NO. 14 ARCHEOLOGY OF BAY ISLANDS, HONDURAS STRONG 9 



they leapt ashore and talked with a Senor who called himself Imbibe, 

 and from here they crossed over toward the mainland which is called 

 the land of Maya in the language of the Indians and from here to 

 the coast ahead as far as a cape which the Admiral called Gracias a 

 Dios ". Bartholomew Columbus states that " The Island of Banassa 

 which they discovered here has very robust people who worship idols. 

 Their food is mostly a certain bleached grain the height of a ccsarc 

 which grows just as it grows in the hallcare in clumps, from which 



they make excellent bread In this place they took a ship of 



theirs (the natives) loaded with merchandise and wares and were 

 told that it came from a certain province called Maiam or luncatam * 

 with many garments of silk [sic] of diverse colors." 



Ferdinand Columbus was a boy of only fourteen when he accom- 

 panied his father on his last voyage. Subsequently he gathered 

 together a great library of books and manuscripts pertaining to the 

 discoveries of the period. This magnificent collection, some 20,000 

 volumes, furnished the source material for most of the early his- 

 torians, but about four-fifths of the collection has now disappeared. 

 The " Historic " written by Ferdinand Columbus, survives only in 

 the Italian translation of Alfonso Ulloa. It is thought that the latter 

 may have tampered with the text in places." Las Casas apparently 

 had access to the same manuscript sources and the concurrence of the 

 two accounts, at least regarding this immediate region, is close. Las 

 Casas will be quoted at some length and only additional facts in the 

 " Historic " need be given here, for some of these seem to have the 

 human touch of an eye witness not found elsewhere. 



Ferdinand called the island Guanara, and locates it 12 leagues from 

 the mainland near the point his father called " Casine ". Later, in 

 1508, he says, this point was designated as the Cape of Honduras on 

 the voyage of Solis. The island contained nothing of worth save 

 pieces of earth called cola'de, from which copper is smelted, and 

 some of the sailors, thinking this was gold, kept pieces for a long 



"Lothrop 1924, p. 13, and 1928, pp. 354, 355, points out that the word "Yuca- 

 tan ", a Spanish corruption of the native phrase, did not come into use until 1517, 

 whereas this letter was written in 1505 or 1506. The original document bears 

 out this contention inasmuch as the words " vel luncatam " are superscribed over 

 the word " Maiam " and do not belong to the original text. See Brinton, 1882, 

 p. 10. Lothrop concludes that this touched-up passage is doubtless the source of 

 the assertion of later historians (and ethnologists) that the captured canoe came 

 from Yucatan. 



''Harrisse, 1871, and elsewhere, has attacked the authenticity and value of the 

 "Historic", but Fiske, 1892, I, p. 340, defends it as "of priceless [historical] 

 value ". 



