“The Pinta, the best sailer of the three, was ahead.  She makes signals, already agreed upon, that she has discovered land.  A sailor named Rodrigo de Triana was the first to see this land.  For the Admiral being on the castle of the poop of the ship at ten at night really saw a light, but it was so shut in by darkness that he did not like to say that it was a sign of land.  Still he called up Pedro Gutierrez, the king’s chamberlain, and said to him that there seemed to be a light, and asked him to look.  He did so and saw it.  He said the same to Rodrigo Sanchez of Segovia, who had been sent by the king and queen as inspector in the fleet, but he saw nothing, being indeed in a place where he could see nothing.

“After the Admiral spoke of it, the light was seen once or twice.  It was like a wax candle, raised and lowered, which would appear to few to be a sign of land.  But the Admiral was certain that it was a sign of land.  Therefore when they said the ‘Salve,’ which all the sailors are used to say and sing in their fashion, the Admiral ordered them to look out well from the forecastle, and he would give at once a silk jacket to the man who first saw land, besides the other rewards which the sovereigns had ordered, which were 10,000 maravedis, to be paid as an annuity forever to the man who saw it first.

“At two hours after midnight land appeared, from which they were about two leagues off.”

This is the one account of the discovery written at the time.  It is worth copying and reading at full in its little details, for it contrasts curiously with the embellished accounts which appear in the next generation.  Thus the historian Oviedo says, in a dramatic way: 

“One of the ship boys on the largest ship, a native of Lepe, cried ‘Fire!’ ‘Land!’ Immediately a servant of Columbus replied, ’The Admiral had said that already.’  Soon after, Columbus said, ’I said so some time ago, and that I saw that fire on the land.’” And so indeed it happened that Thursday, at two hours after midnight, the Admiral called a gentleman named Escobedos, officer of the wardrobe of the king, and told him that he saw fire.  And at the break of day, at the time Columbus had predicted the day before, they saw from the largest ship the island which the Indians call Guanahani to the north of them.

“And the first man to see the land, when day came, was Rodrigo of Triana, on the eleventh day of October, 1492.”  Nothing is more certain than that this was really on the twelfth.

The reward for first seeing land was eventually awarded to Columbus, and it was regularly paid him through his life.  It was the annual payment of 10,000 maravedis.  A maravedi was then a little less than six cents of our currency.  The annuity was, therefore, about six hundred dollars a year.

The worth of a maravedi varied, from time to time, so that the calculations of the value of any number of maravedis are very confusing.  Before the coin went out of use it was worth only half a cent.