The magazine of American history with notes and queries . -mile breeze, and be-fore night they saw the land. Sunday, the 28th, he anchored in a beautifulriver in Cuba that had twelve fathoms at the entrance. This is the firstharbor his ships had entered in the New World. He named it San Sal-vador. I infer, by the courses and distances sailed from South Ragged,the currents setting to the west along the coast of Cuba, and the descrip-tion of the harbor, that this is the present Port Padre. Columbus descrip-tion of the Bahama Islands, especially the fourth that he visited, com-pared with that giv
The magazine of American history with notes and queries . -mile breeze, and be-fore night they saw the land. Sunday, the 28th, he anchored in a beautifulriver in Cuba that had twelve fathoms at the entrance. This is the firstharbor his ships had entered in the New World. He named it San Sal-vador. I infer, by the courses and distances sailed from South Ragged,the currents setting to the west along the coast of Cuba, and the descrip-tion of the harbor, that this is the present Port Padre. Columbus descrip-tion of the Bahama Islands, especially the fourth that he visited, com-pared with that given by him of Cuba, produces an impression of thesuperiority of the former ; but all the Bahamas are insignificant coral islands, 24S THE FIRST LANDFALL OF COLUMBUS with only a moderate elevation above the sea. Cuba is the Queen of theAntilles ; it has mountains seven thousand feet high, and there is a lofty-range on the side that Columbus coasted. The contrast between this islandand the Bahamas strikes the beholder even in sailing along the coast. No. 4. That the Admiral blended them in his writing is a warning to investigatorsto discriminate between his ideal descriptions and his log. The formerexpress the mental condition of a religious enthusiast, who, after eighteenyears of painful solicitation, found the fruition of his hopes among thelittle islands of the Bahamas. The log is the professional record of THE FIRST LANDFALL OF COLUMBUS 249 seamen ; the courses, distances, trend of coasts, direction of winds, etc., arepurely technical matters that seamen are not likely to put down under theinfluence of their imagination. Nor are these things capable of exaggera-tion. Twelve fathoms, southeast wind, east and west coast line, shoalwater to the southward, mean precisely what is said, and these words canbe relied upon, unless a clerical error has been made. This paper is aneffort to separate the log from the narrative, and to plot that on acorrect chart. If the Crooked Island grou
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