Columbus: The Four Voyages, 1492-1504 by Laurence Bergreen Read Free Book Online Page B

Bohío, he wrote, “they were speechless.” Columbus did not dismiss the rumors of cannibals entirely, remarking that he believed “there is something in this.” Bohío would have to wait.
    In the predawn darkness of Sunday, November 25, Columbus went ashore at Cayo Moa Grande, located on Cuba’s northeastern coast. It was unusual to begin an expedition on the Lord’s Day, but he was operating on an instinct “that there should be a good river there.” His hunch seemed to pay off when he “went to the river and saw some stones shining in it, with some veins in them of the color of gold”—actually, they were iron pyrites, or fool’s gold—but Columbus convinced himself that he had discovered the genuine article. “He ordered some of these stones to be collected to bring to the Sovereigns.”
    This investigation quickly led him to something less precious than gold, but of greater practical value: wood to repair and strengthen the ships. “Being there, the ship’s boys sang out that they saw pine trees; he looked toward the sierra and saw many great and such marvelous ones, that he could not exaggerate their height and straightness, like spindles, thick and elongated, when he realized that ships could be had, and planks without number, and masts for the best ships of Spain. He saw oaks and arbutus” or, rather, trees closely resembling them, “and a good river, and the means to build sawmills. He saw on the beach many other stones of the color of iron, and others that some said were from silver mines; all of which the river brought down. There he cut a lateen-yard and mast for the mizzen of the caravel Niña .” The neighboring cape was so capacious that “100 ships could lie without any cable or anchors.” He envisioned a large, productive shipyard busily engaged in harvesting sturdy pine trees to construct “as many ships as were wanted,” all sealed with readily available pitch. The possibilities for a permanent outpost in this newly discovered land provoked Columbus to paroxysms of ecstasy and overstatement. It seemed that the prospects for settlement steadily improved with every landfall; the air became sweeter, the prospect more pleasing to the eye, and nowhere more than here, in Cuba. Anyone seeing this land, he maintained, would be “full of wonder.” And, of course, China lay just over the horizon.
    Columbus continued to praise his newly discovered land, evoking “nine very remarkable harbors which all seamen considered wonders, and five great rivers . . . very high and beautiful mountains . . . the most beautiful valleys . . . thick with high and leafy trees, which were glorious to see.” The one gnawing concern in this paradise was “tremendous fear” of cannibals, rumored to launch raiding parties in which they captured the land’s timid inhabitants. The Indians he had brought on board as passenger-captives were horrified when they realized he was headed for their domain, “lest they make a meal of them, nor could he quiet their fears.” Instead, they babbled about the cannibals’ single eyes and “dogs’ faces.” Columbus chose to deal with the rumors thus: “The Admiral believed they were lying, and thought that those who had captured them must be under the sovereignty of the Grand Khan.”
     
    O n November 27, from Baracoa, near the easternmost end of Cuba, he composed his most comprehensive summary yet. He revised his estimate of his findings upward, always upward, partly because he was convinced of the region’s strategic value, even if it was not China, and partly to distract the Sovereigns from the embarrassing circumstance that he had not accomplished what he had promised to do. “A thousand tongues would not suffice, nor his hand to write, for it appeared that it was enchanted,” he wrote of Cuba and its neighbors. Did anyone doubt the truth of his observations? “It is certain, Lord Princes, that when there are such lands there should be profitable things without