Even making a difficulty in giving him their
hands to kiss, and then caused him to sit down in their presence. Having
given a brief account of his voyage, they gave him leave to retire to his
apartment, whither he was attended by the whole court; and so great was
the favour and honour shewn him, that when the king rode about Barcelona,
the admiral rode on one side of him and the Infante Fortuna on the other;
whereas before no one rode along-side of the king except the Infante, who
was his near kinsman.
[1] Rabo de junco is explained to signify Rush-tailed: Rabo being a tail
and Junco a rush in the Spanish language. - E.
[2] Don Ferdinand compliments his father too largely in this place by
supposing Cipango and Hispaniola the same. The original design of
Columbus to sail westwards to India, which he erroneously supposed to
be vastly nearer in that direction, led him accidentally almost to
discover Hispaniola on the supposed route to Cipango or Japan. - E
[3] The dates of the voyage may be here recapitulated. Columbus sailed
from Palos on the third of August 1492, and reached the island of
Gomera, one of the Canary islands, on the ninth of August, or in six
days. He remained there and at Gran Canaria, refitting and
replenishing his stores, till the sixth of September, when he began
his passage due west across the Atlantic; and the first land of
America was discovered on Friday the twelfth of October at two in the
morning: thirty-six days after leaving Gran Canaria, and seventy days
after leaving Palos in Spain. - E.
[4] This would seem to be a great exaggeration, perhaps an error of the
press; but now impossible to be rectified. - E
[5] Nothing can be more ambiguous than the interpretation of signs between
people who are utterly ignorant of each others language: But the signs
on this occasion seem rather to imply that the cacique requested the
Spaniards to declare themselves his friends, by participating in
hostile demonstrations against the people from Tortuga. - E.
[6] This term evidently expresses a person unused to the sea, as
contradistinguished from an experienced seaman. - E.
[7] Cazabi seems to have been what is now called casada in the British
West Indies, or prepared manioc root; and axi in some other parts of
this voyage is mentioned as the spice of the West Indies; probably
either pimento or capsicum, and used as a condiment to relish the
insipidity of the casada. - E.
[8] The meaning of this term is nowhere explained in this voyage: but in
the account of the discovery of America by Herrera, it is said to
signify pale gold. From its application in the text, it is probably
the Indian name of gold, the perpetual object of inquiry by the
Spaniards.
