Columbus_ The Four Voyages - Laurence Bergreen [21]
The day ended with Columbus entering “a beautiful house” with “marvelous work” hanging from the ceilings; he did not know how to describe what he beheld, most likely intricately woven mats adorned with shells, so striking that he thought he had stumbled into a temple. With sign language, he asked the Indians if they said their prayers here, and “they said no; and one of them climbed up and gave me all that was there.”
The morning of December 4 brought a light wind, and Columbus was finally able to set forth from the harbor he had taken to calling Puerto Santo. He ran along the coast, passing a landmark he named Cape Lindo, often identified as Punta Fraile, Cuba.
He spied a “great bay” that just might be a strait or passageway leading to the empire of the Grand Khan and sailed throughout the night “in order to see the land which went to the E,” but eventually he yielded in his ambition on the advice of Indian guides. The coast he was now exploring, with its intimations of the Eastern kingdom, actually belonged to Cuba, “which up to then he had considered mainland by reason of its extent, for he had easily gone about 120 leagues along it.”
By considering the possibility that Cuba was an island—not a promontory of the Asian mainland—Columbus seemed to abandon one of the most cherished hopes of his voyage. He had not, as yet, found Asia, nor the Grand Khan, yet he could not bring himself to acknowledge that he had found some other land. Unable to solve this geographic puzzle, he lost himself in the act of sailing, heading back once more to the island of Hispaniola, ceaselessly exploring, for what, he could not say.
As night was coming on, Columbus sent Niña ahead to “sight the harbor by daylight, because she was speedy; and arriving at the mouth of the harbor”—on the coast of modern-day Haiti—“which was like the Bay of Cadiz, and because it was already night, she sent in her barge to sound the harbor, and which showed the light of a candle” to indicate the way. Columbus approached, “hoping that barge would show signals to enter the harbor,” but just then “the light on the barge went out.” As a consequence, Niña “ran off shore and showed a light to the Admiral, and coming up to her, they told him what had happened. At this point, the men on the barge showed another light; the caravel went to it, and the Admiral could not, and stayed all that night beating about.”
After this intricate dance of wind and current and flickering torchlight, the new day, December 6, dawned, and Columbus “found himself 4 leagues from the harbor.” He caught glimpses of onshore fires, their columns of smoke “like beacons,” perhaps warning of a tribal war on land, from which he felt characteristically exempt.
“At the hour of vespers, he entered the harbor, and gave it the name Puerto de San Nicolas, because it was the feast of St. Nicholas, for his honor,” Columbus wrote, extolling its “beauty and graciousness.” He considered it his right and responsibility to confer names wherever he went, regardless of the site’s traditional designation, and in many instances, the name has stuck, erasing history in the process. There was a power in naming, almost as if he were converting his surroundings to Christendom; naming was claiming.
Considering it superior to all other harbors he had visited on his voyage, Columbus explored its perimeter, sounded its depths, searched for hazards, and was pleased to declare, “There does not seem to be a single shoal.” Its length could comfortably accommodate “a thousand carracks,” a heavy hint to his