Page:The Scientific Monthly vol. 3.djvu/38

 32 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

appears to have inquired into the premises at all carefully. It may therefore be instructive for us to compare two or three of the different versions that are contained in the original sources^ after which we may be better able to interpret the actual facts.

First of all it will be of interest to traverse in imagination with Columbus the route by which he steered his caravels amid the verdant, perfume-laden isles that dot the sea near Cuba, as he sailed westward in the month of May, 1494, with the project not only of finding a new route to India, but of actually sailing round the world. This we know from what Ferdinand Columbus tells us in a passage undoubtedly de- rived from his father's journal of the second voyage, " that if he had had abundance of provisions he would not have returned to Spain except by way of the East.'*^ Through the irony of fate the Admiral was obliged to turn back from near that point where the fishing scene was witnessed^ when two or three days more sailing would have proved to him the insular character of Cuba, and might have led to the immediate dis- covery of Yucatan, or Mexico.

We shall let Ferdinand tell us in his own language, which we may be sure follows very closely his father's journal, of what took place as the first European vessels to navigate along the southern coast of Cuba came upon the Queen's Gardens. The English rendering here given is found in the second volume of "Churchill's Voyages" (p. 636), and reads thus:

On Saturday, the 3d of May, the Admiral resolved to sail over from Cuba to Jamaica, that he might not leave it behind without knowing whether the report of such plenty of gold they heard there was in it, prov'd true; and the wind being fair, and he almost half way over, discovered it on Sunday. Upon Mon- day he came to an anchor, and thought it the beautifullest island of any he had yet seen in the Indies, and such multitudes of people in great and small canoes came abroad that it was astonishing. . ..

The wind being somewhat contrary, the Admiral could not make so much way as he wished, till on Tuesday the 13th of May he resolved to stand ;for Cuba, to keep along its coast, designing not to return till he had saUed 5 or 600 leagues, and were satisfied whether it were an island or continent. . ..

The nearer they sailed to Cuba, the higher and pleasanter the little islands appeared which were all over that sea, and it being a matter of difficulty and to no purpose to give every one of them a name, the Admiral called them all in gen- eral Jardin de la Beina, the Queen's Garden. ... In these islands they saw crows and cranes like those of Spain, the sea-crows [gulls], and infinite num- bers of little birds that sung sweetly, and the air was as sweet as if they had been among roses, and the finest perfumes in the world; yet the danger was very great, there being such abundance of channels, that much time was spent in finding the way out.

In one of these channels they spy'd a canoe of Indian fishermen, who very quietly, without the least concern, awaited the boat which was making towards them, and being come near, made a sign to them in it to attend till they had done fishing.

1 "Hist." p. 166.

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