[404-2] Accepting de Lollis’s emended text.
[405-1] “Quando se aia de proveer de socorro, se proveera de todo.”
[405-2] April 16, 1503.
[405-3] Cuba. According to Ferdinand Columbus the course was as follows: The Admiral followed the coast of the isthmus eastward beyond El Retrete to a place he named Marmoro (near Punto de Mosquitos) somewhat west of the entrance to the Gulf of Darien; then May 1 in response to the urgency of the pilots he turned north. May 10 they sighted two little islands, Caymanos Chicos, and the 12th they reached the Queen’s Garden just south of Cuba (see [p. 301, note 1]). The next day they landed in Cuba and secured supplies. It is significant of the tenacity of Columbus’s conviction that Cuba was a part of the mainland of Asia that he here calls it Mago (i.e., Mango). June 12, 1494, when he had explored the southern coast of Cuba, he reached this conviction and compelled his officers and crew to take oath that “it (i.e., Cuba) is mainland and in particular the province of Mango.” Navarrete, Viages, II. 144. (The affidavits are translated in Thacher, Columbus, II. 327.) Mangi (southern China) is described by Marco Polo at great length. In the second Toscanelli letter Quinsay is said to be “in the province of Mangi, i.e., near the province of Cathay.” It is noted several times in Columbus’s marginalia to Marco Polo.
[406-1] Allí me torné á reposar atrás la fortuna. De Lollis, following the Italian translation, reads: Allí me torné á reposar atrás la fortuna, etc. “There the storm returned to drive me back; I stopped in the same island in a safer port.” As this gives an unknown meaning to reposar, he suggests that Columbus may have written repujar, “to drive.”
[406-2] June 23. Historie, p. 334.
[407-1] On the contrary the narrative of Diego de Porras, which he prepared after his return to Spain in November, 1504, is a much clearer account of the voyage in most respects than this letter of Columbus’s. For it, see Thacher, Columbus, II. 640-646. Porras relates that during this voyage the Admiral took all the charts away that the seamen had had. Thacher, Columbus, II. 646.
[407-2] “El puerto de Jaquimo [Jacmel], which he called the port of Brasil.” Las Casas, Historia, III. 108.
[408-1] Cuba.
[408-2] The pilots thought that they were east of Española when Columbus turned north, and consequently thought that Cuba (Mango) was Porto Rico (San Juan). Cf. Historie, p. 333.