The computations from Santa Cruz, in the Canaries, to San Salvador give this result, as kindly made for us by Lieutenant Mozer, of the United States navy.

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4

Arabic word for raft or float; here it means canoes.

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5

To this first found land, called by the natives Guanahani, Columbus gave the name of San Salvador. There is, however, great doubt whether this is the island known by that name on the maps. Of late years the impression has generally been that the island thus discovered is that now known as Watling’s island. In 1860 Admiral Fox, of the United States navy, visited all these islands, and studied the whole question anew, visiting the islands himself and working backwards to the account of Columbus’s subsequent voyage, so as to fix the spot from which that voyage began. Admiral Fox decides that the island of discovery was neither San Salvador nor Watling’s island, but the Samana island of the same group. The subject is so curious that we copy his results at more length in the appendix.

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6

This is supposed to be Caico del Norte.

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7

Was this perhaps tobacco?

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8

They are called Hamacas.

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9

Las Casas says they were not meant for smoke but as a crown, for they have no opening below for the smoke.

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10

A castellano was a piece of gold, money, weighing about one-sixth of an ounce.

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11

This was the name the old geographers gave to Japan.

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12

These were probably hammocks.

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13

Within a few months, in the summer of 1890, a well known English publisher has issued an interesting and ingenious edition, of what pretended to be a facsimile of this document. The reader is asked to believe that the lost barrel has just now been found on the western coast of England. But publishers and purchasers know alike that this is only an amusing suggestion of what might have been.

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14

That of Peter Martyr.

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15

“Canoaboa” was thought to mean “Land of Gold.”

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16

The name is spelled in many different ways.

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17

In the first Decade of Peter Martyr.

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18

The whole subject of the portraits of Columbus is carefully discussed in a learned paper presented to the Wisconsin Historical Society by Dr. James Davie Butler, and published in the Collections of that Society, Vol. IX, pp. 79-96.

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19

I am indebted to T. J. McLain, Esq., United States consul at Nassau, for the following information given to him by the captains of this port, who visit Samana or Atwood’s Key. The sub-sketch on this chart is substantially correct: Good water is only obtained by sinking wells. The two keys to the east are covered with guano; white boobies hold the larger one, and black boobies the other; neither intermingles.

The island is now uninhabited, but arrow heads and stone hatchets are sometimes found; and in places there are piles of stones supposed to have been made by the aborigines. Most of the growth is scrubby, with a few scattered trees.

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