Columbus_ The Four Voyages - Laurence Bergreen [53]
The next day’s anchorage brought Columbus, still aboard Niña, to the mouth of a broad waterway that he named Río de Gracia. A “good landlocked harbor” beckoned in the distance, but the presence of shipworms, or teredos, warned him away. Once shipworms worked their way into the planks, there would be no getting rid of them, and they would destroy the ship from within. He departed from this uneasy anchorage at midnight on Friday, and confidently reported “great progress because the wind and currents were with him. Dared not anchor for fear of shoals, and so lay-to all night.”
Even before dawn Niña raised anchor and shaped a generally easterly course. Columbus was tempted to explore “a great and very beautiful opening between two great mountains,” which led to an enticing harbor, but he was fearful that once Niña entered the harbor, the wind might shift. Instead, he rounded one rocky cape after another, daring to anchor in the midst of a “very great bay” surrounding a “tiny little island.” He estimated the depth at twelve fathoms when he dropped anchor, and dispatched a barge in search of water and people, but the inhabitants, he reported, had all fled, and with them the hope of obtaining the life-size statue of gold. He paused to wonder at the immense surroundings, and the configuration of the landmass along whose board he had been coasting. Had he reached a new gulf or island? Or was this endless and varied coastline still “one land with Hispaniola”? If so, “he remained amazed at how big was the island of Hispaniola.”
On Sunday, the Admiral had the time and tranquillity to make planetary observations. He patiently awaited “the conjunction of the moon with the sun,” which he expected four days later, on January 17, as well as the sun in opposition with Jupiter, which he claimed to be “the cause of great winds.”
As Columbus studied the heavens, preoccupied with what the celestial signs portended for his destiny, sailors aboard Niña’s barge disembarked onshore in search of food, “and they found some men with bows and arrows, with whom they waited to talk.”
One warrior wished to board Niña to meet the Admiral himself, and when Columbus came face-to-face with him, the encounter proved unsettling. His face was stained with a substance that Columbus took to be charcoal but more likely was a dye derived from a local fruit. “He wore his hair very long and drawn together and fastened behind, and gathered into a little nest of parrots’ feathers, and he was as naked as the others.” Columbus believed the Indian was a Carib, but in Las Casas’s opinion, the emissary belonged to the Taínos, who had borrowed the Caribs’ weapons in self-defense. It mattered little to the Admiral, who talked only of gold. Was there any to be found in this region? A great deal, the Indian replied, gesturing at Níña’s substantial poop to evoke a massive quantity. “Tuob,” he called it, a new designation for the precious substance, and said it could be found on the island of Boriquén, the Land of the Valiant Lord, as the Taínos referred to Puerto Rico.
In exchange for this intelligence, Columbus ordered that the obliging Taínos be given food, “pieces of green and red cloth, and little beads of glass,” and sent the man ashore with orders to return with gold. Columbus had seen traces of gold sewn in the Taínos’ clothes and assumed it must be readily available. When the barge bearing the Taínos approached the shore, no less than fifty-five men, with “very long hair, as the women wear it in Castile,” appeared from behind the trees, each one carrying a bow. The Taíno who had gone aboard Niña turned to his own people and persuaded them to