[Note 3:  Alonzo Perez Nirando, a sailor from Huelva, made the joyous announcement, and the sailors sang the Salve Regina in thanksgiving.  Columbus named the island Trinidad, having already decided to dedicate the first sighted land to the Holy Trinity.  The three mountain peaks close together seemed to render the name all the more appropriate.]

Twenty miles from that place, the Admiral found a sufficiently large port to shelter his ships, though no river flowed into it.  Sailing farther on he finally discovered a satisfactory harbour for repairing his vessels and also replenishing his supply of water and wood.  He called this land Punta del Arenal.[4] There was no sign of any habitation in the neighbourhood of the harbour, but there were many tracks of animals similar to goats, and in fact the body of one of those animals, closely resembling a goat, was found.  On the morrow, a canoe was seen in the distance carrying eighty men, all of whom were young, good-looking, and of lofty stature.  Besides their bows and arrows they were armed with shields, which is not the custom among the other islanders.  They wore their hair long, parted in the middle, and plastered down quite in the Spanish fashion.  Save for their loin-cloths of various coloured cottons, they were entirely naked.

[Note 4:  The narrative at this point is somewhat sketchy, but the author, doubtless, faithfully recounted the events as they were reported to him.  The ships approached the island from the east, and then coasted its shore for five leagues beyond the cape named by Columbus La Galera, because of it’s imagined resemblance to a galley under sail.  The next day he continued his course westwards, and named another headland Punta de la Playa; this was a Wednesday, August the first; and as the fleet passed between La Galera and La Playa, the South American continent was first discovered, some twenty-five leagues distant.  Fernando Columbus affirms that his father, thinking it was another island, called it Isla Santa; but in reality Columbus named the continent Tierra de Gracia.  Punta del Arenal forms the south-western extremity of the island and is separated by a channel, according to Columbus, two leagues broad.]

The Admiral’s opinion was that this country was nearer to the sky than any other land situated in the same parallel and that it was above the thick vapours which rose from the valleys and swamps, just as the high peaks of lofty mountains are distant from the deep valleys.  Although Columbus declared that during this voyage he had followed without deviation the parallel of Ethiopia, there are the greatest possible physical differences between the natives of Ethiopia and those of the islands; for the Ethiopians are black and have curly, woolly hair, while these natives are on the contrary white, and have long, straight, blond hair.  What the causes of these differences may be, I do not know.  They are due rather to the conditions of the earth than to those of the sky; for we know perfectly well that snow falls and lies on the mountains of the torrid zone, while in northern countries far distant from that zone the inhabitants are overcome by great heat.