dispel their fears of a long voyage, I decided to reckon fewer leagues than we actually made. I did this that they might not think themselves so great a distance from Spain as they really were. For myself I will keep a confidential accurate reckoning.”
When Columbus makes landfall in the Caribbean, nothing he discovers among the islands dispels his fixed idea that he has reached India:
“The woods and vegetation are as green as in April in Andalucía, and the song of the little birdsmight make a man wish never to leave here,” he writes on October 21. “The flocks of parrots that darken the sun and the large and small birds of so many species are so different from our own that it is a wonder. In addition, there are trees of a thousand kinds, all with fruit according to their kind, and they all give off a marvelous fragrance. I am the saddest man in the world for not knowing what kinds of things these are because I am very sure that they are valuable. I am bringing a sample of everything I can.”
To be sure, Columbus is no naturalist, yet he cites the parrots over and over. The green and purple birds, identified on mappae mundi as the product of India, testify he has indeed arrived somewhere near his intended destination. The “mainland” the natives describe at a distance of perhaps ten days’ journey must be India. The island they call Cuba, he concludes on October 27, the day before he lands there, is just “the Indian name for Japan.”
In his own choice of place names, Columbus honors his Savior and his sovereigns: San Salvador, Santa María de la Concepcíon, Ferdinandina, Isabela. Dubbing his way through the archipelago,he is barred from a full tour of the region by the grounding of one ship and attempted mutiny aboard another.
On his way home to glory, a February storm blows out of the sea with the force of the Devil. Columbus, fearful the water will swallow him before he can declare his discoveries to the Crown, now draws his chart. He secures the parchment in a waxed cloth, seals the cloth inside a barrel, and throws the barrel to the waves. Should he perish, the finder of his message may inform the Sovereigns “how Our Lord has given me victory in everything I desired about the Indies.”
Instead, the map disappears in the storm while its maker lives to command three more westward voyages as Admiral of the Ocean Sea and Viceroy of the Indies. Through all these explorations, Columbus never concedes he has found anything but a shortcut to the Orient. Only after his death, as his remains traipse back and forth across the Atlantic yet again for a second and even a third burial, does the magnitude of his discovery divide the globe into the Old World and the New.
Slowly the outline of the far shore takes form. The piece labeled “Florida” hangs unattached, floating like a shroud above Columbus’sHispaniola (Haiti and the Dominican Republic), until the ends of the Floridian borderlines connect to a larger landmass. “America” appears for the first time on a wide new world map in 1507. The territory borrows the Christian name of its frequent visitor Amerigo Vespucci, an Italian merchant and navigator. Vespucci has sailed west with both the Portuguese and the Spanish, riding the rivalry between them, boldly proclaiming their scattered claims a bona fide continent distinct from Asia.
At first Vespucci’s first name applies only to the southern half of the New World, but it comes to envelop the northern part as well, as explorers from competing countries push ahead to see what lies beyond.
The Spanish throne wins a great victory when Vasco Núñez de Balboa falls to his knees on a bare summit of Panama in September 1513, exulting at first sight of the Pacific Ocean. It takes him several days to descend from his encampment through the forest to the shore, where he wades into the water to baptize it. Sword drawn and shield held high, Balboa shouts the name of Spain over this sea and every land washed
When Columbus makes landfall in the Caribbean, nothing he discovers among the islands dispels his fixed idea that he has reached India:
“The woods and vegetation are as green as in April in Andalucía, and the song of the little birdsmight make a man wish never to leave here,” he writes on October 21. “The flocks of parrots that darken the sun and the large and small birds of so many species are so different from our own that it is a wonder. In addition, there are trees of a thousand kinds, all with fruit according to their kind, and they all give off a marvelous fragrance. I am the saddest man in the world for not knowing what kinds of things these are because I am very sure that they are valuable. I am bringing a sample of everything I can.”
To be sure, Columbus is no naturalist, yet he cites the parrots over and over. The green and purple birds, identified on mappae mundi as the product of India, testify he has indeed arrived somewhere near his intended destination. The “mainland” the natives describe at a distance of perhaps ten days’ journey must be India. The island they call Cuba, he concludes on October 27, the day before he lands there, is just “the Indian name for Japan.”
In his own choice of place names, Columbus honors his Savior and his sovereigns: San Salvador, Santa María de la Concepcíon, Ferdinandina, Isabela. Dubbing his way through the archipelago,he is barred from a full tour of the region by the grounding of one ship and attempted mutiny aboard another.
On his way home to glory, a February storm blows out of the sea with the force of the Devil. Columbus, fearful the water will swallow him before he can declare his discoveries to the Crown, now draws his chart. He secures the parchment in a waxed cloth, seals the cloth inside a barrel, and throws the barrel to the waves. Should he perish, the finder of his message may inform the Sovereigns “how Our Lord has given me victory in everything I desired about the Indies.”
Instead, the map disappears in the storm while its maker lives to command three more westward voyages as Admiral of the Ocean Sea and Viceroy of the Indies. Through all these explorations, Columbus never concedes he has found anything but a shortcut to the Orient. Only after his death, as his remains traipse back and forth across the Atlantic yet again for a second and even a third burial, does the magnitude of his discovery divide the globe into the Old World and the New.
Slowly the outline of the far shore takes form. The piece labeled “Florida” hangs unattached, floating like a shroud above Columbus’sHispaniola (Haiti and the Dominican Republic), until the ends of the Floridian borderlines connect to a larger landmass. “America” appears for the first time on a wide new world map in 1507. The territory borrows the Christian name of its frequent visitor Amerigo Vespucci, an Italian merchant and navigator. Vespucci has sailed west with both the Portuguese and the Spanish, riding the rivalry between them, boldly proclaiming their scattered claims a bona fide continent distinct from Asia.
At first Vespucci’s first name applies only to the southern half of the New World, but it comes to envelop the northern part as well, as explorers from competing countries push ahead to see what lies beyond.
The Spanish throne wins a great victory when Vasco Núñez de Balboa falls to his knees on a bare summit of Panama in September 1513, exulting at first sight of the Pacific Ocean. It takes him several days to descend from his encampment through the forest to the shore, where he wades into the water to baptize it. Sword drawn and shield held high, Balboa shouts the name of Spain over this sea and every land washed
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