The History of Cuba. Willis Fletcher Johnson

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СКАЧАТЬ across the southeastern end of the Great Bahama Bank, since most appropriately called the Columbus Bank, until just at nightfall he had seen looming before him on the southern horizon the mountainous form of a vast land. It was too late, however, to continue the voyage that night, so he lay to, and at earliest daybreak of Sunday morning, leaving behind him the islet fittingly called Caya Santo Domingo, completed his course to the land which he fondly but vainly hailed as the much-sought Cipango.

      The coast at the point at which he reached it seemed specially designed by nature for his favorable and auspicious reception. There lay before him what seemed the estuary of a large and beautiful river, free from rocks or other impediments, and with a very gentle current. It had an ample depth of water for his vessels, and was sufficiently broad, even at a considerable distance inland, for them to beat about in. It was encircled by lofty and picturesque hills, the aspect of which reminded him of the "Pena de los Enamorados" near Granada, in Spain; and upon the summit of one of them was what he described as another little hill, shaped like a graceful mosque. Enchanted with the vision, and gratified beyond expression at what he confidently assumed to be the reaching of his goal and the vindication of his enterprise, he gave to the spot a repetition of the name which he had devoutly bestowed upon his first landfall, calling the port San Salvador.

      The identity of this spot has been much questioned and disputed; perhaps even more than that of Columbus's first landing in the Bahamas; and it is not to be regarded as entirely certain. Washington Irving pretty confidently placed it at Caravelas Grandes, far to the west of Nuevitas del Principe, while others insist that it was at Nuevitas itself. Navarrete, on the other hand, with his theory that the first landfall was at Grand Turk Island, held that Cuba was reached at Nipe Bay, east of Holguin; while Las Casas and Herrera insisted that the port of San Salvador was at Baracoa, near Cape Maysi, at the extreme eastern end of the island. Midway between the extremes, that most scholarly and judicious of geographers, Sir Clements Markham, selected the natural harbor of Naranjo, a little to the west of Punta Lucrecia and Punta Mulas. Other historians and geographers, after painstaking research, declare that they do not believe the place can be determined.

      With this, in the ultimate analysis, I would agree. It is probably impossible to establish indisputably the identity of the place. Yet it does seem to me that the arguments in favor of Naranjo, as selected by Markham, are so strong as to be all but entirely convincing, and that it will be judicious, therefore, to assume that it was there that the Admiral first reached the shore of Cuba. A glance at the map shows this to be the region which was nearest and which he was likeliest to reach first, coming from either Long Island or Crooked Island, eastward of the Mucaras, on a south-southwest course, which, we are told, is what he steered. The port of Naranjo answers to his description in depth and breadth more nearly than any other on that part of the coast. It is the estuary of a considerable river, as was Columbus's San Salvador, though how large the river really was he does not appear to have undertaken to ascertain, though he did ascend the stream some little distance on his first day's visit. Finally, it is to be observed that Naranjo is girt about by hills, precisely as was his San Salvador, and on the crest of one of them there is a huge rock, jutting up like "another little hill" and roughly resembling in shape a mosque, because of which the hill is called "Loma del Temple." This, then, and not Nuevitas, Nipe, nor Baracoa, I believe to have been the scene of Columbus's discovery of Cuba.

      

QUEEN ISABELLA

      We have seen that Columbus at first unhesitatingly believed it to be Cipango which he had reached. Despite that fact, and also despite the fact that the natives called it Cuba, he insisted upon renaming it. In accordance with his previous practice in nomenclature, it must have a very noble and distinguished name. His first landfall he had named for the Holy Saviour Himself; the second for the Holy Virgin; the third for the King, and the fourth for the Queen of Leon and Castile. The next name in order, in dignity and distinction, was that of the heir to the dual throne, wherefore he named the land Juana. Most writers, including Irving, have made the curious but facile mistake of saying that this name was given "in honor of Prince Juan, the son of Ferdinand and Isabella." It was, in fact, in honor of Princess Juana, the daughter of those sovereigns. She was that unhappy princess who because of her insanity was called "La Loca," and who by her marriage with Philip of Burgundy and of Hapsburg brought a new dynasty to the Spanish throne and greatly involved the monarchy in the politics and wars of Central Europe. Juana was mentally incompetent to succeed to the throne of Castile which she inherited upon the death of her mother, wherefore she was compelled to relinquish it to the regency of her father; and when he united Castile with Aragon, and conquered and annexed Navarre and Granada, and thus became the first King of Spain, Cuba was renamed in his honor and known no longer as Juana but as Ferdinandina, or Fernandina. Still later it was called San Diego, or Santiago; and again Ave Maria Alfa y Omega. But these names were transitory. The natives never accepted one of them, but clung to the old name of Cuba, and there was a fine touch of poetic justice in the fact that that name survived the extinction of the race that had cherished it. Under the ruthless rule of the Conquistadores the aboriginal population of the island almost entirely vanished, and with them practically all traces of their existence save four. These were the name and use of tobacco, the name and use of hammocks, the name and use of canoes, and the name of the island itself.

      It would not have been surprising, and it would have been quite pardonable, had Columbus seen everything in the New World through glasses of couleur de rose. Naturally of a romantic and imaginative temperament, he experienced in the realization of his long-cherished ambition such a degree of spiritual and mental exaltation as seldom has come to mortal man. Yet quite apart from this, the native beauty of Cuba, as seen to our eyes to-day, abundantly justifies the rhapsodies in which he indulged in describing it. On that first memorable Sunday he wrote in his diary, "This is the most beautiful land ever beheld by human eyes." From the quarter-deck of the Santa Maria he gazed with rapture upon the profuse verdure of the shore and of the hills which rose in the back-ground, observing with admiration and surprise that the trees grew down to the very water's edge, as did also the herbage, as he had never seen it elsewhere. The palms and other trees were largely of different kinds from those which he had seen in Spain, in Guinea, and elsewhere, and they bore flowers and fruit in great profusion, while among them were innumerable birds, beautiful to the eye and with songs entrancing to the ear.

      Two canoes, containing each several natives, put out from a recess in the harbor shore to meet the Spanish ships, but when a boat was lowered from one of the latter, to proceed ahead and take soundings, they incontinently fled. Columbus himself then entered a small boat and went ashore, where he found two houses, which he assumed to belong to the owners of the two canoes. No persons were to be found upon the premises, and the only living things were "a kind of dog that never barks," which we may assume to have been some small animal of the ant bear tribe, now probably extinct or at any rate no longer domesticated. The houses were notably neat and clean, and were evidently the abode of fishermen, since in them were nets and cordage of palm fibre, fish-hooks of horn, and harpoons of bone. All about the houses the herbage was as profuse, at the end of October, as it was in Andalusia in May. Most of the herbs as well as the trees were strange to Columbus, but he found some wild amaranth, and much common purslane. He went some distance up the harbor, or river as he called it, at every step or stroke of the oars seeing something new to excite his admiration.

      The natives of Guanahani whom he had brought on his ship informed him that Cuba was a very large island, which could not be circumnavigated in twenty days; that it contained ten large rivers and that its whole expanse was well watered. They were also understood by Columbus to say that gold mines and pearls were to be found in the island, and that large ships came thither from the mainland domains of the Grand Khan, ten days' sail away. The bulk of this "information" was of course quite mistaken by Columbus, his vivid imagination and his eager desires easily misleading him into interpreting anything which the natives might say, largely in sign language, as meaning just what he wished to be true.

      The next day Columbus left San Salvador and sailed westward along the coast. That was the direction in which, СКАЧАТЬ