The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 Part 23

[217-2] This should be 8 leagues. (_Id._)

[217-3] Las Casas, I. 429, says the distance to the mines was not 4 leagues.

[217-4] Punta Isabelica. (_Id._)

[217-5] The distance is 10-1/2 leagues, or 42 of the Italian miles used by Columbus. (_Id._)

[218-1] The mermaids [Spanish, "sirens"] of Columbus are the _manatis_, or sea-cows, of the Caribbean Sea and great South American rivers. They are now scarcely ever seen out at sea. Their resemblance to human beings, when rising in the water, must have been very striking. They have small rounded heads, and cervical vertebrae which form a neck, enabling the animal to turn its head about. The fore limbs also, instead of being pectoral fins, have the character of the arm and hand of the higher mammalia. These peculiarities, and their very human way of suckling their young, holding it by the forearm, which is movable at the elbow-joint, suggested the idea of mermaids. The congener of the _manati_, which had been seen by Columbus on the coast of Guinea, is the _dugong_. (Markham.)

[218-2] Las Casas has "on the coast of Guinea where manequeta is gathered" (I. 430). _Amomum Melequeta_, an herbaceous, reedlike plant, three to five feet high, is found along the coast of Africa, from Sierra Leone to the Congo. Its seeds were called "Grains of Paradise," or _maniguetta_, and the coast alluded to by Columbus, between Liberia and Cape Palmas, was hence called the Grain Coast. The grains were used as a condiment, like pepper, and in making the spiced wine called _hippocras_.

(Markham.)

[219-1] Rio Chuzona chica. (Navarrete.)

[219-2] Reading _broma_ ("s.h.i.+p worm") for _bruma_ ("mist") in the sentence: _sino que tiene mucha bruma_. De la Roquette in the French translation gives _bruma_ the meaning of "s.h.i.+pworm," supposing it to be a variant form of _broma_. The Italian translator of the letter on the fourth voyage took _broma_ to be _bruma_, translated it _pruina e bruma_, and consequently had Columbus's s.h.i.+p injured by frost near Panama in April! _Cf._ Thacher, _Christopher Columbus_, II. 625, 790.

[220-1] So called because the summit is always covered with white or silver clouds. Las Casas, I. 432. A monastery of Dominicans was afterwards built on Monte de Plata, in which Las Casas began to write his history of the Indies in the year 1527. Las Casas, IV. 254. (Markham.)

[220-2] Puerto de Plata, where a flouris.h.i.+ng seaport town was afterwards established; founded by Ovando in 1502. It had fallen to decay in 1606.

(Markham.)

[220-3] Punta Macuris. The distance is 3, not 4 leagues. (Navarrete.)

[220-4] Punta Sesua. The distance is only one league. (_Id._)

[220-5] Cabo de la Roca. It should be 5, not 6 leagues. (_Id._)

[220-6] Bahia Escocesa. (_Id._)

[220-7] Las Casas says that none of these names remained even in his time. I. 432.

[221-1] This was the Peninsula of Samana. (Navarrete.)

[221-2] Isla Yazual. (_Id._)

[221-3] Cabo Cabron, or Lover's Cape; the extreme N.E. point of the island, rising nearly 2000 feet above the sea. (Markham.)

[221-4] Puerto Yaqueron. (Navarrete.)

[221-5] Cabo Samana; called Cabo de San Theramo afterwards by Columbus (Markham.)[TN-3]

[221-6] The Bay of Samana. (Navarrete.)

[221-7] Cayo de Levantados. (_Id._)

[222-1] This should be, "who says that he was very ugly of countenance, more so than the others that he had seen."

[222-2] Las Casas says, I. 433, "Not charcoal but a certain dye they make from a certain fruit."

[222-3] Las Casas, I. 434, says there never were any cannibals in Espanola.

[223-1] Las Casas, I. 434, says that a section in the northeastern part of Espanola "was inhabited by a tribe which called themselves _Mazariges_ and others _Ciguayos_ and that they spoke different languages from the rest of the island. I do not remember if they differed from each other in speech since so many years have pa.s.sed, and to-day there is no one to inquire of, although I have talked many times with both generations; but more than fifty years have gone by." The Ciguayos, he adds, were called so because they wore their hair long as women do in Castile. This pa.s.sage shows that Las Casas was writing this part of his history a half-century after he went first to Espanola, which was in 1502, with Ovando.

[223-2] See p. 226, note 4, under Jan. 15.

[223-3] Porto Rico. (Navarrete.)

[223-4] Las Casas, I. 434, says that Guanin was not the name of an island, but the word for a kind of base gold.

[223-5] A gap in the original ma.n.u.script.

[224-1] Las Casas, I. 435, has, "and as word of a palm-tree board which is very hard and very heavy, not sharp but blunt, about two fingers thick everywhere, with which as it is hard and heavy like iron, although a man has a helmet on his head they will crush his skull to the brain with one blow."

[224-2] "This was the first fight that there was in all the Indies and when the blood of the Indians was shed." Las Casas, I. 436.

[225-1] Porto Rico. Navarrete says it is certain that the Indians called Porto Rico Isla de Carib.

[225-2] Probably Martinique or Guadeloupe. (Navarrete.)

[226-1] By this calculation the Admiral entered the service of the Catholic Sovereigns on January 20, 1486. (Navarrete.)

[226-2] "What would he have said if he had seen the millions and millions (_cuentos y millones_) that the sovereigns have received from his labors since his death?" Las Casas, I. 437.

[226-3] Porto Rico.

[226-4] Columbus had read in Marco Polo of the islands of MASCULIA and FEMININA in the Indian Seas and noted the pa.s.sage in his copy. See ch.

x.x.xIII. of pt. III. of Marco Polo. On the other hand there is evidence for an indigenous Amazon myth in the New World. The earliest sketch of American folk-lore ever made, that of the Friar Ramon Pane in 1497, preserved in Ferdinand Columbus's _Historie_ and in a condensed form in Peter Martyr's _De Rebus Oceanicis_ (Dec. I., lib. IX.), tells the story of the culture-hero Guagugiona, who set forth from the cave, up to that time the home of mankind, "with all the women in search of other lands and he came to Matinino, where at once he left the women and went away to another country," etc., _Historie_ (London ed., 1867), p. 188. Ramon's name is erroneously given as Roman in the _Historie_. On the Amazons in Venezuela, see Oviedo, lib. XXV., cap. XIV. It may be accepted that the Amazon myth as given by Oviedo, from which the great river derived its name, River of the Amazons, is a composite of an Arawak folk-tale like that preserved by Ramon Pane overlaid with the details of the Marco Polo myth, which in turn derives from the cla.s.sical myth.

[227-1] _Y los mas le ponen alli yerba_, "and the most of them put on poison." The description of these arrows corresponds exactly with that given by Sir E. im Thurn of the poisoned arrows of the Indians of Guiana, which still have "adjustable wooden tips smeared with poison, which are inserted in the socket at the end of a reed shaft." _Among the Indians of Guiana_, p. 242.

[227-2] Capsic.u.m. (Markham.)

[228-1] Gulf of the Arrows. This was the Bay of Samana, into which the river Yuna flows. (Navarrete.)

[228-2] Porto Rico. It would have been distant about 30 leagues.

(Navarrete.)

[229-1] "The sons remain with their mothers till the age of fourteen when they go to join their fathers in their separate abode." Marco Polo, pt.

III., ch. x.x.xIII. _Cf._ p. 226, note 4.

[229-2] Now called Cabod el Engano,[TN-4] the extreme eastern point of Espanola. It had the same name when Las Casas wrote. (Markham.)

[229-3] Alcatraz.

[230-1] The _almadrabas_, or tunny fisheries of Rota, near Cadiz, were inherited by the Duke, as well as those of Conil, a little fis.h.i.+ng town 6 leagues east of Cadiz. (Markham.)

[230-2] _Un pescado_ (a fish), called the _rabiforcado_. For _un pescado_, we should probably read _una ave pescadora_, and translate: a fis.h.i.+ng bird, called _rabiforcado_. See entry for September 29 and note.