[Note 8:  According to the judgment of Las Casas, Bartholomew Columbus was a man of superior character and well qualified to rule, had he not been eclipsed by his famous brother. Hist.  Ind., ii., p. 8.]

[Note 9:  Bull granted May 4, 1493:  Ac quibuscumque personis . . . districtius inhibemus, ne ad insulas et terras firmas inventas, et inveniendas detectas et detegendas, versus occidentem et meridiem, fabricando et construendo lineam a Polo Arctico ad Polum antarcticum, sive terrae firmae, Insulae inventae et inveniendae sint versus aliam quamcumque partem quae linea distet a qualibet insularum quae vulgariter appellantur de los Azores el Capo Verde, centum leucis versus occidentem et meridiem ut praefertur pro mercibus habendis, vel quavis alia de causa accedere praesumant, absque vestra et haeredum et subcesorum vestrorum praedictorum licentia spetiali....  By the agreement signed at Tordesillas, the distance was increased by common consent between Spain and Portugal, not as Martyr says, to 300, but to 370 leagues.]

Leaving Hispaniola,[10] the Admiral sailed with three vessels in the direction of the land he had taken for an island on his first voyage, and had named Juana.  He arrived, after a brief voyage, and named the first coast he touched Alpha and Omega, because he thought that there our East ended when the sun set in that island, and our West began when the sun rose.  It is indeed proven that on the west side India begins beyond the Ganges, and ends on the east side.  It is not without cause that cosmographers have left the boundaries of Ganges India undetermined.[11] There are not wanting those among them who think that the coasts of Spain do not lie very distant from the shores of India.

[Note 10:  He left Hispaniola on April 24th.]

[Note 11:  This was the general opinion of cosmographers and navigators at that period; contemporary maps and globes show the Asiatic continent in the place actually occupied by Florida and Mexico.  See map of Ptolemeus de Ruysch, Universalior coquiti orbis tabula ex recentibus confecta observationibus, Rome, 1508.]

The natives called this country Cuba.[12] Within sight of it, the Admiral discovered at the extremity of Hispaniola a very commodious harbour formed by a bend in the island.  He called this harbour, which is barely twenty leagues distant from Cuba, San Nicholas.

[Note 12:  Always deeming Cuba to be an extension of Asia, Columbus was anxious to complete his reconnaissance, and then to proceed to India and Cathay.]

Columbus covered this distance, and desiring to skirt the south coast of Cuba, he laid his course to the west; the farther he advanced the more extensive did the coast become, but bending towards the south, he first discovered, to the left of Cuba, an island called by the natives Jamaica,[13] of which he reports that it is longer and broader than Sicily.  It is composed of one sole mountain, which rises in imperceptible