The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 Part 28

[294-2] The island of Porto Rico, to which the Admiral "gave the name of St. John the Baptist, which we now call Sant Juan and which the Indians called Boriquen." Las Casas, II. 10.

[295-1] See note to Journal, September 29. Frigate-bird is the accepted English name; a species of pelican.

[295-2] Porto Rico.

[295-3] On Friday, the 22d of November, the Admiral first caught sight of the island of Espanola. Las Casas, II. 10.

[295-4] Cape Engano, in the island of Espanola. (Navarrete.)

[295-5] Preserved in the Bay of Samana.

[295-6] See Journal, October 21. and note.[TN-6]

[296-1] Of this voyage of exploration there seems to be no record. Our natural sources, the _Historie_ and Las Casas, are silent. Columbus suspended his writing in his Journal from December 11, 1493, till March 12, 1494. Antonio de Torres sailed for Spain February 2, 1494, when Dr.

Chanca sent off his letter. Probably this exploration was begun about December 20.

[296-2] _Unos gosques grandes_. The French translation has _gros carlins_, "large pug-dogs." Bernaldez calls these dogs, _gozcos pequenos_, "small curs." "Cur" is the common meaning for _gozque_ or _gosque_. See Oviedo, lib. XII., cap. V., for a description of these native dogs which soon became extinct.

[296-3] Bernaldez, II. 34, supplies the native name, _Utia_. Oviedo, lib.

XII., cap. I., describes the _hutia_. When he wrote it had become so scarce as to be seen only on rare occasions. It was extinct in Du Tertre's time, a century later. Of the four allied species described by Oviedo, the _hutia_, the _quemi_, the _mohuy_, and the _cori_ (agouti), only the last has survived to the present day.

[296-4] Cabra, or Goat Island, between Puerto de Plata and Cas Rouge Point. (Major.)

[297-1] Apparently the cayman or South American alligator.

[298-1] The river Yaque.

[298-2] It is only seven leagues. (Navarrete.)

[298-3] This chief's name is Guacanagari in Las Casas, _Historia de las Indias_, and in the _Historie_ of Ferdinand Columbus, Goathanari in the Syllacio-Coma letter, Guacanari in Bernaldez and Guaccanarillus in Peter Martyr's _De Rebus Oceanicis_.

[298-4] The admiral anch.o.r.ed at the entrance of the harbor of Navidad, on Wednesday, the 27th of November, towards midnight. Las Casas, II. 11.

[299-1] See Journal of First Voyage, December 25.

[299-2] The Bay of Caracol, four leagues west of Fort Dauphin. (Major.)

[299-3] "Toward midnight a canoe came full of Indians and reached the s.h.i.+p of the Admiral, and they called for him saying 'Almirante, Almirante.'" Las Casas, II. 11.

[300-1] The hawk bell was a small open bell used in hawking. The discoverers used hawk bells as a small measure as of gold dust.

[302-1] See above, p. 289, note 1.

[302-2] The mark was a weight of eight ounces, two-thirds of a Troy pound. The mark of gold in Spain was equivalent to 50 castellanos, or in bullion value to-day about $150.

[303-1] Melchior Maldonado, apparently the Melchiorius from whom Peter Martyr derived some of his material for his account of the second voyage.

See his _De Rebus Oceanicis_, ed. 1574, p. 26.

[304-1] The familiar hammock.

[304-2] The original reads "cinco o seiscientos labrados de pedreria,"

which Major translated "five or six hundred pieces of jewellery," and Thacher "five or six hundred cut stones." The dictionaries recognize _labrado_ as a noun only in the plural _labrados_, "tilled lands."

Turning to Bernaldez, _Historia de los Reyes Catolicos_, in which Dr.

Chanca's letter was copied almost bodily, we find, II. 27, "cinco o seis labrados de pedreria," which presents the same difficulty. The omission of _cientos_ is notable, however. I think the original text of Dr.

Chanca's letter read "cinco 6 seis cintos labrados de pedreria," _i.e._, five or six belts worked with jewellery. _Cintos_ being written blindly was copied _cientos_ by Antonio de Aspa, from whom our text of Dr.

Chanca's letter has come down (Navarrete, I. 224), and was omitted perhaps accidentally in Bernaldez's copy. This conjecture is rendered almost certain by the _Historie_, where it is recorded that "the Cacique gave the Admiral eight belts worked with small beads made of white, green, and red stones," p. 148, London ed. of 1867. This pa.s.sage enables us to correct the text of Las Casas, II. 14, changing "ochocientas cuentas menudas de piedra," "eight hundred small beads of stone," to "ocho cintos de cuentas menudas," etc., "eight belts of small beads," and again, _ciento de oro_ to _cinto de oro_. In the Syllacio-Coma letter the gift is _balteos duodecim_, "twelve belts." Thacher, _Columbus_, II. 235.

_Cf._ Las Casas's description of the girdle or belt that this chief wore when Columbus first saw him, Dec. 22, above, p. 194.

[305-1] These were not only the first horses seen in the New World since the extinction of the prehistoric varieties, but the first large quadrupeds the West Indians had seen.

[306-1] Port Dauphin. (Navarrete.)

[307-1] That is, three months from the time the fleet left Spain, September 25, 1493. Neither the _Historie_ nor Las Casas mentions the date of landing. In the Syllacio-Coma letter the date is given as "eight days from Christmas." See Thacher, _Columbus_, II. 236, 257.

[307-2] Port Isabelique, or Isabella, ten leagues to the east of Monte Cristi. (Navarrete.)

[308-1] _Cosas introfatibles_ in the Spanish. The translation follows the French version. The text perhaps is corrupt. The word _introfatibles_ is not found in any of the Spanish dictionaries nor is it a learned compound whose meaning is apparent from its etymology. Professor H.R. Lang suggests that _cosas corruptibles_ may be the proper reading. The sentence is omitted in the corresponding pa.s.sage in Bernaldez, II. 30.

[308-2] The river Isabella.

[308-3] I can offer no explanation for this name, which is found only in Dr. Chanca's letter. Bernaldez, who copied Dr. Chanca, gives Isabela as the name of the city, II. 30, and the _Historie_ and Las Casas, who preserve for us the gist of Columbus's own narrative, both say that "he named the city Isabela in memory of Queen Isabela." Las Casas, II. 21.

_Historie_, p. 150.

[308-4] Yams, the _Dioscorea sativa_. Columbus had seen the yam in Guinea an applied the African negro name, _igname_, _name_, whence the English, yam. See note to Journal, November 4.

[326-1] By the Indians Dr. Chanca means the Tainos, the native inhabitants of Espanola.

[326-2] "Every woman wears a tiny ap.r.o.n called a _queyu_, suspended by tying its strings around her waist." Im Thurn, _Among the Indians of Guiana_, 194.

[326-3] On this body painting, see Im Thurn, _ibid._

[310-1] A species of the _N.O. Bombaceae_; perhaps the _Eriodendron anfractuosum_. (Major.) The English name is silk-cotton tree. The fibre, however, cannot be woven. Von Martius suggests the _Bombax ceiba_.

[310-2] _Cf._ Hazard, _Santo Domingo_, p. 350, "the cotton plant which instead of being a simple bush planted from the seed each year, is here a tree, growing two or three years, which needs only to be trimmed and pruned to produce a large yield of the finest cotton."

[310-3] Probably the so-called Carnauba wax or perhaps palm-tree wax.

_Cf._ the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_, art. "Wax."

[311-1] The Spanish here is _linaloe_, but the reference seems to be to the medicinal aloes and not to lign aloes. On lign aloes, see Columbus's Journal, November 12, and note.

[311-2] The myrobolan is an East Indian fruit with a stone, of the prune genus. Crude or preserved myrobolans were a more important article of commerce in the Middle Ages than now. There were five varieties, one of which, the _Mirobalani citrini_, were so named because they were lemon-colored. Heyd, _Histoire du Commerce du Levant au Moyen-Age_, II.

641. A species of myrobolan grows in South America.

[311-3] The product of the _Bursera gummifera_.

[311-4] _Cf._ Columbus's Journal, November 4, and note.

[311-5] _Agi_, also written _Axi_, is the _Capsic.u.m annuum_ or Spanish pepper. Most of the cayenne or red pepper of commerce comes from the allied species, _Capsic.u.m frutescens_. In Mexico the name of this indigenous pepper plant was Quauhchilli, _Chili_ tree. _Chili_ was taken over into Spanish as the common name for capsic.u.m and has come down in English in the familiar Chili sauce. See Peschel, _Zeitalter der Entdeckungen_, p. 139; De Candolle, _Origin of Cultivated Plants_, pp.

289-290. _Encyclopaedia Britannica_, art. "Cayenne Pepper."