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The Story of North American Discovery and Exploration. Julius E. Olson
Читать онлайн.Название The Story of North American Discovery and Exploration
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isbn 4064066394059
Автор произведения Julius E. Olson
Жанр Документальная литература
Издательство Bookwire
On Sunday, October 28, he arrived there, in what is now called the Puerto de Nipe; he named it the Puerto de San Salvador. Here, as he went on, he was again charmed by the beautiful country. He found palms “of another sort,” says Las Casas, “from those of Guinea, and from ours.” He found the island the “most beautiful which eyes have seen, full of very good ports and deep rivers,” and that apparently the sea is never rough there, as the grass grows down to the water’s edge. This greenness to the sea’s edge is still observed there. “Up till that time,” says Las Casas, “he had not experienced in all these islands that the sea was rough.” He had occasion to learn about it later. He mentions also that the island is mountainous.
1 Arabic word for raft or float; here it means canoes.
2 To this first found land, called by the natives Guanahani, Columbus gave the name of San Salvador. There is, however, great doubt whether this is the island known by that name on the maps. Of late years the impression has generally been that the island thus discovered is that now known as Watling’s island. In 1860 Admiral Fox, of the United States navy, visited all these islands, and studied the whole question anew, visiting the islands himself and working backwards to the account of Columbus’s subsequent voyage, so as to fix the spot from which that voyage began. Admiral Fox decides that the island of discovery was neither San Salvador nor Watling’s island, but the Samana island of the same group. The subject is so curious that we copy his results at more length in the appendix.
3 This is supposed to be Caico del Norte.
4 Was this perhaps tobacco?
5 They are called Hamacas.
6 Las Casas says they were not meant for smoke but as a crown, for they have no opening below for the smoke.
7 A castellano was a piece of gold, money, weighing about one-sixth of an ounce.
8 This was the name the old geographers gave to Japan.
CHAPTER V — LANDING ON CUBA
When Columbus landed, at some distance farther along the coast, he found the best houses he had yet seen, very large, like pavilions, and very neat within; not in streets but set about here and there. They were all built of palm branches. Here were dogs which never barked (supposed to be the almiqui), wild birds tamed in the houses and “wonderful arrangements of nets,1 and fish-hooks and fishing apparatus. There were also carved masks and other images. Not a thing was touched.” The inhabitants had fled.
He went on to the northwest, and saw a cape which he named Cabo de Palmas. The Indians on board the Pinta said that beyond this cape was a river and that at four days’ journey from this was what they called “Cuba.” Now they had been coasting along the Island of Cuba for two or three days. But Martin Pinzon, the captain of the Pinta, understood this Cuba to be a city, and that this land was the mainland, running far to the north. Columbus until he died believed that it was the mainland.
Martin Pinzon also understood that the king of that land was at war with the Grand Khan, whom they called Cami. The Admiral determined to go to the river the Indians mentioned, and to send to the king the letter of the sovereigns. He meant to send with it a sailor who had been to Guinea, and some of the Guanahani Indians. He was encouraged, probably, by the name of Carni, in thinking that he was really near the Grand Khan.
He did not, however, send off these messengers at once, as the wind and the nature of the coast proved unfit for his going up the river the Indians had spoken of. He went back to the town where he had been two days before.
Once more he found that the people had fled, but “after a good while a man appeared,” and the Admiral sent ashore one of the Indians he had with him. This man shouted to the Indians on shore that they must not be afraid, as these were good people, and did harm to no man, nor did they belong to the Grand Khan, but they gave, of what they had, in many islands where they had been. He now jumped into the sea and swam ashore, and two of the inhabitants took him in their arms and brought him to a house where they asked him questions. When he had reassured them, they began to come out to the ships in their canoes, with “spun cotton and others of their little things.” But the Admiral commanded that nothing should be taken from them, so that they might know that he was seeking nothing but gold, or, as they called it, nucay.
He saw no gold here, but one of them had a piece of wrought silver hanging to his nose. They made signs, that before three days many merchants would come from the inland country to trade with the Spaniards, and that they would bring news from the king, who, according to their signs, was four days’ journey away. “And it is certain” says the Admiral, “that this is the mainland, and that I am before Zayto and Quinsay, a hundred leagues more or less from both of them, and this is clearly shown by the tide, which comes in a different manner from that in which it has done up to this time; and yesterday when I went to the northwest I found that it was cold.”
Always supposing that he was near Japan, which they called Cipango, Columbus continued to sail along the northern coast of Cuba and explored about half that shore. He then returned to the east, governed by the assurances of the natives that on an island named Babegue he would find men who used hammers with which to beat gold into ingots. This gold, as he understood them, was collected on the shore at night, while the people lighted up the darkness with candles.
At the point where he turned back, he had hauled his ships up on the shore to repair them. From this point, on the second of November, he sent two officers inland, one of whom was a Jew, who knew Chaldee, Hebrew and a little Arabic, in the hope that they should find some one who could speak these languages. With them went one of the Guanahani Indians, and one from the neighborhood.
They returned on the night between the fifth and sixth of November. Twelve leagues off they had found a village of about fifty large houses, made in the form of tents. This village had about a thousand inhabitants, according to the explorers. They had received the ambassadors with cordial kindness, believing that they had descended from heaven.
They even took them in their arms and thus carried them to the finest house of all. They gave them seats, and then sat round them on the ground in a circle. They kissed their feet and hands, and touched them, to make sure whether they were really men of flesh and bone.
It was on this expedition that the first observation was made of that gift of America to the world, which has worked its way so deep and far into general use. They met men and women who “carried live coals, so as to draw into their mouths the smoke of burning herbs.” This was the account of the first observers. But Las Casas says that the dry herbs were wrapped in another leaf as dry. He says that “they lighted one end of the little stick thus formed, and sucked in or absorbed the smoke by the other, with which,” he says, “they put their flesh to sleep, and it nearly intoxicates them, and thus they say that they feel no fatigue. These mosquetes, as we should call them, they call tobacos. I knew Spaniards on this Island of Hispaniola who were accustomed to take them, who, on being reproved for it as a vice, replied that it was not in their power (in their hand) to leave off taking them. I do not know what savour or profit they found in them.” This is clearly a cigar.
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