[135-1] Punta del Maternillo. (Navarrete.)
[135-2] Las Casas says, I. 326. “I think the Christians did not understand, for the language of all these islands is the same, and in this island of Española gold is called caona.”
[136-1] The last words should be, “distant from the one and from the other.” Las Casas, I. 327, says: “Zayton and Quisay are certain cities or provincias of the mainland which were depicted on the map of Paul the physician as mentioned above.” These Chinese cities were known from Marco Polo’s description of them. This passage in the Journal is very perplexing if it assumes that Columbus was guided by the Toscanelli letter. Again a few days earlier Columbus was sure that Cuba was Cipango, and now he is equally certain that it is the mainland of Asia asserted by Toscanelli to be 26 spaces or 6500 Italian miles west of Lisbon, but the next day his estimate of his distance from Lisbon is 4568 miles. It would seem as if Columbus attached no importance to the estimate of distances on the Toscanelli map which was the only original information in it.
[137-1] Cf. [p. 134, note 3].
[137-2] The true distance was 1105 leagues. (Navarrete.)
[138-1] Contramaestre is boatswain.
[138-2] “Bohio means in their language ‘house,’ and therefore it is to be supposed that they did not understand the Indians, but that it was Hayti, which is this island of Española where they made signs there was gold.” Las Casas, I. 329.
[138-3] Columbus understood the natives to say these things because of his strong preconceptions as to what he would find in the islands off the coast of Asia based on his reading of the Book of Sir John Maundeville. Cf. ch. XVIII. of that work, e.g., “a great and fair isle called Nacumera.... And all the men and women have dogs’ heads,” and ch. XIX., e.g., “In one of these isles are people of great stature, like giants, hideous to look upon; and they have but one eye in the middle of the forehead.”
[139-1] Las Casas, I. 329, identifies the mames as ajes and batatas. The batatas, whence our word “potato,” is the sweet potato. Mames is more commonly written ñames or ignames. This is the Guinea Negro name of the Dioscorea sativa, in English “Yam.” Ajes is the native West Indies name. See Peschel, Zeitalter der Entdeckungen, p. 139, and Columbus’s journal, [Dec. 13] and [Dec. 16]. Faxones are the common haricot kidney beans or string beans, Phaseolus vulgaris. This form of the name seems a confusion of the Spanish fásoles and the Portuguese feijões. That Columbus, an Italian by birth who had lived and married in Portugal and removed to Spain in middle life, should occasionally make slips in word-forms is not strange. More varieties of this bean are indigenous in America than were known in Europe at the time of the discoveries. Cf. De Candolle, Origin of Cultivated Plants, pp. 338 ff.
[139-2] The word is contramaestre, boatswain.