Columbus_ The Four Voyages - Laurence Bergreen [136]
The flotilla paused again when Columbus sighted a landmass he took to be an island. But further exploration of the extensive coast—more than twenty leagues—challenged his judgment. On Wednesday, August 1, he arrived at the broad mouth of the Orinoco, among the longest rivers in South America, located at the border of Venezuela and Brazil. The topography persuaded him that he had arrived at the mainland, and the recognition marked the signal discovery of this or any other of his voyages, his first sighting of the continent whose size and location neither he nor anyone else in his ships fully understood or acknowledged. The mystic in him preferred to assume that Providence had led him closer to the entrance to paradise. He shied away from the rigors of geographical adjustment required for nautical reckoning. Nor did he know what to make of the coastal flora beyond noting that it appeared lush and reassuring. “The trees brushed against the sea,” in Las Casas’s paraphrase, a sign that the sea was calm “because when it is rough there are no trees there at all, but rather sand.” Yet a “surging current” appeared to emanate “from above,” and a “mounting current” from below.
He led the ships into a shallow, brackish body of water west of Trinidad, now known as the Gulf of Paria. After all he had endured, the sweeping shore seemed a sort of paradise, as befitting one of the best harbors in the continent’s eastern coast. “This gulf is a marvelous thing,” Las Casas commented, “and dangerous because of the great river that flows into it.” He called it Yuyaparí, now the Orinoco River. “This river travels more than 300, I believe 400 leagues.” He was describing the Orinoco Delta, a giant, fanshaped network of waterways. Between the land and sea lurked danger, as Las Casas explained. “Since that gulf is surrounded by mainland on one side and on the other by the island of Trinidad, and is, as a result, very narrow for the violent force of the opposing waters, they meet in a terrible confrontation and very dangerous battle.”
Dropping anchor on Thursday, August 2, Columbus permitted his exhausted men to venture onto a swampy brown beach near Icacos Point “so that they might rest and enjoy themselves” after their anxiety-ridden crossing. Restful it might have been, but the setting had an isolated, melancholy feel, as if time were running out as surely as the tide.
Later that day, a large canoe bearing twenty-four Indians appeared, halting at a safe distance. The Indians shouted over the water, and Columbus’s men responded not with words but with a show of objects—“brass pots and other shiny things”—to encourage the canoe to approach for a bit of friendly trading. The Indians came closer, but still kept their distance, even though Columbus improvised a dance of welcome. “I wanted very much to speak with them, and not having anything more that seemed to me suitable to show and lure them to approach, my last resort was to have a tambourine brought up on the quarterdeck to play and have some boys dance, believing that this way they would draw near to see the celebration.”
The Indians interpreted the merriment as a war dance and “took up and strung their bows, held up their shields, and began shooting arrows.” Their intended targets scurried below deck. Columbus “gave the command to stop the fiesta of drumming and dancing,” and ordered his men to bring out their crossbows and fire several warning projectiles at the Indians, who had expended their arrows and positioned themselves at the stern of one of the caravels, as if readying to overrun her. At that moment, the ship’s pilot summoned the confidence to dangle from the stern and lower himself into the canoe,