ing him of our theory, for he wanted to get Dr. Pedroso's 

 impression direct from the original Spanish. 



To our delight, Dr. Pedroso produced a simple sketch 

 of San Salvador and the other islands to which Columbus's 

 course had carried him that included the additional island 

 Ed had visualized. When we explained the reason for our 

 satisfaction at this interpretation, he was immensely in- 

 terested and offered to write his friend, Dr. Ramon 

 Menendez Pidal, president of the Royal Academy of 

 Spanish Language in Madrid, to learn what he would in- 

 fer from a reading of this particular passage. Some time 

 later we received a letter from Dr. Pedroso, stating that 

 the learned Spaniard had been unable to find any fault 

 with our interpretation. 



When the time came to make our personal investiga- 

 tion of the islands to which Columbus's fleet may have 

 sailed, we included the possibility that Columbus might 

 have first landed at Caicos, but then, instead of following 

 the course which Verhoog had outhned by way of Great 

 Inagua, sailed past Mayaguana to Samana and then to 

 Long island, where his course joined the one from Watling 

 island suggested by Morison. 



I reahzed as I sat in Leonard Thompson's hving room 

 in Nassau the night of June twenty-third, attempting to 

 explain to him and his wife exactly why Ed and I were 

 investigating these possible courses of Columbus, that to 

 brief anyone on such a confusing subject in a short time 

 was no simple task. Leonard, who had accompanied 

 Marilyn and Mendel Peterson when they joined Sea Diver 

 at Turks island a few weeks earher, was to fly Clayton 

 and me in our Widgeon to join Sea Diver at Caicos the 

 next day, and I wanted him to make some detours from 

 the usual direct route so that we could fly over some of 

 the islands which were included in the three theories we 

 were examining. 



304 Sea Diver 



