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Here, on Hispaniola, the profusion of strange flora perplexed him. “A very unusual land,” he remarked, “with a great many wide rivers, big mountain chains, ample and treeless valleys and high peaks. I suspect the vegetation does not dry up at all during the year. I do not think there is any winter in this territory, since at Christmas there can be seen many nests, some with birds, others with eggs.” These birds puzzled him. Their appearance was the result of a separate evolutionary track; as such, they were the product of forces unknown to Chanca or anyone else of that era. Lacking a taxonomy adequate to the formidable task of classifying the fauna all around him, he hesitantly recorded references to “a few multi-colored dogs,” and a “furry animal like the rabbit . . . with a long tail and with fore and hind legs like those of mice, and it climbs trees. Many people who have eaten it say it is indeed tasty.” At such moments, it seemed as though he were in another world similar to that of Europe, but subtly and enigmatically different, like a foreign language he could only partly decipher. Creatures that he took to be snakes, for instance, baffled him; he claimed that the Indians “like them a lot, much as we like pheasants in our country. They are of different shape but the same size as our lizards,” with the exception of one curious beast that he estimated to be the size of a calf “and had the shape of a lance.” The creature inspired an outpouring of Spanish abhorrence, yet “many attempts to kill it were thwarted by the dense vegetation where it could hide by the sea and never be caught.”

In late November 1493, the fleet paused at the port of Monte Cristi, on the inhospitable northern coast of what is now the Dominican Republic “to study the configuration of the territory,” in Chanca’s words, “since the Admiral considered unsuitable for a settlement the place where he had left the men.” With the benefit of hindsight, Columbus realized that his hasty choice of site on the first voyage had failed to take into account basic considerations such as the availability of water and food, and proximity to the aggressive Caribs. He concluded he needed to know the territory—and its dangers—better. He soon found them.

A scouting party came across “two dead men near the river, one with a rope around his neck and the other with a rope around his foot.” The next day, Chanca wrote, the scouts discovered “two more dead men, one of whom was in a position that revealed he had a long beard.” Who were they? With professional sangfroid, the physician observed that “some of our men had more negative than positive feelings, and rightly so, since none of the Indians have beards.” Columbus had nothing to say on a subject that could only bring dread to his men. They were about thirty-six miles from the fort.

Columbus departed for La Navidad two days later, on November 28, intending to call on Guacanagarí, the chief who had been entrusted with protecting the life of thirty-nine Spaniards from the first voyage. En route, the Admiral’s ship foundered amid the shallows in an eerie reenactment of the mishap the previous Christmas, when Santa María had struck a sandbar, but this time Columbus’s flagship broke free to arrive after nightfall. “We did not dare to take port near the coast until the next morning when the depth could be surely known and safe passage possible,” he recounted. They were still three miles from their goal when a canoe bearing five or six Indians gave pursuit, but Columbus had no intention of waiting for them.

He fired two shots to announce his arrival. As the reports echoed and faded, Columbus waited for the Christians in their garrison to respond in kind. But there was only silence that grew more poignant with every passing minute, “for they suspected that the comrades whom they had left there had been completely wiped out,” as Guillermo Coma remembered. Even the detached Chanca admitted to a “lot of concern” among the crew members. “Great sadness was all-encompassing,