Columbus_ The Four Voyages - Laurence Bergreen [221]
Barrier reefs are prevalent in the Indo-Pacific, and also in the Caribbean. Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, extending over 1,200 miles, is considered the largest of its type. Finally, if the reef sinks below the ocean surface, it can be considered an atoll, and surrounds a lagoon.
On the voyage out, Columbus had erroneously considered the appearance of sargassum a sign that he was approaching land, and he set about sounding the depths of the Atlantic only to find that he was nowhere near the shore, a mistake he did not repeat when inbound.
For more on the mesmerizing Sargasso Sea and seaweed, see Stan Ulanski, The Gulf Stream (2008), pages 78–81, a worthwhile popular account.
Chapter 4: “The People from the Sky”
For more on the Treaty of Alcáçovas, see Morison, Admiral of the Ocean Sea, pages 40 and 344.
Columbus’s inadvertent return to Portugal rather than Spain remains one of the most hotly contested issues in Columbus scholarship. Partisans of his supposed Portuguese origins seized on it as an example of where his true sympathies lay. Other commentators have suggested that Columbus’s return to the Iberian Peninsula indicated that he unconsciously had his heart set on returning to Portugal all along, or that he pursued a covert agenda favoring João II rather than his announced sponsors, Ferdinand and Isabella. Or even that he functioned all along as a secret agent on behalf of Portugal. Columbus did have some residual feeling for Portugal after all his years there, but in reality, João II contemplated assassinating Columbus to prevent his return to Spain, and the mariner lived to regret washing up on the Portuguese coast in a tempest. Had the weather been better, he would have proceeded directly to Spain rather than engaging in a distracting and dangerous detour.
Had Columbus by some miracle managed to cross the Pacific Ocean and make it to China, no Grand Khan would have greeted him as Marco Polo had once been greeted; instead, he would have been rebuffed by the newly resurgent Ming dynasty, whose bureaucrats had banned maritime trade and led their nation into deep isolationism. How can we know? That was exactly what happened to Columbus’s cousin (on his wife’s side), Rafael Perestrello. He sailed on behalf of Portugal to the Chinese coast in 1513, the first European to accomplish that feat. Perestrello traded successfully in Guangzhou, but when a Portuguese embassy charged with opening formal relations reached the Chinese court, the Ming emperor, Zhengde, threw them in jail, and all dealings between the two nations ceased.
Columbus’s “Letter on the First Voyage,” sometimes known as “The Spanish Letter of Columbus,” has a varied and intriguing history of its own. The original fourpage black-letter document, issued without a title, was probably published in Barcelona in April 1493, based on Columbus’s original manuscript, dated February 15 of that year. The Admiral called it “Columbus’s Letter to Santángel,” although it was actually intended for his Sovereigns. It is possible that the conventions of the royal court demanded that an intermediary, such as King Ferdinand’s finance minister, Luís de Santángel, announce or otherwise convey a document like this to the Sovereigns rather than their receiving it directly.
Leandro de Cosco’s Latin translation, probably completed in late April of the same year, elevated the document’s stature, and went through nine editions in a year’s time. A copy can be found at the New York Public Library, although the images contained within are misleading. One portrays a figure purported to be Columbus disembarking from a large galley with oars. That, like the others, were simply reprints from books already printed in Switzerland. Nevertheless, Columbus’s “Letter on the First Voyage” ranks as the first significant American document.
Chapter 5: River of Blood
Financing the fleet for the second voyage is described in Christopher Columbus: Accounts and Letters,