The shallowness of the sea and the numerous currents, which at each change of the tide dashed against and injured the lesser vessels, much retarded the Admiral’s progress, and to avoid the perils of the shallows he always sent one of the lighter caravels ahead; this vessel being of short draught took repeated soundings and the other larger ones followed.  At that time two provinces of the vast region of Paria, Cumana and Manacapana, were reached, and along their shores the Admiral coasted for two hundred miles.  Sixty leagues farther on begins another country called Curiana.  As the Admiral had already covered such a distance, he thought the land lying ahead of him was an island, and that if he continued his course to the west he would be unable to get back to the north and reach Hispaniola.  It was then that he came upon the mouth of a river whose depth was thirty cubits, with an unheard-of width which he described as twenty-eight leagues.  A little farther on, always in a westerly direction though somewhat to the south, since he followed the line of the coast, the Admiral sailed into a sea of grass of which the seeds resemble those of the lentil.  The density of this growth retarded the advance of the ships.

The Admiral declares that in the whole of that region the day constantly equals the night.  The north star is elevated as in Paria to five degrees above the horizon, and all the coasts of that newly discovered country are on the same parallel.  He likewise reports details concerning the differences he observed in the heavens, which are so contradictory to astronomical theories that I wish to make some comments.  It is proven, Most Illustrious Prince, that the polar star, which our sailors call Tramontane, is not the point of the arctic pole upon which the axis of the heavens turns.  To realise this easily, it is only necessary to look through a small hole at the pole star itself, when the stars are rising.  If one then looks through the same aperture at the same star when dawn is paling the stars, it will be seen that it has changed its place; but how can it be in this newly discovered country that the star rises at the beginning of twilight in the month of June to a height of only five degrees above the horizon, and when the stars are disappearing before the sunrise, it should be found by the same observer to be in the fifteenth degree?  I do not at all understand it, and I must confess the reasons the Admiral gives by no means satisfy me.  Indeed, according to his conjectures, the terrestrial globe is not an absolute sphere, but had at the time of its creation a sort of elevation rising on its convex side, so that instead of resembling a ball or an apple, it was more like a pear, and Paria would be precisely that elevated part, nearest to the sky.  He has also persisted in affirming that the earthly paradise[8] is situated on the summit of those three mountains, which the watcher from the height of the crow’s nest observed in the distance, as I have recounted.  As for the impetuous current of fresh water which rushed against the tide of the sea at the beginning of that strait, he maintains that it is formed of waters which fall in cascades from the heights of these mountains.  But we have had enough of these things which to me seem fabulous.  Let us return to our narrative.