誓 DELUSIONS OF NOMENCLATURE 11 Alonzo Pinzon reported to him that the natives were speaking of a place called Cubanacan, he identified that name with Kublai Khan, and assumed that he was on the mainland of Cathay, and about only 100 leagues from the capital of the Great Khan. This practice of confusing native names in the American islands with those in Asia of which he had heard, was continued, with further misleading results. Thus, when he heard the island of Santo Domingo called Quisqueya, he identified it with Quisai, the Chinese metropolis mentioned by Marco Polo; and when the natives named the place as Cibao he supposed that name to be a corruption of Cipango. Constantly, as Lamartine observed, the phantom of Asia interposed itself between Columbus and America, to rob him, for a chimera, of a great reality. Finally, on his return from this voyage, Columbus explicitly reported to the King of Portugal that he had not been to any of the African lands claimed by that monarch, but to Cipango and to India; the Spanish sovereigns addressed him as "Viceroy and Governor of the Islands discovered in the Indies"; and the general supposition in Europe was that he had reached the eastern coast of Asia, and that Cuba was a part of the mainland of Cathay. The letter of Columbus to Ferdinand and Isabella, reporting the result of his voyage, was entitled a "letter concerning the Islands discovered in the Indian Sea," or, "the Islands of India beyond the Ganges," and in the opening passages of that letter Columbus said: "On the 33rd day I came to the Indian Sea." This delusion was not corrected but rather confirmed by his second voyage. He then explored the many islands of the Caribbean Sea, and believed himself to be among the 7,440 islands near Cipango, described by Marco Polo, who probably referred to Formosa and the Loo Choos, or possibly the Philippines. Marco Polo, following Aristotle's nomenclature, had named an island in that region Antilla, whence Columbus or else Peter Martyr-gave to these islands the name of the Antilles. Thence Columbus revisited Cuba, skirting its southern coast for a long distance. Natives assured him that nobody had ever travelled so far as its western extremity, wherefore he was confirmed in his belief that it was indeed the mainland of Asia. Again the native nomenclature led him into self-deception, for hearing of a province named Mangon, he unhesitatingly identified it with the Mangi of Marco Polo. When he was told it was inhabited by people with tails, who wore long garments to conceal those appendages, he found in that report further confirmation of his belief; for he recalled that Sir John Mandeville had mentioned the alleged existence of such a tribe in Asia. Thus encouraged, he kept on, expecting to reach the Golden Chersonesus, or Malay Peninsula, and thus circumnavigate the world, returning to Europe by way of the Indian Ocean. He in fact went as far as the Bay of Philippina, or Cortez, and then turned back, still confident in his belief that Cuba was Cathay, and that Hispaniola, or Santo Domingo, was Cipango. Nor did he learn the truth on his third voyage, but instead added to his stock of errors. Directing his course further southward than before, in order to ascertain whether the people of equatorial Asia (which he supposed South America to be) were like those of Africa, he reached the Island of Trinidad, and the coast of Venezuela. He correctly judged the land at the south and west of the Gulf of Paria to be part of a great continent, though he persisted in the error of supposing it to be either Asia or a continent lying just south of Asia. But he cherished the extraordinary notion that it occupied the "highest part of the globe," and was the seat of the Garden of Eden, and that the great torrent of fresh water which flowed into the Gulf of Paria proceeded from the fountain which fed the Tree of Life! The fourth and last voyage of Columbus was dominated by the same erroneous conceptions, and was in addition marked with the beginning of that quest for the "Secret of the Strait" which so greatly occupied the attention of his successors for many years, and which has scarcely yet been EXPLORING THE ISTHMUS 13 wholly relinquished. Says the historian and explorer Galvano, citing Gomara: "In this same year, 1502, Christopher Columbus entered the fourth time into his discovery, with four ships, at the command of Don Ferdinand, to seek the Strait which, as they said, did divide the land from the other side. . They went first to the Island of Hispaniola, to Jamaica, to the river Azua, to the Cape of Higueras, to the Islands Gamares, and to the Cape of Honduras, that is to say, the Cape of the Depths. From thence they sailed towards the east, unto the Cape Gracias á Dios, and discovered the province and river of Veraguas, and Rio Grande, and others which the Indians called Hiemra; and from thence he went to the River of Crocodiles, which is now called Rio de Chagres, which hath its springs near the South Sea, within four leagues of Panama, and runneth into the North Sea; and so he went unto the island which is called Isla de Bastimentos, that is, the Isle of Victuals; and then to Porto Bello, that is, the Fair Haven; and so unto Nombre de Dios, and to Rio Francisco, and so to the Haven of Retreat; and then to the Gulf of Cabesa Cattiva, and to the Islands of Caperosa; and, lastly, to the Cape of Marble, which is 200 leagues upon the coast; from thence they began to turn again to the Island of Cuba." Thus is the story briefly told by the old historian, with some terminology strange to modern ears. To paraphrase the narrative, and to amplify it in the light of other knowledge, we may say that, being refused entrance to the harbours of Hispaniola, Columbus directed his course westward, passing completely by Cuba without realising the fact and its significance, and reached Roatan, the Bay Islands, and the coast of Honduras. There, on the mainland of Central America, he found native tribes more civilised than any he had seen before, and accordingly assumed that at last he was approaching the capital of the Great Khan. The mainland of Honduras he believed to be continuous with Cuba and to be Cochin China, the southeastern part of Asia; and he supposed that if he went northward he would presently reach that south coast of Cuba, along which he had sailed on his second voyage, and would thus be compelled to return eastward. Thus, to our lasting regret, he was deterred from going on to Yucatan and visiting that country while it was yet in the glories of Mayan civilisation. Instead, he turned southward, to seek the Golden Chersonesus, and to go home to Europe by way of the Strait of Malacca, which he believed was to be found somewhere between Honduras and Venezuela-between Cochin China, Cathay, and Mangi at the north, and the Garden of Eden at the south. That "Secret of the Strait" thereafter engaged his chief attention. He rounded Cape Gracias á Dios, and so went down the Mosquito Coast, along Costa Rica, to the Chiriqui Lagoon, and along the coast of Veraguas, the western part of the Caribbean coast of Panama. There he reckoned that he was only ten days' journey from the mouth of the Ganges River. The natives told him he was nearing what they called "a narrow place between two seas." They meant, of course, a narrow strip of land, the Isthmus of Panama. But Columbus, always believing that which he wished to be true, confidently assumed it to be a narrow strip of water-the much desired Strait. No such Strait appearing, however, he pressed on to the eastward along the Panama coast, entering the Bay of Limon and the mouth of the Chagres River. On November 2, 1502, he entered the Bay of Porto Bello, east of Colon, and thence proceeded to Nombre de Dios. Finally at El Retrete, on December 5, he abandoned for a time the quest of the Strait in that direction and turned back to the westward, to explore more carefully the coast of Panama along which he had already sailed. He spent the winter there, chiefly on the coast of Veraguas, which, because of its gold mines, he firmly believed to be a part of the Golden Chersonesus. He vainly sought to plant a permanent colony on the Belen River. At the end of April he set out again in quest of the Strait. Reaching the Mulatas Islands, near Point Blas, he identified them with a part of Mangi, or southeastern Asia. Past them he proceeded as far as the entrance to the Gulf of Darien, and then, instead of entering it and exploring its FAILURE AND SUCCESS 15 waters and shores, the very native habitat of the Legend of the Strait, he turned northward and eastward, and on May 1 started back for Hispaniola, never again to approach the mainland of the American continent. Thus he ended his career under the same delusion which had marked its beginning, and left his actual aim unaccomplished, though in the unconscious fulfilment of a far greater aim. He died in the unshaken belief that he had reached the Asian coast, and in ignorance of his real discovery of a thitherto unknown continent, and without finding the mythical Strait for which he sought. He had indeed "builded better than he knew." In his will he reaffirmed the error he had cherished, declaring that "It pleased the Lord Almighty that in the year 1492 I should discover the Continent of the Indies and many islands, among them Hispaniola, which the Indians call Ayte and the Monicongos, Cipango." It was not until 1508, two years after his death, that Cuba was circumnavigated, and thus found not to be a part of the mainland; though it may be that Amerigo Vespucci, in 1497-8, practically achieved that enterprise without realising its significance, by sailing around the Gulf of Mexico from Yucatan to Florida. It is true that upon the Admiral's coat-of-arms was placed the well-merited inscription, "A Castilla y á Leon, Nuevo mundi dio Colon"-To Castile and Leon, Columbus gave a New World. But it is not certain that Columbus himself was the author of that inscription, or of the phrase "New World." Peter Martyr seems to have been the first to speak of the lands discovered by Columbus as the "New World," in a letter written by him in 1494, while Amerigo Vespucci, in 1503, was probably the first to use the phrase in a published book; but Vespucci cherished the same delusions that Columbus did. Writing to Lorenzo de Medici, on July 18, 1500, after his voyage to America, he reported that about a month before he had "arrived from the Indies;" of the Venezuelan and Colombian coast, which he had explored, he said he had concluded that "this land was a continent, which might be |