken it to be. The Spanish is uniformly “El Quibian.” Peter Martyr says: “They call a kinglet (regulus) Cacicus, as we have said elsewhere, in other places Quebi, in some places also Tiba. A chief, in some places Sacchus, in others Jurá.” De Rebus Oceanicis, p. 241.
[402-2] “Una mozada de oro.” Mozada is not given in any of the Spanish dictionaries I have consulted. The Academy dictionary gives mojoda as a square measure, deriving it from the low Latin modiata from modius. Perhaps one should read mojada instead of mozada and give it a meaning similar to that of modius or about a peck. Major’s translation follows the explanation of De Verneuil, who says: “Mozada signifie la mesure que peut porter un jeune garçon.”
[403-1] The mouth of the river was closed by sand thrown up by the violent storms outside. Historie, p. 321.
[403-2] The teredo.
[403-3] During the weeks that he was shut in the River Belem Columbus had his brother explore the country. The prospects for a successful colony led him to build a small settlement and to plan to return to Spain for re-enforcements and supplies. The story is told in detail in the Historie and by Irving, Columbus, II. 425-450, and more briefly by Markham, Columbus, pp. 259-207. This was the first settlement projected on the American Continent. The hostility of the Indians culminating in this attack rendered the execution of the project impracticable. In the manuscript copy of Las Casas’s Historia de las Indias Las Casas noted on the margin of the passage containing the account of this incident, “This was the first settlement that the Spaniards made on the mainland, although in a short time it came to naught.” See Thacher, Columbus, II. 608.
[404-1] De Lollis points out that these striking words are a paraphrase of the famous lines in Seneca’s Medea, Chorus, Act II.:—
Venient annis saecula seris
Quibus Oceanus vincula rerum
Laxet, et ingens pateat tellus,
Tethysque novos detegat orbes
Nec sit terris ultima Thule.
Columbus copied these verses into his Libro de las Profecias and translated them. Navarrete, Viages, II. 272.