Columbus_ The Four Voyages - Laurence Bergreen [58]
The longer Columbus remained at sea, the greater the divergence between his actual and presumed locations, which meant the greater the danger. As the voyage unfolded, the ultimate test of his navigational abilities occurred not in the outward-bound journey—which was a demonstration of his vision, not his navigational accuracy, with any landfall in the New World considered a “discovery”—but on the return voyage, when he headed toward a specific destination, not a fanciful idea concocted by Marco Polo or the result of calculations based on inexact measurement. Not knowing where he was as he commenced the return leg of the voyage, and resolute in the belief that he was somewhere off the coast of “India,” he found himself at an enormous disadvantage as he attempted to retrace his course, and the problem became worse with every league he traversed. He was lost without realizing it, just as he had been since the day the soft outlines of the Canary Islands faded into the mist.
Amid this relatively calm interval during the inbound journey, Columbus prepared to defend himself against challenges sure to come from Pinzón, the Portuguese, and other rivals, by summarizing his exploits for Luís de Santangel, the Queen’s Keeper of the Privy Purse, to pass on to the Sovereigns. (It is conceivable that Columbus wrote two such letters, one intended for each party, but only the letter to Luís de Santangel has survived.) Published only weeks later, in April 1493, it is considered the first instance of printed Americana, and perhaps the most important and valuable.
Columbus’s “Letter on the First Voyage” attempted to burnish the events of his first voyage. If his diary reads as a jumbled, frequently contradictory series of impressions made on the fly, his letter reveals his more considered impressions, those he expected to secure his place in the scheme of things. From start to finish, he was determined to accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative aspects of his voyage. “Since I know you will be pleased at the great success with which the Lord has crowned my voyage,” he began, “I write to inform you how in thirty-three days I crossed from the Canary Islands to the Indies, with the fleet our most illustrious Sovereigns gave to me. And there I found many islands filled with people without number, and of them all have I taken possession for Their Highnesses, by proclamation and with the royal standard displayed, and nobody objected.”
Although he had no idea where he actually had gone, he proceeded to explain his taxonomy of discovery: “To the first island which I found I gave the name Saint Salvador, in recognition of His Heavenly Majesty, who marvelously hath given all this; the Indians call it Guanahani. To the second I gave the name Isla de Santa María de la Concepción; to the third, Fernandina ; to the fourth, Isabela, to the fifth, Juana, and so to each one I gave a new name.” How splendid it was to conjure and name a new world.
On a more troubling subject, he added, “When I reached Cuba, I followed its north coast westwards, and found it so extensive I thought this must be the mainland, the province of Cathay.” Here he rewrote his own history. As his logbook indicated, he initially believed that Cuba was a very large island, and if that were the case, it could not be connected to Cathay, or China, a result that would undercut his promises to the Sovereigns, the purpose of his expedition, and his cosmography. The explorer did not want to confront the consequences of his own discovery, and so he resorted to a convenient fiction, explaining that as he sailed along the Cuban coast, he saw only “small groups of houses whose inhabitants fled as soon as we approached,” and stayed on his course, “thinking I should undoubtedly come to some great towns or cities.” Worse, the “coast was bearing me northward,” and winter was approaching, not that he had any realistic expectation of encountering ice and snow in this subtropical climate, where persistent heat and humidity plagued Columbus and all the men as they went out in their wool