[410-4] For the word barra no explanation can be offered except what is derived from the context. As the Italian has diverse malattie, “divers diseases,” de Lollis suggests that barra should be varias and that maladias was somehow dropped from the text.
[410-5] Leones. The American lion or puma.
[411-1] A misunderstanding. The Mayas made no metal tools. Brinton, The American Race, p. 156.
[411-2] Possibly Columbus may have seen some Maya codices, of which such remarkable specimens have been preserved.
[412-1] Considering Columbus’s experience at Veragua this account exhibits boundless optimism. Still it is not to be forgotten that through the conquest of Mexico to the north this prediction was rather strikingly fulfilled.
[412-2] It is not clear to what Columbus refers in this sentence.
[412-3] De un camino. The texts to which Columbus refers just below show that this should read de un año, in one year.
[412-4] In the Latin version of Josephus used by Columbus the Greek θυρεὁϛ, a target, was rendered lancea. See Raccolta Colombiana, parte I., tomo II., p. 367.
[412-5] Tablado. In the Italian translation tavolato, a “partition wall,” “wainscoting,” also “floor.” Tablado also means “scaffold” and “stage” or “staging.” We have here a curious series of mistakes. The Greek text of Josephus has ἐκπώματα, “cups.” The old Latin translator, perhaps having a defective text, took ἐκπώματα apparently to be equivalent to πώματα, which has as its secondary meaning, “lids,” and translated it by the uncommon word coopercula, “lids” (cf. Georges, Lateinischdeutsches Handwörterbuch, sub voce cooperculum). The meaning of this word Columbus guessed at, not having the text before him to see the connection, and from its derivation from cooperio, “to cover,” took it to be a “covering” in the sense of flooring, or perhaps ceiling, above where the shields were hung “in the house of the forest of Lebanon,” and rendered it tablado. The whole passage from the old Latin version (published in 1470 and frequently later), Columbus copied into a fly-leaf of his copy of the Historia Rerum ubique Gestarum of Pope Pius II. See Raccolta Colombiana, parte I., tomo II., pp. 366-367.
[413-1] Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, bk. VIII., ch. VII., sect. 4; I. Kings, X. 14, 15; II. Chronicles, IX. 13, 14.