Many Other Birds Were Seen From The Ship Flying Towards The
South-West, And That Same Night Great Numbers Of Large Fowl Were Seen, And
Flocks Of Small Birds Proceeding From The Northwards, And All Going To The
South-West.
In the morning a jay was seen, with an alcatraz, several ducks,
and many small birds, all flying the same way with the others, and the air
was perceived to be fresh and odoriferous as it is at Seville in the month
of April.
But the people were now so eager to see land and had been so
often dissappointed, that they ceased to give faith to these continual
indications; insomuch that on Wednesday the tenth, although abundance of
birds were continually passing both by day and night, they never ceased to
complain. The admiral upbraided their want of resolution, and declared
that they must persist in their endeavours to discover the Indies, for
which he and they had been sent out by their Catholic majesties.
It would have been impossible for the admiral to have much longer
withstood the numbers which now opposed him; but it pleased God that, in
the afternoon of Thursday the eleventh of October, such manifest tokens of
being near the land appeared, that the men took courage and rejoiced at
their good fortune as much as they had been before distressed. From the
admirals ship a green rush was seen to float past, and one of those green
fish which never go far from the rocks. The people in the Pinta saw a cane
and a staff in the water, and took up another staff very curiously carved,
and a small board, and great plenty of weeds were seen which seemed to
have been recently torn from the rocks. Those of the Nina, besides similar
signs of land, saw a branch of a thorn full of red berries, which seemed
to have been newly torn from the tree. From all these indications the
admiral was convinced that he now drew near to the land, and after the
evening prayers he made a speech to the men, in which be reminded them of
the mercy of God in having brought them so long a voyage with such
favourable weather, and in comforting them with so many tokens of a
successful issue to their enterprize, which were now every day becoming
plainer and less equivocal. He besought them to be exceedingly watchful
during the night, as they well knew that in the first article of the
instructions which he had given to all the three ships before leaving the
Canaries, they were enjoined, when they should have sailed 700 leagues
west without discovering land, to lay to every night, from midnight till
day-break. And, as he had very confident hopes of discovering land that
night, he required every one to keep watch at their quarters; and, besides
the gratuity of thirty crowns a-year for life, which had been graciously
promised by their sovereigns to him that first saw the land, he engaged to
give the fortunate discoverer a velvet doublet from himself.
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